So...my brother got his letter in the mail today after sending off his email resignation. He was very happy! I have a best friend that was able to pull herself together after I announced my departure from the church and sent off my own resignation to keep being friends. While some things have not changed, a lot has. A connection is gone, and I feel like she is a bit wary of me. That's to be expected, but her sudden need to post up her testimonies and thoughts about the Savior have increased, and I can see right through to the secret messages.

Is it natural to still have a bit of doubt? Was the Mormon influence so strong on me that I am actually worried I may be wrong? But as a church member, things didn't feel right either. I was taught that in order to be a good Mormon, I had to fear God. That never settled well with me. A lot of things didn't. I guess I'm just in an awkward stage of my recovery? I hope to feel 'stable' soon. A lot of people hhave shunned me now that I am exmormon, so I'm glad to still have my best buddy...people just don't like change. They don't like to see this once meek, Shy girl suddenly grow a backbone and stand up for herself.

What about you? What kind of friends stayed, and who decided it wasn't worth wasting time on you anymore?

I'm of the mindset that I want nothing to do with a god that would send me to hell for using the brain I was given.

This feeling will pass soon enough. It took a while after my realization of my atheism. If I had to guess, I'd say no longer than six months.

As to my friends? I lost no friends. I have a few select people that are lucky enough to be considered a friend, and they were never Mormon.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2011 05:50AM by koolman2.

i agree with koolman. shouldn't have to worship a god out of fear. you fear you have made an error. don't worry about it. if you are wrong, a god worth worshipping will understand the reasons for your choice.

+1 totally agree. Pascals Wager is nothing more than a scare tactic

Though I cannot speak for everyone, my guess is that there are a lot of people on this board who have felt just like you do now. I know I had my moments of wavering between two worlds. But here's what I found out, to borrow a cliche, it gets better. I got over the wavering pretty quickly and realized I had done the right thing for sure in leaving Mormonism.

Advice is cheap and here's my two cents worth. Keep educating yourself! Follow this board, read books and find sites on the net that will help you through this transition. This alone helped me tremendously.

If you can hold onto old friends from your TBM days, by all means, do! But my feeling is you will need to begin making new friends, too. Get involved in your community. If you feel comfortable with it and have the need to, find a different church. But for goodness sake, don't mope around home second-guessing your decision.

Best wishes to you and keep us posted here.

You probably aren't. But you may be.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. And you are risking OD as a SOP for rejecting Mormonism.

But you're also risking hellfire by rejecting Catholicism, Zoroastrianism, Islam and ancient Greek polytheism, among others. The nature of being able to make choices is that you may choose the wrong thing and end up paying.

I hear the "I wouldn't choose to worship a capricious and malicious god, anyway" line a lot. Hell, I've used it a lot. As if just because I choose to not affiliate myself with a capricious and malicious god, it means there's no way the true god could be capricious and malicious. But he might be. And by choosing to reject him, I may be assuring myself a spot in hell.

Ulitmately, I think those "comply or perish" religions just wear out a lot of people with the perpetual fear for so long that they get to the point that they're simply too exhausted to care any longer. I know that's pretty much the case with me. Maybe I am destined for hell. Oh well. But then, maybe I'll have a deathbed conversion. Who knows. I doesn't matter anyway.

Which (I think) is the point I'm trying to make in this post. Religion doesn't matter. Just do your best. Try and focus on being moral and ethical and blow off the mental complying gymnastics because that (logically) seems the least important. Then, hope for the best and let the chips fall where they may. Anything else and you're adding a whole lot of stress rule your life for no reason whatsoever.

After 22 years in, I have 2 that are still friends. Both former mission companions. They don't give a rat's ass what I think about the church. It's not an issue.

Ron

for about 9 months after I stopped believing. My brain was pretty dang sure it was a bunch of baloney, but there was this nagging fear of overlooking something and still a vague hope that maybe God would FINALLY answer my prayers and everything would make sense again and I would go back to my old comfy life in the church. (How's THAT for a run-on sentence?!)

And then I got over it. It was almost like a switch turned off the self-doubt, fear, worry. And I had such a sense of well-being, confidence and peace about my decision.

I think you just have to be away from the indocrination and manipulation long enough to clear your brain.

BTW, I got better after I finally ditched the garments. I think it was a factor that I wasn't hedging my bets anymore.

If Mormonism happens to be the only true church in the universe God will have to answer some pretty serious questions about JS, the BOM's historicity, Temples and Masons, polygamy, racism, etc.

No fair, loving, rational god would ever force his children into a lifetime of ritualistic, mindless servitude controlled by an ultra-rich, sexist, racist, and just plain strange cult.

With that in mind, my conscience is totally clear. If there is a god, in my opinion he would at least be smart enough to be able to see the obvious flaws in Mormonism. Simple as that.

The only people who remained friends with me were my non-mormon friends to begin with and they were very supportive and very happy for me to make the move.

Not one of my mormon friends ever tried to maintain a friendship with me and I found out quickly that my real friends were never in the LDS faith to begin with.

It takes a few years, but you learn what a real friend is. The only contact I get from the church now is people who show up on my door or contact me because they are my current assigned home teacher to my TBM wife and kids. I quickly point out that I don't need 'assigned' friends and let them do their business with my wife and kids but I never join in the same room with them anymore cause it only makes me angry and sad to see my family still buy into the LDS bullshit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2011 02:34PM by Comfortably Numb.