I laugh at the idea so often nurtured by the Mormon Church that Joseph Smith “reluctantly” accepted God’s directive to engage in sex with numerous females, many of them already married. Anyone who has thoroughly studied the matter knows that Joseph Smith’s unbridled womanizing, and its discovery and subsequent dissension among the members, seriously threatened to undermine the early Church.

When the Prophet Joseph’s increasingly irresponsible and brazen behavior pushed the boundaries of common sense and decency, causing a collective rumbling, the act of Mormon men taking multiple wives, conveniently became a commandment from God. The Prophet Joseph likely wiped the sweat from his brow when he discovered that many of his followers actually believed that crock of .. uh, Godly revelation.

The Roots of our Tradition

Members of the early Mormon Church, the same as those today, were encouraged to avoid thinking too much for themselves, because they needed to learn to rely on modern revelations given by God to his chosen people, via a living prophet. Independent thought was allowed up to point, but if it called established doctrine or cultural practices into question, then it was framed as an evil influence, that threatened to harm the Church, and was not tolerated.

The fact remains that our Mormon ancestors consciously swallowed the religious hook and were reeled into a worldview that by today’s standards seems quite bizarre. So many of us, as descendants of these early Mormon pioneers, have been taught to idealize our ancestors as god-fearing, intelligent people, and to deny any complicity or responsibility, on their part, in believing the crazy stuff found in Mormonism.

We were taught to accept the fiction that they created as their worldview of reality, with a well-ingrained, cultural reluctance to see this dynamic as our ancestor’s own silliness. This reluctance, or cultural training, to avoid seeing our own ancestors as lacking sound judgment can make it difficult to fully release the religion’s impact that played out in our family’s lives and identity in the Church.

A Matter Of Choice

The truth is that our ancestors chose to believe this stuff and then they passed on their beliefs to their children and called it a privileged heritage. Was there true nobility in teaching their children that they were favored by God and thus persecuted at every turn, because Satan wanted to destroy the only true Church on earth? Not really, but it sure helped the Church out in persuading people to become enmeshed in its culture.

Those beliefs created a scenario, where in order to maintain the belief that Satan was out to destroy the Church, Mormons had to create a worldview that continued to see believers as constantly being persecuted by evil influences. Our ancestors created identity in framing everyday life as a huge struggle against the evils of the world. It was almost as if life was too easy, you were doing something wrong.

“Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven,” is a well-known mantra in the Church. In essence, for Mormons, there must be an evil them in order for the good us to be tested and to receive heavenly rewards. When a group defines their collective identity by how well it separates itself from other human beings, especially those who have different ideas, and even more so when those ideas are framed as a threat to its own well-being and stability, the group can become stuck in a type of unhealthy, self-serving loop.

The Persecution Complex

Mormons create a type of social vortex where they must constantly recreate a sense of enemies that fight against the Church and God, in numerous aspects of life, and at almost every turn. Why? So that faithful Mormons can continue to define themselves as God’s chosen people who will continually be persecuted because of Satan’s and the world’s hatred of them. Yet, if this element of perceived persecution of Mormonism, which is created via the culture’s own beliefs, ceased to exist, who would they be?

When a group defines its very identity by how others must hate them, it leaves little room for seeing a bigger, more inclusive picture, and it suppresses the opportunity to objectively examine their own specific view of reality. If Mormons could stop seeing themselves as endless victims of life, it would completely change the dynamics of the religious culture. In my opinion, it would create a much more empowering and loving reason to life life. Why fight against life, when it is simply not necessary? The religious parameters won’t allow that to happen.

Can you image a Mormon Church that didn’t see the nonMormon world as a threat to their own well-being? Can you imagine a Mormon Church that accepted and loved people for who they are without asking them to clone their beliefs and culture in order to be their spiritual equals? In a perfect world, somewhere off in a parallel galaxy…..

Mormons, like many controlling religions, thrive on creating a clear and divisive line between what constitutes earning God’s favor and supporting their religious and corporate enterprises, and what does not. Things that do not overtly support Mormon interests are often painted with suspicion. Things that support the Church are trusted. Given the fact that worldwide, Mormons only comprise about 2/10s of 1% of the earth’s population, it’s rather silly to think that Mormonism has all of life’s answers. It doesn’t. Other viable and healthy worldviews exist.

