Actual Versus Hypothetical Learning, or My Deconversion
Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:28 am
Stage One, Detachment
When I was 19, I feel while skiing, breaking my fall with my left hand. When I got up and brushed off the snow, I went to grab my ski poles and discovered that I could not grip with my left hand. It did not hurt, but I could not make a fist.
The next day, my hand had swollen, then by the following day I met with a doctor who confirmed a broken third metatarsal and scheduled me for surgery, to insert a metal plate.
I think about that moment, now. My hand did not hurt, I did not know it was broken, but mainly it just didn't work.
That's similar to how I am feeling now.
This last year our family has undergone our own drama and hurtful actions by church leaders. I was denied a stake temple recommend interview because, according to the stake president, my husband was involved in "an intrigue of priests." Or, in other words, my husband and another male member of our ward were at odds in a legal dispute over a contractual relationship.
Shortly after I was given the green light for a recommend. Several months later, my husband wrote emails to the bishop and stake president explaining his disappointment about the way they intervened in this conflict. Shortly after the bishop denied him a temple interview due to his attitude in the emails.
About a week after, the bishop reconciled with us, but the stake president made an appointment with my husband for a preliminary disciplinary council regarding the legal conflict and the emails from my husband. By the time the interview rolled around, the SP had softened considerably. Instead of the interview being with the whole presidency, it was just him. He sat and listened to my husband explain the whole conflict for over an hour. He then invited me in to hear my thoughts for a few minutes. Then he apologized to us.
The apology meant a whole lot to me, it went a long way to salving the pain from the last year.
But, now, like I felt when I broke my hand, something is wrong. It's like something broke and I don't know what.
I grew up in the church, but in a scientifically-minded family. My mom taught us biology at home before we learned it at school. Both parents chief focus became that of acquiring a Christlike character, not on obsessing with rules or culture. My dad's major area of study is the Beatitudes and how to shift one's flawed perspective to a more loving, Christlike perspective in times of conflict. I can attest as his daughter that he's diligently tried to let this shape his life and enhance all our family relationships.
When I was quite young, I always processed gospel teachings logically to the extent that my age and understanding allowed. To me, God could be best understood as Love and Truth and Light. The core of the gospel has always been that we are His children, that He loves us and sent His Son for us.
My family has traveled extensively, living in different countries, over the years and most of that time, church has been in a foreign language for me. This means that for nearly a decade, my relationship with church has been mostly social with what is best called highlights of doctrine. I guess you could say that the language barrier has forced us to, or allowed us to, stay focused on the most basic gospel core, at Church.
So now, after the conflict we've had with the other ward member has been significantly resolved, I'm not sure what is yet undone, because that's certainly the case. When I was 18, several experiences of those close to me popped that bubble I enjoyed as a child, that essentially immunized our family from "bad things." By age 19 I had reasoned and developed a strong testimony that God truly judges by the heart, that no outward analysis could truly achieve that divine judgment: in other words, you cannot say that a young man who dies as an inactive is doomed, for example.
Likewise, for the twenty-plus years since, I've persisted in translating the black-and-white oversimplifications of the LDS culture into more nuanced, open-ended concepts. I guess that up until now it's worked for me.
Something about this last while has undone something.
The ward member has hurt us tremendously. He seems to be a pathological liar and is very skilled and charming. I know that, even though my lifelong acknowledgments that church leaders are fallible, it has been frustrating that our church leaders were tricked into believing him over us, even if temporarily. I see his fruits as truly evil fruits, I feel like he was like a wolf in our midst. (He threatened to kill us, intimidated us on several occasions, and eventually assaulted my husband.)
Maybe I also doubt myself, since I agreed that we trust him. For the record, I feel like we've grown and learned tremendously from this hellish experience. I feel that because of this, I will be smarter but also able to have more compassion on others and love more deeply.
But something is undone, and I'm not sure what. I'm hoping that by talking through it, I can understand.
Stage Two, Awareness
My deconversion wasn't a result of learning history and it wasn't from being hurt by the church, though it intimately involves both.
I knew that Joseph Smith was a man of shady practices. Somehow I allowed myself to suspend conclusions about him based on that knowledge. I figured that maybe God could still work through a man like that even if he screwed up that much.
Then, through church, we met a man like Joseph. This man lied to us, he acted in bad faith, he lied about us to our church leaders, he threatened my husband with violence and death, eventually assaulting my husband.
