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There wasn’t a single event for me, my faith issues distilled upon me like dew from heaven. 
1) I saw an elaborately decorated sarcophagus in an art museum. I studied it and saw several very familiar vignettes, in particular a lion couch scene. At the time the thinking was: “Cool, I know a little about what those mean.” I was fascinated and decided that I’d devote more study to Egyptology.
2) A vague reference to the seer stones in one of the volumes of Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith. I was intrigued because I had never heard of them before. I searched up and down in church publications and other books but I didn’t find much info on the subject. I eventually abandoned the quest.
3) Skipping way ahead here. I realize this reflects poorly on me but there was someone in my family that I simply didn’t want to be with for eternity. I won’t get into specifics but my beliefs about the concepts of justice and mercy were
severelystrained at this time. That strain took my beliefs about the purpose of life with it. After that happened I revisited #2 above and found that my research was greatly aided by the internet. After I got my fill of seer stones I went back to pursue my studies of Egyptology, in particular just how much I knew about those vignettes I had seen. It was a process that took years to evolve and just as much time to recognize. There was no “Ah ha!’ moment. It just kind of grew out of a desire to learn more and more.
For me it was unmet expectations on the part of the organizational church. One one hand, we have a church that claims a prophet who speaks directly with God, is the ONLY true church, and has pretty high demands on the membership financially and service-wise. It levies pretty severe consequences on people who deviate from the textbook, both culturally, and eternally. And it requires a lot of sacrifice. For me, all these hard parts were worth it, given its grand claims. But then, it behaves in ways that seem to violate its own grandiose claims – temporal concerns trump commitment to values, greater concern for organizational issues than individual issues, and for me personally, complete lack of support on issues that are the core of our mission throughout my life — getting on a mission, eternal marriage, adopting children, and respect for me as an individual when I suffered from burnout. It’s been repeated and sustained.
And if I shared these concerns openly, the institutional church, as embodied by its leaders, would tell me this is my fault — that I was somehow not faithful enough, failed a test, am apostate, or some other argument that places responsibility for my conclusions squarely on my shoulders only — without any acknowledgement of accountability for the church as a whole. And remember — the church is not just its people — it’s its policies, its systems, the kind of leaders it tends to promote and attract, and its structure. These things create culture and behavior that drives behavior. In my view, you can’t hide behind the “church is perfect but the people aren’t” argument, when culture drives behavior as much (more, in my view) than individual personality or personal weakness does.
This was the chink in my armor. It gave way to commitment crisis, which then raised many issues like the ones we see on the web. The historical and other issues are secondary, but I will say — they support the prevailing thought in my own mind — that the church is not worth the sacrifice and stress it imposes on me as a member. I am so much happier now devoting my time to part-time business interests that have a service component. My life is mine to chart and I can grow in ways that are simply not possible in the church.
I do appreciate the impact it is having on my daughter, though. I am glad that I did marry someone who has integrity and who I can trust to be faithful to me, and I admire the hardworkingness of its members, and their general desire to be good people. The fruits are good — but the doctrine, and the experience of being a traditional mormon don’t bring me happiness anymore. Maybe at some point in the future, but not for the time being. A TBM would say I need to “eat husks” for a while. I say I’m growing and evolving as a human being.
For me, it was the endowment at age 19 before leaving on my mission. I had grown up anticipating that the endowment and temple marriage were the pinnacle of spiritual experience, but the endowment was anything but that for me. Despite attending a temple preparation class and reading “The Holy Temple” by president Packer, I was totally shocked by my experience in the temple. For the first time, I really began to question whether this could be of God. I ended up coming home from my mission early and struggled to make sense of things for a long time, but was able to put things that I didn’t understand on the shelf for many years, although I’ve never enjoyed endowment sessions, no matter how hard I try. Then my shelf came crashing down when I read some of Grant Palmer’s book and a neighbor left the Church. Shortly after, I started listening to Mormon Stories and found out about a lot of the other troublesome issues in Church history. Polygamy and blood atonement are big problems for me.
I’m still trying to figure out what I do believe now, and keep my marriage and family together, but it is so hard. At least I know that I am not alone and that there are a lot of people that can and do figure out ways to make it all work and have peace and happiness again.
It’s funny you should ask what precipitated my FC, because I was wondering that myself earlier this week, and then I remembered what started it all. I read the essay on Race and the Priesthood. I think I was just surfing around on lds.org, which I do occasionally. I taught youth SS and there is a lot of stuff on there to help. When I read the essay I was stunned. Not so much about the “we don’t really know why the whole thing started” idea, but the idea that women were not allowed to be endowed in the temple. My brain started screaming, “But that has nothing to do with the priesthood!!” Growing up we were told it was an issue of priesthood, when I read that women were banned from the temple endowment I knew it had nothing to do with priesthood and everything to do with race. I was sick to my stomach and literally felt physically ill. From there I read the essay on plural marriage, and while I knew that JS had multiple wives, I never knew he married other men’s wives. There again was what I considered a lie–that has nothing to do with populating the earth with mini-mormons. I felt deceived, and sickened. I have never felt the same since then, and struggle to attend church every week. Sometimes I wish I could turn back the clock, but that isn’t possible so I just fake it for now. My crisis started in earnest with the Nauvoo polygamy essay. I realized then that I would probably never be “all in” again and that I needed to look out for my own spiritual welfare. I think my FC starting after moving to Utah it started slowly . It was a real eye opener to see how different things are here with the church.
It would have been to our advantage to have a few relatives in our ward.Sadly we don’t have any relatives here in Utah.
I think the lack of a calling has helped my FC to move forward.I have had lot of time to study and ponder.
I have met a lot of very nice non members. Who are very Christ like, loving and accept people just the way they are.
I have a hard time understanding how people in a ward can justify some the things they do to fellow ward members.
It is hard to watch a worthy young man be too ill to go on a mission. It is sad to see how some leaders would not accept the young man’s illness and try to force him to go any way.
I think being worthy of a calling and not being given one has not helped my FC.
I am not sure how I am going to move forward out of this FC.
I’ve been dealing with my FC for so long know that it is hard to pinpoint what exactly kicked it all off. My inner turmoil still seems to jumble many things together. It may have been finding out that Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter, using his stones to search for lost treasure and other things. This smacked of scrying or witchcraft to me and I had grown up believing that the Bible prohibited such things. And if the Bible prohibited those things, why would God use him to restore the Gospel? That may sound silly or too simplistic, but it is one of the things that kicked it off. The other thing was finding out the things that Brigham Young taught that are no longer taught today and wondering why I should believe in a prophet’s declarations when at any point in the future the current leaders can simply declare that previous teachings were just someone’s opinion? Not that I agree with those doctrines that BY taught (I wouldn’t have joined the church if those things had still been taught when I was an investigator) but just the idea that what one generation believed to be the word of god can be changed by subsequent generations, that rubbed me wrong. I know, I know, continuing revelation…
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