They Should Have Told Me Mormonism Wasn't "True"
But they'd never do it. My parents bought into the notion that out of 6.59 billion humans on planet earth, they were among the elite 12 million who were the only ones who really knew what was going on. They still believe everyone else but those who revere Joseph Smith as a prophet are in complete and grievous error pertaining to how a soul is saved. Consequently, this is the religious world view that was handed to me the day I started breathing air. I have caused my parents considerable heart break for declaring I no longer am able to believe what they believe. My personal integrity means more to me than an allegiance to my parent's ideology ever did. I reserve the right to look around this world, read as much as I possibly can, weigh the most accurate facts available to me, and then operate according to what makes most sense to me. Mormonism simply no longer makes sense to me. It makes some sense, but not enough sense for me to devote my life to it in any way shape or format.
Why should they have told me Mormonism wasn't true? Oh... maybe they shouldn't have... because they couldn't for all intents and purposes and remain true to their ideals. Mormonism is highly authoritarian in nature laced with fairly substantial black and white perspectives. What they should have done is exposed me much more to critical thinking. I trusted too much too often. My life was filled instead, with dogma. They should not have filled it so full of dogma. Nothing, in hindsight, that they taught me about god was proveable. I do not think that is a healthy way to operate. Before calling a doctor, a blessing was given. If a medical procedure was to be performed, god was invoked first. If you had personal trials or problems, I was encouraged to pray to god... for hours if that what it took, or go without food for a day... followed by more praying. Then, of course, always think of Jesus and what he would do in any given scenario and mimic that. These were some of the ways I was taught to cope with the world. Nothing exactly wrong with it, except you get hungry when many problems crop up and you are constantly fasting. And praying is nothing more than talking to yourself, and mimicking a man whose existence is doubted leaves the human experience stripped of much needed authenticity.
What caused you to doubt Mormonism, anyway?
This is complicated. The short version is that I grew up codependent on parents and god for approval, starved for the recognition and validation. I suffered at the hands of fairly incompentent spiritual advisors and later discovered how completely uninspired they were. My fragile development was ham handed clumsily and recklessly. I grew increasingly disatisfied with the formula revealed to me for personal growth and could not adequately attribute Jesus Christ as the force behind my growth and the growth of important people in my life. This created deep schisms in my perception of the role religion was supposed to play in human development. I married, and saw the same pattern repeat itself. Jesus Christ was supposed to significantly aid both of us in all facets of our problematic marriage. I fell out of love, tried to fix that as did she, failed and lived a full couple of years or more wondering if we could ever repair the shortcomings in our marriage. Eternal marriage to her was a horrible concept. Eventually, I researched what my church taught, exactly, on divorce and discovered that the founder of my church had been married to 24 documented wives. I learned that some of these wives were already married to other men when they married him. The more I read, the more twisted the story became as it unraveled. Eventually, I came to a point in time where I could no longer believe. The following long essay attempts to detail how that unfolded:
A Non Mormon friend once asked me:
I want to ask you what the circumstances were of your conversion to rational thinking. It seems that people get pretty plugged into their faith, especially Mormons. We can see what it's done to our catholic friends ... It's none of our business, so don't feel a need to go into it. I just wonder what it takes to shake somebody free?
I get asked this from time to time and I have been meaning to write specifically on it. It is a tough subject. I have not wanted to trifle with it because of how complex it is.
Circumstances: I went through my teenage years with a severe amount of unnecessary self-loathing. I was required to confess all of my sins to my ecclesiastical authority starting from age 11. But it starts earlier than that.
I was raised in an emotionally distant environment. My parents are good people. They vote, took care of their kids temporal needs, taught them to fear god, were tidy and orderly, hold together a profitable family owned business, keep all the laws, hardly a speeding ticket, sing in the choir, serve in the boy scouts of America leadership, cooked for an entire week at a youth girl's camp several years in a row, sew hundreds of dresses for poverty stricken African young girls, they laugh, they cry, they are honest. But I count the times my mother told me she loved me on my hands. My father was a little better, but was quite rigid and authoritarianesque. Regardless, I can state that the emotional detachment caused a significant approval need to surface in my young world.
