NOM

Any feedback for the following essay I just wrote? Be brutal if you can. I want this part of the story of my exit to be amazing.

At this point in the story, I've already explained shelves, described my faith crisis, and defined cognitive dissonance.

*****

The Beam in the Church's Eye

It’s a common trope in ex-Mormon forums that Church leaders are nothing more than lying moustache-twirling liars who tell evil lies. No. No, no, no. There’s nothing moustache-twirling about Church leaders. I can say without reservation that they’re good people who see themselves as honest, and that they usually are.

I understand angry ex-Mormons. I get how hard it is to be fair to an organization that caused you great injury, especially if it still does. I’ve felt how emotional pain forces you to pay attention to its source and demands that you explain it yesterday so you can protect yourself from more of it today and tomorrow. I know that the easiest way to protect yourself is to assume the worst. I accept that sometimes this is the only feasible way to move on.

I also understand how the Church feeds these bitter explanations by spreading self-serving deceptions that look every bit like self-serving lies.

The best way to tell that these deceptions are unintentional is to recognize that almost every believing Mormon on the planet spreads them without a trace of guilt. I used to do it myself. I’m not a habitual liar; if anything, I’m uncomfortably transparent. Further, the Church teaches its members to have a maddening level of personal integrity. What gives?

Before explaining how this happens, I need a concrete example of this pervasive dishonesty. I choose the Church’s own history. Here’s what the foremost Mormon historian, the author of the Joseph Smith biography Rough Stone Rolling, recently said about Church history as it’s taught.

I think for the Church to remain strong, it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true. It can’t be sustained. So the Church has to absorb all this new information, or it’ll be on very shaky ground, and that’s what it’s trying to do. And it’ll be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.

Richard L. Bushman. Young adult fireside, Washington D.C., June 2016.

Assuming Brother Bushman is right, how did this happen? How did the Church get to the point where it’s dishonest with its own members about its own history? How do the members who know that the dominant narrative is false go along with this dishonesty so easily? More to the point, how did I?

When we deceive others without intending to, it’s because we engage in self-deception first. Collectively engaging in a self-deception as widespread and dissonant as the Church’s dominant narrative requires a great deal of common motivation.

It all begins with a conflict of interest.

One side of the conflict of interest is characterized by these two parts:

• The Church is God’s only true church. Members are explicitly and implicitly taught that it is therefore superior to every other organization in every way that matters.
• The label on almost every Mormon’s shelf, “I belong to God’s only true church,” isn’t just a statement of fact, it’s also a statement of identity. The Mormon identity is integrated into every aspect of life until it becomes as fundamental as a family identity.

This side of the conflict allows Mormons to bask in the reflected glory of their esteem for the Church. It’s a heady thing to be so tightly integrated into the most important organization the world has ever known. Its successes become your successes. Its failures would become your failures, except it can’t fail. To obey is to be an instrument in the hands of the very creator of the universe: you are his scalpel, his cavalry, his ace in the hole, his small trusted band who will save everyone. When all is finished, when the Great Jehovah joyfully proclaims that his work is done, when the Earth is finally cleansed of sin and remade in the majesty of the Eternal God, you will stand at his right hand with your believing loved ones, all of you clothed with glory, immortality, and eternal lives! All this because you are God’s only true church.

Do you see how the prospect of losing all this feels like the prospect of death? And that was just the carrot! The stick is devaluation and rejection by community and family.

The other side of the conflict of interest is anything that serves as evidence against the Church’s claims to truth and authority, or against its superiority.

Contrary evidence makes Mormons anticipate a reduction their esteem for the Church, and therefore a reduction in their worth. Worse, they’re surrounded by such evidence and continually feel threatened by its existence. Its relentless undercurrent makes navigating their lives dangerous. Deep down, they’re terrified of being pulled under.

Now suppose you’re a Mormon. You come across evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, which perhaps you had never heard of. This presents you with a conflict of interest.

On the one hand, you were taught to honestly seek truth, and then act according to it no matter what. As the hymns go, “Oh say, what is truth? ‘Tis the fairest gem that the riches of worlds can produce,” and “Do what is right, let the consequence follow.” Maybe you should look into this.

