u/FreshLiterature6536

I'm really struggling to understand why the church doesn't work harder to prevent or even just to punish sexual abuse in its ranks...

I mean, I can imagine some members saying "tHe AtOnEmEnT aPpLiEs To EvErYoNe" but in the Book of Mormon the sons of Mosiah and Alma the Younger were forbidden from taking possession of the Brass Plates, and from ever being Kings because of their egregious sins... In fact, the entire government structure of Nephite civilization was reorganized by King Mosiah with the express purpose of preventing the Sons of Mosiah from rising to power. So, there's strong doctrinal precedent for the permanent consequences of sins, even for the repentant (or, God forbid, for future prophets themselves). Hell, Christ literally warned that His church was to guard the sheep from wolves entering the flock. Doesn't Christ say that anyone who hurts a little child deserves to be drowned to death?

And there are plenty of theological loopholes... like, even if you wanted to pretend you were concerend about the salvation of a sex-offender (a suspicious concern to have in the first place), there's always work for the dead and repentance in the afterlife and stuff in the Millennium, right? So there's really no reason to shy away from permanent excommunication and lifelong trespasses for CSOs because God can "make it right" on judgment day.

I'm reminded of a man, several years ago in the congregation of my youth, who was an obvious pervert. He was always trying to grab other people's children. A new family moved into the ward with young girls, and the man of course started trying to put them on his lap and what not. The mother (a naive woman) received no warning from the bishopric or any relevant authority of the risk this elderly individual posed. Instead, another mother warned the newcomer when she saw what was happening... it is so sick and twisted that the church has no protocols for inducting new bishops that involve declaring risks to incoming families. Isn't the church obsessed with "women nurture, men protect and provide"? Well, where the hell are all the men when the flock needs protecting?

I remember once, during graduate school, an obvious pervert came to a young adult ward and started looking for young women. I immediately knew something was off, so I got confrontational and told the man to leave. He didn't. Everyone around me looked at me like I was crazy for being mean to this "potential investigator". So I called the bishop, the first and second councillors, trying to get them to back me, only to find out: they had invited him to the ward activity. That night, I lost track of him and found out later that several girls had gone to the bishop telling him the man made inappropriate advances on them and was making them uncomfortable. The bishop did nothing, even after I called him. The next day, the man was arrested for assaulting a woman on the school campus. I had several women in the ward reach out to me, thanking me for what I did/said to try and make the situation safe... but why did it have to be me?! I was just a sunday school teacher! Where was the bishop?!

On my mission, a pervert was attending a baptism. The Bishop was totally fine with him being there. The sister's later approached me and said they were worried because this stranger was seen leaving the building after a female investigator. We went looking for him, and found him with the female investigator, and intervened. In the end, I learned that the bishop knew who this man was and still said nothing.

Like, WHAT THE FUCK?! That stuff should have knocked me out of the church a long time ago... but it didn't. I was wrapped up in other problems.

But now that I'm out, all these memories are coming to the surface and I'm realizing: there is literally no reason not to take an extremely strong stance against sex offenders/predators. Put more cameras in the buildings/offices, trespass offenders, refuse rebaptism to CSOs, train bishops to raise awareness... there's so much the church could be doing to protect their own people, and yet they'd rather spend millions upon millions of dollars fighting the victims of families in court. Imagine going to church, paying tithing, and then the church uses that tithing money to take you to court after one of their bishops molests one of your kids... fvcking diabolical.

It just gets weirder and weirder the more I think about it... In the United States, sexual abuse costs $9 billion on a national annual level... more than half of that is in Utah alone (~$5 billion). Utah has rates of child sexual abuse higher than the national average. One of the apostles own brothers is a repeat offender... are we honestly expected to believe that D. Todd Christofferson miraculously emerged unscathed from the household environment which produced his brother Wade?

The more I think about it, the more sick I feel.

