[Arrakeen]

kotm wrote:

I’m sure I’m not the only one struggling with this. But lately I have been becoming more and more disassociated with the church because of it’s members. I know often times i’ll see members behaving very unchrist like on places like social media and even in real life. I feel like I have just been going through the motions lately. Attending my ysa ward and going to the Temple once per month so I can at least pretend to be active. But this is just really bothering me.

I have long struggled with this as well, especially during my time at BYU. I don’t remember who said it, but I once heard the line “The church is not a museum for the righteous, but a hospital for sinners.” I think this is an interesting perspective. We often hear about church members being an example or a light to the world, but in my experience church members aren’t necessarily any more “Christlike” than the rest of the population. I have known many members who were flawed individuals, including some much more deeply flawed than people I’ve known outside of the church. But you wouldn’t go into a hospital expecting the patients there to be representative of peak physical health. So from that angle it’s not surprising or even a bad thing to find selfish, judgemental, or unkind people among the members of the church.

Ideally, the purpose of the church is to help flawed people become better. The extent to which it actually achieves this varies greatly between individuals. The important part is whether it is helping you.

In my own case, I have distanced myself from the church and no longer attend. I find it can sometimes be easier to view church members charitably when their flaws can no longer hurt or impact me directly.

[Arrakeen]

SilentDawning wrote:

I love IU. I listen to a lot of her songs and I am impressed that she writes them all herself. I wasn’t aware of this one, and it’s one of those songs that spells “I’ll be there for you through thick and thin”. A very spiritual, uplifting song. I didn’t know she had put this one out. Time to check her official site….

Wow! I never would have guessed. I thought for sure I was the only Uaena on this forum 😆

I recently went to the Atlanta stop of her world tour and it was amazing. IU is a super inspiring person and pretty much the most wholesome celebrity ever.

[Arrakeen]

Late to the thread, but here is one of my favorite songs. It’s in Korean, but I linked a lyric video with the English translation. This song often moves me to tears and has gotten me through some difficult times in the past.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4jp4bH52E8[/youtube]

[Arrakeen]

Bruceson wrote:

I hope that the OP was able to work with his challenges in a positive way for him.

Thanks, I’m still working through it all, but making progress!

[Arrakeen]

I haven’t heard too many people outright say that they regretted their mission, but there have been many who seem to hint at it. They say things like “it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done” or “I’m glad I went, but I would never do it again.” One time in a BYU elders quorum meeting someone said “Let’s be real – the mission kind of sucked.” I think that’s the closest to an open admission I heard from an active member who wasn’t a family member.

Now it’s a different story for family members. Almost everyone in my family who served a mission – with the exception of one cousin – hated the experience. My dad, my uncles, and later myself all had recurring nightmares for years after returning home. My dad had all sorts of horror stories about his mission and never tried to sugarcoat it. I distinctly remember when I was growing up my dad never wanted to watch The Best Two Years movie with us because he was still traumatized. My uncles also had terrible experiences and went through some level of faith crisis because of it. I remember when I got back from my mission I met up for lunch with one of my uncles who was a professor at BYU and I asked him how long it took him to overcome the crisis of faith his mission caused. He told me he wasn’t sure he ever did overcome it. I guess for him the mission was the first time that following the church “path” didn’t work for him – and he has never really viewed the church the same.

As for myself, if you had asked me immediately after returning home I would have said I didn’t regret it. It was terrible, but I did learn a language and learned valuable lessons about standing up for myself and pushing back against authority. However now with hindsight, I would say I definitely regret going.

With the two years I spent on a mission I could have instead done a study abroad like my sister did, which seemed way more fun. Like all the benefits of a mission without the drawbacks. I could have finished school sooner and may have been in a better position to pursue grad school.

The biggest thing for me is seeing the impact the mission had on my mental health. It’s one thing to suffer through two years of hardship, it’s another to return with chronic depression. Being depressed basically robbed me of my college years and I was unable to socialize, make friends, or date for the majority of my time at BYU. Only now when I’ve mostly recovered am I beginning to try to rebuild some sort of social life and I’m realizing how behind I am having missed out on all the things I should have been doing in my early 20s.

[Arrakeen]

I’ll be sad when StayLDS goes away. It’s been a big help to me since I joined years ago when in the middle of my faith crisis. I haven’t been very active on this site recently since it’s been a while since I went to church and many of the happenings in Mormondom no longer directly impact me. Though I will admit to casually scrolling through Reddit to keep up-to-date with some of the current events in Mormonism. Not entirely sure why, maybe I just want to feel a little connected to what was once a major part of my life.

