After I quit attending the LDS Church in 2019, I attended four Protestant churches, wondering if I could find a new faith home. That’s a fairly small sample size, and I didn’t attend anywhere longer than a couple months, but it was enough to identify why the Protestant sermons and Bible discussion were so different from LDS sacrament talks and Sunday School or Relief Society lessons. No one told me how to feel.
At some point in my decade-long faith crisis, I looked around a Church meeting and realized it didn’t matter what I chose to believe — my problem was that I no longer felt what I was supposed to feel.
Testimonies are part knowledge and understanding, but a good portion of a testimony is feeling. Do you feel peace at Church? Did you have a burning in your bosom when you prayed about something? Did you feel the spirit when you obeyed? Feelings are the cosmic game of Hot or Cold we play with Heavenly Father.
You know how to play Hot or Cold. One child leaves the room during Sharing Time. The rest of the Primary children hide an object. Then the child comes back in and the other kids all yell “Hot!” when he’s getting close, and “Cold!” when he goes the wrong way. The goal is to keep going in the “Hot” direction until you find the object.
Being guided by the Spirit works the same way. The Spirit sends you a warm fuzzy feeling when you’re getting closer to Christ, and you get a cold prickly feeling (stupor of thought) when you’re getting further away from Christ. Not only can we rely on the Spirit to tell us Hot or Cold, but LDS speakers and teachers spend a lot of time telling us what will give us warm fuzzies and cautioning us against actions that cause the cold pricklies.
We also have discussions about how to tell the difference between the Spirit and our own feelings. There isn’t really a definitive answer to that dilemma. If you know, you know. If you don’t, you don’t. Having the proper feelings means you’re feeling the Spirit, right?
We should be grateful for all things. We should be of good cheer, feel joy when we do service, feel peace in the temple, feel the spirit of Elijah prompting us to do family history work, love our families and know our most important work is within the walls of our own home. Further, we serve willingly, we choose not to be offended, we want to share the gospel with others and we feel blessed to have the gospel in our lives. We feel promptings of the spirit, we enjoy spending time with our families, we work to make our scripture study time meaningful and if we are bored at church, it’s because we didn’t prepare well enough.
Certainly, there are scriptures that tell us how to feel. “Be of good cheer” (John 16:33). “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). “In everything give thanks” (1 Thess. 5:18). The LDS Church took this and ran with it. Part of Mormonism is being instructed in how to feel.
Church leaders and exemplary members want us to be happy, of course they do. Church leaders themselves are happy so they are well-qualified to give us advice in how to be happy just like they are. And there’s the rub – we are to be happy doing the same things and in the same way that Church leaders and exemplary members are happy. Obviously this includes Church service, marriage, parenthood and enduring to the end.
This works for a sizable number of people. Many Church members find meaning and purpose and joy doing just what the Church tells them to do. Having a good community and prioritizing your family are good things. Feelings build community. Look at sports – entire communities spring up because people have intense feelings about which group of people is the best at getting the ball from Point A to Point B.
When my feelings went wrong, I doubled down on my efforts to do all the behaviors that used to produce the right feelings – more scripture study, more temple attendance. That backfired, and I ended up worse off because I felt betrayed by my own obedience.
Instead of feeling grateful for modern-day prophets, I felt patronized and irritated that they demanded my respect and trust while not being very respectable or trustworthy. Instead of feeling the joy of serving the woman I ministered to, I felt like the ward was taking advantage of me. Instead of feeling peace in the temple, I felt worthless. Instead of hoping for a family relationship to heal, I just wanted out. And Church was just so boring.
The pressure to feel a certain way caused me problems. My feelings were as wrong as I was. We aren’t allowed to have certain feelings. When I had the wrong feelings, I felt guilty and disobedient, which naturally made things worse. What I eventually learned is that you can’t force your feelings. You can influence them, but feelings just are. They exist. You acknowledge them, try to understand why you feel a certain way, and deal with the information. I’m sure this sounds remarkably obvious to most of you, but for someone who was raised in an emotionally unhealthy environment, this took a lot of practice.