I craved approval from my parents like I craved air. I did all the things a boy should do to please his parents so that I could hear words of praise, which served as my only validation that I was loved. Rarely was I hugged (I know, poor me!). As a child I recall acting out in temper tantrums, starved for attention. I admit that some of this could be a part of my personality and I don't dismiss that. I am, at present, unable to determine how much my young and formative personality played a part in this. I do, however, recognize that parents-- by definition, should be the ones with the broader perspective as to what a child might need in order to develop into a healthy individual.
Part of this need for approval, in my opinion, set me up to act religiously for some importantly wrong reasons. Did I act religiously for only the approval of those who mattered most in my world? Not entirely, but it played a large factor in it. Recall, I craved approval from my parents. I was not getting it. Performing religiously got me accolades and attention. What was I to do? Also, I write extensively about how powerful god is supposed to be elsewhere on this site. God is supposed to be that entity who lifts us up and sustains us in our dire hours. God is supposed to be interested in our success as his children. Furthermore, I hate to use the word "act" as part of my youthful performance. My religiosity was not an act. I was sincere. I was dogged. I was consumed with making the gods of Mormonism hear me and be near me. I'll be honest. There were rewards where I felt what I deemed to be, at the time, a Mormon god, near to me. I mean, it actually worked some of the times. And when it did not work, I blamed myself and trusted that my pinnacle parents, who knew better than I, were leading me down a worthy path to follow. But ultimately, the system broke down and the gods quit responding entirely. I cannot be certain that I did not manufacture these experiences and feelings out of a desperation attempt to reconcile the concept of god that was preached to me from every conceivable angle. Eventually, I became rather weary of being told that the reason the gods would not respond was because
1. god tests and tries his people.. or worse
2. I had committed some act that had distanced myself away from god, rendering it impossible for god to sustain me, support me, or lift me up spiritually in my times of need.
I could go on and on about the fallacious assumptions required in order for either items 1 or 2 to be remotely plausible, but I think I cover that in another post somewhere else.
I find it telling that the abandonment I felt from the gods started to happen inversely proportionate to the degree of knowledge I was gaining concerning the possibility of zero existence of any gods. The more I understood that belief in god was completely and utterly an act of faith, the less "around" this god concept chose to be for me. As I learned more about how different people view the god concept, the ability for me to have a meaningful exchange with a god decreased significantly. It's never repaired itself. And my life and mental outlook has never been better.
If you are a theist, and would like to offer perspective to me, I am open to it. I have looked at this chapter of my life in every way I can think of. I am not asking you to try to convert me. But if I have missed something, I would gladly go through it with you. After all, to be wrong about the existence of a god is serious stuff ;)
Okay then, moving on.
My pre teen years were sheltered ones. My Mormon parents carefully guarded whom I spent my extra curricular time with. I grew up in a protective bubble. This bubble was the design of an Us vs Them mindset. I was taught to keep myself distant from people not of my faith so as not to fall prey to temptation. Drugs, alcohol, swearing, stealing, unchaste acts, and violence. I applaud that part of the equation. I am glad that I am the posessor of a spotless youth record full of good grades, excellent work ethic, and a respect for women. But to achieve this, my world required that I view Mormons=good, Non Mormons= suspicion.. beware... they do not believe like we do... they are "The World".
As a side note. I recall many apocolyptic discussions with my parents. I grew up believing that right around the year 2000, Jesus would come to earth and vanquish evil and this second coming would be a glorious event worth dying for. This included me hearing the horrible woes that would preceed this event. The famine, the plagues, the world in commotion, men's hearts' failing them, rape, pillage, and increase in evil all across the lands, wars and rumors of wars. I was taught to be ever preparing myself to stand as a witness for Christ at all times and in all places, lest I be caught unawares. Jesus was most certainly coming. Just look at the world ripe for destruction. I was taught a world view that entailed the year 2000 as the end times. This disgusts me now... that a parent would inflict such a view on their children. It's so fanatical. So pointless. Especially when if one reads the actual scriptural basis for this type of thinking it even suggests plainly that "no man knows the hour" when Jesus' second coming was to arrive.
Anyway.
I became the ultimate Parent Pleaser. I would have made Norman Rockwell proud. But. No matter
what I did, I never got the smathering of love and approval that I craved. What then, do you suspect was the next source I tried to tap for approval?
God.
