Making the Transition
My adventures in discovering the wonder and beauty outside of the mirror of my former LDS lifeWho is this blog for?
In the few months since we've left the LDS church, I come to find out there is an enormous number of us in transition. The conversations have been fun/funny.I thought I'd capture some of the moments for anyone else coming behind (beside?) us. Breadcrumbs in the forest (like Hansel and Gretel only not with the same ending, lol ;)
One common theme in the stories (ours and others') is that we're all stumbling around in the real world finding fun new things, trying and failing in others. I thought it would be entertaining to capture some of our own silly adventures. Not sure if anyone else will be interested but feel free to read.
Who is this not for?
The only folks I can think of that shouldn't read are those that would like to think that Rebecca and I are hurting, sad or in church withdrawal/denial. You won't find any of that, sorry.Totally believing LDS folks might find it entertaining so feel free to read.
Who are you and why do I care?
If you can find humor in a 30-something that had his first drink (surprise) and the stealthy manner in which he went underwear shopping (for the first time since he was a kid) this might be interesting to you. It's kinda like the 40-year-old Virgin played out in real life.Long story short, I was Mormon until August when my family and I left the church.
Three kids, LDS mission, hundreds of trips to the temple and countless hours of church service before I finally discovered that it just isn't true.
Ok, gimme the story...
Short summary: As far as personal stories go, it was all pretty dramatic (for me). I'll try to be as honest as I can. My journey took me from years of TBM ("totally believing Mormon") through Prop 8 insanity, into our Ward bishopric followed by an abrupt exit.Real story: Truth is that I was living the standard LDS story, fully invested, until Proposition 8, the LDS-backed (organized and financed) (wikipedia) California ballot initiative to block gay couples from marriage. Until then, I think the only thing perhaps not "standard" about me is that I've always been a liberal (bleeding heart) and it continued to surprise me how most LDS were so conservative but I shrugged it off. It didn't bother me until the church's official statement on supporting Prop 8:
"Do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time."
Prop 8 shook me. It was during the Prop 8 enfolding that I first realized the church might not be infallible. I looked a couple things up, my search was centered on the reasoning for the history of the LDS priesthood (the church denied priesthood from people of other races until 1978... (wikipedia) for those that may not know, the "Priesthood" isn't just leadership, it is a right/rite and requirement for "all worthy males", except black men pre-1978 and it is a prerequisite to being able to receive all LDS blessings).
During that search, I stumbled on a brief history of the Book of Abraham (wikipedia) and... that was it. I knew then. I didn't look deeper (LDS apologist reponses to problems with Book of Abraham) until much later, I was scared to honestly. I was awake all that night, alone, realizing that it's all been an illusion? Or maybe there is some truth to it still, convoluted but still true?
I spend the next year rebuilding myself, engaging even more in the church, hoping to understand if I was alone in this and trying to justify my life of service.
I was called to the Elder's Quorum presidency around this time. A year later, a couple good friends left the church because of, you guessed it, they found out about the Book of Abraham and a whole lot more. That shook me up again. I watched the United States shaken in the grip of George Bush conservatism each night on the Daily Show and Colbert Report. My chats with Rebecca each night were my only release.
I was then called to be the EQ President. I was initially hesitant but at the time, Rebecca, while she had the same problems and doubts, was still a believer (she didn't look into anything) and I found that my happiest moments in the church were visiting people, knocking on doors of folks many of whom were down on their luck and I didn't push the church, I just told them I was there if they needed someone. Oddly enough, EQ duties kept me from having to teach things that I didn't feel comfortable with. So I accepted the calling. After a couple years I started to think that I'd ride out my EQ calling and then I'd pull back. It was only 5 years (or so) right?
A couple years later our bishopric was switched out... and I got the phone call from the Stake President's secretary. I knew what it meant and I worried about it terribly.
I went to my dad, a new convert but still very liberal man (even with his current church belief). I told him my doubts and he understood them. His advice was go ahead to the interview but make sure I tell them the things that bothered me. He said that the answer would be obvious to the Stake Presidency then.
That's what I did. I said how I love the brothers and sisters in my ward and I'm perfectly happy to serve as they want me to but that I had some issues. I said that I didn't think that the Priesthood being withheld from black people could possibly have been from god. I said that I had serious issues with polygamy. I said that I was a liberal, democrat and I supported gay rights. Rebecca was in the room with me and listened to the whole thing and nodded her head.
