A while after I embraced rejection of mormon claims a question slowly formed in my subconscious. Recently it has been nagging me more directly, and I thought I would see if you all had a similar experience. The question goes like this, "How in the hell did I miss the red flags!"

There were dozens or scores of obvious problems that I let slip by without significant scrutiny. When I did notice something, I took a defensive posture.

For example, the wizened stake patriarch opened my blessing by announcing that, "Now lowpriest, you are the oldest in your family, and so...." You see, my older sister was sitting in the same room at the time. Huh. Well, here is how I looked at it then:

1) Maybe he meant that I was the oldest son. Since priesthood holders apparently counted more than girls, perhaps her age was not considered. Sorry, I actually thought that at the time. I have since repented of it. Damn mormon thinking still screws with my vocabulary, but you get the idea.

2) Maybe I was spiritually older, whatever the hell that meant. Yep, I actually considered that the stake patriarch may have known something that I didn't know about myself. God
thought that I was special.

3) Maybe I was older because I joined the church first. Right. That would explain it.

4) Maybe it was a mystery that I was not intended to understand.

5) Maybe he meant to say it, knowing that it was wrong, to see if I would be faithfull and obedient. I had recently learned that if we followed the prophet then we would be blessed, even if he was wrong, although he probably never would be wrong on anything that mattered.

6) Maybe I heard incorrectly. This would require his wife who transcribed the recording and everyone else in the room to have heard wrong, too, but it could happen.

7) Perhaps the word "older" actually meant "wiser" or something else that I needed to learn.

8) Maybe he just misspoke and it didn't matter. Maybe he meant to say that I was "not" older and just did not include the word.

9) Perhaps that one line needed to be considered in the broader context of the blessing, which somehow made the statement correct in concept if not in actual fact. Maybe the Lord intended for me to act like I was older.

10) Even if the patriarch really thought that I was older, the other stuff in the blessing was probably spot-on. Why was I focusing on one error when everything else was true? If I was faithful wouldn't it all become true?

Well, in my mental gymnastics I scored a perfect 10, didn't I? Even stuck the landing... "Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith," had not been spoken from the pulpit yet, but apparently I got it. Like I said, I could list dozens of errors that I defended. Why? Red pill, baby. At some level I had bought in. Drank the kook aid. (Apologies to the real product's company. When auto correct replaced kool with kook I decided that it was a better fit.) Pick your own metaphor.

Of course, once I removed faith (the other F word) all of these defenses fell like the house of cards that they are. Its a wonder that it took as long as it did. I think that I really wanted it to be true. You gotta want it or it doesn't work.

Thoughts?

What examples do you have?

So now you know...

We used to tell my younger sister that she was adopted. We thought it was funny until she told us as an adult that she thought she was all though childhood because of it.

Another sibling had 23 and me done recently. I was going to do it to, but a friend asked what I would think if the reaults differed.

Of course, the older and less mormon I get, I think more about people and actual relationships than lineage.

Lowpriest Wrote:
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>
> Of course, the older and less Mormon I get, I
> think more about people and actual relationships
> than lineage.

I heartily agree. As I've posted several times, I consider myself a "Mongrel-American:" mixed breeds are the hardiest, and the Dickens with elite ancestry, be it "Mormon Royalty," "Pilgrim ancestors," or what-have-you.

My joke with my four superb children is a kind of a reverse: I openly joke (in front of the others), "You're REALLY my favorite." They take it in good fun.

mid-70's. ERA working through ratification through the states. I'm a young married with two little toddlers. We spent weeks in R.S. making posters to take to a protest at the Illinois capitol where they were going to vote on ratification. All the while I was helping make these signs, a little voice in my head kept saying, "why is the church against women having equal rights?". I tried to be the good little mormon woman and not express this out loud. But, I did NOT go to the protest. I made up an excuse.

My mother didn't get involved in it either.

I know they had a big meeting down in SLC at some big place like the Salt Palace (I think that is what was there then).

OMG Gemini! Mormons certainly know How To manipulate through peer pressure! So glad you didn’t go.

Low priest—your sister is from the tribe is Manasseh, the the rest of you are from Ephriam.

My fathers Mormon family were All from Ephram, except one brother was from Menasa and no one could figure it out. One day, he cheated on his wife, ran off with the other woman, and left
The Mormon church. The patriarch had been right! The
Church is true!

Me—I should Have run out of The temple during the death oaths. The temple was Creepy and satanic, and my groom had a secret criminal past of assault and battery. Everything in my body was rebelling against This, but I thought “my parents Are Honest And Intelligent, and they believe in this,
And They wouldn’t lie to me...”

I always got along better with nevermos than TBMs. I think subconsciously my heart was not in it. I tried very hard too, did tough callings, paid full tithe, went on a mission, attended early morning seminary. When I went away for graduate school I stopped attending and was never happier. I realized that none of those things had anything at all related to my happiness.

Give Nelson a year of not going to church or doing anything with members and he will give the whole thing up. I believe it is that simple.

>>I realized that none of those things had anything at all related to my happiness.

This is a good observation, Chipace. Although I left the Catholic church over doctrinal and policy issues, I also never found any joy in the Catholic mass. Some people love it, but I always found it deadening.

The Mormon church spends a lot of time telling its members what will make them happy. When people start to really pay attention to their own feelings, they might discover that their happiness lies elsewhere.

I have had many happy experiences as part of LDS church membership. Looking back I would have to say that none of these experiences required the church. The happy times had to do with family, fun activities with friends, and helping out. I had many sweet emotional experiences. Again, these did not require mormon doctrine and they required me to look the other way on a lot of goofy church practices. I should have bailed out sooner.

