It's been over a year since I first came to postmo, and I've always wanted to add my story to the list here, but it never felt like my story was completely over. After a year of transition, I feel like I can look at my history with Mormonism in an accurate light.
I was raised in the church. My father was a bishop and then a Stake president for the first 17 years of my life, and my mother held leadership positions also. I grew up not really paying attention to any of it, I was a free spirit and went my own way for the most part.
My high school years were spent by usually being in trouble, and not being a very good Mormon. I left home at 15, was kicked out of high school at 17, and after a few years of not liking where my independent life was going, I decided to hang it up and move home, return to high school and go on a mission. I learned in the MTC that I really knew NOTHING about the church, down to It's most basic principles. I was embarrassed by that, and committed to learning everything about this gospel that I could. I wanted to be an expert. I was also a good missionary. I was street wise for my age, but the previous years of rebellion, drinking and drugs and subsequent unhappiness I knew I needed to make the most of my 2 years, and I did that. I'm proud of that. I grew up.
On my mission I was hungry to know more. I woke up 2 hours before I was supposed to to study the scriptures, and read church books. At night I would listen to church tapes of anything that would further my knowledge of this church. I read the 7 volume history of the church, and even went so far as to read the journal of discourses. I was a gospel GEEK. By the time My mission had ended I'd read the book of Mormon 10 times, and all the other standard works at least 5 times, not to mention anything I could get my hands on.
There came a point that It started to eat at my testimony. not because prophets are human and say the occasional crazy thing, but because I started to see patterns of humanity in a celestial gospel. That's fine, right? I also started seeing inconsistencies in eternal principles. The last few months of my mission I towed the party line and continued to work, but it was starting to screw with my head.
I came home, stayed active for years and got married in the temple when I was 23 to the woman I will spend the rest of my life with hopefully. She came out of inactivity and we were married in the SLC temple. I was a Mormon success story, and my parents were proud.
But I was starting to show the wear. I felt like I'd heard ALL of what the gospel had taught me over and over, and It's in my nature to want to know more, to see it in new angles. Surely truth would hold up to it.
I started to go to church less and less, and got guilt from my wife who felt we needed to raise our kids in the church. She liked the social part, I liked the gospel part. Id been home for 10 years from my mission when they made me elders quorum president, and that was the beginning of the end for me. I dove in, but I was running on empty. It just bored the hell out of me, but I felt I was a good EQ president. I picked the best instructors I could, we had alot of fun and activated new people just by being positive and exciting. I was very conflicted --- caught between God, eternal principles and my spidey sense that was telling me that something was rotten in rome. My better sense was starting to win out. I was released after 3 years when the ward split, and I really never went more than once a month.
I was virtually less active for 9 years. I had countless love bombs for being a tragic figure in the ward --- a former EQ president, Scriptorian/church historian, who had fallen away, but I knew I was getting closer and closer to being done. My wife and I would make token efforts to go to church out of sheer guilt and when the bishop asked me to get "worthy" to baptise 2nd oldest daughter, I went in and felt like the biggest phony. I did it, but not much longer after that it just became unbearable. I remember sitting in the parking lot with my wife because we would put the kids in primary classes and sneak home, and I told her "I am never going back there again".
I told my wife this, and she told me "finally!". I was shocked. She told me that she never believed in it, she knew that to snag me and get married, she would have to become an active Mormon. Along the way she picked up the social pressure and Godly guilt to keep her active. I fell in love with her all over again, right then and there. We picked up the kids after church, and never went back.
But my head was still full of Mormon. I still had a head full of conflict. God made me a certain way. He made me impatient, he had made me curious and analytical. He also made me not very social when I didn't want to be. The social aspect of Mormonism EXHAUSTED me. It wore me out, but I still held to alot of if It's principles. Mentally, I was a mess. Quite honestly, It would get so bad I questioned whether I could do it much longer.