When my feelings apostatized from the Church and took me with them, it felt like I wasn’t really in the driver’s seat anymore. Which left me with the question: when can I choose my feelings and when are my feelings unchangeable?
- Attitude changes: During my Church years, I prayed to like callings that I didn’t want and to feel charity for people I didn’t like. It mostly worked. I had faith-building experiences in learning to love callings and accept people.
- New information: Wheat & Tares spends a lot of time acknowledging that feelings about the Church change when you find out more about Church history and what was and wasn’t taught in Church. Knowledge influences feelings. You can’t unlearn something; you can’t just choose to not feel betrayed. Information and experiences cause feelings that can change previous feelings.
- Personal identity: When your feelings root into something fundamental in your personality, they’re not likely to change. Denying these feelings is what people refer to as cognitive dissonance or an identity crisis. Sexual orientation is a feeling rooted in our identity. Feelings about fairness and justice also spring from deep places in our identity.
The Brethren want us to trust our feelings as spiritual manifestations of objective truth, right up until we disagree with them. The problem is that when you’ve taught people to accept strong feelings as evidence of truth, you can’t unteach that. *In a teary voice* I believe, with every fiber of my being, that Heavenly Father has confirmed to me by the power of the Holy Ghost that he wanted me to stop attending Church.
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Questions:
- Do you have a testimony of sports? Can you have a faith crisis involving sports? What I’m getting at is if you have similar feelings about secular activities that you have about spiritual activities.
- Why do feelings change? Can we change our feelings back? Would you want to change your feelings back?
- If you could change one feeling, what would it be?
- To those who have become disenchanted with Church, when did you stop feeling the way you were supposed to feel? Did you learn information before your feelings changed, or after?
Wheat & Tares 
I love this perspective. Once I learned to accept my feelings, I quickly was a peace with not needing to make it work. Not needing to determine if the BoM or the church is true or not. I’ve heard many different perspectives on how someone realizes they are ‘out of the woods’ in their faith crisis, and that was it for me. When I stopped feeling guilty for my honest feelings, accepted that they are how I felt, and no longer had any desire to try and make the church work somehow (i.e. thread the needle of false narrative vs factual information and choose to believe in what my mind had already realized didn’t add up). I can’t imagine how choosing to believe that way is a peaceful feeling.
As an example, ever since I was a kid if the local missionaries are teaching someone I know, my first feeling has always been dread. Hoping that the person doesn’t get baptized. Truly hoping that they don’t. I can’t explain why, I know that there is supposed to be excitement around someone joining the church, but I’ve very honestly always felt like that when it happens. I remember seeing a kid from school show up at church one Sunday, probably when I was 7 or 8 years old. I just cringed. Not because he was someone I disliked, but I just had an aversion to him joining the church (turned out that was the only time I saw him there).
As I’ve learned to be honest with myself I have tried to recognize the reasons behind some of my innate feelings like this, rather than apply guilt to myself for my honest feelings.
“Can you have a faith crisis involving sports? What I’m getting at is if you have similar feelings about secular activities that you have about spiritual activities.”
Not sports, but I teach at a university, and as tenure-track employment has become increasingly precarious there has emerged an entire genre of “Academic Quit Lit” written by people who have sacrificed decades of their lives for the opportunity to provide meaningful service (as a teacher and/or researcher) to an institution (academia) that had previously given them a sense of purpose, community, and fulfillment. It’s not the same as having an LDS faith crisis, but there are some real similarities. (See https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/08/18/reading-academic-quit-lit-how-and-why-precarious-scholars-leave-academia/)
It was revealing to me when I was finally able to recognize how uncomfortable certain things made me feel and that maybe I had the right to recognize that. It was okay if I stopped continuously believing that I needed to bring my feelings into congruence with certain church leaders’ teachings and narratives that conflicted with my values.
