Many times I read here how many live with people who ignore all the evidence against the lds church. I myself ignored so much, put a lot on the shelf and was oblivious to many facts and attitudes in the church. Why? I had a testimony of the BoM.

The strength of my testimony of the church lied in the Book of Mormon. I am a convert to the church and I liked the BoM, I got converted because of it. I had a problem from the beginning with the story of the gold plates and the first vision but the missionaries told me if the book of mormon makes you feel good, that is the spirit. If that is the spirit then the BoM is true. If the BoM is true, then JS was a prophet and if he was a prophet the church is true. Of course if the church was true, I needed to get baptized. I got baptized and convinced myself it was all true, and whenever something bothered me such as my lack of belief on the FV, polygamy, teens asked to give their babies up, the arrogance of leaders, the little budgets, etc. I always went back to the BoM and read it and I was fine again. Once my belief in the BoM as an inspired book was shattered, everything was shaken too, all my doubts about the lds church surfaced as well as all doubts I had about the bible from my early childhood, before my mormon days, and for the first time I was not afraid to doubt, well maybe a little, but it was okay to think and express that something didn't make sense.

I think that maybe we all have something that we hold on to. For some it may be the idea of an eternal family that keeps them strong or the temples. For some it may be the priesthood. Maybe an answered prayer or a missionary experience. A conviction of the first vision or the current prophet perhaps. Or it could be just as simple as the tradition of their parents.

Another poster today said that it was not the history but the doctrine that bothered him. Maybe when we are bothered or challenged on that very thing that is the pillar of our testimony, everything else falls apart. For some of you frustrated with family members about not listening to the real truth about the church, maybe it would help to find where their testimony is rooted an take it from there.


What was the keystone of your own testimonies? Did you have one? Did you have something that would make you think I must continue on this path or gave you comfort when in doubt?

D

agree - i was thinking BoM and JS before i even read your post

i was the same as you - once i accepted that there were problems w/ the BoM i started studying JS and once i learned about the BoA it was all over for me - because BoM and JS were my testimony...

i think that's why some TBMs and even jackmos frustrate me - it's like their 'testimony' is rooted in something that can't be studied or debated

some people seem to have a testimony of the church based purely on how they feel about the people at church or how they feel about seeing their spouse or children participate in church rituals such as giving talks or passing sacrament

i'm not sure how to approach that type of TBM...

also, i wonder if some TBMs don't have a testimony of the IDEA of the BoM or the IDEA of JS - i get the sense that my parents are like this - they're life-long committed TBMs that, admittedly, almost never read scriptures but they have a strong testimony of the scriptures... because of feelings they had years ago while reading

over time i think they've built those feelings up into some kind of untouchable testimony fortress - which is especially weird to me with my father because he is (in every other facet of his life) very much a details person

i'm not sure if i have a point but... good topic deconverted2010

MILk! That was the keystone of my testimony. The whole package just sounded so good. How could anyone not see it???

I could become a God! It made sense to me. If you just keep learning more and more all the time, why couldn't you get there eventually? Learning and intelligence seemed to have infinite possibilities.

I never thought it would be magical. I figured there would be thousands of years of God school and then an internship and finally, the white robes, long beard, my own personal Holy Ghost and thousands of men to sleep with. Well actually, I assumed if I could be faithful enough God would make me straight and it would be thousands of women. But that's another story.

But that was the cornerstone. EXEPT, I only ever deluded myself into believing I had a testimony because from the time I was two years old it had been hammered into me that the most important thing in life was to have a testimony and no way was I going to go one more day without one.

This is an excellent post.

I’m a 30 year plus church vet. I’m sitting here trying to come up with the one thing that I could truly say I had a testimony of.

Temple? No. Bad experience on my wedding day, my parents couldn’t attend.

BOM? No. I just couldn’t get interested enough to keep reading.

Joseph Smith? No. Even as an investigator, I was like “Really?”

Priesthood? No. Too much guilt attached for not measuring up. Plus I wasn’t an RM.

Stake Missionary? Maybe. We baptized a whole family. Who later pillaged ward fast offerings and skipped town in the middle of the night.

I have my ticket punched on all the leadership positions up to and including HP group leader. I guess what kept me going there was the camaraderie and shared burden with the guys I worked with.
Always kind of embarrassed by the message when explaining the church to non-mo’s but I liked the guys I worked with.

I think the cumulative effect of the glimmers of good things from the above list plus the reflected testimony of those around me kept me going.

