I know I've harped on this before but it came up again just yesterday so I thought I'd give the subject it's own thread. I have now been asked this question by a number of non-LDS people who, hearing I've left Mormonism, want a clarification on something they heard a Mormon say. It goes something like this:

"My LDS neighbor (friend, co-worker) says that people only leave the Mormon church because they are offended. If their church is losing so many members because they are offended, why doesn't the church do something about how offensive their members are? Maybe they could teach more about being Christlike or some basic manners or something."

You see, most normal people don't blame the victim - the offended - for not bending over and taking the offense the way Mormons do. Their immediate reaction is to wonder why Mormons are so offensive and why no one is doing anything to teach Mormons better manners. Especially if their church is hemorrhaging members like the Mormons are. Why can't the Mormon leadership wake up and realize that Mormons need some etiquette lessons? Is it because they realize it's a hopeless task or are they so focused on making money that they don't realize what ignoring member bad behavior is costing them? Or maybe they just think that, as God's in Embryo, everyone else has to cow-tow to them in an astonishing display of corporate narcissism. At any rate, you'd think the leaders would wake up and see how much money having such offensive members is costing them.

Or maybe they just know that isn't really the reason people leave???

People don't leave because they are offended.

They leave because they can't take the craziness anymore and/or because of significant issues with the doctrine.

The church can't admit that because then it might actually lead to other members questioning - so then the reason becomes that the exmo left because of being offended or because of sin.

I would bet that when a member says that someone left because they were offended they didn't actually go and talk to the exmo themselves to find out - they got that info from gossip or from their leaders.

When I left I got several letters from people in the ward I barely knew. One particularly memorable letter was from the Relief Society president. Other than a wave driving by and "How's it going" exchanges we were basically strangers. That didn't stop her from sending me a letter filled with apologies for imagined offenses. For some reason she was convinced it was her fault for me leaving the church and she begged me to reconsider.

The letter was way over the top. When I had my TBM wife read it she was embarrassed and felt the need to apologize for the offensive nature of the letter apologizing for the imagined offenses.

But you're right, nobody has yet asked for the real reasons I left. When it's discussed and I try to tell them the believers always seem to twist it back to being offended or wanting to sin.

Stupid cult.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2011 12:45PM by Stunted.

"But you're right, nobody has yet asked for the real reasons I left. When it's discussed and I try to tell them the believers always seem to twist it back to being offended or wanting to sin."

Christ...I'd love to tell these morgbots and other like-minded bible thumpers....it's not that people WANT to sin...It's just that people SIN. It's in our nature. Good morals, good teaching, and good role-modeling help to reduce the amount and severity of peoples' sins but we ALL do it..even super sanctimonious TBM mormons....

I.e., the church is a cult in the pathological and destructive sense. It can't admit truth; there's no honest confrontation of why people leave; the only reason to leave has to be b/c the person is offended or flawed. The victim has to be the problem b/c the church could never be the problem: the church is perfect and cannot be questioned. You must turn off your brain when interacting with it and that interaction is only ever done on its terms b/c it is perfect and you are not; in fact you are to be perfected by following the course the church lays out for you.

And the best defense is a good offense.

I'm not just being a smart ass, it's all about seizing and keeping the initiative/power in the relationship. The church always plays the victim, the persecuted, even as it quietly bullies and blackmails the membership. It's truly sick.

Being the church means never having to say you're sorry....and yes, that is the Mormon "Love Story". That's the kind of loving response you can expect.

Try to imagine if they started saying people were leaving because of doctrinal issues.

I would pity the poor bish. and SP's. They are the ones who would have to come up with answers about what those "issues" are that people are taking flight over. What would they say?

Well sister W. left because there were just too many versions of the first vision? Or JS had 38 too many wives? Or the church lied about just one too many things?

There is no way they will open that can of worms. Why would they when blaming the victim has worked well for them?

mia Wrote:
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> Try to imagine if they started saying people were leaving because of doctrinal issues.

The interesting thing is that in mainstream Christianity this would be a perfectly acceptable reason to leave one church (usually for another.) For instance in recent years, a large Lutheran congregation in my community split, with many of the congregants following their pastor to a new church. There is also an Anglican church for those who disagree with the direction that the Episcopal church has taken.

People also leave because they favor one minister over another, or they like a particular congregation better than another, or they prefer a different style of service or want better youth programs for their kids. Or sometimes they just want to take a break from church altogether.

Imagine if Mormons had the same level of freedom!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2011 07:34PM by summer.

