freebyu

[NovemberEast]

regarding http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/81233/

In Anne's answer she referenced that in the scriptures "there is a difference between people who lack light and people who decide to leave it."

I can think of plenty of BOM stories that exemplify this but i'm no scriptorian so I'm blanking on any scriptures that say this directly. Are there? If so can you provide the book/verses? Thanks!

[Shrinky Dink]

The example that came to my mind is in the Celestial, Terrestrial, Telestial, and outer darkness.

D&C 76.
vs 83 says people in the telestial kingdom "are they who deny not the Holy Spirit"
vs 84-85 says that these people will be thrust to Hell until the last resurrection. (But they will be resurrected!)

vs 31-38 says that the sons of perdition have denied the holy spirit after receiving it, and they will not be redeemed.

While I highly doubt any BYU student fits into these categories, it is an example on how there is a difference between people who lack light and people who decide to leave it.

[Zedability]

This is totally in the book of Alma, but I can't remember where. But it's during the Nephite/Lamanite/apostate wars-that-coincide-with-the-sons-of-Mosiah's-missionary-service in the first half of the book of Alma, where he talks about how the apostates were both significantly more difficult to re-convert and significantly more brutal in war.

I think he makes a similar comment in either Helaman or 3 Nephi about apostates, and possibly in Mormon too.

[Portia]

Sons of Perdition should be a microbrewery.

[Portia]

Or, alternatively, the world's least-scary death metal band. (With last names like Christiansen and Offlurvensen, they just could pull it off!)

[TheBlackSheep]

I just couldn't disagree with Anne, Certainly more.

The current Honor Code does not require members to have a testimony. It does not reach into their hearts and demand that they believe everything (or anything) about what the Church teaches. What it does require is a certain standard of behavior.

Right. Absolutely. I think most of us that underwent a faith transition at BYU understand that. What's hard is the church attendance and the social necessity of keeping our lack of testimony secret.

It is true that for LDS students, the required behavior includes attendance at the student's LDS ward. However, the school is well within the bounds of fairness to require that students attend meetings of the organization funding the vast majority of their education, whether they believe every teaching it proffers or not.

Maybe, maybe not. But maybe requiring ~6 hours (3 for church and 3 for a class, and that's if you don't have a calling) of meetings every week is a little much. A faith transition is an intensely difficult time, and going to church is not, for many of us, a benign activity during this time. It causes intense discomfort, stress, and psychological pain. That makes church meetings seem impossibly difficult.

I think that the encouragement to continue living certain behaviors, including church attendance, almost certainly sometimes helps people rebuild their testimonies in difficult times. There are no doubt people who while at BYU have struggled but kept attending church because they know they need their bishop's endorsement. I believe that in the vast majority of cases, this is more likely to lead to a positive outcome than if they simply stopped attending when they began struggling with their faith.

I completely disagree. In my experience, both with myself and the many folks I knew and continue to know in this situation, forced attendance causes the vast majority of those struggling to have an increasingly difficult relationship with the church and its leaders due to the aforementioned stress and psychological pain. I have no idea if anybody would return to the church if they didn't have to keep going, but I believe many of us would develop significantly less bitterness, anxiety, anger, and psychological difficulty.

A church-sponsored school absolutely has interest in encouraging the growth, healing and maintenance of faith.

Perhaps. I would simply suggest that the current policy supports none of these goals.

It is made very clear in the scriptures that there is a difference between people who lack light and people who decide to leave it.

I don't think this is fair. We're talking about 17-year-old kids who decide to attend BYU and apply. It's not their fault if they grow up a little and undergo whatever circumstances and decide they cannot maintain their belief in the LDS faith. It also doesn't help inactive people to employ this sort of rhetoric about them.

Finally, I think it is important to consider justice on a wider scale when considering these situations.

Possibly a little dramatic. Let's be real: a missed opportunity at BYU because you didn't get in and BYU doesn't get rid of a few non-believing students won't ruin anybody's life. Feeling trapped between losing a ton of money and credits plus outing yourself to your family and friends before you're ready and having to keep going to church, lying, fulfilling callings, and the rest can be really hard. I'm still dealing with it in therapy five years later.

So, right now BYU is now facing a person who is different in important ways than the one they tried to recruit.

Again, this isn't these students' fault. When I applied for BYU, I was the ideal applicant and I was in all ways devoted to the LDS faith and BYU's mission. By the time I graduated four years later, I had grown up, had certain experiences, whatever, and BYU and its policies absolutely did not help. You grow a lot during college. It's not these kids' fault that this happens.

