I had posted a few weeks ago about a dilemma I was having about my step-daughter’s looming temple marriage this spring. My tbm wife has told me I need to be there, it will cause major marital problems if I am not. All of the groom’s family is flying in and will be at the temple ceremony, my in-laws and adult children will be in attendance, and finally, my wife’s ex-husband and his wife will be there, so it leaves my wife without a spouse.

Many posters said I should lie to get the recommend since the church has been lying to us. Some people said don’t go, you will lose your integrity. So, after thinking about it I decided to be honest. I would go to the bishop and tell him I am worthy in every way (or at least I could be with time) to have a TR except that I couldn’t say that I believed the church was true.

I met with the bishop last night. Although I only go to Sacrament Meeting once a month so I can be supportive of my tbm wife, and I hold no callings, the bishop doesn’t know I am a non-believer. He is a nice guy, he is not a Nazi-Mormon at all, but he is a chatty and he loves small talk, a good people person. I got right to the point and told him I wanted to see if I could get a recommend for the upcoming wedding.

I went on to tell him I could answer all the questions properly except the “do you believe the church is the one true church and that there is a true and living prophet on the earth today” question. I took a deep breath, looked him in the eye, and very relaxed told him I didn’t believe the church was true, and haven’t for several years. He looked at me with shock. I knew the next thing would be his testimony thrown at me, but it wasn’t.

He wanted to know what I had read to get me to that belief. I actually wasn’t sure what the first hint was that I came across that helped me discover that the church wasn’t true. I think possibly the first thing was when I found out that Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter before he found the gold plates. I told that to the bishop. He acted surprised. He said he had heard that before but thought is was Anti-Mormon lies, and he wanted to know how I could be sure the information I was reading was not just made up fiction from enemies of the church. I told him that I found the best information from the church's own history. I mentioned the Richard Buchman’s biography of Smith, all written with the churches authorization. He hadn’t heard of that book.

Instead of trying to counter everything I said, the bishop seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. He hadn’t heard of any DNA problems, or The Book of Abraham issue. He said he wanted to read about them. I asked him if he knew Joseph Smith had over 30 wives. He said no, he thought Smith had 2 or 3, but he was unaware of that many wives. I told him to go to lds.org, the church’s own website, and see with his own eyes. He wanted to read “In Sacred Loneliness” by Compton when I mentioned it to him and I told him I would loan my copy to him. He wanted to make sure Compton was an active member, and I affirmed that he was.


I told my bishop of how devastating it is to leave the church especially when all of your family believes in the Mormon Church, and I indicated that as a bishop it would be much harder for him, so I recommended he not start down the road I was on. He said he wasn’t afraid of history, he only wanted to know the history was accurate. I told him that the FARMS website was probably a good starting point.

The discussion went on for over 2 hours. I know he won’t remember all the resources I mentioned to him to seek, and maybe he was just trying to be a nice guy and act interested with what I was saying. He may have no interest in studying church history, time will tell, but I was pleased he was interested in what I was saying. Who knows, maybe one day he will discover the truth and join us here.

We finally made it back to the TR question. He said he didn’t know how he could give a recommend to a non-believer. I told him I could have lied about it and easily gotten a recommend, but honesty was too important to me. He said he knew there were probably ward members that had lied to him to get a recommend before, but he couldn’t do anything about it, so they go to the temple. He said he would need time to think about it, and we would chat in a week or so.

For now, I don’t believe I will get a recommend, which in a way is a relief. I haven’t told my wife yet, but when I know for sure that I won’t be at the ceremony I will let her know. It won’t be good for her, but it will either make or break our marriage. I keep remembering it is a family church of course. I’ll post my bishop’s response when I know.

YOU certainly have more than (all of) ChurchCo...

Yikes! thats scary man! i hope you get what you truly want!
so do you think your wife would rather you lied?

Well...if he works his way out of the church because of you...he owes you the first beer

It will be interesting to see what conclusion the bishop comes to. He may surprise you. He may value your honesty more than you think. He may do some reading, and make a decision that surprises all of us. We'll see.

Wow... very interesting. Many bishops don't know what we, who do the research into the real history.
Maybe he'll do some searching himself.

I have known a bishop and stake president who when confronted with the notion: well, I don't "KNOW" for sure, nobody does, it's more about faith and belief than anything else, would be accepting of that position. Happened to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2012 04:32PM by SusieQ#1.

Good for you sticking to your truth and integrity!! That is more important than anything (wedding, family, the church, etc.) IMO!

If your bishop decides to give you a temple recommend you have to go through all of this again with a member of the stake presidency.

