BYU Boner Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I love what another poster said, “Mormonism, not > my circus, not my clowns.” Damn, I wish I came > up with that! Da Bone.
I stole that phrase and used it for something else today (not LDS-related). ;)
Most of the time I have spent here was to heal or to take a break from work, which I'm doing right now.
It is the mormons who won't leave me alone who make me angry.
I put much more into my mormon experience than my family members who have left the church. They did leave in their teens. None of them have resigned. My sister even posts things that the leaders say and she is about as NOT MORMON as they come. She quit attending at age 17.
Our own Richard Packham has stated for years that there are more ex-mormons than there are active ones. So true.
What has amazed me in the 20 years I have been out, not one of my family members whether close or distant, has ever asked me WHY I left the church. They make an assumption, I guess, that it was entirely due to the coming out of my temple married husband and our subsequent divorce. I guess it is what lets them remain in their little bubble because they can't handle that I found out it was all BS.
Exactly. They don't want to know. They are afraid that you discovered some of the same things that they have doubts about but are afraid to peel that onion. Just like with the Zion curtains in Utah bars and restaurants, they're faith is so weak that if they see a drink being poured, they'll lose all control and turn into raging alcoholics.
The article does nothing to address the shunning done by family members of those who leave the church. They may leave of their own accord and choice on their own terms, but the shunning is only begun once that process begins. It is like a divorce that never ends.
To have been a Mormon is in many respects similar to having been Amish. The main difference IMO is to be Amish at least is visible lines of demarcation. With Mormonism is not so visible because Mormons teach to be Mormon is to be "in the world but not of the world." Amish separate themselves from the world from the very beginning. When an Amish person leaves their church and home they pay with the price of leaving everything they know behind.
With Mormonism is kind of the same thing only not as visible. Because it is the religious identity that is the person's frame of reference to the world around them until they leave it. Suddenly it no longer applies and for a ex-Mormon that can leave them drifting out to sea without an oar or direction.
For me it was why my faith was important to me when I left. Just not the religion. I clung to my faith as I pitched the religion. My faith was what carried me through and to the other side of that chasm I was leaving behind. I feel like I was delivered from Mormonism, not just escaped it.
Amyjo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > At least the Amish believe only in the Bible. Not > in the Holy Book of the Mormon, et al, and phony > profits.
Meh, most denominations add something. The RCs and Orthodox Churches add a big heap of doctrine which isn't in the Bible - Mary as perpetual virgin and Queen of Heaven, the use of images as pieces of physical worship etc.
The Amish have a whole line of thinking which says buttons on clothing are evil. Merely because the Bible doesn't mention them. Well, the Bible doesn't mention speaking in an obscure German dialect, but that doesn't make it evil either.
Well, that's the part they conveniently left out. People would love to leave and call it a day. But, you get guilt-ed, open hostility, shunned, gossiped about and pestered to return. It's almost like you have to go totally ballistic to get your message across. Which is what they call "Not leaving the church alone".
It isn't like your dad didn't have a say in his own moral culpability.
He had choices to make and erred on the side of least resistance to his folly.
The cycle is generational unless it is broken. You were one of two to break the chain. He couldn't keep you in bondage without your consent. Your sisters paid with their lives vested in the same destructive pattern you broke free of.
He still left hurt and heartache (and resentment,) in his wake. He couldn't just bow out gracefully. That wasn't his style. That was how his religion defined him. But it doesn't get to define you.