For me it was when I went down the list of supposed Mormon benefits and decided I didn’t really need any of them.

Questioning was like trying out the beginner slope, first time skiing, and next thing you know I’m airborne.

When I saw the temple video. They kept me in a state of blind wonderment until I finally saw it. The big secret "secret handshakes". After all the hell my family and my friends' family put us through for not going along with it all in our teens and making us feel crazy. That was the d@mn secret. My brain is still in shock and I still have temple nightmares. Most of what I was taught in life was bs, tough pill to swallow even now.

When my wife taught me how to use a computer.

It took me one hour. Confirmed that Smith and then Young stole another man's wife and said that God was OK with this sort of thing...Henry and Zina Jacobs.

That should be enough to convince anyone that they were charlatans.

Your RIGHT politic! What kind of "prophets" do such a thing?! And that's only ONE thing wrong with the church there are SO many more!!!!! It seems weird that I still have friends and family members that are still involved with the church some of whom I KNOW have heard this stuff and decide to go by there own "personal revaluation about it" ok should we also go by "personal revelation" about Charles Manson and just try to get a fuzzy feeling about him and think maybe HE was a "prophet" as well? Makes about as much sense as having warm fuzzies about Joe and Brig! Actually NO Brig was even WORSE! Gosh!

Thanks Joe the Man. They have no feelings for Henry Jacobs but will support a religious gangster with their last breath.

Sure! You make a great point and also about that whole thing that just blows my mind is ive heard a lot of mormons talk about all these affairs going on among there friends and family's and how horrible the cheater is and ya cheatings not good but yet Joe and Brig can ruin marraiges and THATS TOTALLY FINE its A OK cause he was PROPHET didn't ya know? Not only that they did TONS of other crap and planned murders and that's a ok as well?! Plus the for strength of youth handbook makin young kids feel guilty for completely NORMAL sexual thoughts and masturbation and calling it second to freaking murder! When Joe the man ho was out a hoin the night away oh and the day away as well (in the barn fanny!) Doesn't really make a lick of sense to me to be completely honest! And also poor Zina! Havin to go from Henry to creeper Joe and shudder BRIGGG! UGH! Gives me nightmares just THINKIN about it!

Gives me nightmares just thinking about it, too, since Brigham Young thought bathing was a bunch of nonsense.

During my first Endowment session.

I agree - first temple session. Still haven't gotten over it.

Middle journey was "Zelph", during an Institute Class.

Clincher: Book of Abraham.

When everyone in the ward thought they were better than me and went out of their way to tell me. The TBM family did not help either, and their "just doing what they thought was right". BS!

The temple...

Looking at myself wearing the garb, especially the 'baker's hat'... "Hmmm...", said my young, silly intellect, "ghawd is either an idiot, or he is not at all involved with mormonism."

My final solution, that he might not even really exist, took a bit longer to present itself.

My first time through, I looked over at my groom to be (I went through a week early as I was shocked at how my sister looked after she went through and got married). I had to stifle a laugh when I saw that damn hat. I'd rather wear the veil.

I started questioning when I went to work at Thiokol at age 19 or 20 and I met A LOT of nonmormons, many of whom I ended up dating. The mormon guys never treated me well. I had dated I believe 1 mormon guy at that point in my life. I could get a date with any nonmormon at Thiokol if I had wanted to.

I became best friends with some of the nonmormons and I'm still friends to this day (although one is deceased). They treated me much better than most mormons ever had. I also met some mormons out there who treated me better.

But that was the first clue that something was REALLY WRONG. I struggled with turning down marriage proposals from 3 guys I really wanted to marry over the 8 years I worked there. But I had to have that damn TM.

Things pretty much went downhill from that time on. The rest just FORCED ME OUT. I had no choice but to leave.

It started when we were taking the so-called lessons in 1961 and I questioned Joseph Smith Jr was a prophet. I thought he was channeling dead spirits. :-)
I let that ago, and went along to get along.Met a RM, married in the temple, lived in UT (1963-67), hello-Mormon culture shock, had kids, moved to CA, kept busy, busy, busy in the multitude of callings.
Many times, I was subjected to some of the most bizarre, strange, odd, weird,some fit throwing behavior from members and leaders that I could not reconcile with the teachings. I chalked it up to: "the church is perfect the people are not." Worked for the LDS Church Education System in the Institute Program as a secretary to Institute teachers for awhile.