They say the garment is supposed to "remind you of your covenants with God"... as if the weekly sacrament, family home evening, daily private scripture study, daily family scripture study, morning and evening prayers, prayers over meals, family prayers, prayers before classes if you're a student at any of the BYUs, multiple weekly religion classes for BYU students, Tuesday devotionals for students, early morning seminary, institute classes, weekly youth activities, *(deep inhale)* monthly fasts, tithing, regular livestreamed Firesides, sexual restrictions, ward temple trips, personal temple trips, EFY/FSY, 10-hour biannual general conferences, 1.5/2 years of mission service, various ward service activities, ministering assignments, fulfilling your ward callings, and perennial dietary restrictions didn't do that already (not to mention "extracurriculars" such as meeting your rotation to feed the missionaries, or clean the church, or things like holidays what with the Halloween ward Trunker Treats, ward Easter egg hunts, as well as Christ-centered holidays like Christmas to boot).

Funnily enough, the garments never reminded me of my temple covenants (as redundant and ill-defined as they were). I'll tell you what they did remind me of though:

They reminded me of how gross and uncomfortable they felt in the tropical climates of Taiwan on my mission (even if I got the special ones for hot weather). They reminded me of all the clothes I couldn't wear because the garment would interfere with the drape, or sneak past the cuff or collar every 5 seconds. They reminded me of how badly I felt about my body because of how poorly they fit. They reminded me of how cheap the church was because they were made from the crappiest material possible, and were designed to lose shape and color after 30 washes so you had to buy more.

But you know what they really reminded me of? They reminded me of how the myopic (see what I did there?) "Bretheren" of TSCC were just as stubborn as they were hidebound and beholden to the atavistic whims of legacy Mormon prudes. They reminded me of how God is so exacting and apathetic that He can't even inspire his self-professed "apostles" to do something as simple as redesign the mandatory underwear to be just a little more comfortable. It took 200 years just to get rid of the sleeves! And they still suck! But no, they have to stay basically the same, because, heaven forbid, if they use better materials and designs, the church might end up manufacturing them at a loss (clutch the pearls!).

Doesn't Costco even have loss-leaders? But not God's own church! Not the very embodiment of charity, not the institutional refutation of avarice incarnate! Give me a break.

Hey everybody!

I just wanted to express my gratitude for this space. You've all been so extremely helpful not just in answering questions logically but doing so supportingly and sympathetically. I've loved having a space which - through its anonymity - afforded me the safety to express things I otherwise wouldn't have had a place to express them for fear of hurting those closest to me, even if I did so somewhat imprudently.

Something that has surprised me is the complete lack of charity exhibited by almost all the members of the church as I've undergone this unanticipated development in my life.

I've been told some rather hurtful things by people very close to me, I've been lied to by people who claimed to be there to help me (even as they accuse me of lying), and I've been mocked by people who don't even know me. These members have essentially slammed the door behind me on my way out and said "good riddance".

I know they will go to Sunday worship services, excuse their terrible actions with logical fallacies and eye-for-an-eye thinking, and waste their lives away in this state of perpetual denial and unrepentance. They are all the proof I need to know the church isn't true. No gospel that a loving God could give would ever enable this kind of membership.

Of course, I have to be fair, there are several exceptions: Don Bradley personally messaged me and was extremely kind and encouraging on my spiritual journey. He seems like a really straight arrow. He has apparently gone through some horrible things, and has somehow come out of it all with what appears to be a sensitive heart. He has set an example for me to be kinder to those who appear to be our enemy. And there have been several people on this subreddit who were less than polite as well. Sometimes, unfortunatley, my answers were to respond in kind. I wish this were enough to redeem the character of church membership in my eyes... but as seems to be the case more and more frequently these days: I remain unconvinced.

So I'd like to offer an apology for any of the times I was unhelpful in keeping this a safe space. It has never been my intention to hurt, but to understand and feel understood. I'd like to again express my gratitude one last time for everyone's supportive words. YOU ARE ALL AMAZING!!!! I HAVE MY WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF ME!!!! This life is our life, who knows if we even get another. I am no longer going to stake my hopes on, or excuse my poor behavior with, the book of a man who very possibly made the whole thing up. If that means I get castrated for all eternity like I've been told by some Mormons as I've left the church... then so be it.

