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I know I posted and ran, but after a couple years of struggle then living the last year without taking Mormonism into consideration. We decided as a family to resign. My eldest daughter’s baptism or lack thereof was the jumping off point to living a year without listening to mormon advice or guidance. We are much happier.
It’s weird to think about it though. I’m really sad about the fact that as a whole we are much happier. Our marriage is stronger. The sex is better than it has ever been. Just having Sundays to go on family outings has been wonderful.
As we drift more and more distant from the culture and tribe that raised us I keep getting hit by just how weird it all was. It feels like a different life and one I won’t return to.
Sorry guys, we couldn’t stay
2 of my siblings have also left the church in the last couple of years.
Mike wrote:Zelph, thanks for the Introduction & welcome to the group. You have alot to say.
One of the things you said:
Quote:My brother-in-law has/had issues with his faith and that small outward lapse left him as a second class citizen in the eyes of my father-in-law. Yes it is their problem, but I’m not sure how to convey just how much I care about and love my family. Leaving the church would cost me dearly in the things I love the most.
Regarding your brother-in-law, you said that he is treated as a second class citizen by members of your family. Is that the way you treat him too?
Or, do you have to pretend to others that he is “second class”?
It helps me, to look for people who appear to sit on the outside & talk to them. It doesn’t have to be anything profound.
I feel comfortable being on the edge or outside of what others considered “normal”. It hasn’t always been that way.
I’m looking forward to hear more from you.
NQR (Not Quite Right)
Mike from Milton.
My father-in-law specifically. However my father-in-law is very much a McConkie mormon (ie rigid, doctrinal, and completely convinced that righteousness has granted him spiritual secrets to which he alone is privy). My brother-in-law is my favorite extended family member by far. I think the original point was that coming out as a non-believer while remaining a cultural mormon would drastically alter the family dynamic.
I need to give a quick update however. In some ways I’ve been able to restructure my belief in such a way that it makes sense for me to continue. I still cannot believe in the spiritual as a separate influence from my own feelings, but some words written by Brigham Young of all people have given me more of a thread to hang on to than I might have previously thought.
Brigham Young wrote:Yet I will say with regard to miracles, there is no such thing save to the ignorant–that is, there never was a result wrought out by God or by any of His creatures without there being a cause for it. There may be results, the causes of which we do not see or understand, and what we call miracles are no more than this–they are the results or effects of causes hidden from our understandings.
Thank you for your posts. Thank you, montereyredfox, I really enjoyed your post and was going to add something but realized that you’d already expressed anything I would mention. I’m not planning on leaving any time soon but mustering the courage to venture into what I previously thought was known territory is a bit frightening.
There are so many roads you have crossed that I have yet to even see in the distance. Thanks for your story. Brian Johnston wrote:If a religion makes someone a better person, but the reasons they thought it made them better are inaccurate, does that make it true or false? It gets pretty fuzzy when you start to inject human beings as variables into the equations.
That’s my current view. I see it as good or bad, rather than true or false. If I have issues with historical claims of the church it actually has little to do with my current lack of belief. The church could be true even if the leadership were “bad” men. By it’s nature it is only the spirit that dictates “truth”. Even then there is a line of thought within the church that I absolutely love. I’d actually argue that it’s the one true way within the church. D&C 9 sums it up perfectly. Study it out in your mind then get confirmation. Nothing galls me more than people who roll the bones. They do nothing and think they’ll be guided. They do no search or ponder, they just want answers handed to them on a silver platter. Watching a missionary decide where to knock on doors by closing his eyes and pointing at a map, or searching for an answer to a problem by dropping his scriptures and reading the first verse that it opens up to hoping that it contains the answer. Magic 8-ball revelation is complete BS and the antithesis of everything I find of value in the church. Again this doesn’t reflect on the leadership, just the members.
So yes absolutely I find a great deal of value in the church. So many lives of those I love the most have been completely changed by it, I am a better person because of it.
My belief only breaks down with the spirit itself. I make do with searching and pondering.
If an FLDS member prays to know if the Book of Mormon is true, he gets an affirmative, based on the common premise of it being the keystone. So what does he do with that information? Is the FLDS church true because the BoM is true? Community of Christ? I do not and can not believe that there is a single line of truth with the current prophet as arbiter. This then means that EVERYTHING is open to being truth/not truth, every claim whether historical or spiritual needs to be “studied out in your mind”. So here I am. I cannot implicitly trust everything that flows from the mouth of those who have “stewardship” over me. I cannot implicitly trust myself as I am quite fallible. The only answer for me is to study everything out in my mind. Because I doubt that the spirit is communication with a god whose only true and living church is the LDS church based on the fervency of religion and lack of monopoly on the holy spirit, I then can only rely on the spirit as my own intuition empowering me with the things I have prepared by studying them out in my mind.
Even Brigham Young said that there are no miracles. Only things that we do not understand. IE, there is always a physical law in effect when a miraculous event occurs. By the nature of the LDS gospel and the reasoning behind the atonement god cannot break the laws that he has set forth. This makes him an architect or programmer of the world, who at one point compiled and ran the universe So when I say I am currently an atheist it is only because I don’t believe in a personal god right now.
hawkgrrrl wrote:You’ve got it backwards. YOU are not the one who didn’t belong. This man is in apostasy, not you. Anyone who claims to have charity and speaks like this of his fellow man is not Christian. Members who agree are in the wrong, but Mormons have a very very hard time speaking up for what is right! Even when false doctrine is preached over the pulpit, it’s difficult for people to acknowledge it. It’s so much easier to just pretend it didn’t happen or to go along with it. People do lack courage.