I was disappointed in the whole church for some time but couldn't put my finger on why, exactly. The automatic thinking scripts had done their job and I was faced with what made sense and what I had been taught to believe.
I started backing off, slowing down my participation. The Man in the Women's Restroom story (posted about that)was a catalyst and how they handled it was so bizarre, it was a good reason for staying home.
My oldest daughter was preparing for teaching a class lesson when she went on line and - bingo. She found things that started her researching which she shared with me. Then I started my research, eventually, figuring out how to get out and save my marriage and my family etc. By 2002, I had officially resigned my membership.
Life has been wonderful, since. Eventually, everyone left, or resigned completely except my husband, who remained a believer until his death Jan of 2013.
I've been writing about my Exit Process from Mormonism since about 1999, sharing many of my essays, articles on RFM.

When I was told that if I prayed about something and the answer was different than a leaders' then I had received mine from Satan.

Heidi GWOTR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I was told that if I prayed about something
> and the answer was different than a leaders' then
> I had received mine from Satan.

I have always wondered what we are supposed to do if our answer is different from the church position. I know they say that means our answer is from Satan, but what if we never receive the "proper" confirmation? What if I pray about the BOM, about the truthfulness of the church, and the only inspiration I get is "meh"? Why would a just and loving God allow Satan to give you a wrong answer without providing you a right answer?

I know the church will say it is because I need to pray more, be more obedient, etc. But what if I have been doing those things for 40+ years and still get nothing? Then how do I handle it when church policies contradict with my own conscience and sense of compassion or right and wrong? How do I respond when faced with contradictions in the church such as the BOM claiming unrighteous people are cursed with dark skin and the church "disavowing" such a theory? Or the Book of Abraham? Or Joseph's seer stone and treasure hunting? Or Joseph's sexual impropriety?

For me, I guess I had always been questioning it, but I so wanted it to be true because everyone I knew claimed they knew it to be true. My entire family was Mormon, and all of my close friends as well. But nearly 40 years after I was baptized, I finally decided that if God cannot find his way to provide me the same confirmation of the truthfulness of all things LDS that he seemingly so willingly gives others, then either God doesn't care about me, the church isn't true, or God doesn't exist. In any case, I am done trying to justify anything LDS.

At twelve years of age, I knew it was all fake. That made for some hard teenage years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2018 03:31PM by donbagley.

When I first learned about the Kirtland Safety Society. This was in the mid '00s...many, many years after I should have heard about it in Sunday school, or seminary, or institute classes.

About the time I was ordained a deacon. I knew I wouldn't be following the rules.

I grew up in a fundamentalist xtian church with a crazy mom that took themselves a little too seriously.

Wed: Prayer meeting from 7pm - 11pm
Fri: Bible study from 7pm - 11pm
Sat: Ministering at the Youth Study Center (juvvie) 11am - 2pm
Sun: Sunday school 9am - 11am, church 11am - 2pm

On top of alllll that, my mother would give me assignments. I remember one where I used a concordance to try to find all mentions of the number 12, and I wrote a paper about it and gave a freaking presentation in our living room for her friends.

Here's where my mother messed up: When I was 12, she sent me to a Friends school.

A couple things happened when I went to this school:

1. My grades dropped because the school was ~1.5 hours from my house on public transit, and we had mandatory after school sports. By the time I got home, I'd grab a sandwich, and it was off to church on Mon and Wed. I was always, always tired, and I didn't have time to study/do homework. I wasn't allowed to study in church, and I was usually standing on the el and buses going to and from school, so I was kind of stuck.

2. Many of my classmates were Jewish. When we all starting turning 13, there were ~2 bar/bat mitzvahs a month.

Now, I don't know why my Bible-beating mother allowed me to go to these ceremonies, but I'm glad she did. I started wondering why these kids were going to hell. It didn't seem fair. They loved God just as much as we did. Why do they believe what they believe while I believe what I believe? Our PARENTS told us to.

After that, I starting thinking God might not be so bright or kind or whatever. There was another Friends school much closer to home. Why didn't my mother send me there? No matter how hard I prayed, God didn't give me answers to exam questions, which I found kind of douchey because I *was* at church instead of studying. God knew that *and* he knew the answers to the exams. A little help would have been nice. Plus my mom was beating the tarnation out of me on a regular basis in God's name, and that was kind of a crap thing to allow her to do.