So when the dominoes started falling precipitated by Prop8, they fell very fast.

I was indoctrinated in the cradle of mormonism. Not Utah :)
I lived near Kirtland. I went to the historical sites many many times. I spent the night in at the John Johnson farm in the room that JS hid what ever it was in that box. I was allowed to go through these places on my own with out guides. I sat in the room of the prophets and read my scriptures. I saw Motab sing in the kirtland temple.
I couldn't imagine why any of the founders would put themselves through all that torment if the church wasn't true. I remember thinking this while sitting on the front steps of the JJF looking out into the yard where JS was tarred and feathered. I was in awe of what these people put themselves through. I cried while standing on the banks of the river in Nauvoo, trying to imagine how horrifying that crossing must have been. I walked through the homes and felt sad. The missionary guides were well trained to manipulate emotions. Asking questions is not encouraged.
The problem is, I had no idea how fabricated ALL of those stories were. I had all kinds of warm fuzzy feelings (spiritual witness) whenever I stood in the sacred grove, Carthage jail, or at the Hill Cummorah.
I now know the warm fuzzies couldn't possibly be the Holy Ghost telling me it was all true,because none of it was.
When I found out why JS was tarred and feathered, and lets not forget a child died because of that night, I was so disgusted. Then to find out the Smiths didn't live near the grove when the supposed vision occurred, the plates most likely didn't exist, Emma had a room full of sister wives she didn't want,how things really were in Nauvoo, and Joseph went down during a gun fight. And I knew I had been lied to, and that my emotions had been manipulated, I was furious.
All my life leaders in this church have made me miserable. My personality doesn't fit the mormon mold. As a result I lived my life in unnecessary emotional and spiritual turmoil. Feeling like I was never good enough. Wishing I could be more compliant, more like the people who I saw at church. It seemed so easy for them. I've been shunned by many,including my parents and some siblings. Always feeling like there was something wrong with me. I didn't have the right talents, I hated reading scriptures, Most of the time church was torture, I hated having callings, I didn't want 8 kids, I couldn't make myself talk in that fake little voice, Garments were pure hell, The temple seemed stupid, I couldn't make myself be that person that was so accepted by members and my family.
Then to find out its a pack of lies and manipulation. Their condescending attitude toward me when I found out the truth. I hate the Mormon culture. It's extremely sick. Everyone is living their life (if they know it or not) on a foundation of lies. There is no way you can be happy living on the sickness of the past. Eventually it will have a negative effect on you and those around you.
When I read the farms and fairs boards I want to scream. It's just another version of the same lies and manipulation. The top dogs stand up in conference and play the same mind games year after year. People coming out of meetings feeling hopeless and defective, yet they are so indoctrinated they don't dare consider it's the mormon religion that is making them so incredibly miserable. They look in the mirror and wonder who the hell that is looking back. That is the loneliest feeling. Especially when you have no idea how to find out. True spirituality and emotional help are discouraged, and often impossible to find, leaving people to try harder, do more, and press on in a system that's turning them into empty shells.
If you are lucky enough to find out the truth, and to be able to leave, you may lose everyone and everything you have. You have a hard road ahead of you.
The church literally steals your life, and feels no guilt about it. You are the bad one if you have a problem with it. They will do their best to turn everyone near and dear to you against you.That's their way of protecting the lie. An evil lie all dressed up to deceive anyone they can get their hands on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2012 03:51PM by Mia.

That is a great question. I think I was just brainwashed that the whole package was true. Certainly, the BOM was not it, the temple was not it, the Prophet was not it. So, I am not sure except the package. I assumed in my early years that if I did not understand the temple or the BOM that it was my problem and my weakness. But, I realized later on that I never felt the spirit (Moroni promise) when reading the BOM and I never felt anything was weird things in the temple.

My "testimony" was provisional. "Okay, if you guys say so."

I think that is the norm. Or the majority.
Most don't even realize that's what happened.
There is some truth in if you say it enough it will become true for you. Hence the endless testimonies, over and over.

For me, this was exactly it. Since the day I was born everyone I loved, trusted, and respected drilled it into me that mormonism is true. Even as a young teen I realized a lot of it didn't really make sense, but the idea that it might not be true never even entered my head.

It took moving, in my thirties, to an area where belief in mormonism isn't the norm before I even considered the possibility that it might not be true. I stopped attending in a matter of weeks.

For me, it would be so busy feeling ashamed about various things, that I did not take the time to ask why I felt ashamed of them.

