People leave the church because of a "trust gap"

[Stargazer]

15 hours ago, Jeanne said:

I believe you are honest all the time..I didn't mean to imply otherwise.    Funny thing.  I had a job interview years ago where they asked me if I was truly honest..so I was honest and told them I am honest to the point where and unless I hurt someone's feelings...didn't get the job and this is why..

Funny story: I'm a computer programmer and at a job we had another rather odd fellow programmer who told of once being asked in an interview to tell something about himself, and he came up with a very wild story, that was true.  He lived in Seattle, but for a time worked in a town across the Puget Sound, for which he had to take the ferry to get there.  On good weather days he walked to the ferry terminal and on the other side took a bus to his place of work.  On bad weather days he took his car.  One day, when the weather was so-so, he drove his car, but during the ferry trip forgot about the car, and took the bus from the ferry to the job.  A couple of hours later he got a frantic call from his wife, who had been contacted about the abandoned car sitting on the ferry, and the search effort then going on for his presumed dead or drowning body floating in the Sound.  Needless to say, the authorities were very upset with him about this!  And of course he did NOT get the job he was interviewing for.  Not sure if it was because of his story.  As I said, he was a rather odd fellow in a number of respects -- a free-floating spirit and actually quite guileless.   He was a Jewish guy married to a Chinese Buddhist, and at his first son's bris the rabbi asked him what name the boy was to get, and he said "Christopher", which gave the rabbi quite a start!  And yes, he loved to tell these stories about himself.

Edited April 21, 2017 by Stargazer

[Meadowchik]

1 hour ago, why me said:

Can someone believe in Lutheranism and not believe in Martin Luther? Can one be a presbytarian and not believe in Knox? Or a methodist and not believe in Wesley? Maybe not.

Can one be a chritian and not believe in the new testament? Or in the old teatament? Or a protestant and believe in catholicism? Or a muslim and not believe in the quran? Nor believe in the Mohammed story?

All religious faiths are tied to history. Can one be a protestant and believe that the protestant reformation did not happen? However it is only the mormons that must look to their history and believe in it or not. Right?

Some messages stand on their own, independent of the messenger. Imagine a prisoner ratting on his cellmate. Authorities check the names and dates and find evidence for conviction, evidence which stands on its own once it is discovered through due process.

On the other hand, there are some messages which absolutely rely on witness testimony, where once you get on the trail it all leads to the personal account of a person or people and cannot stand alone independent to the testimony. The keys to this dispensation absolutely rely on Joseph Smith's personal testimony, those keys as we know them do not exist without Joseph.

Edited April 21, 2017 by Meadowchik

[JulieM]

2 hours ago, why me said:

It mentions that emma gave serveral women to be married to her husband. Who were these several women? Should we give them names? Does it matter?

Yes.

How can you have an honest discussion about Joseph's polygamy without mentioning and discussing who his plural wives were?

[William Jones]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Yep!  

Because they didn't!  

Leaving the true church cannot possibly be legitimate.  Of course, if you don't believe the church is true, then I guess one might think that one's reasons are legitimate.  But the earth isn't flat because one believes that it is.  The earth is what it is.  The church is Christ's church and it is true.  Even if every member leaves it, thinking that they have legitimate reasons to do so, they're still wrong.

So, if I came to the conclusion that the church isn't what it claims and left because of that discovery, I really left for some other reason? Thanks for the clarification! Maybe I really was offended by all the nice people or wanted to drink coffee instead of the energy drinks mormons drink?

[Johnnie Cake]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Out of 7 children I have attempted to help raise in the Gospel, none of them is an active member as adults.  Absolutely none of them became inactive because of these historical difficulties.  In fact, only one of them ever found out about these uncomfortable topics (head in hat, teenaged brides of Joseph Smith, etc), and he only did so many years after leaving the church.  He left the Church to follow his wife's faith, and he apparently needed to have a club with which to beat me, concerning his leaving the Church.  He certainly didn't leave for that reason.  All of the others left because of the pull of the world: smoking; drinking; premarital sex; dislike going to church; and so on.