So now, I think I'll go buy that guitar that my tithing would have stopped me from buying... I found a few other churches in town to investigate this Sunday! I'm going to go on a date with that baptist girl, too. And most importantly, I think I'll try a capuccino and see if I can avoid feeling guilty about it... or maybe my first iced tea? Wish me luck!

Much love,
Freshliterature6536

This'll probably get hella downvoted but I suppose idgaf.

I recently left the church (asked the bishop to remove my records today, actually), and something I've noticed is I'm worried I'll become "bitter"... I don't want my anger or resentment to give the church rent-free space in my head. Several people have warned me to that effect, both in and out of the church.

I feel like part of being free is accepting the bad without tossing out the good. Seeing as how there's a lot of bad talked about in this subreddit, I figured I'd reminisce on some of the good memories as a way of helping me put the church behind me (and maybe helping others here too?):

• I remember family scripture night turning into tickling and wrestling matches with my dad.
• I remember moving to a new ward and, while singing the hymns on my first Sunday there, feeling suddenly like I belonged.
• I remember having a crush on the prettiest girl in the congregation, Emma, and being absolutely terrified to talk to her. She left the church too.
• I remember our young men's high adventures, lying on the beach looking at the stars after white water rafting, and talking with my friend Coleman about black holes and star wars. I think he left the church as well.
• I remember praying to know if God was there, and crying my eyes out because I felt insanely loved for no reason.
• I remember when the girl I loved married another man... I was inconsolable, but when I did baptisms for the dead, I felt completely at peace. It was the only place I could feel normal for months. She's definitely still in the church lol.
• I remember as a missionary eating my first soup-filled dumpling in Taiwan and almost dying from ecstasy. It was the best two years.
• I remember listening to Jeffrey R. Holland's conference talks and feeling so loved, and inspired, like I could do anything and God loved me.
• I remember sitting in my bishop's office asking for financial help, and him giving it to me without question or hestitation of any kind.
• I remember going to BYU-Idaho and meeting my first girlfriend there (we'll call her Rita), and kissing her for the first time on my couch while watching something like NCIS (can't remember the show, was a little distracted)... she left the church.
• I remember meeting my best friend (we'll call him Eddy) at a church service activity, and all our crazy life adventures together since (he left the church too, we've been friends for 8 years).

I remember all of that... and I'm leaving. It's ok. The church had good and bad. By leaving, I'm not betraying the good. But by staying, I would be ignoring the bad, and that's something we can't do. I feel angry and also grateful. There is disillusionment and nostalgia. Their underwear sucked, but some of their hymns were pretty fire sometimes. It didn't make sense, but it did make me feel better in a lot of ways. I know that's not everybody's experience, I got lucky in more ways than one, and my heart aches for those who don't even have a single good memory to fall back on. But I have a lot of good.

That's why it was so powerful and hard to leave for me: there was a lot of good. I'm grateful to the people in this reddit who helped me disarm my fear in leaving, but one thing I hope never gets disarmed is the fondness I feel for all the best parts of myself that survived or were engendered by my time in the Church.

Thank you, you stupid f*****g cult. Thank you.

It's mind boggling to me, the reactions people have when I tell them I'm leaving:

I'm being disingenuous, I don't really want an answer to my questions, I just want to leave the church so that I may sin without guilt, I'm just being prideful and have a huge ego, I'm leaving because I'm lazy and don't have any friends, I'm just disappointed I haven't gotten married, I'm taking the easy way out, the devil has tricked me, God will curse me for forsaking the gospel, this will drive a wedge between me and my family, the list is endless.

These are all things that my closest friends, families, and mentors have actually told me when I informed them I was leaving the church, or when I approached them with questions.

