Posted by:
Brain Steamer
(
)
Date: May 22, 2018 04:14PM
Having read through quite a few threads, I wanted to get some thoughts down on paper to share. I want to provide some input into how to break the cycle from Catholic to Mormonism to atheism.
I think a little history of myself is important to the discussion. My parents were converts and I was born into the church. I’ve lived in various states-including Illinois, Wyoming, Georgia, California and Nevada. I went on a mission to Brazil for two years (and still have fond memories). I joined the Army as a military intelligence language analyst. I’m currently living in Utah with my wife and three kids. I have a BS degree from a state university in Geology.
Personal apostasy:
I was on the straight and narrow my whole life, and relatively enjoyed the church most of the time. I enjoyed a healthy lifestyle and was generally happy. I was at the university computer lab one day and getting ready for a Sunday lesson, when google returned the website:
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org.
Curious by nature, I went to the website and my mind was blown. ‘This can’t be real?’, ‘Surely this is anti-mormon propaganda.’. I remember back on my mission asking my mission president, ‘Why don’t we ever hear about Joseph Smith’s (JS) plural wives?’-to which he responded, ‘people get excommunicated for asking too many questions about JS’s wives.’ That really never settled well, but being the good mormon boy-I had tried to stay obedient.
I also remember a fellow missionary in the MTC that really struggled with evolution and saying ‘I know the church is true’. He just couldn’t say it and was looked at as the black-sheep in the class. No joke, we’d pray for him to have his testimony strengthened. Out in the mission field, I was his companion for a brief time and talked to him at length about evolution. I tried as hard as I could to make it work, but between the Book of Mormon and the letter from the first presidency “God Created Man in His Own Image” (https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/02/the-origin-of-man?lang=eng), death could not have happened before Eve partook of the fruit 6-7,000 years ago.
The more I studied geology in college, the more I realized evolution was true. I could know it! I could see the proof, and the ironic thing is it’s so easy to study here in Utah. In geology alone, you have biostratigraphy (aging units by similar fossils), chronostratigraphy (deposition chronology), magnetostratigraphy (magnetic properties during deposition), and seismic stratigraphy (deposition, then things shift). Then you have physics, chemistry, and biology, which also confirm evolution is true. Anyway, everywhere you go here in Utah you find rocks that are millions, often times hundreds of millions of years old-and there is evidence of life in them.
I was deployed to Iraq for a few years during the Iraq war. For those who are angry at the church for taking your tithing and a few years of your life while on a mission-If that’s the worst this life threw your way, I envy you. Even still, I’m actually thankful for the experiences I had over there. I think the most important thing I learned was that an analytic mind saves lives. I finally decided to stop doubting my doubts and wake up to the fact that my life depends on my brain. I have to analysis things in order to feel safe.
My wife had a different experience, especially during the deployments. There were a lot of people, mormons and non-mormons that came to her aide. She would have been lost without a community coming together to support-and I will always be thankful to those people. Point being, though, she was given an experience that made community acceptance vital to her existence. Even though she emotionally vomits thinking of polygamy and many things they say about ‘being given to a righteous man in the hereafter’, she has to stay connected in the neighborhood to feel safe.
With that, over the last few years we’ve been slowly backing out of the church. It came to a head when I was finishing up the final year of college. The elder’s quorum president came to me and tried to grill me with questions about why I hadn’t been doing my home teaching. I started with, ‘it’s been really busy, etc…’ but after continued questions I finally stated, ‘I have a testimony that home teaching is a crock of crap. Over the last ten years, I’ve been deployed three times, moved twice, had three kids, had a major sickness-and I did that without any home teachers. I know I can be okay without the home teaching program.’ … I was promptly released from my Sunday school calling without even a thanks from the pulpit.
Since that point, I’ve been going occasionally with my wife. As long as she goes and the family goes, I’ll go with them.
Now down to the meat:
My “problem” is that during discussions, my wife is concerned that without the church, our kids will end up in despair and heartache, not having any hope or happiness. I have also seen it in her, too, because it’s been engrained in her that ‘it’s either all true or none of it’s true’. There will be pain and despair that comes with looking at this logically and growing to trust in yourself. But I don’t want my family to get stuck in a mindset that we have to accept atheism to break free of the church.
I’ve been trying to have impact lessons on hikes and drives. Little teaching moments that life is important, you are important, I will love you, there is evidence that a force is driving life, etc… How have you (the general reader) worked to keep things positive? Moving out of Utah isn’t an option…