At the beginning in our relationship with the man we knew, we thought the issues could just be fairly normal misunderstandings. We granted that he had legitimate issues and understood that his poor health could also exacerbate his poor relationship skills. So, that time period was this quasi fog of undertainty tinted by us giving the man the benefit of the doubt and also acknowledging our own flaws and poor decisions.
However, as the relationship continued to deteriorate, it became clearer that there was no equivalency between the way our two parties were struggling with the relationship. We were acting in good faith, while he had never had any, but only maintained a thin veneer of fake good intentions until it was untenable for him. We saw that there was no way to reach this man with reason or kindness or compassion while maintaining a mutually responsible and honest relationship.
The day that he told my husband he wanted to kill him, and when called on it responded that he would not get in trouble as there were no witnesses, it was immediately after he had sent us an email saying he would be looking down from Heaven at us in Hell. He CC'd church leaders that email. In other words, he was publically invoking God's judgment against us for our supposed offenses while privately denying any risk to his own soul for his offenses against us. To me, this made everything terrifyingly clear. I saw that the lengths to which he would go were absolutely unacceptable.
To this day, this man still attends church with his family, having never acknowledged his actions or apologised for them. At first, when the stake president apologised for how he and the bishop has hurt us (after believing the lies) I did feel much better.
However, I realised that it all still felt different. I think my heart was broken, and my glasses were clearer: I knew that a man who lies consistently about important things that hurt people cannot speak for God. Whether he be the man who punched my husband in the face, or Joseph Smith. Neither of these pathological liars were a mouthpiece of the Lord.
In my case, I knew the church was false when I learned about human nature, with a certainty that Joseph Smith was not good enough to be who he is said to be. Having a broken heart helped as well, in seeing the church with more objectivity.
Stage Three, Transition
This has just begun!
Stage Four, Moving On
Not there Yet
In Retrospect
We all learn differently. I remember BYU religion lessons on Jesus Christ and how he merited his title as our Father, in part, by committing to come to earth to be our Savior, that he had a theoretical understanding of his mission but only came to realize it in near fullness in the Garden when he atoned. That's when his knowledge became complete, because of experience.
So when I was young and learned that there were credible issues with Joseph, I acknowledged my own epitemological limitations and suspended doubt by supposing that revelation might work differently than I thought. Then, with our recent experience, I learned that there are things men can do that repulse the Spirit of God and which do not allow the Spirit to dwell within them. Our "friend" did this, and so did Joseph Smith, even when acting as prophet.
When I was 19, I feel while skiing, breaking my fall with my left hand. When I got up and brushed off the snow, I went to grab my ski poles and discovered that I could not grip with my left hand. It did not hurt, but I could not make a fist.
The next day, my hand had swollen, then by the following day I met with a doctor who confirmed a broken third metatarsal and scheduled me for surgery, to insert a metal plate.
I think about that moment, now. My hand did not hurt, I did not know it was broken, but mainly it just didn't work.
That's similar to how I am feeling now.
This last year our family has undergone our own drama and hurtful actions by church leaders. I was denied a stake temple recommend interview because, according to the stake president, my husband was involved in "an intrigue of priests." Or, in other words, my husband and another male member of our ward were at odds in a legal dispute over a contractual relationship.
Shortly after I was given the green light for a recommend. Several months later, my husband wrote emails to the bishop and stake president explaining his disappointment about the way they intervened in this conflict. Shortly after the bishop denied him a temple interview due to his attitude in the emails.
About a week after, the bishop reconciled with us, but the stake president made an appointment with my husband for a preliminary disciplinary council regarding the legal conflict and the emails from my husband. By the time the interview rolled around, the SP had softened considerably. Instead of the interview being with the whole presidency, it was just him. He sat and listened to my husband explain the whole conflict for over an hour. He then invited me in to hear my thoughts for a few minutes. Then he apologized to us.
The apology meant a whole lot to me, it went a long way to salving the pain from the last year.
But, now, like I felt when I broke my hand, something is wrong. It's like something broke and I don't know what.
I grew up in the church, but in a scientifically-minded family. My mom taught us biology at home before we learned it at school. Both parents chief focus became that of acquiring a Christlike character, not on obsessing with rules or culture. My dad's major area of study is the Beatitudes and how to shift one's flawed perspective to a more loving, Christlike perspective in times of conflict. I can attest as his daughter that he's diligently tried to let this shape his life and enhance all our family relationships.
When I was quite young, I always processed gospel teachings logically to the extent that my age and understanding allowed. To me, God could be best understood as Love and Truth and Light. The core of the gospel has always been that we are His children, that He loves us and sent His Son for us.
