Note: this post follows up on a previous post about how to respond when a friend or loved one struggles with their testimony and a related post from ldsmissionaries.com. I highly recommend both.
It seems that just about everyone these days has a friend, a cousin, a spouse, or a child who is either considering leaving the Church or has already left. Every situation is different, but there are some general principles that apply in a wide variety of situations.
We’ll start with the easy stuff–what NOT to say:
1) Are you reading your scriptures?
You might not be meaning to, but you are essentially blaming the person’s struggles on them. When someone tells you they have cancer, you don’t ask them if they’ve been eating right. “Oh, well, yeah. You’ve been eating way too many potato chips lately. So I guess I can see where the cancer came from.” That’s neither empathetic nor loving. The same is true for people struggling with their testimony.
2) [Draw a line in the sand]
Some well-meaning members will say things like “it all hinges on X: if you don’t obey X commandment, why obey any of them?” or “Either Y is 100% true or the entire Church is a lie.” We like to draw these lines in the sand because it makes things very simple. Black or white. True or false. Either the thing I believe is 100% true, or it’s 100% false. Well-meaning members think these sand lines will draw the person back into the fold by using the person’s remaining beliefs to convince them that X or Y is also true.[1] But the well-meaning Mormon is actively driving sheep from the fold.
We know what the Savior does when even one sheep leaves the fold for whatever reason, and it involves leaving the ninety and nine. We’re just creating a lot more work for Him when we encourage people to stop coming. The best smell at an LDS sacrament meeting is cigarette smoke. The best look is jeans and a t-shirt on someone who hasn’t come for six months. The best sound is someone asking the hard questions or struggling with the uncomfortable truth. It’s supposed to be a hospital, right? The people you think are the sickest are the ones you should make feel the most welcome.
3) Just choose to believe.
This one makes so much sense until you think about it. What if I told you to just choose to believe that Hillary would be the best president. Or Trump. Look–just choose to believe. Just have the desire to believe and you will. The problem here is simple: do the research into psychology and persuasion. That’s not how human beings work. It just isn’t.
Desire can lead to faith in Christ, but it can’t shoehorn someone into believing something they don’t believe. So when you pretend it can, you’re driving a wedge between you and your friend. You’re telling them “I have no idea what you’re going through, and you can tell that because I’m giving you overly-simplistic advice that wouldn’t work for me if our places were switched, but I haven’t tried putting myself in your shoes, so I don’t know that.”
4) Be careful where you’re getting your information.
If we attack entire information sources as anti-Mormon, we’re painting ourselves into a corner when some of those information sources spout information that is factually correct. We’re essentially telling people “the truth is anti-Mormon if it comes from the unapproved sources.” That’s a fairly dangerous realm to enter. Do we really want to send that message?
I’ve had people tell me that a particular historical fact is anti-Mormon. Here’s the problem with that: the historical fact happened. It’s documented. It’s there in history. We know it happened. So, if you tell me that it’s anti-Mormon, what message does that send? That facts are anti-Mormon? Nobody wants to send that message. So stop sending it.
5) Stop thinking about those issues. Just focus on the Core Gospel Truths.
You first. If you want your friend to focus only on the Core Gospel Truths (which, I’ve found, isn’t a very concrete term to begin with) stop telling pioneer stories. Stop interpreting the Book of Mormon to back up your political opinions. Stop telling people that fellow members who think differently than you on non-central issues are chaff, led by Satan, and out to destroy the Church. Stop caring when people crack irreverent Mormon jokes or line up outside during Priesthood Session or decide to not go on a mission. Stop defending BYU’s honor code as if it were Perfect Eternal Truth From the Mouth of God. Stop fuming when Mormons support legalizing marriage equality.
See, it’s not that easy. Don’t make your friend do it if you’re not willing to.
6) But you had a spiritual experience! You think God didn’t know about those issues when He gave you that spiritual experience?