I command you for telling him the truth, it must have been incredibly scary, especially since it concerns your daughter's wedding. Very courageous indeed.
And I am pleased by your Bishop's open reaction. He didn't try to discredit your information through overtly self-righteous preaching!

Of course if you get a pass from the bishop you have to go through it all over again with a member of the stake presidency.

Bishops tend to get more hard core on enforcing things the longer they are in. A member of the stake presidency will have always been a bishop.

but I figure the bishop will consult with him prior to giving me a TR. Sometimes if the leaders think they have a glimmer of hope of getting you back they will bend a little. Like I say, I don't plan on getting a recommend.

Yeah that would make sense. That's probably part of what he will do in the week to think about it. Good luck.

All the other questions except the "are you honest in your dealings with your fellow men" question are BS. That question about forking over 10% of your income to a bunch of conmen pretending to be Jesus's treasurers is the most BS of them all. So it sounds like you're worthy. Maybe you should use the commitment pattern on the Bishop/SP to get them to sign the recommend. TBMs are used to being guilt-tripped so why not put some guilt on them that they're the ones trying to tear your family apart.

You might just prepare your wife a bit. Maybe even tell her that you really wanted to just lie, but that you value your honesty and integrity too much.

Some things are too high-priced to buy.

Best of luck to you moving forward. Let us know how things go.

Your bishop knows about as much as mine with regard to church history, and is about equally interested in learning. Pointless to discuss it with him, so I don't.

If I were in your shoes, this would be my answer as to why I don't believe in the church any more:

I've come to no longer regard the spirit as a reliable means of obtaining truth. There are too many logical and philosophical problems with it. I am, in fact, an absolutist, meaning that I a firm believer that a person can know something beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that thing not be absolutely true. It is only true relative to that person. I have no interest in relative truth, and thus can not rely on personal conviction in my perception of truth. An LDS testimony is based on loosely-defined spiritual experiences, for which the only offered proof is the resulting conviction. Since I no longer consider that conviction reliable, it logically follows that I can no longer rely on the LDS testimony in my assessment of truth.

Considering the LDS insistance that a knowledge of the truth can only be obtained by such means, I thence had reason to suspect the truth it holds up using them. When analyzed from this non-spiritual perspective, there was not sufficient evidence to cause me to rationally believe in the truth of the church. However, this doesn't mean that I don't still want to live according to its principles.


If he asks further, I might bring up how I performed a controlled experiment on the spirit, and discovered it to be an unreliable source of truth (and that the church's prayer method does not encourage controlling the variables that could contribute to the result).

Also, if he tells me I need to pray about it, I will point out the obvious circular reasoning in appealing to the spirit to determine whether or not the spirit is a reliable source of truth. I don't know of any mormon who realizes this obvious conundrum.

Kimball, I really like your points. Even if ine has the most unshakable faith inthe world, feeling the Spirit will never be a reliable source of facts or truth. You expressed exactly what I had been feeling since the premiere of my disbelief!

When my bishop and I had my "coming out" discussion he actually said:

"Your problem is that you've intellectualized this. You can't use your head, you have to use your heart."

Awesome.

"He said he knew there were probably ward members that had lied to him to get a recommend before, but he couldn’t do anything about it, so they go to the temple."

Funny isn't it, that the bish knows you have told the truth because you laid out you integrity in front of him yet you won't be given a ticket to the lords house, yet others who have lied are happily sent on their way with a smile, a handshake, a non deserved pat on the back and a ticket to the show for their dishonesty.

He might admire your integrity, but his own inetgrity would probably not allow him to give you a TR. Good job on the info that you passed on, it is amazing how little many know about the crutch.

Wait - your wife threatens you with marriage problems if you do not go to Her daughter's wedding?

Unreal.

I'm also amazed that she would risk a second divorce over it. Sheesh!!!

This is a side issue, but one that I believe in strongly. A marriage relationship needs to be devoid of a few things: ultimatums, name calling and threats, and the "D" word at the drop of a hat.They are only used to try to control the other person anyhow and only make things worse.

Negotiate a truce, make an agreement that those kinds of things are not part of the relationship, agree to disagree with respect.

Wow, I tip my intellectualfeminist hat to you, Non Believing Dad!! I wish I'd had my only two remaining family members at my own temple wedding. But they were Catholic, automatically 'unworthy'. (And the ceremony itself is so pathetic and cultish, it wouldn't be enjoyable to anyone who isn't deeply Mormon indoctrinated). Nonetheless, I feel the sting and the personal shame of my family's absence to this day. I am so impressed with your integrity and how you handled the meeting with the bishop. You're cut out of a far better cloth than the cult; it'll indeed be interesting to see what happens.