HELLO, I AM NEW HERE

[_zeezrom]

This journey was so disruptive and internally tumultuous that I chose to travel it alone.

This is a very sad letter. It breaks my heart.

[_Chap]

Now we have been deprived of Droopy, we must do all we can to keep Belmont here and posting for us ...

He don't know me very well, do he?

Well, I am a simple soul. When I saw this:

Farewell, to one and all.

This place has become far, far too toxic to justify any further participation. Not even Wade can likely convince me to stay around any longer, on the pretext of keeping at least some apologetic presence on this board for the sake of, perchance, mellowing some hearts and minds.

This place makes me feel ill and angry, and especially now that in recent weeks the board has been given over primarily to the relentless personal defamation of specific, targeted apologists who threaten to spill the exmo milk, I've come to the end of the line. In this state of mind, neither defending the gospel nor inviting others to return to the fold is in any sense a real possibility for me.

Fin.

I had no idea that it was some kind of essay in auto-parodic irony.

I look forward to seeing Droopy's wondrous 'mellowing' influence at work in the days and months ahead. For Lo, Droopy is with us always, even unto the end of the world.

(Or the next time he decides to throw a hissy fit.)

[_Droopy]

There are plenty of people who did that and decided to leave the Church because of it. And your insistence that people have a "responsibility" to research is rather strange in light of what the Brethren (notably Elder Packer) have said about digging into problematic Church history.

Despite the implication of a circular argument here, Elder Packer has only cautioned the Saints to the spiritual realities of mortality and the forces that work powerfully and in combination agaist our salvation.

Delving into church history from a secular perspective can be perfectly safe for those who are both spiritually and intellectually mature, but even here, there are dangers, and these dangers are not intellectual in a pure sense (that one will discover unambiguous "sanitized" history etc.), but spiritual, in that as one becomes fixated upon such questions (and their conjectural, hypothetical, and theoretical meanings), both spiritual and human psychological/charcterological dynamics come into play. Some of those spiritual forces are those of darkness, and they will use problems of Church history to darken, confuse, and disorient the mind and heart and attempt to lead one out of the gospel.

Those forces are always present, and there is no limit to human pride, hubris, and vanity. Hence, we have long seen the standard pattern in which an interest in the "problems" of Church history becomes in time a preoccupation that begins to displace actual study of the gospel itself. As the study of anti-Mormon literature and revisionist historicism of the Signature Books type increases, study of the scriptures and the words of the living oracles decreases. Pride and an aggressive sense of intellectual self sufficiency takes the place of a harmonious balance of intellect, faith, and spiritual sensitivity.

Apostasy is well underway.

[_Chap]

This journey was so disruptive and internally tumultuous that I chose to travel it alone.

This is a very sad letter. It breaks my heart.

Yes.

But soon Belmont will be back to suggest that the letter may well be fake, or alternatively that back in 1837 this guy's ancestors should have done more research on the internet before they joined the church.

[_stemelbow]

This is a very sad letter. It breaks my heart.

Pretty hostile letter too. That is the saddest part--the blame is all on some others it seems. He wishes to attribute to the leaders of the Church something that doesn't appear there to me--they are knowingly pushing something they don't believe in. I don't get the need for anyone to start attributing things like that in others. Its very reminiscent of that which he decries--the assumption that people who don't believe don't believe because of sin or that they were offended.

With that said, I think it very reasonable that people leave the Church after years of being in it, when exposed to some things associated with the Church. Its going to happen. His case does seem like a sad one. What can I, or the brethren do for him? Accept the conclusions he's drawn? it seems like he's demanded that, or nothing else will satisfy him. Sadly.

[_Droopy]

A fairly standardized "why I left the Church" narrative, albeit significantly spiced with a heady dose of paranoia, delusional fantasies of persecution, conspiratorial thinking, personal moral and intellectual grandiosity, majestic self pity, and the usual plethora of logical contradictions and "presenting problems" of an internal nature reframed and externalized as problems within the Church.


Fascinating exit story boilerplate.

[_Droopy]

It may not be a fake, by any means, but it does bear some of the classic marks of a very formatted type of "exit" story and letter that's been common within ex-Mormonism for decades and which does appear to be a kind of "form letter" for leaving the Church.

[_Simon Belmont]

Simon Belmont,

Since I have not heard from you in a PM or E-mail I quess you and I can discuss this issue here. However, I think it is only fair to let others join in.

Others can join in, of course. This is a public message board.

