Talking To Your Religious Family About Church History Issues

[Music] hey what's up guys x morgan with my spiritual life i got my jared my jared helping me out today dibs okay so today we're talking about how to talk to your religious family members about the gospel or church history like things you don't like about it the that gospel weird hearing you say that like gospel things you don't agree with right like that's how we're going to talk about the gospel of jesus christ so here's my first tip don't criticize it ever [Music] the gospel of jesus christ that is just stop you ruined my joke okay redo uh here's my first tip don't do it don't talk to your family about church history and i know some people are going to disagree with me but i don't know what to say you're wrong okay here's my point it is innate in us to want to save everyone when we first feel like we're set free to the truth um but unfortunately the sad truth is a lot of people don't want to be set free from the truth and it can seriously damage or ruin your relationships now that being said um i think there's a time and place for it and that's why we're going to give you tips on how to do it more effectively you're gonna do it anyway you might as well do it right i i think there are times that you that it can be helpful to talk about it because yeah especially if they ask about it and also there's certain you know your family members better than we do so there's some of them that might be like in a place where they can hear these things and this is just some advice on how to sort of present it to them in a non-combative way yes yes again everyone's situation is different and my general advice is to stray away from it just to avoid causing more conflict in your relationships but that being said sometimes it's really important and necessary and i think being honest is important i just think what what we attribute a lot of times as ex-mormons to like talking to our family about church history is like just slamming the church to them and just yelling about it and that is exactly what doesn't help anyone he's actually uh our friend sean escobar likes to talk a lot about this i like a lot of things he says about this because he talks about when he left you know you get that feeling like because when when i left it i learned some unsavory things like i learned about the book of abraham and things like that and i was like well this can't be true and and it just was instantly like oh okay it's not true and you do kind of get that in your head that oh man they don't know about this and if they did know about it they would do the same thing that i did right and you'd think that but that's not the case a lot of people either don't want to hear this stuff or we'll remain steadfast believers even after knowing this stuff so that's sean in one of our in our recent video um where we interviewed a bunch of people he actually said you're not as convincing as you think you are so just kind of move on like live your life that's what's important okay so that being said if you want to talk to your family about the gospel and church history then here's some tips we have for you guys so my first tip is to use lots of i language and make it about your feelings and what i mean by that is to say like i found out about da da da and it made me feel it's a very good formula much less attacking than joseph smith's pedophile on the church is evil and they're just about to take your money and that automatically makes your family really defensive they're not going to listen to anything that you say and especially because you are representing everything that they've been told you would be as an ex-religious member someone who's bitter and angry and abcd right so the more you can just say it from this perspective of i feel this way about this thing i learned the more you can kind of deflate the situation and not put them on the automatic offensive like position of wanting to fight and you're not you're not telling them how they should feel about it either yes like i i felt terrible when i found out about early mormon polygamy if you say that then then it's not you know pushing it in there if you if you say joseph smith was a pedophile that's that's very charged language um it's it's actually like pretty literally untrue as well and so it kind of hurts the argument more than anything they're gonna get angry because now they either have to defend a pedophile or explain why he wasn't a pedophile or or they have to feel pressure to also feel the same anger so don't put the pressure on them to feel the same way that you do and so i find this very helpful and i think sometimes the reaction to that is to for someone to be very dismissive and it can be frustrating so you can say well i found out joe smith was marrying young girls and it really bothered me and and like you can say that and then they could say well i knew that and it didn't bother me and and it and like it can feel like this very dismissiveness and and that's where you have to say well i'm glad that you feel happy with where you're at but for me this is something i find very upsetting you know and so just again like not being attacking not telling them oh you're wrong or you're stupid or you're a terrible person you don't care about young girls or something like that just like okay that's your experience this is my experience so it's also important to give them somewhat of the benefit of the doubt because that does seem like one of the things like a guy marrying underage girls that does seem like a thing that you should pretty obviously be against so give them a little bit of the benefit of the doubt that it's not that they're okay with a guy marrying