On the other hand, this evidence threatens to kill you. Everyone you love and trust has told you it can. Besides, you felt a stab of fear, some anger, and a little disgust when you realized what it was. Maybe you felt weirdly dazed, as if the edges of reality were bending away. Was that the Spirit warning you that it’s dangerous to your soul? Also, if you take it seriously, you might have to give it some weight and put it on your shelf. What if it’s too heavy?

Now, what are you going to do?

You’ll probably pick one or two of the following resolutions, which members and apologists have been using for decades. Which you pick will depend on a lot of factors, including your tolerance for cognitive dissonance, the strength of your Mormon identity, the strength of your belief in the Church’s claims, and your existing knowledge. I’ve ordered the resolutions roughly from resolutions in favor of Mormon identity to resolutions in favor of evidence. If you’ve never heard of Joseph’s polygamy, they’re also ordered from least cognitive dissonance to most.

Keep in mind that because you’re a human being, your overriding concern will be to feel safe and worthwhile. Every other factor pales in comparison. So what will you do?

• Deny. That didn’t happen. Joseph said so himself until the end of his life.
• Ignore. I’ll just put this tiny jar of Joseph’s polygamy on the shelf and forget about it. It probably didn’t even happen, anyway.
• Downplay. Okay, it definitely happened, but it wasn’t that bad. It was even good sometimes because it helped men take care of widows.
• Dismiss. Even if most polygamist wives weren’t widows, it’s not a big deal. It happened a long time ago, so it doesn’t affect us.
• Absolve. Even if it disrupts men’s attachment and makes women feel devalued, it wasn’t Joseph’s fault because God commanded it.
• Excuse. Joseph probably married other men’s wives because God was letting him figure out the rules. We have to forgive his mistakes.
• Blame. Fine, he was creepy sometimes. Why do people have to drag skeletons out of the closet? Not everything that’s true is useful.
• Accept. I don’t know what to make of this. I guess the Church is less likely to be true. Maybe God uses Joseph’s polygamy to test our faith.

For what it’s worth, the Church has recently moved from deny/ignore to downplay in new course materials. New Church-approved apologetic materials add dismiss/absolve/excuse. It also resolves the conflict using everything from deny to blame without reviewing specifics.

If the LDS Church ever resolves the conflict using accept like its cousin the Church of Christ finally ended up doing, I’ll consider going back.

I did something cunning to create the list of resolutions to the conflict of interest. I got its overall form from the following well-known poem.

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

Anonymous. “The Narcissist’s Prayer.”

Obviously, I did this to make a point, but my point might not be what you think it is. I’m not saying that Mormons are narcissists. Far from it. Mormons are explicitly taught against having personally arrogant attitudes and behavior.

The key difference between a narcissist and a Mormon - or really, a religious fundamentalist of any kind - is in what the two bask in. A narcissist basks in the glory of his own unstable self-esteem. A Mormon basks in the glory of his unstable esteem for the Church.

This collective arrogance is the beam in the Church’s eye.

I couldn’t see it clearly until it had been removed from mine.

It’s hard to put into words how much this resonates with me. Thank you for putting this together.

That's some mighty fine work there Reuben! It is hard to know for sure and make assumptions that there are no mustache twirlers at the COB. I think most are sincere, some are probably aware but painted in the corner because it's their livelihood for their entire family and extended family. I would guess there's a mix up there on the Salty hill. For me it was not only the narrative of the one true church, but eternal family and knowing the exact purpose of life. Giving all that up for the unknown was a tough transition at first, but now it's liberating.

IT_Veteran wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 1:42 pm It’s hard to put into words how much this resonates with me. Thank you for putting this together.

You're welcome! If you don't mind my asking, does this have something to do with a certain father-in-law?

RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 2:36 pm That's some mighty fine work there Reuben! It is hard to know for sure and make assumptions that there are no mustache twirlers at the COB. I think most are sincere, some are probably aware but painted in the corner because it's their livelihood for their entire family and extended family. I would guess there's a mix up there on the Salty hill.