There were good reactions, of course. People who reassured me "this won't impact our friendship", "everyone has their own path", or "I still love you"... but its just so strange because I didn't go looking to leave the church. Quite the opposite, actually. I've fought really hard to stay in it.

I've never been unworthy of the temple, I've magnified every calling, kept every commandment, watched every Conference session, wore the garments every day, served my mission faithfully to the end... you get the picture.

And I've had a great time, too! I'm not bitter! I've never been abused by leadership, I've never had my heart broken by a girl in the church, I wasn't a marginalized minority, I've never been denied welfare, I never experienced a death in my family or similar traumatic experience, I'd been exposed to MSP arguments years ago and it literally didn't phase me. Compared to a lot of people in this sub who came out as trans or got SA'd by leadership, I have had it incredibly easy in the church!

But here I am. I just woke up one day and realized I didn't believe it anymore.

Anybody ever notice how the Book of Mormon cleverly preempts virtually every possible good-faith or logical reaction against itself by by portraying them as evil characters who are then either converted by the power of God or meet their doom?

For example, esteemed historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and other experts who identify scriptural anachronisms can easily be dismissed as prideful naysayers, according to 2 Nephi 9:28-29.

Lawyers, politicians, and other authority figures capable of using the law to bring justice against Joseph or church leaders for their crimes are to be viewed with suspicion because they are like Zeezrom in Alma 11.

People who question Joseph's use of their resources, or who ask to see the plates, are wicked "sign seekers" according to the story of Korihor in Alma 30.

Priesthood blessings aren't working, or signs and visions don't work unless Joseph is there? 3 Nephi 8:1, guess you're just too wicked.

Edit: as one commenter pointed out, if the BoM has grammatical errors or internal inconsistencies? They are the faults of men according to Moroni 8.

Edit: Another commenter pointed out: if people try to use the Bible to refute the Book of Mormon? 2 Nephi 29 condemns these sinful people for not being willing to accept more of God's word.

People don't want to play along with another one of Joseph's hairbrained schemes by forsaking all their possessions and going to build a new city in a swamp in Illinois? They're like Laman and Lemuel in 1 Nephi.

The list is endless. The Book basically exists just to defend itself.

Now that I've left the church, I see it everywhere in its pages.

Coincedence, I'm sure.

Recent 27M exmo here (in large part thanks to this sub helping me deconstruct apologist fallacies).

And I've noticed something... The church uses its judgmental nature to scare people from leaving.

For example, the only people in my life who have left the church are - from an LDS perspective - disasters.

• My uncle pretended to join the church just so my aunt would marry him. He took his garments off the day after the civil ceremony. He has also cheated on her.
• Another cousn started abusing alcohol and opiates at a young age, grew out extremely long hair, became extremely obese, and joined a rock band.
• I have a cousin who left the church, divorced her well-regarded husband, fled to Europe, joined a different cult, and gained a bunch of weight.

You get the picture.

But the rest of the TBM family? Highly educated, articulate, well-groomed, pressed clothes, gainfully employed, shiny teeth and nice hair.

From an LDS perspective, this pattern is evidence that people who leave the church all have questionable sanity. "Look at how ugly, unsuccessful, and weird the people are who leave the church! You don't want to be like them, do you?!"

I have been told this by my own mother! When I told her I was leaving, she said I was "just like my uncle"... a rather hurtful thing to say.

I was guilty of thinking this way myself until I met my exmo therapist about a year before my departure from the church. Even after leaving, she still bears all the trappings of an upstanding Mormon. And that's when I learned something:

The truth is, there's nothing really wrong with any of my cousins who left the church. The kinds of choices they make now pale in comparison to the emotional abuse they've endured and the trauma of losing a very comforting worldview. They're just trying to do what makes them happy, and the church doesn't have a monopoly on happiness, no matter how much it insists otherwise.

I'm glad to be out of the church now. I have fond memories, but it was so judgy. I've only publicly left for about 3 days now, and I still grapple with fear, shame, and guilt. But I like the idea of seeing people for who they are, and not defining them by their decisions or appearances. Hopefully I can grow into that habit of real charity.