I realize that this is my personal story, and others will be different, but all my kids left the Church because of the pull of the world.  Darned few of the children of other members I have know who have left, whose reasons I have known about, have left over historical challenges.  Actually none of them.

This is why I think that most people who go inactive are just unconvinced of the Gospel, or have never had, or have lost interest in it.  And I've seen a number of these come back after many years of inactivity -- for various reasons.  Part of the problem in reactivating these folks is that they are largely apathetic with respect to the Church, and have better things to do and concern themselves with.

The article in the SLTrib states that the Trust Gap was the predominate reason...not necessarily the only reason...for every person who leaves the church each has a justification for doing so...which probably could be any number of reasons...but according to the survey in the OP...the majority are leaving due to their loss of trust in the ability of the church to just tell the truth.

Edited April 21, 2017 by Johnnie Cake

[rockpond]

15 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm pretty skeptical of her claims here. Not that I disagree with you on truth issues. I think those who have a kind of black and white view can be shattered when they find that view isn't correct. The question is what percentage of people who leave are in that group.

Of course the solution is to give people the more nuanced view that I think most people in leadership have. Honestly it's hard to be around leadership for long without recognizing these are fallible people trying their best. Ether 12 comes to mind. So I'm always especially surprised to find people who've been in leadership who see a trust gap as a problem since it suggests something very odd about their own experiences in leadership. My personal experience is that most of those who face these trust issues haven't been in or around leadership to see the practical way leadership works. (I'm not extending from that - just noting my experience) I think in some ways it was easier when it was fairly common to see the Apostles and recognize them as human. Now that the Church has grown so big and people are so disconnected from upper leadership it's easy to color them with an unrealistic idealization akin to how fundamentalists do scriptural figures.

But my main qualm with Reiss which I think I mentioned earlier is that "trust gap" is pretty vague. After all if you no longer believe for whatever reason you no longer trust them. So the cause of the trust gap seems more important to discern. Pointing to "trust gap" is one of those kinds of explanations that appears to explain a lot without actually giving you any more information than you had before.

I think the Church has encouraged and taught that "unrealistic idealization" over many decades now.  We begin that teaching in primary so it is no wonder now that we've got leaders of the church who believe that whatever the church does (from policy to curriculum to general conference addresses) represents the direct mind and will of God.

[Kevin Christensen]

21 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

What I wanted was for Joseph to be the prophet. The hypothetical space in which that was possible grew smaller and smaller until it was gone. Now I see quite clearly indeed. 

I do think that there are many things about the LDS gospel which are mightily appealing and comforting, especially if we are careful to ignore a bunch of other things.

I think that all of us probably adapt Mormonism in one way or the other. Only now after the emotional attachment has been severed, can I see very clearly and obviously that the church is not what I thought it was.

I do agree with what you say here:

"And I searched out a wide range of LDS scriptures that describe how the spirit communicates, both through the mind and through the heart, and sometimes through events.   It is most definitely not just feelings (though that is part of it), but also enlightenment, expansion of the mind, judgment, insight, understanding, study, and experiment."

As I mentioned, I took several years  compiling 28 Biblical tests for both true and false prophets (something, I notice with amazement that I still retain decades later, that no one else had ever done), so that I could be confident that I would recognize a prophet if I saw one.  I also studied what mistakes to avoid (70 Biblical examples of arguments against true prophets, such as "How can a sinner do such miracles?"), and ways to remove beams from my own eye.   It seems clear to me that hypothetical space must be defined by a hypothesis.  And each hypothesis must be tested not only as a distinct hypothesis, but against competing offerings.

Everyone has to select where they want to focus their time and attention.  The trick is how we go about deciding what is important, and what is not.

