Hi. I'm new to the board, I'm 21 years old, from Northern British Columiba, Canada, and I don't know what to believe anymore. I need your guys help. I have been watching exmormong.org for about 3 years, following all your posts, learning as much as I can. But I actually wanna talk to you guys.

My story goes like this:

When I was a kid, we always went to a Protestant christian church. Always. My parents even worked for the christian school and church i attended. I always felt screwed up, since the age of 8, and j had a lot of emotional problems as a kid/teen. I remember riding my bike past the ward doesn't the street by our house, but when the neighbor girl invited me to the ward one sunday, my mom told me I must never go there. And so I would watch people come and go from the LDS church, but never go in or ask them questions. My curosity grew as I become older. When I was 14, an LDS girl in my class and I were talking, and we got on the subject of church. This is when I found out she was a mormon, and she invited me to church. My first time ever to the LDS church, was Mother's Day 2009. I was 15 years old. And all I knew of mormons, was from the old mormon.org. For the next two years, I would sneak off to the LDS church whenver I could. Sunday's, Thursday's for young womens, conferences, you named it, I was there. I must have gone through 30 sets of missionaries, and had all the lessons dozens of times. They treated me like one of them, and for all intensive purposes, most of the time, they thought of me as one of them. They didn't push for baptism, cause they knew I was living two lives, and that my parents hated the church. I knew so much about the church, I had total strangers convinced I was a long time member. I was happy, and I believed all of it. i went online, found out all the bad stuff about the church, found exmormon.org. But I didn't let it phase me. I was still sure that this was Christs Church. And I planned to go to university in Calgary, where I could be baptized, and I planned my baptism day for the day I turned 18. Dec 17, 2011. I had such a testimony, and I eagerly awaited this day. I remeber thinking Dec 17,2010, this day today, one year from now, I will be a member. I was so happy.

The Temple:
I have always had a very strange attraction to the temple. When I was googgling the church, naturally, I found out all the stuff about the temple, but I tried to rationalize it. And I did. I know so many temple facts, I can tell which ones they are from any picture of the inside or out, I can tell you the biggest to the smallest, and I'm addicted to looking at pictures of them all the time. The first time I ever saw a temple, was July 2012. I was on my way to california for a trip. It was supposed to be a proton test churxh trip, and we had stopped for supper at Fried green tomatoes in Portland. I remember seeing all these dressed up people walking in, and wondering what was up. After inward done eating, I felt the need to go outside. And I didn't know why. I went out to the parking lot, and started walking around. As I looked up to the sky, I saw a spire, and another and another. And then I saw the angel Moroni, and I started to cry. I truly felt peace. And I was so happy. I watched as far as I could when our tour bus pulled out of the parking lot, and the spires faded. Back in Canada, I was determined to go see a temple again. I had been keeping updated on the construction of the Calgary Alberta temple, and I knew I had to go see it at the open house. I convinced my two friends to take me, and we made the 10hr trip to the open house. I could hardly contain myself before we got there. We spent the night in edmonton with my friends brother, and we ended up at the Edmonton temple. I cried again, and was out of the car before it had even come to a complete stop. It was so hard to leave. And I thought I felt the spirit. The next day we went to Calgary. As we walked into the temple, I couldn't help but think I was home. And as we sat in the celestial room, I didn't even know how to express myself, except that I knew one day, I would be back to the Calgary temple to be sealed. Nothing about the online stuff could bother me anymore, I had sat in the temple, and nothing was gonna keep me from coming back. We wend home, and I drifted away from the church. I stopped lessons, and didn't come to church anymore. I had a hard time believing, and I slowly gave up. People kinda stopped inviting me, i think because I had turned 18, then 19, then 20, and was still not baptized. But then this last May, 2014, I had a dream. I was in a grassy field, and there in front of me, on a hill, was a square temple, glowing in the night. And I was happy again. When I awoke, I was distraught. Several weeks later, I was on a business trip for he oil company I work for, in edmonton. After my day was over, I got dressed, called a cab and went straight to the temple. And j sat there for hours. Unable to leave. When the temple worker finally told me I had to go, I didn't want to leave...and I waited as long as I could. Since that day, I have been tossing mormonism around in my head. I know everything about it, inside and out. I know why its not the truth, but part of me feels like it's the only thing that can save me from myself. From my emotions problems, my sins, my guilt. It's an everyday fight between going back to the church, or not.