So, at first, I was hesitant to leave the church (still am a little bit... there's fear and guilt, but I'm mostly out). And I reached out to people who I believed cared about me to see if they couldn't answer my questions. After all, what if the exmos are missing something? I'm no genius, I need variety in my information diet.

One of those people was an Elder I was friends with back in the states. When I told him I was leaving, he offered to set me up with an apparently very impressive lawyer and friend of the famous Mormon Apologist, Don Bradley.

I've never read Don Bradley (I'm thinking about giving him a crack, why not?), but for those of you who don't already know, he's apparently an ex-atheist and historian nerd who accidentally converted himself to Mormonism by studying Joseph's life. At least, that's how the story goes. His friend, who we'll call Tim, is a lawyer and was willing to meet.

The conversation started out friendly enough. I informed him I was agnostic, so I wasn't coming at this with any preconceived conclusions. Tim was certainly articulate and well-educated, and seemed curious how I came to walk away from the church despite being so stalwart in the past.

But then we got to the issues of doctrine and history... and it pretty much went sidewise. Of course, the tone remained mostly civil (with some slight exasperation), but his criticisms drifted from attacking the substance of my arguments to subtly aiming at the substance of my intellect and motives.

For example, I brought up tithing. I said I didn't appreciate being told by the church that if I wanted to see my family again, I need to pay them 10% of my income. If commandments are supposedly a reflection of God's will and intentions for us, then I feel no moral obligation to worship in a pay-to-play system.

He replies "the church doesn't say any of that. that's your interpretation, but its not accurate." I used to be quite the scriptorian, and I'm pretty fucking certain that's what has always been taught, but ok. I ask him for his version, and the picture he painted had reinterpreted the doctrine so much it was virtually unrecognizable from any historical exegesis!

I pointed out his theological drift, but he didn't seem bothered. So I had to oversimplify:

Me: "the church teaches that temples are exclusive places for performing vital salvific ordinances which substantively impact our quality of experience in the afterlife; do you agree?"

Him: "yes"

Me: "the church teaches that temple worthiness is required in order to be admitted for such vital salvific ordinances, would you agree?"

Him: "yes"

Me: "temple worthiness is determined by the temple questionnaire, which requires that you be a full tithe payer, would you agree?"

Him: "yes"

Me: "so, by this logic, if I don't pay tithing, I'm not temple worthy. If I'm not temple worthy, then I can't access vital salvific ordinances and their affiliated promised blessings, therefore my quality of experience in the afterlife is directly determined by whether or not I give the church my money; do you agree?"

Him: "no"

He started spinning some bullshit about how its not about the money, its about the sacrifice, but I cut him off. I told him if its about sacrifice, why doesn't the church (a $300bil corporation) ask us to donate 10% of our income to any given neglected cause area? Like shipping malaria nets or something.

Of course, he doesn't answer my question. He just shifted, and said "do you think because the church is so wealthy, it doesn't still need your tithing?"

At which point I informed him that if the church still needed my money after collecting 10% of the incomes of tens of millions of people for the better part of two centuries, then what it really should be looking for is new financial management, not the money of its hardworking members.

It's around points like this in our conversation that he would start getting really cagey. He started telling me I wasn't being objective, that I wasn't being agnostic enough, that I'd already made up my mind and wasn't interested in believing and that's why none of his points could convince me; essentially implying I lied to him in the beginning of the conversation.

We had more back and forth, and at one point he asked (I'm paraphrasing): "do you think that because the church is rich, tithing isn't a commandment from God?"

Which isn't the question you think it is. Remember, I had told him earlier that I was being agnostic (which I am). If I answer the question either yes or no, he can say "see? you do have preconceived conclusions and opinions, you're not being agnostic at all." Then my credibility is out the window because I've misled him, and there's no point in him talking to me any further because I'm a bad faith actor. So I just said "I have no idea, I just don't see how tithing makes sense."