God was taught to me to be all loving, all knowing, all powerful and decidedly-- no-- emphatically Male, Mormon and Polygamous. (The polygamy portion of his character came later). And you know? It worked! I was baptized a Mormon at age 8 and was told that I now entered into a relationship with god and that through god's son, Jesus, I would be able to feel as pure as the driven snow each and every week if I renewed and kept my baptismal covenants by taking the sacramental bread and water. I wanted that, who wouldn't? So I strived to be a very good child of god.
By the time I was 11, I entered puberty. I discovered that the body could feel really, really great employing certain techniques. 2 months or so after this amazingly wonderful discovery, I read a book written to teens of the church authored by a living Mormon prophet. This man represented God on earth to me and millions of others like me. And he said that what I was doing was evil, would lead to homosexuality, would send my life into great peril and place my soul at risk for other gross iniquities. God's only prophet on earth told me that I was unworthy in every respect of the word and must cease and desist from any sort of the practice immediately. At the book's advice, I immediately met with my Bishop, (who happened to also be my father). Dad told me that I had to be placed on a church probation whereby I would be forbidden to take the sacraments if I had participated in such "gross self-abuse", as I came to call it.
yes. I was 12 years old. Kind of harsh, in my opinion.
Well, I succeeded in curbing my appetite for it for the most part but not entirely. The curbing was born only out of extreme self-loathing and a strong desire not to feel like that too often. There were months where I was able to will myself to "be good" and there were months when I partook of this "evil" practice. As a child, I could not grasp how something that felt so good, relaxed the body in the way that it did was so terrible. But eventually, I succumbed to the many pamphlets and admonishments doled out to the young people of the church. I morphed into a young man who loathed it (or more properly read: loathed himself) and thus painted myself into a corner with the
belief that the only way to a clear conscience comprised of 100% abstinence. Ugh. I literally feared for my sexual orientation on a regular basis! By age 13 or 14 I kept wondering when would I "turn" gay as my Mormon prophet decreed would eventually happen. I was a little confused because I was still very much attracted to females and not at all attracted to males. Anyhow. Shouldn't I be consumed with more normal things like hunting, fishing, art, or astronomy? Nah, I was ever caught up in this cycle of how good or bad I was dependent upon teen libido.
My world cracked open and might as well have swallowed me whole from then on until age 23 when at that time, I discovered how much nonsense this prophet was speaking. I spent age 11 to 23 under the mind control of a church that made me feel horrendously bad on practically a bi-weekly basis. My self image plummeted. I walked around the day after my "fall" with my eyes on the floor, forlorn, self- imaged carpet bombed. I could build up my self esteem again only if a few days went by where I could finally provide a "good" report card to god and my bishop. Until then, I endured extreme self-loathing. I wanted god to love me and approve of my efforts to worship and serve him.
But no matter what I did, if I "fell", I was unworthy. Unworthy meant I could not take the sacrament. Unworthy meant that I had disqualified myself from being able to feel the presence of the Holy Ghost. Unworthy meant that I had extricated myself, through an evil act, from my god's presence. I had banished myself from him. I was told that the only way to recompense was to sincerely repent.
Sincerely repent? okay. So I bought into the notion that I could tell god I was sorry and that would make it all better. If I did this, and meant it, my sin would erase and I could start fresh. What a wonderful principle-- but as you will see it also had a sinister side. Part of my repentance meant that I had to pay a small penalty comprised of not taking the sacrament that week but then, I was good to go. The first few dozen times I really meant it too. But eventually, by age 16 or so, the repenting became rather tedious. (read one of my painful confession sessions to Mormon authority here). I was told that god recognized that a person was truly repentant if he confessed his sins (to the bishop, aka-- in my world from age 11 to 17, my father) and forsook the evil deed never to repeat it. Obviously, my once a week or so frequency was not manifesting any sort of the concept of forsaking. Because of the obvious proof that reads that if a man forsakes a sin, he will not repeat it. How nuts is that? I mean, think it through. In adolescence alone, the average male is going to commit most of the sins god detests. He should repent. Fine. But Woe to that man if he ever commits the same sin again... in any event over the course of his 70+ more years alive. That means he was not sincerely repenting. But it's a process, they say. Some process. Jesus was supposed to grant people the ability and strength to overcome. Yet from what I gather from many other theists, it seldom happens. I observe that instead of Jesus infusing people with power, the source of any moral victory can be better attributed to
1. self-loathing born out of guilt and a desire to not feel that way,
2. sheer willpower
3. normal trial and error development and observing what works and what doesn't and making the needed adjustments in your life
I never knew how many athiestic people there were who never knew Buddah or Jesus Christ or Vishnu or Jehovah God at all yet they display some of the utmost shining examples of decency and morality I could ever imagine. Moreso than nearly all of my theist counterparts. At least on par with them!