I was assured that they felt I was kind, generous and of a charitable heart and that this was the most important aspect of the calling as councilor to the bishop. He said that a testimony of these other things may come in time. He asked Rebecca if I was worthy and she said yes, of course. That was it. I was sustained as the ward first councilor and the rest is history...
Though, of course, it wasn't.
You were clearly very fully invested... how/why did you leave then?
The rest deserves a couple blog posts on their own but Rebecca and I took a trip to Europe (part business, part pleasure). It was a transcendent event in so many ways. Something happened to me. The art, the sum of thousands of years of human emotion, it hit me hard. I came back a changed person, moreso than learning the church history problems before.I was inspired, glowing, a human torch. It's like I'd been touched by the finger of a god and I had accepted who I am. If anyone is interested, I can capture the events, the works of art that led to that moment. I can still put them together. I'd be interested if anyone else could take the same journey of thought and find their own spiritual moment.
Rebecca sensed the change and pondered it. We went on a Spring vacation with the family and I could also tell she was thinking things over deeply herself. We have always been close but we grew closer. After our vacation, she had made some of her own decisions but it left her uncertain. She demanded I tell her what things I knew, some resources to read that weren't "anti" (the most disparaging and discouraging term for anything not LDS). I pointed her to www.mormonthink.com.
The site is not an anti site, there is very little opinion and they are honest about sources that are circumstantial, but the vast body of fact is overwhelming. It's a carefully documented examination of "everything else" that the church leaves out of the official manuals but nevertheless are the reality.
What were your big issues?
Interestingly I've found from other folks leaving the church that the issues that shocked us the most change across the spectrum.For me, there were a few top issues:
As painful as it was to find out, I was shocked to find out Joseph Smith's polygamy was not with widows, it was with unmarried teenage girls and other still-married women, some of whom were married to faithful men sent out on missions (by Joseph Smith). This is not speculation, it is recorded in the familysearch.org records including the ages of the girls and the dates they were "married". Some of the girls journals still survive, including the dismayed feelings they had when they found out they would be "secret" brides to JS, not just in name, and that they were off the market from other youth activities (courtship for example). Either god is uninterested in sexual sins or there are serious problems with this.
The First Vision wasn't adopted by the LDS church until the 1920's and Brigham Young either never heard of it or he didn't believe it. It is iron clad fact that Brigham believed that Adam was God the Father, aka Elohim, recorded in official church talks over the pulpit in multiple occasions. In fact, until at least 10 years after the church was founded (church founded in 1830, wasn't even mentioned in a church publication until 1842) references in church publications (and members' journals) that mention the "First Vision" are referring to Moroni's visit. No mention at all of a boy's prayer and a godlike visit.
The Book of Abraham papyrus wasn't lost in a fire, the church has the very copy, with Emma's affidavit on back even, that he translated and the church has his "alphabet" that he used to translate... and it is so incredibly not even apologetically close that apologists struggle to explain it. It turns out it was an ordinary and common funeral text. Ugh.
Corroborated by Russell M Nelson in his talk "A Treasured Testament" (Ensign July, 1993) the Book of Mormon translation was accomplished when Joseph buried his face in a hat with his "peeping stone" (later called the "seer" stone) and he would read the words as they appeared in the darkness of the hat. Joseph didn't read from gold plates when he translated, he wasn't alone with his scribe, and there was no Urim and Thumim (to non-LDS this stuff all sounds greek, I know) ever mentioned until many years later. Why would the church depict him translating at a table when they know he buried his face in a hat? Is it because it freaks them out as much as it did me? It turns out Joseph had his "stone" long before he claimed his visions and this was the reason he was arrested and convicted (the only time I know of) of scrying for treasure. So all those times we learned in Sunday School that Joseph _wasn't_ a treasure seeker turned out to be bogus. JS had a stone, the courts took it from him as evidence, and he later found another one when digging a well.
When you take away the First Vision, and you realize that Joseph Smith wasn't a "good" man when it came to sexual sins, the translation of the Book of Abraham has serious credibility issues and you picture him looking into a hat and using his stone to do "scrying", what the heck do you have left? But there is sooooo much more. Ugh, it was so painful to find these things out.
You sound like the people the church warned us about...
