http://ifeellikeschrodingerscat.blogspot.com/2012/01/leaving-lds-cult-of-false-expectations.html

"One of the major reasons, I suspect, that I’ve never had a crisis of faith in the church is that my family has always been amazing."

Yes, all the exmos and all the people writing exit stories and going through troubles over the church just don't have amazing families.

So to stay in cool with the church and have a grand old spiritual life, not only do you need to follow the 600 or so odd rules of Mormonism, and follow blatantly false texts, you just need to be super-righteous and have a super wonderful family. Everyone who doesn't is just missing the beautiful LDS boat.

Basically this guy is so inscribed in cultural Mormonism that he couldn't leave it if he tried. It's NOMishness that distances itself from the chapel Mormonism that is inflicted on the 99% of the membership via correlation and fundamentalist conservatism in the church. Even Dehlin can't stand more than sacrament meeting.

Yes he is engaging in a "No true Scotsman" Fallacy. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2012 04:55PM by derrida.

seems to me hes been brainwashed like many .cant see the truth even if it bitt him on the bum i feel sorry for him

I have an outstanding family--and most of them are standing outside the LDS church.

That describes the church pretty well, I think. The entire damn church--there is no righteous core. I'm glad that Mr. Robomormon had an amazing family, but mine was amazingly dysfunctional.

Carl Cranney ‎"You see, it is a wise thing for people to remove their expectations of the church. That might be one of my own definitions of enlightenment. But it would be equally wise to remove one's expectations of other people's expectations in regard to their relationship to the church."

*insert Inception music here* :)

Adam, I wouldn't actually argue that the church is all good. "No hallowed hand will stop the work from progressing either." My Dad's comment (and it was in reference to those he worked with sometimes as a Mission President, so do with that fact what you will) is one I have a testimony of, so to speak. There are things about the church I wish would change, but I'm in no position to change them. I just write blog posts and try to help the members in my local ward as I can.

I'm also open to the fact that I may not be as nuanced about the church/member distinction as I ought to have been. But I still think it's true that without any individual members, there would be no church, so I don't think I'm entirely wrong on this point either. If a policy is changed, it would be because some member, somewhere, decided to change it. Or a group of members. Probably some of the brethren, obviously.

And again, I'm not saying the negative experiences people have in the church are false. I'm saying that I wish it weren't so, and that the LDS Cult of False Expectations generates much of those negative experiences, so that's one of the many reasons I wish it would go away. To much unnecessary heartbreak. We're failing as Christians in so many ways. We're not all fire breathing devils either, mind you, but the Cult of False Expectations isn't helping the situation at all. I'm seeing positive strides in this direction, however, as evidenced by this SL Trib article John linked yesterday: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53408134-78/church-lds-mormon-faith.html.csp

I just hope my post (which apparently went very very viral) helps things along in a positive way. That was its intention. *standard caveats about not trying to deliberately anger or ostracize people here*

Mormons tackling tough questions in their history | The Salt Lake Tribune
www.sltrib.com
An LDS student surfs the Internet for a school assignment and discovers that Mormon founder Joseph Smith had multiple wives, even marrying a 14-year-old.

If we remove our expectations of anything it stops being whatever it was that might have caused us difficulty in the first place. How easy. This idea of "removing our expectations" from the LDS church is trivial to the point of being moot. The church doesn't change because we remove our expectations from it. The LDS church isn't just something one can play an expectations game with: There are consequences to preaching the "wrong" things in church; there are consequences to bringing up one's children in a church strong on indoctrination; there are consequences to remaining silent.

The idea that those of us who have rejected the church are just stuck in a Fowleresque Sunbeam level of spirituality is just insulting. The LDS church isn't so flexible and liberal as your local UU branch or even United Methodist church. To act like it is I think is just ignoring what the church really is so that you can go on staying cozy and loyal to your ancestors' church.

Most of this attachment one finds among cultural Mormons I really don't understand as a modern secular human being: I've had some academic and family research interest in my grandparents' and great-grandparents' religion, but it never occurred to me to convert to it or to adopt it whole hog as a culture I needed to revere and take on as my own.

Most of us, I think, just move on with the relevant movements, ideas, and interests of our own day. This LDS conservatism, this attachment to an intellectually bankrupt church and tradition, seems like a stubborn refusal to leave an historical and cultural cul-de-sac. One stays there more out of a hope for the historical inertia of a sad tradition to amount to something helpful than out of any real progressive interest. E.g., fight for gay rights in the church or out of it? Why not join the rest of history and fight the real fight, the fight going on outside a church frozen in so many ways in the 19th century?

Scott said...
Just a quick reply to anonymous poster above who linked to the Claudio Zivic on lds.org. He says and I quote "However, we need to be concerned and watchful that we do not fall into personal apostasy, which can result from several causes. I will mention only a few." And then he mentions sin, being offended by or in conflicted with another member, and claiming too much authority like Oliver Cowdery. I didn't really see laziness in there although that is one of the many other things that can lead to personal apostasy. It'd be tough to cover them all in a short article, and Elder Zivic made no claim to.

I know some people jump to bad conclusions (like all of Job's friends did), but that's their mistake.

Keep up the good work Carl!

JANUARY 30, 2012 3:44 PM
http://ifeellikeschrodingerscat.blogspot.com/2012/01/leaving-lds-cult-of-false-expectations.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2012 08:09PM by derrida.

When lesson manuals start sounding like this liberal Mormon then we can talk about "expectations." As it is now the expectation that the Church expects of its members is total and complete subjugation to Church authority.