underage girls it's they're in their mind they're telling themselves there has to be more to this situation than i'm that i know about right now there has to be some different explanation right i know the church is true so there must be something else i'm missing so your your advice you had mentioned was remain unemotional and i know i just said make it about your feelings but this is a different kind of advice so go ahead remain unemotional so mostly what i mean by that is to not use that charged language that we're talking about um tonight he's super angry right so i took a little bit different of a route and when i would talk to morgan about it i i usually wouldn't even use i language i but i also wouldn't use the you language i would say some people think this some people think that they just do that like i separated myself and morgan from the situation and i would say like she'd be like well what do you think about the book of mormon yeah the book of mormon like well there's i don't know a ton about it there's some people that know about this view of the hebrews book that he had some people believe the spaulding theory a lot of people think the spaulding theories nonsense because of this i would give her a different point of views that weren't necessarily mine um it left me so much less attacked like i felt so like safe when you would just present this stuff like and so to clarify jared left the church before i did and so we would have these conversations i being the believing member and that's so funny i totally forgot about that until we you brought it up but i felt so much less um like on the defense because i'm like oh he's just telling me like there's all these different opinions and like i i was so much more open to having a conversation about it um and just understanding where he was coming from better was really helpful for us even if i had never left and i was much more willing to have a conversation when i didn't feel like i had to be defending my stance and i i mean i would tell her when i thought something wasn't very credible because she'd ask about polygamy and i'd say well well there's you know some people have there's this evidence that joseph smith um basically cheated on his wife and and the apologist will say this about it i don't know that the brian hale's argument is very credible because he's it right you know you give credit where credit's due because he's a really uh well-versed guy he probably knows more about mormon polygamy than anyone else i just think his conclusions are batshit i don't know i would take my emotion out of it and i'd say i wouldn't i wouldn't show her the anger that i felt over it because you got to find somebody that you can scream about it too because i you know i had my friends that i would yell those things about joseph smith being no he's a piece of he's a liar he's a con did you know he did this and this and this and this and this and but somebody who's a believing member isn't necessarily ready for just an itemized list of everything especially from somebody who's angry about it because when the more angry about it you are the less credible you seem because well you're acting based on your emotions you're drawing conclusions based on something that made you angry and anger comes from satan no really though yeah that's another aspect of this so it's super important to not let your family be the landing board for your anger it's just gonna damage your relationship with them and make you not a trustworthy source to talk to even if they ever did have questions so find someone because it's normal to feel angry when you're leaving a high demand religion it's just part of the process find someone that you can outlet that too safely and then from there then go if you feel the need then when you talk to your family try to remain as unemotional as you can as far as just not being so angry again easier said than done but i think it's super important and i think it makes you seem more credible and it again facilitates more connection and communication than yelling and shouting so the next topic was be fair i'd say it's important because we really don't want to do this as as a fresh angry ex-mormon you what you have that thought of why would you be fair to the church they weren't fair to you or whatever right explain what being fair means so when i say be fair i mean be fair in your criticisms of the church okay like i mentioned the spaulding theory right that's a theory about solomon spalding something about um i don't know like a book he had written that may have closely resembled the book of mormon but it's now dismissed by even a lot of ex-mormons and that i like that they're willing to do that i like that when ex-mormons are willing to look at a criticism and they're able to say this isn't a fair criticism yeah it might look bad on the church but i mean a it's not true and b it it'll look even worse on us yeah it's important to be fair in your criticism of the church because if you're not you know then you seem like you just have an axe to grind right and you lose credibility and you want your your positions to be ironclad this isn't just in regards to the church this is in regards to everything um if you start letting yourself throw unfair criticisms at the church just because you know the ends justify the means or or because well he doesn't play by the rules why should i play by the rules if you start doing that you're going to be intellectually very weak you're not gonna be able to your positions won't hold up to scrutiny because i found it on nothing and if your family catches you saying something that doesn't hold up to scrutiny then they're going to call everything that you're saying