This is what I had to deal with for the rest of the call until we ended because it was getting late. Almost 1.5 hours, he never answered any of my questions. He just reinterpreted scripture to fit his worldview, refused to engage with the substance of any of my logical cascades, and laid traps for me to discredit myself.

I never thought I'd say this, but thankfully my mother was extremely abusive growing up, so I have been well-trained from a young age to resist his dark arts.

Now, obviously, this isn't a clear victory in the sense that he capitulated. It wasn't my goal to get anyone to leave the church anyways. I genuinely like debate, and if somebody could offer me a fair rebuttal to my issues, I'd have serious reservations about leaving the church.

But I considered it a victory because I didn't fall into any of his traps and he really didn't have much to say to me otherwise. It's funny how they all use the same playbook: never address the question, just respond with unfalsifiables, non-discriminating evidence, logical fallacies, or attacks on my character and intentions (I'm lazy, disingenuous, etc.).

I suppose all of that just goes to show that I know I'm doing the right thing by leaving. Couldn't do it without you all!

A big thing that's been helpful during my deconstruction is searching for historical parallels or analogues to LDS origination claims as a means of quieting my departure anxiety.

For example, the Book of Mormon (BoM) contains alleged Hebraisms like the chiasmus, which apologists use to substantiate the narrative that a largely illiterate Joseph Smith couldn’t possibly have contrived the BoM. Asides from the fact that pretty much every language has some sort of chiastic structure (including ancient Chinese... is the Book of Mormon actually a Chinese text??), there's also the fact that the Quran has chiasms, despite Muhammed receiving no institutional education of any kind. Additionally, the Rigveda, the Odyssey, and Hamlet all possess chiastic structures, notwithstanding their writers showing no evidence of being authoritatively educated on the nature of chiasms. Hell, I've written chiasms, and I had no idea what they were. Does this mean that the authors translated their works from reformed Egyptian by the gift of God? Obviously not. In comparison to Joseph’s account, it is at the very least equally if not more likely that chiasms are a natural byproduct of thorough human storytelling, irrespective of the author's formal training.

To illustrate my point further, the Book of Mormon ostensibly makes several since-proven “guesses” about the ancient world which at the time would not have been common knowledge among both laypeople or global experts (e.g., cement, Mesoamerican city fortifications, and steel in ancient Jerusalem)... ignoring the fact that the precision of these guesses is highly exaggerated and severely outnumbered by the amount of incorrect guesses (such as horses, elephants, and wheat), it’s worthwhile to note that the Simpsons, Nostradamus, Isaac Asimov, and my grandfather (who accurately perceived I was leaving the church before I went public) have similarly intuited a litany of future events including Donald Trump’s presidency, 9/11, artificial intelligence, and COVID-19. Does that mean they got their information from ancient gold-plated records? Again, obviously not. It seems more likely that Joseph Smith made common sense assumptions regarding advanced civilizations which happened to bear out, pending further archaeological discoveries.

Another favorite talking point of mine is that Jeffrey R. Holland asserts Joseph Smith would not have "knowingly gone to his death" for a lie... this makes sense on the surface, but by the same logic Joan of Arc, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, al-Hallaj, and Shoko Asahara all died for their visions and prophecies "because they were true." It seems more likely that dying for a cause is characteristic of pious frauds and cults, rather than a sufficiently exceptional heuristic for judging the veracity of fundamental outliers.

One major sticking point for me, however, was the testimony of the eight witnesses. An apologist friend of mine has emphatically insisted: "How could so many people believe that they all saw and touched something which didn't exist? And how could they take their affidavits to the grave? They can't. The Book of Mormon is true." He demanded I offer rational justifications for such behavior, despite the fact that the burden of proof is not on me (I’m approaching this from an agnostic point of view). It was quite ironic, seeing Russel demand I disprove that his teapot was floating around the sun.

