In short, I was raised a Mormon, and now I'm agnostic. I started a private "journal" of sorts several months ago to track my thought processes as I opened my mind to the possibility (and later realization) that the religion of my upbringing was not what it claimed to be.
I'll try to keep it interesting, but no guarantees.
***
Here is some background on me:
I was born into the Mormon religion. I served a mission in Brazil. I graduated from Brigham Young University. I'm the oldest of six kids. My parents and three of my siblings are active, believing Mormons. The other two siblings are not active and are more or less atheist/agnostic.
As a child and teenager, I was a hardcore believing Mormon. For the most part, I grew up in a very insulated part of Utah. In high school I was very focused on mission preparation. During my sophomore year, one of my seminary teachers mentioned to me that Thomas Monson had once promised that if you memorized a scripture a day for a year, you would gain a photographic memory. I thought a photographic memory sounded useful, and it would double as good missionary prep, so I took him up on it. I actually kept it up until the start of my mission, so I ended up memorizing well over a thousand scriptures. I think it did improve my memory, but I wouldn't say it's "photographic." (I share that mainly to illustrate my dedication to the church/gospel during that time of my life.)
I had a mission full of good and bad (yet always growth-inducing) experiences. I still appreciate its value to my personal development. After my mission, I stayed relatively faithful for slightly over a year before descending into varying stages of inactivity. At this point I didn't stop believing or attending church, but I allowed my behavior to slip a bit. For the next several years, I waffled in varying stages of inactivity. After moving to California for law school, I became even less active and more disconnected from the LDS community. Deep down, I remained a believer and thought I had a pretty strong testimony, but my behavior became even less consistent with church rules. I still attended church occasionally, but no one knew my name and I never met with the bishop. (He was cool and never pressured any kind of meeting.) I was a back row, sacrament-meeting-only church attendee.
This continued for the next several years until I made a lukewarm resolution to get my life "in order" again. This was in mid-2010. I went and met with my branch president and fessed up. This led to a couple meetings with the stake president, who indicated I would be subject to some type of disciplinary council either at the stake or ward level. I told them I was agreeable to that, but then didn't hear from my branch president for a couple months. During that time, I "strayed" again, so to speak, and took another little break from church. When I returned a few months later, I met again with my branch president, but indicated that I no longer felt ready for a disciplinary council. I started ward hopping after he persistently sicked his clerk on me every Sunday to try and meet with me. I also ignored calls from the stake president's secretary.
Another several months went by. One day I was chatting with a friend on facebook and he asked where I stood with the church. I told him I still believed it, but that behaviorally I wasn't on track. Being single, I told him that I thought it would be great to find a less active woman in similar circumstances and perhaps we could go back to church "together." He invited me to an online group of liberal-thinking Mormons and ex-Mormons. Through my participation there, I became exposed to various aspects of the church that I either had not encountered before, or had long-since shelved through (now unsatisfying) apologetic rationalizations.
The last time I had encountered literature negative toward the church was roughly 12 years previously, shortly before my mission. This was the late 90s and the internet was just starting to really take off. I remember reading something about the kinderhook plates and having quite a scare. I think I must have read an apologist's response somewhere saying that JS never really translated them--it was just a scribe's entry. Wanting to believe, I latched onto that and probably said a fervent prayer thanking the Lord for providing an answer. At that time, I made up my mind that the "anti's" must be liars and that there would always be a satisfactory response. With that mindset, I somehow brushed aside many of the criticisms leveled at the church which nowadays bother me considerably.
Anyway, this time around when I encountered the many evidentiary and reason-based criticisms leveled at the church, its doctrines, and its history, my legally-trained mind could not dismiss them so quickly. I saw things in a whole new light. Perhaps I was more cynical and not as willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe my understanding of human nature had sharpened and occam's unforgiving razor demanded a more obvious interpretation of polygamy/polyandry. The BofA issues were huge (those I actually hadn't heard about before). The multiple accounts of the first vision, and the sketchy "restoration" of the priesthood struck me as wholly unconvincing. The anachronisms and embarrassing plagiarisms in the BofM struck home. Brigham Young absolutely repulsed me. And of course, there is much more.
