I've been a member of the LDS church for about 11 years. I was a convert. Always felt I had a strong testimony but for some reason, some things have changed in my outlook on life and I started to look into the different areas of the Church that confused me. What I've learned is shocking and earth shattering and I'm not sure where to go now. I'm confused about what I've read about problems of the first vision, BOA etc. Can anyone give me any help or direction?
Thanks

are you looking for help with the first vision/BOA part or the earth shattering part?

let me try that again...

here's a great book on the BOA - the whole thing is online for free (last chapter is optional haha)

http://www.irr.org/mit/bhoh-pt1.html


and if you're looking for help with the 'earth shattering' part you've come to the right place...

MormonThink helped me.

http://mormonthink.com

Thanks for the links. It's just I thought I knew a lot about the church, well enough and it seems I hadn't even scratched the surface. I've been talking to my wife about these issues I now have (mainly with the corruption, brigham young, no physical evidence of the BoM) and she tells me to talk to my Bishop about it which I may but I can already expect what he will tell me.

have you been lurking here for very long? if not maybe you should before you do anything too drastic - your story is starting out in a very familiar sort of way...

take it slow with your wife

and put off meeting with the bishop - take a little time to catch your breath and get your bearings first

but I play one on tv. Actually, in real life I'm a used car salesman with as much ecclesiastical training as your bishop.

so feel free to ask me anything. It won't even cost you 10%.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2011 04:32PM by WiserWomanNow.

It gives a lot of information in very concise, easy to read chapters. Best wishes to you in your journey.

Most of us have been there... This is a good place to vent and realize that you're not alone.

What you've mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg. I was a convert and member for 11 years also; when the blinders came off, I was shocked by how much was in plain sight the whole time that I never questioned... for instance, how many of Joseph's wives could you name? Why was there no context for all those quotes in the "teachings of the prophets" manuals, wouldn't the "teachings of the prophets" be sermons/talks rather than sound-bites? Why doesn't the church disclose where the money goes? Why doesn't the church run homeless shelters, or help the non-members in the community? Why would a prophet lie about what we believe? and on and on and on...

My advice, continue to study and foster your non-mormon friendships now... If your experience is typical then you'll need them. It's okay to not define or label your faith/belief. And above all, it's okay to re-evaluate what you believe when presented with new information...

I came across this site after looking at an article regarding the different symbolism etc in Salt Lake and temple square. I haven't been to the temple so was shocked to read about what actually goes on in the endowment process.
I thought I had a strong testimony and despite the questions in the back of my head I could always pray and feel better about it.
Now it's like the one thing in the world I thought was true no matter what (the church that is) has been ripped from me and it's left a huge whole.

Has anyone gone to their bishop with these kinds of questions? What kind of a response can I expect?

Your bishop will tell you to read the BoM and pray about it. Or he will try to convince you to not worry about it. Because he has no real answers. This is why the church frowns upon getting information from non-official sources or so-called "anti" sites.

I wouldn't bother.

"Ask the bishop" is an automated response given by the members to any questions someone has. They don't feel they can answer such questions and are told to direct you to the bishop on anything off color. I have been told to "ask the bishop" several times over the years.

If you click around enough on line, you will educate yourself and it will be fascinating!!

I was a convert in the church since 2002 and resigned in Sept. 2010. My husband's family (and my husband who is a Jack mormon) are Mormons and they don't talk to me about why I left.

On the first visit he was very nice and seemed sincere. He listened to my concerns and promised me he would/could find the answers to all of them. I met with him a week later and his entire demeanor had changed. He no longer cared about my concerns and questions, he only wanted to focus on what sins I must be committing to drive the spirit out of my life.

It was obvious to me that he had tried to find answers by going up the chain of command and he ended up getting bitch slapped by the Stake President or maybe an area authority.

In the end, nobody had good answers. The best Mormonism has to offer is to pretend the questions aren't really that important so it's safe to ignore them.

Stunted.

Your subject line says it all: you have freed one of your wings. Pull the other one out of the fire and fly.

The huge hole in your life is your life . . . waiting for you to fill it with meaning and a life of integrity and responsibility for your thoughts, choices, and actions.

Best wishes to you in your journey.

Don't view the hole like it's a bad thing...see it as space that's been cleared out and ready to be filled with your choice of the many things life has to offer.

...you were told things you already wanted to be true. But those things weren't the whole story.

...are the Books of Mormon, Moses, and Abraham.
The evidence of their bogusness is written right in them, you just have to notice it.