Thanks! And thanks for the feedback. One difficulty I have in both thinking and writing is not stereotyping, or at least not treating the leaders of the church as a single entity. I do have to deal with an abstraction to make things tractable, which makes it hard to keep in mind that they're individuals.

Maybe I'll add a to-do item for after I've finished writing to find every place I've written "the Church" or "leaders" and see if it makes sense to bring up the huge variety of personalities in them.

Reuben wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 1:06 pm
This collective arrogance is the beam in the Church’s eye.

I couldn’t see it clearly until it had been removed from mine.

I've been calling this "arrogance without malice" for a long time. Leadership is primarily to blame because this stuff all runs downhill to local leaders. It's hard to see it when you have been raised and heavily indoctrinated in it from birth.

Here's an example. My father was a depression era child. Money was always very tight. But as he grew and came into his own the custom was to give a waiter or waitress your pocket change as a tip.

By the 1990's things had changed significantly.

But it hadn't sunk in with him. Even though HE was making quite good money his tipping habit had remained the same.

Finally we were out to dinner together one time and he tipped the waiter his pocket change on about a $65.00 meal (thinking he was being generous) and the guy literally followed him out to the parking lot to tell him he had "forgotten his change" and gave the tip back. Obviously it was a not too veiled insult regarding the paltry and insulting tip amount.

My dad had meant to be generous in his way but he hadn't stayed current with the realities of the day.

Church leaders have been taught and indoctrinated for decades that the church has all the answers and is lead by Christ himself on a personal level. Even when they know the truth about historical issues they justify those things as being acceptable in the big picture and overall scheme of things. Their first priority isn't truth. It's PROTECTING the church no matter what because they love it. They don't/can't see themselves as arrogant. How can one be arrogant when you're on God's side and He's on yours?

It's like a 17th century physician putting leeches on your arm to bleed you in order to save your life. They are convinced they are right and their intentions are good, but you're dying just the same.

Reuben wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 4:30 pm

IT_Veteran wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 1:42 pm It’s hard to put into words how much this resonates with me. Thank you for putting this together.

You're welcome! If you don't mind my asking, does this have something to do with a certain father-in-law?

That’s part of it, certainly. I think a bigger part though is just that you did a good job of putting many of the things I’m feeling into words.

Quite a few powerful thoughts there, Reuben. Bravo!

Here are some of my favorites from your essay.

1. Self-serving deceptions that look every bit like self-serving lies.

I've never considered this so explicitly before. Self-serving deception vs. Self-enlightenment sounds like one of Erik Erikson's stages for those born in the covenant.

When we deceive others without intending to, it’s because we engage in self-deception first.

I've always suspected that a reason for missionary work outside of missions is to help assuage our own doubts. It helps to bolster such a self-deception.

“I belong to God’s only true church,” isn’t just a statement of fact, it’s also a statement of identity.

A supporting mythological story for this is that we Church members were overly boastful of our ability to discern the truth back in the preexistence, so we were born into one of God's less truthful churches. Our test is to see if our boastfulness of discernment was real or imagined.

Hope you can write further and expand on this essay.

I like to content myself with the truth that Mormons are a wonderful people who, despite their conservatism, continue to do good deeds on a daily basis.

moksha wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 10:07 pm I like to content myself with the truth that Mormons are a wonderful people who, despite their conservatism, continue to do good deeds on a daily basis.

Part of my objective is to explain to myself (and eventually my family) how it is that people who are usually so wonderful can deceive themselves so pervasively and turn on each other so quickly. I've been studying psychology, reading stories, and introspecting for a long time to try to answer this, and I think I can finally explain it well. I think every bad behavior the church engages in as a whole is directly caused by this collective arrogance (collective self-deception, fundamentalism), or is a common terrible mistake that gets maintained by it (racism, homophobia), or both (authoritarianism, judgmentalism). I can't think of a counterexample.

The thing that worries me the most is the possibility that collective arrogance is required to instill all that wonderfulness, at least for some people.

Great essay Reuben.

