Why Do People Leave the Mormon Church? Racism, Polygamy?
Filed under: Mormon Church, Mormon Prophets and Apostles, Mormon Videos, Videos
There are many reasons why people leave the Mormon Church. Fortunatelly most people do not, but still we need to be willing to help those who are struggling. The video below is a presentation by John P. Dehlin about reasons because people leave the Mormon Church and how we can help. I found an interesting comment to the video:
Most people are under the false impression that you have to be perfect to be called of God. People accuse Brigham Young of being racist and conclude that? he could not have been a prophet of God because of his weakness. You shall know them by their fruits, not their weaknesses.
This is an interesting and true concept. At the end of our lives we will be judged by what we did and even desired to do, all the good and the evil we did or thought. So, Brigham Young did a lot of sacrifices and good for the Kingdom of God but he was still a son of his time, and he had some wrong ideas about black people. However, it should be important to remember that most Americans were racists to at least some degree at that time. But obviously, there are different degrees of racism. There is a big difference, especially in the 18th century, between someone who would treat black people like animals and someone like Brigham Young who said inappropriate things about them, because of his limited knowledge or bias.
But some may say, ” Was he not a prophet? How could he make such a mistake?” Remember what Joseph Smith said, a prophet is a prophet only when he act as such, not at all times. Moreover, the Mormon Church was against slavery when many other Christian Churches were strongly segregated. Yes, the Mormons did not give the priesthood to the blacks, but other christians Churches for a long time segregated completely blacks from white members. Is not that racism?
As I wrote previously, some people have a wrong idea of what a prophet is (see http://gmormon.com/864/was-joseph-smith-a-true-prophet).
This is the video with more interesting ideas about why do people leave the Mormon Church