The people who leave must be demonized. Oh those silly, weak apostates, dumping the One True Church® because of some imagined affront, or because of a triviality. Tsk tsk tsk.

they keep repeating the stupid milk-cream stories in their speeches. So the crowd can sit there and roll their eyes because the apostates are sooo small-minded. Yeah right.

I’m only offended that you would think I’m shallow enough to toss away my salvation because of a personal offense. The guy at the DMV offends me but I still deal with him for the greater goal of getting my license renewed. If what you’re offering is real I’d withstand any offense.

How would the church prefer that people who disagree with it's doctrines or practices express their disagreement?

You would have thought I was asking them to calculate the absolute value of Pi -- talk about speechless.

Should you consider you might be in a cult if you cannot even fathom how to communicate respectfully about simple polite disagreement!?

This reminds me of a true little story I told an exmo group the other day.

It happened a few years ago at the Sacramento Temple tour some of us attended. Two or three of the group decided to go the the lady's room during the wait time for the tour. We had to back track and wald past the greeter at the door to get to the restrooms.

Greeter looked at us with a pained expression and said, "Did we offend you??" LOL

"No, we're just going to the lady's room."

Greeter, "Did you forget to go before you came in?" LOL

I'm almost surprised she didn't want to know exactly what we needed to do in the stall. LOL

The whole tour was dominated by the morg need to control, control, control all nonmos.

"You see, most normal people don't blame the victim - the offended - for not bending over and taking the offense the way Mormons do."

I think bad-talking people who get offended (via lessons and conference talks) is one of the ways the church trains members to put up with mistreatment, not only at church, but in everyday life. It's like "look at the BAD person who got all upset, and look what happened to them." But they don't provide healthy options for dealing with interpersonal problems within the ward.

You have NO options to address wrongs in the church. You can't criticize leaders, you can't appeal policies or doctrine, and you aren't supposed to to get upset and disassociate with people who act inappropriately. You can't switch to another congregation if you like the people better there. You are just supposed to take it. So the church creates an environment that is great for offensive and abusive people.

That's not why I left, BTW. I left over doctrine. I had been thoroughly trained to be a nice little doormat so I would have put up with just about anything. And sometimes I did.

When I wrote my exit letter I specifically made a point of stating that I had not been offended by anyone. And I had not. I emphasized that I felt badly for leaving so many good people behind and that I was leaving for doctrinal reasons and not because of some offense. Though I do not know for certain, my guess is that the gossip mill perpetuated the "he-was-offended" myth anyway.

as the members who greeted me with smiles and brother this and that were not my friends when I left the building. It was later that I started my research to find out it was all bull anyway.

I think the fact the leaders do nothing to address the offensiveness of the members is proof that the leaders know that is not the reason people are leaving. Every exmo represents a loss of tithing dollars (or potential tithing dollars) so they are a valuable source of revenue. The leaders want them to stay and yet they aren't addressing what they say is the main reason they leave.

Because they know that it isn't the main reason...

One is as a mind stopper. They don't want members thinking about what the actual reasons might be.

Thinking about real problems doesn't happen when their minds are stuck on who didn't say hi or who looked sad when they weren't called on to say the closing prayer.

I keep thinking that the thing to do when asked this question would be to say, "No. I left because I ran out of people to offend, and since you Mormons blame the one who was offended for being offended, it's your fault!"

I am still wondering why my TBM friends haven't asked me HOW I was offended or WHO offended me. If that's the only reason I would leave then wouldn't someone offer to apologize and love me back into the ward? If I was a TBM that's what I'd do.

My RS visiting teacher suggested I was just too lazy to do the callings. I think she decided that because at first I just kept avoiding the bishop when he wanted to have interviews with me for callings. Actually, I liked the guy and didn't want to get into the whole loss of faith discussion with him. So, since they already came up with their own reason (too lazy) I guess they figure I'm beyond helping? Do they still think I believe? Wouldn't occur to them to offer help with callings or give encouragement. Nope. I'm just a loafer so I deserve to lose my spot on God's right hand. What a dumb church.

By claiming that you left because you "wanted to sin" they will usually be able to back up the claim with supposed evidence. As we *all* "sin" by Mormon definition, then somebody who knows you will be able to point to some behaviour as evidence. It is a logical fallacy of course, but it won't stop them making the argument.

Breaking the WoW is the most obvious example. As we no longer believe that the WoW was ever given by God (or even that there IS a God to give us commandments!) then we have no reason to believe it is "sinning" to drink coffee or alcohol. But TBMs see it as "sin", and conclude that must have been the reason for leaving.

I know, because when I was a child I was very familiar with my parents telling me this about older youths that went "inactive" as a precaution.

Apparently nobody can make you feel angry, it is your own choice how you feel and respond when one of your yoke-mates fails to be as perfect as you shamefully expect them to be.

