Aren’t you doing more harm than good through talking about this?

This is one of a series social media posts that I wrote in 2021 during the height of my Faith Transition. Because I was publicly deconstructing in front of an entirely faithful network of friends and followers, I received a lot reactions, questions, and backlash from people I loved regarding my journey. Many of them were dismissive or hostile towards me because they had been trained to me as a “defector.”

Since an overly long response in a comment or personal message would have been seen as aggressive, I took quotes from these reactions to write these public posts in response. I never attributed the person who asked the question since I didn’t want anyone to feel specifically blamed or called out for having the response. The questions are also not unique. They are part of the scripted response we were taught to have as members of the “in-group.” Still, each post begins with a quotation because it is a question I personally received during my Transition.

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I recently received this question:

“Aren’t you doing more harm than good through talking about this?” 

This is a fall-back question that most of us in faith-crisis get to, also.

Although, from the crisis-perspective it’s phrased like this, “Well, even if it’s not true–it’s still doing more good than bad, right?” 

For me, that moment was about a year ago. I had naively assumed for over a year and a half of research, that the Church would prove itself, if I just gathered enough pieces to make sense of the picture.

If I just backed up enough to take an eternal perspective (I thought), I would see the Celestial patterns emerge. If I just held out (I thought) and kept doing all the things, and kept praying about it, I would eventuallyfind the key that made sense of it all.

Well, I was right about one thing: Patterns did emerge. 

They just were not the ones I wanted or expected. 

The major patterns were those of 

White-supremacy

Misogyny

Systemic and local abuse

Cover-ups

Greed

Power

Pride (not the friendly rainbow-kind)

Interestingly, despite these, I also saw sub-patterns emerging around 

Kindness

Generosity

Compassion

Integrity

Humility

Love

Maybe I’ll call these two strains of Mormonism “Wheat and Tares.”

The problem is, that the leadership represents and pushes the “Tares” version of Mormonism and the “Wheat” version survives primarily because of the members who decline to follow all the advice of their leaders. 

I heard someone say it like this: “Everything good in Mormonism doesn’t actually come from Mormonism. It comes from the goodness of the people in it.”

The question of harm vs. good is an important question that I ask often and try to observe honestly. I don’t want to interrupt anyone’s goodness. However, if the goodness is being produced by the members and that goodness is being interrupted by the systemic “Tares,” then what does that mean about critiquing the system? Am I doing harm by pointing out the failings of the “Tares”?

In other words, do you think that members stop being kind, generous, compassionate, honest, humble, or loving when they are not yoked to an oppressive, manipulative system? If I speak for myself, I can say that no, it does not.

In more other words: I see the harm as being the deception and exploitation of people, not the disruption of the people who would perpetuate that deception.

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Note: I wrote a second response to this same question later on in my posts. I guess was getting this question a lot. You can find the second response here.