Luckily, we don’t have to acquiesce to any of these bad-faith stipulations – after all, even if I could explain this behavior, my apologist friend certainly wouldn't accept my arguments. We can instead reach for lower hanging fruit, which is to demonstrate that the history of the church is not as unique as its leadership wants the public to believe. If certain events are not entirely unique to the LDS faith, then alternative explanations outside of church dogma for comparable occurrences become plausible.

Accordingly, I readily found several comparable examples that served my purposes: the Marian Apparitions and miracle of the sun at Fatima in 1917, the Knock Apparition and its 15 witnesses in 1879, the frequent collective visions and miracles attested to by the Shakers in the Era of Manifestations. It turns out, it’s not entirely unusual for people to corroborate shared miraculous visions. Nor is it unusual for them to never recant, even at death’s door. The only unusual part of the witnesses account is claiming to have held the plates and felt their weight... and given Joseph's proclivity for purchasing ancient artifacts for translation, its entirely plausible a set of plates came into his possession which he kept hidden. It's also entirely possible he had them made, or that the witnesses are all lying. After all, like we talked about earlier, its not unusual for people to lie, even when faced with imminent death.

The origins of the Book of Mormon certainly exhibit a unique concentration of typically isolated anomalous earmarks worthy of attention from a broadly academic standpoint. While it warrants deeper investigation, these curiosities appear to be nothing more than indications of a rare convergence between remarkable psychological profiles and distinctive regional fervors, not of the irrefutable authenticity and historical veracity of Christian primitivism. While Christ’s life has been producing wholly distinguishable religions for the past two millennia, it is only the Catholic and LDS churches which truly stand alone in their assents to power and concomitant internal control. While refraining from granting them any clemency or allegiance, I think they at least deserve our distant respect and admiration on these notable grounds alone.

To quote the late Doofenshmirtz, “if I had a nickel for every time Christ’s life produced a patently impressive religion, I’d have like two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.”

Edit: damn this post exploded, y'all are an amazing support group, thank you so much. this has been very reassuring. for a second there my mother almost bullied me back into the church lol. but I'm like Rocky... she just keeps hitting me and I keep GETTING BACK UP. *ding ding*

Original Post:

JUST NEED SUPPORT HERE. REALLY ROUGH TIME, Y'ALL. VENTING.

Recent PIMO, I've (27M) equivocated informing my parents because on the one hand I want to feel their love without the guilt of deceiving them, but I also I want to protect their feelings and poor health, and don't want them to hurt me either. So I broke down and told them.

It went poorly. I mean, my dad was chill with it. He was like "yeah I felt the same way at your age". He asked some questions, accepted, and said "well, I love you."

But my mother was chernobyle. She has always struggled with healthy communication. When she's upset, she often makes people take responsibility for her emotions.

She'll use your own contradictions or imperfections to invalidate anything you say, and then supplant your statements with the least charitable narrative she can possible contrive (usually accusing you of lying for selfish purposes or succumbing to the devil), and then attempt to punish you for it by bloviating about how wrong and selfish you are and how right and well-intentioned she is. She can go on for hours in this state of martyrdom. I've literally had times where I've just muted my phone and stuffed it under a pillow and gone back to check on it later just to find she's still blathering on. She's a product of her terrible childhood, I should have known it would go this way, I suppose I wasn't surprised, but still you never get used to it, its pretty enraging.

So anyways, I informed her about my decision to leave the church a few weeks ago, and told her the truth: that I hadn't said anything because I was confused, unsure, too emotionally vulnerable, trying to be careful of her feelings, and wanted to make sure I was leaving the church for the right reasons.

She immediately dismissed what I'd told her, and said she couldn't believe me because "I'd been lying to her for the past several weeks, so why should she believe what I'm telling her now?" ... as if that makes any sense... maybe believe me because I had the gumption to tell you all of this in the first place. If I was a selfish liar, I'd just keep lying and never have said any of this, but she doesn't think that way.