Think of a respected friend who tells you she doesn’t like broccoli. You can tell her all you want “but you liked it two weeks ago, remember?” You can even tell her “you’re being prideful, you need to sustain the cook.” But will that make her like broccoli today? It might make her try it, but what if she actually doesn’t like it? People change. No amount of telling someone they used to like a food, or telling them that you like the food, or telling them they are prideful for not liking the food, will make them like the food. It might, in fact, make them start hiding their real likes/dislikes from you. But, you can’t talk someone into liking a food. The same is true for religion. We all know this–no missionary converts people to the Church. Nobody talks someone else into a testimony.
“Okay, so now what,” you might be saying. “This isn’t fair–you’ve just taken every single arrow from my quiver. You’re telling me there’s nothing I can say to help someone come back to the Church. You sound pretty evil to me, you anti-missionary.”
And to answer your question: yes. I am saying that you can’t argue someone back into the Church. But maybe that shouldn’t be your number-one priority. We’ve all spoken with someone whose primary goal is to make us believe that they are right. We’ve all spoken with someone who is not willing to be wrong. It’s not fun. It feels like they care more about being right than about being friends.
Here are six things to say when your friend leaves the Church:
1) Wow, that must have been a very difficult decision to make. What can I do to help?
Many (most?) people take this decision very seriously–assume your friend did as well.[2] It’s easy to think that a person hasn’t been very thoughtful if they come to a different conclusion than we have. But it means a lot when we express trust in our friend’s thoughtfulness. We send them a clear message: “I’m friends with you, not your testimony.”
2) Want to catch a movie this weekend?
Expressing doubt about a core tenet of a community is one of the quickest ways for someone to feel they no longer have any place in that community. If you’re able to show that you’d still like to spend time with your friend, that you don’t think they have modern-day religious leprosy, your relationship will be that much stronger. BONUS: if you both have kids, make it clear that your kids will still be spending time with their kids. Do the opposite, and you’re kicking the sheep on its way out of the fold.
3) Tell me about it.
Members of a tight-knit community focused on converting others are often untrained in the art of listening. Put aside your inner Preach My Gospel, or at least turn it to the section about listening. Ask a lot of open-ended questions. Let your friend talk, and don’t try to poke holes in their arguments or take a Bold Stand For Truth And Righteousness. Right now, your friend needs to be heard and loved, not convinced.
4) Have people in your ward been giving you a hard time about it?
Disagreeing with your friend’s opinion but still respecting it is one of the most valuable gifts you can give. It is very likely that few people in your friend’s ward will be able to do this. If you are, you will strengthen your relationship immeasurably.
5) So, what’s next?
Sometimes we let our personal preconceived notions fill in blanks differently than our friend would. Maybe if you thought X or Y weren’t true, you would immediately get drunk at a brothel. So when your friend loses their testimony in X or Y, it’s easy to assume drunken brothel time is just around the corner. But that’s almost never a fair assumption. Ask. Listen.
6) You know, I don’t agree with the way you said that, but I think I understand what you’re getting at. You’re saying . . .
This one demands a lot from you, so I’ll include a PS to your friend below. It requires the incredibly hard action of turning the other cheek. But that means you might get hit on both cheeks.
Your friend is likely hurting right now. He or she might lash out in one way or another at the Church, the ward, your Bishop, the prophet, the Book of Mormon, the Temple. Lashing out is not okay, so the worst thing you can do is to lash out back.
PS: to friends who leave the church: try not to lash out. You’re hurt, you’re in pain. It sucks. But try not to speak angrily about the Church to other members. You’ll end up self-fulfilling your prophecy of rejection if you’re mean to Mormons. They’ll stop wanting to be around you. Can you blame them? Nobody feels comfortable around people who angrily attack their beliefs.[3]
Conclusion
The above 12 suggestions are just that: suggestions. Situations differ. People change. What is appropriate to say at one time might be insulting three weeks later. You know your friend. Focus on your friendship, send the message that you care about your friend as a person just as much as you cared about them as a Mormon.
