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My family on both sides is Mormon for generations; the most recent convert was four generations ago. Same thing for my wife. We have three boys, 8, 10, and 14. I grew up believing it all, but eventually found I was inventing reasons that God could exist, playing the guy claiming there’s an invisible dragon in his garage in Carl Sagan’s parable. I was Earl Warren testifying about a divine fifth column. Eventually I had to face up to the scarcity of evidence for the existence of God. I came out to my wife and family; my siblings and Mom were very supportive. My Dad wrote one harsh email telling me to repent, but left it at that. My wife dealt with it for a couple of months, but eventually it became clear that she’d leave me if I didn’t act the part of a believer.
How do I keep from becoming resentful? I don’t want to be at church, but my wife needs help taking care of the kids during sacrament. I don’t want to pay tithing, but my boys are all in that ordinance-heavy age between baptism and leaving home, so it’s necessary to be able to participate in that. I recognize the cognitive biases that religion preys on, and that exploitation offends me. It is necessary for me to be here in order to preserve my family, but I don’t want it to drive me crazy.
Any advice?
Thanks for posting your intro. I can relate to parts of your struggles. I’m glad you found us, and hope we may offer something to help you find your own way. For me it helped to see the “biases that religion preys on” more as personal needs that religious participation helps to fulfill. It helped me to begin to understand how diverse personalities can be and how different the wants and needs of those personalities may be from my own.
Quote:Eventually I had to face up to the scarcity of evidence for the existence of God.
I would agree with this up to a point, but I must recognize that this statement is based on assumptions and specific definitions of God. I find much evidence for my personal concept of God.
Quote:My Dad wrote one harsh email telling me to repent
Some people cannot see what you see. Be charitable of his blindness.
Quote:How do I keep from becoming resentful?
Look for the positives, they do exist. Begin a new journey where the Carl Sagans and Richard Dawkins are not the most authoritative or relevant voices. Read books such as Lowell Bennion’s “Religion and the Pursuit of Truth” and look for things that you can agree with – even small statements.
Again welcome! Tell us more about what’s on your mind!
Welcome metaweta! I hope you’ll be able to find some things on this forum that help you. It’s kept me sane(r) and probably even helped my marriage to some degree. I relate to a lot of what you’re saying. I rarely bring up my doubts, as it just makes us fight. We’re sort of at an equilibrium – we just don’t bring it up. I don’t mind terribly going to church because my ward is a good ward and my calling is mostly enjoyable. It might be a very different story if I dreaded church or if my Bishop quoted Cleon Skousen from the pulpit.
Hi, metaweta – I’m glad you’re here. I try to think about what I would want if the roles were reversed. Like roadrunner, I don’t bring it up too much because it causes contention. But I DO see small moves to understand me better. My husband will occasionally talk to me about some “difficult” issue and I can tell, by his word choice and inflection, that he is signaling me to say, “I’m not dogmatic and uncomprehending.” He’s just very conservative and invested in a way that, turns out, I’m not. Welcome to the forum. Many of us here have experienced a crisis of faith and many can relate to things that you have said. I went from TBM to nearly atheist at one point, and I do agree that the evidence of God is scant. Nonetheless, I do believe there is a God, but one that is not nearly as “visible” or “accessible” as the LDS view. In fact, in my view God is nearly totally uninvolved with us – hence the scant evidence. This view has helped me to rebuild my faith and has kept me sane. I understand where you are at with your kids – I have made some serious mistakes that can never be fixed and I would urge you not to make those same mistakes, be involved. Being agnostic or atheist doesn’t have to mean removal from a community, even of believers. I know quite a few people who attend regularly to support loved ones without having classic testimonies. It’s called participating in a community with charity and love, and it’s been done for thousands of years in every religious tradition that has existed. They live their lives according to the dictates of their own consciences and allow everyone around them to do the same. I don’t have anything else profound for you right now, but if you step back and look at what’s most important to you, you can find a way to be authentic and honest without having to be confrontational. Again, it happens all the time – much more often than most people ever understand.
Thanks, all, for your replies. I’m not necessarily looking to leave the community—I’m culturally a Mormon, and there’s no changing that. I find the people at church to be friendly and caring. The trick is that the Mormon adult male community has castes; a man who doesn’t pay his tithing is treated, by policy, as though he were a woman: he’s not allowed to preside over men in any calling, and he’s not allowed to perform ordinances, including ordination. There would be a corresponding judgement—conscious for some, unconscious for others—of my sons. They wouldn’t be denied the ordinance, but people would begin to look askance at them, to pity them. It’s unreasonable, of course, to expect to belong completely to an organization without paying the dues, but it still rankles me that I can’t leave, either. The comment about cognitive biases was not meant to insult others, but rather to express my own fears. When I pray, give talks, or pay tithing, I can feel the cognitive dissonance from consistency effects. I’ve been taught all my life that it’s wrong to lie, that personal integrity is among the paramount virtues. How can I reconcile this teaching with my attendance and participation?
metaweta wrote:Thanks, all, for your replies. I’m not necessarily looking to leave the community—I’m culturally a Mormon, and there’s no changing that. I find the people at church to be friendly and caring. The trick is that the Mormon adult male community has castes; a man who doesn’t pay his tithing is treated, by policy, as though he were a woman: he’s not allowed to preside over men in any calling, and he’s not allowed to perform ordinances, including ordination. There would be a corresponding judgement—conscious for some, unconscious for others—of my sons. They wouldn’t be denied the ordinance, but people would begin to look askance at them, to pity them. It’s unreasonable, of course, to expect to belong completely to an organization without paying the dues, but it still rankles me that I can’t leave, either.
