NOM

I'm in Illinois so you don't see too many ex-mos out there and I posted about this before, but a guy emailed me through the lds discussions site and lived like 10 minutes away with the exact same name as one of my family members so all the more crazy.

Anyway, had lunch today with him again (AJ) and he brought his believing wife and another guy (DB) from the ward who is mentally out. It's not that this is unique for people who leave, but it's really interesting to see how what the church is doing isn't really helping.

The two guys both had their shelves broken pretty quickly - DB came across the gospel topics essay while preparing a lesson and that led him down the rabbit hole, and he then went to his EQ president (AJ) with questions that led him down the rabbit hole. Both were mentally out in a few months and the wife who came with has been slowly losing faith in the Mormon church but not God/Jesus. DB's wife is still full TBM although becoming a bit more liberal, but she didn't come with.

Again this is purely anecdotal, but the believing wife was really upset by the devotionals this year attacking doubters. Her husband told her about the issues and she read the CES Letter/Letter For My Wife and then went to FAIR for rebuttals along with the newer apologetics like Terryl Givens, etc.

So she is trying to make it work, but she was really upset about the way the church is shooting the messenger and not addressing the problems. It gives me hope that people are starting to see through it, although granted it's one person in a non-Mormon area. When she was talking about where she was with the church, she admitted that her belief in Joseph Smith was pretty tenuous and I think she knew she was not long for the church, but really interesting to hear her talk about how apologetics worked at first and then started to turn her off.

Now I just need my wife to agree to double date with them and hope she rubs off on my wife a bit

I feel for her.... it can be so mentally painful in the beginning (especially for women?). The betrayal really hurts.

Messed up post.

jfro18 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:41 pm
Again this is purely anecdotal, but the believing wife was really upset by the devotionals this year attacking doubters. Her husband told her about the issues and she read the CES Letter/Letter For My Wife and then went to FAIR for rebuttals along with the newer apologetics like Terryl Givens, etc.

So she is trying to make it work, but she was really upset about the way the church is shooting the messenger and not addressing the problems.

This is a great description of the typical church response. The exception was the essays, and they haven't even put them in print yet.

Lithium Sunset wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:46 am I feel for her.... it can be so mentally painful in the beginning (especially for women?). The betrayal really hurts.

Yeah I felt that a lot... and it gave me some different perspective hearing it in person than when you hear someone talk about it on Mormon Stories or something like that.

Also gives more insight into why we all fight so hard to not let that information in, because it really sucks to have to process it and figure out how you were so foolish to believe it for so long.

I'll be curious to see what she does over the next year - She all but said she knows that she's got one foot out of the boat but just want to try to find some middle way... and we all know that the middle way is usually a transition more than anything else.

When the dust finally settles we will have a smaller organization that might as well change its name to The Church of Jesus Christ of Non-Critically-Thinking Saints.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 2:27 pm When the dust finally settles we will have a smaller organization that might as well change its name to The Church of Jesus Christ of Non-Critically-Thinking Saints.

One thing that that was (to me) the most interesting is that she took the exact same steps my wife did after I told her all of this.

1. She went and read FAIR's rebuttal for answers
2. She read the Crucible of Doubt by Givens and some other neo-apologetic books

Yet after doing those two things she actually lost faith in Joseph Smith/Mormonism where my wife is able to just completely double down - AJ's wife said she actually found herself getting mad during Crucible of Doubt and writing things in the margins that she had read earlier. I know that's not uncommon or anything, but it is really interesting how two people can do the exact same things and have such different reactions.

It both gives me hope that one day my wife will open up and also makes me so depressed that she may continue to hunker down and refuse to ever look at it objectively.