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This subject is a follow up to a post by, samsonwilliams titled: How do you know a FC is over. The purpose as I see it, is to show that our journey is different for everyone.
There may be similarities, but we can react differently based on our personality, family history, gospel
experiences or church history, etc. For this post, I’m not going to talk about my faith crisis or the events
that challenged my beliefs & led to my inactivity. Instead, I want talk about how I came out on the other side.
I was inactive for about 6 years. My wife & children followed my example. Over the years, we had very few
contacts with the members of our ward. When we did, it was uncomfortable at best. My journey back was slow in coming.
Some of the things I missed were:
– A spiritual or religious center to my life.
– I missed social contacts with the people I knew & liked.
– I missed a sense of religious certainty or peace that I was approved by God.
– I missed the peace that the temple experience offers.
– I’m sure there are other things too.
The moment things started to change was when we got a new Home Teacher. He didn’t know us. he started by asking us questions
and listened to our answers. There was no preaching, judgement or guilt. After a few months, he invited us to come to church.
We started off slow. Our old friends were welcoming with no questions or judgement. Overtime, we developed new friends who
don’t know our history unless we decide to talk about it. Which doesn’t happen very often.
Up to the point of my FC & inactivity, I was a person who believed in “absolutes”. By this I mean, Does God answer every prayer?
ABSOLUTELY. Is the LDS church the only true church? ABSOLUTELY. Are families forever? ABSOLUTELY. You can see where I’m going with
this. (Feel free to add to the list of absolutes if you wish.)
Since coming back, I don’t live the “absolutes” as much as I used to. My belief system is more open to new ideas & possibilities.
I have a calling today that is not as public as my other callings used to be. I am in Family History. I like the belief that we are all
connected. FH helps me to see that. I like working with software & helping people one on one.
I like Temple work & going to the temple. I don’t necessarily like the repetition, but I think there is always something to learn or
experience. I like to put my thoughts in neutral & try to find peace.
I like to meet & talk with people that are not in the church. I don’t do it to try to convert them or take the missionary discussions.
I do it to better understand who they are and what they believe. (Or, don’t believe.) I have friends that are Atheist, Muslim, Jews
and more. Before my FC,
allsocial contacts were in the church or members of the church. I’m glad that part is over. It has been a great journey so far.
ps. Keep in mind, you don’t have to come back to the church to feel fulfilled or reconciled to what you were before your FC.Some of my friends never came back to the church & feel fulfilled in this life & the next.
There will be more to come.
“How I came out on the Other Side”BACKGROUND:My faith crisis was mostly the result of and an important sideshow in a personal “mistaken identity” crisis. I had developed an “identity” as “a mostly righteous individual who believed in personal revelation and guidance from God”. – I checked most of the checkboxes for church engagement on both the literal and spiritual levels. Clean Living, Modesty, Templework, Geneology, Consideration for others, etc.
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I was “a good example” on paper, but I really hated (and still do) the “performance box” my gender put me in. Cooking gives me anxiety (reasons), and I prefer to support others through “logic” rather then the “emotional sensitivity” I was supposed to have been born with. I tend to view the concepts of “power and authority” more as a genderless trainable skillset rather then an innate individual attribute of the other 49% (ish) of the population. I came across communication information from the world of neuroscience, development, and communication that made me question whether I was qualified to receive revelation from God. Not from a “worthiness” aspect but from an “actual ability / communication hardware” question.NOTE: Yes, I am aware of the “everyone and anyone can receive revelation from God” narrative. I am also aware of the many individuals who feel that they haven’t ever genuinely received revelation from God as well. My narrative was that “I thought I was – but now that I know more about myself, I am not nearly so certain about those thoughts”.
a) I spent 6 months or so on the theological line between Atheist and Agnostic (with Deist a variation of Agnosticism) without my spouse being aware of my faith crisis period.
b) Eventually I settled into the “Agnostic” camp because I have no way of absolutely knowing that God exists or what God wants and the hope that God exists and is indifferent to me or cares about me is more comforting then saying that God absolutely doesn’t exist.
c) A “Lot” of gospel-related topics became less important to me personally to “know the answers to” because of where I was as in relation to God.