So then, having established that Jesus does not infuse people with power to overcome I can now explore the part of repentance that makes matters worse. The doctrine of repentance was hammered into me something to the effect that if I did actually repeat the sin, at that moment of reckless repeat, all of the former sins that I had repented of now returned upon me for further accountability. sarcasm: Joy! The weight of that doctrine was staggering. It used to cripple me into the depths of low self-esteem. Some how, I managed to develop a strange duality. In public, where I still needed to be the Norman Rockwell Good Son, I put on smiles and shined the best I could for my parents, siblings and friends. But inside, the tempest raged. Keep in mind I seemed to be fine if time went by since my last "mess up". But at about age 15 or 16 I began to feel hopeless. I began to realize that just maybe I was not a valiant youth warrior for god. My failure to control my sex drive to zero occurrance as mandated by my church, as small of a deal that it is to the real world, completely caved me into quite the unrested and unhappy soul.
Well, as you might imagine, it was more than I could bear. I felt that I was being required to hold back the tide. Eventually my father was released as Bishop (they typically serve 5-7 years). The next bishop picked up where my father left off. Only he had a cure for me. He sent my 17 year old self to counseling. He knew of a really good Mormon psychologist who could get to the root of my "problem" and find a way for me to overcome this "evil habit". Nevermind that Jesus was supposed to cure me. The scriptures that explained the saving powers of the atonement are legion. But perhaps the dozens of times I reviewed these scriptures, I missed something. I don't know. But off I went to the counselor-- further reinforcing in my mind how seriously screwed up I must be.
I was not sent for depression as I still maintained a good front. I was sent to learn how others had turned back the tide successfully. This created in my mind the thoughts that I was the only one
unable to do it. Later, I was shocked to discover how common masturbation is among males. I should have read a book. Better yet, those in authority should have told me I was not the only person.
I became confused. Didn't the bible state that god will not tempt man beyond what he could bear? Didn't the apostle Paul decree as to how there is always a way to escape temptation? Did that way really include professional coounseling? I was desperate. I wanted to be fixed... cured. I had been convinced that I was a deviant. Let's keep in mind here a few things:
1. I did not do drugs, I never tasted alcohol, I did not sleep with girls
2. I maintained an 11:00 curfew perfectly
3. I was a 3.45 gpa student, and I attended seminary with much zeal and enthusiasm
4. I excelled in sports, basketball and football, I was an eagle scout
5. I prayed frequently, stood up in front of my peers and declared my strong testimony as to how I knew Mormonism was god's true church many times, and at age 18, I had read the book of Mormon twelve times or more when most teens had barely read it once.
In short, I did everything I could to find favor with god and my parents.
So I was not some social deviant derelict in need of correctional facilitation. More on that in a minute.
Counseling emphasized self-esteem. It pulled out the scriptoral basis that showed how with god, I could conquer everything. It's true, I promise! Really! This, I see in retrospect, was a classic set up for an exacerbation of the problem. Just pile on the weights to my guilty persona.
1. All this did was prove to me that YES I was expected to abstain from any masturbation
2. And that others (read: everyone else) were abstaining
3. And why couldn't I?
I very much felt like I was the only one in the world with this problem. Never was there any mention that I was not alone. I was encouraged to continue on my quest to banish masturbation from my life... and that it was time to put off more of the boy and put on more of the man. I was encouraged to focus on the days that I did not "partake" instead of the times that the dam of resistance burst and I indulged myself "one last time". My behavior was compared to that of a drug addict or alcoholic. Nice.
