Unbelief is not Disobedience
When I stopped going to church, it was a decision based upon years of wrestling with its truth-statements. I had stopped believing. I didn’t leave angry. I didn’t want my tithing back. In fact, I worried about the sociality and opportunity to grow through service that I was missing by not remaining active on some level. I believed that the church offered social and spiritual benefits that gave people a sense of purpose, ethics, and comfort. I still felt that being raised in the church can make bad people good and good people better. Though many of my Mormon friends and family members have sinced worked very hard to dissuade me of this notion, I still tend to believe it.
Unfortunately for me, in Mormon culture there is no room for the possibility that one might leave the fold for intellectual reasons. There is some talk about the devil employing the philosophies of men to blind the elect, but usually it is assumed that the drop-out has separated himself for one of two reasons: 1) anger; or, 2) guilt. The first assumes the drop-out is an overly sensitive and unforgiving soul who has been offended by a local leader. The second usually assumes adultery —or worse— the habitual violation of the Word of Wisdom. (Either way, the drop-out presumably feels uncomfortable standing in the presence of the righteous.)
Though I had suffered my share of idiotic leaders over the years and had been, in fact, an idiotic leader in my own way, I never saw that as anything more remarkable than the general, human condition. Nor did I leave the church due to sin. I was not being disobedient. I had stopped believing. There is a big difference, but apparently only to me. Very, very few of the faithful whom I have known and respected and loved for 30 or more years can get their heads around the possibility that a person can just study and employ the requisitely appropriate logic to arrive at an opinion contrary to theirs. In their minds, there has to be a reason other than, of course, the fact that the church is not what the leaders claim it is.
And I have had plenty of the alternative reasons applied to me. I have had a dear friend of more than thirty years accuse me of leaving so that I “can drink and screw around all I want.” (Does he really know so little of who I am, or is he unwittingly expressing the only reason he would leave?) I have had family members suggest anger, depression, and/or narcissism as the root cause. Very occasionally, I am told I am too intellectual for my own good. (Well, it is comforting to know that for those few, at least, sexual deviance is off the table.)
It was difficult for me at first to be publicly called to repentance at family get-togethers or to discover that my children were being told what a disservice I had done them for rejecting my priesthood responsibilities; nevertheless, I figured it was the price I had to pay for delivering such a shock and I expected that eventually those who loved me would grow more comfortable with and accepting of my decision. It’s been about four years now. They haven’t.
The most difficult ones to deal with are the ones who, in fact, see themselves as open-minded and accepting: “Well, I figure you are on your own journey. I don’t judge you for your choice.” What shameless, ill-considered nonsense! The fact that judgment is even mentioned implies that I have done something they deem to be wrong, but they are too passive-agressive to weigh in with an honest opinion.
Almost equally annoying are those who feel the need to make excuses for me. “Well, he had a really tough time with his marriage.” “You know, he only drinks coffee because his doctor says it’s good for his fibro-myalgia.” I know they mean well, but there is nothing in my life about which they need to become well-meaning. When someone whispers confidentially, “Did you know he drinks beer?” the response of a non-jugdemental believer should be, “So what?” and not, “But he has a good soul. He’s just a little lost right now.”
I left the church because I no longer believe in its tenets. It’s that simple.
Although I left my faith with good wishes for all who choose to remain, today I no longer feel much patience for them. I don’t want to talk with them about The Church. I don’t want the unwitting proof of their complete ignorance of their cherished faith, let alone of the world they live in. I don’t want to hear their testimonies. I don’t want to see their tears or suffer their reassurances of love for me “no matter what.” Yes, I still believe that Mormonism can make bad people good and good people better, but the past four years have taught me that you can’t cure stupid.
Great post, Nahum. I can totally relate to your experience with confused and judgmental family member and friends, and especially your discussion of the underlying stories they tell themselves to make sense of your shift out of the fold and belief in the truth claims.
I also love, on a basic, visceral level, your last line about not being able to cure stupid. My worry, however, is that your final paragraph signals a decision to no longer engage with these “stupid” people who don’t get you and can’t relate to your experiences and that in so doing your world of interactions will shrink drastically. I don’t know if I’m reading this right, but if I am, I hope that you’ll still interact with them, just protecting yourself emotionally even more than you have already, of course. It’s important that people who know the difference between unbelief and disobedience continue to serve as a contrary data points to the unexamined assumptions they have. I know that is not likely a “calling” you want, but I think it’s vital. How else will they ever become educated about this? Plus, I know you and you’re built for relationality. I’d hate to see you withdraw from people.