“Reuben” wrote:Part of my objective is to explain to myself (and eventually my family) how it is that people who are usually so wonderful can deceive themselves so pervasively and turn on each other so quickly. I've been studying psychology, reading stories, and introspecting for a long time to try to answer this, and I think I can finally explain it well. I think every bad behavior the church engages in as a whole is directly caused by this collective arrogance (collective self-deception, fundamentalism), or is a common terrible mistake that gets maintained by it (racism, homophobia), or both (authoritarianism, judgmentalism). I can't think of a counterexample.

The thing that worries me the most is the possibility that collective arrogance is required to instill all that wonderfulness, at least for some people.

You could consider weaving in examples of supernormal stimuli from a religious (Mormon) perspective to support your observations. Perhaps the church or religion in general creates a supernormal stimuli that causes members to react with collective arrogance as you describe above. You could tease this out in your essay and explore it.

https://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/

I really like what you wrote, Reuben. I have so little faith in any church member sympathizing with this belief. I still attend and am quite active in my ward as an undercover unbeliever. I am about to go on a tour of Nauvoo with my devout in-laws and there are so many questions that I really cannot bring up. There will be some extensive reporting on this activity as it unfolds starting in a week. But I will be dealing with these ideas the entire tiem.

Your essay is trying to break through some entrenched attitudes that are well supported by the narratives coming from leadership. "Follow the Prophet" is a way of life, not just an annoying Primary song. I truly hope that a devout believer can understand this point of view. I have little faith that the institutional church sees any advantage in supporting any kind of liberalization.

Some good ideas here but the points you make will work against this argument being seriously considered by TBMs. But I completely agree, the way members absorb the identity of their church role is blocking their ability to reason their way out.

A question. How do the top leaders create an identity that allows them to regularly tell bold lies? They present themselves as Apostles and Prophets in a literal way which most members interpret to mean they meet at some point in their callings in the Temple with Jesus. The leaders all know that is not true. But they do little to address this and that is not a self deception. They are being dishonest. There are other examples but this should make the point. Ask your relatives if they believe church leaders meet or have met regularly with Jesus or other resurrected beings. I can't absolve the leaders for this deception. Nobody should. Unless they are all mentally ill, they know they are lying by regularly implying and hinting that they are literal prophets etc.

EternityIsNow wrote: ↑Sun May 27, 2018 3:37 am Some good ideas here but the points you make will work against this argument being seriously considered by TBMs. But I completely agree, the way members absorb the identity of their church role is blocking their ability to reason their way out.

A question. How do the top leaders create an identity that allows them to regularly tell bold lies? They present themselves as Apostles and Prophets in a literal way which most members interpret to mean they meet at some point in their callings in the Temple with Jesus. The leaders all know that is not true. But they do little to address this and that is not a self deception. They are being dishonest. There are other examples but this should make the point. Ask your relatives if they believe church leaders meet or have met regularly with Jesus or other resurrected beings. I can't absolve the leaders for this deception. Nobody should. Unless they are all mentally ill, they know they are lying by regularly implying and hinting that they are literal prophets etc.

Reuben, I really like your kindness towards the leading men of the church. It demonstrates your own goodness. However I have to say Eternity has nailed it. The buck has to stop somewhere and at that point you have to call a lie a lie.

Finally found the time to read through the entire essay. Good stuff Reuben.

Reuben wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 1:06 pmIf the LDS Church ever resolves the conflict using accept like its cousin the Church of Christ finally ended up doing, I’ll consider going back.

Are you referring to the Community of Christ above?


And this statement:

Reuben wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 1:06 pmWhen we deceive others without intending to, it’s because we engage in self-deception first.

Can you explain your thinking here? I personally think that we can unintentionally deceive others without engaging in self-deception ourselves.

My example would be: I unintentionally deceived others on my mission. I taught them things I believed wholeheartedly, things which were taught to me my entire life as "true". Did I engage in self deception somehow by teaching people the things I believed? (Even though those things were not "true"?)

wtfluff wrote: ↑Sun May 27, 2018 12:48 pm Finally found the time to read through the entire essay. Good stuff Reuben.

