[SeattleUte]

Mike, you are witty and well spoken as ever. However, you remind me of Arkady Renko. Are you familiar with Martin Cruz Smith's brilliantly imagined police detective in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia (the novel Gorky Park, etc.)? Arkady is a fabulous detective, and with boundless integrity. He works tirelessly to catch criminals. And nobody understands what's wrong with his employer as well as he does. The greatest challenges he faces in his investigations are invariably the corruption of the Soviet and post-Soviet state.

But dammit (here is where you remind me of him) he loves Russia, for all its mendacity and all the suffering it causes, whatever iteration. He's had numerous chances to defect to the West, or start a new life there, even following some he loves deeply who chose this way out, but his love of homeland keeps him toiling away amid the low standard of living, the banged up metal desks, the corruption, the suffering--and he will not allow it all to compromise his principles. Actually, his many contradictions and stubbornness are what make him such an interesting, loveable character (my wife once confessed to me that she had literally fallen in love with him).

I understand your identity vis-à-vis the LDS Church is this kind of loyalty. But maybe Dehlin has a different constituency--those who (like our new comrade DaKing here) had come to rely and find inspiration from him. I have a feeling that DaKing's experience, which by the way mirrors Dehlin's own experience, is typical. Say all you want about inoculation or Mormon Stories, Dehlin is right—ultimately those who resort to this kind of succor wind up unbelievers. If you make the LDS Church about the story being true like we're taught history or science must be true, you will wind up outside the fold.

So, maybe Dehlin feels an obligation to those whom he moved as he worked publicly to sort out his own faith to keep the dialogue going. Maybe that’s more charitable than being a recluse. Maybe that’s his calling. Do you think he makes much money doing this (if so, maybe you and I should go into the business)? Maybe what you call being a drama queen is really trying to help people. (I confess though that I've never read a word of his work and don't intend to.)

By the way, apostates are fully aware of the richness of LDS human experience and humanity. That is precisely why it IS so hard to leave. You are obviously being too facile in deciding it's such an easy thing to leave. Apostates don’t miss the mythology; we miss the love, and being loved. Like Russia, the LDS Church is full of wonderful people however bad and callous of human suffering are many of its leaders, or how deluded by the leaders some of the people may be.

Here is a list I recently made of some of my favorite apostates. What do you think of it?

The historical Jesus

Paul of Tarsus

Dostoevky

Tolstoy

The Founding Fathers of the United States

Spinoza

David Hume

Adam Smith

Joseph Smith

Nietzche

Darwin