Thanks for the welcome

I’m a little different demographic that most members on this site – I’m an ex-Mormon and and atheist.

I was actually concerned if this was a forum that I was welcome in so when signing up I explained my situation and why I want to be involved in the forum. Not only was I approved but Brian took the time to write me an email personally letting me know I am welcome here. So thank you! I’ve also greatly appreciated the welcome and thoughtful responses to my posts for far.

So if I’m an ex-Mormon, why am I here?

Largely because I still am a cultural Mormon and will essentially be one for the rest of my life. My wife is TBM, my children are TBM, my parents are TBM, my neighbors are TBM, my coworkers are TBM, etc. I am going to continue to be living in an LDS community in the heart of Utah Valley. I want to do so in a harmonious way and have deep relationships with Mormon. So in that sense I want to “Stay LDS”.

Also, I am really interested in the open-minded approach I am seeing in the posts in this forum. I have participated some on ex Mormon forums and I find perhaps the majority of the people there to be just as close minded as TBMs – maybe even more close minded. The general approach of those forums to villainize all Mormons and everything Mormon is not my approach and a little silly in my way of thinking. So even though most of you have decided to stay members of the church and some of you still maintain faith and perhaps testimonies of things I don’t believe I think I align pretty closely in general with people’s approach on this website.

I’m not here to convert anyone to leave the church or believe what I believe. However I am interested in discussing those beliefs at times in a civil way.

Here’s a little about me and my story.

I was BIC and grew up active in the church. I went on a mission to Arizona and had a great experience. I came back, attended BYU, and got married in the temple. As a teenager I had a continual “problem” with masturbation and porn as an adult. This had a impact on eroding my self-esteem – I kept it secretly hidden most of the time and just felt a lot of shame and disgusted with myself for trying over and over to quit without success. For a TBM looking at a reason for me to not believe they can peg me as a sinner.

In my 20s I had a lot of doubts. I had minimal exposure to anti-Mormon stuff on my mission but batted it away fairly easily. The doubts I had were more internal. I’ve always been skeptical of mysticism – so the convenience of miracles and the emphasis on miracles / promptings as the primary evidence of the church being true by so many in testimony meetings always bothered me.

The idea that if something goes your way it is a miracle and if not it is God’s will just seemed to convenient. In addition the inconsistency of spiritual promptings bothered me. It didn’t seem like I or others could really count on these promptings to make actual decisions – a situation I read about in the news where several small children of TBM parents slowly died in the trunk of the car while they scoured the neighborhood looking for the children really hit home – why didn’t the spirit prompt any of these worthy parents to check the trunk? I personally had several promptings that just didn’t pan out.

For me the big kicker was the scriptures. The more I read them the less I believed them. The Old Testament is pretty obvious. Any kind of objective look at it pretty quickly identifies it as mythology. The Book of Mormon and D&C also had numerous problems – for example the whole idea that the cursed people have dark skin just didn’t jive with me – it seemed a lot more likely that those living where they were exposed to more sun evolved to get more protection from the sun. The discrepancy of the magic world of the scriptures vs. the real world described by science just didn’t seem compatible. So the main thing I was supposed to do to increase my testimony was destroying it.

I’ve had many personal deep spiritual experiences. A few years back I had been in the mostly doubting stage for a couple of years at least. Largely because my wife & bishop were aware of this we were invited to go as chaperones on a youth Trek outing. As part of this I read the entire Book of Mormon before the trek in a month – and I definitely felt something. The Trek was deeply spiritual for me. It revived my testimony and reconverted me for a few years.

However, in the end I concluded that the evidence that it didn’t add up outweighed the evidence of the spiritual experiences. I determined that those emotions were just that – emotions and that I was in situations that elicited those emotions and that is the explanation of where they came from.

So about 3-4 years ago was the last time I waffled back and forth. I decided that I was just going to pretend I still believed it for the benefit of my wife and our marriage. So I went down that path for quite a while. I was called as EQP a few months later – I was in a spot where I either had to accept the calling or come out on my belief so I decided to accept. I tried to do a good job and fulfill the responsibility but sometimes it was challenging to be motivated.

Eventually I started rethinking the hide it and fake it approach. I seemed to be somewhat positioned to be called to be bishop somewhere in the next 20 years and I just didn’t think I could do that for a number of reasons. I was concerned that my kids might at some point have doubts and think they would disappoint me. The life of a hypocrite was tiring and felt like a wedge in having a genuine relationship with my wife. After mulling it over for months I finally told my wife where I was at.

I was somewhat surprised by her reaction. She knew I had deep doubts in the past. For some reason it hit her a lot harder this time. Perhaps because she thought my doubts forever gone; perhaps because I was more definite. Soon after I let the bishop/stake presidency know and I was released. The bishop was quite hostile about it – he’s not the nicest guy to start with – but I was a bit taken aback. At the time I was planning to do the NOM thing. I’m actually grateful at the bishop’s hostility in retrospect because I think that was a pretty big factor in my pulling back more aggressively.

Around the time that I decided I was going to “come out” is when I started researching on the internet. Finding out a lot of details about the history of the church and additional evidences that the things I no longer believed were made up was an interesting process. It was after I had already made my conclusions but certainly solidified them.

I kind of did a slow transition out of the church – not really slow, but over weeks and months. My wife has been amazing in so many ways. She agreed that if I am convinced it’s not true, there is little point in me being involved. Of course, there have certainly been boundaries, compromises, etc. After a couple months we determined I would not pay tithing on my income but that she would on her part time job – she agreed it made no sense for me to pay on something I don’t believe in. Likewise I have slowly stepped back from pretty much every aspect in church – it has been difficult for my wife, but she has been awesome in accepting that me respecting her beliefs is sufficient and that I don’t need to participate.

Finally last November/December I officially resigned. A lot of people wonder why I did that instead of just going inactive (in my case I actually resigned and continued to attend sacrament meeting.) That is a fairly lengthy answer but in short: 1) I wanted to emotionally distance myself from the sense of responsibility – I still felt responsible to be a good Mormon as long as I was a member – e.g. I felt the temple covenants still held some sway even though I felt they were made to a God that does not exists – I still felt some internal responsibility, 2) I felt like in the relationship with my wife that my resigning would be helpful – the sense of finality was a good thing – sort of the idea that having a missing child you fear is dead is worse than having a dead child – it may be a backward thought for most – but I think it was valid for our particular personalities and relationship, 3) there are some aspects of the church -e.g. Joseph Smith’s polyandry, etc. that bothered me on an ethical level to the point that I personally did not want to be a member the organization.

Recently as I alluded to in another post my son has been to the bishop to confess moral sins a couple of times. The most recent was a couple weeks ago. At that point along with a couple other reasons I let my wife know that I wouldn’t be attending sacrament meeting with her any more. Partly because attending was becoming more and more painfully boring, partly because the place my wife & I have come to is both respecting each others’ beliefs but not imposing them on the other, and mostly because I didn’t want to even implicitly condone my son being shamed by not being allowed to take the sacrament yet again.

With that said I think there is a lot of good in Mormonism. I think my life has been enriched by it in many ways. I think there are great people in it. Although I believe it is false, even arguably fraudulent I think there are many great people trying their best to improve themselves and serve others. I believe there is much on Mormonism that facilitates doing just that. There are also aspects of the religion that I find disturbing and even destructive.

So here I am. If you made it through all of that congratulations.