On Board the Belief Train

Passing beliefs onto children is as a natural part of family life and part of a child’s normal development. The developing brain takes the beliefs of family and culture in any worldview and creates neuronal pathways around what a child repeatedly experiences. These pathways create a sense of predictability and reality in life. The facts are that children raised in any belief system, whether it be Atheism, religion, scientific inquiry, or Pastifarianism will naturally take on the values of their parents as true, at least in their early years.

Our Mormon ancestors were good at sacrificing for a common cause, and allowing themselves to be persuaded to promise their very lives if necessary to building up Mormonism, but at what cost? They embraced limited thinking, a degree of doctrinal deception, and an acceptance of fear, group coercion, and guilt and then passed this collective heritage on to thousands of their posterity. At the same time, they passed on a very strong belief in family and faith, and the importance of sticking together forever via religious belief.

As Ex-Mormons, we chose to walk away from our ancestor’s tradition. We continue to grapple with a worldview that was handed down to us, as beloved family members who mattered to them. Our ancestors acted out of a conviction that they were doing the best thing for their posterity, and this conviction makes it very difficult to maintain a sense of love and mutual respect, especially when that very posterity questions the foundation of the collective’s beliefs.

Where our Mormon families often intertwine their identity with religious doctrine, they see our departure from the faith as a rejection of their own beliefs and values. When you sacrifice so much for your kids and they say, “Thanks, but it’s just not for us,” that has to smart. When your own kids claim that what you believe is not true, and that everything you have worked so hard to create as a Mormon no longer matters, it can create a lot of dissonance.

When people choose to step outside of the established cultural norms, it will inevitably be met with some degree of pushback and suspicion from those who see the beliefs as true. The brain biases us to do exactly that. Understanding how we humans are hardwired to reinforce reality, and seeing what we want to see in life as true, can help us to understand why people react with such fear, viciousness, and callousness at times to our journey out of the tribal culture, and why they do what they do. Understanding these dynamics, however, may not lessen the pain from being rejected that one experiences in stepping away from the old rules and expectations. Releasing old ideas and creating new belief paradigms that move us beyond the tribal mindset is not an easy thing to do.

The Mystery Behind Belief

Why do we as Ex-Mormons, who are letting go of our collective past, still feel the need to somehow justify our ancestor’s actions as laudable? Where does this deeply seated need inside of us, to continue to defend them, come from? The messages we received in the culture are pretty clear. When Mormon descendants reject the faith, they not only spit in the face of those who sacrificed their all to allow their kids to be Mormons, they also place their future posterity in jeopardy of losing a great opportunity to be blessed more than everyone else, forever. Those are effective guilt tactics. We were told over and over again that the most intelligent and spiritual people on the planet are Mormons, and that Mormons are better at knowing the truth, simply because they come into life with an innate ability, as God’s elite children, to discern and accept God’s highest truth, which is only found in the Mormon Church. When we learn, however, that the idea of being God’s elite is based on how our human brain constructs a sense of reality, via repetition, and not because of divine favor, it gives us the opportunity to embrace a bigger picture of life.

The neuronal pathways in the Mormon-infused brain are pretty strong when it comes to seeing our heritage as blameless and superior to our run-of-the-mill earth-mates. The idea of being superior was reinforced over and over again as our truth. We each embraced these tribal values as our own, as our brain’s natural processing; at least until our brains developed the capacity to think critically and to step back and to take a good hard look at what we had been taught was true.

When Worlds Collide

We were taught in the Church that early Mormons experienced their many hardships precisely because Satan did not want the Church to prosper. How many times did we hear that the Devil placed his primary efforts in annihilating the Church, and in trying to dissuade its members, via sin, from becoming a force for good in the world?

So when you learned that Joseph Smith created a paper currency to trade with nonMormon neighbors in Kirtland, Ohio, and then invited the neighbors to see the holdings in the local bank, which allegedly backed the currency with silver, that seemed like good enterprise and a great a way to build trust in the community. When you learned, however, that Joseph Smith purposely filled the bottoms of the boxes, stacked on the bank’s shelves, with sand and other heavy objects, and then placed silver coins on the top layer to make them appear to be full of money, it changed that perspective.

When Joseph bilked the trusting nonMormon neighbors out of thousands of dollars, who had willingly traded goods and services for the Mormon notes, and then closed the bank and declared the Mormon money worthless, no wonder the neighbors were angry. No wonder they called the Mormons liars and thieves. Suddenly our collective ancestor’s claims of “We were innocent, hated, and unjustly persecuted, just as God said we will always be,” took on a completely different meaning.

The question that then needs to be asked is the following. When our ancestors saw that their prophet had devised another wiley, though somewhat brilliant scheme to steal from their nonMormon neighbors, why did they want to remain a part of an organization that treated people that way?

