When you realized that you absolutely could not be in TSCC anymore?

Did you have a Eureka moment, or was it a slow, painful exit?

Slow and painful. Everyone around me had a testimony, and I just couldn't figure out why god wouldn't answer my prayers and give me a testimony. The harder I tried, the more frustrated I became. I took it rather personally, and figured god didn't like me for some reason. In retrospect, it seems pretty silly, but at the time it was heart breaking for me.

Finding out about the Book of Abraham. It was a huge and sudden shock. Felt like the ground had been ripped out from under me. My "shelf" came crashing down. Thats when I really started to research everything I could. It's been fascinating and exhilarating, and horribly depressing at the same time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2013 06:06PM by closer2fine.

Definitely Eureka!!

I was reading a book, and realized that if I read another word my entire Mormon World View would be DUST!

I was a TBM BIC RM at BYU.

I immediately took off my garments, broke the WOW for the first time in my life, and never looked back!

What was that book?

He is referring to: http://www.amazon.com/Early-Mormonism-Magic-World-View/dp/1560850892



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2013 09:03PM by whiskeytango.

As odd as it sounds, mine was a bit of both..
I started researching the church for various reasons and I was genuinely interesting in learning what the truth was. I told myself that I would withhold coming to a conclusion until I had done enough studying to get a basic grasp of the whole picture. I kept to that, even though after a short while of studying it was hard to not decide once and for all that tscc was (obviously) false.
So I purposely filled myself with cog-dis and held up my shelf despite the inevitable outcome. If it was all untrue, I wanted to study myself out and make sure that nobody (myself included) could say I was jumping the gun.
In the end I let my shelf go and my TBM beliefs collapsed all at once. Right after, I had a few beautiful minutes of extreme happiness and complete clarity of mind. It was wonderful :)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2013 07:24PM by msp.

That sounds like a beautiful way to leave :)

It was slow and painful. I had secrets doubts about the church. But always shoved em down.I had no access to the internet. And when I hard trials w/the church,I thought my faith was being tested. The Last straw was a bishop who thought my daughter should put her son up for adoption cuz in his words,"Theres alot of people who'd pay good money for a blond blue eyed boy like that". THATs when I knew it was a lie! After I left I kind of triped on to historical info..Which gave me great validation!!!

Turning point 1990 temple changes, but it took 6 years to fully separate from tscc.

Slow and gradual, but my shelf finally collapsed when I realized that I didn't like most of the people that were presumably qualified for the Celestial Kingdom. It occurred to me that I will never stop listening to Hendrix and The Clash, loving R-rated movies, swearing, and going on booze-fueled vacations with my best friends. What the hell was all the praying, BoM reading, and cliquish gossip gonna really do for me besides make eternity as insufferable as my average Sunday?

I made a wide, gradual turn, really. The opposing forces were first, my discoveries of many of the usual issues, and opposing that was that I married someone who is a TBM and I felt I was letting her down by not continuing. But I just can't, knowing what I know now. You can't control beliefs, especially if you choose to use reason over faith. I decided that reason is a better way to find truth than faith, so there you go.

Faith seems better to many people simply because the "answers" come easily, and lots of answers seem readily available. Trouble is, those are made-up answers. By realizing that some things are unknowable at this time and reconciling myself to that, I found peace of mind.

I was an Elder's Quorum instructor and was up late preparing my lesson. I was doing some deep thinking and googled "why I left the Mormon church" just to see what comments would be written. The first link was Richard Packam's web site. I stayed up all night reading and googling. The Book of Abraham is what sent me over the edge that very night. It affected me deeply. I have Mormon relatives going back 5 generations. This rocked my world to the core. After about 10 years the bitterness is mostly gone now but I am very interested in making everything about the Mormon church transparent.

Mine was gradual but had a sudden turn. I had some doubts as I slid along, then feeling so clever when I realized I had a way to tip the balance back in favour of the morg: no 14 yo would claim to have seen god and Christ, then stuck to the claim through the persecutions that JS wrote about.

I didn't think I needed to prove he actually saw them, just that he claimed it, and based on his story, the sheer amount of persecution would result in a record of some sort.

Well, as you probably know that theory went down in flames, and my gentle slide ended in a cliff.

Did he not stick to them? Do you have sources for that?

Remember; it was years later before he fabricated the 'First Vision' tale.

There were 9 or so versions of it as well...

It started when I was about 5-6 years of age.

I was out by age 13.

I still can't believe that I pulled it off at that age, while still living with TBM parents and all the relatives were active.

The Church was a very dark place for me.

It's not of THE LIGHT

+1

Definitely not.

Sorry, I assumed too much that people would all know.

Turns out there is not one shred of evidence from the time of his youth that he even *claimed* to have the first vision to anyone. It is not until years later that he claims to have the first vision.

I don't know about you, but if I started a church after seeing god and Christ, you can be damned sure someone would have heard about it before or at least during the organization of said church.

hit me like a freight train....on my mission...actually read the book of Abraham...thinking this is freaking stupid...i am out here peddling this shit? sucked it up...started behaving like a tourist...came home, got released...shed the garments....had some cocktails, got laid...never went back.

What's the deal with the Book of Abraham? I don't get it. I know it's in The Pearl of Great Price. Is it made up? What's the book about?