I embarked on a 2 year missionary service. In the interviews, I was told I was a fine example of what a missionary should be entering the field, but I needed to make sure I was worthy in all aspects. See, in missionary service, the spirit of god comes through the missionary into the lives of the people being taught the Mormon gospel. If the missionary was "unworthy", his success as a conduit of the spirit was extremely limited. That was the line at least. Kind of sickening if you ask me. That's right, blame the missionary if the investigator did not join the Mormon church.
Of course, I was told that no young man engaging in the practice of masturbation was worthy to serve a mission. I was devestated. So this time for real I was going to quit once and for all. I pulled up my boot straps and plowed ahead. There was no way on this planet that I was going to stay home and not serve a mission. I had been preparing for this experience ever since I could talk. I wanted to go on a Mormon mission with everything I had. I could not let my parents down. I could not face the stigma of not going. Everyone else was going. Except one friend and I saw how people treated him. It was terrible. Stigma truly sucks... though it is a powerful motivator.
I was sent to Spain. I thrived in this environment. My "works" based mentality resulted in letter of the law rigid work ethic. But did I escape the confession check up process as to how worthy I was? Hardly. Every missionary has a mission president that he must report to. This man takes the position of Bishop in the missionary's life. And yes, I was probed as to whether or not I masturbated. I never thought to lie. I never thought to tell this man that I was 20 years old and it was none of his business. It never crossed my mind to do that. It was just not in my nature to lie or to question god's authority on earth. Lying to Mormon authority, it's taught, is like lying to the lord. So then. After spilling the beans, my mission president admonished me to work harder (I was already working 60 hours per week!). I was required to work 80 hours each week. Cruel, you might say. But I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I wore myself out in proselyting. I was like Paul. I was a valiant warrior for good. Blisters? Heckling? Spit on? No problem. That stuff just made for really great retelling later. It fed the persecution complex. Persecuted for Christ's sake some how felt like I was getting extra rewards or approval. It just felt really great to stare down my adversaries as they persecuted, and some how find a place in my heart to love them in spite of their cruelty towards me.
We would have mission conferences. This is when I first got an inkling that other people might be masturbating. Our mission president actually came out and tactlessly suggested that our low baptismal numbers were tied to too many of us breaking of the Law of Chastity. My eyebrows went over the top of my head. What? Within a few moments, I had rationalized that he was speaking directly at me and just a few other missionaries. I was a great missionary, see, and-- recall that the
only way a convert could feel the spirit of our message is if the bearer of the vessel of the lord had "clean hands and a pure heart". Unworthy missionaries were unsuccessful ones. So the implication in my mind was that if I was truly pure in every sense of the word, my baptismal rates would be even more successful than they already were.
Twisted.
I never stopped to think that though I successfully curbed my extra curricular habit to once or twice a month, people still joined the church who talked to me. I should have noted that, but then again, I was obsessed with it all. I kind of laugh now at how I was one of the leading missionaries with conversions in my mission.
The mission ended. One week later I found myself at Brigham Young University. I was a well respected missionary in Spain. At Provo, BYU, I was a nobody. I fell through the social rankings. I, basically, lost my personhood. Every other male there was also a returned missionary. I was nobody special. The approval need kicked in again. But this time, I had no vehicle to get the signs that I was good enough, or forgiven.
The problem that always confused me was that Christ's atonement was supposed to cure me. All of those years of misfired curing attempts.. what was that? I mean I poured my soul out, crying and begging pitifully that he would but cleanse me of this wickedness. I begged. I reasoned with him. I laid out many times how his matchless power was able to heal the sick, raise the dead, restore eyesight... and how much easier was it for him to heal my wicked heart. I cannot tell you how many times I went through this scenario with the gods of Mormonism. Sooner or later, I figured, I
would be good enough to qualify for the cleansing power of the atonement in my behalf. I had taught for 2 years that Christ's atonement had the power to heal, to change people's lives. I believed it. I saw it happening in other people's lives (I thought). But for me, it just never worked in this area and a few others. The sinning just kept returning.
I happened to find myself one day in the Harold B. Lee library in 1992. Internet was not widespread back then. I was determined to see just how abnormal I really was. I researched the topic of masturbation and quickly found the Masters and Johnson reports that reported how 90% of all males masturbate. I dropped the book when it then said that on average, most males did this 4 to 5 times a week... and many engaged in it every day! I wanted to vomit. What was this? This was reality? It couldn't be. My. How hard I had been on myself all these years... AND WHY DIDN"T ANYONE TELL ME??