- A “Lot” of stuff is tentatively tagged as “human idealism” or “mortal projections onto God” or “unknown/currently probably unknowable”.
- “Christianity is one of those things actually, which makes church engagement interesting.
A CHANGED PERSPECTIVE: “[God May Fail], but Charity Never Faileth”I chose “Charity” as a personal value / lifeline at the time because it still made me “socially acceptable” and it still worked for me.
– “Charity” means the literal “mourning with those that mourn” and “comforting those that stand in need of comfort”.
– “Charity” means “the work of extending Grace” – that grace/compassion to myself, and to those that I wandered into while in my faith crisis.
– “Charity” was a way that God could still connect to me and communicate with me that would not leave me bereft if God never showed up in relation to me.
– It was better to be a “charitable atheist” then a “non-charitable atheist” in my values system.
A CHANGED PERSPECTIVE: “Like Adam Post-Garden”Like Adam, I determined that I was (and still are) “waiting on the revelation/knowledge that God promised to send”.
– The temple narrative makes it clear that no one was judging Adam’s caution as “rash” or rushing Adam to accept God’s messengers on their own credentials. The messengers show up several times before Adam recognizes them – and no one blinks an eye about that. While Adam is sorting out the messenger situation, Adam is also raising kids with Eve and co-creating a life together in a new world outside the garden.
– If Adam can wait until he is sure he knows what is going on and who the messengers are, then I can sit in the discomfort of uncertainty doing what I need to do and co-create a meaningful life where I am.
WHAT HELPED:My Mother and Grandfather– My grandfather was an ethical atheist/agnostic and helped me identify “the dark night of the soul”. My mom accepted me and provided/provides a sounding board for a lot of related topics This Site (and eventually others)– especially the essays on the support page. Being deliberate in practicing setting boundaries without burning down all the bridges was super helpful in my marriage and friendships. I have made friends here who have impacted my life in ways beyond what I thought was possible. Professional Counseling– My faith transition was 1 aspect of what loosely may be called a “mid-life identity crisis”. I have found out a lot about how I interact with the world, and what I value in the world that has helped me truly see who I am (not the gender-performance based individual I used to be) and what I really truly value and how to live a life adapted to what I need and what I can sustainably give. Information and Narratives– The “rabbit hole” of “communication” has also lead to other sources of information, ideas, and concept that were game-changers for me. PM me with a topic and I probably have a resource:)TIMELINE:– I’ve been at this for 7+ years now I think.
– I tried to “make it work” going to church as the “active parent” dragging my kids to church solo in the hopes they would connect to the community. I tried “all the things” to see if I could re-calibrate and identify conversation with God.
– I have co-managed to have a more fulfilling and healthier relationship with my spouse that is arguably equally “because of” and “despite” my faith transition. I don’t recommend this process for marriages in general – my husband and I “got lucky” and “made our own luck” in a lot of ways.
– I haven’t really been engaged at church since March 2020, and it has been good for me and my children. My husband doesn’t often attend church, and doesn’t feel a huge need to be engaged with the church community. Our religious-based struggles were literally “personal and family values as matters of principle” rather then specific practices.
– I do consider take my children to some cultural events such as the Halloween or Christmas party for now. I do value my friends who are still my friends post-faith transition, and we meet up periodically.
I still drag my teenager to stake youth service projects when I can because “Charity Never Faileth” and they need the experience of helping others to provide different perspectives.
“1980’s to the present Mormonism” is the heritage I have from my family and is an integral part of my identity that I can’t just throw out through re-invention.
What has your journey been like through your faith crisis? Punishing, rewarding; bleak, hopeful; devastating, beneficial; lonely, connecting; sad, happy; etc. The journey has had its ups and downs but the more lasting result of my faith crisis is that it has been both enriching and a net positive. If granted a wish I wouldn’t choose to undo it.
I started off feeling incredibly alone. Many of the topics surrounding a faith crisis are taboo at church so it can give the person experiencing a faith crisis the impression that they are all alone. You/we aren’t alone.