If you describe anyone that disagrees with you as evil and angry then you'll always be looking over your shoulder. The reality is I was fully, completely and totally a believer, I wasn't being sinful, doubtful, evil, angry or any of that. I simply looked at the facts, initially with skepticism and suddenly I realized that the preponderance of evidence made me realize that the only thing keeping my from seeing with reasonable eyes was... my pride and fear.I had everything to lose and who wants to admit you've been wrong for so long? Through a mission, through school and college, through marriage and a career. Our pride resists.
And then there is the fear... it is far easier to let someone tell us that the answers are all there. Who wants to live a life without knowing what happens at the end?
So how did you leave?
Within a week, Rebecca not only knew more of the facts than I did, she said to me "You need to ask for a release and it's time to get out." She felt lied to, betrayed, and she didn't want to waste any more of our lives living something that simply can't be true.The next several weeks were eventful. The story is all here if you want to read it as it unfolded
First the Reddit post on making the decision and getting out
Here was when the family found out and in the comments is our "Exit Interview" with the bishop
Here is the public blog announcement when I posted it to our Facebook.
Paul--I also struggled with certain bits of church history (more as a teen), but I found that with the often sparse evidence available, none of it provided anything even close to an open and shut case--certainly nothing that would prove that Smith wasn't a prophet. It did, however, provide plenty of fodder for critics to extrapolate the conclusions they were seeking, and provided an exit for those who really didn't want it to be true. For example, your critique of plural marriage seems pretty damning on the surface, but you didn't mention many factors that really take the bite out of it, for example the fact that many of these marriages were for "eternity only" (i.e. not binding during mortality, and thus no sex), which very likely included Smith's marriage to the 14 year old Helen Mar Kimball--which was incidentally requested by her father Heber C.. In her own words, Helen said her marriage was for eternity only, which is why she was upset when her parents (with whom she continued to live) restricted her from going to parties and dances. There is also ample evidence that Smith's sealings to those already married were for eternity only, not for mortality. As you know, marriages just for eternity aren't done anymore.
ReplyDeleteWhich brings up a good point -- I think a lot of my initial disillusionment was that I felt like the restoration of doctrine should have been a perfectly smooth, almost Disney-esque experience--after all, if it came from God how could it be as messy as it was? What I failed to grasp was that mortality by definition (and design) is extremely messy, because it involves very imperfect humans, which mainly learn by working stuff out on our own--with direction from God only as needed. For example--when God introduced plural and eternal marriage, He didn't immediately provide much instruction on how to implement it, allowing them to gradually work the details out on their own, providing correction along the way. Another example is the seer stone you mentioned. We like to imagine that Smith just smoothly translated the B of M using the Urim and Thummim without a hitch. And we know he did use it--but for whatever reasons, be they mental, environmental, or practical, or perhaps even a lack of faith, he found that he got better results with the seer stone, using a hat to block out the light. Of course at the surface it sounds weird, but in reality it boiled down to a human with very limited capacities using whatever he found to work. Do you think God cared which method Smith used? Of course not, as long as the job got done. If Smith were a fraud, he likely would have just perpetuated a nice Disney version of the translation--so if anything, the reality of what he and others reported about the translation process makes his story much more human, and believable.
It was actually the Mormon viewpoint on mortality that was one of the clinchers for my conversion, especially when I compared it to the majority Christian viewpoint of the Fall being nothing but a tragic cancellation of a wonderful paradise for all, for no other reason than the stupid choice of two people. This majority view not only made God seem horribly unjust and petty, but it implied that He wasn't interested in empowering us to learn for ourselves (in the face of opposition) to both prize and choose the good--instead He just wanted us to be pure and innocent like children who can't sin because they don't know any better.
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ReplyDeleteDrune, I appreciate that you are an apologist for the LDS faith, finding something that shows serious flaws in faith is incredibly trying (I went through it oviously). I don't want to stir you up but your comment is full of hard factual errors. As an apologist (I'm really hoping you aren't employed by LDS church) claiming that Joseph Smith didn't have sex with these young women is completely wrong. There are dozens of first hand accounts well documented, in fact, even the Mormon apologist scholarly organization admits he likely did. Details here
ReplyDeletehttp://mormonthink.com/joseph-smith-polygamy.htm#full
What about his maid Fanny Alger? That happened more than 5 years before there was even a concept of "plural marriage" and, in fact, they never married and Fanny later married someone never joining the church. After the affair was discovered Emma threw her out and when Joseph restarted his "marriages" years later he didn't tell Emma for quite a while that he was having these relationships. Details, references, marriages, and timelines are all in the link above.
