My wife says she’s not sure my love is enough

Ray has a good point. You’ll have no problem with the performance questions, tithe paying, support of your family, chastity, etc. I would guess you’re not affiliated with any apostate groups and I’m sure you sustain President Monson as president of the church. As to having a testimony of the restoration, my view is do I believe in the mission and atonement of the Savior and you’ve already said you do. You don’t have to lie or evade. If the best you can do is hope then I expect that will be good enough for God and I’m sure for your bishop. You may be under a bit of time pressure with the recommend and you’re job but don’t be in a rush to make irrevocable decisions when your feelings are in flux. Deal with today’s problems today, that’s more than enough.

Poor you. Poor wife. This is really hard.

Bless you. Bless wife. You need strength and remembrance and love. Hug lots! Hug wife and kids every hour.

-Joseph Campbell (Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyer) really helped our Heber13 to have a gentle landing, I think. You might check out a video or a book from the library and maybe even watch it with dear wife. It’s about a deeper faith, a more powerful faith.

-Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth might help you understand and explore what Ray probed you about, as well as give positive direction to your current difficulties.

Positive, positive, positive. Guard and breathe fire into positive energy. Good humor, affection, and attention in your family.

Tom

My first impression after reading your post was to validate a long-held belief of mine — mixing business and Church is like mixing oil and water. The two don’t go together very well — the Church, with its emphasis on eternal fairness, serving for higher motives, selfless service, giving up time and money, doesn’t mix well with employment in which you have immediate consequences for making mistakes, temporal matters are out in front, and the budget motive. In my view, when the spiritual is tied too closely to the temporal, it ceases to be spiritual anymore. I’ve had two heavy-duty temporal relationships with the Church, and it only complicates matters and each time has threatened my testimony. The fact that you have to a be a TR to be a Church employee has the unsavory impact of sometimes making yoru motives for living the gospel temporal and self-serving. I was in that position when I wanted to adopt through LDS Social SErvices — had to keep a current temple recommend or they wouldn’t let us stay in the adoption pool. It totally screwed up my motives and spirituality. I vowed never to work for the Church although I have skills that definitely would make me a good fit otherwise.

So, for the long-term, i’d consider expanding your talents in other areas through additional education, etcetera, to expand your career options, In general, it’s never good to be so specialized you can’t work for another company or be mobile. If you find yourself in that situation, it’s time to augment your skills and start preparing for an orderly exit from your work with the Church on your own terms.

In the short term, too much is at Stake for you to go without your TR. Your marriage, your job, your economic situation. I personally would look at this from a Utilitarian standpoint — the greatest good for the greatest number. In this case, you need time to get into a different economic situation, or get your faith back. So, I would post here and work through your issues so you can come out of that temple recommend interview with your job intact — you will then have two years to make whatever adjustments you need to make so you don’t have this economic pressure tied to your spirituality ever again.

I wouldn’t feel a lack of integrity over it either — I was a Bishop’s counselor and did many TR renewals. There is judgment on both sides of the interview questions — on the part of the person asking, and on the part of the person responding to the questions. As long as you can get through the questions based on your own interpretation fo what they mean, then you should be OK. If your doubts make it hard to attend the temple, then don’t go until you feel right about it again.

Regarding sharing your doubts with your Bishop. I’ve learned that’s a mistake. He’ll only force you to prove your faith at some point, against his own interpretation — and his standards may well be higher than your own. If you don’t share your doubts, you can answer TR questions against your own standard. I suggest you figure out how to back out of the doubt-sharing with yoru Bishop and simply deal with this personally. I think discussion here about specific issues might help.

Personally, I think you need to get to the point where your personal philosophy is driving your involvement in the Church, allowing you to say “yes” to the TR questions for your own spiritual reasons rahter taking the party-line of the Church — which is only the prevailing level of thought, and not doctrine in most cases anyway, and probably subject to change eventually.

Regarding your marriage. I’ve been there. I have to suck it up and keep my doubts to myself, That’s why I have so many hundreds of post here. It’s my only outlet. You might consider making it your own and cutting off doubt-sharing with anyone else in the Church.

