Continuation of thread begun by RfM poster "Levi:"

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,808706


I put my first item on the Mormon shelf when I was about seven:

I was with my older brothers digging seashell fossils out of the side of a hill near where we lived, many miles inland from the nearest ocean. I asked how the shells got there. Someone reminded me that water had covered the entire earth during Noah's Flood. I remember thinking (not sure if I voiced my budding cognitive dissonance): "But how would the shells get into THE SIDE of a hill? Wouldn't a flood just have dumped them on the ground?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2013 05:33PM by Fetal Deity.

Going to the temple for the first time when I was 19 and thinking, what. the. hell??

Having apostate family members who ruled.

When I discovered that, contrary to what TSCC had taught me, other churches ***did*** have the name of Jesus Christ in their title. I was about 17 at the time and I thought: "If they have lied about this, what else have they lied about?"

matt Wrote:
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> "If they have lied about this, what else have they lied about?"

This question is probably the begining of the end of the testimonies once held by most of the posters here.

I was eight years old, when my parents got me the church's children scripture books with tapes and a tape recorder for Christmas.

I began at the beginning, the Old Testament. It's a really bad idea to send a kid to her room alone with that book, even when it's been written for a child.

I didn't think building a tower in an effort to reach God was sufficiently bad enough to never get to talk to your family again, and in my mind, impossible to do anyway, so why did God care?

I also remember being upset about lots of the other stories like King Solomon threatening to cut the baby in half, Job having his family destroyed, Saul's wife being turned into a pillar of salt just for looking back. That one was really scary to me because it seemed like something I could potentially do... You know giving into some little temptation and then bam, you're salt!

God seemed really angry, mean and unpredictable. I didn't like him. I distinctly remember thinking that and then feeling guilt for the thought.

The Old Testament has some very twisted stuff, much of which is at least rated "R." I can't imagine any parent--who knows what's in there--allowing their young children to read it without adult supervision and heavy editing/censoring (I suppose the church did some editing of the material ... but still!). My guess is that your parents weren't really aware of everything that can be found therein, or maybe they just thought to themselves "if it's scripture, it must be okay."

I agree. I was the kind of kid who loved reading in my room and so I think they thought they were doing a good thing. After all, it was straight from Deseret Book.

Age 19. D&C class at BYU. I thought Joe's revelations were too specific and convenient. He had a question, he prayed, God told him the answer directly and specifically. It seemed to me that Joe was making it all up. I put the D&C on the shelf and could not read it again, because I would question the entire house of cards.

After I was baptized I learned that Blacks could not be members.

I asked if that meant God was disappointed in his own creations and why wouldn't he want them in his church?

I was told that we don't always know or understand why God does what he does....in other words

"Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die."-Tennyson

Put it on the shelf.

When it was explained to me (by my older brother) that "Heavenly Father" wasn't really my father, that I'd existed just as long as him and I was technically adopted. That was earth-shattering for me.

As a potential new convert, When my sister was telling me the story about the gold plates. I asked what happened to them, and she said they were taken into a cave, and we weren't allowed to see them, because we needed to have faith that they even existed.
"But look here, eleven people saw them, it says so here in the front."

Only much later did I learn that they didn't simply walk into a room and look at the plates. No, they had to go out into the woods and pray to see them. WTF WAS I NOT THINKING?!

I joined the fun Church-Of-Tons-Of-Teen-Activities when I was in high school in California in 1977. One day at school the following year, all the LDS kids were in a tizzy because of Spencer Kimball's 'revelation' allowing blacks to hold the priesthood. I was all confused, trying to understand what was going on. Finally, I said, "Wait, what do you mean? Blacks WEREN'T allowed to hold the priesthood before now?" First I knew about that.

I remember really being confused and kind of embarrassed that I belonged to a church that had been so disciminatory. But, apparently up on the shelf it went, because it wasn't for another 30 years of TBM-living until the lights came on for me.