So you've read a lot of these "exit stories" -- so have I. I'll make two points here:

(1) One thing rings true for most of these "exit stories": the people in them don't take responsibility for themselves and for their choices in life. By that I mean: who is responsible for learning about one's faith? If I, for example, joined a Southern Baptist congregation and was completely ignorant of some of the black spots on its history (namely racism), that's my fault, not the SBC's. If I later become disillusioned with the faith because of that racism, I have no right to blame the leaders of the SBC or other members of the SBC for "duping" me. It was my choice to join, and it is mine to leave if I choose.

(2) For every "exit story" there is a powerful testimony of a faithful member who understands that no organization is perfect. For every "exit story" there is a faithful member who knows the historical problems with Mormonism yet remains faithful.

A good example is Mormon Scholars Testify.
Another is Don Bradley's story.

[_Droopy]

Simon Belmont,

Since I have not heard from you in a PM or E-mail I quess you and I can discuss this issue here. However, I think it is only fair to let others join in.

We were talking about a letter I mentioned of a person who was still in the LDS Church yet lost faith in the Church's credibility:

Here is the letter:

http://richkelsey.org/letter_from_an_ac ... ber_of.htm

You said,

Rich, come on. The Internet is full of those "insider" letters. Anti-Mormons use them all the time to appear as though they have some credibility.

Ok, sure there is a chance that the letter is fake.

Yet, it sounds so much like countless stories which I have read at Ex-Mormon Forums over the last two years that I think it is legitimate.

And, I know people at Ex-Mormon Forums, some are good Christians, and others have lost faith in Christianity. The issue these people have in common is not that they wanted to sin; but rather that they wanted the truth.

A lot of men and women who are zealous for the faith end up digging deeper into their religion. They had pure motives, yet what they found in their search was shocking.

Here is a quote from Bushman concerning this:

"Introduction" by Richard Bushman

The following is Richard Bushman's introduction paper to the 2008 summer seminar, “Joseph Smith and His Critics,” given July 29, 2008.

Increasingly teachers and church leaders at all levels are approached by Latter-day Saints who have lost confidence in Joseph Smith and the basic miraculous events of church history. They doubt the First Vision, the Book of Mormon, many of Joseph’s revelations, and much besides. They fall into doubt after going on the Internet and finding shocking information about Joseph Smith based on documents and facts they had never heard before. A surprising number had not known about Joseph Smith’s plural wives. They are set back by differences in the various accounts of the First Vision. They find that Egyptologists do not translate the Abraham manuscripts the way Joseph Smith did, making it appear that the Book of Abraham was a fabrication. When they come across this information in a critical book or read it on one of the innumerable critical Internet sites, they feel as if they had been introduced to a Joseph Smith and a Church history they had never known before. They undergo an experience like viewing the famous picture of a beautiful woman who in a blink of an eye turns into an old hag. Everything changes. What are they to believe?

Often church leaders, parents, and friends, do not understand the force of this alternate view. Not knowing how to respond, they react defensively. They are inclined to dismiss all the evidence as anti-Mormon or of the devil. Stop reading these things if they upset you so much, the inquirer is told. Or go back to the familiar formula: scriptures, prayer, church attendance.

The troubled person may have been doing all of these things sincerely, perhaps even desperately. He or she feels the world is falling apart. Everything these inquirers put their trust in starts to crumble. They want guidance more than ever in their lives, but they don’t seem to get it. The facts that have been presented to them challenge almost everything they believe. People affected in this way may indeed stop praying; they don’t trust the old methods because they feel betrayed by the old system. Frequently they are furious. On their missions they fervently taught people about Joseph Smith without knowing any of these negative facts. Were they taken advantage of? Was the Church trying to fool them for its own purposes?

These are deeply disturbing questions. They shake up everything. Should I stay in the Church? Should I tell my family? Should I just shut up and try to get along? Who can help me?

At this point, these questioners go off in various directions. Some give up on the Church entirely. They find another religion or, more likely these days, abandon religion altogether. Without their familiar Mormon God, they are not sure there is any God at all....

____________________________________________

Richard L. Bushman is a Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University, the current holder of the Howard W. Hunter visiting professorship in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University, and author of the recent biography Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.

If this is Bushman's analysis of the phenomena, I've got my own, thank you, and I'll stay with that until something better comes along, which the above patently isn't.

[_Ceeboo]

Hey Droopy,

A fairly standardized "why I left the Church" narrative, albeit significantly spiced with a heady dose of paranoia, delusional fantasies of persecution, conspiratorial thinking, personal moral and intellectual grandiosity, majestic self pity, and the usual plethora of logical contradictions and "presenting problems" of an internal nature reframed and externalized as problems within the Church.


Fascinating exit story boilerplate.

I think you may have missed heart-breaking, tragic, complicated, and enormously sad.


I was, am, and continue to be utterly amazed at how LDS people react to these letters from their very brethren (I Just don't get it)


Beyond BIZARRE, in my opinion.

Peace,
Ceeboo