My Motivation As A Critic Of The LDS Church

The question was put:

"A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement.

Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive (in praise of an object of attention), negative (in dispraise), or balanced (weighing a combination of factors both for and against). Since all criticism must be regarded as having a purpose, a critic may also be definable by his or her specific motivation. At its simplest, and for whatever reason, a critic may have either constructive or destructive intent. My link

Granted, this forum has more "honest critics" than what I have seen in other forums and being rare are very welcomed. Yet, I continue to see "cheap shots" toward our sacred faith with "questions" disguised as "gotchas" or the elusive trail to the "nail in the coffin" for the Lord's Church.

As a "critic", what is your purpose or motivation?

I only ask because I know of no one in the LDS Church who plays the role as a "critic" for other's beliefs and I completely don't understand the need to be one. I am open to understand."

To which I responded:

As a critic, I have no intention of destroying the LDS Church. I remain a member. I criticize the church because of the immeasurable pain many of its teachings have caused in my life (unnecessarily, it turns out, because those teachings were, in my view after study, pondering, and prayer, wrong). My hope is that I can be an instrument in helping to bring about corrections of erroneous teachings/doctrine so that future generations will not have to suffer what I have suffered. I realize that this change is not likely to happen during my lifetime, but I keep hope that it will happen one day, and when it does, a very heavy yoke of bondage will have been lifted off of people who want to keep their faith.