I've been wondering about this a lot lately. How do you lead Mormons to think critically about their religion without creating a negative experience for them?A faithful Mormon wrote:What's interesting is that I didn't really notice how bad it can be until I hit the church-critical forums on the internet. I'm dismayed at how often such forums can lump Latter-day Saints or Utahns as some monolithic whole to be judged harshly. When someone does something bad, it happens because people do bad things. But when a Latter-day Saint does something bad, it happened because they were a Latter-day Saint.
I been told over and over that I'm incapable of having critical thinking skills, or that I must be a racist, or that I must leave entirely, merely because I'm a Latter-day Saint. Despite the person having had no prior contact with me, they just know my demographic and judge me by it.
Overgeneralizing others is horrid. Being lumped into a "them" and judged by it hurts. You feel like your actions and ethics must be significantly above average just to get equal treatment, and even then you often don't get equal treatment despite hard effort on your end.
I try to live my life with something I call API... assume positive intent...
Exactly. This rule of thumb also helps you see that others may be trying to go about constructive and friendly approaches in life but their path may contradict your path. Don't get mad at people who deep down are seeking to improve constructively.
Paired with the "assume positive extent" is "Judge as a person, not as part of a group." I could easily think of my neighbors as "The Mexican, the lesbian, the evangelical, the hoarder, the dirty house". But I won't. They are are "Carl, Alice, Bob, Liz, and Beth" (obviously not their real names of course). People are complex and lumping to judge them harshly does them a disservice.
Mormons like this read criticism of their beliefs, their church, and their leaders. And they internalize it. They believe they are being personally attacked.
Is that misunderstanding the critic's fault, or the believer's?
Clearly Mormons think that it's possible to love the sinner and hate the sin. Why can't they see it's possible to love the Mormon and hate their church?