IS there a RIGHT and a WRONG reason to leave the church?

[miss taken]

Just thought I would throw this one out there. I'm not talking from the perspective of an active person who I am sure would always say there would be NO good reason to leave the church. Just wondered what ya'll thought??

Mary

[peter_mary]

Just thought I would throw this one out there. I'm not talking from the perspective of an active person who I am sure would always say there would be NO good reason to leave the church. Just wondered what ya'll thought??

Mary

Dear Mary,

I'm going to challenge the premise of your question right from the get-go. "Right" or "Wrong" thinking is part of what we scurried away from in Mormonism, remember?

I think I understand what you're thinking...is there proper motivation for leaving, and if so, does that mean that some motivations for leaving might not be proper? But really, when I reflect back on the number of reasons and ways people have left, all I can conclude is that there are, "many reasons to leave the Church," but far be it from me to challenge their "rightness" or "wrongness."

Okay, now that I've gone and rained on your parade (and I feel kind of bad about that :( ), come here and let me give you a big hug!

{{{{ :) }}}}

Maybe someone else will have something to say more along the lines of what you were hoping would be a conversation starter before I went and mucked it all up...

Peter_Mary (the wet blanket)

[dogzilla]

I can think of a wrong reason.

Say you're a TBM. You love the church and everything it stands for. Your parents, nevermos, hate it and everything it stands for. They tell you that they will cut you out of their multi-million dollar will if you remain active in the church. You leave the church, not because you want to and it's the right thing to do for you, but because someone else wanted you to... and because you're greedy.

That would be a wrong reason. (I just flipped that around: I joined the church for the very sort of wrong reason above: because I thought I'd get along better with my dad, not because I thought the church was true, or even worth joining.)

[peter_mary]

I can think of a wrong reason.

Say you're a TBM. You love the church and everything it stands for. Your parents, nevermos, hate it and everything it stands for. They tell you that they will cut you out of their multi-million dollar will if you remain active in the church. You leave the church, not because you want to and it's the right thing to do for you, but because someone else wanted you to... and because you're greedy.


So you're saying I SHOULDN'T have left the Church for that million dollars? Oh, man...I have REALLY screwed up this time. Bad... :duh

Peter_Mary

[miss taken]

Dear Mary,

I'm going to challenge the premise of your question right from the get-go. "Right" or "Wrong" thinking is part of what we scurried away from in Mormonism, remember?

I think I understand what you're thinking...is there proper motivation for leaving, and if so, does that mean that some motivations for leaving might not be proper? But really, when I reflect back on the number of reasons and ways people have left, all I can conclude is that there are, "many reasons to leave the Church," but far be it from me to challenge their "rightness" or "wrongness."

Okay, now that I've gone and rained on your parade (and I feel kind of bad about that :( ), come here and let me give you a big hug!

{{{{ :) }}}}

Maybe someone else will have something to say more along the lines of what you were hoping would be a conversation starter before I went and mucked it all up...

Peter_Mary (the wet blanket)

Hah! Paul! I knew you were going to say that before I even posted!!! :) I still put it up though, because, well yes I think you have used better words to say what I was trying! to say, but i still think we live in a 'moral' world if you know what I mean. There are (using Ed's terminology) in my thinking, ...crumbs what words do I use! More productive reasons for leaving the church and less productive ones..? I don't know, the fact that we are all still here talking about it means we havn't totally moved on.. hubby was saying this morning, 'Mary I was a twin for 40 years, I am not a twin anymore, I have moved on, Why can't you?' I think he means! to not think about the LDS church anymore, which is I know what a lot of LDS people would say, perhaps some in a more unkind way...

The fact that we are on this site indicates maybe to some extent that we are all still working it through.
I suppose I was wondering if there was a way, a reason, mental reasoning that we could use so that we could truly say. That's it. Move on.

I think Tom (Hi Tom if you are still there) affected me in a way, all this talk of not seeing our children, really put me back into that mindset about, how much I love my son, and want to be as good as he is. (I hope you are understanding what I am saying! lol I woke up in a total panic this am that he was going to get to the CK but I wasn't)

Hope in all this mental rambling, you can see what I am trying to say. Sorry if it is a little heavy!!!lol I have a hubbie with a great sense of humour, who can turn a deaf ear if I go on too much!!!!

Mary

[why me]

I don't think that it will be possible for most people in this sight to move on. The church has affected their lives in a deep and heart-felt way. When this happens there is no moving on...only perhaps new beginnings. I suppose that this is only natural because, as humans, we are influenced by feelings and experiences and if this is the case, those feelings and experiences that we have all shared in the church will be with us a lifetime. As you have said in many of your posts, you want to keep the good feelings and experiences as part of your own life biography and this is not a bad thing. I am writing my own biography through my experiecnces with life and each day that I live I had a sentence or two in my own book. I believe this can be also true for everyone on this forum. The LDS church has played a major role in shaping their biography. And if this is the case...how can one move on or away from it? You cannot delete it from your life-book. That being said, we all must except the church as a source for who we are at this moment in time. In our biographies there are many characters who are now becoming part of our personal story and there are many more characters who have left our own personal story. But can we all really move on? and would we want to if we could? Perhaps not. In this forum, many will leave and return, others will follow and leave a comment or two. Others will stay longer and we, with each new character that comes and leaves, will receive a new connection of human-ness. And it is now in our biography.
You have left many pearls of wisdom and you will leave many more in this forum. But likewise, many others have left their own pearls of wisdom and experience and we are all richer for it... :)

