We Mormons are good at explaining our way out of tight spots. When it comes to the obvious connections between Freemasonry and our temple ceremony, for example, it may look like we’ve been painted into a corner, but that’s when we’re the most creative. In the case of Freemasonry, we’re capable of turning the argument completely around and asserting that Freemasonry is actually derived from Mormonism. I’m not kidding. We’re really that good.
Problems with the translation of the Book of Abraham? Problems with the historical authenticity of The Book of Mormon? The Kinderhook plates? Fannie Alger?* All child’s play, even for amateur Mormon apologists . We’re serious about defending the internal consistency of our theology. Sure, at times it may appear to be the equivalent of two geeks at a Star Trek convention debating the physics behind the hyperdrive continuity patterns in Episode 6 of Season 4, but it’s something we grow up knowing how to do. We learn the mental gymnastics of religious apologetics like Hispanics learn soccer.
So when it comes to understanding why folks choose to disassociate themselves from the church, our complete lack of inventiveness is conspicuous.
All we have is the tree of life and the metaphor of folks letting go of the iron rod and getting lost in the mists of darkness. That’s it. Why do folks let go of the rod, you might ask? Our explanations are impressively uninsightful and incomplete (when they aren’t completely inaccurate). We generally assume a combination of foolishness, sin, and arrogance, and then get on with the Sunday school lesson.
We can do better than that. For those of us in the cheap seats, we know that getting up here takes effort. We didn’t get distracted by something shiny and then wander up forty flights of stairs by accident. As I’ve said before, looked at the right way, we’ve climbed a small mountain. We should feel like we’ve accomplished something.
Or here’s another metaphor. Imagine you’re sitting in an inner tube-one of those big black ones-floating lazily down a slow-moving river. It’s a sunny day, and the water is pleasantly cool. You’re with a group of friends and you’re enjoying yourself. Both sides of the river are lined with trees and other vegetation. You can tell from your reclined position in the inner tube that the river runs between two fairly steep embankments-and that it would be a difficult climb through trees and underbrush to get to the top on either side. You start to say something to your best friend, but then notice that he (or she) is busy paddling to the shore. You watch as your friend gets out of the water and begins the difficult hike up the side of the embankment.
There are two questions that need to be asked about this metaphor. First, why is it difficult to get to the top of the embankment? Second, why would somebody want to?
These are two different questions-and each requires its own post. Next week I’ll talk about the metaphorical underbrush that makes the hike to the top of the embankment difficult, particularly in a bathing suit and flip-flops. The week after I’ll talk about what motivates folks choose to cut their day of tubing short.
For now, let’s hear your take on it. Why is it hard? Why do people do it?
I suspect the real story isn’t much like the version we get in Sunday school.
*I just read a post by a descendant of Levi Ward Hancock, Fanny Alger’s uncle, whose son later claimed Levi had married Joseph and Fanny in April of 1833.
I guess instead of quibbling on Facebook, I’ll state my reservations to the river/tubing metaphor here.
What does the river represent? Does it represent church activity? Is the assumption that church involvement is something like “cruise control” where the currents take you wherever it will and you, the faithful member, just goes with the flow? This is good if you want to set up leaving/disassociating as difficult and painstaking (which, sure, it is for many), but what to say about the fact that most members are inactive? That most people just drift away? That the path of faith too is not a ride in an inner tube.
I also didn’t like the implication that staying in the river was the easy way out. Too convenient.
I think that maybe white water rafting would better suit this metaphor. This way it could be difficult to continue on the river as well as difficult to get out. I person that finds to voyage enthralling may be willing to make the effort to dodge the rocks and may even be rewarding, however for others it may be stressful and damaging and getting out of the river may be the best option for that particular person. Both ways are hard, one is better for one person and the other the better for another.
Aprillium, I like the idea of adding in the rapids–I’m going to have to work that into future posts. . .
Aprillium,
Right on. Maybe the people who head for the shore often are those who crash or are beached thereon.
