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For many of us it’s more than just a faith crisis, it’s also an identity crisis. Church doctrines and church culture were who we were and what we did. It informed all life decisions and made up a good part of what occupied idle thought.

Chamelea wrote:

But with that 90% stripped away, who am I? Then the new me started immerging and it was everything opposite of the old me; everything the old me tried to prevent and fight against. And that old me still frequently whispers in my mind.

We sometimes talk about “deconstructing” here. Picking apart and analyzing every facet of our beliefs to determine what’s at the bottom. Where’s the foundation. I think that deconstruction period extends beyond beliefs, deconstruction extends to our identities as well. After we feel we’ve deconstructed enough, the process of rebuilding begins. The deconstruction process can leave us surrounded by rubble. During reconstruction we can use pieces of the rubble that still hold value to us or we can seek out new construction material.

Who I am is a byproduct of what came before. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without those experiences, good and bad. I see it as a journey of discovery. I’m trying to discover who I am, still, and I’ve been at this for close to 15 years now. 😯

But that’s okay, my identity can be more than it was before.

Joseph Smith wrote:

…the most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived its members the privilege of believing anything not contained therein, whereas the Latter-day Saints … are ready to believe all true principles that exist, as they are made manifest from time to time.

Joseph Smith wrote:

I believe all that God ever revealed, and I never hear of a man being damned for believing too much; but they are damned for unbelief.

Here I take “damned” to mean that we’ve stopped progressing as a person.

In the modern church era when we talk about belief and doubt it’s almost always framed as belief and doubt in the church itself. Church culture has become very creedal over the years. There are right beliefs, there are wrong beliefs. I’d like to reframe belief and doubt a little. Belief in oneself. Doubting oneself. Remembering that the process of self discovery is a difficult one and it’s a journey, not a destination.

Chamelea wrote:

Either situation makes me wonder why I even bother going to Church. I wish I could just take some time away from church like some of you have mentioned, but my husband is in the bishopric, so I’m the one bringing the kids to church and I have to keep up the image that things are just as they always were.

That’s an extremely tough situation to be in. Most active posters here have been at this long enough to have benefited greatly from the pandemic shutdown. That was a time where other people’s expectations of us were relaxed.

I won’t mince words here because this was a lesson that was hard learned for me. Sacrificing our needs to satisfy other people’s expectations of us sucks. I’m a people pleaser at heart and I know it’s difficult to stick up for myself. It feels alien after a lifetime of trying to please others, often pleasing them at my expense.

Also, living a double-life, any kind of double-life, is extremely hard on the psyche.

(cont.)

[nibbler]

Welcome and above all, thanks for sharing.

The very first thing that popped into my head was something I had heard over the years at church. I can’t find the quote anymore but it matches the sentiment of this quote that is purported to be from a personal letter from J. Reuben Clark to Milton H. Ross, 28 March 1951 [J. Reuben Clark

Papers]. I’ve only seen this quote appear in one place on a google search, that’s why I’m using the word purported.

Quote:

I fear that some of us are going to be greatly surprised to see in the Celestial Kingdom a number of people that we would have assigned to a far lesser kingdom.

Or an alternate take on the same idea:

Quote:

When you get to heaven you will likely view many folks whose presence there will be a shock to you;

But, take note, don’t even stare; doubtless there will be many folks surprised to see you there.

Believing in certainties about the afterlife can give us comfort but at the same time can can make us despair. The good news is that no one truly knows for certain what, if anything, an afterlife holds. Doubts about certainties relating to the afterlife can make us despair but at the same time can give us comfort.

I believe in a just and merciful god. Any attempt to limit god’s love and mercy feels more human than divine. At least to me.

You mentioned Fanny Alger. Do you ever find it funny that we can find so many issues with Joseph Smith’s personal character that it calls into question his ability to channel revelation yet at the same time we place a great deal of faith in his revelations about the particulars of attaining a specific afterlife?

Stated differently:

How do we know what the qualifications are to enter the celestial kingdom?

