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I have friends and family members who have left the church. A few actively removed their names from church records. Most of them simply slipped into “inactivity” and some even still consider themselves Mormons. I have some confessions to make about my various relationships with them.

Sometimes (though not always) I feel anxiety around them. I fear they might believe my love for them was somehow conditional on our shared faith, meaning my ongoing love is weakened or even pretend. I even wonder if my love was conditional, at least in some ways. I worry that any kindness on my part will be misinterpreted as covert missionary work. I worry that they’ll believe I pity them as lost souls who must be making sinful choices and disconnecting themselves from God. In fact, I don’t pity them for that. My belief that God’s mercy is deep and abiding and that eternity is a very long time suggests they’ll ultimately be fine and, more importantly, that their current experiences have value whether they unite with the church or not. So I grieve with hope.

Which leaves me with one last anxiety: that my loved ones might feel diminished by my attempt to recapture them into my narrative of God’s love and salvation. They may get the impression I feel bad for them because they aren’t living life the way I believe they should. Any pity on my part can feel judgmental and misplaced—especially considering the fact that someone who leaves the church can still live a good and happy life.

The truth is, I do feel sorrow when people I know leave the church. But expressions of this grief can be taken in a number of ways leading to negative side-effects. These include alienating people who choose to leave, as well as reinforcing a sense of superiority on the part of people who stay. At the most basic level, the idea is that a person who leaves is being defined according to a perceived lack on their part. Sorrowing for them makes sense according to the assumption that staying is the absolute right decision. In sorrowing, I impose my own standard on them even though I do it as an act of love. But my love is thereby revealed to be conditional. Instead of relating to a former member as still being a sister or brother in Christ, a dear friend or family member, I define myself over and against them—even if I admit that the fact that I’m still here and they aren’t seems ultimately mysterious.

I should put my sorrow in perspective. I sorrow for people stricken with cancer. I sorrow for parents who lose a child. I sorrow for suffering. In expressing sorrow for people who leave, I express judgment about their actions and the quality of their life. I categorize them with other sufferers in ways that may be untrue to their own experiences. I risk making a judgment about the likely state of their soul eternally, a judgment only God can really make and which I’ve been cautioned against making (Matthew 7:2). I cast them in the role of sufferer whether they feel like they suffer, or whether their actual suffering differs much from my own resulting from the vicissitudes of life that impact anyone (Matthew 5:45). Yes, there are some people who leave the church and who shift their values in sometimes-destructive ways, but there are church members who suffer from the same things, and there are people who leave but who maintain good values and live healthy—even Christlike—lives. And people who leave and apparently do suffer as a result of not adhering to LDS values (say, someone who caused an accident by driving while intoxicated or something) need an increase of love, not a withholding of love in an “I-told-you-so” fashion, as well as an ongoing recognition that everybody sins.

To people who leave, then, I think my expression of sorrow can come across as blame or as unfair judgment against them when according to my own beliefs I’ve been commanded to take care of the beam in my own eye before worrying about other people’s motes (Matthew 7:3). As I said, this doesn’t mean I don’t grieve when a friend or loved one has decided to leave. (And this isn’t a discussion about why people leave!) I try to worry less about the state of their soul than I do about the fact that something in their experience made the church a non-viable option for them. Instead of measuring their ongoing adherence or deviation from LDS values, I grieve that I’ll miss out on their ongoing contributions to the body of Christ. I sorrow that the church can’t live up to the divine potential it seeks to achieve. I sorrow even more if the person who leaves experiences grief at their loss of a faith that formerly sustained them.

More than with grief, however, I try to relate to them with hope. Not just hope that they’ll turn around and choose the right and make it back, but that whatever they do, they’re in the hands of a loving God whose plans for them are beyond the reach of my own vision. For both theological and practical reasons I believe saying “I sorrow for you leaving the church” isn’t likely to communicate love to most people who’ve decided to leave. It’s also unlikely to inspire love on the part of those who remain.

All of us are so much more than our church membership or lack thereof. I believe we’re all still God’s children. Some of my friends and family who’ve left share this sentiment. I hope my friends and family who don’t share this particular belief can understand it as flowing from unfeigned love, and that they know my love for them isn’t contingent on their relationship to my church.