Or their tube ruptures- either in a slow leak or a big bang.
I don’t think either metaphor works, and this may be the main problem, we no longer share/speak the same language. It’s like wanting to find out why someone got fat, but only talking about the exercise or lack of it and never mentioning the food.
Many people were hanging on to the iron rod, griping it with all their life and than they found themselves in a place they never thought they would be. There is no way back. We have no local leaders that are trained to help with deep spiritual and community relationship concerns. If you ask Salt Lake for help the letter is forwarded unopened to your local leader. No one will acknowledge that there may be more than one iron rod, that we are all different and that we each are of value, not just the leaders.
I don’t think many people choose to cut their day of tubing short. The price is too high.
You make a good point. Some folks that end up on the shore may not have intented to cut their day of tubing short–it may be due to circumstances that are largely outside of their control. It’ll be interesting to work through some of these angles in the next couple of posts. . .
@Heather, you are right, of course, but part of the point was to come up with a metaphor that would counterbalance the simplistic assumptions that are often made in the other direction (that is, that folks that disassociate are lazy, foolish, wayward and/or arrogant, etc.).
I’m not sure there is a good way to help devout members understand the reasons some might let go of the rod. In a discussion I had with a very faithful friend earlier this week, I attempted to explain why I no longer wear garments, that it’s an issue of belief. She replied, “Well, of course you shouldn’t wear them if you are unwilling to keep your covenants.” It may be a matter of semantics, but I couldn’t seem to make it clear to her that it isn’t a matter of being unwilling or unable to keep covenants; it’s simply that I no longer believe the narrative behind the covenants, therefore making the keeping of them seem rather silly and arbitrary. I don’t know how to bridge that gap in communication. I couldn’t find the right words to convey my disbelief in something she finds so simple and easy, and I’m not sure that anything I could have said would have gotten through.
Yep, I’m with you.. how can we ever understand each other.. when someone once knew you as a believer and now you don’t believe.. it seems hard for people to understand that it could be just that, a change in belief rather than a choice to disobey.
I think you may be right. If someone isn’t willing to make an effort to see things from a different perspective–stretch themselves a bit–then there may not be much that can be done.
I think a bigger issue is addressing how you can encourage someone TO be willing to look at things from a different perspective. These things don’t come easily.
You make a very good point. It seems like life experience is often is often an impetus, or close relationships with individuals outside the church. . .
I have faith in the power of metaphors… I really believe that a brilliant thought can cut through complacency, and leave a mark – however faint – that will demand (perhaps at a future date) to be examined further. It’s ‘sowing seeds’, I think.
Whenever someone uses the “easy” excuses to dismiss the reasons someone leaves the church, I always make sure I inform them of another possibility: not sin, not being offended, not pride, not laziness, but maybe they just came to the logical conclusion that the church isn’t what it claims to be.
Maybe the river isn’t going somewhere worth going. So why stay in it, even if it’s hard to climb out?
Well put.
mormons need for people who leave to be making a wrong choice. it keeps them feeling safe. if it’s ok for someone else to leave, somehow, that means it might be ok for them to leave and they – in general – don’t want to deal with that. it’s what keeps the “we’re right, everyone else is wrong or less right” system going.
When Mormons react that way, it shows you were never a real person to them in the first place. You were a role to them, and when you stop fulfilling that role, you lose your value to their lives.
Discovering how contingent friendships with other members of the church sometimes are can be a painful experience. . .
Not sure I wholly agree with this. I think this is often true in many social settings. You’re “friends” with someone because they work in your same hallway/building, but then if/when they move to another building, you don’t really maintain the friendship.
Or maybe you’re “friends” with someone because they live next door to you, but then you move across town, and don’t keep up with them anymore.
Or you’re “friends” with someone because your kids are on the same soccer team or have dance lessons at the same time, but next year the teams/times switch and you don’t really keep up.
I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect anything different from “friendships” at church.