Through Joseph Smith.

Okay, but he got polygamy wrong didn’t he? What if he was wrong about the qualifications to enter the celestial kingdom as well?

Or stated more bluntly:

If Joseph Smith made it to the celestial kingdom, he set the bar very, very low for the rest of us.

When it comes to eternal families, I always fall back on my current relationship with my family. After all, this life is a part of eternity. Do I have my family now? If not, what can I do to regain them now? In this life.

I say this because I’ve seen some people on both sides of the fence (orthodox believers and people that leave the church) become estranged from family where church doctrines become the wedge. We have the doctrine of eternal families, not the doctrine of eternal church. In my opinion, if people are putting family before church then they’re well down the path to having an eternal family. Regardless of church membership.

Chamelea wrote:

What suggestions do you all have for me to help me be able to continue going to church like I’m striving to do without feeling utterly depressed nearly every time I go to church?

That’s a tough question. I know because I’ve been there. What helped me tremendously was some time away. I’m talking years off. There’s the quote, “you can’t heal in the environment that broke you.” It’s a generality, meaning it doesn’t hold true for everyone. Also, not everyone is in a position to take a break from church.

Another thing that helped me was taking some time to learn what I wanted out of my church experience. So much of the church experience is about conforming to the programs. It doesn’t have to be that way. It took time but I eventually learned what did and didn’t work out for me and setting and maintaining boundaries ultimately helped.

Just to reiterate, we’ve been taught that faith brings joy and doubt brings pain. I’d say that it depends on the things you’re believing in. Sometimes it’s the beliefs that bring pain and it’s the doubts that can open you up to more joyous revelations.

Those are the initial thoughts.

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It’s probably in reference to this: viewtopic.php?p=144183” class=”bbcode_url”>viewtopic.php?p=144183

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I know the feeling.

None of us are perfect, it’s just not in the cards. At the same time, I like to feel like the community I’m a part of is headed in the same direction as me.

Like if I want to go to the mountains and the group I’m with also wants to go to the mountains but they keep getting lost, running out of gas, distracted and detoured, maybe even get in a wreck. Contrast that against a group that does all those same things but they’re headed to the beach instead of the mountains.

Church feels like that a lot of the time.

There are places on earth where there are beaches and mountains though.

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The article mentions the fact that leaders said the ban would end one day but the article understandably fails to get into the specifics that critics often cite. For example, some quotes from BY where he implies that black people would one day get the priesthood but only after every white person had already gotten it.

It’s unfair to expect the article to air the dirty laundry, like sending Mark E Peterson away so they could finally get a common consent vote on lifting the ban, but I do wonder whether the actual healing can begin without having open discussion on some of these points. I don’t know.

Quote:

Soon after the June 1978 revelation that ended the restriction, Elder Bruce R. McConkie declared: “Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come.”

I’m glad this quote is in the article. Specifically, “We spoke with a limited understanding…”

This goes back to my point in the other post. I think it’s important to know that our leaders are fallible, even in their pronouncements of doctrine.

Back to modern day. I see many members espouse bigoted attitudes, citing church doctrines. Church doctrines that could be equally fallible. Church doctrines that could be made “with a limited understanding.” Yet I see people project their prejudices onto god and later use it as a defense for said prejudices that initiated in their own hearts.

I think church would be a more hospitable place if we injected a massive dose of humility into the culture. Not just being humble on a personal level but also being humble as it relates to arrogance surrounding “knowing” doctrines that alienate and discriminate others.

Again I’ll ask, how might personal racist or bigoted attitudes factor into the process of receiving more enlightening revelations? What will it take for us to feel confident enough to say, “I’ve received a revelation from god” to end our prejudices?

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Quote:

However, although there may be some misreporting, research has shown that religious individuals, and Latter-day Saints in particular, are the most likely to give accurate self-reports.12 While religious individuals may feel more embarrassed about reporting things that do not make them “look good,” they are more likely to accurately report those things. Thus, while we should acknowledge the limitations inherent in self-reported data, it is also important to acknowledge that the Latter-day Saints in our sample are, based on previous research, likely to report with a high degree of accuracy.