in a question even if you feel like you bring up a lot of valid points for example there are a large number of people who suspect that john c bennett performed abortions for joseph smith's polygamous wives the problem is there's no real documentation of this that we we don't have any real account and if i'm wrong about that then by all means throw it in the comments that'd be really cool to find out about something like that um but i haven't found any credible evidence to believe that and so if i were to if i would just kind of hear that online and then throw that out like well your church is against abortion but joseph smith was fine aborting the kids of his polygamous wives if i threw that to morgan she when i was still believing yeah when she was still believing she might have gone and researched it and found out well that's not actually a fair criticism because there's no credible evidence of that right then she's and then i'm ruined like she's not going to come to me anymore because i believe anything you say yeah why would you right right and i think you really like as hard as it is like you cannot bring these things up to your family with the intention of trying to change their mind because it's up to them if they want to be open and if they want to learn more and if they're not like you got to let it go like and and so i think these conversations can be really important sometimes because sometimes they really do want to know or sometimes it's really important for you to explain to them um especially if it is a spouse i think that's even more important um but you got to keep in mind that if you go at this with the intention of trying to change their mind you're probably going to walk away disappointed and that you really that's not your job like you can't you can't take that role on like all you can do is this is something that bothered me and here's why and you gotta like leave the rest to them because you can't force them into this decision you can't force them out of this perspective and the harder you try the more it's only going to damage the relationship because they're going to want to withdraw from you if they feel like you're forcing something down their throat that they don't want and you're gonna feel the same way about them if they're forcing the gospel down your throat and you don't want it so it's like you gotta as hard as it is like you gotta have that space you know definitely don't get mad at them when they don't have the reaction that you want because you can bring this stuff to their attention and they might do something dumb and just start bearing their testimony to you i think that's i think that's i think it's dumb i think it's intellectually weak um but don't say that because it'll ruin your relationship that's i i think it's also part of their conditioning because as missionaries we were told that don't argue with people if they start bringing up things that are troubling you just bear your testimony and so i understand being enraged by that but don't get mad at them like that's what they've been told to do and you getting mad at them is only going to confirm their suspicions that you are an angry ex-mormon led by satan yeah i i don't like using the word dumb because i'm like i'm like they really are just trying to do their best i don't know sometimes i i try to give people the benefit of the doubt but i'm careful when i say i said that's a dumb thing to do yeah i don't think they are dumb people for doing it no no i know i know i think the reason i think it's important to make that distinction is because i think it's okay in your head to think that's that's a stupid thing he just did but and you can understand maybe that's a dumb thing but you don't tell them don't be like you're dumb for doing that dumb thing don't even tell them it's a dumb thing you got to be patient because you got to understand that smart people can do dumb things and you got to remember all the dumb things you did because we all did yeah yeah um i think another thing that can help is if you approach the conversation with this attitude of i'm concerned like i'm genuinely concerned and here's why um and i think again it kind of comes back to what i said before but just having that like mom dad you know these issues are concerning me and having that approach as instead of that oh my god i can't believe i've been lied to it's just it'll make the conversation go so much differently another thing we wanted to bring up is have it's important to have the confidence to say i don't know in some of these conversations and that can be really really hard to do um because especially when you first leave you don't know a ton about church history maybe you only know a little bit or maybe you know some but you're not good at repeating it and you just feel like i i don't know how to answer all these questions that they're bringing up and i think it's important to have the confidence to say i don't know the answer to that um and that it's okay like you're okay with it and i because when you leave god's true church the reaction of your family is to be like well what do you like what now you must have found something way better than god's true church somehow so what is it and like you got to be comfortable saying i don't know like and that's that's just hard to do and especially when your whole life you've had the answers to everything one other um good phrase to use that i i got this from katie and alan mount from their marriage on a tightrope podcast they said that doesn't work for me i love that sentence that doesn't work for me um because it's non-attacking and it's just stating your true feelings about the situation like the mormon church just