I think the difference between the church and those other social settings is that there are distinctly different contingent terms of friendship in the church setting as opposed to other social settings. Additionally, we are generally aware of the contingencies for friendship outside the church, but not so within the church.
For example, we might be aware of the geographical contingencies of friendship in both work and ward (e.g., I move out of the ward, so I eventually stop talking to you. That’s directly comparable to me moving to a different hall/floor/building)…but I don’t think many people are as aware of the ideological terms of friendship (our friendship is defined by the fact that we both are active, faithful members of the church…and if that changes, bye bye!)
So, these are very different contingencies.
Very nice fantasy to believe in, Heather, but no, that’s not it. The friendship stops because you’re poison now, and we can’t let poison corrupt us. And your theory doesn’t begin to account for the reactions of family members.
Well, I haven’t had this experience, so perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken. I just feel like sometimes we expect too much from other church members and the church as an institution.
As to family members, I agree completely that that is a different story.
I think the difference is that we profess to “love” our “brothers and sisters” in the church, whereas that is not neccesarily the expectation with our “friends” at work (etc).
The way I see it, love should not be contingent upon another’s choices. I love my kids no matter what their choices, same with my husband, and parents – AND my friends. My experiences have been that my church “friends” who supposedly “love” me have mostly done so only when they thought they were successfully leading me out of the cheap seats; when their efforts were not fruitful or were taking too long, their “love” waned. I don’t intend for that to sound bitter. It is really more of an observation of yet another hypocrisy between church teachings and our members’ actions (perhaps myself included).
I think this is too easy. People in general find change to be hard and they find change in other people to be discomfiting. I don’t think it is fair to say that you just played a role for them. That is like saying that every romantic relationship that doesn’t end in marriage was worthless or was only to teach you something for a future relationship when that is far from the truth. Some of my most cherished memories are with people who are no longer in my life and who couldn’t be because we were going on divergent paths and made different choices. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about them or that they don’t care about me. It just means as paths diverge it gets harder to share and understand each other. I cherish others compassion as I search out truths and changes for my own life, so it seems only fair to extend that compassion to the motives of those who feel uncomfortable with those changes.
I don’t know if it’s easy or not. But it’s accurate. People deal with each other in terms of roles they play in each other’s lives. I’m not sure how anyone could go throgh life and not realize this.
Just go back home as a mature adult and watch how you turn back into the child you were when dealing with your parents. A vivid illustration of how we relate to each other in roles.
After nearly four years of, often difficult, conversations discussing this question, I’ve found that the real answer is — I don’t know. There are reasons, concrete doubts that arose from legitimate questions and I have spent a lot of time thinking about those reasons and explaining them to the people I care about. But I increasingly believe that those reasons are signifiers, they pointed towards another path, but they are not the reasons for leaving. People often want to talk about those reasons, all of us talking around the truth, which has been more simple and more full of mystery. I walked into the woods with my heart full of faith and questions and I walked out of the woods with surprising, scary answers. I stayed as long as I could and then I pulled away because I had to honor the drumbeat in my heart telling me to go. Walking away has not been like closing a door, it has felt like a great unfolding, like the answers I had as an orthodox member were too small to contain the world as I experience it. But I am ever aware that my experience is not vastly different from the experience of any convert. And that the methods in the church that felt so confining for me may point others towards God and fill them full of grace. Some people have fallen away from my life, but others have stayed with me and treated me with the same kindness. I have learned that my defensiveness, my fear of being judged and misunderstood is often far greater than the experience itself. I have learned that being misunderstood is not the end of the world, especially when the great salve of compassion is present, a compassion that often has to start with me.
Heidi, I really appreciated this. I suspect that for a lot of people, it’s about integrity in a way–it’s about honoring the drumbeat in their hearts telling them to go (as you put it). For some people, to NOT follow where their hearts and minds lead them is a kind of betrayal. . . I think this is really profound: “I have learned that my defensiveness, my fear of being judged and misunderstood is often far greater than the experience itself.”
‘a great unfolding’ – I love this description.