The issue of continued interaction will certainly involve a decrease in the quality of that interaction because I will now deflect any attempt to engage in what the stupid see as a deep or meaningful conversation.
A mutual friend of ours listed four things that a person’s character must contain in order for there to be any value in the interaction you prize: 1) the individual must be intelligent; 2) the person must be sincere (i.e., having no hidden agenda); 3) the person must be diligent (i.e., willing to do the work [reading, study, introspection, etc.] required to examine his or her underlying assumptions); and, 4) the person must be benign (i.e. intending me no harm).
I find this list to be a remarkable distillation of what is essential to a good-faith, relationship, even if it be a conflictive one. Thus, I have no obligation to engage with the stupid except to meet my obligations to basic civility and kindness. This includes even family members and friends who refuse (or are unable) to be rational. I can love them, give them what service I can as it is needed, but I can no longer join them in conversations about the ultimate questions of life.
From what I can gather, these family members and friends that you are talking about here might still have all four of the characteristics you list for valued relationships and you just aren’t seeing that. To not “get” you and where you’re coming from does not really imply a lack of intelligence, a hidden agenda, a refusal to be diligent, or a desire to do you harm. But if you write them off now, you’ll never know, and they will be denied a chance to grow.
What about a direct letter to each of them individually outlining things, using the post here as a template that you can personalize to each individual? Something along the lines of (but, of course, far more personal and elegant)?
“Dear _______, I have experienced a growing frustration with our relationship over the past _________ years, and this is leading me to want to interact less with you. Here is my reasoning…. I would love this letter to promote some real, heartfelt conversation between us, but if you feel that’s impossible at this time for you to try to get out of the assumptions that are coloring your attitudes toward me and my choices regarding Mormonism, then know that I will be happy to engage you going forward on surface topics but I must refuse to address the ultimate questions of life with you.”
Just thought of a Book of Mormon story that may relate a bit. It is when Mormon is leading the armies during the end-game battles that completely annihilate the Nephites. He prays “without faith” for them but nevertheless continues to lead them into battle. Is there a chance that you might want to adopt this attitude and continue to engage? You don’t have “faith” right now that someone will actually begin to see you for who you are and why you are no longer active, but at least this way you leave the door open to that possibility. If you simply just stop engaging on these issues, saying four years of beating my head against a brick wall is long enough, you are essentially eliminating that chance (slim as it may be).
Man, can I mix metaphors! (Battles, Doors, Brick Walls.) Impressive, huh?
Nahum
“The past four years have taught me that you can’t cure stupid.”
A couple of things strike me in your post. I hope some of this makes sense. From age 18 – 30, I lived in four states, three countries, and moved through eight jobs. Each time I transitioned from one job/place/store/community to another one, I would go through a phase in which I felt as if everyone around me did things in a really stupid way. About half way through this period of my life, one of the companies I worked for required that we take a short course on culture shock. One of the symptoms of culture shock is that you begin to feel that everyone around you is sort of stupid. I found that even moving from one store within a company to another store within the same company, I experienced culture shock. I thought my new employees were stupid, when in fact they were quite bright. They just did things differently. The culture shock I experienced as I moved to the new store was my problem, not theirs.
Point two: As I considered leaving my spouse, I joined a support group. What I didn’t know was that the support group I was in was only a small part of a much larger web of support groups. The support group I initially joined was for those who were really upset and lost. Not referring to you directly, but they used interesting and similar terms to what you used in different ways above. They wanted their money back, they were offended, they used really harsh words, They lashed out, they felt betrayed, and so forth. At some point as I participated in my group, someone invited me to join another support group. This new one had people who had gone through many of the same things as the first group, but for most of them, a lot of water had run under the bridge. These folks no longer used snide epitaphs for the people who injured or betrayed them. In fact, there was a much larger range of folks who had been either hurt by their spouses and those who themselves had been the ones who had injured their spouses, all trying to listen and learn from each other as they all attempted to reclaim and repair their lives.
This new group still had all the marital problems, but they were just at another level. And I’m telling you. The first support group was very very important for me to be in. I came to feel very safe there despite the venom and anger I saw there. Those people did a great deal to heal my soul. The second, more diverse group helped me move a great deal farther. From there, even more groups branched out to address very specific issues. Most of which had little to do with my situation. And at some point, I found that my need for these support groups dissipated. I just needed to work things out with my spouse.