We can’t expect to convince people to come back, but we can bring people closer to Christ insofar as we act toward them the way Christ would act.
[1] the 9th Article of Faith teaches that still have a lot of great and important things to learn. Might one of those new revelations help us more fully understand X or Y, or maybe even completely overturn X or Y?
[2] Come, Join With Us. President Uchtdorf. October 2013 General Conference. Quote: “One might ask, “If the gospel is so wonderful, why would anyone leave?” Sometimes we assume it is because they have been offended or lazy or sinful. Actually, it is not that simple. In fact, there is not just one reason that applies to the variety of situations. Some of our dear members struggle for years with the question whether they should separate themselves from the Church.”
[3] Read these if you’re going through a faith crisis/transition/heterodox experience/whatever you want to call it:
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU ARE EXPECTING A FAITH CRISIS (p.s. IT SUCKS)
My husband seems to believe he can simply bully me into full orthodoxy again (I hold a TR, pay tithing, and serve in a church calling but that hasn’t stopped him from accusing me of hating the church). I wish I could send him a link to this article. Unfortunately, Rational Faiths isn’t on the approved list of pro-Mormon websites, so I can’t let him know I’ve been reading here. But this article is really, really great.
Anon- my advice is get to a counselor with you and your husband. Even most every LDS counselor will be pushing back on your husbands behavior and will let him know this will not work. This sounds more like Satan’s plan – take away all your free agency.
You may need to stand up to your husband and if he just gets more angry – you know where he stands.
Don’t do what many do in situations like this. Don’t just put up with it for years or even multiple decades until you are a hollow shell of a person that looks back on their life full of regrets. Do it!
Although generally, I like this article, I find it a bit surreal/absurd that a comparison of leaving the church to contracting cancer is supposed to be an improved mindset
Cancer was a perfect example. When dealing with a dying child, I was floored at the stupid-ass comments and suggestions people would make.
My faith transition has led to very similar comments and suggestions.
The shunning was a surprise. There were people who I thought would remain my friends. I was wrong.
Good article. Th only thing I am struggling with is how to get this out to even more people.
Jeff,
I appreciate the thought that went into this article. The set of “To Do’s” is great and is good advice! However, I would disagree on the points listed as “Don’t Do’s,” except #2 Line in the Sand (that’s always faulty thinking) and #4 check your sources. Once you have tried the “To Do’s” and the person feels they are validated and have a friend who will listen without judgment they may be open to thinking about things differently. That is when I think applying your 1, 3, 5 & 6 “Don’t Do’s” can be useful.
I think your discussion about #3 “Just choose to believe” is inaccurate. There are times when all sources of knowledge have been tapped (spiritual, rational, emotional or internal, information or advice from other trusted people) and certainty or conclusion on an issue is still not obtained. Then, one can choose to shelf the issue, which can be OK, but to engage with family and friends and life it may be necessary to choose one way or the other. In such a case, there is nothing irrational about just choosing to believe, or not believe.
Great article. Thanks.
My mother tells me that when she left the Church, there were two people from the ward who still talked to her. Two.
In fact, most of my immediate family members are ex-Mormons and I still talk to all of them! And when we have family get-togethers, everyone gets along fine, whether they are LDS, Catholic, or atheist. When I’m hosting Thanksgiving dinner, we have a prayer before we eat. When someone else is hosting, we don’t. It’s as simple as that – and yet I know a lot of people who are totally baffled by this dynamic!
I actually have a couple of acquaintances who’ve left recently, and it turns out that both of them have actually unfriended/blocked me on FB. I wish there was a way of saying to these people, hey, I’ll still be your friend!
These are really helpful suggestions (both what to do and what not). I wish I’d had this to shove in my former therapist’s face when she, on finding out that I’m both Mormon and inactive, started interrogating me about my testimony, etc., etc. You shouldn’t leave a therapist’s office grateful you had yet to tell them something about your life. That’s just counter-productive.