Yeah - stuff just wasn't adding up, and no matter how good I tried to be, I wasn't worthy of God's love because of original sin and blah blah, none of it made sense. "It will be explained in the hereafter" wasn't comforting, especially because I was terrified of GOING TO HELL, so meh.

Stupid cult.

Thanks for your story, Beth! Wow, that's a harsh lifestyle. Religious fanatics have the poorest judgment I have ever seen. They can't ever seem to make a decision for the benefit of others. They're always burdensome. You cringe when they enter the room. I'm glad you made it through that sane.

she was totally sane. She seemed completely normal and reasonable, and then the next thing I knew, Mean Mom came out.

There are parts of my childhood that were lovely - she took me to museums on a pretty regular basis. She had been an art student before she married my dad and subsequently dropped out, so there were always easels, paints, sketchbooks, old-school charcoal and rubber charcoal erasers...We spent a lot of time at the Archeology Museum at Penn because it was free and sometimes they showed free movies. She grew up at the shore, so in the summer, she'd take me to the bookstore to grab something to read, and we'd spend the weekend reading on the beach. When it wasn't summer, she'd buy me two books a week to read on the weekend.

Things started changing, though. There was a Christian bookstore on the drive from Philly to the shore, and I was no longer allowed to read secular books, but I could read...Christian Archies. Yes, there are Christian Archie comics. One summer I read the NIV version of the New Testament. Then the trips to the museum stopped because of the blasphemous idolatry like the big Buddha statue. Then I started tracting strangers in public places, and UGH.

IDK, Don. She would also go out at night and leave me alone when I was about seven years old, so there's that. I have never been able to make sense of it.

Thanks for all the responses. I browsed around some of the Mormon discussion boards and had to quit before I tossed my cookies. It was the infallible leadership thing that had me for so long. Questioning them would be like questioning God. Completely nonsensical. That’s how it is inside the bubble. You live in a self contained universe where you dismiss conflicting information out of hand cuz Stan. It’s a closed minded system. There are lots of other closed minded systems, curiously tied to large and conservative institutions. You can’t go against them even if you’re right and you can prove it, because their dogmas are so strong. I see it firsthand.

I know there are lots of defenders of institutional science here, but if it’s so great then what’s with the nukes? If we know so much, why do we have war and poverty? The way you know you’ve left the dark ages is that the least among us don’t get treated like shit, so you tell me. By that metric, the Mormons fail. How could they not, in their closed world of self denial. If you can’t be true to yourself, what good are you to the world?

So I look at the Mormon world as if it’s a Zoo exhibit behind glass. Things can’t be like they were before. I can’t live in that cage. I’m just not that kind of animal.

When I got endowments taken out and got married. Temple was creepy and I felt they were "secret combinations" the BOM warned us about. It seemed so culty. I never went back and after taking an ethics class in college, I really started questioning the concept of god. My whole belief system unraveled quickly.

Maybe the temple is a bubble test. If you don’t feel uncomfortable, you have a good strong bubble. You’re thoroughly brainwashed. Sure, they’re going to lose a few.

Good metaphor.

I realized why they always said, "you need to keep going for it to make sense". Reminds me of the quote from The Handmaid Tale, "this may not seem normal to you now, but it will become normal".... no thank you!

I never believed there were unquestionable things. I was told there were, but I questioned that, too.

sure enjoy your post. I think I questioned as a teen especially while working away from home my first summer. Then fear settled in following a health scare, and I put my questions back on the shelf until later.

For me it was a series of times until I was finally able to break free enough to question freely & directly.

Probably when those stupid edicts called church policy started to become more important than the gooey glop taught doctrine. That was in the 1990s under the Hinkster.

The first thing that ended up on my shelf occurred as a missionary when the church couldn't even supply my stateside mission with an adequate supply of the BoM! This was pre-internet and it wasn't hard to place copies at the time.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1925676,1925676#msg-1925676

Never.

I *did* figure out that nothing is unquestionable, though -- and so started questioning everything. Does that count?

That happened slowly, starting at about 16, and finally hitting home and becoming full-on at 21 (after returning from a mormon mission).

:)