the loss of innocence
Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:37 am
I lost my faith in the LDS church around the year 1993, around the time of the excommunication of the September Six. Their excommunication occurred after my loss of faith, but partly precipitated my decision to formally exit the church, along with my children, rather than remain a social member for my family’s sake. Along with my family, through various stages, I was an adult convert to the church (or almost adult at 19). As time passed, our convert family also split into believer and nonbeliever. After the initial emotional fall-out created by my loss of faith, and my family’s hopes for a united hereafter, we settled into a truce largely based on silence and our continued love for one another. It’s the pink elephant in the living room we all politely avoid. Although I initially wished we could come to understandings with one another about this division, it is simply too emotionally fraught for us. Ignoring it is the best option. We’ve learned to live with it, and our mortal bonds still unite us, and we’re there for one another despite this difference. I know some people with a similar divide do not fare as well; I count myself lucky.
I didn’t discover the internet and ex-mormonism therein until 1996, when I became a member of the ex-mormon email group that later developed into the RFM board. For the next several years I participated there off and on. Gradually I discovered boards that were designed for interactions between believer and ex-believer or nonbeliever. Here, I thought, we could learn the bridge the divide, we could learn to talk to one another instead of past one another. If I couldn’t talk to my family and help them understand what had happened to my faith, perhaps other believers could stand in as proxy. I was optimistic, and frankly, gentler and kinder back then.
But as people from both sides of the divide well know, it doesn’t take too many unpleasant interactions, too many seemingly unjustified “attacks” from the “other” side, and it seems inevitable that tribes form and boundaries, instead of softening, sharpen to knifelike points. Conversations seem pointless, and at times I wonder if we are speaking the same language. I am amazed at the misunderstandings – how people can take words that I intended to mean one thing and make them mean something else altogether – usually uglier or more stupid or obtuse. I’m sure believers feel the same way.
Perhaps if I had had this experience at a different point in time, with a different global backdrop, I would view it as pretty meaningless, and perhaps just demonstrative of why polite people avoid certain topics. But today it seems to mean something different, something gloomier and more global. It demonstrates to me that we human beings are just not designed – either by a God or a blind watchmaker – to be able to bridge the divides between us. Instead, we seem wired to form tribes that become hostile and suspicious of one another. The price for this species flaw in the “real world” seems to be paid in human blood and tears, rather than harsh debates about topics that, in the end, don’t really matter much at all to the world at large, no matter how large they loom for certain small groups.
I mourn for my loss of innocence. Make no mistake – I lost that innocence not just because of the behavior of others, but because of the hardening of the invisible boundaries I set, too. I mourn not because of my small life, but because I have children, who will have children, who will have children… I hope. At this moment in time, despite the optimists among us, I think that this inability to bridge the divide, demonstrated in a small community like Mormonism and ex-mormonism, is symbolic of something far larger, something universal – and something that may, in the end, destroy the hopes of future generations – or even their existence.
Good night, and good luck.
I didn’t discover the internet and ex-mormonism therein until 1996, when I became a member of the ex-mormon email group that later developed into the RFM board. For the next several years I participated there off and on. Gradually I discovered boards that were designed for interactions between believer and ex-believer or nonbeliever. Here, I thought, we could learn the bridge the divide, we could learn to talk to one another instead of past one another. If I couldn’t talk to my family and help them understand what had happened to my faith, perhaps other believers could stand in as proxy. I was optimistic, and frankly, gentler and kinder back then.
But as people from both sides of the divide well know, it doesn’t take too many unpleasant interactions, too many seemingly unjustified “attacks” from the “other” side, and it seems inevitable that tribes form and boundaries, instead of softening, sharpen to knifelike points. Conversations seem pointless, and at times I wonder if we are speaking the same language. I am amazed at the misunderstandings – how people can take words that I intended to mean one thing and make them mean something else altogether – usually uglier or more stupid or obtuse. I’m sure believers feel the same way.
Perhaps if I had had this experience at a different point in time, with a different global backdrop, I would view it as pretty meaningless, and perhaps just demonstrative of why polite people avoid certain topics. But today it seems to mean something different, something gloomier and more global. It demonstrates to me that we human beings are just not designed – either by a God or a blind watchmaker – to be able to bridge the divides between us. Instead, we seem wired to form tribes that become hostile and suspicious of one another. The price for this species flaw in the “real world” seems to be paid in human blood and tears, rather than harsh debates about topics that, in the end, don’t really matter much at all to the world at large, no matter how large they loom for certain small groups.
I mourn for my loss of innocence. Make no mistake – I lost that innocence not just because of the behavior of others, but because of the hardening of the invisible boundaries I set, too. I mourn not because of my small life, but because I have children, who will have children, who will have children… I hope. At this moment in time, despite the optimists among us, I think that this inability to bridge the divide, demonstrated in a small community like Mormonism and ex-mormonism, is symbolic of something far larger, something universal – and something that may, in the end, destroy the hopes of future generations – or even their existence.
Good night, and good luck.