Leaving the Church Handbook of Instructions

[Red Ryder]

We need to come up with a Leaving the Church Handbook of Instructions.

Let's brainstorm and throw something together.

This is a great place to start:

It's realizations like this that clearly show how the mental prison of LDS belief is only locked from theinside. We could get out whenever we want save for the social conditioning of our peers. Logic and science have no real bearing on LDS doctrine and only a marginal nod is ever given to theology.

[Corsair]

This is a short list of strategies for leaving the church. Let me know if I am off base in what you are wanting to develop. As I wrote it down it opens far too many questions for one post. I started coming up with ideas and noted that they fell into two categories: "dealing with beliefs" and "dealing with others". These are not very elegant titles and I would welcome suggestions.

Dealing with Your Beliefs

• The stages of grief and exiting the church
• The nature of belief
• The limits and use of evidence, skepticism, and faith
• Critical thinking and logical fallacies
• Apologetics and counter-apologetics
• Be angry now, but in the longer term develop an attitude of indifference towards the LDS church
• Developing your own morality

Dealing with Others

• Finding a new social group
• The Pros and Cons of resignation vs. inactivity
• How to tell your family if you tell them at all
• Negotiating your mixed-faith marriage
• Strategies for your children of all ages

Note that the issues in "MormonThink.com" and the "CES Letter" are not the focus of this list or even a large part of the information.

[The Beast]

I'm pretty sure my contributions to the instructions would include burning...lots of burning, in fact.

[trophywife26.2]

Well I highly recommend paying for and then listening to Mormon Expression Podcast. My favorite is Episode 268: What To Do If You Decide To Leave The Church, but I don't think it's actually on the site and I think the site is hacked.

So here are some notes I took a few years ago. I hope John Larsen wouldn't mind if I put these notes up. If he happens to read this, and he happens to mind, please contact me and I will take my notes down. I took these a number of years ago so I can't even say if these are straight up quotes or if they are paraphrasing or a little of both. I think I tried to do direct quotes. Just know these are not my ideas.

What to do if you decide the church isn’t true
John Larsen

1.Give up your definition of ‘truth’; you can’t prove the church isn’t true anymore that you can prove the lakers aren’t true.

2.Study, ponder, and Pray; stop cherry picking and actually study your religion. Look at both sides don’t fear information. If you were buying a car, would you only read positive reviews?

3.Let yourself mourn, and be happy simultaneously; recognize that it’s normal to experience loss and miss parts of the church, but also normal to feel relieved of pressure and happy about new possibilities. You don’t have to prove to anyone how happy you are out of the church. Allow the wide range of emotions, feel it, acknowledge it, process it.

4. Relax, it all doesn’t matter; You don’t have to do it all anymore. You don’t have to do all your home teaching, you don’t have to do genealogy, you don’t have to go to the temple. Just breathe. Whether or not you believe in the church doesn’t make it anymore true or false. Relax.

5. You are on your own schedule, there is no hurry; you don’t have to decide anything, anytime soon. Take your time. Don’t make big life decisions quickly. Don’t go get a tattoo overnight. Don’t run out and tell everyone you want to resign. Let it sit and think about things. You don’t have to tell anyone anything.

6. Regain your own privacy and boundaries; It’s okay to not answer questions. Set your boundaries. It’s okay to say no. You are in control. It’s okay to lie, if that’s how you want to handle it (No I can’t meet with the bishop I am busy). You don’t owe anyone explanations. You can just say no and not give a reason. Silence can be a great tool when asked awkward questions.

7. Take responsibility for your own life, immediately; You may have made decisions in your life based on what the church told you to do, how many kids, what your career is, not going to school, being a stay at home mom, spending time and money on a mission, all the money you’ve spent on tithing. Move forward by grieving the loss, but don’t fixate on it. The sooner you can focus on the future, the happier you can be.

8. Reset your relationships; discard ones that don’t work and work on ones that do. Some relationships will have to end and it will be painful. It’s okay to let some relationships go. Over time it may even change and you may gain relationships back.

9. Find out what matters to you; what is it that you like to do compared to what you’ve been told to do? What is it that you care about?

10. Phase out what doesn’t work and enhance the things that do; again go slow, and just remember you don’t have to do it all overnight. If you can’t hold yourself back from sharing, go see a therapist or find groups to talk to instead of just throwing it all over everyone.

It will all be okay, you will be able to adjust, but it will take time.

I really hope it's okay to post these since they aren't my ideas just notes I took. It's just hard for me not to share because I turned to this podcast and later these notes OVER and OVER as a part of my transition.

[No Tof]

Just run.