[miss taken]

I don't think that it will be possible for most people in this sight to move on. The church has affected their lives in a deep and heart-felt way. When this happens there is no moving on...only perhaps new beginnings. I suppose that this is only natural because, as humans, we are influenced by feelings and experiences and if this is the case, those feelings and experiences that we have all shared in the church will be with us a lifetime. As you have said in many of your posts, you want to keep the good feelings and experiences as part of your own life biography and this is not a bad thing. I am writing my own biography through my experiecnces with life and each day that I live I had a sentence or two in my own book. I believe this can be also true for everyone on this forum. The LDS church has played a major role in shaping their biography. And if this is the case...how can one move on or away from it? You cannot delete it from your life-book. That being said, we all must except the church as a source for who we are at this moment in time. In our biographies there are many characters who are now becoming part of our personal story and there are many more characters who have left our own personal story. But can we all really move on? and would we want to if we could? Perhaps not. In this forum, many will leave and return, others will follow and leave a comment or two. Others will stay longer and we, with each new character that comes and leaves, will receive a new connection of human-ness. And it is now in our biography.
You have left many pearls of wisdom and you will leave many more in this forum. But likewise, many others have left their own pearls of wisdom and experience and we are all richer for it... :)

THanks Why me. Hubby, who has never been a mormon, just can't see what all the fuss is about!
Mary

[formermormon]

I think there are some less-good reasons to leave. For example, if deep down you still believe that "the church is true", but you are driven to rebel against your parents or the leadership or whatever, or because you are just dying to violate ye olde Word o' Wisdom. Basically, if you leave out of weakness, rather than strength.

Contrast that with leaving because your conscience won't let you stay (which seems to apply to most everyone here). We left because it was the most moral, honest, upstanding choice we could make. That is a GOOD reason.

[why me]

I don't know if you are correct former mormon. If I look at the voting results that were posted in another thread about our status in the church we have quite a few members of this forum who are inactive. And I wonder just how many who have actually left actually have left. The Mormon faith seems to leave its mark on all those who had, at one time or another, a testimony of its truthfulness. Perhaps if a person joins only because of a marriage problem or because your girlfriend or boyfriend require you to do so...maybe then leaving is quite easy. But for those of us who experienced a small burning sensation in our heart...well, the church will seem to have a constant impact in shaping our lives, regardless if we are mormon, less active, exed or dis-followshiped. Maybe I am wrong about this...it would be interesting to hear from the other members of the forum. As for myself I am a two-headed man and I can find juggling these two heads rather difficult at times. :confused: But I have met alot of great people when I was a young adult (many moons ago)...good people and I am not sorry for meeting them. They have influenced my life book and it's story. It is not possible to delete these characters nor would I want to at this time in my life.

[miss taken]

Why me, I think you make a really good point, that I hadn't quite thought about i.e. is there a (sorry for using these words again) right and a wrong reason for joining the church.

I can definitely state that I joined at the age of about 8 or 9 simply because my parents were joining, and because I liked the idea of going for a swim!!! I had NO idea what it was really all about.

Mary

[aether]

I don't know if you are correct former mormon. If I look at the voting results that were posted in another thread about our status in the church we have quite a few members of this forum who are inactive. And I wonder just how many who have actually left actually have left. The Mormon faith seems to leave its mark on all those who had, at one time or another, a testimony of its truthfulness.

Well I don't know about anyone else, but I'm one of those "only inactives," and I was also a hugely devout member. I had the strongest testimony in the world, or so I thought. No one loved the church more than I did, it wasn't possible. And yet here I am. It seems to me that once you leave the church, you do not go back. Once you've moved above something, you don't go back down. There are some people, of course, who don't move above it.. they just move to the side of it, and those people come back to the church. Like a family in my ward whose teenage girls all went off with rebellion and did drugs and got pregnant.. and then came back to the church once their life was destroyed. I agree that that's the definition of whether it's "right" or "wrong" to leave the church - whether you do it out of strength or weakness.

[formermormon]

Why me - well, to clarify, I was talking about those who did leave - that seemed to be the premise of the question.

I actually think that some of the "inactives" are in that category also because they can't conscientiously keep being involved with the church.

That said, I didn't mean to suggest that there are no good people in the church, or that nothing positive could have come from involvement in it. Of course not!

I think that's part of the whole mormon black and white thinking - "good people are in the church, bad people leave". If you are in that mindset, then you might just switch it (once you start to question) to "bad people are in the church, good people leave". I guess I think that's a stop on the line before you get to "post-mormon". It takes a while to shed that black/white thinking. I actually think the vast majority of the people here (officially off church rolls or not) believe that there was an admixture of good/bad in the morg, but once they started to tune into what THEY could tell was right and wrong (sexism, racism, homophobia, lies) vs. (kindness and decency of some members), the balance shifted quite decisively towards no longer actively participating in the church.

What do the rest of you think?