NOM

Today after SS, one of our elderly ward members came up to me and started relating a story of being challenged in her beliefs. The background is that this woman and her husband were recently presiding over a mission in southeast Asia about 5 years ago. The person challenging them was one of the AP missionaries from their mission. She told me this missionary had lost his faith from taking a world religions class in institute. She then went on to theorize about why he had lost his faith. It ran the gammut. I kept smiling and nodding. First was the theory about his parents filing for divorce the last few months of his mission, the second was bringing up that he "might be gay, but I don't think so", then it was that he was enticed by the philosophies of men mingled with scripture (Umm, from LDS institute?). I was getting fairly uncomfortable at this point in the conversation, so I simply said "we should have more charity and love" and then I mentioned, "well, we all have psychological biases that we use to protect our world views". And then thankfully, priesthood opening exercises started.

I think this older couple is in for a shock when more and more of their former missionaries start waking up. I am kind of sad that this Elder decided it was a good idea to attack his former mission president about it. Probably poor taste and not a good persuasion method.

The weird thing is I don't understand why she thought I was a particularly good person to express this stuff to. I thought I was a scary pariah that made controversial statements in sunday school, but maybe they just think I'm a wierd wanna-be intellectual. It was bizarre.

FiveFingerMnemonic wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:20 pmI was getting fairly uncomfortable at this point in the conversation, so I simply said "we should have more charity and love" and then I mentioned, "well, we all have psychological biases that we use to protect our world views"...

I think this older couple is in for a shock when more and more of their former missionaries start waking up. I am kind of sad that this Elder decided it was a good idea to attack his former mission president and wife about it. Probably poor taste and not a good persuasion method.

Great reply - about having charity and love and acknowledging our own biases. Excellent.
I imagine she approached you because you come across as someone who would give helpful insights - which you did.

I took a world religion class at a church university. I figured, if I didn't know anything about other religions, how could I say this church is best?
A couple years later, I considered going on a mission, & did splits but still couldn't bring myself to really believe the lds church was best for everyone. I saw too much good in other religions - in other peoples' testimonies.

The other day, I ran into a neighbor and friend of one of my kids. We had a long talk - he was really shocked that I wasn't TBM as he thought. I was kind of surprised about his open mind too. He told me about how a lot of his friends and another of our teen neighbors don't believe in the church. I wonder if it really is a trend with teens and young-adults - maybe with the internet and having access to so much info.
What do you think?

Internet for sure. More common apostasy among the young generation has a social consequence of causing more of them to take a look.

FiveFingerMnemonic wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2017 3:57 pmInternet for sure. More common apostasy among the young generation has a social consequence of causing more of them to take a look.

Yeah, the internet has really opened things up - I probably wouldn't have evolved so much spiritually if it weren't for NOM and other internet sites.

For my kids, I really pray that they'll find their way through extremes of TBM shame... and angry anti-religious pessimism - but it does seem like a "narrow way."