You can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone

This is a comment people who have left the Mormon church get often.  It is used by church members to explain why people who have left the church sometimes criticize the church.  It is also used by church members to insinuate that those who have left the church are under Satan's influence because once one has had the truth, one cannot leave the truth without turning against it.  Finally, it is also used as evidence that the Mormon church is true, precisely because one cannot leave the truth alone once one forsakes it.

It goes right along with the Mormon assumption that the only real reasons that people leave the church are that:

• They were offended by someone
• They wanted to sin
• They were deceived by Satan

To a Mormon, there is really no other legitimate reason for people to leave the church because the church is true: after all one cannot forsake something that is true without it being the fault of the person who forsook it.  To conceive of someone leaving for legitimate reasons is baffling to a true believing Mormon.  I know because I lived it, and heard it time and again when I was a true believing Mormon.

Having been able to step out of the cultural conditioning and childhood indoctrination, I now find both the quote and the assumptions to be some of the silliest logic built into Mormon church culture.  I also find myself chagrined that even with my training in science and logic, it took me many years to step out of that conditioning and indoctrination to see the illogic behind these cultural beliefs.

To be clear, I don't blame Mormons for holding these beliefs.  They are part and parcel of being Mormon, and Mormon doctrine is highly insulated from critical inquiry by its members through authoritative pronouncements from the pulpit about the dangers of employing reason in spiritual matters. Think 2 Nephi 9:28. This used to be a favorite scripture, one that I used to explain away all of the difficulties--because if I allowed myself to reason on difficult topics in Mormonism, it would lead me to the conclusion that the problems (at least) were because men made up the damaging church policies (such as withholding the priesthood from black men, withholding the priesthood from women, the institution of polygamy). Somehow God wasn't reasonable, but because His ways are higher than my ways, I needed to accept that.

The Saying

The reasons I find the quote "you can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone" to be silly are the following.

First, it's circular logic: people who leave can't leave the church alone because it is true; and the church is true because people who leave can't leave it alone.

Second, this assumes that people who leave churches that are not true leave those churches alone, or this could not be a phenomenon that points toward the truthfulness of the Mormon church.  This is clearly false.  There are many ex-religious groups that criticize the religions they left.  Think of ex-Jehovah's Witnesses and ex-Catholics for example.

Third, this makes the highly unreasonable demand that when someone leaves an all-pervasive culture, s/he should leave without ever talking about the negative aspects of that culture.  The Mormon church not only pervades all aspects of life, but it owns the important events in people's lives: birth and name through baby blessings; initiation and acceptance into the community through baptism, temple endowment, and missions; weddings through temple sealings; divorces through temple sealing cancellations; and death through the wearing of temple robes for burial.  To expect that one would leave the church that pervades and controls so much of its members' lives without commenting on or criticizing the negatives is a simply ludicrous demand. It's like expecting someone who spent his or her whole life in the water to not complain about what it was like to be wet all the time once having experienced being dry--that doing so is a sign of weakness or wickedness.

Last (and most difficult for a true believing Mormon to comprehend), is that this makes a huge assumption that true believing Mormons cannot fathom questioning.  It assumes that the Mormon church is true. It does not allow for even the possibility (let alone probability) that the Mormon church might be wrong on any important spiritual topic.  A true believing Mormon is not capable of seriously entertaining the thought that any of his or her sincere religious beliefs might be wrong without experiencing highly uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.

Going far beyond the discomfort of considering one might be wrong is the thought that the church may have been deliberately disingenuous in representing its history, for example:

• Joseph Smith's method of translating the Book of Mormon (it was done by putting a peepstone in a hat and burying his face in the hat, not by having the plates in front of him as pictured in all official church literature).
• Joseph's having married the wives of other men without Emma's knowledge (Polyandry is never mentioned in official church literature or in BYU church history courses).
• The mistranslation of the Egyptian papyrus as shown by the total mismatch between Egyptologists' translation and the "translation" by Joseph ('nuff said).
• Among many other things...

Learning that the church lied is extraordinarily painful when one has trusted it implicitly all his or her life.  And this is by the church's own definition.  These things may not be out and out lies, but are not fully honest, as defined in the Gospel Principles manual, where it states

There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.

I remember how painful it was for me to learn about the church's prevarications. I was physically ill when I learned about the church's lack of honesty about its history.  Definitely one of the most painful times in my life.  I don't know that anyone who hasn't gone through it can fathom how painful it is to learn these things.

The Assumption

There reasons that I find the assumption about why people leave the church to be silly are that they terribly judgmental.

First, it assumes that people leave because they are weak. Being deceived by Satan, wanting to sin, and becoming offended are all weaknesses.  I find this a terribly arrogant approach to people who have probably struggled tremendously to keep their faith precisely because they understand the social implications of losing it.

Second, it requires a highly arrogant assumption: that only people who get the right answer can possibly have received that answer from God.  If one is sincere, prays hard, and yet gets a different answer than a true believing Mormon, that person cannot possibly have been open to the spirit, prayed hard enough, listened hard enough, wanted it enough, and been humble enough.  That is a terribly arrogant judgment of others.

Lastly, it shares the same arrogant assumption that the quote does. It assumes that the Mormon church is true. It does not allow for even the possibility that the Mormon church might be wrong on any important spiritual topic.  It judges all of the sincere people of the world that are not true believing Mormons as being deceived.