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I found an article on Fair mormon on this and what struck me was the concept of the 'exit narrative'.
https://www.fairmormon.org/blog/2017/06 ... -year-olds
From the article:
Do you agree with me that this is something we deal with on this forum at times? In other words, some forum members share an underlying message in their posts that in essence say: "I used to believe the church is true, but now I find joy and happiness outside of church teachings. I hope you will give up your false beliefs and follow me". I believe this because at times, I've felt that the message a person is sharing is designed to encourage doubts about the gospel and to receive validation by getting others to agree with them.THE EXIT NARRATIVE
While talking about the love of God, which we can all agree with, her speech was calling out the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as false. It follows the pattern of a typical exit narrative which reads, I used to believe the Church is true, but now I find joy and happiness outside of Church teachings. I hope you will give up your false beliefs and follow me. Anyone advocating that from the pulpit should be asked to step down, even if they are twelve years old.
While I was not there for this girl's 'testimony', I did see this happen once when I was a child in my home ward. Back before the block meeting schedule, we had sunday school exercises in the morning before we split up for sunday school classes. A member of the Sunday School Presidency got up and told us all about his decision to leave the church and then gave his reasons why. We all sat there stunned and uncomfortable. One ward member even yelled 'sit down "______"! But another man, got up, put his arm around this brother and told him how much we all loved him and hoped that he would be able to work out his doubts and frustrations with the gospel and keep coming to church. Incidentally, he did not remain in the church--he had his name removed, but surprisingly, he didn't become bitter as long as I knew him, I think because he felt that there were members who genuinely cared for him, though they disagreed with him and his choices.
I hope that on this forum, we can speak up and counter false beliefs and challenge 'exit narratives' but do so in a way that allows the person to still recognize that we care about them however, I'm not sure if it's possible when our only contact is through words on the screen.