I wanted to post this, bR cause I have valued exmormon, and it's been very helpful for me. And I love you guys.

I'm sorry to say it, but some people try to fill the holes in their life by submitting to cult thinking.

I'd suggest you try reading books about cultism and perhaps talking to a therapist with expertise in this area.

This obsession feel safe and wholesome to you and makes you feel somehow more whole and connected to God.

Unfortunately, it's an illusion like the water vision on a roadway. Except that Mormonism will actually fulfill some of those illusions for a few years before it fades to reality. By then it's difficult to escape and might be next to impossible to recover and start again to fill that emptiness.

jessupnorth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I know why its not the truth, but part of me feels like it's the only thing that can save me from myself. From my emotions problems, my sins, my guilt.

What sins? I am asking this in all serious. Have you robbed anyone lately? Burglary? Assault? Murder? Extortion? Theft? Anything else that an officer of the law would arrest you for? No? Then you're good. Declare yourself a normal, fallible human being and enjoy your life.

In my many years on this Earth, I have found guilt to be a valuable tool in *evaluating* my actions. Notice that I said evaluating and not judging. Sometimes guilt steers me into apologizing to someone or making better choices. Sometimes after evaluating a situation I decide that no one was grievously hurt, and that I can chalk up my behavior to normal human foibles.

Mormonism will just make you feel guilty about stupid things that don't matter. You will feel guilty about not attending the three hour block, or not doing enough home teaching, about not doing your calling with appropriate vigor, not having FHE, or not serving a mission, or serving a mission without working your tail off, or forking over enough $$$ to this massively rich church, or failing in a hundred thousand other things that the church will demand of you. This is the fidelity to the "law" above all else that the Jesus of the Bible was arguing against.

You are at a very tough age. The 20s is a *very* tough decade to navigate. You are trying to make sense of the world and to find your way in it. Cut yourself a break! Stop feeling guilty for being human. You will be okay. *You will be okay.* Trust that you will find your way and will be a better, stronger person for making the tough decisions and for getting a few bumps and bruises along the way. You can do this! You don't need the crutch of a controlling organization telling you what to do every minute of your day. You are smarter than that. You are a better, more moral person than that.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2014 06:26PM by summer.

My only suggestion: don't "believe."
Know.
You do that by learning facts, researching evidence, educating yourself. You don't do that by going to what on the surface seems "attractive," or by "following" what somebody else simply tells you to do.

Let go of the idea that if something makes you feel good now and then, it's "true." That's fallacious and a bit silly.

Good luck finding your way.

Knowing and believing are two different things, so how can you know what to believe?

That was painfully earnest and made me want to make it all right for you. But the big lesson in life is that there is no entity to swoop in and make everything all right. You already know that. Very few of us think we have anything figured out, so join the club and start the exploration. If you fall down, just laugh because we all do.

The Mormon church teaches that the "natural man is an enemy to God." It's not true for many reasons, but more importantly, it is not true for you. Don't be so hard on yourself. You are at the beginning. Mistakes are for learning from, not for guilting yourself. Honest loving people in life don't grade each other, don't judge, they lift each other up. It's good to do that for yourself as well.

So the short cut is this, they masquerade as spiritual places, with knowledge of God.

The truth is that they are just selling a product, God, salvation, forgiveness and you don't actually need any of those things.

Religions masquerade as benevolent organizations that only have your best interests at heart, however the truth is that what they teach about God is not true. Religions have a long history of written records of human religious experiences and ideas that have become part of our culture.