I agree with Ray. If people don’t have doubts about their faith, they are foolish. Our spiritual experiences sustain us in whatever form they come, but I too am a skeptic about the claims people routinely make.
Yeah. It’s always more difficult when the person is much older (over 70 or so). I should have stayed and addressed the issue. The not belonging wasn’t really that the incident happened and I projected what the older person said about homosexuals, but more that I didn’t feel it was my place as an “outsider” (funny coming from a lifelong member with faith issues) to correct him. In many ways the church has steered and accepted that you can be born gay. He was basically repeating the ideas that are presented in the Miracle of Forgiveness as far as homosexuality is concerned with a little extra bigotry.
The most unfortunate thing I see is that the church can’t actually bend on homosexuality until it bends a little on the law of chastity.
The difficult part is realigning myself so it is still my religion, even if I do not believe.
Roy wrote:
This is a complex issue for me. I reveal myself to others piece by piece. Because of non-traditional thoughts I have revealed to some ward members, I may be regarded by suspicion by them and feel marginalized. Because I am also always holding back with ward members and framing what I share in positive ways I feel somewhat isolated – never truly known or accepted. For me the big exception to this has been my family. In my family we are all different but rather accepting and loving. Though they do not know me completely I am confident that they would accept me just the same regardless. DW and I have discussed wanting to provide this same loving acceptance for our own children.
First of all, thank you for the kind words, it brought some tears to my eyes. I’m pretty outwardly adamant about approaching things from a scientific perspective. I have been for a while. In some ways I think my parents would be fine, but my mother would cry over me. If there’s such a thing as an intuitively spiritual woman, it’s her. She would not love me less, but she’d cry while praying for me.
I’m pretty open about most of my views since even my parents are generally unorthodox Mormons. My mother is rather famous for giving mind opening church lessons. I still remember the time in one of her Gospel Doctrine classes, she posed the question. “If a non-member pays tithes to another religion with faith that he is following Gods commandments, does he receive the same blessings we do for paying our tithing?” You could see it slowly blowing everyones’ minds. Her point being that the “one true church” doesn’t have an exclusive on the blessings of god.
Roy wrote:
I’m wondering about birth order dynamics here. It sounds like you have been pretty independent and responsible. The more dependable you have proven to be the more others have depended upon you and the less help you have received. This in turn can make you even more dependable and “self-reliant.” This can be viewed as a blessing or an injustice.Absolutely. I may have eaten sloppy joes, beans and cornbread, and lots of ramen as my parents raised me while they finished school, but I’m also the executor of their will. They trust me rather implicitly. Honestly I think they’re paying for her schooling as a bargaining chip to keep her from running off with her non-member boyfriend.
Roy wrote:
Your personal/family/religious background surely contributed to the man you are/were, what is more difficult to guess would be if your life would be “better” or “worse” with some alternate course.
I wouldn’t change a thing. I can’t imagine having a better life honestly. Working your own way through school while providing for your family (wife is a stay at home mom) is hard and tiring, but I have a job when so many others do not. My family has its needs fulfilled and all I have to do is lose a little sleep.
Roy wrote:
For my own children, I endeavor to provide them with that loving acceptance I mentioned earlier. I have no idea if this is the best way to raise them – some might say that it is too soft. I don’t want my kids to be promiscuous, or sexually mistreated (inside or outside of marriage), or go through divorce, or lose a child and some may feel that if I raise my children “right” they will have a better chance at avoiding the first 3. I don’t know too much about that, but I do know that if any of these or other tragedies do happen to my children and they need a safe place to turn – I want them to be able to find that safe place in our home and family.
Absolutely. I have 3 daughters under the age of 5. If their mother is any indication they’ll be gorgeous young women one day. I am not ready
😆 Old-Timer wrote:Imo, you have too much to lose to do anything formally or to “open up” to everyone – and you love the Church itself enough that leaving over lack of knowledge would be . . . silly. Cherish what you have.
Thanks. It means a lot to get encouragement.
About the title. I never got to the first time I felt I truly didn’t belong.
I have a fairly heady background, having taught early morning seminary for a year and generally being a doctrinal bookworm. I had fulfilled and read everything “allowed” on my mission and memorized whole sections of scripture (at one point I had half of the book of alma completely memorized). I asked special permission to read non-approved but still church literature, my mission president granted my request.
When assigned to a particular area, I had access to an institute library. In another transfer there was an entire and complete copy of the journal of discourses in a meeting house. Another meeting house had every issue of the improvement era back to the 1950s. (including the 1968 copy that had the papyri in it). I read it all. The things I didn’t have time to read I photocopied. My district meetings and later zone meetings became famous for the trainings I produced.
Because of that, I usually avoid Gospel Doctrine class and instead attend gospel principles. I love the earnest faith and real questions asked and I generally try to be an asset in the class. 2 weeks ago the subject was the Law of Chastity. People began to stray towards homosexuality as a topic when the proclamation to the family was mentioned. I raised my hand and expressed that we need to confront within ourselves our own issues before we can condemn anyone.
Well an older LDS couple was also in the room. The lesson devolved into a “wise” explanation from this older member on why people are gay. Fag was even uttered a couple of times by him. I was dumbfounded and perhaps cowardly left the room. I could not have had a civil disagreement with him. That was the first time I truly felt that I didn’t belong, that it wasn’t for me. The teacher did nothing to stop it and everyone but my wife was nodding their head. So I left with my youngest daughter and read a recently released scholarly/doctrinal work by one of my good friend’s older brother in the foyer…
I should have stayed in the room.