doesn't work for me in my life and my family like it's that's just not where we're at and and it's just a a great way to say what you feel but also not be a jerk and create all of this awkward tension with someone it's also something that completely doesn't compute in the mind of a mormon so it's something that they are going to be like what they might think about it a little bit you know because it's supposed it's the gospel it works for everyone it's it's a universal truth that is the best path for absolute not only the best but the only path for everyone um so saying uh maybe it works for you but it doesn't work for me um that's it's a very confident statement in and of itself and it it would be very perplexing i think i said something like that to one of my one of my friends when they asked me they kind of just finally he was like dude i gotta know what where are you with the church stuff and and i was i didn't really know what to say it kind of caught me off guard and i think i just said it's not really my thing right it was like not your thing what do you mean like it was so bizarre it created curiosity instead of shutting down like for needing to defend right well that and they're used to like that the sort of character of an ex-mormon that you have in your head when you're a mormon is that they are angry they are actively trying to tear the church down and they don't acknowledge that maybe maybe some people do want to be mormon and you saying it doesn't work for me implies that it can work for some people which is kind of like atypical maybe from what they put them into you yeah it puts them on this unexpectedly safe ground with you and they're like and we're not expected to feel okay after you answered that so now i'm like positively suspicious or something i don't i don't really know how to say right no i think the more you can create curiosity instead of confrontation the more you can actually connect and have a conversation instead of just yelling at each other hopefully um so yeah i think everybody has different principles but i think one principle that maybe ought to be universal is truth um and if what you are doing is searching for truth or reality or whatever you want to call it and you are able to constantly remind yourself because there will be times when you feel attacked when you're feeling defensive if you're if if holes are poked in your argument you you will feel sort of vulnerable and and defensive like you want to lash out but you got to remember the holes are being poked in my argument they're not being poked in me what i'm here to do is to look for truth and if i'm looking for truth well i mean if i don't have the truth it ought to be harmed it's that j ruben clark quote so we need to apply it as x mormons just as much as mormons need to that should be at the absolute pinnacle of your of your values as a person is to be like if my opinion isn't true i want to know that it's not true now it doesn't mean that mormonism is true but if they poke holes in what you're saying take it as an opportunity to build a stronger idea truth should be your ultimate goal i feel pretty comfortable saying i i don't generally feel comfortable telling people what their ultimate goal is but i think i i'm fairly confident that right truth should be a first principle for everybody in the world i think it can just help you take their criticism less personally even if you're caught off guard if you're like well ultimately i'm just looking for truth and so you know you brought this point up and i'm gonna look into that or let's talk about it or whatever like again just keep it unemotional as much as possible if you're trying if your goal is to find out what is real what is true um then you're not going to be hurt by conflicting evidence like if somebody shows you if somebody says well no actually it turns out there were horses in america this whole time we just found out don't get mad find out if it's real because if it is that's no longer a valid argument and you have to use a different one be patient with yourself be patient with your family members this is really hard these conversations are very very difficult for both sides they really really are and i think they really are important to have in certain cases so again just approach it carefully and table the conversation for later if needed like just say you know what i think things are getting a little heated maybe we should both take a step back and think about this and we can talk about it another day you know there's nothing wrong with saying that um because sometimes you can just see that it's not going anywhere productive i hope you guys found this video helpful we have a prompt for you guys to answer which again you can answer in the comments below or you can click the link to join our facebook group and answer the prompt there so we can have a conversation about it um the prompt is what advice do you have for people when talking to their religious family members about church gospel issues or history and like do's or don'ts very helpful um we'd love to hear some of your guys's stories as well because that's always really really helpful so thank you guys so much for watching this video please hit that subscribe button because our baby is due march 12th and so we are gonna need to take a little hiatus from the channel to sleep or well really to not sleep and uh so please hit that subscribe button it'll really help us to keep the channel afloat while we are gone and we'll see you guys in the next video [Music] you

Channel: My Spiritual Life

Views: 1,861

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Id: Kve2qyK3QHo

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021