There was a period where I was consumed with reading and studying everything I could get my hands on. In the thick of that period I wondered if I could ever give up that addiction. I did. I didn’t intentionally try to will myself away from that stage, I simply let it run its course.
I found this forum (and later others). That helped me realize that I wasn’t alone in my thoughts and feelings.
I’m now over a decade on the other side of those crisis days. Up until very recently I’ve been active in the church, attending meetings, holding callings, holding an active TR. I won’t say that’s been easy. To make it work I had to establish boundaries at church, which was difficult because church culture tends to steer people towards an all or nothing approach.
I certainly had my ups and downs during that period. For example, a talk on a subject that would bring some latent but intense emotions back to the surface. In those instances I just get up and leave the meeting.
There was a period where my boundaries were challenged. Several years ago I got into an argument of sorts with a local church leader that was emphatic about me not being allowed to turn down a calling they were extending to me. They weren’t taking no for an answer and I wasn’t budging.
There were also a few old guard types in that ward that ruled the roost. I also had several other clashes with orthodoxy in that ward. For example, there were a few occasions where people were getting onto me for how I dressed (not wearing a suit coat). It was legit nuts but I want to point out that I think it was just a few “bad” apples that were souring the experience of trying to navigate church participation with nuanced beliefs.
After I started enforcing boundaries I found myself alone in a crowd when I attended church. There’s nothing quite like attending church for months on end where no one talks to you. My ward has mellowed a
lotover the last several years but I’ve since reduced my activity levels because church meetings don’t feed my soul. From my perspective, I’d attend church if I felt like it could help me grow or if I felt like I could help other people grow through my attendance. I don’t feel like either of those goals can be accomplished at church, so I’m starting to ease back on my activity level. I see the role of church meetings as being a refuge that people with a very specific set of beliefs go to for affirmation of those beliefs. I feel like if you color outside the lines you’re getting in the way of the validation they’re seeking at church.
I don’t mean to make the journey sound so dour. A faith crisis has helped me find excitement, curiosity, wonder, hope, questions, answers, and a bigger and better god. It’s like opening a door to a room you’ve been in all your life and discovering there’s a wide wonderous world waiting for you right outside.
Thank you to those who have posted so far. What you have each shared is really insightful. It occurs to me that I only really talked about how a faith crisis changed my relationship to the church and I didn’t really talk about how a faith crisis changed me. I’ll have to mull that one over and post later. nibbler wrote:
It occurs to me that I only really talked about how a faith crisis changed my relationship to the church and I didn’t really talk about how a faith crisis changed me. I’ll have to mull that one over and post later.
It occurs to me that I only really talked about how a faith crisis changed me – and I didn’t really talk about my relationship to the church:)
Short Answer: How to Make This Work? Neurodiversity Edition–
I was left to take the children to church and church functions mostly on my own due to my husband’s health problems and severe social anxiety. – Both of my children have ASD and ADHD –
so “the rules of community engagement” are challenging and require adaptation that I was mostly presiding over by myself (which made me equally an individual worthy of respect AND a threat to the system – or something). Our local leadership did their best to be supportive and follow my lead – but what they could do, what my children needed in terms of support still cost me a lot of resources emotionally, mentally, and physically – and my faith transition blocked most of the “spiritual payoff” that would make it possible to “break even” in terms of resource management. – I also have executive functioning and social challenges – so I “burn out” from the overwhelm sooner than most moms I saw with similar circumstances. As for friendships/community – I do attend some activities, I bring “the good candy” at Halloween, and I have taken most of my relationships that are valuable outside of the church community.
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A kicker really was that I eventually became a literal “non-Christian” and so I felt like an imposter at church because my being there was signaling that “I was Christian” when I knew I wasn’t. It didn’t feel fair to the community for our family to show up and consume the community’s time/talent/attention and absorb the care of the community because we weren’t going to be able to “give back” the ways that the community wanted. – I think the “final nail in the coffin” was “gender-based performance measures”. I “preside” (practically in my sleep) and I “provide” (whether you look at being the breadwinner, resource procurement, or analysis of what is needed – doesn’t matter). “Nurturing” is a relative weakness of mine – which is in part why my husband stayed at home with our children [and I don’t think it is “women specific” – everyone promises at baptism to “mourn with those that mourn” which is a form of “connection” and “nurturing”].
