I’m a rare presence around these here parts. But I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about something particular for a few months now–enough that I thought perhaps I could write something little (and by little I mean personal and rambling) about it.
The thing is that, well, I’m a person with some pretty solid beliefs and standards, but I’m not a fighter. And I never have been a fighter. Mostly, I just want to live a quiet, peaceful, content life away from fights of any kind if I can help it.
So, if someone comes at me wanting a fight, I’ll probably panic a bit, shake a little, attempt a response, most likely do some kind of cry session at some point, but ultimately, I will simply walk away and do everything in my power to never encounter that person or thing or place again.
I’ve rarely witnessed a fight where one or both parties actually changed their minds or apologized so, sometimes I just think, “Why?” Why do that and feel like crap when I could be talking with nice people or making a pie or kayaking or giving a hug or…practically anything else?
I know, I know. You want to tell me things like, “Some things are worth fighting for!” and “If you don’t fight for x, then who will?” or “We need people like you in the church!” or “Stay. Stay and make change happen.”
But…you see…I can’t make change happen. I thought, once upon a time, that I might, that I could. But, no. Maybe someone else can…. But not me. And the only thing that my tiny, microscopic attempts have gotten me…are fights. Fights and judgement and anger and vitriol and self-righteousness and denials and a more intense, deep, visceral pain than I have ever known in my life.
And what is the point of wasting so much precious time in my short, small life… on that?
This is the voice of the silent ones who leave. The ones who don’t want to tell anyone else that they know better (we don’t claim to, really)… But, from their side, see a disintegrating community with no options. With no one listening. With no one even caring. And still…we don’t want to make anyone feel too bad about it. We can’t assume we know what other people need, after all.
We just don’t want a fight. We just want to live a couple Sundays (or all the rest of our Sundays) without getting slapped across the face.
And we disappear. So many of us are disappearing. And do you even notice? Do you? I’m not really sure, but maybe it doesn’t matter to us anymore. And sometimes that makes us sad. Because we miss our old sense of belonging to a community that once existed in our hopes. But we’ve discovered, miraculously, that when we walked away, we didn’t have to fight anymore.
And it was okay. And joyful. And right.
Because there’s no time for meanness and fighting. Not in our short, small, beautiful lives. No time at all.
Perfectly expressed, Apame. For sensitive conflict-avoiders, church can become such a place of discomfort when you don’t agree with everyone else. And it’s not just fights with others. For me, the conflict within myself as I try to figure out what to do and what to believe is so very wearying as it drags on year after year that sometimes peace seems like the most appealing option, no matter where it lies or what it costs.
I love how you’ve said this, Apame. I hate that you’ve had to reach this conclusion, though. I actually sympathize a lot, even thought I do far too much arguing online. I hate it in person, and I don’t think I could stand it as part of my church experience either.
I think I’ll just copy Peace Train’s comment and replace the post with it (including proper attribution, of course ;-).
Thank you for leaving. We who disagree with you don’t want a fight either, but feel that the Church is something far different than what you and those who think like you and those who post here think it is or should be. We want to be left alone, just like you want to be left alone. That is all we ask, but when you make a big deal about it, don’t think we will shrink like violets or give in to spoiled children who have been told more than once how to behave. We would have rather you and those like you to have gained a testimony of the Gospel AND the Church (for they go hand-in-hand for Mormonism), but if not than please by all means be on your way. It allows you to be free and us to be free .
Holy hell, commenter #4 — you should be afraid of being struck down for blasphemy to add a moniker like that to a comment like yours! I don’t know for sure who the “we” in your comment refers to — likely nobody but you plus the maggots in your pockets — but you don’t speak for anyone in the Church that *I* belong to. Mostly I hope you’re an anti-Mormon agitator hoping to fool someone into believing that there are rotten souls like yours in the Church, because you’re no one I recognize from my own experience.
I don’t like fighting either, Apame, but I do it, sometimes, like now, because somebody has to.
I don’t know what church #4 belongs to, but MY church currently has 90,000+ representatives out knocking on doors, has released a feature-length documentary film, and does everything in its power to NOT be left alone.