How could anyone know this for certain? Especially that part where they say Latter-day Saints in particular are better at giving accurate self-reports.

It truly reads like someone with an agenda to show that the LDS church is better than all the rest at absolutely everything.

LDS members don’t lie to make themselves look good as much as other people do, even when we ask them if they’re lying about lying. LDS members don’t revere church leaders as much as members of other churches revere their leaders. LDS members cook the best burgers. LDS dads can beat up non-LDS dads.

It’s borderline comical how they have to get a line in there saying that the church is the best.

Again, I can only speak to my experience, but my experience was the dead opposite of some of the things their study attempts to show.

Roy wrote:

The study is published by “BYU Studies, whose focus is to publish scholarship aligned with the gospel of Jesus Christ”

So it’s apologetics. Start with the conclusion, the gospel of Jesus Christ (aka the LDS church) is the best, then work your way backwards from there to come up with a study that proves the preconceived solution.

Quote:

With the sustained secular winds that seem to blow against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and religion in general, we need high-quality research and thinking that critically examines popular narratives about organized religion, which often mislead rather than inform.

The persecution complex rears its ugly head again. If people are critical of aspects of church culture, the church isn’t going to take the criticism as a moment of self reflection to see if/how the culture can be improved, rather they’ll come up with their own study to “mislead rather than inform” in an attempt to prove their farts don’t stink.

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Roy wrote:

Right. That quote from Dr. Dyer seems particularly inappropriate. Most researchers will caution that correlation does not equal causation and that more research needs to be done. To speculate that maybe these people that struggle just don’t understand the church teachings and doctrine seems nakedly apologetic.

This study is of/for everyone, right? Imagine a Catholic reading that.

The people with the most scrupulosity are ex-Mormons and it’s probably because they didn’t understand the LDS doctrines enough.

C’mon.

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I wonder how this study accounts for missions. It would be near impossible to argue that missions aren’t rife with toxic perfectionism.

A separate rulebook. Obedience in order to be successful is the constant drumbeat.

The mission culture both comes from and feeds back into a wider church culture.

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Nowhere close to my lived experience. Nowhere close.

I can only speak to my personal experience, I have no way of knowing the aggregate experience of people leaving the church. All I can say is that for me personally, having a faith crisis was the only way I could break out of the cycle of scrupulosity. In fact that was the biggest benefit of the faith crisis. Abandoning the god of toxic perfectionism.

Quote:

When we experience toxic perfectionism, it could be because we’re misunderstanding what the church actually teaches and what the doctrine actually is,” [Lead researcher for the BYU study, Dr. Justin Dyer] said.

Is this a real study, because that line you quoted makes it sound like a complete farce. One of their conclusions is along the same lines of saying people leave the church because they don’t have a strong enough testimony.

My experience with the church (to this day) is that there’s a near obsession with making testimonies stronger and being more and more obedient. Your testimony is never strong enough as is, there’s always a push to make it stronger. The blessings you seek in life are forever out of reach because you’re not quite obedient enough to “qualify” for them. I’m out of the trap now but I hear people say these things every Sunday I attend.

Roy wrote:

He places the blame squarely on the students…

That’s another aspect of church culture. If things aren’t working out for you then you’re always to blame. I get the need for personal responsibility but when you’re taught teaching A your whole life and you reach a point where teaching A no longer works for you, the very people that taught you teaching A your whole life come down on you, “It’s your fault for believing teaching A, you don’t truly understand, it’s teaching B silly.” Until such a point where teaching B no longer works for you. Rinse, repeat.

I don’t know their methods, I don’t know if I’m in a completely different generation that’s removed from a lot of it, but I suspect someone heard some criticism that the church pushes people towards scrupulosity and a group was tasked to do a study that showed that, no, it’s the people that say church culture leads to scrupulosity that suffer the most from scrupulosity and the church is the best place in the universe to be to not develop scrupulosity.

