Why can't people who leave the LDS church move on?

[♪alt13]

Being distraught that your parents thieved money from you (on the grounds of moral superiority) is an excuse?

You're right, it is an excuse.

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

I don't see how its ignorant? As an example my brother in law spends hours each day on ex-mormon websites. His Facebook is filled with anti-mormon stuff. He left the church 4 years ago.........

I spend 3 hours a week at church and barely do my home teaching. I bet my brother in law spends 3x as much time a week focusing on the LDS church than I do.

It's ignorant in that the post doesn't give any evidence that you've made any attempt to understand from the perspective of those who leave the Church but have instead relied on small sample anecdotes, leavened with a good deal of stereotyping, to reach a conclusion when there's easily available information on this topic out there that can give you a quite good sampling of perspectives from the people you are wondering about. (Whew, how's that for a run on sentence?)

Perhaps ignorant is too strong (I don't say you personally are ignorant, I'm sure you're not), but maybe 'lazy' is a better adjective.

Look at it this way, as you and other LDS may get annoyed when people rely on lazy stereotypes to describe you, so to do us 'apostates' get annoyed when people rely on lazy stereotypes to describe us. I agonized for years about my my growing lack of belief in the LDS Church. And making the break was very, very difficult. Yes, I did indulge in what you may call 'anti-Mormon' discussion boards (again, partly true partly not), but I got it out of my system and moved on.

From time to time just out of curiosity, I do go back to the boards to see who's still around, and I find that many of the same personalities are still there saying the same thing for the hundredth time. This is itself pretty interesting in my view, and some of these people really do need to get on with their lives. I think part of it is that this is an environment in which they are the elite (every discussion board has its cliques of 'elite' or 'dominant' posters), so I think it serves that psychological need in some cases. In any event, I do agree that it's healthy to move on at some point, and those who after so many years don't, I do wonder about them. (But then also I wonder about LDS apologists who spend so much time and energy year after year on their discussion boards. I get that for some it's merely a harmless hobby, the these boards are always a witch's stew of personalities, including some who are in badly in need of a life, or perspective, or both.)

 

[LogGrad98]

Is there a legit reason why people woudl get offended? We always say this like it is a terrible thing, but it seems to me that religion is so deeply personal that it makes people, I don't know, fragile for lack of a better word.

 

[colton]

Look at it this way, as you and other LDS may get annoyed when people rely on lazy stereotypes to describe you, so to do us 'apostates' get annoyed when people rely on lazy stereotypes to describe us.

That's exactly what Pres. Uchtdorf said in his Saturday morning talk last week at General Conference--that we should not stereotype people who have left the church because we don't know what their motivations are, what their experiences were, etc.

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

That's exactly what Pres. Uchtdorf said in his Saturday morning talk last week at General Conference--that we should not stereotype people who have left the church because we don't know what their motivations are, what their experiences were, etc.

And I think it's a great thing that he's saying this. The fact is (or I think it is), that with the information age, more and more LDS families will have close family members leave the Church, and they need tools to deal with it.

In the past, it was often assumed that 'apostasy' was the result of sin (e.g., certain family members in my case wondered who I had committed adultery with), laziness (e.g., 'he was just to lazy to pray and read scriptures), pride (big one in my family--I was too proud to humble myself to follow the prophet), and so on. I will say that one thing that annoys me to no end is when discussions of 'apostasy' reference 'lost sheep,' as if I'm lost and can't find my way. In fact, I believe strongly I have found my way after decades wandering lost. My guess is that, despite GC talks to the contrary, popular culture/belief among rank and file members still trends strongly to the above 'comforting' rationales for apostasy (after all, if one leaves for 'valid' reasons, this might suggest that the reasons are, well, valid, which goes against the entire premise that it's all so wonderfully and evidentially true, something frankly I think many, though clearly not all, members are afraid to confront). But maybe things are changing, and I'm just out of the loop.

 

[jimmy eat jazz]

Your play on words makes no sense. What does make sense is when someone is involved in a religion or activity that they talk about it or are obsessed.

Being obsessed with something they are no longer affiliated with makes no sense.

It makes sense if, given your original post, you're someone on the outside looking in and trying to explain why people do things that we think are a bit silly without making any effort to understand why they do those things. To someone on the outside, seeing how LDS obsess about their religion and can't ever stop talking about it, and how it informs (or seems to inform) their entire frame of reference for everything, and how they appear not to have a self identity outside of this religious affiliation, they might have a hard time understanding it, might be tempted to resort to lazy stereotypes to explain it, and might be tempted to conclude that because it's not something they understand or would personally do, it must somehow, therefore, lack validity.

NOW do you see?

Or, I could talk about how Mormons are obsessed with homosexuality (or other people's sex lives in general), something they don't have an affiliation with, and wonder why that makes any sense.