Also, consider making your religion an act of service for your wife. If she has an emotional need for your involvement in the Church, then let this be your way of serving her. My wife has needs — for example, for financial support. So, I work at things when I’d rather be relaxing because it’s how I can show my love for her. I also shut up about my problems with the Church because it only upsets her. Plus, if I start inspiring contrarion thoughts about the Church in her, who knows how she will react without religion in the future if she adopts my attitudes? At least now, with her believing the Church as she does, I can count on faithfulness, lack of addiction, agreement on service, family home evening, my children saving for worthy causes, and the other good things in the Church that benefit my life.

Try looking at the Church for its practical benefits for a while, and your involvement as a way of expressing your charity for your wife. Until you can develop your own deep passion for living the gospel again. And the deep passion should be YOUR OWN REASONS, and not necessarily those espoused by the culture or general membership. It’s possible.

For now, you’ve got to get through that TR interview so at least you have time to get yourself into a better situation….

Tenor, I agree with Silent Dawning’s advice. I agree to go ahead and get your TR so the issue of finding new employment and uprooting your family doesn’t become additional stress on you, your wife, and your kids right now. It sounds like your bishop has been pretty nice and accommodating thus far and will probably be easy enough on you during interview. Lots of people on this forum have dealt with the TR issue, so can give you lots of ideas on how to reframe your thinking.

I’m guessing you probably already figured that out anyway.

The issue with your marriage is the biggie. That’s what you’re most concerned about… it’s the topic heading. I think it’s a good strategy that when things get tough and times get hard, the best move is to simplify. So… here’s the short answer. You cannot control how she reacts to your change of belief and change of heart about the church. That, brother, is out of your control. Don’t make the mistake of trying to tell her how to handle this new information. It’s going to hurt her for a while and you understand she’ll probably say some things she doesn’t mean. You know she is scared. So, focus on what you can control, which is how you treat her and your kids, and how you react to her fear and worries. If you end up leaving the church completely, not one church leader would advise her to leave you and find someone else if they were following the handbook. She might get that advice from TBM family members, but not from “the church” leaders. Since it sounds like you are completely committed to keeping her as well, what do you do? What do couples do when they are committed to stay married but have huge disagreements? They find compromises. They learn to adjust. They get help. Someone mentioned counseling. You said you didn’t feel like you connected with the LDS counselor. Find another one. Maybe this time not LDS, or maybe it doesn’t matter. Counselors understand things might not click and they’ll usually even help you find someone else if things are clicking and moving along in a mutually satisfiable manner. Band-aid the TR issue so economics and geography don’t disrupt things past the point of healing. The TR issue will come up again soon enough. Spend your time and thoughts on making marriage better. Let her see that men who have doubts about church history and doctrine don’t necessarily have doubts about love, their spouse, and committment to their family. A good man is hard to find, they say. Make sure she knows you are a good man. Show her, don’t have to tell her.

…I’m still fully active and tithe-paying in the LDS Church…As an employee of the Church, my job is dependent upon having a current temple recommend. Although I’ve read Jon Dehlin’s essay on how to navigate the TR interview, I can’t conscionably internally reinterpret the TR questions so that they mean one thing for me and another for the interviewer just so that I can answer “correctly.”

I love my wife, but most recently when I told her that, she said that she’s worried that my love isn’t enough. Although she doesn’t verbalize it, I’m pretty sure she feels like she deserves more…So I’m here to ask for some advice: what are some steps my wife and I can take to help ameliorate this situation? Have any of you had to deal with similar situations? If so, how are you working through it?

My wife’s reaction was almost exactly like this when I finally broke down and told her I didn’t believe some of the Church’s extravagant claims anymore. She basically said she wasn’t sure there was any point for us to stay together if I don’t believe in the Church. And she already knew I was a slacker by Mormon standards when she married me but I guess she thought I would come around and clean up my act eventually and hoped we would get married in the temple some day.

