My exit story began only about 10 months ago. Up to that point I had never questioned my faith. I was a typical Utah Mormon. I was born and raised in the church. I did not serve a mission but instead got married at 19. My wife and I were valiant in our church membership. We always paid a full tithing, went to our weekly meetings, prayed daily, etc.
To be fair I should mention that although I was still a “worthy” and active member of the church I was not feeling satisfied with what I got out of church. A couple of weeks before I ran across all of this information I had a talk with my wife about struggling with my testimony. To understand my struggles I need to discuss my parents and give a little background.
As I mentioned above, I was born and raised in the church but as a teenager I was not interested in religion or church. I went to church every week because my dad required it, but I was never interested in being there. To make along story short, when I met my beautiful wife, when I was 16, I decided to give the church a try. The approval I received from my parents at that decision felt really good. I kind of became addicted to having their approval (especially my mom). Not that I lived my life in every way to please them but if I had a choice that could result in them being very proud of me or disappointed in me I usually chose to make them proud of me. And with those choices or accomplishments my mom’s reaction was one of the first things I thought of when I was making them. An example of this is when I was in college. I was a pretty good student and received a lot of A’s. Whenever I did this the first person I wanted to show my grades to was my mom. Even before my wife who I had been married to for 4 years before I went back to college.
Well in 2001 my mom was diagnosed with cancer. She fought it tooth and nail. She had several rounds of radiation or chemotherapy treatments. My dad was great through all of it. He really put her needs and wants completely ahead of his. In late 2005 my dad was killed in a car accident. My wife, kids and I moved in with my mom to help take care of her and make sure she had the support she needed. Within 4 months of moving in the cancer finally took my mom. This was a terrible time that I’m still struggling with but that’s a different story.
The problem was, with mom and dad no longer around, the approval I received from them related to church was, of course, gone. Looking back I feel that because they were no longer around I allowed myself to question my testimony at a level I had never done in my life. As I looked at what effect the church had on my life and what I got out of it I really started to question why I needed it in my life. I dreaded Sundays, the endless meetings, being nagged about home teaching, keeping my kids “reverent”in sacrament meeting, etc.
My typical Sunday before I left the church started with bishopric meetings (I was the ward financial clerk and am still not sure why I needed to attend ALLof the bishopric meetings) at 10:00, these would last until around 12:30 atwhich time I would get home as quick as possible to allow my wife to leave without the kids so she could be 15 minutes early like the first counselor inthe Relief Society Presidency should. I would then tie up any loose ends related to getting the kids ready (my wife usually had 99.9% of the preparations complete). I would then take the kids and drop them offto primary/nursery and sit through 3 hours of the mind-numbingly boring church block. Then my wife would take the kids home while I stayed to count tithing and cut any checks the ward needed to pay. I would usually get home around5:00 or 5:30. So on Sunday, the “day of rest”, I spent very little time with my family. I know that my experience is in no way out of the ordinary and probably a little tame compared to other people but I still wondered why I didn’t enjoy church.
If the gospel was supposed to bring happiness into our lives I wondered why anything related to church did not seem to bring me any happiness. When I told my wife that I didn’t enjoy going to church and wondered if that was messed up she replied that no one liked going to church. It’s just something we do. She could see the problem with the logic in that but neither of us could think of a solution so we agreed that we would try harder to be worthy and make sure we said our evening prayers together as a couple before our personal prayers.
In January of 2008 the presidential primaries were getting into full swing and I was doing my duty as a good member of the church and throwing my support behind Mitt Romney. I couldn’t believe how unfair the media and people outside of Utah were treating God’s servant. I read every article I could find that detailed how poorly he was being treated by outsiders. Most of the articles were in the “Lord’s One True Newspaper” (aka the Deseret News). One article I was reading in the Salt Lake Tribune (I knew I should have stayed away from the heathen’s newspaper) was discussing Mike Huckabee mentioning that Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan were brothers. The article had a bunch of comments on it and as I was reading through them someone mentioned something about Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Abraham. I had never really paid much attention to the Book of Abraham since it was never an area of focus in Sunday School or Priesthood.
As I started looking into the questions related to the translations of the Book ofAbraham I was shocked at the information that was out there. Even more, I was upset that as a member of the church who had attended weekly for the last 30 years, I had never heard anything about these issues.
When I started researching the Book of Abraham problems I jumped on the internet to research. The Mormon Curtain website was one of the first sites I stumbled upon and on the main page of that website there is an A-Z index of controversial issues related to the church. I felt like I had just unlocked Pandora’s Box. I was again shocked and a little pissed to find out how much information was out there, about an organizationthat I had given so much of myself to, which I was completely oblivious to.
The Book of Abraham issues were really all it took for me to no longer believe in the church. It seems like such a cut and dried case of Joseph Smith being caught in a lie. It was quite a paradigm shift to go from accepting Joseph Smith as the man who had done more save Jesus Christ…to either a compulsive liar or a delusional story teller. (or probably a little of both!!!)
Once I lost my “testimony” of the Book of Abraham I still had a pretty large hurdle to get over, the Book of Mormon. I had heard the stories growing up that there is no way Joseph Smith had the ability to make up what is written in the Book of Mormon. After all he was a poor farm boy who only had a 3rd grade education. Ididn’t know any 3rd graders who would be able to write a book like the Book of Mormon. At this point I felt very confident that he made up the Book of Abraham but maybe he was called of God to write the Book of Mormon but then became a fallen prophet by the time he wrote the Book of Abraham. I was lookingfor any plausible explanation of how he COULD have translated the Bookof Mormon by any means other than divine inspiration. I had no expectation to have the same type of evidence that there was related to the Book of Abraham. I figured that the church stayed away fromthe Book of Abraham for a reason but the Book of Mormon was the “cornerstone of our faith” so the case could not be that cut and dried.