So you see, if you are too weak to cheerfully endure the psychological bludgeoning from the a-hole of a bishop, you are choosing to feel bad in order to justify some hidden sin.

I'm actually going to go with the church tries really hard to teach members not to be offensive.

There's been lots and lots of GC talks exactly on those topics of being more Christlike, not offending etc..

I think the bigger problem is the highly authoritarian nature of the local wards/stakes. I've heard things in church like if your bishop tells you to pay 15% tithing you should just do it. So then you get people living in your neighborhood temporarily and arbitrarily raised up over each other as the voice of the lord that you are not to question. Often the raised up person doesn't have the greatest social skills and waa-laa mass offenses. The bishop in our current ward is a great example - the last bishop was a incredibly warm nice guy. The new guy is a huge jerk. Church attendance has dropped in the range of 20% - this one socially incompetent (real job = government environmental control bureaucrat) has ostracized tons of people. In the end - most effective bishop you could ever hope for in pushing people away from the church.

A church can sometimes be judged by the people that come out of it. Yes mormons are offensive but theres other resons for that.

You try not to be offensive when the local accountant has been given by god the right to tell your 14 year old doughter what she should do with her underbits and you pay the organisation he works for ten percent of your income to do it.

The Brethren hardly ever go outside of their bubble on how they deal with matters that come in life. Thus they are oblivious to just about anything except what they hear from their wife (who are more naive than they are), their children, their fellow group thinking GAs, the Area Authorities and Mission Presidents who report to them, the church office managers who report to them, and the occasional LDS scholar they consult with on various matters. As a result the Brethren learn of real problems through indirect channels or if directly its in a setting of their choosing where they're behind the desk and calling the shots and whoever is before them is either a sinner or a rebel, and if a rebel then it's pawned off ASAP down the food chain or handled with a very hands-off approach. In many ways its like being a College Dean and anyone not conforming is like a college freshman who wants to drop out because he or she doesn't like learning and doesn't want to have a bright future. I'd like to emphasize that I'm not saying that college is the only way for people to succeed in life, especially now with it being a ticket to lifelong financial bondage for people who aren't very careful. But to a college dean it's typically the path they know best and one that they excelled so you can imagine the perspective a dean would have towards a 19 year old kid wanting to throw it all away. That's how the GAs feel about us. They feel sorry. But here's how they view the types of problems out there.


1. People just not committed enough (i.e. lazy) - Usually these are the people who leave the church quietly (like most of us) but they have concerns over doctrine, history, or just that they never felt at spiritual peace or saw a ROI from their involvement in Mormonism. For the most part they are the intellectuals, feminists, and gays that I describe below but just non-confronting. Why people aren't committed enough just puzzles the church leaders. For us it makes sense. For them it doesn't because they can't seriously consider the real issues since this requires out-of-box thinking which to them is akin to playing with Satan or opening a porn magazine.

2. Gays - about 10% of people are gay (including those born in TBM families) and thus the local leaders are constantly dealing with people who want to be TBM but they are who they are. To the Brethren these are people with problems. To us they are just who they are and it's like saying that left-handed people or people with red hair are sinners.

3. Feminists - approx. 50% of the members are female who don't get to pass the sacrament, get treated 2nd class, wear sexy temple underwear, etc. and a great number of them become vocal. To the Brethren these are just people with problems and weaknesses. To us they are normal humans who expect us to live in the 21st century AD (not 21st century BC).

4. Intellectuals - From time to time the lazy people, gays, feminists, etc. will actually put something down on paper or share verbally the real reasons they won't be TBM. Rather than just go away quietly and pretend to be lazy, they feel a need to explain why they don't believe the BS. These loudmouth thinking people are called intellectuals whereas the quiet non-confrontational thinking people are called uncommitted or lazy. To us they are normal people. To the Brethren these are weak, problematic people who just "don't get it" and if these intellectuals don't shut up then they are dangerous enemies who mock God. An astute GA will quickly be able to discern what kind of person an intellectual is by whether or not they shut up. If they shut up then they are lazy/weak/uncommitted. If they speak out then they are tools of Satan and thus should not be heard.

"Offended" is used as a code word in Mormonism to be dismissive and discount an opinion.

If the church says someone left because (s)he was "offended," then it becomes the problem of the person who left. The church can keep the cog-dis up, and it doesn't open the can of worms that the real reasons for leaving would.

For the members, it's instinctive - find a way to declare a person's reasons for leaving as "they were offended," and it solves all problems.

Remember - to them, it's all YOUR PROBLEM for not following the One True Path(TM). It couldn't *possibly* be a valid issue with the doctrine.