The church is not what you thought it was.  Paul says, when he was a child, he thought as a child...  The issue for me is not whether the Church or Joseph Smith are what I thought they were when I was young and naive, given that I began, like everyone else, as a child.  Nor is the issue whether the Church or Joseph Smith are what I want them to be, whether I am frustrated in any way.  It is whether the founding and defining inspirations are Real.  That, I think, is a rather different thing.   Rather then disillusion, or shattering, my experience has been an ongoing enlightment, unfolding, an expansion of my mind, and enlargement of my soul.  For instance, no one taught me that Alma's conversion was comparable to a Near Death Experience, including all of the after effects.  I cannot be bitter and cynical about that change in my understanding.  Sorenson and Gardner and Larrry Poulson, among others have radically changed my view of the New World setting of the Book of Mormon, so that I see something very different than what I got from looking at Friberg paintings.  Again, rather than shattering, I feel expansion in discovering that some things were not what I thought.  When I read Margaret Barker's The Great Angel, I had my thinking completely changed with respect to the Book of Mormon, again, enlightenment rather than disappointment. Watching, and experience such change and transformation of my thinking is like watching a seed grow and change.  Rather than complain,
"Why is it doing that?  It no longer looks like it once did... it's not the way I thought it would always be!", I'm rather excited by what I see and curious to find what else may happen.  These things, I notice, have to do with the foundational clams of the Book of Mormon, its authenticity.  Not with later social issues that, no matter how colorful or controversial (including the sorts of things I read in Compton on the plural wives of Joseph Smith), don't account for the foundation.

While Othello is strangling the life out of Desdemona, he is absolutely certain that she is not what he thought she was, and as he walks away, the last thing he wants to discover is that he could have possibly made a mistake.  I am one of those who understands his bitterness and disillusion and pain, but I don't think that what he needs most from his community is sympathy and understanding.  It's not all about Othello's pain and disillusion.  There is the question of why certain other people disagree with Othello regarding Desdemona, and what they might know or have seen that he has not considered, and the question of what certain things he has seen might mean when considered within other frameworks, within a rather different hypothetical space.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited April 21, 2017 by Kevin Christensen
typo

[HappyJackWagon]

6 minutes ago, rockpond said:

I think the Church has encouraged and taught that "unrealistic idealization" over many decades now.  We begin that teaching in primary so it is no wonder now that we've got leaders of the church who believe that whatever the church does (from policy to curriculum to general conference addresses) represents the direct mind and will of God.

I agree. There's a new article by Wheats and Tares in which they discuss the continued whitewashing of church history or faith promoting stories. They specifically talk about two recent conference talks about the Tsunami and the Stake Center Fire to illustrate how faith promoting stories are still being told even if they are not exactly accurate. Interesting stuff. https://wheatandtares.org/2017/04/19/is-whitewashing-continuing-today/

[Jeanne]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Funny story: I'm a computer programmer and at a job we had another rather odd fellow programmer who told of once being asked in an interview to tell something about himself, and he came up with a very wild story, that was true.  He lived in Seattle, but for a time worked in a town across the Puget Sound, for which he had to take the ferry to get there.  On good weather days he walked to the ferry terminal and on the other side took a bus to his place of work.  On bad weather days he took his car.  One day, when the weather was so-so, he drove his car, but during the ferry trip forgot about the car, and took the bus from the ferry to the job.  A couple of hours later he got a frantic call from his wife, who had been contacted about the abandoned car sitting on the ferry, and the search effort then going on for his presumed dead or drowning body floating in the Sound.  Needless to say, the authorities were very upset with him about this!  And of course he did NOT get the job he was interviewing for.  Not sure if it was because of his story.  As I said, he was a rather odd fellow in a number of respects -- a free-floating spirit and actually quite guileless.   He was a Jewish guy married to a Chinese Buddhist, and at his first son's bris the rabbi asked him what name the boy was to get, and he said "Christopher", which gave the rabbi quite a start!  And yes, he loved to tell these stories about himself.

Seriously..Christopher???

[William Jones]

14 minutes ago, rockpond said:

I think the Church has encouraged and taught that "unrealistic idealization" over many decades now.  We begin that teaching in primary so it is no wonder now that we've got leaders of the church who believe that whatever the church does (from policy to curriculum to general conference addresses) represents the direct mind and will of God.

