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I’m struggling. Today my girlfriend said that she likes to spend time getting to know herself. I admit that I haven’t been that honest with myself about what I believe in regards to the Church. She is TBM and said that sometimes Satan makes us reject ourselves. I kinda nodded my head, which I guess was dishonest, because I was thinking to myself, “I don’t believe in Satan. Satan doesn’t exist.”
I explained a little of why I started coming back to Church in my post
Revelations and DatingBut I have trouble facing the nagging reality of the truth about myself and my beliefs about Church doctrine. I’ve been pushing it to the back of my mind. I’ve refused to face it.
I still just don’t believe any of it literally. None of it.
I’ve been going to institute with my girlfriend, who is unusually intelligent and says very insightful things about the scriptures. But I have to admit to myself that when she offers her keen insights to the class, I find myself thinking, “I don’t believe anything she just said.” When someone says, “Why would God do this?” my mental reaction is, “Because God is imaginary.” When we were talking about the lost 10 Tribes of Israel who went to the north countries, my girlfriend seemed to be excited about the doctrine of the whole thing, but I was thinking to myself, “Why can’t we find the lost 10 Tribes on Google maps? We’ve had military satellites surveying every square inch of this planet for 40 years, and no one has ever found anything. If the lost 10 Tribes are real, why can’t we find them?” I sometimes look for metaphorical interpretations for various doctrines and stories, but sometimes it’s hard to find one.
I said the closing prayer at the last institute class. I admit that my prayer was a little clumsy and awkward because I was struggling with the belief that there was an anthropomorphic God who was really listening and would answer. I don’t know if my girlfriend noticed or not.
I took my girlfriend to the Saturday morning session of General Conference a few weeks ago. She said she had a lot of fun. I enjoyed being there with her and I like going to the Conference Center. After the session she asked me which talk was my favorite. I said they were all good. I wanted to believe that, but I think that response was dishonest. I didn’t believe any of the religious doctrines from the session literally, and I was a little disappointed and conflicted.
If I were to marry this woman (which I doubt will happen, as I talked about in the “Revelations and Dating” post) and we had kids, she’d want to have scripture study from the Book of Mormon, and since I think that Joseph Smith and company probably wrote the Book of Mormon, I’d have a hard time explaining the things that God did to the people in the Book of Mormon because I still think all those stories are fictional.
I dunno. I’m torn, because I do like participating in the Church, but I don’t believe any of the doctrine literally. I like the metaphors and the opportunity to make meaning from the stories and the temple and the other things, but ultimately I think it’s all mythical.
I don’t know. Maybe I just need to leave.
I’m a Mormon culturally and in my behavior. I like the Mormon lifestyle. I like the social opportunities. I like the “clean living.” There are some great moral lessons and good stories. But I just don’t believe any of the doctrine.
I don’t think my relationship with my girlfriend will work out because she just isn’t that attracted to me (which is extremely frustrating). But if it does, and we do get married, I’d worry that I’d spend the rest of my life as a New Order Mormon, going to Church every week but always feeling that I was hiding my secret non-belief.
Any thoughts from anyone?
I think once we’ve started down the path to the dark side we can’t go back. 
What struck me most about your post was all of the stuff in there you said you don’t believe. That’s fine, there’s lots of stuff I don’t believe also. What do you believe? Is it all really just cultural as far as Mormonism or religion in general is concerned?
InquiringMind wrote:I dunno. I’m torn, because I do like participating in the Church, but I don’t believe any of the doctrine literally. I like the metaphors and the opportunity to make meaning from the stories and the temple and the other things, but ultimately I think it’s all mythical.
I don’t know. Maybe I just need to leave.
I’m a Mormon culturally and in my behavior. I like the Mormon lifestyle. I like the social opportunities. I like the “clean living.” There are some great moral lessons and good stories. But I just don’t believe any of the doctrine.
I don’t think my relationship with my girlfriend will work out because she just isn’t that attracted to me (which is extremely frustrating). But if it does, and we do get married, I’d worry that I’d spend the rest of my life as a New Order Mormon, going to Church every week but always feeling that I was hiding my secret non-belief.
Any thoughts from anyone?
I don’t have any advice, but I like to think that the atmosphere at church is going to change. Since you like so much about it, I hope you can hang on until it does.
