Did you as a missionary want to convince anybody who you approached that the Book of Mormon was a genuine history and want your investigators or converts to believe that,or was it because the book had a message about faith,repentance and baptism?

Yes, absolutely I/we wanted to convince them that it was true history (this was 1998-2000, and still using the six discussions). But I was personally also all about the four fundamentals of faith, repentance, baptism, and being guided by the Holy Ghost. All the deeper mysteries were interesting but unnecessary. I was still in by 2002, mostly out by summer 2003, and fully resigned by summer 2004.

That's a really quick exit. What caused your faith to decline so rapidly, if you don't mind responding?

I'm just guessing; Common Sense?

Faith gives way when you question it eventually. Fiercely and such. Once you say that could not have happened, and here's why.

Miracles become less formidable, and are unable to withstand the scrutiny that is applied to them. Faith is something I confronted lately, and I believe it to be something useful to a certain point.

My ex-wife would probably not recognize me now. Especially because she has her faith, and I am slowly chipping away at becoming an atheist.

The voices have come back on and off, during the past few months. However, that seems to be triggered by stressors in my life. Especially, when I am going to go back to the school life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2025 05:08PM by lousyleper.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's a really quick exit. What caused your faith
> to decline so rapidly, if you don't mind
> responding?

Oops. Sorry for the super late response.

I had the strongest testimony of the Book of Mormon on my mission. I got injured for a month and read the book for a month and drew maps of all the ancient lands, and the internal consistency of the Book of Mormon totally sold me. I always had doubts about Joseph Smith, the church, the Book of Mormon, but the internal consistency of the Book of Mormon and the stories inside of it really sold me. I felt “the spirit” when I read certain stories, like Nephi’s triumph over his shitty brothers, King Benjamin’s sermon, the sons of Mosiah being given a second chance, Ammon, Abinadi, Alma and Amulek and the tragedy of all the burning people, the Amalickiah-Ammoron wars, Helaman’s 2000 young soldiers, Kishkumen, the Book of Ether. That was all cool stuff.

But also during my mission, I was unimpressed with the morality of the visiting General Authorities. They seemed really stupid. They made accidental racists comments all the time (this was in Africa). They told us to convert rich people, not poor people. Oaks and Scott couldn’t answer basic questions asked by missionaries in a big meeting (like the Adam-God Theory... they basically lied to us and said Brigham Young declared no such doctrine.

Coming back home from my mission, I started to see racism and bigotry in all the people in my own home neighborhood. They all voted for George W. Bush. They all wanted a war in Iraq. They all wanted LGBT human beings to leave the state or go to hell. There was some state legislation on the ballot that year on whether or not to codify marriage as between a man and woman in Utah. I thought, “Who are all these people I grew up with? Why are they all such moral bigots?” (I remember defending LGBT students’ rights to have a club in my high school law class.) For political reasons, I started to see the people in Utah as rather weird.

But here’s what did it:

In college I took a bunch of playwriting storytelling classes and I learned about Aristotle and something called “catharsis,” which are those rich, luscious feelings you have when you read a good story. SUDDENLY IT ALL CLICKED FOR ME. The Book of Mormon isn’t true because the stories are nice. That feeling I’m having isn’t the Holy Ghost telling me that the book, the church, the leaders (everything) is all true. That’s a completely specious line of reasoning. The only reason why I felt those feelings while reading the Book of Mormon is because I felt catharsis at the end of those stories, which is a completely natural, normal phenomenon known by the ancient Greeks several thousand years ago. Mormons just hijacked catharsis and used it as a cult tool.

Soon after that I was on this recovery board and read up about church history, Josephs wives, the lies, etc.

By 2004 I was officially resigned with the help of the website Mormon No More.

My family and I were on the outs after that. I finished college in Utah. I went to Harvard. I moved abroad. I’ve been having been have an absolutely wonderful life as a moral, thinking atheist. Sometimes I mosey on over to Facebook and I just can’t believe that all of my friends and family members are still so trapped by something that is so obviously fake!

Oh, and the temple ceremony is absolute garbage. I knew that the first time I went through it.