That doesn't make them any more true than Greek or Roman mythology. Zeus, note this similar name Zeus and Jesus, Poseidon, Hestia(virgin goddess of the hearth, home and chastity) just like the Virgin Mary?, Hades the God of hell.
All the same characters as religion, just reinvented for Christianity.

Religions want you to allow them to educate you in the ways of God, but all they are actually doing is cult indoctrination, they will have you all twisted up with guilt for being human(the natural man is an enemy of God from the Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:7, fear of Gods displeasure if you don't obey, fear of not being blessed/saved from some dire fate, and you will pay (tithe) you will obey, confess, work for free and these Churches are getting rich.

So how is it that they end up making more money than a fortune 500 company, they are powerful voting blocks and influence government decisions.

What most of us have figured out is that this is a big and ongoing fraud with many people so emotionally invested in their religions that they can't even consider that it may not be true.

jessupnorth, step back and think very carefully why you feel a "fatal attraction" to Mormonism. You know it is made up, even if many of its adherents profess to "knowing" it is true. Recognize how this "burning in the bosom" can be a result of skillful manipulation.

Look at the girls who are running away from their families to join the Isil/Isis group and their brand of Islam that considers itself separate from other sects of Islam and so superior that its adherents kill their "inferiors" without compunction.

Why would those girls join such a group? They don't join to fight but rather to serve as slaves, wives, bearers of children. They are attracted to the romance and drama, but more than that, they have said they long to be part of something bigger than themselves, something which will take control of every detail of their bodies, their minds, their future, their very lives.

When their Isil masters have spoken, the thinking is done. When the prophets have spoken in Mormonism, the thinking is done.

At the time when one is trying to figure out a life path, such a restrictive pattern might be seen as attractive. But, I think one who accepted that certainty would be condemning himself to bondage just as those young women are doing.

Personal responsibility, authenticity, and thinking for yourself is hard, but so very worthwhile.

It's easier to see this kind of thinking from a distance in a more extreme group than in the one that binds a willing victim.

Take a breather, do some volunteer work with those less fortunate and find out who you are and your core values. Helping others will bring clarity to your life.

I agree with Summer, please don't fall into "I must be sinning" thinking. The teachings of Jesus are clear that true sin involves religious hypocracy, mistreatment and abuse of others, and hurting the vulnerable of society. Judaism and Islam also teach these, but some of our zealous followers ignore these in following false leaders. From your post, I sincerely doubt that you're "sinful" in your questions and desires to find yourself.

Annonynon expresses well the desires of young people to find a cause, even one worth dying for. It's one of the reasons, I too, joined Mormonism when I was 18. Unfortunate, for those of us on this Board, we found that Mormonism destroyed our personalities and true selves To create adherents who ignore the very teachings our faith was supposed to be based on. Please be very careful in trusting ANY leader who says that they have all the answers and are better than others.

Best wishes in finding your life's pathway. Keep us posted. Sometimes we're a little bit crusty on the Board, but I think you'll find true support.

+ + + So well said by several posters!

byuboner Wrote:
----------------------------
>
> I agree with Summer, please don't fall into "I
> must be sinning" thinking. The teachings of Jesus
> are clear that true sin involves religious
> hypocracy, mistreatment and abuse of others, and
> hurting the vulnerable of society.
> ...
> Annonynon expresses well the desires of young
> people to find a cause, even one worth dying for.
> It's one of the reasons, I too, joined Mormonism
> when I was 18. ( us too at 17 and 21) ...

> Please be very careful in
> trusting ANY leader who says that they have all
> the answers and are better than others.
>
> Best wishes in finding your life's pathway. Keep
> us posted. Sometimes we're a little bit crusty on
> the Board, but I think you'll find true support.

Have you seen the askreality videos at youtube or the gentle awakening website or Steve Hassans website about cults?

