Runtu wrote:Has anyone else (critic or believer) found that they just don't have as much emotional investment in debating Mormonism as they used to?
LDS and LDS-related boards are interesting to me. Naturally, because I invested 13 years of my life in Mormonism. You can't walk away from a marriage any less, and just forget everything. But in time the bitterness passes, and you re-evaluate your past from different perspectives. I think my life would have been less rich without my Mormon experience, even if it's all a "fraud". It's part of the "human experience". I was thinking the other day about my first stake president, who passed away several years ago. I recall him saying that he thought the second coming of Christ was "very close", in 1976. For me this is now all irrelevant, but I thought about the good person he was, honest to the core, and in my job I meet some real low-lifes and scum who would rip off their mother. Perhaps others have different impressions, but my impression of the vast majority of my Mormon friends is that they are honest, hard-working, and good people. Whatever Mormonism does, it makes people so much better. JMO. It made me better. It gave me a strong sense of ethical values in the way I should treat my fellow human beings. Yes, all those corny LDS films had a heart-warming feel, and they inculcated a feeling of the importance of people. Mormon culture is good in this sense. It provides a sense of community and belonging, thus the hand shakes, as if to say, "we are brothers and sisters". The taxi culture, in which I now work, is exactly the same. Shaking hands with fellow workers shows the bond between fellow workers (sometimes it's a way of saying, "we have to endure the same S***, so you are a brother"), and this is amazingly like Mormon culture. "You are one of us, and you are valued." I think this is the tribal instinct beastie often talks about.
So now I tend to dwell less on doctrinal things, or contention, but if I have an "emotional investment" in Mormonism, it is because I can still see the value of the culture. I don't believe opinionated board comments by some "rabid TBMS" reflects the true nature of Mormonism. If you were an employer, and a temple-going Mormon applied for a job at your work, would you trust him/her before a joint-smoking hippy? Not trying to catergorise here, because I know some bloody nice joint-smoking friends, but in all honesty, I would employ the Mormon first if honesty was a requirement of the job. If you try to destroy Mormonism, you are destroying people who are the bedrock of society. I am no where near as good as they are, and I'm not interested in church anymore, in the least, but I think Joseph Campbell's saying "find your bliss" applies here. What is bliss to one, is horror to another. But the bottom line for me is this: Does your bliss make you a better person, one who can be trusted? It was Paine who said that people who believe absurdities commit atrocities. And though I find some unlikeable thinking, like allowing people to suffer for someone else's religious beliefs, when they should be allowed the right to die (which I consider an atrocity), I think the good outweighs the bad.
It's issues like this that keep me interested. But I have no emotional investment in "church" Mormonism. Tom Ferguson apparently did, because in spite of concluding that Joseph Smith created a "spoof", he remarked that Mormonism is "the best brotherhood anywhere", and continued with activity in the church. I don't need to convince anyone of anything. If you do me no harm, and do society no harm, then as far as I'm concerned you can believe the moon is made of Swiss cheese.