My Reintroduction

[DPRoberts]

Let me re-introduce myself since we have a new NOM like unto the old one, minus the archive where you can look up introductions. I am BIC, RM, MIT with 4K and a TBM DW. On my mom's side we go back to the earliest days of the church. My dad was more of a social convert. My three oldest kids are no longer interested in the church, and the youngest may well follow. If I still believed I would feel like a terrible failure. As is, it may well be that a needed generational change may come of mine and my DW's ineptitude in raising LDS children to be faithful adults.

My dissaffection starts with the here and now for the most part. I was aware of some of the history from my teen years in the Mormon Corridor. I knew about Joseph Smith's polygamy (I had to educate a couple of mission companions), for example, and some of Brigham Young's strange ideas. I was always able to rationalize my way around those things as being far enough in the past and having sufficient uncertainty as to be inconclusive.

As I tried to make the Mormon way work I hit a point where I felt like there was little progress and little growth happening. My testimony had grown stagnant as I saw it. Then I made a simple, conscious decision. As my earlier testimony had grown out of doubts and questions, I felt that I needed to again examine my faith against the contrary evidence. I needed to stop ignoring information that might challenge my beliefs. That opened the gate to Fowler's stage 4 for me.

My here and now issues mainly come down to mainly two.

The first is the lack of anything truly valuable coming from latter-day prophets. The reality simply does not match up with the expectation that has been set. The guidance we get in these latter days seems to be completely slanted toward sexual and churchy compliance issues while deaf, dumb and blind on issues of equal or greater moral significance. Why would God be so concerned about pornography and same sex marriage but basically silent on things like massive financial fraud and preemptive war? The only reasonable answer for me is that these men do not speak for God, if he/she/it exists. They are just capable, but otherwise ordinary, men who teach what they know from a particular biased perspective while claiming God as the source of their bias.

The other big issue is the structure of religious teaching. I find it is completely indistinguishable from what a con man would tell you to keep you in his game. Blessings are promised, and if they don't appear, well, God must be testing you. And He can test you just as much and as long as He wants until the day you die, which also happens to be the day you will no longer be of any use to the corporation hiding behind a church trademark. It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, yet still makes grandiose claims to being something greater. If there is a God I will take my chances that he does not reward gullibility.

Due to my DW's unwillingness to engage the issues, I am likely to be stuck with some sort of church participation for quite a while. I like my ward, so that is not a huge problem. I definitely agree that it is best not to tell local leaders anything other than what I am or am not willing to do. As for my DW, I think she has turned me into the poster child for "go slow". I do not know if she will ever allow herself to face church issues head-on, nor do I know if she could handle a FC. That means I may be around here for a long time.

A big shout out to the folks who got this site up and working again. It has been so valuable to me to have a place to come and know that I am not alone. I hope we can keep this the same safe and civil place that the old site mostly was. I agree with limiting profanity as another posted in his intro.

[MoPag]

Welcome back!

Realizing the "prophets" weren't actually talking to God was one of the biggest eye opening moments in my faith transition too. It's crazy because when I was TBM I just loved GC and I would reread all the conference talks in the Ensign. And now on the other side of my faith transition I look back on that I'm like WTF was I thinking?

I like how you described rationalizing around certain things in church history. I used to do that too, and it is so nice not to have to do that anymore!

[SeeNoEvil]

Welcome back DPR! I enjoyed reading your story. Realizing that the prophet did not talk to God was the final axe blow to my shelf. Prior to that I was as TBM as it gets. Don't give up on your wife.... her shelf is probably bulging and she just doesn't realize it. One day that final blow will come ....