I had a habit when It would get particularly bad to go out into the desert at night on my Harley and talk to God, or whoever. At this point, I didn't know anymore. One night, I had "lieutennant Dan" moment, shaking my fist at the sky in pure anger and told God "Is that all you got???" I told God I wasnt going to do it anymore. I was DONE. I meant it. it HAD to change for me, because I was starting not to be able to hold it together. I knew it was because of how I was looking at life.
Then I was in salt lake on business and saw it. My first postMormon.org billboard. That's all it said "youre not alone.... PostMormon.org". I went to it a few days later, and I was so relieved. It scared the hell out of me to be honest. This was dangerous ground. Satan surely had me. This was anti-Mormon. This was my salvation I was messing with.
I read a book during this time, referred by an old friend called "conversations with God" by neale donald walsche. It freed me. It was a new way of looking at God. not a punitive, harsh Rule oriented God, but one that TRULY Understands. I highly recommend this book if you havent read it.
It afforded me the the mindset to explore postmo and be a bit more open with how I felt.
I was 50% free of my guilt. Id changed how I looked at God, and I was ready now to break down my religion. I started feeling better. The conflict in my head and life went from daily, to maybe weekly. I could start to feel my life coming back. I felt good!
So I remember the night, taking my laptop into the RV and did something I'd NEVER done, or dared do. I read the other side of Mormonism. I read how "anti" Mormons viewed the church. Some of It my spidey senses told me was crap, but some of it was well documented, showing both sides of the story. It was what I'd always suspected. The Mormons had spun it ALL. I was hungry again and read 2 more books: Fawn Brodies "no man knows my history", and Grant Palmers book on the origins of Mormonism. Oh my God, I knew what I just read was accurate.
But it was massively depressing. I had lost my base. My way of thinking. I think I was in shock. I felt like I had created a void, and I had. I chose to. I gutted out my mental cancer, but didn't know where to go from there. I needed to rebuild myself. I just wasnt sure how. This went on for about 3 months, and in the meantime my wife and I had resigned from the church.
But, quite honestly Im a fighter. I was also motivated. The demons in my head were gone, and I slowly started to look at the world the way *I* wanted. I had to pick through the principles that I knew were good: Family, honesty, love, charity, and others, and used them as a framework to rebuild my structure. Really, the way I always should have. I did.
It's been a year now since I have resigned. I love life! I love my family. I still believe in principles, I still believe in fidelity in my marriage, I still believe in raising my children, being honest and helping people. I also don't believe in judging people who don't maybe believe in those things. I traded Doctrine and knowledge, for finally being "Christ like".
I also became agnostic. I look at life empirically now, and I don't honestly know if there is a God and don't spend alot of time thinking about it. I don't know if Christ even existed. I don't know. I don't ask. If there is a God, and he truly is a good dude, then he will understand. In the meantime I'm going about my life and giving back as much as I can. I've joined an organization that helps abused children and spend at least 10 hours a week on that, sometimes way more. I ride my bike alot --- that's my church. Coming over a lonely road out in the middle of nowhere, and seeing the sun set over the mountain with a pocket full of beef jerky and a love in my heart for it. I'm watching my kids grow up, and quite honestly my wife and I are much more close now. My conflict is gone, and It's been gone long enough that I feel like I have a new lease on life. This must be what some people call "born again", only mine is the agnostic version. Everything seems better, and Life makes sense. With that in my pocket, I can move on to things that I need to do on this short life and hopefully pass onto my kids.
Ive said this a hundred times, But I want to thank Jeff Ricks for starting this support group. It has saved my life and soul in every way there is to save it. If the worth of a soul is great, then I probably owe him a couple of billboards at the VERY least. He saved mine, just by having enough vision to create an organization that reaches out to people just like me.
My story isn't over. I know its just begun, but I can tell now that at the very least Im on good footing and look forward to the future. It may seem tragic to some, but to me I'm back where I belong.
A. Dunn
PS -- forgive my grammar. Im not patient enough to proofread it :)