ACT is a mental health therapy that could have pertinence to church members and former members working through faith transitions. It combines cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness with a foundation of acting in congruence with our values which ACT helps us to explore.
Russ Harris is an Australian doctor who has helped to popularize ACT and make it more accessible. He has a number of videos on YouTube that illustrate some of the ideas if you can find his YouTube channel. You can Google Russ Harris sushi train metaphor and also Russ Harris passengers on the bus to find some helpful videos.
I’ve heard that Utah State University has an ACT Guide which is offered for something like $10 where one can work through the ACT process. BTW you say “act” instead of spelling out the letters and it stands for acceptance and commitment therapy (I think).
I’ll provide some links in a following comment (just anticipating the spam filter).
Links for ACT and Russ Harris YouTubes:
Sushi Train Metaphor by Dr. Russ Harris
Dr. Russ Harris – Acceptance Commitment Therapy (YouTube channel)
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC-sMFszAaa7C9poytIAmBvA
Passengers On A Bus – an Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) Metaphor
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Self-Help Programs
https://cehs.usu.edu/scce/services/act-guide/#
This post resonates a lot with me. I think what struck me most when discussing other religious denominations and traditions was realizing that there really ISN’T the same prioritization on feelings as in Mormonism.
Even now, I second guess that statement. Am I misrepresenting those other denominations to say that? Did I hear them correctly? It’s just so weird to even write down.
And yet…it’s as you wrote early in the post: “no one told me how to feel” because in many denominations, that’s not the point.
This also makes apologetics look very different between traditions. Like, everyone wants to believe their faith is backed up with objective evidence (and certainly, many faiths have claims that must be accepted without secular evidences), but it seems that in Mormonism there’s more of a fallback to emotional confirmation as spiritual confirmation as objective justification.
Ethan – that’s a great defining point on the faith journey: when you stop feeling guilty about your honest feelings. I felt so much guilt for having the wrong feelings, and plain old acceptance was like that speed boost you get in video games. Guilt as a motivator applied by an outside force is problematic because of how much misery and confusion it causes. When guilt is an internal signal that we’ve done something that violates our own values, then it can be productive. When guilt is used by others to shame us for violating THEIR values, it’s manipulative.
Anon – thanks for the tip. I haven’t heard of ACT but it sounds helpful. I fished your comment with the links out of the moderator queue.
Andrew S. – I wondered if I was missing something too, to say that other denominations didn’t focus on feelings. Hence the caveats about my small sample size.
This is so interesting to me. With the caveat that this is purely anecdotal to me, my experience is there must be some level of emotional charge in these denominations, even if perhaps they just don’t come out and say it. Otherwise I’m at a complete loss to understand why these people support Trump for example. The only way it makes sense in my mind is that they have connected with him emotionally. I bring this up as an example as there appears to be a correlation between some Christian religions and our past president. And I don’t say that to be unkind; I’m sure many of my political and spiritual affiliations are based on feelings. Just an observation.
I wonder if other high demand religions like JW and Scientology rely on emotions. Otherwise I’m kind of wondering how they keep people engaged.
To answer some of your questions, I do have a testimony that sports are not true =). With regards to secular activities, yes I think they can be similar to spiritual activities. Above I mentioned politics. I think that my connection with nature as well as exercise is similar as well (for me personally; I recognize it doesn’t have to be that way for everyone).
Lastly, I read President Nelson’s GC talk last night where he talked about why people leave (apparently because it’s too hard but in reality we’ve been deceived because it’s easier to stay) which is completely an emotional charge. I really do wonder if President Nelson has actually engaged with someone who left the church in the last ten years. My wife and I both agreed that if life was significantly harder post-Mormonism, we would be open to returning. But that’s just not been our experience. I share this in connection with your point that my personal experiences dictate how I live. I think the biggest thing that has changed my feelings is just me living life and having experiences so completely different than our church leaders. After dealing with so much cognitive dissonance for years, I’m happy to try it my way now.
