NOM

I observe TBM's and they mostly seem happy. I once told a close TBM friend I thought she would be happier if they weren't TBM, but I might have been wrong.

I think they would be healthier (mentally at least.) Happier? I think it might depend on the person. Maybe there are certain people/personality types that really work with the TBM mindset. I was mostly happy as a TBM, but I'm a lot happier now that I don't have to do constant mental gymnastics to make my religion work.

deacon blues wrote:I observe TBM's and they mostly seem happy.

Much of the observed happiness is a facade I believe.

I always tried to put on a happy face while trying to force myself to be TBM. On the inside, I was dying.

wtfluff wrote:

deacon blues wrote:I observe TBM's and they mostly seem happy.

Much of the observed happiness is a facade I believe.

I always tried to put on a happy face while trying to force myself to be TBM. On the inside, I was dying.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Some, maybe many, could be faking it.

I was pretty TBM, but once I was able to shed the guilt arising from devout LDS belief I felt a lot better.

It is always difficult to know if corresponding undesirable behaviors accompany someone's TBMness. For instance, are they judgmental and condemning? Do they harbor weird right-wing conspiracies? Do they insist on buying Fords and eating wheat germ? Have they entered into the zone of Gospel Nazis?

I've met TBMs who have none of these traits and are just like regular people in thought and action. If someone's beliefs make them a good person and these beliefs do not knock the stuffings out of their compassion and general humanity, then more power to them!

I don't want to say that TBMs are all putting on a happy face and aren't truly happy, but I felt a lot of pressure to look like part of the happiest people on earth when I was a member. I strongly suspect some other members feel the same.

I think for many of them - at least the TBMs I know - they're happy due to a sense of belonging and a feeling of community. If you ask about the spiritual side of it, or the truth of the church, they often revert to talking about the community. That's really all the church offers - the Christianity part of it is so hidden and corrupted, that it's mostly a big club with huge annual dues.

But - the organization is great at telling people how to get approval. It's great at creating an identity, even if it is meaningless. It's great at being club-like in the Us versus Them sense of things, and people like to be in the right.

Those who grow up in the church generally don't get the sort of faith-based teachings you get in mainstream Protestant churches. It really is all about faith in most of those churches - it's about the teachings of Christ and examining yourself (usually without the guilt stuff, unless you're in a fundamentalist church), and internalizing how you're living that life. Nobody interrogates you - nobody singles you out if you don't follow a stupid rule. It's between you and God (or however you frame God in your heart and mind).

Other churches certainly have great communities, but they're not mandated "friendships" - and "callings" are voluntary. If a person's identity is wrapped up in seminary, YW/YM, or Primary songs, or the title of a calling, and if that's where they find happiness, it will be quite a contrast to be independent in the spiritual sense.

No dumb rules to follow, so there's no way to congratulate yourself that you're wonderful & you're better than someone else.

I know some families with unstable backgrounds for which being LDS is an enormous benefit. While it's pointless in a way to speculate on what-if situations, I'm pretty sure they they are much happier as devout members than they would have been without that framework in their lives.

Many things the LDS church (or other such groups) offers to believers can potentially contribute to significantly to happiness, such as the community, the feeling of doing something important, and the idea that there is an afterlife where wrongs will be made right and you can see family and friends again.

This reminds me of the "are you happier now?" topics that come up around here from time to time. Often it seems that people have a difficult time quantifying happiness generically, but can name some specific areas in which their lives have improved (or not) after a faith transition.

One thing I have observed is that some former Mormons (though not so much around here) seem to go out of their way to express how happy they are now similarly to the way current Mormons do. In both cases, it comes across as a little hollow at times. Though I have no doubt that some of these people really are just as happy as they claim, both inside and outside the LDS church.

I tend to trust that those who would be happier outside tend to end up outside. It s just one of the cognitive processes that if someone is unhappy in an organization, they are much more likely to find things to criticize. If people are happy, they will ignore all the faults that seem glaring to those who are not happy. It is why people can know all the historical problems, and those problems honestly don't matter. It is also why many members find one WTF problem in the history, and start digging and turning over rocks to find what else has been hidden.

For example, I had issues with the church since I was a kid. But while DH was active duty military and we moved 20 times in 20 years, I needed the social structure. I needed a ready social group when we moved into a new area. I could not afford to let the issues bother me. I told myself that the church was good, even though I could not make myself say that it was true. I dint look at issues at all because I couldn't afford to. But when we settled into one area, then the balance shifted. The church was causing more misery than happiness. When I really became unhappy at church was when I decided that maybe the problems did matter.

My guess is that there is some of that in all of us that ended up questioning. We were not happy and so we looked around for why. Which is why so many of us say we are much happier now that we are out. And why those who are still in mostly think they would be miserable without the church in their lives.

Wise and true words and observations Alas.

My situation is that I just can't lie. Especially about religious things.

To lie is to destroy trust.

I can't do that to another human. Trust is sacred. When we destroy that, we have nothing.

And I knew from a young age that I didn't know if our religion was true, and I couldn't leave the culture because that was my culture, so I had to find out what the truth was. I just shut up while I was finding out.