There are four lights, and this study is the anthesis of my lived experience at church.

I look forward to their study that says the moon is the sun.

[nibbler]

First off, I’m sorry for your losses. It’s not easy. It’s not meant to be.

I can’t say I’ve ever heard someone ask for a blessing to raise someone from the dead. That ask probably came from a place of deep despair and sadness. I feel for your friend.

1. What is more important? Going through the rituals of religious life or being a well-rounded Christian? (following the example of Christ’s life).

There’s a Joseph Smith quote I’ll post from time to time.

Quote:

I love that man better who swears a stream as long as my arm yet deals justice to his neighbors and mercifully deals his substance to the poor, than the long, smooth faced hypocrite.

Now speaking for myself, I see ordinances and rites as things meant to help people orient themselves spiritually, nothing more.

Mormonism and religions in general have taken the rites and ordinances and made them an end unto themselves. In Mormonism we have the scriptures that say Jesus was baptized even though he didn’t need to be because people have to get baptized. We also have the concept of vicarious ordinances. That’s how much stock we place in ordinances being required.

I get the feeling that a god that can raise up children for Abraham from stones can get around some ordinance requirements. Maybe vicarious ordinances in the temple are that mechanism but being completely open and honest with where I’m at, the vicarious ordinances we do in the temple are more for the living than for the dead. By that I mean that doing vicarious ordinances for grandpa puts mom and the grandkids’ mind at ease more than it unlocks a door to any place in an afterlife.

So long story short, I’d rather be in a community of well-rounded Christians without the ordinances than a community that rejected Christlike principles but had their ordinances. Here I’d point out that it’s not a case of either/or. There’s always a healthy mixture of both.

2. This life is moving so fast. Will we learn everything we need for eternity in this life? Or is there more to come?

We don’t truly know what eternity looks like so right out of the gate we’ll learn something. I like the model of there always being something to learn.

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All we really have is speculation. I’ve heard any number of things.

[list]

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I’d say that in the year 2024 the current implementation of the word of wisdom serves more as a cultural identifier and loyalty test than an actual law of health.

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I’ll give my disclaimer before I get into it. I think the bans on coffee and tea are beyond ridiculous. That said, if the bans on coffee and tea were rescinded tomorrow I wouldn’t start drinking them. I don’t have any interest in coffee whatsoever, having tried it already before I joined the church. Tea I could take or leave. This is just me saying that I’m not chomping at the bit for leaders to relax rules on coffee or tea so I can start drinking them. If I wanted to drink them, I wouldn’t wait for permission.

With that out of the way…

I can hear the echoes of an apologetic argument in my mind. “There’s always another study.” Like back in the day when there were studies that showed that eggs were good for you, then studies that showed they were bad for you. I can imagine an apologist for the current implementation of the word of wisdom pulling out studies to show that coffee is bad for you.

I wanted to get out of that debate for a moment and enter a different one. 😈

Billions of people have drank coffee and they’ve been doing it for over 1000 years. We’re well past the human trial phase of coffee consumption. Anything you consume could be bad for you if consumed in extremes and there is no magic diet that will prevent you from dying.

I can understand with alcohol and smoking because those decisions can affect others. Alcohol leading to abuse or accidents involving other people. Secondhand smoke. But if the effects of your choices are limited to you it seems less important. Again, there’s no magic diet that will prevent you from dying.

People know their own bodies. If eating a particular food makes you sick, you’ll avoid it. It doesn’t mean the food should be blanket banned for everyone. E.g. some people have diverticulitis, so no one can eat nuts anymore.

Now there could be an argument about addictive substances and in the case of coffee, the caffeine could be considered addictive. I don’t know where I come down on that debate. Personally, when I’m thirsty I crave water (for real). Does that mean water has become an addiction for me and I should curtail my consumption of it? I literally couldn’t live without it.