I “authorized myself” as the acting representative of our family (and to be fair – I got lauded as “being righteous” for it) to do a lot things because my husband wasn’t available to share the burden – and in any church community environment that made people uncomfortable.
I “wasn’t supposed to be the leader” because I was “supposed to be a follower” – and I can “follow” as an active “co-participant” and my “following” is going to be providing leadership (at least for my scope of the assignment) – because that is what I do. And what I do is not what the church organization needs me to do – and that matters to me.The purpose of the church is “proclaim the gospel” – which is a form of Christianity, “redeem the dead” – which is not a priority of mine, and “perfect the Saints” – which is something that I ran the very real risk of undermining due to my faith transition and related collateral fallout.. Almost 15 years ago, I was serving as ward mission leader and my wife was the primary president in our ward in rural Iowa. I had read RSR and was digesting the idea that the role of Prophets is something other than just acting as a microphone/dictation machine for God (which is hard to apply to JS because we have so much scripture that came through him that we treat as being infallible). I was working through the Gospel being messier than I had imagined. I was like a creationist learning about evolution and then thinking, “wow! God must use evolution to create life!” I still believed that God was at the head of the church and directed its movement more or less and had bestowed his authority upon it. Then my daughter was stillborn a few weeks from her due date. This rocked me to my core. I had relied upon an assumptive reality where I was in control of my destiny. This was tied into my church performance because I paid my tithing, honored my priesthood, magnified my calling, kept my covenants, etc. What exactly are the promised blessings in the covenant contract? If the blessings didn’t help produce a healthy birth can they be relied upon to keep my other children or family members alive and healthy? If the promises of earthly protection and prosperity are so fickle, what assurances do we have that the post mortal promises are more sure?
My crisis was accompanied by an assumptive world collapse. I felt like I was in freefall. I found StayLDS and started the process of rebuilding. In the reconstruction process, I have tried to be flexible. My new assumptive reality is not reality, but only the framework in my mind that I use to understand and interpret reality. My previous assumptive world was too stiff and absolute and brittle. When something big happened so close to home that contradicted that framework, it all came tumbling down. I now feel like my framework is earthquake resistant and has the ability to sway some with new and challenging information.
Part of my challenge early on was determining if my stillborn child “counted” as part of my eternal family. She is not listed in the church records. There are statements of opinion from church leaders that stillborn children do count and will be resurrected but there is no official position. It was up to me to decide. This felt like new territory and was rather uncomfortable for me. I had been accustomed to drawing upon the comforting certainty of prophetic revelation, temple ceremonies, and priesthood power to back me up when I confidently declared, “I know that family is forever.” Now, I was left on my own to feel it out in my own heart, mind, and soul. I believe that my daughter and I belong together and will be reunited. She is a part of me almost as if she were a lost limb. It was an injustice of this mortal world that took her from us but in the eternal world that injustice will be corrected. This will become important later on in my story.
As I’ve adjusted my belief in the LDS church from the only correct path back to heaven with my family, I have also adjusted my activity level and set up new boundaries. Our church can be VERY demanding and it just wasn’t sustainable for me to continue to work at that level now that I understand the promised rewards differently than I once did. I also believe that this led others to view me and my family as not fully part of the tribe and this can be hard.