Fear that I would be wrong.

was the relationships within the church. When that fell apart, so did my testimony.

My testimonkey was entirely based on the testimonkeys of my parents, my uncles and aunts, my siblings, my cousins, my second cousins etc.

My dad's extended family emigrated to the other side of the world and I didn't really have much contact. My mum's extended family, on the other hand, were with only a couple of apostate cousins as exceptions, entirely TBM and we are fairly close.

So when you grow up being told it's true, and everybody in your family lives it like it is true, then you accept they must be right. I never received an answer to a single prayer in my entire life, I never got the warm fuzzies reading the BoM or going through the temple. Yet I still *believed* it was true, and that *I* was the problem!

So what changed? Well my extended family and wife are all still TBMs. What changed was growing up and realising that just because a lot of people I like and respect have a particular shared belief, *DOESN'T MEAN IT'S TRUE*. This belief primed me for accepting the real truth when I started to investigate Mormonism.

Interestingly, I started to develop this understanding not through religion, but through politics. Throughout my life I have been taught through my family that two things are true - the Mormon church, and the socialist left wing Labour party. I was indoctrinated equally in each. Yet there was no church commandment prohibiting differing political beliefs - indeed, and ironically, it was precisely because the Brethren and Utahns were right wing and so obviously held different beliefs to my parents that opened up this possibility.

So I started to think for myself politically, and realised that I believed THE EXACT OPPOSITE to my parents and family politically. They believed in left wing economics and were socially conservative. I believe in right wing economics and am socially liberal! They are authoritarian Marxists. I am a libertarian / right-wing liberal.

This new awakening only happened in my twenties a few years ago.

When one has two handicapped siblings, who one knows can never lead as full a life as we able bodies ones, then the questions are asked of the priesthood "Will they at least get a reward after this life?"

Their answer gave me hope that they would go straight to the CK, not having had the opportunity to sin and we, as a family, gained some comfort from that.

When I found out that they are secretly considered to be the way they are as punishment for some infraction in the pre-existence, and are here as a lesson to the rest of us, my testimony caved in. That's when I began researching and ended up here. The whole mess is a sham and only designed to control and keep bound those who might need some comfort, with carrot dangling just out of reach.

Then I learned the true church history and I was gone.

The family systematically extracted themselves from all dealings with mormonism and we ensured they could not get within spitting distance of our family, especially those less fortunate ones, who had been full tithe payers at the church's behest.

Briggy

I bought into this one big time--but part of that was the attitude of if you do everything the way we tell you, you will be "guaranteed" that nothing bad will happen to you--your kids won't be lost, you won't end up divorced, etc.

I worried about this issue from the time I was a small girl. I've said this before--my dad drank coffee and even as just a small girl I would stare at the bottle of coffee in the cabinet and worry about losing my dad.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2012 10:08AM by cl2.

This is a good thread. I really had to think, what was the breaking point for me? I knew about many of the historical problems with church history for over a decade. However, something always kept me going back to the church even though it had so many evidences against it.

I guess I could say that the keystone of my testimony was guilt. I was convinced that maybe I wasn't worthy enough and that was why I didn't "know" the truth. That is where the power of the cult truly is... using guilt to manipulate and shame. Eventually something just snapped in my mind. I let go of all the guilt and all of a sudden the power of the church completely imploded.

After my liberation from guilt, I read "No Man Knows My History." That book was the final nails in the coffin to any testimony I may have had.

Wow! What a great thread. I wanted to be snippy and just put: "A Lie" for the answer to the question. Instead, i'll try to really explain.

I love history. After a mission, I converted my love of history to almost exclusively church history. I knew many of the issues but thought some of them were either outright inaccurate or at least twisted in ways to make the church look bad. I figured JS wasn't perfect but God used him anyway to establish his church and kingdom. In lots of ways that gave me hope. Looking back now, I recognize how much power the guilt cycle had over us. Most of us suffered in silence thinking we were the only tarnished ones and that we needed to work harder for god to accept us and give us the special feeling that this was his work. I lived off the idea that "i already knew it was true and apparently didn't need a witness or burning feeling."