I delved into other studies. I researched the female side of the stats. What? Women did this too? I recall walking out of the library that day quietly chuckling to myself. I wasn't exactly laughing. It was surreal. It was the chuckle of a person half admitted into the realm of insanity. I could not stop myself from releasing this sickly low decibel crazy person's chuckle. I remember creeping myself out with how it sounded. I was not humored, but that was the only sound that could crack through my architectural veneer of Mormonism that I had constructed over the years. A low, sickly, pathetic sounding chuckle.
I was confused but upset too, in some other world type disconnected way. My brain simply could not process what I had just read. This means god is, what? wrong? His prophet said... and every Mormon leader I dealt with confirmed and supported the policy. Maybe it's not god who is wrong. I gasped in horror as the thought crossed my mind:
Maybe the church policies and doctrines are just misguided in this one area.
Enter my first significant recognition of cognitive dissonance. That thought was immediately consumed by guilt and a treasonous feeling in my gut that made me want to vomit. The Mormon church is not wrong. It cannot be wrong! It's, well.... the church! It couldn't be that the church was in error. It had to be me. After all, Joseph Smith restored the church! This I know for a fact! I had countless manifestations by god telling me that the Mormon church was the only true church on earth.
So then, what do you suppose I did? I rationalized that the 10% of males who were not masturbating according to Masters and Johnson, were comprised of Mormon men!
Unbelievable.
But it made sense. Mormon men held the priesthood of god, the very power and authority to act and perform ordinance and ritual in his name. Priesthood was a pipeline to god, and special blessings attended those men who sought to honor this priviledge. Priesthood was power. Sure, and obviously, there was something wrong with me... but not the rest of the 4 million or so righteous and worthy stalwart preisthood bearers of god. Therein lay the bonefide workings of the missing 10%. Subscribing to this mode of thought, made me feel wretchedly wicked. Why could I not stand tall with my bretheren? What in hell's name was my problem! I do admit that secretly, I hoped above all secret hopes, that maybe I was not alone. Maybe others in my Mormon male world also struggled mightily as I did.
That day the door was held open for my mind and heart, I chose to not go through it. I should have exited right then and there. I should have smelled my suspicions and followed up. But I didn't. Mostly because I was bound captive by my need for approval. Leaving Mormonism would mean the harshest rejection from my family and friends. And god.
So I got married. It was a mismatch. I was unhappy. Long story short, we never should have gotten married. Mormons are forbidden to have pre marital sex. Because of this, we both craved consummation of these powerful emotions we were feeling (hormones, if anything). She was all things ballet. I was all things construction. Two different worlds... requiring two different universes. We married because, imo, we could not step back and see through the fog of hormones pushing us to consummate our intrigue with one another. Also, and don't laugh... the environment at BYU is extremely pro marriage. It is grossly out of touch with reality. 17 and 18 year old girls routinely enter their freshman year finding themselves engaged to be married that year. I have two sisters who, for this reason, married at 19. What more could we expect from a campus comprised of clean cut, morally upright, stars in their eyes youngsters who sign a creed upon entering BYU that they will not, in any circumstance, have pre marital sex. You laugh. The majority of the students keep this agreement.
The first year of marriage was a shocker. It included me waking up one day about, oh, 6 months after the wedding completely distraught that I did not love my wife. And I certainly was not attracted to her. It only got worse because the Mormon church heavily frowns upon divorce. I accepted my fate reluctantly and tried for 3 more years to make the best of it. After three and a half years, I began to question the stance of the church against divorce. It was very innocent. I went online to search for any possible way out of this marriage with dignity and entered
Mormon Marriage Divorce
into the internet search engine. What popped up was the fact that Joseph Smith had been married to 33 women simultaneously. What tha? I never knew that. I thought Brigham Young was the polygamous one. And oddly, the fact that Smith was polygamous did not shake me at first, it was quite the opposite for a brief moment in time. Actually, the concept of polygamy appeared to be pure genius. I allowed myself to fantasize about being married again. Who cares about 33 wives. All I wanted was a second chance to find my soul mate. I was so lonely. And trapped in a marriage. Imagine. Having a second wife. Surely I wouldn't make such an unwise choice the second time.
