You Used to Love 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.
Q: “You used to love the Church, the Gospel, the Book of Mormon. What happened?”
And, in many ways, I still do.
🛵Mormonism is a pretty good ride. It fuses Christianity, the Enlightenment and a magical worldview in some pretty interesting ways and it offers a lot of creative explanations for why humans work the way we do. Many of those explanations make a lot more sense within a 19th century American mindset, but even today, people find interesting ways to remix the doctrines in meaningful ways.
🪄One of the reasons I am still in this space at all, is because I think it’s so interesting.
It’s fascinating to watch all this play out–to learn about the historical influences, to get wide-eyes at the nonsense of Joseph F. Smith, to wax nostalgic over Hinckley’s attempts to modernize, to examine the doctrinal whiplash that has been coursing through the Church with Nelson.
🦣This behemoth of an organization,
🏗this latticework of ideological beliefs,
🏟this community structure is so
wonderfully, terribly, laughably, inspiringly human.
🤷♀️It doesn’t seem unusual, as far as organizations go, but it is my native soil and thus, I know more about this particular slice of human thought, bias, and history than I do about any other. And, through learning about Mormonism, I have gained insight on all other systems, religions, and governments of the world.
🌎🌏🌍Further, when compared with the immensity of the world’s problems, the problems that we face within Mormonism seem easy to solve.
🙌We have everything we need to make the Church into vibrant, healthy place:
🗃–all the doctrine necessary to validate and support anyone’s personal spiritual journey while also protecting from abuse (“All souls are great in the sight of God,” “God hath given you a knowledge and he hath made you free,” “Satan [seeks] to destroy the agency of man…” Etc.)
📚–all the history necessary to be humble about where we’ve been wrong and accept correction, when science or psychology or anthropology shows us our mistakes
💰–all the money necessary to implement deep, substantial changes in the Church (step 0: admit that we DO have a paid, professional clergy and that women should be paid equally in that hierarchy)
🩹–all the influence and resources necessary to apologize for and make reparations for damages to marginalized groups
(By the way, Step 0 is this: apologize for the Race and Priesthood ban, turn all of BYU-Hawaii, Lai’e land, and Polynesian Cultural Center over to native Hawaiians and Polynesians AND offer to make the same level of cultural preservation and education effort for FREE to First Nations peoples,
And Step 0.2: stop dictating life paths for queer and female members of the Church. Let them fly to their dreams. They will make you look so good.)
🏥–all the real estate necessary to make hubs for refugees, service, and actual humanitarian aid all over the world
💒🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🤗✨–all the human-power necessary to heal families, lead communities, and revitalize large areas by offering a judgment-free, open-access opportunity to engage with sacred rituals and symbolism in ALL of our ordinance-work.
⭐️What we need, we already have. ⭐️
This isn’t a matter of “restoring” the Restoration, though.
🎨 It’s a matter of seeing everything that Joseph Smith and his successors have offered us as quasi-artistic religious offerings and then choosing to keep the better part–by which, I mean, the parts that actually align with God, assuming that God really is Love. ❤️
If my posts seem too uniformly-critical, it is because I am trying to communicate the gravity of the situation:
🏦⛪️–the disparity between the corporate Church ’s conduct and the individual’s practice,
🏚–the severity of the under-education of members about the system they/we are participating in,
💔–the consequences of our intentional ignorance
…the problems are immense.
But, there are many things I love (still) about the Church, the LDS-version of the Gospel, and the Book of Mormon.
🧗Progression
🌳Symbolism
🔀Agency
🍎Myth
☀️Spirituality
It’s a story-scape I have spent a lot of time imagining and (for the most part) enjoying.
Because I have loved this, I hope it will get better. It’s still the ideological container for many people I love.
As Nemo says on his channel, “when one realizes they are in a burning building, they must choose to either run out and save themselves or stay to help other people out, too.”*
This is how I stay.
❤️🩹
*Nemo the Mormon on YouTube stays by remaining active, commenting on Church practices via YouTube, and and voting opposed: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo-6l1g27GdDb4riutS8I0w
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