The Philosophy of Leaving

by Ren  

 

I've been asked recently why I left the church, and it got me thinking about it again. I was brought into the church with my family when I was 4 years old, not long after the death of my uncle. My mom took it very hard, and needed something to reassure her that death wasn't so terrible a thing. One of her neighbors and friends was a mormon, sent over the missionaries, and that was that.  

I got baptized at 8, deacon at 12, teacher at 14, priest at 16, went to BYU for one year after my graduation, served a mission a year later, came home, moved back to Utah (long story short, I hadn't meant to MOVE there, but oh well) and went "inactive" when I was about 24 or 25 years old.  

I married a wonderful non-member when I was 29, and we moved to the northwest in 99. About 2 years ago, I finally made my break from the church official, and resigned. Sounds like the perfect happily ever after, doesn't it?   I had some poor experiences with the church growing up - nothing compared to some of the stories which have been posted here - had some calm and quiet arguments with my Mission President and other church leaders and members, but nothing like one might expect to have sent a strong, enthusiastic member running from the comfort and congregation of the mormon religion.  

So what makes a person like me leave?  

Well, for me, when I first began to question the many contradictions of the church, it was really terrible for me - - I was forced to question why I didn't have that enveloping swell of the spirit which so many people around me described. I just didn't feel it. I felt "warm and tingly" sometimes, but it came and went. And I experienced the same feelings when I'd see a particularly beautiful sky, hear a wonderful song. I once gave a talk in my single's ward about how things like clouds and music gave me the sense of the spirit. I'd interpreted that to confirm the existence of God, and helped me know that I was meant to be here, for whatever reason. Someone in my ward came up to me afterwards and told me I was insane. "You can't have a testimony of clouds and flowers, you can only have a testimony of the Book of Mormon or the Church!" She also suggested that I should never again be allowed to give a talk in sacrament meeting, and told the Bishop so while I was still in earshot. At the time, it crushed me. But I now look at this as one of the first whispered suggestions that I really wasn't in the right place, after all.  

The worst part of it all was that I didn't realize I was actually one of hundreds of thousands of people just like me - one of millions, billions worldwide who are just wondering what direction their life should take, and not finding religion capable of answering that for them. I'd been taught all my life that God Had A Plan, and that if I just TRUSTED HIM, then all my problems would be resolved.  

I can't live like that. I have to work things out for myself, I feel, I don't know, genetic predisposed to grasp my destiny with my own two hands and surrender it to no one. I asked a lot of questions, and grew excessively suspicious of the "we don't have an answer to that, we must trust in God's will and take it on faith..."  

My opinion was pretty simple: if you claim to be a religion with Living Prophets, then no question is off limits. If there's a question, there's going to be an answer. If you can't provide an answer to a legitimate question, then you don't have prophecy. It's that simple.   If anything sent me out the door, it was the church's take on "figuring things out for yourself", aka The Sins of Intellectualism. I simply refuse to believe that God would give us the ability to reason and to think - to have Agency - and then say "well, I want you to HAVE the ability, but I don't want you to USE it."  

Once the church began to push its "just trust the Prophets and leaders of the Church" with one hand, while answering complaints about conflicting or erroneous statements of past prophets with "sometimes they speak as Prophets, sometimes they speak as men", then that was it. I was done with them.  

For a few years, I still kind of considered myself a mormon, but I was just like a gypsy mormon. A saint without a home. But I took the freedom of the chapel-free faith to study on my own. And the more I learned, the more I realized that my original understanding of the church - its history and actual doctrines - was very restrained by its very carefully limited teachings. I started learning a lot which filled in the gaps.  

Things like, if Martin Harris, Sidney Rigdon and Oliver Cowdery really saw an angel, why did they leave the church? Cos, man, if I saw a heavenly messenger in the flesh, telling me what's what? That'd be all I'd need to know.  

The "116 pages" story always bugged me, too. It just didn't make sense. the Word Of Wisdom seemed too convenient, as did the law of tithing.   But mostly, it was just the glossy looks, the vacant expressions on people's faces that made my spider senses tingle.  

The funny thing for me was that people always talked about the confidence and faith they felt, the sense of security they received when in the warm bosom of the church.  

But when I finally made the decision to cut my ties, and resign, I felt relief and clarity. I felt sad that I was leaving something behind which had once meant so much to me, but I felt the quiet peace of knowing you are at last doing what is best for your continued spiritual growth.  

The worst time for me was being where you kind of are now - keeping up the illusion for the people I knew around me, while internally struggling with the weight of feeling like the church was not, in fact, true. The idea that "no man can serve two masters" struck me as oddly applicable, and I realized that my unhappiness was simply a result of not following the life my soul wanted me to follow. Once I made my choice, my heart was able to get behind the admittedly difficult path.  

I don't hate the church. It instilled in me a deep and lasting desire to question the mysteries of the universe and believe that those answers are not unattatinable. And I feel bad for the people who are still there, who, like me, don't believe but don't know why.  

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you all. Thank you for being here, and please know that your stories have helped me far more deeply than you may know.