There’s no word of wisdom on things that are far worse for you than caffeine. Diets high in sugar intake, saturated fats, processed foods, etc. Yet god doesn’t feel a need to interject and incentivize people to avoid those things by withholding saving ordinances. Those all fall under the umbrella of people’s agency to partake, just pay the price. Why can’t coffee and tea be the same?

What was the point of Peter’s vision of no unclean animal? Or what was the point of Jesus’ teaching that it’s not what goes in someone’s mouth that defiles a person, it’s what comes out? What happened to that?

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Interesting find Roy. I find the comparison of your average chapel to a smelly chicken coup especially apt.

I don’t remember the cleaning of church buildings ever having fallen on the youth, but maybe only because I didn’t have a youth in my house during that time frame. I’m not sure what they meant by it being a part of ongoing weekly activities. Maybe it was limited to them taking out the trash and cleaning up after themselves at the end of activity night and it wasn’t the same level of cleaning that’s come to be expected on Saturdays.

I actually don’t mind cleaning the chapel. I get the whole take care of your own stuff angle. What gets to me is all the double, triple, quadruple, etc. dipping the church does to the members. Members are expected to pay a full tithe. That money is meant for the upkeep of the “kingdom” including any cleaning required. Rather than spend the money on cleaning, they ask members to do it. Youth camp is coming up, so we’re going to dip into tith… nope, we’re going to ask the youth to do a fundraiser and get the families to make up any shortfall. Again, all on top of tithing. Tithing doesn’t even go towards helping members, that comes out of fast offerings. Again, all on top of tithing.

Most any time a special expenditure comes up, the church doesn’t dip into its dragon hoard, they ask tithed members to sacrifice even more. The members get hit up left, right, and center; all so the church can save up more money to what? Hoard even more assets? When. Is. Enough. Enough?

I’ve seen other churches do FAR more for their members with FAR less. That’s the frustrating thing. Our church has rich people-itis. The appetite to see that bank account grow is never sated and it certainly won’t grow by paying for needs. It’s like Jeff Bezos inviting you to lunch and making you pay so it doesn’t eat into his net worth.

I’ve heard rumors that traveling authorities in the church that are now participating in stake conferences have been tasked with talking up tithing. Anecdotal, but we’ve had our stake conference and the visiting authority actually did talk tithing. The church must have taken a hit recently. I suppose that’s the only way to break this current cycle. If the organizational church is going to stick out its hand for every little thing then it should be deducted from the tithing people pay.

Let’s see… tithing would have been $400 but I spent three hours cleaning the church this month. $20 an hour, three hours. $400-60 = $340. I paid $50 into fast offerings. $340-50 = $290. I had to pay $50 for snacks and materials for activity night. $290-50 – $240. Had to feed and take care of the missionaries. $240-100 = $140. Here, here’s your $140 full tithe. It’s certainly better than the model of tithes plus all of those extra expenditures ($660).

The money members are already paying in the form of tithes should be going towards these things. That’s. What. It’s. For.

Sorry (not sorry) for the thread jack.

[nibbler]

:think:

One apologetic that I’ve heard is that lessons learned during a preexistence period persisted through the veil in the form of our dispositions. Like if you learned patience in the preexistence, you’d be more inclined to have patience in this life, or something like that. You wouldn’t remember the lesson, you’d be predisposed to being that way.

That line of thinking may have ended up doing us more harm than good though because some have taken that as a starting point to arrive at dangerous conclusions. E.g. I have [more material wealth, the “right” skin color, more physically abled, charisma, etc.], therefore I was more valiant in the preexistence, therefore god put me in charge over you. Unfortunately we’ve seen that sort of thinking.

Maybe it’s like a cat using a litter box. I didn’t teach my cat that, it just does it out of instinct. Maybe things that occurred in the preexistence survive the veil in the same way.

I don’t believe in a preexistence, at least not in the same way as what’s taught at church, so I don’t get too hung up on it.

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