Excellent post. The very nature of Mormonism requires a high degree of submissiveness to the “Brethren”. From an early age members are conditioned to align spirituality with hierarchical directives. Too often we either ignore or hide genuine spiritual promptings that may conflict with accepted Mormon philosophy. Freedom of thought is limited.
My spiritual epiphany began only after realizing I did not require an Oaks or Bednar to act as “middle men” in my relationship with God. This simple philosophical change opened a new world of self realization and free will. It is liberating to accept responsibility for examining our individual spirituality. My only regret is that I wasted precious time listening to and accepting what others told me I should think and believe.
It is interesting to ponderize the implications of sports or secular related faith crises. The major difference is that we can exercise a degree of freedom in choosing who to support or what to believe. Unlike Mormonism which lays out in painstaking detail how we should act, believe and dress, we can exercise individuality and free will. In the real world, it is not a sin to criticize a coach or politician with whom we disagree. The Church denies this simple privilege.
1. We are supposed to trust our faithful feelings over the data (historic) when it comes to our testimonies. But what happens if the data changes are feelings so that we no longer feel like we believe?
2. We are supposed to trust our faithful feelings over our worldly desires. But what happens when these desires (a woman wants to work, a man wants his wife to share the priesthood) change the way we feel about the Church?
3. We are told that wickedness never was happiness, and we are told that if we leave the Church we are following a wicked path. So what is going on if we are happier outside of the Church than when we were in?
I could make a much longer list but I don’t want to be any more tedious than I am already. I guess my point with these questions is that the Church wants us to embrace some feelings but reject other feelings. It’s a little like doubting your doubts but not the Brethren.
Edit above: “our” not “are”
So, I had to Google something just to confirm…
Anyway, I’ve been having ongoing conversations with Catholics where they will say, “your experience with Mormonism distorts your view of what other denominations are like” and for a long time, I would reply, “no, no, I can tell the difference between Mormonism and other Christian denominations.”
But over time, it became clear there were basic and fundamental differences in understanding between denominations that I couldn’t really tell.
The role of emotion or sentiment in religion is precisely one of those areas. Here’s an article talking about this from a Catholic pov:
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/untangling-religion-from-sentiment
The following story would just go entirely differently if it were with an LDS bishop or stake president:
I think I have had “wrong feelings” at church since childhood and up until the last ten years or so. I always blamed myself for the wrong feelings and felt guilty about them. Wrong feelings are shamed at church and you can’t say them to anyone or talk it over and even check if your feelings are based on wrong facts. For example, I remember sitting in primary as a very young kid and the teacher told some story about Joseph Smith, and I thought that he was mean to whoever he was interacting with in the story. But the teacher was clearly expecting us to love JS for whatever he did. Now I don’t remember the story at all, just sitting there knowing I didn’t like JS because he was mean and yet knowing I couldn’t say it, because I was expected to love the prophet. But I never quite got over feeling like I didn’t like JS, and that God would never make a mean man prophet, because God was smarter than that.
Now, if it had been possible to talk about it, I may have come to a more positive feeling by understanding the story in context, or been told other stories where he acted kindly. But I was forced to stuff my feelings.
I learned later in therapy that stuffed feelings don’t go away, in fact they fester and grow. And I can look back on this little incident in primary, and see that it influenced everything about accepting that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I never could really accept him as “God’s chosen.” So, the church is not doing itself any favors by forcing people to stuff “wrong” feelings. Stuffed feelings are like poison that work quietly from the inside to kill positive feelings. If we were allowed to ask the hard questions at church and get real answers instead of being shamed, then the negative feeling would not fester and grow.