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ReplyDeletePaul--I read your Mormonthink article, but it seems to disagree with your claims because it says that Smith was married to Fanny (and that Smith taught polygamy since 1831), and that Smith didn't have sex with Helen Mar. You said my comment was full of hard factual errors, but I think the words "hard" and "factual" should be avoided when the evidence is so scant—which is why you and Mormonthink could so easily arrive at different conclusions. Of course a lack of evidence doesn't stop critics from spinning the most negative slant imaginable, then acting as if a positive interpretation were out of the question. For example, Mormonthink acknowledged the evidence of no sex with Helen, but explained it with a wild theory about Smith keeping her in his "harem" until she was older. This ignores the fact that "eternity only" marriages were a very real and confirmed thing at the time (a term that Helen herself used to describe her marriage), and close friends Smith and HC Kimball would have seen this sealing as a way to link their families in the eternities. Why, then is this not considered a very valid explanation?
ReplyDeleteAnother indication of your unfair bias is the tabloidesque wording you use to try to portray Smith as a scandalous sex fiend. Most anti's are Christian, so think of the huge double standard of presenting polygamy in this sleazy light as a way to discredit Smith as a prophet, when they unhesitatingly sustain polygamists like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, etc. as prophets. I'm not saying that Smith didn't have sex with any of his plural wives -- but if God had restored the Biblical practice of polygamy, there's nothing scandalous about it! And is it reasonable to call Smith a sex fiend when the lack of progeny, etc., indicates that the sex was likely very limited? Mormonthink explains this with the wild speculation that Smith arranged abortions. But if he had taught that polygamy was to raise up seed, would he not welcome the babies? It just doesn't add up. So why is it so unreasonable to say that sex wasn't an impetus for Smiths' polygamy at all (as if he didn't have enough on his plate), but that he really considered it a commandment from God?
The fact that you deleted my second comment is also indicative of a one-sided agenda, as it tells me you're not interested in considering the real essence of Smith's work. When Christ taught us that "by their fruits ye shall know them" (true prophets), do you think He had in mind a biased mudslinging tirade that focuses on often unverifiable little nitpicks (as many Jews launched against Jesus), or did He mean to objectively and prayerfully consider the fruits of his prophetic work? For me, it was the way all of Smith’s revelations fit together to paint a beautiful picture of our true identity and relationship to God (in turn explaining why mortality is the way it is), that gave me the conviction that Smith was the real thing. It just fits together way too perfectly and wonderfully to deny, and feels incredibly right -- which is why to me, a focus on the topics you deem important is like fixating on little ant hills instead of looking up and regarding the magnificent Mt Everest of truth in front of you.
You mentioned that you don't want to stir me up, but the intent of your blog is obviously very carefully designed for that purpose. I suppose you know that people with fragile testimonies may read your blog and not know enough to realize how unfair and biased it is, and it kills me to think you are so far gone that you’re OK with that. Unless you’re just an anti-Mormon posing as the sincere unsuspecting member who unwittingly uncovers appalling facts unknown to other members, which is so irrefutably damning to Mormonism that it causes a painful yet ultimately liberating loss of your faith…hey, I kind of like that theory!
Drune, your insistence that there is "no evidence" he had sex with these people is disturbing. There is a ton of evidence from first hand accounts. You want to nitpick about whether or not Fanny Alger was a "wife" to discredit the Mormonthink references? In reality NONE of the women Joseph Smith had relations with were his wives except Emma Smith of course because it was illegal even back then. Please take a read of _In Sacred Loneliness_ (on Amazon and in print of course). First hand accounts of his relationships. My goodness. More than 1/3 of his "wives" were between the ages of 14 and 20. Were you aware that was the case? Did you know that he, yes, had sex with them? Or are you still following the official church press?
ReplyDeleteIf you want to believe, please by all means, believe. I didn't write this to convince you otherwise. I wrote this to explain how I was able to awaken to life and give peace and comfort for people following after me.
In Sacred Loneliness, on Amazon
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/In-Sacred-Loneliness-Plural-Joseph/dp/156085085X
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ReplyDeleteDrune, calling me "anti-Mormon posing as disillusioned member" is not only sinking to insulting low levels, I have dozens of friends, mormon and non-mormon that can attest to my accepting, kind and generous attitude towards everyone. Poorly done.
ReplyDelete