You Think All Church Members Are Stupid

Q: “It sounds like you just think all Church Member are stupid for believing in this.”

😔I hear this. I feel it. I didn’t know what post-members thought of me, after they would leave. That not-knowing would make me so uncomfortable that I would usually drop contact. I didn’t mean to be “soft-shunning” anyone, even though that’s what such behavior would be called, I was just self-conscious and afraid of asking about their whole experience.

❓Let’s get curious, though, about what this concern shows us. ❓

First, I think it shows that, as members: 

➡️we are not given any ways to doctrinally/communally humanize and validate experiences that don’t fit our Church-is-best, so they-should-have-stayed-active narrative. 

➡️we are afraid of asking questions of our post-believing friends or neighbors because that will challenge our assumptions in ways we don’t want. 

➡️the go-to way we view post-members is to assume they are stupid, petty, deceived, confused, etc. 

Next, it’s important to acknowledge that this concern does not exist in a vacuum. 

➡️It draws on the bandwagon-fallacy of reasoning that because “So-and-so is a faithful member and he/she is super smart, the whole system must make sense at some level.” 

➡️It is often bolstered by the ad populum fallacy of assuming that “16 Million people couldn’t all be wrong!”

and

➡️It has roots in our lack-luster education on Church History, which models the oversimplification and demonization of the actions/motivations of “apostates.” 

🔥It is also further complicated by many ex- or post-mormons who  have so much cognitive dissonance around trying to humanize members, as those member do other harmful things in the name of Jesus, that they (the Post-members) fall back to the us-versus-them thinking of assuming that members are just arrogant and stupid.  

🦔In my view, we are all more vulnerable in our thinking and reasoning patterns than our conscious brain would like us to believe. Our brains would rather be safe than accurate, and so, our patterns of logical thinking depend heavily on our emotional/psychological perception of safety. 

✂️In other words, we are wired to grease up, massage, or just ignore facts that don’t fit comfortably within our worldview. (Mormonism has the extra tool of compartmentalizing anything that doesn’t make sense as being “something that will be explained after we die.”)

💞Our brains will prioritize social acceptance highly, too, since we are social animals who have evolved to be co-dependent with community. 

🧮If we are in a position of privilege, these blinders will be extra-thick and extra-difficult to remove because 

1) any portion of the problems that are visible will have been rationalized or explained away for us by other people with privilege 

2) recognizing we’ve been wrong or unfairly advantaged is NOT in our survival interest and it would require a lot of work to deconstruct,

And

3) learning about the under-privileged when we are in positions of power threatens our sense of self–we want to see ourselves as “the good guys,” and if we learn about the unfairness of a system that works for us, than we might feel obliged to change that, which probably means making a system that doesn’t benefit us as heavily. However, if we never learn about the problems in the first place, we can simply dismiss the cries of injustice as whining and complaining from a few outliers.

⚔️Further, if there is ANY threat of violence or physical danger (Mormon examples: Blood Atonement, the Whittlers of Nauvoo, Temple Penalties before 1990, metaphors of war to alienate alternative political/ideological strains, cataclysmic prophecies of the Last Days, domestic violence and abuse, etc), our brains shift into 💥survival mode💥 in which we really do see things through a black-and-white lens as relating directly to our physical survival.

This means that if we want to know the truth  (as in, “things as they really are”) about anything, we really have to open ourselves up to some uncomfortable possibilities 

🧩about being wrong, 

⚖️being privileged, 

🛡And of not being “the good guys” (at least, in the ways we may have thought) 

Does this make people who haven’t confronted those feelings stupid? 

I don’t think so. 

I think it makes them human. 

Maybe it shows something about how much fear they’re living with, about the phobias that have taken root in their lives, about what they think their survival depends on.

💣Ironically, the more people subscribe to this thinking, the more likely cataclysmic violence and war will result, because the black-and-white thinking leads to xenophobia, impulsive reactivity, and extremism.

But, I don’t want to get off in the weeds about Last Days prophecies, so…

No, I don’t think members are stupid. 

Or maybe, more accurately: 

Yes, I think we’re all stupid because we’re all wired to build our logic around our fears.

I get that. 

But, I’d rather not live in a world the caters to fear, so I’m doing what I can scour it out of my own thinking and ask these questions instead: 

🔮How can we help more people to feel safe? 

🔮What if we built our brains around love instead of fear? 

🔮What would a Gospel/Church/community  based on that look like?