My family has traveled extensively, living in different countries, over the years and most of that time, church has been in a foreign language for me. This means that for nearly a decade, my relationship with church has been mostly social with what is best called highlights of doctrine. I guess you could say that the language barrier has forced us to, or allowed us to, stay focused on the most basic gospel core, at Church.
So now, after the conflict we've had with the other ward member has been significantly resolved, I'm not sure what is yet undone, because that's certainly the case. When I was 18, several experiences of those close to me popped that bubble I enjoyed as a child, that essentially immunized our family from "bad things." By age 19 I had reasoned and developed a strong testimony that God truly judges by the heart, that no outward analysis could truly achieve that divine judgment: in other words, you cannot say that a young man who dies as an inactive is doomed, for example.
Likewise, for the twenty-plus years since, I've persisted in translating the black-and-white oversimplifications of the LDS culture into more nuanced, open-ended concepts. I guess that up until now it's worked for me.
Something about this last while has undone something.
The ward member has hurt us tremendously. He seems to be a pathological liar and is very skilled and charming. I know that, even though my lifelong acknowledgments that church leaders are fallible, it has been frustrating that our church leaders were tricked into believing him over us, even if temporarily. I see his fruits as truly evil fruits, I feel like he was like a wolf in our midst. (He threatened to kill us, intimidated us on several occasions, and eventually assaulted my husband.)
Maybe I also doubt myself, since I agreed that we trust him. For the record, I feel like we've grown and learned tremendously from this hellish experience. I feel that because of this, I will be smarter but also able to have more compassion on others and love more deeply.
But something is undone, and I'm not sure what. I'm hoping that by talking through it, I can understand.
Stage Two, Awareness
My deconversion wasn't a result of learning history and it wasn't from being hurt by the church, though it intimately involves both.
I knew that Joseph Smith was a man of shady practices. Somehow I allowed myself to suspend conclusions about him based on that knowledge. I figured that maybe God could still work through a man like that even if he screwed up that much.
Then, through church, we met a man like Joseph. This man lied to us, he acted in bad faith, he lied about us to our church leaders, he threatened my husband with violence and death, eventually assaulting my husband.
At the beginning in our relationship with the man we knew, we thought the issues could just be fairly normal misunderstandings. We granted that he had legitimate issues and understood that his poor health could also exacerbate his poor relationship skills. So, that time period was this quasi fog of undertainty tinted by us giving the man the benefit of the doubt and also acknowledging our own flaws and poor decisions.
However, as the relationship continued to deteriorate, it became clearer that there was no equivalency between the way our two parties were struggling with the relationship. We were acting in good faith, while he had never had any, but only maintained a thin veneer of fake good intentions until it was untenable for him. We saw that there was no way to reach this man with reason or kindness or compassion while maintaining a mutually responsible and honest relationship.
The day that he told my husband he wanted to kill him, and when called on it responded that he would not get in trouble as there were no witnesses, it was immediately after he had sent us an email saying he would be looking down from Heaven at us in Hell. He CC'd church leaders that email. In other words, he was publically invoking God's judgment against us for our supposed offenses while privately denying any risk to his own soul for his offenses against us. To me, this made everything terrifyingly clear. I saw that the lengths to which he would go were absolutely unacceptable.
To this day, this man still attends church with his family, having never acknowledged his actions or apologised for them. At first, when the stake president apologised for how he and the bishop has hurt us (after believing the lies) I did feel much better.
However, I realised that it all still felt different. I think my heart was broken, and my glasses were clearer: I knew that a man who lies consistently about important things that hurt people cannot speak for God. Whether he be the man who punched my husband in the face, or Joseph Smith. Neither of these pathological liars were a mouthpiece of the Lord.
In my case, I knew the church was false when I learned about human nature, with a certainty that Joseph Smith was not good enough to be who he is said to be. Having a broken heart helped as well, in seeing the church with more objectivity.
Stage Three, Transition
This has just begun!
Stage Four, Moving On
Not there Yet
In Retrospect
We all learn differently. I remember BYU religion lessons on Jesus Christ and how he merited his title as our Father, in part, by committing to come to earth to be our Savior, that he had a theoretical understanding of his mission but only came to realize it in near fullness in the Garden when he atoned. That's when his knowledge became complete, because of experience.
So when I was young and learned that there were credible issues with Joseph, I acknowledged my own epitemological limitations and suspended doubt by supposing that revelation might work differently than I thought. Then, with our recent experience, I learned that there are things men can do that repulse the Spirit of God and which do not allow the Spirit to dwell within them. Our "friend" did this, and so did Joseph Smith, even when acting as prophet.