I guess that leaves its more small-minded members on their own to figure out how to deal with the repercussions of a diverse, global church full of people who are *gasp!* different than they are.
Dear Apame,
In many ways, I am like you. I hated getting into fights as a kid, and avoided them at all costs. I hate getting into fights now as an adult, and I am known far and wide as a peace-maker in my family, in my stake and ward (up until I left the Church), and so much have loved the people of my ward and stake. I love my very Mormon family. I just couldn’t stay in their Church, which used to be My Church, because it hurt too much. I still attend Sacrament meeting with my wife and I play the organ by mutual agreement with the bishop, who knows I am gay and out and out of the church (of course he know, how could he not, he was the one who “let” me resign). I live in a paradox now, a kind of “forever” fight with my wife, who I still love dearly, and who loves me (I and my Annabelle Lee), but it is not where I want to be; I want to be in and involved with a wonderful church again, not the church I saw before I left this year.
Apame, THIS. So much this. I wouldn’t say I left entirely silently (my parents and a lot of other people found out exactly how far gone I was through an international editorial…but prior to that, though I wasn’t silent about my position, I certainly wasn’t broadcasting it).
I AM a fighter in a lot of ways. I don’t like it, but I believe I should be willing to stand up over and over again for what I believe in my soul to be right. What kept me in so long was the idea that I could help and work to change things, and what finally broke me was realizing that like you said, I *couldn’t* make change happen. When I laid down my bit of rope in the tug of war, I was afraid to let go because I thought it would be painful or frightening, but it was the opposite. That was what was so unexpected.
I don’t want to fight any more, not necessarily because I’m tired (although goodness knows I am…I don’t know how the women who’ve been doing it for longer than I’ve been alive are managing, I feel like such a weakling in comparison…). I don’t want to fight or argue because I’m convinced it won’t make the slightest bit of difference. The fight first wore down my resolve, then my energy, then my hope, and at long last, my actual faith. It was painful and ugly and continues to me–just because I’ve stopped the fight on my end doesn’t mean other people have stopped theirs with me–but I’m surprised and grateful how much peace I’ve found in walking away from the fight.
It’s not right for everyone, I acknowledge that, but I’ve seen from the other side now just how many people are walking away, silently or not. And a lot of the narratives I’m seeing and hearing match yours perfectly.
“And we disappear. So many of us are disappearing. And do you even notice? Do you? I’m not really sure, but maybe it doesn’t matter to us anymore. And sometimes that makes us sad. Because we miss our old sense of belonging to a community that once existed in our hopes. But we’ve discovered, miraculously, that when we walked away, we didn’t have to fight anymore.”
I didn’t expect to tear up when I began reading this post. But I could have written this.
Apame,
Thanks for this moving post. The events of this summer reinforce to me that change is going to be glacial in such a large organization with such a conservative decision-making process (decision-makers who are elderly, with life-long tenure, with a practical requirement for unanimity which appears to permit individual vetoes in favor of the status quo).
I had hoped for something different, but this is our reality. Which means that I agree that the amount of change any one individual can bring about is likely to be vanishingly small, at least at an organizational level.
I think then, that the main reason to stay is if the positives outweigh the negatives for you individually. If they do, then stay and contribute whatever you can. If they don’t, then maintain your health and happiness by blazing a new path for yourself. I am glad that you seem to be succeeding at doing the latter.
Beautiful post. I think there is a particular graciousness in not fighting. That you are secure enough in your own path to live it quietly (even if, when challenged, you may not feel secure… You may feel ready to ‘panic a bit, shake a little, attempt a response, most likely do some kind of cry session at some point’).
I know I sometimes get sucked into fights and after a point, I think, why am I even doing this?
(that being said, I recognize there is some value for fights, for the folks who can stand it or thrive in it. One thing I find is that arguments really are more for bystanders and third parties… But even as a sometimes participant, I’ve found that even if a discussion doesn’t change my mind in the slightest initially, in the future, I’ll have better appreciation for the arguments employed.)
Oh, Apame.