I found them very insightful.
http://truthisrestoredagain.wordpress.com/gentle-awakening/

IMO - Mormon Doctrines and Temple covenants equal: Pray, Pay (the leaders) and Obey (what the Prophet says). I found that Joseph Smith even changed scriptures in the Bible.

The Beehive is an apt symbol of the LDS church!

Members sacrifice their financial means and lives (seemslike in a feudal system) for the benefit of the leaders.

You mentioned the Bible, how the Mormon church's other scriptures ...
Do you know about the changes that Joseph Smith wrote into the Bible?

IMO:
An internet search: "Bible vs Book of Mormon", "Ensign vs Bible",
or Gospel Principles vs Bible, will give some interesting articles to contemplate.

http://theensignvsthebible.blogspot.com

They let you sit on the furniture in the celestial room during a tour?

Ya....they told us all that we could take a seat and asked us to be as silent as possible. Whisper if we must talk. They asked us to think about our relationship with God, and to just ponder. We must have been in there for close to 5 mins before we went across the hall to the biggest sealing room.

I'm a little confused.

You said you "believed all of it" and despite that fact that you "went online, found out all the bad stuff about the church" you didn't let it "phase" you.

You repeated the fact that you've been on exmormon.org for years and that you know all the "bad stuff" inside and out and it didn't affect your testimony.

I'm curious, what is all the "bad stuff" that you actually learned? Specifically? And what websites and/or books did no learn this from?

And despite the bad stuff not affecting your testimony, for some other unstated reason you suddenly started losing your testimony. Why?

Jessup,

I've been where you are. I converted to Mormonism at age 29, at a time when there was a lot of upheaval in my life.

I can relate to the feelings of obsession/fascination about the church and its temples.

My life got better, with no thanks to the church, and I eventually sought, fought, and thought my way out...but not without a lot of pain. Although I was smart enough to dodge tithing payments, uncomfortable interviews, dead dunking, or other forms of investment that I would later on regret, I made a different kind of unintended investment: I fell in love with a TBM, who broke my heart because I would not cut away the best parts of myself to fit into his tiny little box.

I'm fighting feelings of inferiority that the Cult had planted in my brain, that only got worse in light of my heartbreak.

Young lady, don't give the best years of your life to that church. Although I look at my journey through Mormonism as a dark time in my life, I'm relieved that it didn't happen in my early twenties...I may not have survived it as well as I have.

You need to start thinking your way out. Maybe you can start by reading this. Look at the characteristics for a cult, and measure them up against everything you know about Mormonism.

http://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/forum/uploads/CultCharacteristics.htm

http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2014 09:47PM by godtoldmetorun.

I would not cut away the best parts of myself to fit into his tiny little box

Do this...... start believing in yourself . Know you can

do things and be whatever you need to get by or get ahead

in the world, because phony, made up religions will only

let you down, take your money and your mind and complicate

your life. Believe in whats real, not some pie in the sky

bologna that will let you down.

Another useful book is "Kingdom of the Cults," which will help you understand the difference between cultic practice, psychology, and doctrine vs. authentic Christianity. Very readable, with a large chapter on LDS. But as you read about other cults, you'll how they are similar in many ways.

Note how much attention you pay to the mystical aspects of your experience with Mormonism. You go on and on about how you felt, that you "couldn't deny" in spite of the bad stuff you knew.

You do not describe even one of the bad stuffs you learned about Mormonism but rather how you were even MORE convinced that Mormonism was true BECAUSE of your feelings persisting after learning said bad stuff.

This is the New Apologetics that we see coming out of Mormonism. They ask us to discard or dismiss facts and our rational thoughts and give weight instead to sentimentality and discoveries of fascinations with temples. In other words, it's important that you do not look closely at the Magician's other hand...

I look at your post and see the lines devoted to positive descriptions of your experiences with Mormonism and my gut tells me you are a troll. We often get them during holidays because BYU students have more time and love to love-bomb the apostates.

