Dr Moore wrote: ↑Thu Aug 04, 2022 4:44 pm
Often, but not always, right? Maybe not a majority of the time. Nelson is asking believers to avoid listening to all of them. For many, such as myself, the reconsideration of faith had nothing to do with other circumstances. It was entirely about things I learned regarding the faith. Yet here is Nelson, suggesting to his believing audience, that there must be something else wrong, hidden, perhaps even sordid, about me and my life, that explains -- even negates the intrinsic value of -- my doubts.
He also is trying to have it both ways. How often to people join the church because of some life trauma that makes them vulnerable and in need of community, love and confident answers? Should their experiences not also be doubted, if not preemptively invalidated?
On the one hand, I understand and agree that it sucks to have people assume that something is wrong with you if you decide one day that the LDS Church is not true, whatever that means. The whole religion thing is so baffling from the get go that it is difficult to understand how we get entangled in it all. Of course, people spend their time doing all kinds of diverting and odd things, so perhaps I should not be astounded by the bizarreness of it all.
So, from my point of view, I have to wonder about what needs validating or invalidating on either end of the deal. People get sucked into a religion, philosophy, hobby, or what have you, and then one day they may wake up and decide it isn't for them anymore. Their friends and family whom they used to vote Republican with, or attend LA Raiders games with, cannot understand what in the hell happened to change their mind.
The stakes are, of course, believed to be much higher with religion, especially a religion like Mormonism.
But let's say you buy into Mormonism totally, then what is your thought process going to be when a dear one suddenly abandons the faith? Something bad must have happened. Just like the mystery of falling out of love, I guess. What could have possibly precipitated the move from happily coupled to moving on to someone else or choosing being single? Something must be amiss. At least, in the minds of those closely connected to the event.
Well, that just happens. OK. Yeah. Or maybe not. Maybe something bad did happen.
I'm of the mind that all of these things are complicated to the point that it is almost impossible to untangle what actually takes a person from the place of conviction and commitment to disillusionment and departure. Each story is probably a little different from others. Each process something of its own mystery. President Nelson can't account for it, and neither can critics of the LDS Church.
Both have their stories for what must have happened, and, in my view, they are just stories. Myths of their own kind. Each side is really invested in the rightness of its own myth, and it is almost impossible to exchange the one for the other, or bridge the gap between them, because seeing from the other point of view is tantamount to having that point of view, and that simply cannot be.
So maybe it is inevitable that people in the LDS Church are going to think that something must have gone wrong with those who left. It is part of the logic of the whole system, isn't it? It really can't be a neutral event, and to think it is neutral is almost like saying that being LDS does not matter. How can faith be sustained when accepting that point of view?
It does kind of blow chunks and much worse when people who used apparently to love you, be close to you, be your people, etc., think you have gone off the map and maybe succumbed to the devil or some such. It is not like I do not share that experience, and it is not like it doesn't burn a bit. Not that I accept their judgment, but it hurts to have people see you in that negative light. I just don't know how they can be completely neutral about the loss of faith, when they hold having faith to be such a necessary and crucial part of their lives.