I think using the river as a metaphor is a good start, but sometimes staying in the river is harder than leaving it, I think rapids along the way would be good as well.
Many Mormons go with the flow because of those contingency friendships but they might see another party of people in the same river that are on the same “path to enlightenment” (as it were) but seem to be happier, laughing more, having a better time and they join those people. Maybe being Mormon is not the river, but religion in general. Lots and lots of other people are finding happiness without being LDS.
Brent, this column has come to be my favorite on D&S. I think I have been in the nosebleed section of our faith for a while, but didn’t want to admit I couldn’t see the game. I feel like I am in the stage where I keep my head down and practice sketching for 3 hours on Sunday morning.
I happen to like the river metaphor. Any metaphor becomes silly when taken too literally, so the details of the river don’t matter that much to me. I’m curious how you are able to stay at the river, even though you are climbing up the embankment?
I have been thinking about relationships in the church with family and friends too.
I wonder if it’s the way we create our communities. We may overstep “normal” boundries feeling like we know each other because we know what we believe and our believes cover everything from underware, diet, to the afterlife. We are lay ministers to each other. We feel it’s our responsibility to teach each others children. We seek guidance and council from lay leaders. When we move, people come to help, when we’re sick there is a casserole at our door. I wonder if this hasn’t helped us bystep the basics in friendships, getting to know who each of us are.
I could see that if a person changes beliefs the “believing” person could feel at a loss since what the had in comon is now gone. I sometimes wonder if they feel a little betrayed also.
For the person whose beliefs change it feels strange because all the relationships they had in the church seemed so personal and the only thing about them that has changed is there beliefs. They feel like they are still the same person.
To tie it to your metaphor when the water in the river gets choppy the others in the river don’t know what to do, they have no rope or life perservers. The one in the choppy water feels like they might drowned and no one is coming to help. The choice is that they may drown or just get out of the water.
I don’t know if this makes sense…it’s just something I’ve been thinking about.
I’m not inclined to cut church members so much slack. The problem lies both in the doctrine itself and in the oppressive way it’s implemented. It’s not the removal of a commonality in belief–it’s the doctrine that any belief that is not orthodox Mormon is corrupt and dangerous. This leads to feeling that the “offending” questioner needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW! If the “offender” refuses to be fixed, then he must be ostracized like a Benedict Arnold, as if the questioner deliberately decided to stop believing just to screw with his friends and family.
I don’t think it’s a sense of betrayal so much as a deep-seated fear that if the “offender” can question or stop believing, then the “faithful” person might be able to, and that’s frightening. This is why disbelievers are dismissed with shallow and insulting motivations, like sin or pride or being offended by a bishop. The faithful member can’t tolerate the possibility that the disbeliever just decided the church’s claims aren’t valid. That does not compute in his worldview.
But I don’t believe that all these Mormons saying “I know” really know as much as they make out they do. I don’t believe it because I know how I felt when I said “I know” (and I used to say it with great conviction). There was always this little thing in the back of my mind, almost subconscious, and easily ignored, that was afraid something might come along and disprove the church’s claims after all.
I’m convinced every faithful member has that little thing in the back of their minds, because they react to challenges exactly the same way I did while a believer. Even Boyd K. Packer admitted to doubts creeping in when he started reading the “new” LDS history, and his reaction was very familiar: he stopped reading it and warned everyone else to stop reading it and gave clear instruction to CES people to stop teaching it, whether it was factual or not. This is the reaction of someone with that little piece of doubt in the back of his head!
Because of that “thing,” people who do stop believing are a “clear and present danger” to those who keep trying to believe. They are evidence that it is possible to stop believing, and that mixed with their little “thing” scares the bejeebies out of the believers. The disbeliever must go!