Or maybe you just like playing with fire. Let me ask you a question-- what was the most shocking lie you were told by the Mormons? Most of us find that being lied to by those you trusted is pretty hard to forget--especially the first time you realize (for example) that the church regularly changes the Book of Mormon to make it more palatable...even though they claim(ed?) it was/is the most perfect book ever written, coming from the mouth of god and all.

Or maybe the Book of Abraham, a complete fraud, which was being lied about in Sunday School when you were told the original papyri being "lost in the Chicago Fire." They've had it in hand since the sixties. Tell me about the stomach jolt you got from that one.

Let's get right down to which discoveries (bad stuff) you are ready to ignore in favor of the warm fuzzy feeling you had after changing "Pay Lay Ale" in a circle in the temple.

C'mon - which lie bother(s) you the most? Maybe it's Mark Hofmann and the fact that the prophet who did the thinking for all 12 million members and who has inspiration you can only dream of can't tell a forger from a fortune cookie?

Inquiring minds want to know...


Kathleen Waters

I don't know if I could pinpoint just one thing, but if I had to pick just a couple that stand out to me, it would probably be when the video's of the endowment came out on YouTube a while back, and when I realized just how much of the King james version was just copied into the Book of Mormon, and finding out what Brigham Young was like, he is not the good guy everyone thinks he is. And I knew this stuff before, I've know it for a couple years, but I just made excuses why it was ok, or someone got it wrong, or whatever. It also bothered me that, due to my upbringing, I believe in the bible 100%, and yet they did not really, but put more faith in their own scriptures, and yet I was finding problems with those. I just could not get over that.

When the endowment video came out and I watched it, even though i "knew" what kinda went on, mostly reading from exmormon and some other sites, I don't think I understood the real scope. I think I went into expecting to see it and "know" that it was surly from God. Instead, I figured out what you guys have, a ceremony that is confusing, and could totally have been made up by joseph and pulled from maserony. I can't believe how much crazier it was before the 1990 changes. And at one point, all I could do was look around in sacrament, at the people 40+, and think...holy sh*t, I cant believe these people are still in church. And then looking at the younger people, heck even my two best friends, and thinking they may have no idea. And then my best friend got endowed and married in the Calgary temple, and to be honest, she changed after that. She used to be happy, and would like to go out and do stuff. But since then, almost two years ago, she's always depressed, hiding in her house, always sick, tired, and she goes through jobs. She's justf not happy, at all.and it scared me to think that the temple could have affected her like this.

And then there is Brigham Young. And mountain meadows, and blood atonement, and polygamy. I bought the book, Wife no. 19 by Ann-Eliza Young. And that was a big eye opener. And a big step to doubting. I just could not overcome the idea that, this man, being a prophet of God, could consistently behave in such ungodly manner.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2014 06:35AM by jessupnorth.

The single most important thing you can do is to arm yourself with tools--skills--to sort through the mountains of information coming your way.

I promise you will never regret learning to think critically.

For example, if you learn the logical fallacies, you will immediately recognize that you attributing your friend's change of behavior to her trip to the temple is a logical fallacy called "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc," which means, "After, therefore because of."

The single most important factor in human happiness is how we "adjust" to events or information which comes our way. The single most important factor in adjustment is attribution -- what you decide caused something.

This is the process of maturation, observing/experiencing, then drawing conclusions and learning lessons. It can go horribly awry if the attribution mechanism is not working correctly. You can begin attributing all your problems to Satan, which leaves you unable to learn from experience and make corrections. It leads to you remaining childlike and giggly while other women are gaining respect and gravitas.

Take the time right now to put aside religious research and questions and become a very competent critical thinker.

It's a tool you will use every day and can save you from the mess the Morg has made inside your mind.

Best of luck and keep us posted. We are here to point the way out of the forest.


