I was raised Mormon.  It was never something I questioned.  It defined me.  How could you question something that defines who you are?  I built my entire life on the axioms of the church and it is a scary thing to even toy with the idea that those axioms are nothing but air, more elusive than the wind.  Am I being overly dramatic?  Maybe so.  But that chapter of my life was twenty-two of the twenty-five years I’ve been alive, so leaving was somewhat dramatic for me.

 

I attended early morning seminary and weekly mutual activities and three hour blocks of church and youth firesides and Tuesday devotionals.  I read all the scriptures daily and bought all my books from Deseret Bookstore because they were “wholesome” and “good”.  I learned how to cook and clean and take care of small children.  I attended BYU and graduated with honors.  My sole goal was to marry a worth RM.  I was the perfect, meek, docile Mormon girl.  The type of girl any returned missionary would be proud to take home to meet the ‘rents.  So what happened?  Well, I got engaged to one of those returned missionaries.  He was so excited to find someone who was as passionate about the Church and learning as he was.  And as I met his parents and he told them everything he knew about me, I couldn’t help but wonder who he was talking about.  The person he was talking about seemed empty.  Lifeless.  The person he was talking about would be trodden underfoot and taken advantage of and worn ragged before she was thirty.  That couldn’t be me, could it?

 

It was at that all-important juncture in my life that I found myself lost.  I was everything I had always been taught I should be.  But none of it made me happy.  If anything, it made me feel empty and unfulfilled.  Why?  Did God lie when he told me the road to true happiness was in following the teachings of these modern-day prophets?  Or maybe I was just expecting too much.  Maybe I should be perfectly content in my role as it was being laid out in front of me.  But I couldn’t.  There was some deep seeded part of me that just couldn’t be okay with that path.  I wanted more out of life then that.  And as soon as I realized that, I felt like the most selfish person in the world.

 

So after spending three days at my fiancé’s home, I flew back to my parents’ house and did a lot of pondering and a lot of praying.  And I felt hollow.  I felt no burning in my bosom.  I felt no answer to my doubts.  So I started to read.  It began with the scriptures, but I eventually branched out.  One very interesting book was Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass by Hugh Nibley.  But, though I had heard how well this refuted anti-Mormon literature, I found that Nibley did many of the things in writing his refutations that he accused the “anti-Mormons” of doing.  And then I sought the articles and books he was trying to refute.  That’s when I discovered that not only were his articles hypocritical, but he often misquoted and attempted to draw conclusions from these authors that they never intended to be drawn. 

 

That was my jumping off point (pun intended).  From there I started trolling the libraries and internet for anything and everything I could find on the subject.  I discovered that the hallowed history of this marvelous work and wonder was riddled with scandal and debauchery.  I learned that woman were not only taught to be subservient to men, but they were taught to love their role as the lesser sex.  The gender that never makes a mark in the world and is happy to have their children make a mark for them.  They were taught that it didn’t make them any less then men (the men tell them as they give not a thought to how the laundry got done or the children got fed or dinner got made).

 

I have always been taught that it is by their fruits you shall know them.  So what are the fruits of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ?  Are they wife stealing?  Are they pedophilia?  Are they misogyny?  Are they mass murder?  Is the killing of innocents more justified because it was done to the Mormons as well?  Does that justify them killing hundreds in cold blood?  Is Joseph Smith a better prophet because he took down two of his attackers before her fell?  If we are to truly follow the doctrine of turning the other cheek, who better to learn that from then the people who lead us?

 

When I brought these questions to my parents, I was told that the church was for sinners, not saints.  Okay, I’ll buy that.  No one is perfect.  So what fruits has the church born?  Does the Mormon church have a monopoly of morality?  Are they the only ones who can be in heaven (or at least in the highest kingdom of heaven)?  Is fostering superiority in its members (I know they don’t see it this way, but crap by any other name is still crap) the fruit of the church? 

 

And what of the Book of Mormon?  What was so great about it?  Did it teach anything that the Bible or other religious texts did not?  Why, then, was it necessary?  I had been told that each book in the BOM was written in a different voice, thereby proving that it could not have been written by one man.  But upon further reading the BOM, this time merely for style, I saw that it had the same voice throughout.  Upon further study and relying on experts more learned than myself, I found more evidence that it was written in one uniform voice.  Moreover, how did Nephi have knowledge of technologies decades before their invention?  Such as the compass or steam ships?  As every Mormon has heard countless times, this is the keystone of our religion.  If it is false, then the entire church crumbles.  So much for that fruit.

 

Again, being the good little Mormon girl that I was, I took my findings to my parents.  I was told that I shouldn’t read “Anti-Mormon” literature because it plants evil seeds of deceit in my mind.  I just have to have faith and read my scriptures and the works of the prophets and apostles.  The rest will be explained in God’s time, not mine.  So basically, they were telling me that I had to die to learn the answers to my very reasonable questions.

 

Shortly after this, I moved from Arizona to California.  A whole 750 miles away from anything that bound me to the Church.  Away from family and friends and neighbors that all expected me to be an upstanding member.  And I conducted another experiment.  I was told that I would be blessed with everything I needed if I paid my tithing, but if I didn’t I would never have enough.  Like paying tithing somehow magically got all your bills paid.  So what did I do?  I stopped paying my tithing.  And guess what?  I had more than I had before.  A significant amount more.  Suddenly, not only could I pay my bills, but I had time left over to do other things like shop and play and all sorts of fun things.  And now, two years later, I still have more than ever.  10% more, to be exact.  I’ve never had difficulty paying any bills and I have never been destitute, as I always feared would happen if I didn’t pay.

 

To me, that was strike three in my quest to discover the truthfulness about the Church.  No longer could I put my faith in something that had failed three tests (four if you count my unanswered prayers, which it should have passed with flying colors).

 

I could go on about how this revelation affected me.  About how lost I was without the maxims of the Church and how it took me two more years to even begin to discover who I was without it.  But that would turn into quite the little novel.  So I will end my exit story by saying that two years later I mailed in my resignation to the Church and am officially unshackled from any ties that bound me to them.  I have a wonderful husband who knows nothing of the Mormon church and a beautiful daughter who I will never teach about the church.  And that is my story.  I wish luck to all out there seeking their own...