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To attempt to pull this into something meaningful here, I think that the question for you may not actually be “Does the church have something for me?” The question may now be: “Now that I know that the church may not have something for me, what now?” At least that is what it looks like from my present vantage point. If you insist that the church must have something for you, you do have some choices to make. My take is that the church is what it is, it won’t let you change it. You just have to decide if it’s worth continuing to build a relationship with or if it is time to start looking for something else. And there is no rush. It happens or doesn’t happen on your timeline.
Jonah
I agree that my friends and relatives you have in mind are not stupid, but they do (it seems to me) lack one of the traits on the list. They are not diligent. They won’t do the homework. They won’t read the books or articles I would recommend, so that we could begin a critical conversation. Most don’t even read the faith-promoting literature our there or even the LDS canon. They NEED for the Church to be true; thus, they have no desire to engage with me in a critical conversation that will in all likelihood lead to some discomfort.
I hope it doesn’t sound like I making excuses, trying to wheedle may way out of doing something difficult that I don’t want to do. I have honestly tried to explain, but it has never produced anything resembling a positive result, not even a respectful agreement that two intelligent, diligent, sincere, and benign people have reached an impasse.
Jonah
Great point! And doing the work is just so Mormon isn’t it? I feel like I did what they wanted, I read, “out of the best books,” “the glory of God is intelligence,” wondered, ask questions, pondered, and in the end, they didn’t like where I ended up.
Not sure where I mentioned “doing the work,” but even if you got that from something I said, are you suggesting “doing the work” is solely a Mormon idea and not something broader and deeply important to do–perhaps something rooted in reality itself? If someone is to “do the work” because Mormonism says so, then, yes, that can be inauthentic. But just because someone does something that is also a Mormon emphasis doesn’t necessarily mean that person is doing it for that reason.
So what do you have against “doing the work”? What were you reacting to with that line?
Jonah,
You didn’t mention “doing the work.” This phrase was intended to further define the “diligence” I expect from someone who want to argue with me (over anything, really, but in this case) over my choice to abandon institutional Mormonism. “Diligence” is one of the four character traits needed by both opponents seeking to engage in a productive argument.
You asserted that the friends and family of whom I have complained are not stupid. I agreed with you, but pointed out that I must still disengage with them not because they are not intelligent enough, but because they are not dedicated enough to the conversation to “do the homework required.” This is intellectual laziness, not stupidity.
I am puzzled by your question about “doing the work” as a Mormon idea. I don’t see it that way, and I don’t know where I may have said something like it. As I wrote earlier in this thread, the list of four character traits is not original to me, but taken from a mutual friend of ours. I see them as applying to any critical argument, not just to matters of religion generally, nor to Mormonism particularly.
I just figured out that you may have been talking to Habakkuk. He was the one who said “doing the work is so Mormon.” I’m not sure what he meant by that. Yes, the Church does encourage its members to seek the “glory of God” “out of the best books,” to study, ponder, etc., but I see this as being used by Mormons as propaganda, a demonstration of how open minded we are, and of how dedicated we are to education. But the concept of divine intelligence in such passages of scripture is incorrectly equated to book learning, especially in so far as it might advance one’s status and career.
However one wishes to interpret the notion of divine intelligence as a thing to be sought, such scriptures in no way encourage critical thinking, which sees the value of doubt. I think Habakkuk’s last line goes straight to that problem. “Seek, but don’t doubt.”
How does one seek without questioning? How does one question without doubt? The underlying assumptions of every truth statement should be examined and this takes diligence. Most people I know (and not just Mormons) haven’t the intellectual curiosity or the self-discipline.
Yep, was responding to Habakkuk and his comment that I couldn’t track.
Nahum, I agree with most of your comments but would want to take the discussion out of the focus you have on questioning and curiosity as solely acts of the intellect. If we are going to have a discussion in the Mormon realm about “intelligence” and study and pondering, we must broaden it beyond just the mind and go into the spiritual realms and disciplines, too. Clearly that’s the intent and realm of the bulk of the scripture on it. If you’re interested in having that discussion, let’s do it! Otherwise I will simply say I agree with you only so far as what you are saying relates to the mind and its disciplines, but I can’t say that the kind of intelligence Mormonism talks about (or that I’m interested in) is purely about intellectual curiosity or mental self-disciplining, etc.