The comment about cognitive biases was not meant to insult others, but rather to express my own fears. When I pray, give talks, or pay tithing, I can feel the cognitive dissonance from consistency effects. I’ve been taught all my life that it’s wrong to lie, that personal integrity is among the paramount virtues. How can I reconcile this teaching with my attendance and participation?
I feel your pain, and believe me I know it’s tough. What you really have to do is find the “middle way” or “your own way” (or whatever else you end up calling it) where you are being honest with yourself while being honest with everybody else. Take a good, hard look at what you have been taught compared to what you believe. The definition of tithing, for instance, is really quite vague and not necessarily what you’ve been taught. Likewise, talks and prayers do not have to be specific – you never have to testify about God, for instance, but you can testify about the importance of loving your neighbor (if you believe that) and no one will know you doubt God’s existence.
Just as a side note, I do realize that ordinances are under the direction of the bishop, but the handbooks really do not tie tithe paying to performing ordinances. Really, really.
Quote:I’ve been taught all my life that it’s wrong to lie, that personal integrity is among the paramount virtues. How can I reconcile this teaching with my attendance and participation?
Express only what you do believe – or desire to believe – or know – or hope – and use whatever term is most consistent with how you feel.
Talk about and focus on principles and concepts, rather than specific doctrines.
Frame your views in the vocabulary of the others in your ward and family.
Remember that most people bristle only when they feel attacked, ridiculed or dismissed. Express yourself in ways that “do no harm”.
Never forget that there is a difference between being totally open and comprehensive and being honest. You can keep some things to yourself and not be dishonest in any way. Tact is a virtue for that very reason.
I remember thinking at one point that my participation and membership, if I said nothing to the contrary, was like a vote of affirmation for everything any church leader ever said. Then I started to examine and take apart that assumption.
My activity and membership says “this is my home and community”, nothing more. It says almost nothing about my personal understanding and beliefs – other than I am comfortable applying these rituals and symbols to my life according to my interpretation.
I went from active faithful Mormon to agnostic, to atheist…and eventually landed on the pantheists camp. LDS church is hard for me…it just makes so littke sense the way it is practiced today. However, Mormonism does work for me, surprisingly. The lds church…not so much.
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Part of what annoys me is the feeling that I’m wasting my time. I can’t read or write during church because the lessons disrupt my verbal processing—especially in sacrament meeting where the PA volume is so loud. I may be able to do drawings; perhaps that will help. you can always just play the part like I do. Go to church and ignore everything. Give the leaders just enough so they do not think you are apostate. Never offer up any info about your beliefs to any church leader. Tell them what they want to hear in the temple recommend interview. It all sounds dishonest but what else can you do. They set the rules and hold your family hostage. It is not your fault that you are stuck in this corner. Besides the church has no problem withholding information from you, so I see no reason you can not do the same. Short of that you will have to stand your ground and suffer the consequences, which will probably end badly. But if you just give it some time and play along you may find your wife will come along eventually.
In the beginning I took the easy path – I’d treat church and doctrines like a branch of mathematics and when called upon to teach or talk I’d express myself within that limited branch of “mathematics.” In that sense everything you say comes from deductive reasoning where the initial assumption is that the church is true. Edit: This translates to actlike a TBM. Trying to get too fancy for my own good there. :silent: These days I try to take the approach mentioned by many people in this tread, testify and talk
onlyto points you believe are true. That approach takes a lot more time and effort but I’ve found that the added effort helps me better discover what I truly believe. Welcome. Glad you found us. Like many others have said, there are different ways to approach your situation, and based on your personality and desire, you can find something that can work for you.
Just going through the motions may buy you some time and avoid un-pleasantries that come from out-right confrontation with others about disbelief and doubt. But it may also leave you hollow and frustrated with the time and effort you are expected to put into it.
There are ways to adjust your view of things, and by doing so, re-engage with a different perspective. That also takes effort, so it would seem you need to decide what is worth the effort to study, reflect, and reconcile a new view of things with the mathematical approach nibbler mentioned. In other words, you can actually study doctrine and history with a curiosity on how you can know those things, and yet, still see how the church can help to develop the individual and the family.
There are examples of people on this board who attend church actively, even if the inner thoughts and beliefs may not seem like typical mormons. Or there are some that just don’t really attend anymore because it isn’t worth it or is too painful. So there are many paths. You need to choose yours. But my comment to you is to realize there are options that can work.
More important than whether the church is “true” or not, is what relationships around you do you want to nurture and build? Based on your background, it would seem that if you change the rules in your marriage, your kids or your community and not want to do things you did before (pay tithing, serve in callings, participate in lessons, etc)…it will change the relationships. That may be, and you may find that is what just happens, and that for you to be at peace you just need to go through a phase in life where things change…but use the support group here to talk about it and see how others have gone through your journey so you are aware of options and know the risks of each choice you make.
The church is as true as a ham sandwich. So you get to decide what that means to you and what you do with it.
I personally have found deep and beautiful truths through the teachings, even if I view things very differently than I did 10 years ago, and don’t see a need to believe things literally.
Welcome to the forum. Ask lots of questions. Do some reading, and take it slow before talking openly about all your doubts and thoughts. Here on the forum, you can go as fast and furious as you want to challenge beliefs and thoughts. Its safe here to do that.
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