[Actually, the moment that we both found out that we were Mormon was pretty funny. Living outside the Mormon Belt, you just don’t expect a random therapist you picked out off the internet to be a Mormon. And yet there we were.]
I may agree with all of these but just two thoughts: anti mormon sources do exist and they do use spin and dishonesty to make things out to be worse than they are. I wouldn’t tell someone not to explore and question, but have they believed what they’ve read without using critical thinking? Are they only being skeptical of the church without being skeptical of the critics? My second point is that at some point you do choose what to believe. There’s enough evidence and argument for and against the church that you can support leaving or staying. I’m of the opinion that the evidence for it is strong and I have a testimony from God. But if I chose I could make a case against the church.
What evidence is there for the church?
Are you really interested? If so, I would point you to some books, articles, websites and youtube videos.
But if you just want to debate or make fun, then I’m not that interested.
If I wasn’t interested, I wouldn’t ask. I may also be interested in debate also though (never making fun though, that does nothing productive for anybody), because as of yet people have only ever directed me to “evidence” that is merely opinion, or emotion/feeling and not evidence at all. I am always willing to check something out and learn something I don’t know though, which is why I asked.
Only caveat to that is, please don’t direct me to fairmormon. They do far more harm than any anti-mormon site ever could.
I think that fairmormon does a great job. I think they get a bad rap because people want to minimize their influence without engaging their arguments. So it’s “Oh they’re just apologists” or “They do far more harm than any anti-mormon site ever could.” I don’t buy it.
For onlookers, I would start with background stuff: http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Unto-Light-Translation-Publication/dp/0842528881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464901974&sr=8-1&keywords=from+darkness+unto+light
then
http://www.amazon.com/Investigating-Mormon-Witnesses-Richard-Anderson/dp/0875792421/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464902004&sr=8-1&keywords=book+of+mormon+witnesses
then
http://www.amazon.com/Mormons-Codex-Ancient-American-Book/dp/1609073991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464902027&sr=8-1&keywords=mormon%27s+codex
For that silly fairmormon stuff: Here’s a youtube playlist with a lot of the good stuff.
Fairmormon is disliked and gets a bad rap for the same reasons you state anti-mormon sites are, spin and dishonesty. That along with their tendency to victim blame, and attack the character of those that refute them can be outright appalling. They have an agenda and will seemingly do anything to meet that agenda, and lack balance. They are not a trustworthy source, especially when it comes to discussions of evidence.
People have engaged their arguments extensively, and refuted them at length (if you wish me to engage, and refute their arguments I will, but would rather pick one topic at a time. There are too many topics to address at once with such a large amount of subjects covered over the years.) Your unwillingness to “buy it” is fine, as long as you’ve actually looked at both sides of arguments and come to that conclusion (fairmormon has turned off many doubting members with their tactics.) But I have found that often isn’t the case, because mormons are encouraged often to not have anything to do with “anti-mormon” literature, which these days seems to be a label given to anything that disagrees with any aspect of the church or it’s history, no matter how neutral the source.
As for the books you linked, I am familiar with the topics presented quite well, but not with the books themselves so it will take me some time to research it out and see if the author’s actually have presented any new evidence I was unaware of that is not simply faith based belief (I hope there is, but I do remain skeptical of this.) I do not have the disposable income to afford them at this moment, and will see if I can find them from another source (library, etc.) so I can’t really offer comment on them, but thank you for suggesting them. If I may ask, have you read them? And if so, are there particular chapters of interest I should pay attention to that present tangible evidence either in support of truth claims, or the BoM, or that you found the most interesting/compelling?
Dusty,
I have read them and I was able to get them from a library, but I live in Utah where that might be easier.