Kathleen Waters

Just a suggestion ..... if you like the feeling of sitting in a beautiful space, see if there is an older Catholic or Orthodox Church in your area..... I'm not sure about Orthodox churches but most Catholic churches I'm familiar with welcome visitors any time to come and sit..... no requirement to be Catholic or Christian or even talk to anyone at all....

(or find a space in nature that speaks to you -- I find that there are a places that are very spiritual for me)

If you are looking for a substitute for "worship service" that doesn't require you to suspend common sense, try the Unitarian Universalists..... in my experience, they tend to get a bit overboard on the Democrat Party's cause-of-the-week but overall, can be a good community...

I miss the community I got from the people in the church (not Mormon but Christian) when i was a kid.... it has taken me a long time to realize that I can't go back to that world -- I have to make a new one that works for me.... I still miss some aspects but I realized that I just can't accept the baggage that comes with....

I understand the social pull. I too began studying Mormonism at 15, after having been Catholic, Anglican and then Baptist. None of them satisfied me.

I was bullied daily in school, but when I met the Mormon kids, they shared my values and they didn't bully me. I'd found a place to belong.

Nevermind that the first time I heard the story about Joseph Smith's First Vision, my eyebrows shot up and I went, "Oh, yeah?" I thought they were crazy.

But I loved the people I'd met and I wanted to be a part of them. Somehow I managed to put all of my disbelief aside and thought to myself, "Well maybe it is true. All of those adults wouldn't lie to me, would they?" I really wanted it to be true.

But I spent the next 30 years leaving and then going back again. There were times that I had myself more convinced than at other times.

In the end, I had to admit that I'd never really had a testimony. I only had a hope and a wish for it all to be true.

You've already expressed the knowledge that it's not true, but you just love the Church. Personally, I can't imagine being there once I finally came to the full realization that it wasn't true, no matter how much I wanted it to be.

But if you're somehow able to enjoy being there, even knowing that it's all hogwash, then what harm is there is going? I wouldn't be able to sit there listening to what I knew was garbage, but I'm not you.

Do whatever makes you happy. That's the bottom line. If going to church makes you happy, then go. If it makes you feel that you're not leading a genuine and an honest life, then as others have suggested, study why the Church makes you feel the way that it does.

Anyone who has seen that Meet the Mormons movie has experienced first-hand the emotions that they work hard to induce in people. It's all very carefully crafted to invoke those feelings in people.

Study, study, study and you'll eventually find your path.

You feel a great sense of peace and well-being from the Temple. It speaks to you. It makes you feel whole. It's a beautiful experience. That's fine. And it's real. The important thing to understand is that it's coming from you. That's your peace, your sense of wholeness. It's true that the environment of the Temple brings it out of you, but that's a relationship you're having with the place. You find your inner beauty which washes away your guilt.

Beauty and ugliness--sin, if you will--exist together, all the time, in each human life. Becoming convinced of one's sin, becoming doubtful of one's beauty, leads to depression. Being able to pull one's beauty out, even in the face of one's ugliness, is the message of religion: you are a child of God; you possess the Buddha nature, etc.

Mormonism builds the Temple that symbolically speaks to you. But Mormonism tells you it's the Temple that made you feel that way. Mormonism will not tell you that it's your own inner beauty that made you feel that way. Mormonism will not tell you that you can learn to bring that same feeling out when faced with other environments besides the Temple--like when comforting a child, even a screaming child others would reject. You could have the same feeling of peace, wholeness, and love when facing a person in need as you do when you sit in a celestial room. That's called compassion--when you can see the celestial beauty residing in the heart of another person even when they're projecting a different self. Just like your own beauty lies hidden much of the time--waiting for a Temple to pull it out.

Mormonism will claim your beauty for itself. And it will make you pay, through money, time, and guilt, for a promise of throwing a scrap back to you once in a while. But it always belonged to you, and never left you. They just steal it and claim it. Do you see how diabolical this is? Don't fall for it. Don't give yourself away.

It might save her many frustrating years of running up a church owned downward escalator.