One big change of the process of feeling my way through what should happen with my stillborn daughter is that I now feel empowered and comfortable imagining and feeling good about what I think should/will happen in the afterlife. A fairly recent interaction with my bishop helps to illustrate this. He was trying to commit me to pay tithing and mentioned something about how my stillborn daughter is already in heaven and all that remains is for me to live worthily enough to join her there. I gently but firmly/assertively stated that there is no question that I will be reunited with my daughter again, it is not a question of needing to qualify. Anyway, I must of caught my bishop off guard and he backed off. The next year at tithing settlement, he tells me that he has been thinking on that interaction all year and feels impressed to testify that we can only be together again as families if we keep all of our covenants and endure to the end and that this is the teaching of the leaders of the church. Now it was my turn to deflect and noncommittally thank him for his testimony. He is, of course, correct. Church leaders do indeed seem to teach that the only way to be with loved ones in heaven is by jumping through prescribed hoops here on earth.
Because of my journey through my personal dark night of the soul, I have a hard fought testimony that God knows me, loves me, and accepts me fully. I believe that God wants me to nurture and expand goodness and generally follow the golden rule. I also believe that I will be with my family eternally in some form because relationships matter and can forge enduring bonds. I have built this assumptive reality from my own experiences and on my own authority.
I cannot tell my bishop that I trust more in my own intuition, insight, inspiration, and/or authority then his authority over me as bishop or the prophet’s authority over me as president of the church. That, to him, would be a textbook definition of apostacy. This would likely close doors of opportunity for me to more fully participate in the church in the future and I would prefer to keep my options open. So I keep my head down, I don’t make any waves, I contribute and participate where I can (honoring my boundaries and sustainable activity level). If cornered, I present my beliefs as a work in progress. I have strong faith in some things and I am struggling/still working on my faith in other things.
This has been my Journey. I have developed an internal compass and that compass is not always in perfect alignment with church members or church leaders. Mormonism is my tribe and there is much good found there. It is also the belief system of many that I hold dear. To use a sports analogy, I feel like I have become a free agent. I still play for the home team because I choose to, not because I am under contract.
It has been a long and very winding road, but I’m comfortable now with the path I’m on. I was a convert at age 21 while serving in the US Army. I subsequently served a mission. While in retrospect I understand that many of my early church friends were quite progressive, at the time I didn’t realize I was getting a good amount of progressiveness mixed in with stuff like food storage, plant a garden, and keep a journal (I don’t consider any of those things to be doctrine or even part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ but they sure were common in topics in the early 1980s). I would say, again in retrospect, the seeds of my faith crisis/transition were actually planted during my mission. It was there that I began to recognize that some of what I had learned was not necessarily widely held as beliefs or understandings among the general membership. Some of this stuff had to do with things like Joseph Smith being a polygamist, which I’m going to say I “always” knew but a surprising number of missionaries/members not only didn’t know it but didn’t believe it. Suffice it to say, church history, Joseph Smith, etc., were never things I had issue with and thus, unlike many others, these things were not part of my faith crisis. Also I’ll throw in here that I am a thinker and I tend to analyze. The church giving someone like me at least two hours a day of “mandatory” study was probably not the wisest thing on their part.
So fast forward, I returned from the mission, went to college (not BYU), married in the temple, had children, served in the bishopric, and did “all the right things.” I was for all intents a true believing member.
I won’t bore anyone with the events that led directly to my crisis of faith (and I still consider it traumatic and don’t like to talk about it or dwell on it) but it became very clear to me that the God I thought I knew and trusted and had been taught about for 20ish years at this point was not real. Prayers were not answered, belief that everything would work out and there was some purpose to this was in vain, etc. And to top it off, even the church itself, which I had given my all to, was not there to help as I had always expected it would be. But this crisis had little to do with the true church and much more to do with loss of belief in God. I could and did just walk away from the church.
This wandering went on for several years while my family grew and remained active in the church (although boys weren’t ordained and one wasn’t even baptized). I was not openly antagonistic toward the church and had never expressed anything about my personal beliefs to church leaders – but in all honestly the church, the leaders, and the members seemed to care very little for or about me (hence my oft repeated “If you want to find out who your friends in the church really are, stop going – and prepare to be disappointed”).