The fantasy was short lived. Polygamy in my religion was not allowed for traditional marriage anymore. I read some more things and was shocked to find out about the variant accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision. That's odd, you'd think that he'd have written the facts underlying a visit from god consistently each time he did it. But that was not the case. Some accounts included only Jesus, others said it was god, still others said it was Jesus and god and that he was forgiven but no mention of any plan for him to restore a lost church. Very weird.
So I read some more. The more I read, the more frustrated I became. I knew what had been taught
to me. I knew what I preached as solid Mormon doctrine in Spain. Yet so much of my rock solid
truths were set upon entirely rickety support structures! I became consumed. I read everything I could get my hands on for 3 straight months. It became bothersome to my wife and I finally told her that I had discovered that there is another view about the foundationals of the Mormon church. She became hysterical. Crying, arguing, shouting (both of us). My parents and her parents became extremely worried for me. They counseled me. I studied like a fiend. I read the counter claims, the accompanying apologetics... and then...
I discovered that the Book of Abraham was a complete invention. Joseph Smith did not, in any stretch of the word, translate Egyptian papyri into English. The Book of Abraham is supposed to be a literal autobiography of Father Abraham, written by his own hand. What it was, instead, was a common funerary text or pagan afterlife breathing permit for a man named "Hor".
I crumpled. I became depressed. I couldn't sleep. I had intestinal problems. And then my wife divorced me. She had her dad call me and invite me to a temple attendance session. The four of us would go. It would be great. I told him I could not support that. But I did not tell him why. My wife confronted me. I told her that I now was convinced that the temple ceremony was plagiarized from the Masonic initiatory rites and degrees that Joseph Smith and his company were involved with the very same year the temple ceremony came into existence. The Mormon temple experience has much of the same Masonic language, passcode set ups, signs, tokens, hand signals, and arm signals found in the rights of passage within Free Masonry. The information was deadly to my testimony. Game over, the church was not true.
In time, I was able to see how the Book of Mormon also was fabricated from several extant theories of lost tribes traveling over from Jerusalem to the Americas. It was so difficult to acknowledge this. It took about 4 months of study to finally admit that it was likely an invented book. It broke my heart. I still held out some hope in the back of my mind. But that too eventually eroded the more I studied other religions and religious texts.
What were a few of the things leading me to this conclusion? Some of the obvious:
*Many portions of the sermons from traveling preachers of Smith's time and geographical location ended up in this book... and oddly, the people who lived in the Americas 1500 years ago hotly debated the exact same topics that religious folks were debated during Smith's day.
*You did not know that Central Americans were confused about infant baptism, salvation via works or faith, etc? Amazingly, God spoke to these Americans and cleared all that up all those years ago. And now, here was this book coming forth in our day to clear it all up again.
*The book had the wrong crops, animals, and climates for it's south/central american setting.
*Wheels were not used over there yet the book had chariots.
*And the wrong metals were listed in this book but in Smith's day, all of these items were strongly believed to be so.
*I learned that Joseph Smith "translated" this book by the employment of a greenish seer stone he used to cheat people out of their money by claiming he could find buried treasure with it on their lands. He never found any treasure, but was convicted by Judge Neeley of being a glass looker and was given a fine called Leg Bail to promise never to come into that town again.
It became painfully obvious that the Book of Mormon was invented.
It was over in a month. She left. I sold the house. I was alone again... and completely out of favor with my family and my god.
I embarked on a quest to understand how other religions could declare that Mormonism was not true but they were. That took several years. I am still embroiled in this fascinating journey. Exclusivity claims are one of my favorite things to research. I have rubbed shoulders with Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Eckists, Muslims, Jews, and have found each of their claims to be self-contained bastions of Truth with their own patented libraries full of supporting apologetics to boot! Each group has dextrous apolgists that can explain their exclusivity claim and pick apart the other religions. It is mind bending. Eventually, I could no longer believe in any sort of personal god and have sided with a non theistic approach. There may be one god, there may be two... there may be ten thousand or none at all. There may be a god who started this whole thing and has since left for a 14 billion year vacation. I simply do not know. But I do know that all religion cannot be simultaneously The Only True One. I do know that it is impossible to discern which one, if any, is the correct posessor of sole truth pertaining to human salvation.