Reuben wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 1:06 pmIf the LDS Church ever resolves the conflict using accept like its cousin the Church of Christ finally ended up doing, I’ll consider going back.

Are you referring to the Community of Christ above?


And this statement:

Reuben wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 1:06 pmWhen we deceive others without intending to, it’s because we engage in self-deception first.

Can you explain your thinking here? I personally think that we can unintentionally deceive others without engaging in self-deception ourselves.

My example would be: I unintentionally deceived others on my mission. I taught them things I believed wholeheartedly, things which were taught to me my entire life as "true". Did I engage in self deception somehow by teaching people the things I believed? (Even though those things were not "true"?)

Thanks! I always get the Community of Christ wrong. Good point about unwittingly passing on deception.

No Tof wrote: ↑Sun May 27, 2018 10:05 am

EternityIsNow wrote: ↑Sun May 27, 2018 3:37 am Some good ideas here but the points you make will work against this argument being seriously considered by TBMs. But I completely agree, the way members absorb the identity of their church role is blocking their ability to reason their way out.

A question. How do the top leaders create an identity that allows them to regularly tell bold lies? They present themselves as Apostles and Prophets in a literal way which most members interpret to mean they meet at some point in their callings in the Temple with Jesus. The leaders all know that is not true. But they do little to address this and that is not a self deception. They are being dishonest. There are other examples but this should make the point. Ask your relatives if they believe church leaders meet or have met regularly with Jesus or other resurrected beings. I can't absolve the leaders for this deception. Nobody should. Unless they are all mentally ill, they know they are lying by regularly implying and hinting that they are literal prophets etc.

Reuben, I really like your kindness towards the leading men of the church. It demonstrates your own goodness. However I have to say Eternity has nailed it. The buck has to stop somewhere and at that point you have to call a lie a lie.

Well, you both hadn't read the next essay, which explains how it works collectively... because I only posted one essay...

FWIW, I have no illusions about convincing TBMs. My NOMish wife, though? Maybe I'm harboring a delusion that I can help her relabel her shelf to "I belong to a decent church" before it breaks. I definitely want to warn my descendants against fundamentalist religion in general, and I don't want "but they're such honest people!" to be a valid criticism of what I wrote.

It would also be helpful to have a bit of text from before the "Beam" essay about how pervasive self-deception is in our own minds. I'll rework the text to not rely on it so much. Here it is.

I figured when Joseph did deceive others, he almost always deceived himself first. That is, he generally believed his own bullshit. This idea shouldn’t be too surprising to anyone who has told a lie until they believe it themselves. Further, research on self-deception shows that a person’s motivation greatly affects their reasoning, evidence collection, and memory creation, retention, retrieval, and subsequent alteration. Somewhat disturbingly, all human cognition is motivated.

Some people’s cognition seems to be more affected by their motivations than other people’s. I concluded that Joseph Smith needed to believe he was a prophet, seer and revelator, and that he was an intellectually gifted, charismatic bullshitter.

Here's the next essay.

*****

Collective Self-Deception

Let’s take up that polygamy example again. You’re Mormon and you come across evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, creating a conflict of interest between honestly dealing with the evidence and maintaining your Mormon identity. You choose a resolution to the conflict: anything from denial to acceptance.

Once you commit to any resolution but acceptance, you’ll begin to self-deceive. If you deny or ignore the evidence, you’ll put up defenses to minimize further exposure, to hide the truth from yourself. If you downplay it, you’ll limit your exposure to evidence that supports the conclusion “polygamy wasn’t that bad,” such as pioneer stories cherry-picked by the Church to illustrate polygamy’s advantages. If you excuse it, you’re unlikely to notice that God not giving specifics to Joseph is an aberration, and you’re likely to conflate forgiving Joseph with believing him.

You’ll then share your resolutions and self-deceptions, helping turn them into social norms.

How do I know? I engaged in all of those self-deceptions before my faith crisis as I moved from denial to acceptance while trying to resolve the conflict of interest. I shared them all, too. I’ve watched plenty of other people do the same.