Losing my faith was a little depressing at first. I had always thought the Mormon afterlife was particularly exciting. On the other hand, I was relieved to be able to stop worrying about my wayward siblings. It was also a relief to not always be wondering if my friends or coworkers would make good Mormons, or feel that I simply had to marry another church member. I was thankful that I didn't find out about all of this 10 years down the road, a faithful Mormon wife and two kids later.
As a child and teenager, I was a hardcore believing Mormon. For the most part, I grew up in a very insulated part of Utah. In high school I was very focused on mission preparation. During my sophomore year, one of my seminary teachers mentioned to me that Thomas Monson had once promised that if you memorized a scripture a day for a year, you would gain a photographic memory. I thought a photographic memory sounded useful, and it would double as good missionary prep, so I took him up on it. I actually kept it up until the start of my mission, so I ended up memorizing well over a thousand scriptures. I think it did improve my memory, but I wouldn't say it's "photographic." (I share that mainly to illustrate my dedication to the church/gospel during that time of my life.)
I had a mission full of good and bad (yet always growth-inducing) experiences. I still appreciate its value to my personal development. After my mission, I stayed relatively faithful for slightly over a year before descending into varying stages of inactivity. At this point I didn't stop believing or attending church, but I allowed my behavior to slip a bit. For the next several years, I waffled in varying stages of inactivity. After moving to California for law school, I became even less active and more disconnected from the LDS community. Deep down, I remained a believer and thought I had a pretty strong testimony, but my behavior became even less consistent with church rules. I still attended church occasionally, but no one knew my name and I never met with the bishop. (He was cool and never pressured any kind of meeting.) I was a back row, sacrament-meeting-only church attendee.
This continued for the next several years until I made a lukewarm resolution to get my life "in order" again. This was in mid-2010. I went and met with my branch president and fessed up. This led to a couple meetings with the stake president, who indicated I would be subject to some type of disciplinary council either at the stake or ward level. I told them I was agreeable to that, but then didn't hear from my branch president for a couple months. During that time, I "strayed" again, so to speak, and took another little break from church. When I returned a few months later, I met again with my branch president, but indicated that I no longer felt ready for a disciplinary council. I started ward hopping after he persistently sicked his clerk on me every Sunday to try and meet with me. I also ignored calls from the stake president's secretary.
Another several months went by. One day I was chatting with a friend on facebook and he asked where I stood with the church. I told him I still believed it, but that behaviorally I wasn't on track. Being single, I told him that I thought it would be great to find a less active woman in similar circumstances and perhaps we could go back to church "together." He invited me to an online group of liberal-thinking Mormons and ex-Mormons. Through my participation there, I became exposed to various aspects of the church that I either had not encountered before, or had long-since shelved through (now unsatisfying) apologetic rationalizations.
The last time I had encountered literature negative toward the church was roughly 12 years previously, shortly before my mission. This was the late 90s and the internet was just starting to really take off. I remember reading something about the kinderhook plates and having quite a scare. I think I must have read an apologist's response somewhere saying that JS never really translated them--it was just a scribe's entry. Wanting to believe, I latched onto that and probably said a fervent prayer thanking the Lord for providing an answer. At that time, I made up my mind that the "anti's" must be liars and that there would always be a satisfactory response. With that mindset, I somehow brushed aside many of the criticisms leveled at the church which nowadays bother me considerably.
Anyway, this time around when I encountered the many evidentiary and reason-based criticisms leveled at the church, its doctrines, and its history, my legally-trained mind could not dismiss them so quickly. I saw things in a whole new light. Perhaps I was more cynical and not as willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe my understanding of human nature had sharpened and occam's unforgiving razor demanded a more obvious interpretation of polygamy/polyandry. The BofA issues were huge (those I actually hadn't heard about before). The multiple accounts of the first vision, and the sketchy "restoration" of the priesthood struck me as wholly unconvincing. The anachronisms and embarrassing plagiarisms in the BofM struck home. Brigham Young absolutely repulsed me. And of course, there is much more.
Losing my faith was a little depressing at first. I had always thought the Mormon afterlife was particularly exciting. On the other hand, I was relieved to be able to stop worrying about my wayward siblings. It was also a relief to not always be wondering if my friends or coworkers would make good Mormons, or feel that I simply had to marry another church member. I was thankful that I didn't find out about all of this 10 years down the road, a faithful Mormon wife and two kids later.
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