I agree that the language we use and the assumptions underlying the language are very problematic. We’re not talking about “knowing” in a materialistic, scientific way, but “knowing” in the highly subjective, intuitve way that we know we love someone or know we feel something sublime from a piece of music. That said, church members are not one monolithic Boyd K.Packer-like entity (even though the Boyd K. Packer types among us would like it to be so). Nor has the church cornered the market on black and white thinkers. Correlation can be an oppressive force, but, in my experience, many members are ruled primarily by their desire to be Christ-like.
“Knowing” in a highly subjective way is kind of a meaningless concept. “Knowing” doctrines of a religion are true is not comparable to knowing you’re in love or knowing that something gave you a sublime feeling. Those are internal experiences that mean nothing outside the internal experience. Doctrines are meant to be objective statements of truth. “Feeling” the truthfulness of them is meaningless to anyone except the person doing the feeling, and doesn’t express any more truthfulness than the doctrines resonate with the individual.
I know church members are not monolithic, but the Boyd K. types are monolithically the dominant influence in the church. Anyone who cares to have a different experience than the Boyd K. type must do so at the fringes of the society, not within its bosom. (Thus Sunstone’s concept of the “Borderlands” Mormon.)
It’s irrelevant that black and white thinking can be found outside the church. The point is that it exists within the church, yet black and white thinking is almost never applicable to real life.
We often make assumptions about shared experiences and beliefs–and that can be a good thing (for example, if you move into a new ward, you “instantly” have a community), but as you suggest, I think it can create some challenges as well. . . A very thoughful post . . . I’m still thinking my way through this as well. . .
Internal experiences are not meaningless. If we are really being honest, much of our experience is internal and subjective, religious experiences included. And much of our lives are guided and filtered through these internal experiences.
I agree that this is what the church teaches and what many religions teach. But, in reality, doctrines are not objective statements of truth. Doctrines are ways of articulating the ineffable and creating methods to guide us towards the ineffable, but it is very easy to forget the experiences that the doctrines are pointing to and make the doctrines themselves the basis of our worship. I think the mistake is made in, as you articulated very well, assuming that what resonates within us individually is some kind of objective truth that should be applied universally to others.
This is a fair point and I don’t disagree, but as you said, “black and white thinking is almost never applicable to real life” and I would argue the same holds true for black and white thinking about the members of the church. In other words, the party line as handed down through correlation and the institutional church does not always determine the behavior of individual members. My experience has been a mixture of both — every ward full of Boyd K. Packer-types and individuals who seem to be guided by basic kindness.
And where did I say internal experiences were meaningless? They’re meaningless outside the experience itself, as an indicator of “truth.”
You used love as an example. Love literally has no existence outside of the internal experience of the one who loves. It can be manifest in behavior, but there is no concrete thing called “love” out there. It’s entirely within the internal experience of the individual.
You used having a sublime reaction to music as an example. That’s an even more internal experience than love, since little outward behavior results from it. That’s 100% a subjective determination with zero relationship to objective truth.
Neither love nor sublime reactions to art are valid analogies to religious doctrine. Religious doctrine is not presented as a subjective, internal experience. It’s presented as objective truth.
Now if someone wants to say that certain religious doctrine resonates with them, that’s just fine. If they want to say immersing themselves into a certain religion gives them a sublime experience, that’s cool. But that’s not what they say. Nor do they mean with “I know” the subjective internal thing you’re trying to make it out to be. When they claim “I know,” they freaking mean they KNOW.
Your “in reality” about doctrines is exactly my point. Doctrines are not the objective truth their adherents claim them to be. When they do claim them to be such, that’s where the difficulties and abuses of religion are born. If all religious people viewed their doctrines and their sublime religious experiences as you do, the intolerance of religion would evaporate.
There’s a difference between black and white thinking and making generalizations. When I make a generalization, I know it’s a generalization and does not apply universally. Black and white thinking claims that its thinking DOES universally apply. That’s what makes it black and white.
I know of quite a few exceptions to my generalization of Mormons as well. But these people are not dominant in the culture. In fact, they’re fairly quiet and careful about expressing their true thoughts and feelings because they know what the dominant influence can and often will do to them.
