Posted by:
2humble4u
(
)
Date: January 15, 2013 04:53PM
One of the first things that I found odd about the church, even before I actually began questioning it, was the term "being Christlike." Actually "odd" doesn't seem to do it justice, perhaps "offensive" does. Each time I did something nice for my family, friends, neighbours, dog, etc it was because I was being Christlike and not because I just wanted to do something nice for someone else. Oh, of course I was praised and told how Christlike I was, but I still felt hurt by it.
Because why couldn't I be good just because I wanted to, or because I liked making other people around me happy? Why did I have to be like someone else when helping others? Why couldn't I be myself?
After asking these questions, I felt confused because I had no real answer. I wondered if perhaps there was something wrong with me - even though I read my scriptures and prayed daily, was I an inherently evil person? Could I only do good because I was compelled to? These questions troubled me to no end, and I often felt bitter; not at the church but at myself. I tried to be a better person than I could ever have been, I set impossible goals, and in the end the only person I hurt was myself.
Of course I never shared these fears with my parents. I didn't want them to think less of me, and so the only person I could confess to was God. So I prayed, and I prayed often, but I never received an answer. I felt awful, but I would never tell anyone because it would have been a sure sign of my loss of faith, even though that would only come later. I was convinced that I was doing something wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
It's often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I guess in a TBM's eyes it was because my praying led to not receiving answers to them, which in turn led to begin questioning other aspects of the church. Maybe God wasn't answering my prayers because I was praying to the wrong god. Or maybe he just didn't exist.
I shared some of my concerns with parents and church leaders, not in a challenging way but with genuine distress. Some of them were hostile, thinking I was an apostate-to-be, while some did their best to answer but most of my questions never did get an adequate response. Wow, I'm starting to tell my deconversion story... looks like I might as well keep going then.
So I started high school the next fall, and I noticed that seminary, mutual, ward activities, and the Sabbath were taking out a big chunk of my week. I felt like I was being indoctrinated (which I was, in early-morning seminary) and I began to resent the church. But I still didn't know whether or not I believed. In some ways I wanted to, the church was like a safety net and it was sometimes nice to know that some Power was watching over me. But the doubts just wouldn't go away.
So one day, when I got home from school, with nobody else in the house, I hopped on the computer and did a quick google search. I don't even know what it was, maybe something about Joseph Smith or tithing or something else entirely. I was drawn into this new world I had just discovered, the other, darker side of the church. I lapped it all up like a dog that hadn't drunk a single drop of water for days.
From that day on I did more and more research on Mormonism, with great care to use Firefox's private browsing setting so that nobody else in the house would know what I was up to. The more I learned the clearer it became to me that the church just couldn't be true. I found and began lurking on RfM. And slowly I began to decide that perhaps the church wasn't just another, benign church but a harmful cult. I went from one extreme to another in about a year, from TBM to secret apostate. I still went through the motions of mormonism and never let on, until a few weeks ago when I spilled the beans to my parents, and now I'm busily resisting all the love-bombing coming my way. My parents are still under the impression that this is a "typical teenager thing" that I'll be cured of in a few weeks. They expect to see the happy little TBM they knew return. I know that my actions have hurt them, and they genuinely want the best for me. Sometimes I feel guilty and entertain the thought of rejoining the church.
But as one wise poster once said, once the toothpaste is out of the tube it just doesn't go back in.