Posted by:
Humberto
(
)
Date: May 21, 2017 02:46PM
Our responsibilities are as individual as we are.
For me, I initially focused on my family. The number one best piece of advice I received on how to deal with my family was to respect their decision to continue to attend church... to not pound them with my recently discovered facts, to not insist that they listen to me, to not make them feel in any way wrong for doing what they've always done. I had started down this path, and got the predictable response. Where my wife had been a somewhat casual member, she started becoming more hard-core. She started making those TBM type rules for the kids where there had been none before -- like making my daughters attend seminary in order to maintain access to the car. I backed off.
I started focusing on being a better father -- without the church. I started focusing on being a better spouse -- without the church. I let my example pave the way. Here we are several years later, and my wife attends church maybe once a month. She leaves the kids home, since they don't want to go. My daughters are graduating high school this week, and haven't been to seminary in two years. They profess to be agnostic and atheist. They still have access to their car. My relationship and communication with my wife is better than it has been in many years -- as a side note, and probably TMI, I never knew that my wife was so, well, adventurous, to put it politely.
I have it a bit easier than a lot of you. My wife is a convert, so she doesn't have the pressure from her parents or other relatives to be a good Mormon, and to be married to one. She has respected my decision to leave the church, and she respects the kids' decisions to not go as well. And she has slowly but surely backed away from TBMness to near inactivity, and now has a better understanding of why I, and my kids, have issues with the church.
My immediate family, excepting my brothers, are still mostly TBM, but my parents only give me minor hassle. With family, I've learned that the best approach is no approach. You just gotta let them be, or they'll double down on the cultism in order to "set the example, and bring you back into the fold." So, I set my own example, and let it speak for itself.
I'm now turning my focus to my friends and coworkers. I don't know how effective I am, but my strategy is to combat the cult's thought stopping phrases with comments that provoke independent thought. For example, I had a coworker complaining about his workload as EQP in a very needy ward, I simply reminded him that he was a volunteer and could quit at any time, and stop sacrificing the needs of his family. The look on his face indicated that while he understood the facts, emotionally he couldn't process the possibility of turning down a calling -- and this is the real challenge, isn't it? A lifetime of emotional conditioning is not likely to be destroyed with some quick logic. Anyone who doesn't want to be changed, won't be. But maybe over time, with some repeated comments and some tactfully inserted facts, some minds can be opened.