[Portia]

On a more serious note, I do have a lot of thoughts on the matter. I intend these to be 100% descriptive, not prescriptive. All opinions are born of experience. I have only my own, but perhaps they may be of use to others.

I, too was the ideal BYU recruit at 17. And of course, I'm an entirely different woman at 27. But there's a voice in my head that whispers, "wouldn't that be true anyway?" And unavoidably, I think the answer is yes. No individual is a poster child for an institution. That, my friends, is growing up.

I find a lot of pomposity about "seeing the light" and cutting ties with their Church, and by extension their alma mater, among some of my fellow disaffected Mormons. While they're certainly entitled to their opinion, I believe that this attitude is ultimately self-defeating and does more harm than good. Here are some reasons why:

• I am just as much an alumna of BYU as anyone else. What am I going to do, lie? Perhaps if someone who is unaffiliated with the Church sees that I am a contributing citizen, an articulate writer, a compassionate person, and draws the conclusion that I'm not in active attendance, then they'll have no less an opinion and in fact have a good impression of my alma mater. Plenty of people in the "real world" have asked me about my college experience. The fact that my college experience was so incredibly different from the norm is not something that I think is reasonable to omit.
  
  Degree in hand, BYU is not The Matrix. I've often found the claims of "control" to be overblown. (Again, just my experience!) Sure, do I have a whole hell of a lot of uncomfortable family encounters? You betcha! But none of them went to BYU. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that BYU pretty much saved me from an incredibly stressful home life and showed me that you can be Mormon and not be miserable. (I still think this. Still choose not to be. It's okay.)
  
  Defining yourself by a group is pretty adolescent anyway. So you fell angst because your youthful illusions fell away. Welcome to young adulthood. It's like all the self-righteousness of a testimony borne over the pulpit, except this time with sex and philosophy. And hey, I like both those things! But really, I think a lot of the "persecution" was in my own head. Really, my Mormon classmates and professors seemed genuinely interested in my contrarian views. Maybe if you adopt a "wait and see" attitude instead of deciding that you have to take some kind of loyalty oath, then you'll be happier with your decision, EITHER WAY.

Once I decided that I can still consider myself "Mormon," whatever that means to me, it was very freeing. I know that it's not a popular view, per se, but denying a huge chunk of my identity seems incredibly unhealthy.

I have sympathy for those who want to make a political stand, I really do. I just think that it could have a backlash with conservative students and faculty and then they'll decide to tighten the flanks and then where are you? Why not try to win hearts and minds?

I can imagine being a 20-year-old again and being mad as hell and thinking that a bunch of sexist, homophobic bigots had hijacked my school, my life. There are excellent reasons why I am not an active participant. I guess I don't see how signing a petition, being "out" would have changed my 20-year-old rage, though. That may be a big part of it: I'm somewhat averse to labels in general and over-certain, over-zealous evangelism in general.

But really, I think that I did realize my "human potential," that I can commit to a lifetime of service, and it's not in a "nyah nyah" thumb-my-nose way, it's what I genuinely believe. I can believe in Karl Maeser's chalk circle and have integrity, and leave the Church. I know my grandmother and father and maybe some of my professors wouldn't think so, but it's a personal experience and doesn't really need the validation of others.

I hope that the general direction is one of inclusion and an ability to withstand divergent ideas. The mark of an educated mind, after all. I think only a good 12 years after I read it do I understand what Chaim Potok is driving at:

“I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.”

“For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other’s throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the love I have for you, for all the things I remember, and for all the things I should remember but have forgotten, for all these I created this painting—an observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment.”

“Every artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a ‘universal’ without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.”

― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

[TheBlackSheep]

Why not try to win hearts and minds?

This. This is my main pathology. Trying to do this all the goddamn time has made me one sick puppy. I just don't think it's that simple.

I don't think ever 20-year-old BYU student who has problems with the church needs to or wants to really officially leave the church or take some big stand. I just know that my life would have been better if I had not have had to attend years' worth of church when it made me a wreck, and as such I disagree with much of what Anne, Certainly said.

[TheBlackSheep]

And I tried that for a long time. My blessing to anybody that wants to try it, but I don't think anybody should have to try.

[Digit]

Imagine the stress of keeping it a secret if you lived in one of the countries where apostasy is punishable by death. It's sad that in 2015 such things still exist.

[NovemberEast]

death.

Such drama.

[Portia]

Imagine the stress of keeping it a secret if you lived in one of the countries where apostasy is punishable by death. It's sad that in 2015 such things still exist.

Hmmmm. They're all Muslim countries. I have a really difficult time chalking this up to "cultural differences;" this is evil.