Then one day (oldest daughter at BYU, oldest son on a mission) out of the blue I saw a video with Neil Degrasse Tyson talking about Carl Sagan’s “star stuff” and it clicked. It made sense to me, and it (interestingly) followed that there indeed was a God, just not the one I used to believe in (this is where my leaning toward the Deist point of view comes from). The belief in God became a cornerstone of the rebuilding of my faith, a project still in progress. I believe all we need to know about God was taught by Jesus in the four gospels, and I believe the teachings of the church insofar as they stick to the core principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be true (as are other churches when doing the same). There are lots of other things taught in the church that I do not believe (and are not in my view doctrine, but very little meets the criteria for doctrine to me). I won’t say I was in darkness while away from God (not that we’re close pals now) but the analogy of light at the end of the tunnel is apt here – I could finally reconcile.
That basically brings me to now – another 10+ years later. I’m here, I like it here, and this is where I live. This place helped me more than anyone can ever know, and I am grateful for it. In truth in some ways I’ve come a long way over the past 10+ years, in others I’m not that much different. I have gone to church at times during the past 10 years, I have not been in a couple years. I will likely at some point in the not too distant future go at least irregularly to SM only (and most likely not F&TMs). I guess it’ll have to be when I feel like it, and I make no promises of actually engaging. Nevertheless, I am comfortable in my beliefs (and unbeliefs) in God and that all that really matters is that we try to be nice to each other. The rest is just stuff.
What has your journey been like through your Faith Crisis?It started when I tried to serve a mission as a one year member of the church. I had a heartless, cold, businessman as a stake president, and he was harsh with me when I went over my Bishop’s head to get funding for a mission. He ripped my soul out because the idealism I possessed — as far as believing in the miracles associated with serving God. My simple faith and idealism were thrown out by his cynical view of my financial situation and his admonition to just stay home (My Bishop too).
I got over it, got the money on my own (after 2 years of working full time at jobs that didn’t suit me). Testimony shattered and saved.
Then I had problems getting married. I was good looking, intelligent, well educated, but had problems with broken engagements and broken relationships, and the accompanying ostracization you get from the ward when you go out with and break up with ward members. Testimony rattled a bit, but overcome when I got married.
Then I had problems having children, went through LDS Social Services to adopt and was denied to their fears I would break my marriage covenant. Testimony shattered again — so little faith in me, so little reward for righteous living that I thought accompanied obedience. Fast forward after having our own children, and attending a high functioning ward. I got my testimony back again.
Fast forward a decade or so, and I experienced some awful treatment by some female ward members, and even worse, indifferent SP about releasing me when I needed a release.
That was the last straw and it brought me here.
Here at StayLDS I dissected my LDS believes one at a time, and got on “my own clock” as Brian Johnson advised. That led to me being active for a while, serving in lower level callings, and then eventually stopping holding a TR, wearing garments, and eventually attending church at all. This took a long time to happen as I still attended for much of my disaffection.
I still honor my Mormon heritage by reading the scriptives (BoM), listening to LDS music from the past that I loved on my mission, and keeping a journal. I receive home teachers and missionaries when they want to visit, and I may go back again some day. I still believe parts of it, but I am deeply concerned about the amount of time active church service, well, WASTED, chasing after less active people who will come back when they will come back, etcetera.Concerned about the conscription model of service. Concerned about the wealth of the church and their unyielding tithing demands. Comfortable where I am now. And having a near death experience with a heart attack in the recent past has made me confront my beliefs. I have this feeling things will just work out somehow.
I would say a faith crisis is over when it ceases to be a crisis and simply becomes a journey. That change happens differently for every person individually. DarkJedi wrote:
While in retrospect I understand that many of my early church friends were quite progressive, at the time I didn’t realize I was getting a good amount of progressiveness mixed in with stuff like food storage,plant a garden, and keep a journal (I don’t consider any of those things to be doctrine or even part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ but they sure were common in topics in the early 1980s).
This made me chuckle more than it should have. In 1976, as part of a general conference address on family preparedness, President Spencer W. Kimball said, “We encourage you to grow all the food that you feasibly can on your own property.”I am 60, and this counsel is so deeply ingrained that I still
plant a gardenevery year. I fear that the world will stop turning on its axis if I fail to do so. :crazy:
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