Maybe God is a lousy communicator?  He must have been the one to have inspired the leaders to relay the message that whatever the church does is the direct mind and will of God?  Clearly that isn't the case.  Also, didn't he inspire the black and white thinking that pervades the book of mormon?  Why did he do that when life is more nuanced?

[bsjkki]

15 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree. There's a new article by Wheats and Tares in which they discuss the continued whitewashing of church history or faith promoting stories. They specifically talk about two recent conference talks about the Tsunami and the Stake Center Fire to illustrate how faith promoting stories are still being told even if they are not exactly accurate. Interesting stuff. https://wheatandtares.org/2017/04/19/is-whitewashing-continuing-today/

Can you refute the analysis of the critics of the Tsunami story? Both Calm and Samlan have reviewed the critics and found their case is highly questionable. It seems to come down to an out of context interpretation of the word "all.

Their analysis is found on this thread. So far no one has tackled the Bragg story about the fire but I could have missed it.

Edited April 21, 2017 by bsjkki

[rockpond]

5 minutes ago, William Jones said:

Maybe God is a lousy communicator?  He must have been the one to have inspired the leaders to relay the message that whatever the church does is the direct mind and will of God?  Clearly that isn't the case.  Also, didn't he inspire the black and white thinking that pervades the book of mormon?  Why did he do that when life is more nuanced?

I don't think God is a lousy communicator... I think we are mortal listeners.

[William Jones]

2 minutes ago, rockpond said:

I don't think God is a lousy communicator... I think we are mortal listeners.

Yes, but if your child doesn't understand what you say, especially if it is important, don't you take it upon yourself to go back and tell it to him or her over and over again until they get it?  I guess my overall point is that communication is a two way street and the listener shouldn't always be blamed because an imperfect church wants to keep up the illusion of perfection.

[HappyJackWagon]

4 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

Can you refute the analysis of the critics of the Tsunami story? Both Calm and Samlan have reviewed the critics and found their case is highly questionable. It seems to come down to an out of context interpretation of the word "all.

Their analysis is found on this thread. So far no one has tackled the Bragg story about the fire but I could have missed it.

No- I can't refute the Tsunami story. Did I somehow suggest otherwise?

The speaker clearly intended to give the message that the mission president was inspired to protect his missionaries by inviting them "all" to the conference. Of course he didn't invite all. There were many missionaries who couldn't be reached for days after the Tsunami. Claiming that God inspired this mission president to protect a few missionaries, instead of "all" really isn't very inspiring. It makes the story of inviting extra missionaries to the conference to be little more than a mundane coincidence as it relates to the Tsunami.

I chalk stories like this up to the well-intentioned desire to show that miracles still happen and revelation still occurs. But stories like this creates more questions than it answers.

Regardless of intentions, I think it would be wise for anyone speaking in a general church meeting to be accurate in their story telling. We live in a day of Google and it would behoove leaders to remember that.

[Jeanne]

27 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree. There's a new article by Wheats and Tares in which they discuss the continued whitewashing of church history or faith promoting stories. They specifically talk about two recent conference talks about the Tsunami and the Stake Center Fire to illustrate how faith promoting stories are still being told even if they are not exactly accurate. Interesting stuff. https://wheatandtares.org/2017/04/19/is-whitewashing-continuing-today/

And how does one unravel the things that are taught from the age of 4 and 5?  From primary, SS, MIA..Seminary and adult classes with personal study...look at the essays and unravel those things that are so instilled???  It is no wonder that the gap is there..that belief in apostle/prophets has suddenly left one an empty space.

[Tacenda]

3 hours ago, JulieM said:

Yes.

How can you have an honest discussion about Joseph's polygamy without mentioning and discussing who his plural wives were?