[Marduk]

Imagine the stress of keeping it a secret if you lived in one of the countries where apostasy is punishable by death. It's sad that in 2015 such things still exist.

Hmmmm. They're all Muslim countries. I have a really difficult time chalking this up to "cultural differences;" this is evil.

I don't know if this is directed at me or not, but I feel the need to clarify a misconception here.

Although the countries in question do indeed share Islam as a majority religion, and that specifically is enforced by law (something which, I agree, is evil; no government should restrict conscience) to argue that Islam itself is the driving factor is wrong-headed. The extremism is motivated by many, many factors, religion is just the manifestation.

[Digit]

Interesting. It seems that at Eaton, the prestigious prep school in England, "Chapel" attendance is compulsory, regardless of your persuasion. I wonder what they have for atheists. Maybe the "Evening Reflection" (sixth bullet down on the "list of services and assemblies" link).

[Zedability]

I think maybe an ideal, probably-won't-happen-in-real-life-because-human-nature solution could be if BYU students felt safe and non-judged admitting they didn't believe in the church anymore, and could just show up to sacrament meeting and sit in the back for an hour. And the Bishops could be sensitive enough to give them a non-particularly-religious calling like activities committee member or maintaining the ward Facebook page. Then students wouldn't have as much guilt/stress but the points Anne mentioned about BYU being within its rights to require church involvement could be somewhat balanced.

The obvious gaping hole in the idea is that the odds of being able to admit you've lost your testimony AND not feel judged at church (even if there is no official repercussion for admitting a lack of faith) are laughable.

[Portia]

I think maybe an ideal, probably-won't-happen-in-real-life-because-human-nature solution could be if BYU students felt safe and non-judged admitting they didn't believe in the church anymore, and could just show up to sacrament meeting and sit in the back for an hour. And the Bishops could be sensitive enough to give them a non-particularly-religious calling like activities committee member or maintaining the ward Facebook page. Then students wouldn't have as much guilt/stress but the points Anne mentioned about BYU being within its rights to require church involvement could be somewhat balanced.

The obvious gaping hole in the idea is that the odds of being able to admit you've lost your testimony AND not feel judged at church (even if there is no official repercussion for admitting a lack of faith) are laughable.

I knew I liked that kid. This is EXACTLY how I survived. Of course, when I went back to school, I was living in Sandy, which has a verrrry different singles' scene. My bishop was awesome.

Actually my bishop in Wisconsin, when I decided to stop going altogether, might have been just as awesome, but with the Feminist-gate stuff, I felt like I had lost the "home" I had and just came home. I still feel bad that he was basically a cog in a very large wheel.

[Marduk]

I just never understood the whole point of wedding higher education to religious worship. How are they connected? The gospel is designed for everyone. Higher education, at least, traditional liberal university education, is not.

It would be like making you eat tacos to watch the super bowl. I mean, tacos are delicious, and the super bowl is fun, but why is one necessary for the other?

[bobtheenchantedone]

Another perspective: I was virtually inactive for at least a year (and my church attendance had been waning for a couple of years before that) before I really started questioning. I stopped attending because I was having severe anxiety reactions: difficulty getting out of bed on Sundays, stomach too upset to eat beforehand, intense hunger and other physical pain during, frequent panic attacks of various intensities during sacrament meeting, and more. Church was torture by the time I should have been in my final year of college. Thankfully I had dropped out of BYU before then and, when it became too much, was able to stop attending church with no consequences.

[Portia]

I guess this is where I have to side with Zed. I went through plenty of periods of inactivity (mostly due to, "don't feel like it") but I feel like I always had understanding bishops who were more interested in helping me develop as a person than checking off boxes. I'd like to be an optimist and think that even in Provo, there are Bishops who aren't looking for reasons to reject, but are actively invested in the well-being of their "flock."

[TheBlackSheep]

Sure, I had one of those. I also had two terrifically awful ones. One that shamed me for liking girls and having age-appropriate sexual desire (he told me that my dead grandfather probably knew all about me, and what did I suppose that made him feel like?) and made me feel awful, and another who threatened me, quite believably, that he would not let me maintain my ecclesiastical endorsement long enough to get my diploma (I was no longer attending classes on BYU campus; I hadn't in over a year) if I did not maintain 75% attendance of the entire block, show up to some ward activities, fulfill a calling on the less active committee (ha!), and meet with him once a month. I was honest about where I was, and humble and all of that. He told me repeatedly that I needed to stop taking my "vacation."

And "not feeling like it" is different than what bob is describing and what I'm trying to describe.