In the interest of fairness, let me give you a link to a review of Mormon’s Codex that offers both substantial praise and substantial criticism and will give you a good idea of what the subject matter is. http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/john-l-sorensons-complete-legacy-reviewing-mormons-codex/
The other two books are fairly short, so I hope you will check them out. The first is basically just history. The second is definitely a defense oriented book, but it is written by a historian.
I’m in Provo, so I doubt I’ll have any problem finding them. I will check them out when I get the time. In all honesty I am likely to disagree with much of what is presented based on all I do know of the subjects (I have put in a lot of time and effort studying church history, from all angles. Pro church, anti-church, and neutral included), especially if they aren’t presented from a neutral standpoint, but at the same time if the evidence is tangible, compelling and sourced enough my mind can always be changed.
I don’t think anyone is going to be successful ‘proving’ the Church’s validity to anyone else. I think the process is to provide sufficient rationale to give a person reason to seriously consider the validity claims. That sufficiency is different for everyone and comes in many forms, e.g., statements from others who attest witnessing some of the seminal events (Joseph Smith, 11 witnesses, others), statements from others the non-believer trusts who feel they “know” or have a high degree of certainty about it via life or spiritual experiences, the non-believer’s own rationale about how unlikely the restoration could have happened by deceit, observations of the positive outcomes in other’s lives, etc. Those positive sources should be weighed against the counter arguments. Then, if the evidence for belief is sufficient one gains a desire to believe and should take action on the belief-try it, including prayer. This results in personal experiences and direct knowledge about how the belief works in their life and any spiritual communications received. As time goes on the person continually weighs the evidence that is accruing on both sides. Everyone is different in the way they weight spiritual vs. empirical data. Certainty on whichever side they are on may grow strong or not. If significant uncertainty on both sides remains, then the person can simply choose one or the other and proceed.
One source that may be useful is Mormon Scholars Testify. http://mormonscholarstestify.org/1206/index-by-specialty
True, trying to prove that would meet with little to no success. But, the church has made certain claims that can be tested, that can be verified through reliable processes and evidence. Arguments from authority are a logical fallacy that should probably be avoided as well (this is why testimonies are largely useless, and primarily just manipulative.) We can test claims made by Joseph Smith, and in the Book of Mormon and about the Book of Mormon. To date, the evidence is heavily stacked against the historical accuracy of the book and what it is claimed to be (anachronisms, lack of archaeological evidence such societies would leave behind, DNA evidence, plagiarism, etc.) To have spiritual data, you would first have to prove the existence of spirit itself (again, something that will be met with little success trying to prove untestable claims). The idea of choosing to believe is simply choosing a bias, or comfort even if that comfort is provably wrong. I personally prefer knowledge to belief, no matter how harsh that knowledge may be.
For the record, I have tried to wholeheartedly do it the ways I have been asked and do it the more “spiritual way” such as reading the BoM over a dozen times, following through with Moroni’s promise with an earnest and desiring heart (and feeling nothing, no spiritual confirmation.) Listened to bishops councils, stake presidents, prophets etc. Fasted, prayed, studied scripture… all of it. Moroni’s promise ended up not being a universal truth that works for everybody (as I am not alone in this experience), and based on how many other religious or spiritual organizations have many people feeling a form of spiritual/supernatural confirmation to them that their chosen faith was the one true faith leads me to believe that even had the promise worked, it is unreliable at best. (that’s without even getting into the chemistry of how our brains work, or how emotions significantly influence us.)
All that said, I am not saying the BoM doesn’t have value. I think it is pretty obvious that there are people that have found value in it’s teachings, and used it to better their lives and the lives of those around them. I only contest the truth claims about it.
One thing that would be nice and helpful would be sources that are not exclusively mormon, or do not start with that bias that speak in favor of the claims. It just seems counter intuitive to always go to the source that believes it’s true, and continue to ask if it’s true. This is why I wholeheartedly disagree with the Church’s approach of only look at LDS approved sources for information. Information control like that is incredibly harmful, and dishonest toward the honest seekers.