 

[rockpond]

19 minutes ago, William Jones said:

Yes, but if your child doesn't understand what you say, especially if it is important, don't you take it upon yourself to go back and tell it to him or her over and over again until they get it?  I guess my overall point is that communication is a two way street and the listener shouldn't always be blamed because an imperfect church wants to keep up the illusion of perfection.

Well, I certainly agree with that overall point.

[Johnnie Cake]

40 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree. There's a new article by Wheats and Tares in which they discuss the continued whitewashing of church history or faith promoting stories. They specifically talk about two recent conference talks about the Tsunami and the Stake Center Fire to illustrate how faith promoting stories are still being told even if they are not exactly accurate. Interesting stuff. https://wheatandtares.org/2017/04/19/is-whitewashing-continuing-today/

I think we need a thread dedicated to just this topic....but I fear being the one to start it

[clarkgoble]

33 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

So far no one has tackled the Bragg story about the fire but I could have missed it.

No one really has provided a link to explaining what the Bragg criticism even is beyond linking to a long podcast.

Edited April 21, 2017 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, rockpond said:

I think the Church has encouraged and taught that "unrealistic idealization" over many decades now.  We begin that teaching in primary so it is no wonder now that we've got leaders of the church who believe that whatever the church does (from policy to curriculum to general conference addresses) represents the direct mind and will of God.

I agree although that's finally changing. Part of it was unintentional I think. A consequence of a focus on basics for the new members. But they went too far IMO. The last few years they've been more careful but I think they could do more.

[JLHPROF]

3 hours ago, JulieM said:

Yes.

How can you have an honest discussion about Joseph's polygamy without mentioning and discussing who his plural wives were?

Completely agree.
I hate the current trend among members now that Joseph's polygamy is discussed to try and make these wives into second class participants.
And this trend comes from many different approaches (the sealing only crowd, the pity marriage crowd, the not really wives crowd).  Can't stand this attitude.

[bsjkki]

25 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

No one really has provided a link to explaining what the Bragg criticism even is beyond linking to a long podcast.

Yeah, that's why I don't want to analyze it. I hate listening to podcasts. 😉 Hopefully it's as shallow as the Stevenson criticism.

[clarkgoble]

10 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Completely agree.
I hate the current trend among members now that Joseph's polygamy is discussed to try and make these wives into second class participants.
And this trend comes from many different approaches (the sealing only crowd, the pity marriage crowd, the not really wives crowd).  Can't stand this attitude.

How does acknowledging the dynastic element turn them into second class. I'm not quite following you here. There are very strong historical reasons to think not all the marriages were normal conjugal marriages including many in Utah. 

[Tacenda]

15 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Completely agree.
I hate the current trend among members now that Joseph's polygamy is discussed to try and make these wives into second class participants.
And this trend comes from many different approaches (the sealing only crowd, the pity marriage crowd, the not really wives crowd).  Can't stand this attitude.

https://www.lds.org/churchhistory/presidents/leaders.jsp (Look on "Significant Events".) 

I post this at least once a year when the subject comes up on this board. When you go to this website they only mention the monogamist president's wives. All the other wives are invisible except they do mention Emma Smith as Joseph's wife and leave out all the rest of his wives. It's time the church changes this. I've even written the church and complained and nothing came of it. I emailed them on the LDS.org site. ETA: On the top right corner is a feedback button, maybe if we all provide some comment about this, they might start including these women.

Edited April 21, 2017 by Tacenda

[Jeanne]

9 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

https://www.lds.org/churchhistory/presidents/leaders.jsp (Look on "Significant Events".) 

I post this at least once a year when the subject comes up on this board. When you go to this website they only mention the monogamist president's wives. All the other wives are invisible except they do mention Emma Smith as Joseph's wife and leave out all the rest of his wives. It's time the church changes this. I've even written the church and complained and nothing came of it. I emailed them on the LDS.org site. ETA: On the top right corner is a feedback button, maybe if we all provide some comment about this, they might start including these women.

So many female ancestors and pioneers are just a blank page...it would be nice to have their stories and voices during those times.