For me, The book of mormon was the physical evidence that JS was a prophet. I read it many times. My earliest memories of my Mom was her reading it and the bible stories to me. On my mission, our MP told us :"if you get feeling crappy or depressed, read the bom, you will feel better." That seemed to work most of the time. However, over time and later in life, when i would read it, I would get the thought: "wow wasn't that convenient" or "wow, if I didn't know better, that would sure sound contrived or almost exactly like the story in the bible where..." Once that started happening it wouldn't stop. The last time I read all the way through it, I was having that thought more regularly and finally asked a trusted friend what to do about it. He said to read it more. Starting again, i couldn't even get through 1st Nephi let alone the Isaiah parts. So, I stopped reading and continued with my callings and going to church--basically ignoring it and hoping it was a phase that would go away.

The Deseret News had other plans for me. One day, the headline said something like: "DNA scientists at BYU, announce that native americans can trace their lineage to six chinese mammas." I was stunned. This is before the church had begun their remarkably effective revisionist history campaign so there was no wiggle room for me. I read what fair said. The explanations were desperate and hollow. How do you argue with the results? Try to tell me it wasn't a complete sample so we can't know? Dude, I took Stats 220 at BYU. Trying to discredit statistical science doesn't work on me. Their other explanations were equally or even more specious and desperate.

The Book of Mormon is fiction. Finally, everything about Mormonism makes sense.

Whatever I was taught was accepted without much concern. I came from a strong Christian Protestant background, lots of church activity so I thought I was just changing churches with some variations on the beliefs. If the LDS Church said such and such was their doctrine, I just accepted it.
If I was going to be part of a church, I was going to do it all the way and be dedicated. (Personality played a big part!_)

I couldn't get into the BOM, and just assumed it was verifiable. I had grown up with the idea of supernatural, visionary claims so Joseph Smith Jr being a prophet was a lot to accept, as there was no way I could claim he was a prophet, but eventually, I just went along to get along. I was outnumbered. I had carefully assimilated into the heritage and culture by moving to UT and living on BYU campus married housing as a young married convert. I was exposed to Mormonism 24/7.
The garments were not that well accepted, and I never wore them at night, but it was just part of the package and everyone was doing it... so to speak.

The only thing that really got to me emotionally was the music, probably because I was a musician long before I converted. And that had it's roots in my home life also as we all sang as a family and some played the piano.

I found a huge conflict between what I considered "Christian" behavior and attitudes and the lack of any of that in the LDS Church. Too many fanatical nuts trying to persuade me! (And by that I mean Bruce Longo! )

Eventually, the contradictions just became overwhelming. The temple made no sense at all, the dress-ups were too weird, the covenants were too strange, the constant demands on time and money, the lack of any understanding of individual needs, the lack of acceptance of women as equals, (BIGGIE!!), the BIC polygamous heritage that I could never get a handle on and on and on. I often said I could never learn to think like a born in the bed Mormon! I had a whole life before that didn't jive with much of any of it. Members just "knew" stuff that left me without a clue.

I stayed, when nothing made sense, mainly because of my involvement with conducting music. Much of the music went back to my roots in my Christian home, and it had a strong emotional pull.

Finally, verifying in the original church history in 1998, that Joseph Smith Jr didn't have any golden plates from any angel,didn't translate anything, finally hit me like a ton of bricks and I found it quite humorous! The power of the "spiritual eye" witness was still alive and well, and given the same credibility as physical evidence. (Nothing new there, very common in religious settings.). It all seemed so simple: if those ancient records really existed they would be the find of the century (falling after the Rosetta Stone) and would be on display in the Smithsonian, for instance. But. No. Nothing. Zip. Zero.

Then the translations struck me humorous also. What a wild and crazy imagination Joseph Smith Jr had (plus, some help from his cronies!)! What we have is stories about imaginary people, places and things, plagiarized from other works of the times,plus an overlay of the ideas of the times that resulted in a book that is totally without an ounce of credibility! Really quite a feat! However, believers go to their grave sure it is factual. Amazing.

I don't recall that I ever could say I "knew" the church was true, in fact, I told a stake president, clearly that nobody "knows" - it's a belief. He agreed!

I wonder how I lasted as long as I did. So did my friends! :-)

To be clear: I have no regrets. I am grateful for all of my experiences: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. I have a wonderful family, nearly a 50 year marriage because of Mormonism. I never forget that. I have wonderful, good family members and friends that are Mormons. I wouldn't trade any of it for anything.

All of my experiences helped created who I am today! I've learned the power of making peace with all of my life, taking my power back and owning it, to forgive everyone everything, ditch the negative, and appreciate all of it. It's a continuing, ongoing process that brings the greatest joy and freedom, no words to explain it, in fact.