I tried to do what the Church recommends to build faith (scripture study, prayer, regular church attendance, etc.), but it’s not like you can always decide what to believe based on personal preference; sometimes you either believe something or you don’t (or you’re not sure) and there’s not really much you can do about it to change this. Now I’m just trying to be patient with my wife to give her time to adjust to my opinions about the Church and we’ll see what happens.

As far as your job situation, I don’t really know what to say. Actually to be honest I’m surprised that they could legally get away with making something like this an official job requirement. I also heard that seminary or institute teachers supposedly can’t be divorced and if they get divorced they will be fired. My guess is that if almost any other non-religious company tried to openly do something like this they would be accused of discrimination and probably sued over it.

If someone doesn’t mind conforming to the externally visible requirements like tithing and the WoW I would never judge or blame them for just telling them what they want to hear in the other temple interview questions about testimony and sustaining the leaders even if they have doubts about this or don’t believe it the way the Church intended. There is no way for them to know what people really think about these things if all they say is yes.

Like Cadence said in another thread if what they say is true then you are already in trouble simply for doubting them and if it is all made up then what difference does it make anyway? Meanwhile if other members know you don’t have a temple recommend then they will start to wonder why and it is embarrassing in the very least and much worse than that in your case. That’s why I would just renew the temple recommend and not really feel guilty about it either because they’ve made it so inconvenient to really do anything else in this situation.

Take everything very slowly.

Keep the updated TR to keep your job! You can easily wear the garment, pay tithing, and follow the WOW. The personal belief questions have wiggle room.

Your wife needs time to accept your new and changing beliefs. My DH needed a year. He needed that time to realize that I wasn’t broken .. and that my logic and mind gymnastics were something I had little control over. He knows that from time to time I envy the fariytale that I once believed. It was easy … So much easier to believe together.

I believe people, who have a spouse suffering through disaffection, will eventually accept their spouse if they truly understand forgiveness and humility … Or whatever other “Christian” attribute you would like to use.

“Love” is a big word with a lott of actions connected to it. “Love” might not be enough depending on who is defining it/giving it .. if the communication is missing or misunderstood.

I kinda feel like either the TR questions about testimony of God, Jesus Christ, atonement, restoration of the gospel, president of Church as prophet, seer, and revelator, and of priesthood authority have at least a baseline common meaning that all believers should share, or else the questions are all meaningless because there is no God, so the questions themselves mean nothing. Why just two options? Because the way I see it, if God does exist, then it is important to be honest about your testimony of godly things. If I believe in the Judeo-Christian God, I’m probably not also going to say that I also have a estimony of Zeus, Krishna, Ra, Thor, Baal, or any other deities from different faith traditions.

I disagree, respectfully. I believe that VERY FEW members of the Church actually have knowledge of the first vision and can say they believe it with 100% certainty. People are all at different levels. I personally believe some of the temple recommend components (such as the restoration) because I’m willing to accept it might be true. Pretty weak knowledge, in my view.

But that’s enough for me to answer the question affirmatively. I’ve never had a testimony of Jesus Christ as our Savior, but the idea of justice and mercy makes great sense to me. It’s highly intelligent, reconciling our human tendencies to make mistakes with the mercy of God, and allowing us to move past our mistakes. I’ve never felt true forgiveness “as a result of Jesus” — it’s always been the passage of time from mistake to abstinance from the error that makes me feel forgiven — when I’ve shaken it from my character — not some divine spirit-washing. However, the atonement is a working philosophy that I’m prepared to adopt, even though I may well end up finding out that Jesus was just a very smart man after this life is over. I hope not, however.

But these beliefs of mine, mostly logical, allow me to say I believe Jesus is the Christ and Savior of the world. No one is going to push you about where on the continuum of belief you actually reside.

And I think giving up your job for this bit of extreme honesty is landing you squarely on the wrong side of the tradeoff.

Also, reason with God about why you answered yes about certain questions, help him see your plight. You say you believe in him, so talk to him about that. Ask for time, ask for mercy until you can get yourself into a better economic situation, independent of the Church. I think you’re right — it’s going to be a hard sell to get yourself into a new economic situation with the economy the way it is — but at least you can buy some time and get ready for a new situation when the economy strengthens And getting through the TR is essential to that process….