Over the years I have pondered why a Mormon who is taught to be caring and compassionate, will completely slander a person's character by calling them an anti-mormon for merely questioning the truth claims of Mormonism. The LDS member is otherwise a very kind person. I have often been baffled by this because that otherwise kind Mormon must know that calling someone an anti-mormon publicly is a huge slander to their character in Mormon culture and paints them as an "enemy"; and carries with it a lot of baggage and misinformation that makes people assume the former Mormon is very hateful towards Mormons when in reality most exmormons have Mormon family members they love and care about. Instead of the false accusation of "he/she is anti-mormons," the ex-mormon is often just questioning and doubting Mormon dogma itself while loving and being kind to Mormons individually. So why would so many Mormons so easily throw around the term anti-mormon to slander and dehumanize an ex-mormon?
I have pondered this quite a bit and I've come to the conclusion that the physicist Steven Weinberg is mostly correct when he said, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." I have reworded it this way:
Inately kind people tend to do kind things and evil prone unkind people tend to do unkind things. But for kind people to do unkind things, that takes religion.
I like my modification to the word kind a little bit better because it matches what I have experienced in reality myself. For growing up in the Mormon Church, a religion that promotes kindness, I have often been baffled by just how unkind some (no, not all) LDS people can be toward those who doubt and question or leave the religion. I have seen otherwise kind Mormons be dismissively cruel, unkind, and uncaring toward a member who is doubting their religious worldview and is going through a lot of existential pain. It seems like this otherwise caring Mormon, in these situations will shut off their empathy circuits and operate as a loyal member of their religion over a caring spouse or parent or sibling, etc. For example, at first I was appreciative of Patrick Mason's book Planted, where he emphasizes the LDS scripture of mourning with those who mourn. I remember thinking, where were the LDS members like Patrick Mason when I was questioning the truth claims of the LDS Church in the early 2000s?
I realize now that the truth is Patrick Mason is an anomaly; his genuine good person nature and thoughtful personality overrides his sainthood indoctrination. The evidence that Patrick Mason's version of Mormonism is not true Mormonism, is obvious when you see how when Patrick started to humanize exmormons and seek to build bridges with them around 2022, he was immediately criticized and condemned and ostracized by the majority of his fellow Latter-day Saints. He then went mostly quiet online because I personally think he quickly realized that you cannot bridge the gap between the perceived holy and unholy.
It does not matter how many New Testament and even Book of Mormon scriptures that Patrick quotes, from leaving the 99 to care for the "1", to mourning with those who mourn; for those passages are often reinterpreted through the paradigm of sainthood: wherein what is most important is separating oneself from the worldly and the wicked and the unholy. For, while the New Testament itself does contain many passages that seeks to break down social barriers, it also simultaneously contains ideas that encourages maintaining in group holiness: which means seperating oneself from those deemed unholy (or non-saintly). As the apostle Paul himself puts it 2 Corinthians 6:14 (AMP):
Do not be unequally bound together with unbelievers [do not make mismatched alliances with them, inconsistent with your faith]. For what partnership can righteousness have with lawlessness? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
That verse is just one example, here are some more verses, paraphrasing each of these verses from memory: "go and sin no more," "don't be like the Gentiles/Goyim," or "your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees." In other words, multiple passages can be quoted to point out that even the New Testament, while having a universal ethic of ideal cosmopolitan brotherhood, is nevertheless about being holy: and thus separating the holy from the percieved to be unholy, with again Paul saying things like do not be unequally yoked (united) with spiritually "dark" unbelievers.
The reader just needs to ask themselves, how could all of those Christians in the Middle Ages hear the New Testament read aloud often or hear sermons quoting scripture, and then practice behaviors that separated the perceived holy from the unholy; even going so far as to at times in the past engage in torturing percieved unholy unbelievers and even burning them alive?
The answer to this question becomes obvious when one understands what sainthood is really all about (as I discuss in the blog post here). For as I mentioned in my introduction, seeking Mormon sainthood status is not about being a good person or seeking The Good Life of the philosophers. Sainthood is the path of seperating from the unholy earth that is believed to be literally teeming with demons (or evil spirits). It is culturally about seeking Methodist Piety, and/or Augustinian Puritanism. Meanwhile, the LDS canon includes scripture promoting "Paulianity": where a literal space alien called Sin is possessing your limbs, combined with end-times hysteria, a devil delusion, and demon phobia. So "the world" is a frightful place to avoid and escape from. So that sainthood is about the pursuit of holiness as pious seperating from most earthly sensory experiences because the earth is ulitmately evil and the fleshly body is wretched and controlled by alleged evil forces. See my introduction for more details.
