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From: K. Paul Johnson <pjohnson@vlinsvr.vsla.edu> Subject: Re: Why I left (expanded version) Date: Monday, August 17, 1998 12:25 PM Seeing an exchange about the honesty and reliability of an ex-Baha'i's story of "why I left" inspires some comments. There are so many ways to parse the question "Why did you leave?" that I think a couple deserve mention. First would be "What were your conscious thoughts at the time you chose to withdraw concerning the reasons for doing so?" Another would be "What reactions were going on unconsciously at the time that you can now look back on and recognize as motivating factors?" In my own case, the answers to these two questions would be quite different. First would be that the claims of the Bab and Baha'u'llah about their own status and their place in history no longer were persuasive to me. Second would involve so many aspects of being turned off by dogmatism, implausible readings of history, totalitarian hopes for the future, etc. etc., that it took me years to realize all the factors involved. I'd think that at this stage Tim might be learning more of those second-order motivating factors, since it takes a long while to process such things. Homepage |