But I don’t thing the church has good answers to some of the negative history. And they are so sure they are right about shaming normal sexual feelings, and so sure they are right that gay love is terribly evil, and that women are somehow subject to or less than men, that they cannot even see they don’t have decent answers. So, all that is left is to shame people for feeling normal things, like still loving my gay child and loving her wife too. Or feeling that they would like women to have more say in the church. Shame, shame, shame.
But I have taken the attitude that if the church wants people to stuff emotions they don’t approve of, they are only shooting themselves in the foot. Who am I to stop the church from shooting itself in the foot.
josh h – yes, exactly. Our feelings are supposed to pass correlation too. It’s pretty clear which feelings are Church-approved and which feelings are a trial we must endure or a sin we must repent for.
andrew s. – that’s a really eye-opening article. The bishop tried to explain that the confessional doesn’t have to result in specific feelings in order to have meaning. This statement by the Catholic bishop is really different than what a GA would say: “We see the widespread belief in the West, even among Christian believers, that religion and worship should spark our emotions and make us feel good. The wayward conclusion is reached: if they cannot accomplish the demands of sentiment, then they aren’t worth doing. This is the sad, false reality that occurs when religion becomes sentiment.”
I remember several years ago seeing an Ensign article about temple work. It was an unusual article because the author said that sometimes it will feel like work, and be tedious, and we wouldn’t feel the spirit every moment we’re doing our family history work or sitting in a session. Typically, encouragements to do temple work emphasize the feelings as a major motivator. I haven’t seen an article like that since then.
Ooo! And this is from that article you linked too:
“In particular, if sentiment overtakes our conscience, then we are imprisoned in a small, self-created world, where good and evil become whatever we feel they should be. In such a world, we become slaves to the whims, shallowness, and cruelty of our own emotions. In this process, our sentiments demand that we worship them. By adhering to this false worship, we end up worshiping ourselves.”
Anna – agreed. Stuffing feelings doesn’t solve anything.
-I have a theory that when we hear something that aligns with our personalities and ‘top’ values, it feels like TRUTH to us.
-There are lots of values that people can have, and there’s not necessarily “better values” or “worse” values.
-Church teachings align with some values more than other values.
-When church teachings don’t align with an individual’s top values, it doesn’t feel like truth. It feels bad.
-People leave the church because they are staying true to their values, (not because of a lack of values) rather staying true to what the church says should be their values.
-People are happier/happiest when they are living true to their own values.
-Sometimes an individual’s personal top values align with the church’s values and it’s a great fit for them and they end up staying in the church. (But this doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for everyone. Likewise, it doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing for everyone).
-That’s my take on what’s going on.
Great article. It reminded me of a conversation I had with someone at a wedding reception a few years ago. She said she didn’t really like the temple, but she guessed that if she went more often she would. I said, “Not necessarily.” It is kind of bizarre that as Mormons we think that doing something more while not liking it is going to make us suddenly like it. That is just not how humans work.
I was talking with another friend who said that there were so many queer kids at her kids’ school, and she wasn’t sure how to square that with what church leaders were saying, but of course church leaders must be right, even though what they said just didn’t line up with her life experience. She was describing her feelings vs. what she was told she was supposed to feel. I said her assumption that they are right about this is certainly not a foregone conclusion, and if her feelings differ, why does she assume they know better?
I’ll just address #2. For me I think my feelings changed regarding the church when I obtained more knowledge of the history and more importantly social issues where the church no longer aligns with my own beliefs. These are things I can’t unlearn or walk back from. I can appreciate some of the good things the church has brought to my life and I am still somewhat Mormon adjacent. My husband is very much a believer – though there’s definitely nuance there. I care about navigating this sensitively with our family but admit to occasional outburst of outrage 🥴
I love this post, Janey! I think this is *such* an excellent insight about the Church telling us how we need to feel. It makes me think of the old purple Missionary Guide that was in use when I served, where one of the steps was “Help others feel and recognize the Spirit.” I always felt at a loss on this one, as I couldn’t help *myself* feel and recognize the Spirit. Like you, and like Ethan said so well in the first comment, I feel so much more at peace now that I’ve just accepted that the way GAs think and say the world works just isn’t the way I experience and feel it, and I just don’t care about that disparity any more. They can have their worldview and I’m going to have mine, and I don’t feel the tiniest bit of guilt that mine doesn’t match theirs.