I do think independent forums like this one are pretty much all going away as everyone now uses Reddit and Twitter. Though I feel like those larger sites having so many users makes it impossible to have any sort of real conversation or back-and-forth discussion. Other than this forum I am on two other internet forums. One is a fan forum for a band that is no longer active, that one is pretty much dead and seems to have been overrun with spam bots recently. The other one is dedicated to a niche hobby and is surprisingly active, with thousands of active users and at least several dozen posts per day.

With places like StayLDS winding down, I’m afraid it will be continuing a trend that has seen places with genuine conversation and support disappear in favor of bigger social media sites, where it feels like people post and comment but rarely discuss.

[Arrakeen]

Roy wrote:

BYU offers a world quality education at a very reasonable price. It is clearly an investment of church resources. It also cannot accept everyone that applies, therefore there is a sense that everyone that attends is taking the spot of another potential student. In my opinion it becomes a perfect storm of conditions for the Honor Code.

BYU often talks about the dual purposes of quality education and spiritual nourishment, but I fear they are forgetting the former in favor of doubling down on the latter.

For a while, it seemed there was a system with the different BYU campuses serving different purposes. Provo was a highly-ranked and competitive university. BYU-I was less selective but in many ways more focused on the spiritual and “churchy” elements instead of academic competitiveness.

That’s at least how I and many students I knew viewed things. We were more focused on academics and secular education, and Idaho was for people who wanted the spiritual environment and were too righteous to wear shorts. 😆 I know that’s an oversimplification but I think there was an element of truth to it.

[Arrakeen]

Quote:

Student Ecclesiastical Endorsement Questions

Are you striving to deepen your testimony of God, the Eternal Father; His Son, Jesus Christ; and the Holy Ghost?

Are you striving to deepen your testimony of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Are you striving for moral cleanliness in your thoughts and behavior?

Do you obey the law of chastity?

Do you sustain the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators?

Do you support or promote any teachings, practices, or doctrine contrary to those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Do you regularly participate in your church meetings and strive to keep the Sabbath day holy?

Do you strive to be honest in all that you do, including keeping the commitments you have made?

The Church Educational System is supported and funded by the tithes of the Church of Jesus Christ. Are you a full-tithe payer?

Do you obey the Word of Wisdom?

Are you striving to live the teachings of the Church and keep the covenants you have made to this point in your life?

Are there serious sins in your life that need to be resolved with priesthood authorities as part of your repentance?

Honestly, I find this change infuriating and I’m extremely grateful that I’ve already graduated. It was hard enough having a faith crisis as a student, but it was at least possible to get by since the ecclesiastical endorsement only dealt with behavior and not testimony. Now it’s going to be much harder for anyone with doubts to continue attending.

There are MANY talented and bright students who attend BYU and adhere to a high standard of morality, yet question certain church teachings. In fact most of the smartest people I met at BYU probably fit into that category. This is going to alienate a lot of people.

As a student I was glad that I didn’t have everyone around me getting drunk or smoking weed, but I couldn’t have cared less if other students sustained church leaders or had “serious sins” they hadn’t confessed to a bishop. It seems clear the honor code’s goal is not to create a safe environment for living the gospel, but rather to enforce orthodoxy. Personally I see no reason why the standards for getting a temple recommend should be used as a basis for the ecclesiastical endorsement. BYU is not the temple, nor should it be.

This change is going to drive out a lot of students with doubts, and BYU will be worse for it.

[Arrakeen]

Roy wrote:

As a support group, I think StayLDs means to not make rash or permanent decisions in your time of crisis.

I relate much of my faith crisis to my time mourning the still birth of our daughter Emory. It is generally advised after the death of a child to not rush into life altering decisions like changing jobs, moving, divorce etc. The idea is that you are feeling emotional during the crisis and might be making permanent decisions to try to deal with very strong but also temporary emotions.

Finding out that the LDS church is not quite like you had once been taught and believed with all of your heart is like a death and those that go through this process are in a period of mourning. We say often to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This means to not throw out the good while you are deconstructing and learning what is going to be useful to you moving forward. Part of the good and useful that you may want to preserve is the relationships that you have with others. These relationships include church and community members but I think that family relationships (both immediate and extended family) are more important still. I do not think that an individual should just go through the motions of the LDS pathway in order to avoid making waves. However, if that person can slow down they can find ways to navigate with integrity and also be respectful of others that are important to them. That often means to have humility for what we do not yet know and keeping the door open to new learning in the future.

For me, that is the point.

I do not think it means to StayLDS as an active member in good standing perpetually. I believe that there are many people who no longer participate in the LDS church but that have been nonetheless successful in the mission of StayLDS.

I think I would consider my crisis period to be over at this point. I feel like I’ve landed outside the church, but have managed to make it a relatively soft landing. My relationship with my family is still pretty much intact and I was able to fade out my church activity without too much drama or conflict. My main problem for several years was navigating being a student at BYU during my faith crisis and I successfully managed to make things work long enough to graduate and get my degree.