I thought it mattered. Silly me. I didn't realise people don't want to know what is true, they want to be comfortable.

alas wrote:I tend to trust that those who would be happier outside tend to end up outside. It s just one of the cognitive processes that if someone is unhappy in an organization, they are much more likely to find things to criticize. If people are happy, they will ignore all the faults that seem glaring to those who are not happy. It is why people can know all the historical problems, and those problems honestly don't matter. It is also why many members find one WTF problem in the history, and start digging and turning over rocks to find what else has been hidden.

For example, I had issues with the church since I was a kid. But while DH was active duty military and we moved 20 times in 20 years, I needed the social structure. I needed a ready social group when we moved into a new area. I could not afford to let the issues bother me. I told myself that the church was good, even though I could not make myself say that it was true. I dint look at issues at all because I couldn't afford to. But when we settled into one area, then the balance shifted. The church was causing more misery than happiness. When I really became unhappy at church was when I decided that maybe the problems did matter.

My guess is that there is some of that in all of us that ended up questioning. We were not happy and so we looked around for why. Which is why so many of us say we are much happier now that we are out. And why those who are still in mostly think they would be miserable without the church in their lives.

This.

I believe that religion is ubiquitous throughout history and cultures because it provides benefits for people. Those benefits are real and tangible to those people. Whether the 300 or so Hindu gods actually exist or not is a separate issue from whether their belief in them actually improves their lives or mental health. In my opinion, the jury is still out on whether religion in general is better for society as a whole.

I have dealt with depression throughout my life. I think part of the problem was, I was trying to be something (a TBM) I wasn't. However, many of my friends seem to be TBM's naturally, it fits them like a glove. I did discover a surprising exception a week ago. A person I've known for 20 years as a TBM who, to my surprise revealed he wasn't. I'm just concerned about friends who seem so naturally TBM I wonder if they would become clinically depressed if they did have a faith crisis.

GoodBoy wrote:

alas wrote:I tend to trust that those who would be happier outside tend to end up outside. It s just one of the cognitive processes that if someone is unhappy in an organization, they are much more likely to find things to criticize. If people are happy, they will ignore all the faults that seem glaring to those who are not happy. It is why people can know all the historical problems, and those problems honestly don't matter. It is also why many members find one WTF problem in the history, and start digging and turning over rocks to find what else has been hidden.

For example, I had issues with the church since I was a kid. But while DH was active duty military and we moved 20 times in 20 years, I needed the social structure. I needed a ready social group when we moved into a new area. I could not afford to let the issues bother me. I told myself that the church was good, even though I could not make myself say that it was true. I dint look at issues at all because I couldn't afford to. But when we settled into one area, then the balance shifted. The church was causing more misery than happiness. When I really became unhappy at church was when I decided that maybe the problems did matter.

My guess is that there is some of that in all of us that ended up questioning. We were not happy and so we looked around for why. Which is why so many of us say we are much happier now that we are out. And why those who are still in mostly think they would be miserable without the church in their lives.

This.

I believe that religion is ubiquitous throughout history and cultures because it provides benefits for people. Those benefits are real and tangible to those people. Whether the 300 or so Hindu gods actually exist or not is a separate issue from whether their belief in them actually improves their lives or mental health. In my opinion, the jury is still out on whether religion in general is better for society as a whole.

If you look at Kholberg's hierarchy of moral development, and consider that like Fowler's stages of faith, most people don't make it past stage 3, or having an outside authority tell them what is right and moral, then religion is good for the morally immature. Look at how TBMs worry that without religion people will be lost with no moral grounding. Well, that is because they still depend on God to tell them right from wrong. They have never developed the inner compass that is the higher level of development. I think most Mormons never make it to the point where they can take one of those morally gray situations and make a moral choice based on their own concept of what is right or wrong. The church teaches that this immature moral development is where we should be. If we disagree with religious authority, then automatically we are wrong because *authority*. They are still looking to the symbolic mommy and daddy to tell them what to do. The church also uses the level just lower than obedience to authority and teaches us we will be punished for wrongdoing.

When people reach the moral level of that internal guide, they dare to object to things that the church tells them when it conflicts with their inner sense of right and wrong. This is when they have outgrown the church, and this often kicks them out of Fowler's stage three and into questioning their religion. Then depending on how authoritarian their religion is, they either leave it, or become a stage five believer. But reaching the point where you dare to disagree with authority is something that makes people unhappy in their religion, so my point above still holds that people explore the the problems in their religion because they are not really happy. How long people have been unhappy varies. Some people get unhappy one week, and are gone, so they hardly remember being miserable.

One of the things that always turned me off about the church is the insistence that every person do the same things, regardless of their personal talents, abilities, or personality. My square peg was continually being pounded into the round hole of Mormonism.

Having come to the conclusion that I'm better off serving the world in my own way and being my own person, I hesitate to apply generalities to humanity. Some people would be better off without the church. There's a couple in my ward who are struggling so hard to keep believing that it hurts to watch them. They would be much more comfortable if they just let it go. But there are others who could not exist without the comfort of religion, and I respect them as well.