Many years ago, I realized that if I had not been raised in the LDS tradition, I never would have joined such a religious faith. At the time, I felt that I should be grateful to have been raised LDS — as I never would have chosen that for myself. I saw it as God’s Will that I was LDS and I worked hard to comply to His Will.
Such thoughts eventually led me to start thinking about what faith tradition would have been a better fit for me. For me, I thought Lapsed Catholic, Secular Jew or part-time Unitarian would have been the best fits. If not LDS, that is where I would have landed. I based those choices on the various members of those faiths who I had liked and admired. My theoretical choices had less to do with doctrine and more to do with social relationships.
During that same era, I remember asking a LDS friend that. religious question, “ If she had not been raised LDS, which religion did she think she would have ended up in?”
My friend was extremely uncomfortable with the question and finally decided that Southern Baptist would have been her choice — as that was the religious tradition of her grandparents.
Her answer gave me more to think about. She did not choose an alternative religion due to her own theological thoughts or beliefs, she picked the religion of her extended family. She picked her tribe. My assumption is that if she lived in Texas, she would have obviously cheered for the Cowboys — and not the Seahawks or 49’ers.
A few years ago, as I left the LDS church, it felt like I was on my own personal path to find God. It still feels that way. I am on a spiritual journey that has little to do with any particular religious tradition.
My focus has been on increasing the honesty in my thoughts and feelings. I am working — and often floundering — on increasing my personal honesty.
My goal is to allow myself to feel what I feel and to claim those emotions that are often uncomfortable. It remains a struggle as my entire life, I was told what and how I was supposed to feel. I am still struggling to move past through that.
When I listen to an LDS GC talk or a local church talk/lesson, I find myself overly focused on how often someone is attempting to direct my feelings. I have come to recognize that it is endemic within the LDS culture.
At this point in my life, I find such direction of my expected emotions to be manipulative and dishonest. Will I feel differently later? I have no idea.
As someone who went through the seminary program and was a ward or stake girls camp director/staff member I just want to say that I have always hated teen testimony meetings because I never cried in either situation and that I always felt pressured to do so. Everyone else would be sobbing because they were “feeling the spirit” so strongly and I wasn’t. What was wrong with me?
It wasn’t until I was a ward or stake camp counselor or director that I realized that these testimony meetings were extremely manipulative and that you had to cry in order to be socially accepted. The summer that my sister and I ran the girls’s camp in her ward and then two weeks later I was called to be the camp director for my own ward (5 days before our YW were going to camp) I made a vow with my sister and then to my own bishop that there would be no testimony meeting the last night of camp. Instead I told the girls upfront that there would be no mandatory testimony meeting and that we would instead sit around the campfire on those nights and if they wanted to share with the group about our time at camp they could do so. The only thing that was off limits at the campfire was talking trash about other people at camp or back home. There was no pressure to speak if the girls chose not to.
The results were astonishing. At both camps girls who’d been to camp before expressed their relief that they didn’t have to fake having a testimony. The first time campers expressed how relieved they were too because their older sisters, friends and moms had talked about testimony meetings at camp and how they had felt pressured to say things that they didn’t believe and then to cry in order to be believed. Not only that, but several of the girls in both instances felt safe enough to express that they weren’t even sure IF they had a testimony. They did say that they were grateful to have a place where they could actually say that out loud and not be shamed orlectured to by the leaders or the other girls.