With this in mind, it becomes clear that Mormonism is not a mind-space for developing one's authentic self and genuine friendships beyond dogma, for in Mormonism that is not the ideal. For Mormon scripture speaks of denying yourself of all ungodliness which means all unholiness, which are behaviors and attitudes outside the ideal of sainthood and total obedience to the Brethren. It is a lifestyle of maintaining the saintly persona by maintaining a certain distance from unholy outsiders, by associating primarily with the saintly in-group of devout garment-wearing Mormons (Saints).
It is within this ultra-holiness paradigm that you will find otherwise kind people being not so kind in the name of religious sainthood. It is in this "I-must-be-holy-at-all-times" mentality that for example a Mormon family member will disinvite a disbelieving former-LDS family member for say a holiday dinner because they are no longer believers in sainthood; and thus they being deemed "unholy," or "unbelievers," are now a potential existential threat to the saintly sanctum of the Mormon in-group of "Saints" (holy ones).
This explains why there will often be gossip and slander of anyone who questions LDS dogma or leaves the LDS Church, and an assuming the worst about the person; because there is only one way to think of them and describe them which is through the lens of the sainthood paradigm; which is to see them as either "lazy learners," or "they just want to sin," or they could not handle the high demand holiness objective of the only true church, etc. The reason for this is because a failure to bear your "testimony" (or worse give your reasons why you're exmormon), is a threat to the testimony of everyone within the in-group of holy testimony bearers. For the paradigm of Holinesses is built upon the testimony bearing of these holy-insider Latter-day Saints. Therefore, those who will not bear a testimony (affirming the alleged "truth" of a life of pious holiness), becomes a threat to maintaining that sphere of holiness; and therefore doubters become an existential threat to the insider's worldview paradigm. This explains why otherwise kind Mormons will sometimes be rather unkind to exmormons because the saintly paradigm drives them to act that way through phobia indoctrination and contamination fears: wherein they see the exmormon outsider as "spiritually gross" and infectious as an unholy contaminate. In Pauline language referenced above, their percieved unholy "darkness" is a threat to maintaining one's bright and pure body as a "holy temple."
This "your spiritually gross" reaction is explained in psychological terms by our innate sense of disgust and recoilment from things that cause disease and death, such as our natural fear of a rotting corpse or a diseased maggot infested animal on the side of the road. This fear of contamination is then transposed onto the exmormon who is subconsciously perceived by the Latter-day Saint as supernaturally infectious as unholy/un-saintly, just like a disease within their unconscious mind's perspective. Thus, the exmormon triggers their natural bodily immune system response to percieved disease and death by unconsciously projecting onto the exmormon these feelings of disgust and recoilment and fear of contamination. So that all of these natural fears and contamination phobias are transferred onto the exmormon because of the constant indoctrination of maintaining religious purity and separating oneself as a saint from the impure (the unholy).
So that just as you cannot get somebody to willingly touch something they know is likely contaminated with infectious disease, you cannot get an LDS True Believer to hear you out and care about your exmormon story; because the former-saint (exmormon) is quite literally spiritually infectious and "supernaturally diseased" in the Latter-day Saint's subconscious mind.
If you take away the phobia induction and contamination fears from a must-maintain-holiness mentality, these LDS people would not be as uncaring to exmormons. But because the entire LDS system is a system of maintaining insider-holiness, which means being called out as a holy one from the worldly; then those who leave the Church or even question the Church are automatically thought of subconsciously by most members as contaminated by the evil world (i.e., they are worldly, part of the unholy and the wicked to some degree).
Since thousands of words in Mormon scripture itself and in Mormon talks and sermons emphasize a separation of the holy from the unholy, the pure from the wicked, then it is inevitable that this subconscious indoctrination will impact a Mormon's behavior: so that an otherwise caring and kind person will often be quite unkind to somebody they subconsciously perceive as unholy; as they are in their subconscious mind a spiritual contaminant, a worldly infectious threat.
So the next time a Mormon or another religious person who is otherwise kind most of the time, behaves rather unkindly to the exmormon, remember that they unconsciously see them as some kind of spiritual contaminant and as a threat to their testimony; and this is likely why they are being so unkind. They are responsible for their actions, but I believe it's not entirely them but they are a product of thousands of hours of in-group indoctrination from LDS indoctrination.
No comments:
Post a Comment