So how do Mormons engage in all this self-deception without guilt? Moreover, how do they pass self-deceptive ideas and practices around without guilt, especially to their children? All of the following reasons apply, which are well-supported by psychology research.

• Repeating falsehoods and bullshit causes us to eventually remember them as truth.
• Deceiving for someone else’s benefit reduces guilt.
• Deceiving when instructed by an authority reduces responsibility, which reduces guilt.
• Deceiving according to social norms diffuses responsibility, which reduces guilt.

Of course, self-deception isn’t confined to rank-and-file Mormons.

We find a great deal of self-deception in the single most influential Church history book ever, Joseph Fielding Smith’s Essentials in Church History, published in 1922. It presented early leaders categorically as heroes, was uncritically devotional, was often wrong, and was the book current leaders were brought up with. In writing it, Smith was resolving more conflicts of interest than the average Mormon, because his subject matter was his own family.

So in 1922, self-deception about Church history had started to become collectivized. This collectivization started to become cemented in 1944, when the Church began to exert central control over lesson materials. To this day, the history taught in lessons is dominated by Joseph Fielding Smith’s false narrative.

There have of course been challenges, which are almost always met with self-deceptive blame. “Not everything that’s true is useful,” said Elder Boyd K. Packer. “We must never forget this about Satan: he is a liar,” said Elder M. Russell Ballard. And when Mormon academics got it into their heads to tell the truth, Church leaders abused them until it drove them out. This culminated in the excommunication of six of them in September 1993, including one whose unforgivable crime was documenting earlier ecclesiastical abuse.

So it seems that, like lies, unintentional deception can grow out of control.

Now the Internet, bless its cynical cybersoul, has been forcing the Church to change to a more truthful narrative by doing what it does best: giving unrestricted access to information. It breaks down the Church’s collectively self-deceptive defenses against exposure to counterevidence, which sometimes demolishes Mormon identities (i.e. causes faith crises), which leads to attrition. Attrition finally got Church leaders’ attention. But was it based on compassion for members who lost faith? If you think so, I have a moon to sell you.

To reduce conflicts with believers’ Mormon identities, which rely on the Church always being right, the Church is currently trying to pull off change to the dominant narrative without calling attention to it. It thus proceeds at a glacial pace. Is “glacial” fast enough? Will it be okay to have the youth and the elderly know two different versions of Church history, with my generation stuck between them? I would say “pass the popcorn” and try to enjoy the show, but I have loved ones who will be affected.

Does this mean the collective self-deception is over? Hell no. About a month after I stopped attending, Elder M. Russell Ballard irrationally claimed that Church leaders “never tried to hide anything from anybody.” Look, Russell, you were an apostle in September 1993. You were there. How did you forget?

Right, right. Self-deception.

Now, regarding seeing Jesus, there are some important things to keep in mind.

1. For apostles, "authorities" are more senior apostles, including dead ones. They're very serious about the pecking order. If a senior tells a junior to bear witness of Christ in a way that's carefully worded to suggest more than a pleasant feeling, he'll do it with much-reduced guilt.

2. For apostles, social norms are whatever all the other apostles do.

3. They're highly motivated to exaggerate their witness of Christ. And because they're doing it to build precious testimonies, they do it with much-reduced guilt.

And they never say things that they know are literally false, so they can convince themselves that they're honest.

The only way I can see that one could recognize that he's deceiving himself and others would be if a peer called him out on it. Such people don't exist.

This a good start - I don't think you'll change any TBMs minds because it just runs too directly into core of beliefs, but I think it's good for anyone who is on a faith journey/crisis that has opened up to trying to figure out what is going on.

As I've told my wife before - most members do not know most (if any) of the dirty secrets in the church's past. I guarantee if someone went up at general conference and went over them, they would lose a ton of members overnight. So how do they slowly own up to the true history quietly enough that it won't impact those that they have trained to ignore anything that goes against what the leaders tell them? I think we're seeing that... most of the releases are done so quietly that the only purpose is to say they've released it and give those going through faith crisis material to reassure them with the added implication of "See, we've had this out there the whole time. Those who have told you that we are hiding our history are clearly being infected by the devil."

And on it goes...