There is a monolithic dominant perception of what “appropriate” is for a Mormon. It’s universally understood what it is, whether an individual agrees with it or not. When someone utters the phrase “LDS standards,” everyone knows what they mean. It’s a lowest-common-denominator standard that is only partially related to true doctrine, yet is enforced by the dominant influence as if it had a 100% correspondence to true doctrine. That’s what generates the monolithic dominant influence that I can generalize as being “Mormon,” even though you can find lots of exceptions to that among individuals.
The ones in power make the rules, and they definitely have a monolithic way of thinking, or at least what they present to the world as what they think, since they have this fetish for appearing unanimous in all their dealings.
Interesting back and forth. . . I occurred to me, as I read through some of the back and forth, that Heidi seems more focused on the lived religion as it exists in the hearts and minds of the folks that show up on Sunday, while D. Michael seems more focused on the institutional religion, as it is canonized and promoted by the institution. I don’t know if that’s fair (and it’s not a pefect fit), but it explains some of the differences in perception and experience.
I think the question of meaning when it comes to religious experience is particularly fascinating. It’s interesting to me, for example, that individuals often seem to have the same physical experience (in terms of sensations, etc.) and then make such completely different meaning attributions. These meaning attributions, which often go unexamined, generally correspond to the cultural and religious context in which the individual is embedded. For example, a religious experience is interpretted one way by folks in a Mormon community, in another way in individual in a community of American Indians, in another way in India, or in China, etc.
Since the article we’re responding to talks about climbing out of the river, which essentially represents the institutional church experience, I think it’s perfectly fair to speak from that perspective.
That’s completely fair. I’ve enjoyed your comments.
I agree that it is perfectly fair to speak from that perspective and you’ve made a lot of good points about the institutional church (which I’ve largely agreed with, even if it might not have sounded that way at times). But the article also raises questions about the people who climb out of the river, why they do it and how they are treated. Having climbed out, I also think it is perfectly fair to speak from my experience, which has been informed, but not entirely defined by the dominant black and white thinking culture — that goes for ward members, family members, friends and bishops (but not above bishops, you definitely have a point there). But, I also confess that I am generally less interested in drawing lines in the sand and more interested in finding points of common ground because, bringing it around to the original post, I think this is how we are able to move away from the black and white Sunday school answers about why people leave. The church is often very invested in creating others and us (The Saints) vs. them (The World) scenarios and I’m very invested in seeing how people are not really separate from me.
I’ve often thought that while the institutional religion–the black-or-white, follow-the-prophet, we-have-all-the-truth-everyone-else-only-has-pieces–is an easy target, that’s not necessarily true for the folks in the pews on Sunday. There is a surprising variety of beliefs and degrees of literalness, and a genuine goodness in people. . . Sure, there are always a few asses that insist on wielding the institutional religioun like a club, but there are also a lot of people that are just trying to do the best they can in the circumstances in which they find themselves. . . I think I understand what you’re saying about finding common ground. . .
I admire those of you who can hang around and try to make a difference. I’m not optimistic enough about the possibility of success to put myself through that. I’ve climbed the banks and am now resting with great relief on the shore. Jumping back in to the river? (Shudder!)
@ D. Michael, jump back into the river? We won’t try to get you to do that. We’ll save a seat for you up here in the cheap seats though. . .
I’m off hiking through the woods enjoying the view. In my usual hiking state of dress, of course.
I’ve got to add that I love this process of ‘carving’ metaphor, using the different tools brought by the personal experiences of a group. So often the job of metaphor-making has been seen as a solitary thing: the kind of task done by a prophet or poet (thinking of Isaiah, or Joseph Smith)… but actually, if we’re going to use these metaphors together, we’re going to have to make them together.
I suspect this happens over time, in the interpretation of prophetic texts. But starting as you mean to go on seems like a great thing to do.
I’m excited to read the next instalments!
http://thecoffeeshoptalk.com/topic.php?id=34686&replies=1#post-45814