Tough one. If you marry a TBM there will be conflict your whole marriage unless there is some kind of uncommon love or need that you meet in your spouse. I don’t have an answer… I personally was TBM for 25 years and then become unorthodox. At that time my wife and I had kids, propertly, mortgages etcetera, and I meet some important needs in spite of my lack of church interest, so it works.
To start cold-turkey would be a different story then. I think you have a hard decision.
SilentDawning wrote:Tough one. If you marry a TBM there will be conflict your whole marriage unless there is some kind of uncommon love or need that you meet in your spouse. I don’t have an answer…
I personally was TBM for 25 years and then become unorthodox. At that time my wife and I had kids, propertly, mortgages etcetera, and I meet some important needs in spite of my lack of church interest, so it works.
To start cold-turkey would be a different story then. I think you have a hard decision.
The marriage issue is really the issue for me. If I marry a TBM and I decide in 5 years that I don’t want to go to Church anymore, I spend the rest of my life posting and venting on NOM and there may be conflict our whole marriage.I guess I’m kind of thinking out loud here.
If my GF dumps me, I’ll give online dating a try (again) and take out some TBM women. I’ll confess my non-literal belief to them and see how they respond. If they freak out, then maybe it’s just not going to work with a TBM, and I may just have to leave.
There is also the matter of Gospel discussions, where a TBM wife would say “God did this” or “Satan did that” and I’d have to say that I don’t think that either of those beings did anything.
The Church is one of the more expensive organizations to belong to. On my graduate student salary, which I anticipate having in the fall, I’ll make about $26,500 annually, so I’ll be paying $2,650 per year in tithing. If I go to 104 Church activities a year (two per week) then each Church activity will cost about $25. I like going to Church, but I have to decide if it’s worth $25 each time to me.
So these are hard decisions, and I don’t have good answers right now. I wish I didn’t have to make them. When I was not going to Church I was never totally comfortable with the typical single non-LDS lifestyle. When I came back to Church I thought that I had solved those problems. But here they are again.
There’s so much individual variation, it’s hard to give good advice. Maybe my story will help a little. I had my faith crisis before getting married. I started dating this great girl who was a true believer. We ended up dating for three years before getting married, and as part of that we broke up once, got engaged and unengaged, and finally got engaged and married in two months the final time. We knew each other really well and had a really strong relationship in almost every way except with regard to religion before getting married. She knew I had doubts but I had never told her everything. She also knew I did not have a temple recommend but still felt it was the right thing to get married. Less than a year into our marriage, something came up with regard to the church—I think she wanted to say prayers together. I hadn’t said a prayer in several years and felt really uncomfortable with it, and we ended up arguing about it. I was angry because I felt she knew what I was when we got married, even though I obviously hadn’t told her everything. That was a failure of communication on my part. She was upset because she had assumed that my problems were minor and I would eventually “figure it out” and come back to church. That was a failure of assumptions and communication on her part. Luckily we had a strong basis to our relationship and we’re both pretty understanding and patient people. Our marriage has been pretty strong despite this continual point of disagreement and disconnection on a really important issue. I think one of the main reasons it has worked is that I promised her I would always attend church with her and our kids—and I kept that promise. That was kind of the minimum, so that despite our deeper disagreement, on a day-to-day practical basis our relationship functioned without continual conflict. I don’t have any serious problems with church or religion in general, so my middle-way attendance hasn’t caused me any serious angst (until our son was ready to get baptized, which led me to StayLDS).
A lot of what’s happened to me and what I’ve experienced is so unique to me and my wife that I hesitate to apply any of it to you, except to say that if you marry a TBM woman, be prepared for conflict and be sure you have a deep relationship and meet each other’s needs in other ways (as Silent Dawning mentioned). I would also say that it’s a bad idea to enter a relationship without being honest about your beliefs. As they say in The Netherlands “Twee geloven op een kussen, daar slaapt de duivel tussen” (Two faiths on one pillow, there sleeps the devil between). Ray has a post on his blog showing the disturbingly high divorce rates for Mormon mixed-faith marriages. It’s a tough haul.
Oh, and regarding tithing, look up some of the other posts about it. You don’t necessarily have to pay on your gross earnings, though you’d want to have an understanding spouse if you wanted to do it another way. Just to say it, getting to know one’s self is really, really, really important. It is one of our main objectives here – helping people get to know and accept themselves.
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