I struggled with problems in the doctrine and history for years (not to mention the extreme creepiness of the pre-1990 temple experience).

It was a struggle because I couldn't give myself permission to look at the problems from the perspective of accepting the possibility that Joseph Smith and the Church he started was bogus from the get-go.

It was like seeing silhouettes of objects in a dark room (apologies to Plato's cave people). The things that I had been taught by parents and respected adults in church had conditioned me to see things that were never really there.

It was like having spent the day talking about, or watching a scary movie about, burglars and kidnappers and stalkers, who tortured their victims with snakes and swords. Then later at night finding oneself in the dark room where some shape in the corner of the room looks exactly like a strange, bad man standing in the corner waiting to get me. Another shape seems to look, apparently, like it's a large sword. Another shape is definitely a snake!

At first, the imagination and fear races ahead of the slower process of reasoning and analyzing. What's that? Who's there? What a coincidence! I just got finished watching that movie a few hours ago about these horrible things...and here they are in my room!?!?

Staring at the objects, you'd start telling yourself that they couldn't really be what the silhouettes suggested. Why would a man stand in the corner motionless for hours? Why wouldn't the snake make any sound or move? When did you ever buy a sword? Why would a sword be there?

But then again, maybe a mentally ill man would stand in the corner plotting some evil thing. A chilling thought. Maybe HE brought the sword...and the snake. Shiver. Maybe the snake was dead....

Then reason would fight back. No, no, no... The silhouettes can't be any of those things.

The struggles trying to understand the hoaxes, lies, apparitions and false claims of Mormonism were sort of like that. Back and forth. To and fro. No way! Yes, way! Remember what the guy in the movie said. These things are demonic... But it was just a movie. But....

Then one day, instead of continuing the back-and-forth struggle of trying to reconcile what seemed to be (what I had been taught) against the reasoning mind that told me that they also did not seem to be what they sort of appeared to be, I gave my permission to consider the possibility that the problems were all the result of the Church not being what it claimed to be.

In a flash, everything fell into place and made perfect sense. It made such perfect sense that from that moment on, I knew I could never go back to weighing the pros and cons for and against the proposition that the Church was true anymore than I could ever go back to being a 5-year-old believer in Santa Claus.

For example, I no longer had to struggle to imagine some way to understand the rock-in-the hat/peepstone translation of the Book of Mormon that would make it seem like a reasonable thing instead of a ridiculous thing. It simply was ridiculous...because it never happened. Nothing was translated. It was a lie...and a farcical lie at that. Same thing applied to every other "problematical" aspect of the Church. If Joseph Smith was a young, immature, pathological liar, these kinds of things are exactly what you would expect him to lie about, especially given his prior history of leading treasure hunts by pretending to see things in his magic stone.

It was a light switch moment. It felt literally as though I had simply switched on the light in a dark room. Back to the dark room analogy. As soon as the light turned on, the mysterious, somewhat misshapen man in the corner turned out to be an ordinary coat rack with a coat on it and a hat on the top post. The snake turned out to be an extension cord. The sword turned out to be a hockey stick.

The light switch had always been there. I was just reluctant to ever use it before. Probably because I didn't want my parents to be wrong. I didn't want to find out that I had wasted a huge amount of time and life energy giving so much attention to a big nothing.

But when I was ready to face the truth, it was as simple as flipping a switch. And that was that.

I went to the temple before a mission. I went again before getting married. I avoided going if at all possible after that. It was just too creepy.

I wore myself out studying the scriptures and praying fervently in the hopes that the inconsistencies I saw between the New Testament and mormon doctrine was just my imagination. One night I imagined god and satan as great titans battling for my soul and I thought "how silly- I'm just a small insignificant person- certainly they have better things to do and more important people to fight over!" And then I said out loud "go ahead and battle it out but you are going to have to do it without me." And just as Wally Prince said- the lights came on and making the decision to leave came easy.

You mean blue pill, the ones they hand out like candy.

It’s a big production, like the circus. When you grow up in that world, it’s the only reality you know. The show must go on. Who knew there was a whole other world outside the tent?

that in talking with his TBM twin sister just recently, she said she just ignores the parts she doesn't like. Well, there you have it. She told me just 2 weeks ago that she doesn't like the changes being made. She doesn't like the 2 hour schedule. That was the ONE thing she would tell me, but I knew there was more.

Well, so did I. So many things for far too long. And one day, it just all fell apart. In a matter of moments.

I've told this many times. I was walking out at the track one day thinking about what my friend's daughter had said about her wedding plans. She told her mother every time something went wrong with the plans that "the church is still true so what does it matter." I couldn't quit thinking about it. And then I realized IT MATTERED TO ME. And that was it. I was done.

The claims of truth and authority made by the Mormon church are absolute. It's hard to give the organization a pass on a few things that have a problem being swallowed.

I say that now, but what was I thinking then?

Lowpriest Wrote:
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> The claims of truth and authority made by the
> Mormon church are absolute. It's hard to give the
> organization a pass on a few things that have a
> problem being swallowed.
>
I couldn't agree more. I accepted those claims and I had the hardest time making sense why an all knowing God would pick and choose the worst leaders to do their own will. Looking back, it was evident that they were self-serving bastards. I was told again and again that I was wrong to be critical and fault-finding of the lord's chosen.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2019 03:57PM by messygoop.

My patriarchal blessing said I was raised by a loving family. Nothing could be further from the truth. I asked, later on, for a new blessing and was turned down flat. I reasoned that maybe it meant a loving family in the pre existence.