What was it like when you first started doubting the Mormon church?
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I lost a lot when I CONVERTED to Mormonism - my best friend from childhood couldn’t be freinds with me (it was too hard on him to see me in Mormonism), my family disowned me (my grandfather quit speaking to me altogether) and I was kicked out of the house) for joining Mormonism, but I had taken comfort that Mormonism was my “new family” and I had a lot of new LDS friends. Part of what they do is isolate you from your non-LDS friends(and sometimes family) by becoming your only social circle.
Even though (or perhaps because) of the cost of JOINING Mormonism in my life, I really believed Mormonism was true. All my LDS friends and given me the ‘well sometimes we must suffer for the truth (in that case Mormonism)’ and ‘your family is just Satan trying to keep you from the one true church’ support lines. And I bought it. I loved Mormonism, looking back I can see part of that was it fed my pride (one true church, becoming gods, etc). Being a new convert, I had a lot of new friends, new social circle, LDS boyfriend and I really had believed I found ‘the true church’. I had a very strong testimony and for many years that never faded.
Now to your question. Like most Mormons, I had a lot invested in my ‘testimony’ of Mormonism. I was living in Zion (Utah), attending BYU, all my friends were LDS, my fiance was LDS, all but one person at my job was LDS, I loved being Mormon and I was good at it. Mormonism could change my behavior (”Choose the Right”) but it couldn’t change my heart.
So, when I started researching to be able to apologize (traditional definition) for Mormonism, I was not expecting to find out that the ‘antis’ were telling the truth. When I started to see that things like Smith had guns, polygamy was denied long after it was an open secret in Mormonism, that there was a ‘strengthing members committee’ who filtered info, that the Temple rites were changed because of a Satanic ritual abuse scare (Pace Memo), and doubts started to creep in, I was devastated.
And I kept being devestated over and over again with every doubt that came up, every time I found out that the ‘antis’ were right about something, or a quote they used wasn’t out of context. At first, I was puzzled and asked questions and tried to get answers from my ‘priesthood leaders’ but their advice was just to ‘pray’ and only read Mormon material, and caution not to ‘think myself out of the Church’. That wasn’t going to make the facts I had learned go away.
Then came the fear, that I was falling victim to the antis and their lies, that my testimony was suffering. I didn’t want to go through all that loss again, like when I joined. I went into a spiritual crisis mode.
About that point, I remember praying “Heavenly Father, I want to know the truth, regardless of the cost, even if it means giving up Mormonism”. I was in so much pain, confusion, anger, but I had to know what the truth was so I kept going.
When I first went ‘inactive’ (stopped going to church, quit my ‘calling’), I really thought I would resolve my testimony and factual issues and go back, but the more I read, the more I realized I couldn’t trust my LDS leaders to tell me the truth, I had uncovered to many lies and half-truths. I had seen the sources. I prayed a lot, I wanted those ‘warm fuzzy feelings’ back, I didn’t want to lose my friends, my LDS family, my fiance, my schooling, or my job. But the more inactive I became, the less of a ‘testimony’ I had, the more it cost me until I had no choice but to move back to California.
It was then that I had to decide if I really believed in Mormonism any longer. I was reading a few ‘anti’ Mormon Christian books (What Mormons believe, Mormon Mirage type things) that the Christian bookstore owner in Provo had given me and I kept, mainly with the idea of correcting them. I read them, with pen in hand, “correcting” them and arguing with them, in essence. At the end of one of them, it presented the doctrine of Salvation by Grace with several Bible verse (basically a tract). By this point I had already been working as a ‘listener’ for the local AWANA group and had heard many of these verses and the gospel of grace but it really hadn’t sunk in that I needed it. One night, as I was finishing one of these books, I prayed for a ‘testimony’ (burning in the bosom) if what the antis were saying was ‘true’, same pattern I learned in Mormonism. This time the answer was that Mormonism was false, and what I had been hearing was ‘true’. The difference this time, was I had sources and Bible references in context, I wasn’t just relying on feelings (although now I see it as still a very Mormon thing to have done). That was the night I accepted Christ, and turned my back on Mormonism.
That’s a very interesting story. I’m always fascinated in how people are drawn into Mormonism but more importantly, how they left....
Have you been contacted by the church since you left, have they bothered you?
I’ve read and re-read your account about how you turned away from the Mormon church and the process that you went through. I’m left with the feeling that you would have kept searching until you found the truth, reaganaut. Upon reflection I get the idea that it was a spiritual search, but also that you were using your reasoning mind. You were looking for Truth.
My husband and I watched “The Truth Project” this year. And it was really a long-involved set of DVD’s to watch and a lot of thought-provoking discussion followed because God’s Truth is so large and yet, so simple.
As Christians, we rely on Truth. And Christianity is a logical faith. The truth that God has shown to the world logically is threaded throughout the Bible. The revelation through prophecy of the coming of the Messiah speaks to this.
But also, our very need for a connection to Him speaks to this Truth. He occupies our rational minds and makes sense to us.
He doesn’t leave us hanging with lots of quirky and irrational things hanging out there in the darkness that we just have to accept blindly.
We have proof that Jesus was born to a virgin.
We have proof that He lived.
We have proof that He died on the cross.
We have proof that He was resurrected. And the entire purpose of His life... and ours become clear once we accept the resurrection.
We have a rational, logical and loving God who treats us with respect and wants us to know Him. He doesn’t hide from us. He came here so we would know Him on a more intimate level. And believers have the Holy Spirit so that we would never be separated from our loving God.
It’s truly like Mormonism has rejected the power of Holy Spirit and said that only they and their priesthood can save mankind. How blasphemous that seems!
What you left behind was confusion, mistrust and falsehood.
What you found was truth and freedom.
And I’m thankful, to call you a sister in Christ.
Thanks for that testimony. I was one of the originals on the ‘anti-Mormon’ threads because of my experiences with LDS here in Nevada. I had found it to really destroy lives. I have been gone for a while, doing anti Reid things, but it is heartening to hear what you said. I so hope that we can bring the concept of grace back to lost mormons instead of their hopeless doctrine of works.The intent has never been to make Mormons into atheists by any of the Inmans.
The lack of a belief in grace is by the way why I opposed Romney from the beginning (besides the God thingy). Romneycare is a result of the endless need of Mormons to ‘do good’, whether needed or not. It is very manipulative, a way to buy their way into heaven.