leaving is hard
My friend responded to my email about leaving with surprise that it would be hard to leave the church. It just had never occurred to her. So I speculated about why.
Oh, I also wanted to say that I had never considered that it would be hard to leave, either. Maybe this is partly because the three most common reasons listed within the church for people who leave are "they were offended; they wanted to sin or they sinned and were feeling unworthy; and they were lazy." Doesn't sound difficult.
In fact, these reasons are grossly inaccurate. Of all the people I have interacted with since leaving (and that's a lot of people), very, very few of them are captured in those reasons. For most people who actually leave the church or stop believing (as opposed to "jack Mormons" who still believe but just don't practice for a variety of reasons), the main reason is that they simply don't believe the church's claims. "Simply not believing" may sound simple, too, I guess. But it's not.
3 comments:
Once one stop believing & start thinking/exploring it's hard to explain it to "believers". Their perceptions are so different. It's easier for "believers" to think of those three reasons you mentioned, because they couldn't doubt the validity of their faith.
c.rag- Isn't it strange that we can see from the point of view of believers, but they can't see from our POVs? I guess that means we have the upper hand?
that was a surprise to me, too - i have yet to meet even a single person who left for one of those ridiculous reasons. now i find those reasons so desperate and pathetic. if i *really* believe (and don't they love to tell you that you do), then am i *really* going to risk my eternal salvation for a cup o' joe and then try to come up with ten-thousand complex justifications for it? please.
and i have the same problem trying to explain it to people - that i "just stopped believing". in part i feel that it's too difficult for people to hear, because they have this great promise that if they just reading their scriptures, go to the temple, have FHE, go to church, and all that crap, then they'll never "lose their testimonies". i think it's too much for most of the people i know to consider that it's possible to find reason to leave even if you're "doing everything you're supposed to do". indeed, my MIL's first accusation (after telling my husband that she'd rather see him dead, of course) was to ask what we had been doing - or not doing - to make us lose our testimonies. and she refuses to believe that we were doing all that crap right up to the day we turned in our resignations.
it must be very frustrating to our friends and family that they can't put us in those safe, convenient boxes that mean that they don't have wonder what our leaving might mean for them - namely, that we might have a damn good reason or two for leaving that have nothing to do with lifestyle.
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