It was 1969 and Native Americans were still Lamanites and no one could say they weren't. Central America was filled with Nephite ruins. All the proof was there. Frustrating that no one would believe us. We KNEW as time went on that more evidence would surface and the world would finally know the truth. Obviously that happened. Didn't go well for the Mormons though.

For me the BoM was a tool to help people find a way to understand the big questions in life---where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going---and to help them get to the CK.

I was very sincere and believed it to the hilt.

I just said it was "true." At the time, I didn't distinguish historical truth from spiritual "truth."

The irony was that for the first few months of my mission, we didn't have the BoM in the language of the country in which I was serving (Thailand). We had mimeographed excerpts (anyone else remember mimeographs?), but we only had one set per district.

Not surprisingly, converts were very rare in my mission.

In the mid 70s I believed it to be a true history. In Finland we had to buy our BoMs to give to people with the understanding the folks we gave the books to would pay us for them. That only happened once in 2 years. We could not even give them away. A case of Book of Mormons would last for weeks as Finns were not interested.

From a display in a local shop (copier shop) in small-town UT.

I brought it home and DH informed me that I was supposed to put money in the box to pay for it. (I thought it was a donation box).

I never thought that the BoM alone would convince anyone to join the Mormon church.

Not a missionary, but I said forget the ruins, I knew first hand the difficulty of excavations in dense tropical jungles.

I thought for decades, if we could just find the Book of Zenos, or a forgotten mention of Lehi the prophet or a really old old version of Isiah that matched Joseph's translation in 2 Nephi, then the world would have to acknowledge the truth.

I never hav6e anyone a Book of Mormon or had an investigator last to the point to give them one.

And I don't recall caring. The Bom wasn't special to me. The Germans didn't care about religion. So it was a non issue.

Hard to believe now, but back in the mid-60s I fervently believed that once a contact started reading the BoM, a conversion took place.

Back home, when Dialog started publishing and I read about Michael Coe--it was the beginning of the end of my belief.

We just hoped the old Lutheran church ladies would get past Nephi slicing and dicing Laban.

It's been a while (1990-1992) but I don't recall a serious emphasis on trying to demonstrate the veracity of the Book of Mormon. The major point of each discussion was to get them to commit to an action, and keep that commitment. Every discussion began with a follow up on the commitments made during the previous one, with the very first commitment being an agreement to read some of the book and pray about its truthfulness. So there was no real effort on our part to demonstrate that it was true, only an attempt to have the investigator self-convince, based on "feeling the spirit".

Must have practiced it 1,000 times.

And we did 20 push ups at zone conferences every time a missionary flubbed it up.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2025 10:56AM by messygoop.

It all comes down to the ignorance of youth. Some areas I could be highly skeptical and other not. The leadership I grew up with were really great people (save for a couple). So as a kid it never occurred to me that either they were lying to me or were just as clueless as I was to the real truth the church hid from all of us.

Thus, on my mission I just assumed the BOM was correct and I followed the discussions as provided in the discussions ring binder with dividers. For us it was the numbers game. Get those discussions and baptisms. Everything else taught\presented was just a tool to get people to commit. As my mission went on and I came across conflicting information\behavior by way of leadership, companions, and the outside world. I just put that all on my shelf. I wanted numbers so I could go home and stand at the pulpit, brag, and make the girls swoon at my righteousness.

But I will add the best thing that happened to me at the end of my mission was the metaphorical LDS judgement bus that hit me and woke me up to the term, "there is something screwy going on here". My homecoming was a metaphorical train wreak as a result of that bus hit, and it began my path to eventual freedom from LDS Corp.

Early 60's - and it was a record of the Lamanites & Nephites. Yep, a true historical record of them written first to the LAMANITES to convince them - and then to the Gentiles.

Central States Mission - Independence, Missouri

After having read the BOM during the first year of my mission, I was fairly sure that it was no historical document. It simply did not have the ring of truth to it. It really seemed phony. Therefore, after the first year, I never attempted to convince anyone that it was an historical document with a link to God. In fact, I never attempted to baptize anyone I really liked. My family would have been embarrassed had I left my mission early, so I completed the two years.