1. The BoM is racist. It says God started a new black race by "cursing" the Lamanites with a black skin specifically so that they would be segregated from the white Nephites. Yes the book patronizes the Lamanites in many instances, but they are ALWAYS only tentatively entitled to the same blessings as the whites. This is OBVIOUSLY false. If you think otherwise, please explain.
The Books of Moses and Abraham are the ONLY cannonization that the "Curse of Cain" is the black skin of Africans. The Bible DOES NOT say this. It was a cultural assumption in the 1800s and that mistake was written right into LDS cannonized "scripture" that is supposedly the word of God.

2. The Book of Mormon endorses the genocide of Native Americans. Columbus was a murderer. He was a cruel slave master. His atrocities on Hispaniola are enough to call him evil in themselves. He is directly responsible for the extinction of the Tiano tribes. But that's just the tip of the iceburg. The Book of Mormon says he was sent by God to begin the massive, cruel culling of the Native Americans to make room for a proper Christian nation. Throughout the Americas MILLIONS perished by disease and war, and the Book of Mormon says God did all this because the Lamanites had rejected the gospel hundreds of years prior. This is pure bull shit.

3. The Book of Mormon contains the indefensible explanation that the reason the Jews were persecuted was because "none other nation on earth would crucify their God". Yes the Book of Mormon greatly patronizes the Jews, but this "christ-killers" talk is the stuff of Nazis and the KKK. It's pure bull shit.

4. The book uses the sexist pejorative "whore". Why not just say bitch. Really, God is so preoccupied with "the chastity of women". The Taliban would think mormonism is a step in the right direction...There's even a polygamy loophole, apparently reluctantly forced onto it by biblical polygamy, which is pure bull shit.

5. The book says the Bible is true including its most impossible literal claims. Adam and Eve? Flood? No. Humans have lived for 2 million years and human-like fully-upright apes have lived for several million more. The most recent common male ancestor and female ancestor are tens of thousands of years apart and many times further back in time than the biblical creation...and they lived in Africa. Human evolution is well understood and corroborated, and Adam and Eve didn't happen.
The evidence against the flood story is massive. It contradicts all geological findings. It contradicts all biological findings. It contradicts all archeological findings. It even contradicts all historical findings...the flood supposedly occured AFTER several nascent surviving civilizations formed, ie Egypt, Sumaria, even China! CONTINUOUS human, animal, and plant occupation of EVERY land on earth is KNOWN to have been uninterrupted by any global flood. It just didn't happen, but mormon scripture says it did.

The paradoxes in the "gospel" built up in my mind until they finally collapsed all at once...and I had never read any anti-mormon argument except the church's own publications.

Most bishops haven't studied the difficult questions any more than you have. Probably less.

And even if they HAVE studied the difficult questions, there ARE no good answers to them. Which is why the answers leaders give are always pretty lame, and pretty much shift the responsibility to the doubting member (YOU) to fix the problem (that you didn't create in the first place).

So here are the standard bishop approaches:

1) Bro. Belperboy, are there any unresolved sins that you need to confess?

2) Are you praying and reading your scriptures daily?

3) You just need to have more faith. We don't have all the answers, but we'll know in the next life. [After you've given up this one without ANY evidence that this IS another one].


If your bishop is a seminary teacher, you might get more specific information. They'll drum up some evidence that they claim supports the B of M or the B of A, but if you check it out it will turn out to be weak and full of conjecture. Or they'll take the Hugh Nibley approach and throw out so much information that it will almost overwhelm you, but again, if you check out the specifics, none of it will prove their point.

My advice? Focus on the relationship with your wife. Go slow, don't give her anymore information that she is ready to accept. And don't invite the bishop to weigh into the situation AT ALL. Some bishops do damage to the marriage by freaking out the believing spouse. Try not to get down on the church around your wife, but take a more curious approach about the issues you are studying.

Good luck. I've seen many people take the journey out over the last 12 years. OUT is just about the only one direction that honest research takes people, and the main concern is keeping the relationships worth having.

On the main page of this site there is a link to give people who are thinking of joining the Mormon church all the truth before they decide (here is a link)http://www.exmormon.org/tract2.htm

It gives all the problems and if you click on the "notes" button it takes you to the source that proves them. It is a great place to start gathering info.

Your Bishop will just tell you that the bad antimormons are trying to trick you. I was afraid to question anything--couldn't give myself permission to even think or consider if JS was a fraud or not. I was scarred that God would see my thought and I would be condemned traitor.

I would start by looking at only faithful mormon sources. Consider what the late Apostle Hugh B Brown said in a speech at BYU:

"I hope that you will develop the questing spirit. Be unafraid of new ideas for they are the stepping stones of progress. You will of course respect the opinions of others but be unafraid to dissent – if you are informed.
Now I have mentioned freedom to express your thoughts, but I caution you that your thoughts and expressions must meet competition in the market place of thought, and in that competition truth will emerge triumphant. Only error needs to fear freedom of expression. Seek truth in all fields, and in that search you will need at least three virtues; courage, zest, and modesty. The ancients put that thought in the form of a prayer. They said, ‘From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, from the laziness that is content with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it has all truth – O God of truth deliver us’.”