Hi, Tomie. Here's a link to the MormonThink section about the Book of Abraham. Just click on "Show Full Article" at the top of the page, and read your way down. Pretty much everything you could want to know about the issues with the Book of Abraham is there.

http://www.mormonthink.com/book-of-abraham-issues.htm

Finding MormonThink was my turning point. The information about the Book of Abraham in particular. Once I read all of that, I had no choice but to realize that TSCC had been a huge fraud from the very beginning.

One thing was unanswered prayers. I naively assumed that because I had learned the formula for praying "correctly," then surely God would pay attention for a change, especially if I was praying for what I believed were "good" things.

Boy, did I get disillusioned on that one. Imagine praying very earnestly, twice a day, on severely arthritic knees, and still getting only a cosmic busy signal. This went on every day for at least two years. I finally came to understand that nobody was home, and that really hurt. It was far worse than a busy signal. Nobody was THERE.

The other was the endless repetition of a narrow range of subjects. From my earliest school days, I have been intolerant of repetition. I can remember getting in trouble very early in grade school for telling the teacher, "You told us about that last week. Let's move along." I often had the same feeling in church, but as a grown-up, I had learned to be quiet. But it got old.

One year ago today, I found the truth that cracked it all open for me. The garments went in the dumpster, and I went commando to Wal Mart to buy some new undies. We were camping at the time, and I didn't have many options, but on this day, exactly one year ago, I knew I was done. It was only three weeks after sithlord told me he didn't believe in the church. I guess I was a quick study.

Happy one year anniversary twojedis!

Yes, happy anniversary!

You both have been a fantastic addition to our community!

For me, it was very gradual, and surprisingly not that painful. I suppose my journey is not complete; I am still a “closet” non-believer. I haven’t resigned. I’m not going to bother with resigning, unless TSCC presses the issue (so far, I have received zero “love bombing” during my 3 or 4 years on inactivity and non-tithe paying).
For me, it was an “Emperor’s New Clothes” kind of thing. Everyone around me “felt the spirit” and “knew” the church was true, so if I didn’t “feel” and “know” the same things, there was something wrong with me. I did everything I should: I served a mission, I was married in the temple, I served in many positions, and I read the scriptures and prayed. I lived a “clean” life and was always ready to stand up for the church. After decades of trying, I very gradually began to realize that I felt dishonest when I testified about the “truth” and I felt like I was talking to no one when I was on my knees praying.

A little of both. I was getting sick of it for years; the final straw and my last day of having anything to do with them was one Sunday when a new bishop, who was a big jerk, even his kids were scared of him, yelled at me and said some awful things to me. I cried for a minute, then thought, "f___ you." and never looked back.

I spent 2 weeks trying to rediscover my faith, and the next 2 trying to find the strength to go home. After getting home, it took me a little over 2 months to start posting on RfM and decide that I would resign. My plan at first was to go home and live life like a normal non-mo (not happening as of yet!), but after I found the truth about Joe Smith, I felt like I had no choice but to resign.

I was called into the bishopric in a very uptight ward.

About 1 year in - I was struggling with the sick feeling and turned on the internet.

2 hours later - it was over - I knew I had been duped my entire life and there was no going back.

I realized fully where the sick feeling was coming from - it all made sense

I always had my suspicions and doubts about the church. One day I wikipedia Joseph Smith and it was all over by the time I finished the article. I was relieved to find out I wasn't crazy. Mormonism was really a sham!

For me my disaffection with the church built slowly over a period of maybe 15 years. I was inactive for 3 years between 14-18, came back, then had some major life events hit the fan in my early 20's...so it was all sort of downhill from there. This past year, after we reported my temple matron/temple security aunt/uncle to the church for criminal behaviors and found out they'd been physically/emotionally abusing their children (and now grandchildren). The only response we (my mother, me and my cousins who they abused) got from the stake president over it was 'well, if we did anything, what good could it do?'. I was mentally done. I decided last year that I didn't believe it, but to keep family peace I'd keep my mouth shut and go through the motions simply to make my husband happy for the sake of my marriage and kids. Figured after everyone who would care was gone I'd just leave. I hadn't done any research or anything. I was just following my intuition and 'gut' on how I felt about things and what I'd expereinced to that point in my life with the church. It didn't feel right. If it was the truth and fullness of the gospel then why didn't I feel happy about it? Excited? I only felt guilt and unhappiness, with myself, with the world. Then my husband started digging up stuff on it. I found out info about church history that I couldn't ignore. Book of Abraham. Temple stuff. I was out on the spot. Took minutes. Out before my husband proclaimed he was done. It was just the last straw.

It was gradual but there were a few turning points. Here are the important ones and how old I was:

5-7. No way that people lived to be 900 years old or that the story of Noah's Ark is even remotely plausible.

11. Learned that the "holy ghost" wasn't trustworthy in the least.

14. Realizing I was actually supposed to believe that the stories in the BoM was actual history. Didn't work very well as I also learned about that age there were no domesticated horses in America before Columbus.

19. Had what I thought was an intense "spiritual revelation", the God I found was disappointingly absent from the mormon church though.

23. Decided after careful consideration and emotional struggle to mentally leave mormonism for good, and the very next day I learned about this place from a newspaper. At the time it seemed like a sign from above.

The Evergreen program. What a disgusting program for "Gods one and only true church". Inspiration at its finest. Makes me want to puke.