In seminary the seminary council members were the kids who cried the most and were considered by both the teachers and the other students to be the most righteous kids in our entire seminary. If you couldn’t cry as you bore a testimony that was usually word for word the same testimony as everyone else’s you just didn’t get up to do it because you would automatically become suspect. What’s most interesting to me is that every single member of the seminary council had left the church by the time of my 15 year class reunion. So much for crying equaling having the Spirit!
Over the years I’ve learned that emotions, especially regarding testimonies of the church’s truth claims, are not a solid sign of a person’s beliefs. If we rely solely on what we feel we’re liable to have a very up and down experience. When all is right with the world we can feel like our testimony is strong. However, if we’re sleep deprived, experiencing a depressive episode or other manifestation of mental illness, dealing with another kind of illness, experiencing hormonal changes such as puberty, PMS or pregnancy, or are struggling with the effects of the weather on our minds and bodies it can feel like we’ve lost our testimonies or never had one in the first place. I learned this painful lesson after going through a very traumatic experience my first year at BYU that made me think that everything that I thought I knew or that I’d been taught at home and in church up to that time was 100% false including a belief that neither God or Jesus existed. Later on I realized that these feelings were the result of depression (the illness vs. the blues) and of PTSD that resulted from the trauma. After three years of vacillating between agnosticism and atheism but acting like I believed so that I could stay in school I did come to know that God and Jesus are real. Gaining that testimony had nothing to do with my feelings. I just KNEW intellectually that they existed. We do investigators and every member a huge disservice when we teach them and demand that they absolutely have to feel some sort of elation, burning in the bosom or tears in order to be able to say that they have a legitimate
testimony of the church or of some gospel principle. The Spirit generally doesn’t operate that way.
Good points, thoughts, experiences everyone.
Without developing it to full coherence, one reaction I have is that feelings can be a two-edged sword of sorts. Feelings can be manipulated. Some examples that come to mind are:
– racism, based on emphasizing differences, promoting fears, and other things
– and an aversion to lgbtq+ based in part on what has been identified as an “ick” factor (always without acknowledging the “ick” factor that many children express when first learning about sex: “my parents would *never* do that”).
My parents were from a generation that was taught and exhibited a lot of racism, which my parents actively rejected. They navigated an unfamiliar outlook than they’d been raised with. When acBlack family moved into our Utah neighborhood, they welcomed them into our home, and supported friendships between us children.
Over all, there is still an uphill path to us becoming an anti-racist society and church.
In a similar way, it seems to me that despite continued obstacles, the queer community has made consistent education efforts, which is shifting perceptions, and increasing acceptance. I see it in myself, and in many others.
Identifying values
Developing guiding principles
Basing our attitudes and behaviors from there
Great post Janey and lots of things to think about.
I like the story from the Catholic Confessional mentioned above. Separating out feelings from religious/spiritual ‘reality’ of course does cut both ways. Just because you get the warm fuzzies doesn’t make it true; likewise the cold pricklies doesn’t necessarily make it untrue or bad. It’s going to be incredibly messy, but the separation is nevertheless a healthy step.
The exact relationship between feelings and ‘truth’ can likely never be pinned down (if it even exists). The relationship between feelings and mental health, however, definitely can. And doing what is right for our mental health is vitally important. If nothing else, divorcing feelings from ‘truth’ can give us the breathing space to think about things more critically and to better decide what is right for us, without any pressure one way or the other. You are free to feel what you feel and make decisions accordingly. You will find the place where you need to be.
Love this post. Two thoughts:
(1) feelings are so complicated right? Sometimes we seem not to have control over them. Sometimes we can manufacture them. My feelings about Church changed a lot when Church was quite simply no longer meeting my needs. Selfish? Sure. But when I no longer had that kind of tie to church, I was much more open to new information and revising my beliefs and my feelings changed.
(2) I’ve said this before in comments and I have literally zero data, but I’m convinced that being told all the time how we are supposed to feel – about motherhood, the temple, scriptures, come follow me, etc – and then not necessarily feeling that way contributes to high levels of anxiety and depression in Utah.