At this point in my life, I just feel like there is no longer much for the church to offer me. That may change in the future, but for now I don’t see much value in continuing to participate actively in the church.

[Arrakeen]

SilentDawning wrote:

At a minimum I think staying lds means NOT having your name removed. Have great faith in your ability to be wrong in your current beliefs about the Church and in the power of God to surprise you with revelation — or your own Road To Damascus experience like Paul the Apostle had. I know that seems remote right now but it could happen. You never know what life holds so don’t make it harder to come back some day by having your name removed.

I’ve thought about it mainly as an option for closure if I feel the need to mark a cutoff point to leave behind some of my past trauma. But for now I don’t think there’s much reason to go that far. If in the future the church starts sending people to my home to try and bring me back despite my requests to be left alone I might consider removing my name, but for now nobody’s bothering me.

Quote:

I guess there is a continuum of involvement…from cold turkey at one end to regular attendance at the other. Where you are on that continuum really is up to you. One litmus test of where you belong is how you feel when you consider different spots on the continuum. For example, when I think of regular activity and a calling my heart says “No”…there is no way my current belief system will allow that. You may have your own threshold indicated by your own litmus test of “feeling”.

For me, church attendance seems to be where I draw the line. I’m fine hanging out with church members socially, but when they get into the religious aspects, I start feeling like it’s just not the place for me.

[Arrakeen]

DarkJedi wrote:

I think those students should have the privilege of having a graduation ceremony that is something they can remember and be proud of, and as such that would probably not include someone who is hostile toward different lifestyles.

I can’t say I agree with the decision to have Elder Holland speak, but at the same time I realize I have no recollection of who spoke at my commencement and what they talked about, and I graduated two years ago. I suspect the same would be true for many of the students at SUU if not for the controversy, which will probably make it more memorable.

[Arrakeen]

One part of Holland’s “musket speech” the article seemed to omit is this:

Quote:

I would like to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning

which sounds a lot more hostile than the portion quoted in the article. Suggesting not just that it is important to defend the church, but that there must be aggressive actions taken to fight back.

Edit: It seems like this was Holland quoting Oaks:

https://www.thechurchnews.com/2021/8/23/23218683/elder-holland-byu-university-conference-love-lgbtq” class=”bbcode_url”>https://www.thechurchnews.com/2021/8/23/23218683/elder-holland-byu-university-conference-love-lgbtq

[Arrakeen]

Quote:

As one of the foremost leaders of one of the world’s leading faiths, any university would be fortunate to have him as a commencement speaker.

One of the world’s leading faiths? I think outside of Utah very few people have ever heard of Jeffrey R. Holland. If this was any university outside of Utah/Idaho it would never be considered.

One problem I see with this is that it is insensitive to the 20% of students who are not LDS. I could see it being very alienating, as it treats SUU almost like a church-owned school and assumes Holland is an important person to the student body. LDS students have many other opportunities to hear from Elder Holland, but to non-LDS students he’s just some random person.

As a public university, I believe SUU should not endorse or show favoritism to any one religion. Would they invite a rabbi, imam, or priest to speak at commencement? If so then I would say it’s fair to invite Holland. Or if the decision to have him as a speaker is based on his business or career achievements instead of a particular religious role.

[Arrakeen]

nibbler wrote:

Forgot a few:

[list]

[Arrakeen]

“Obedience is the first law of heaven” is what I always think of with regards to this topic. In the church we put WAY too much emphasis on trying to perfectly follow rules, even when doing so is damaging to our own mental health.

Scrupulosity is one of the biggest things that made my mission miserable. I have always been a rule-following, letter of the law kind of person, and the worthiness rhetoric in the mission environment took that trait of mine to dangerous levels. The mission is extremely focused on exact obedience almost to the exclusion of everything else.

In discussions about obedience we were always presented with extreme examples of missionaries getting attacked by crocodiles, being murdered, or meeting some other catastrophe because they went to the beach, stayed out past 9:00, didn’t stay within sight of their companion, etc. But I feel like the scare tactic is completely ignored by the disobedient types while driving the already obedient ones insane with the obsession to be more “exactly” obedient. Reading the white handbook out loud every morning and carrying it around all day makes it seem like what we really worshipped were the rules. In reality whether you wake up at 6:30 or 6:31 doesn’t make a big difference in your life. But if your apartment caught fire at 6:31 and you couldn’t make it out because you were asleep, there would be some people saying if you had been awake and exercising like you were supposed to you would have been spared.

I think if we are going to fix the culture around “exact obedience” we need to start with the things we teach to missionaries.

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