When you learned that the Mormons went around bragging to their NonMormon neighbors that God was going to take their land and give it the Mormons, so that they could build up Zion and create their utopian society, you begin to understand a different dynamic than what you were told in Sunday School. Suddenly the Mormon ancestors and their prophet aren’t as innocent of the persecution as they claimed.

More Thought Collisions

When the Mormon Destroying Angels and the Danites killed people in the name of furthering the Mormon good, why did our ancestors think that this was okay? When Brigham Young stood at the pulpit and stated that Mormons had the “greatest and smoothest liars in the world, the cunningest and most adroit thieves,” and God sanctioned their actions in defeating the Church’s enemies because they had the priesthood of God, how did members justify this as good and honorable? How could they see it as aligned with the Church teachings of a God that demanded its members to have absolute integrity and to deal justly and fairly with every human being? Why did our ancestors continue to ignore the activities and communications from the institution’s leadership that contradicted the teachings of the Church? Many problems exist with the history of Mormonism, and yes our religious heritage is very good at saying these controversial aspects simply don’t matter. For many of us, however, in the spirit of embracing total integrity in our own lives, these deceptions and problems are at the very core of our decision to leave the faith. Asking members to have total integrity in their lives, and in all their dealings with other people, suggests a level of institutional hypocrisy, especially when that very institution has a well-established habit of covering up and explaining away its own problematic history. When Devotion is not Enough

There is no pretty way to put it. Our ancestors believed some pretty stupid stuff. At least now having stepped away from Mormonism, I can see more clearly why their choices to stay faithful to the cause weren’t really all that great for their posterity. I want to be totally free of the misconception that our ancestors were the brightest and the best and the most elite of all of God’s children on the entire planet. That claim seems rather arrogant, now that life experiences outside of the faith, have shown me just how much that belief simply is untrue. Many members of the early Church, some of them prominent members, said “enough” with the Mormon shenanigans and left the organization. Others chose to stay. Those who remained, put their shoulders to the collective wheel, blindly pushed along, and did their “duty to a heart full of song.” They didn’t look back with regret and they persevered and kept going and truly did build an impressive and financially well-endowed institution, even if it was built upon a degree of orchestrated deception. Our ancestors wanted to build a Zion, a Mormon utopia, where they would be free to act and worship as they wanted, and to also tell their stories as their own truth, framing it as the only things in life that really mattered. They have done quite well in meeting this goal. A Bit of Thanks is Due I like to believe that our ancestors did their best that they could within their worldview, and I honor their commitment in creating a belief system that brings meaning and a sense of security into their lives. I am grateful that they gave me a roof over my head, plenty to eat, wonderful memories of playing on my grandparent’s farm and fishing in Trout Creek. It is time for me. however, to be free of the doctrinal nonsense, completely. It no longer serves my highest good. The popular adage comes to mind, quoted by many religious folks to set themselves apart from those who do not believe as they do. We’ve heard the phrase many times. “God loves the sinner, but hates the sin.” I find myself using a similar logic towards my own heritage. I love my family and the congregational memories that were built on a collective and special sense of belonging, but I hate the limiting, lying “truths” embraced by an organization that has set itself apart as superior to every other nonMormon human being on the planet. Making one’s organization superior in the name of God is wrong and old school. For the 21st century, you would think that we would have moved beyond creating reasons to separate ourselves from the human family that shares the planet with us. Finding common ground and respect for each other will result in creating greater humanity and compassion. This us and them stuff no longer serves us. Knock Knock, Who’s There?

Those of us who chose to free ourselves of Mormonism, and to experience life from a place of authentic integrity, have often received a good deal of grief from those within the Church and who insist that only one ways exists to optimally live life. In a reverse sense, we as the Mormon posterity, are taking on the pioneer spirit, as much as I hate to say it, in seeking our own right to personal freedom from a restrictive, and at times, oppressive worldview. We choose to live a life that is authentic and that includes room to respect the rest of humanity.

Perhaps it is exactly the desire to be free of oppressive beliefs that still affects us as a leftover element from our Mormon heritage. Perhaps that belief can be a bridge, for those who grieve a sense of no longer belonging to the tribe, where we can still share a sense of meaning with our ancestors that connects us to our shared heritage in a different, but much more freeing way.

© Cristi Jenkins 2015 All Rights Reserved

Cristi is the author of Closing the Chapel Doors: A Guide to Letting Go of Religious Guilt and Fear