I read Grant Palmer’s “Insiders View to Mormon Origins” and that gave me the plausible explanation I was looking for. I still don’t claim know how Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, but I am confident he did not “translate” it from golden plates with his head buried in a hat looking ata peep stone through divine inspiration.
I approached all of the other troubling topics related to church history and doctrine with the view that the church was not true. Looking at these troubling topics (multiple accounts of the first vision, polygamy, the three and eight witnesses testimonies, anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, errors in the Book of Mormon, racism in the church, blood atonement, Adam God doctrine, Temple Ceremony, etc.) with that view makes it very easy to see how man made and uninspired the church is. One of the comments I received from multiple people as I was leaving the church was that if I foundsomething better that answers all of the “eternal questions” in a better manner that they would switch in a heartbeat. Of course the “eternal questions” can easily be answered by a church that was designed by a man to have an answer to these questions. Oops, I didn’t mean to get off topic…back to my story.
Up to this point I still had not discussed any of these new issues with my wife and all appeared normal on the surface. As I mentioned earlier, I was the ward clerk and she was the first counselor in the Relief Society Presidency in our ward. We have three children all of whom are under 8 so none of them have been baptized. (thank god, the flying spaghetti monster or whoever… for that)
Istarted reading on the New Order Mormon and Post Mormon forums how difficult it can be on families when one spouse leaves and the other one stays so I wanted to present the information to her in the most convincing light possible. I spent the next 3 or 4 weeks spending most of my time at work reading and researching all of the topics that were troubling me. Finally I felt ready to share the information with my wife. I have never been as nervous about anything as much as I was for this conversation. I started by telling herwhat she meant to me and how I did not want anything to affect that relationship. I then shared some of the things that I was the most prepared for, in case she had any questions. The subject that really got her attention was Joseph Smith’s polygamy. I hadn’t done a ton of research related to this topic because it didn’t matter as much to me. By the time I read about Joseph Smith’s polygamy I already thought he was a liar and a scumbag. She couldn’t believe that Joseph Smith married girls as young as 14 and other men’s wives. She initially questioned the authenticity of the information but fortunately for both of us she looked into it more.
We purchased a copy of Todd Compton’s “In Sacred Loneliness”. That was all it took for her, once she read the story of Helen Marr Kimball she was emotionally out of the church and also pretty pissed. Just a few weeks before she had taught the Joseph Smith history lesson in Relief Society and that lesson never mentioned anything about plural wives, let alone promising a 14 year old with eternal salvation for her and her entire family if she agreed to his proposal.
So in arelatively short period of time (about 2 months from when I started researching) we both no longer believed in the church. We were not sure how to make our exit from church. We had to treat it carefully because we live in the south end of the Salt Lake Valley and both have families that are very active in the church. We werein no hurry to throw our social and family lives into chaos.
Luckily our bishop helped us speed up our exit from the church. After only a couple of weeks of not believing but still going to all of our meetings the bishop pulled me aside and asked me how I would feel if my wife were called to be the next Relief Society President for the ward. I was stunned and really did not know how to react. I’m sure myface had a look of horror on it. I awkwardly tried to find something to say. I did not want to tell him we didn’t believe without checking with my wife. So I told him I would need to talkto her before I responded. He said he wasn’t calling her just wondering if I could support it. I told him I thought my wife might have enough on her plate being a young mother with three small children and my not have the experience and wisdom required for the position. (Our bishop was only 30 at this time so I felt he could understand that argument because I’m sure he felt overwhelmed when he was called) He explained to me that he was not making the call but it was coming from (of course) the lord. I just mumbled that if she accepted the call I would be happy to shoulder more responsibility at home to enable her to fulfill her “calling”.
I practically ran home and told my wife about my meeting with the bishop. We went back and forth the entire Sunday trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation and ultimately decided to write him a letter explaining that we were leaving the church and listed some of the issues we had problems with. We delivered the letter to him the next day and the rest is as theysay…history.
It has been a challenging 6 months since we left the church. It has definitely put a strain (and in somecases ruined) relationships with friends and family. Our entire social system has been ruined andour worldview has been tipped on its head but it is SO worth it. I’ve never felt so happy and content that I am able to decide what is acceptable for me to do or not do. It is very empowering to step back from most of my automated responses to situations and ask myself how I feel, not whatwould the brethren want me to do.
I haven’t joined any other organized religion and don’t have any plans to in the near future. I’ve just found that my“feelings” and emotions are not reliable when trying to discern what is true and not true in a spiritual or religious sense. I would classify myself as a hopeful agnostic. I would LOVE for there to be a God andan after life where I could see my mom and dad again. Who knows, I’m so fresh on my path out of Mormonism that I may find some other organized religion that works for me. But for now I am satisfied getting to know myself and defining my own boundaries.
Since I did this somany times as a TBM in my sacrament meeting talks I think it is appropriate to end my exit story with a quote. Thomas Jefferson said “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear... “
I say these things in the name of the flying spaghetti monster…uh…amen???