I know your longing to be safe. I think that is where a lot of fighting stems from. Things that I would ignore on my own behalf make me fire up when a friend is under attack.
I’m glad this is, at least in part, joyful for you. But I can’t help mourning just a little.
How can I be a defence for those like you? How would I be able to tell if you were in my ward? How can I shield you from the fighting? Without just sending rockets back, and making it more unstable. Is it impossible?
Apame, I am truly sorry to see you and others like you leave the church. There are 1001, maybe 10001 reasons to leave the church. There is really only reason to stay, or to even join the church in the first place.
Glenn
So Glenn, I’m a little curious about your comment. I’ve heard that sort of comment before, and I assume the implication is that the reason to stay is that the Church is true (whatever the complicated meaning of that is).
If truth is the only necessary and sufficient criterion, how would you deal with a context where something is “true” but it is also harming someone? What if something is true but it also has evil elements? What if the truth is that there is a divine being in the heavens who in many ways is wonderful but who also has, for the sake of argument, elements of evil? For instance, a god such as the Greek gods.
In my mind, the truth of the existence of that god would not necessarily compel me to love him or worship him. Before choosing to follow him I would also weigh other factors, such as his goodness. Perhaps I would be punished for doing so, but my conscience wouldn’t let me do otherwise. Truth alone doesn’t seem enough for me.
As some people state it, the notion that the Church is true seems almost to imply that its doctrines and policies are precisely as they should be. If that is the case, however, if I see any doctrine or policy that seems to cause substantial harm, this approach seems to leave me with one of two options: 1) God approves of this harm; or 2) The Church is not “true.
Both of those options trouble me. The first makes this god unattractive to me. The second makes me want to leave the Church.
What makes me stay is that I require more than one reason for staying. Truth is not enough. I also require goodness in my church. And if the Church is harming people like Apame then I think the Church (me and you and the leaders who institute policies and receive doctrines) needs to repent and become an institution that each day harms less and less and becomes like Christ more and more.
Thanks for this post, this is me in many ways as well. I am not much of a fighter either, especially when it feels futile, as trying to effect change in the church felt to me. The glacial pace of change is just not something I’m willing to dedicate my life to, when I was getting so little out of church in the end.
I think the hardest part of the fighting for me was internal, between beliefs and information, and the cognitive dissonance in my mind and in my heart. And eventually I just chose peace, and have never regretted it. There are so many paths that can be right for different people, and just as I don’t try to tell people to leave the church, it’s hard for me to understand when people tell others to stay, even though they may be miserable. It may have been nice to have like minded people in my ward, but I don’t think that would have made a difference in the end. And that’s okay, it’s not so bad out here.
Thank you for this post. I can certainly empathize.
As for the ego-centric commenter #4, just … wow. That’s a huge beam in your eye! You might be able to get it out if you read this https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2012/12/15/if-you-dont-like-it-leave-and-religious-pluralism/
Then again, that beam looks pretty enmeshed
I tend to agree with #4. I don’t like my prophets, my Church, attacked by people who claim to belong to my Church. I know God loves us all. I think I know what He wants. You and I have our agency to act as we wish. If you wish to leave you are free to do so. But those of us who stay and love you feel pain. So many who are critical profess their “pain.” What about our pain when we hear our Prophets called out of touch old white men. That is very painful to me and perhaps to them. None of us has a monopoly on pain in this fight.
In the words of the prophet Dan Savage, “It gets better.”
Ardis is right–sentiments like those expressed in comment #4 are an extreme violation of covenants and deserve to be condemned harshly, even if it causes a fight. Thanks, Ardis.
” I think I know what He wants. ”
Everyone thinks this, Kris–that’s the problem.
Righteous words, Ardis. Commenter #4 is an evil-speaker and a blasphemer (or maybe just an anti-Mormon troll).
And when we cannot discern, even remotely, what we want from what God wants, or aren’t even aware that that is an issue, we’ve got real problems on our hands.
Ardis is right. I’ll get in the trenches any day and slug it out next to her. No one has the right to invite someone to leave. No one.