Hugh B Brown. Speech at BYU, March 29, 1958

This talk gives you permission to question--only error fears truth. My advice is to be true to yourself, take courage and find the truth regardless of where it leads you.

One other piece of advice--be careful with your spouse and family. Go slow with them and continually remind them that you are absolutely committed to them--they are first. Regardless of what you find, you will always be a good decent person with morals and a conscience. The church uses scare tactics to say you will become debacherous but that is flat wrong.

Please continue to pray for guidance and read the Bible. Psalms are comforting at a time like this. Go slow. Honor your wife. This is about your relationship with God, and God will wait for you.

It hasn't been that long for me since the "world came crashing down."

First and foremost, I would not go to the bishop. It's similar to going to a car salesman and asking if you should buy a car from a different lot. What do you think his answer is going to be?

I think you've done well in exploring these sensitive topics on your own using the Internet. You can find a lot of valid information that the church would never ever divulge in a meeting or even a one on one conversation with a bishop. When you bring up topics that obviously call in to question the validity of the claims of the church you are most like to receive a "canned" answer. My mission president gave me one such when I asked him about polygamy and Joseph Smith. He said "we just don't know everything and the Lord does." That's all nice and good, but in reality Joseph Smith's polygamy is fairly well documented and he had sex with minor females. Married or not it's creepy.

Church members delude themselves into dealing With the obviously difficult questions. They have to in order to keep their mind and sense of right and wrong in order. Most have questions but ignore them because they're in a Happy marriage or otherwise socially engaged and don't have any reason to rock the boat.

These questions and feelings of complete shock are still fresh on my feelings, too. I know what you're going through. It still feels awkward talking negatively about Joseph Smith or the church because for years I cherished them and what aspect they played in my life. It wasnt until I walked away and started to look at things from my own perspective and not one that the church had set out for me that I finally had that eye opening moment. Those questions are hard for them to answer because the answer isn't what they would want it to be.

Book of Abraham: it's obviously not a translation like the church says. Scholars both in and out of the church have confirmed that. People answer that it is an 'inspired' translation or the standard 'we don't know.' Realilty is too hard to ignore here. The church pretends like these Problems don't exist and expect all of us to just keep going our merry way without questioning them.

The temple ceremony: changed many many many times since the days of Joseph Smith. The church admits this one if you really really press an older faithful about it. This was the one that really got me in the end. If this is the crowning experience of religion as they believe, why would it have to be adjusted several times? They've created the family friendly version by removing the gruesome parts of the ceremony throughout the years. Who knows what changes will come in the future.

Bottom line is its about control. I am a recent deconvert of the church. I am not an atheist, however. I do believe in God. But the Mormon church, like almost all churches, runs on the currency of control. If the church can get you to strive to be a temp
E recommend carrying member, which is their crowning achievement, they've got you working as a cog in their machine. You're paying 10%, giving countless hours in service to the church, and building a family unit that is dependent upon them instead of each other. My family growing up now has dealt with that dependency with a mother who thinks she's a failure because only one of her four children are active in the church. She feels guilt and pressure and control.

The only reason your wife wants you to "talk to the bishop" is in hopes that you will submit to the bishop’s “counsel” to squelch your doubts and ignore the evidence you find, and start being a good little TBM sheeple again. The bishop will use shame, guilt, fear, and any other tactics to try to coerce you into strict "obedience" again.

Your wife is not ready to hear about all the things you have discovered. She is already shaken to realize that you may not be the lifelong TBM she thought she married. Learn all you can for yourself, but take it s-l-o-w in sharing it with your DW.

A bishop only has the authority you are willing to give him. He does not have any special understanding or insight. He does not speak for God.

IMO, the only questions you want answers from him for are these:

Will you support my marriage by encouraging my wife to remain a loving, supportive spouse despite my questions/doubts/apostasy? OR will you undermine our marriage by encouraging her to think of me as a "less than" husband who can't take her to the temple and won't be with her in heaven, even counsel her to consider divorce?

Will you support my family by encouraging my wife and children to remain respectful and loving despite our religious difference of opinions? OR will you undermine my position as father by going around my parental authority or encouraging my children to dismiss my opinions because I no longer "hold the priesthood"? Will you encourage youth leaders to treat my children with pity and condescension because their father is no longer active? Will you encourage my wife and children to make their continued love for me conditional upon my church activity?

Will you support my family by encouraging ward members to be friendly to me and my family? OR will you encourage speculation about my "worthiness", permit gossip about my family, assign ward members to make me a 'reactivation project', encourage them to avoid me because I might be harmful to their testimonies?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2011 06:07PM by caedmon.