She pointed out several contradictions in my past behavior (e.g., I bore my testimony about tithing once about 6 weeks ago, at the beginning of all of this) and used these contradictions as proof that I was being purposefully deceitful. She said I was lying and just leaving the church because I wanted to date non-mormons and not pay tithing (I mean, there's definitely some perks to leaving but its not my primary motivation lol), and that I'd been deceived by the devil, and that this would drive a wedge between us.

At first, I tried to explain the contradictions. For example, I said "Yeah I bore my testimony, mostly because it would be my last chance to do so in the ward before leaving the country, and I was feeling nostalgic and really hoped bearing my testimony would maybe help me believe again." But she never accepts what I say. She does this thing where you start a sentence with an endpoint in mind, but before you can even finish explaining, she interrupts you and attacks the premise of your sentence using the first 5 or 6 words. And even when she doesn't do that and lets you finish a thought, she just trades out one contradiction for another, until it suddenly gets to a point where I realize I'm being made to justify myself to her like some criminal standing before a punitive tribunal, like I'm in a fucking Law and Order episode facing 25 to life.

At which point, I got angry. I've afforded more compassion to friends on the phone over issues of similar magnitude, much less my own child; and she has made truly incredible strides in the past couple years with her communication. I honestly didn't expect this to turn into a fight full of vitriol and suspicion! I have feelings too! This hasn't been easy for me! But that never occurrs to her.

She has this horrible way of turning every conversation into a Struggle Session where you argue over who said what. She drags you into this hellish pseudo-debate where its a race of endurance to see who has the stamina to outlast the other person, and whoever says the last word wins. I used to put up with these in the past, and they'd go for hours until I just apologized and confessed she was right because I was exhausted. On rare occassions arguments could last days or weeks where she'd keep bringing it up and acting passive aggressive. But I learned years ago to just cut her off and save myself the headache. So that's what I did in this conversation.

I said we had gotten way too far from the point and that these were unhealthy and toxic communication dynamics so I wasn't going to participate in them, and that I don't care if she believes me, nor do I care about her characterizations of my intentions and feelings on the matter. I told her I'm telling her the truth about not intending to deceive her, that I am leaving the church for the reasons I've stated, and she just needs to believe me because I'm her son.

Which leads her to second most-frequent manipulation tactic: the victim card. She starts sobbing, "I'M NOT A TOXIC PERSON", bemoaning how I never allow her to have any emotions or feelings and that I'm dominating the conversation. Again, everything is my fault, including how I'm "making" her feel. She said my leaving the church was going to drive a wedge between us. I just stuck with my boundaries and refused to play any more of these games, and blunderingly tried to maitain the frame. So eventually she changed her tone but still said hurtful things like "this will drive a wedge between us" and all that jazz. I tried to reassure her that there's more to her son than what church I belong to, and it was getting late and she was starting to ramble again, so I said I had to go. I told her I loved her a lot and we could talk later, to which she coldly replied "fine. you can go now."

bro FUCK MY LIFE. This has been the response I've gotten from almost everyone except nevermos/exmos and my dad (who was inactive himself for a while)! I get met with this smug and subtly aggressive confidence from everyone that I'm wrong, I'm disingenuous, I've sinned or been deceived, I'm taking the easy way out, I can't possibly have thought this through... its really chafing me.

Rant over.

Make it make sense, folks.

It's crazy how, after realizing I don't believe the church is true, even more things stop making sense. I was just perusing my Book of Mormon a couple minutes ago (perhaps because of nostalgia, perhaps out of a vain hope my faith will return and all the comforts that attended it will assuage my fears, perhaps because a stubborn piece of myself is unwilling to admit that my faith is completely dead yet), and I read Mosiah 19, where the Lamanites are killing the people of King Noah. It says they randomly stop the destruction because "they were charmed by the beauty of their women"... I can't believe I used to actually accept these stories. I've never heard of that happening irl, ever. Imagine an entire army massacring a city and stopping because all the women were just too sexy... like, what the fuck?! you're on a blood-fueled murder frenzy, adrenaline coursing through your veins, and you're instantly pacified by the refugee babes... The Lamanites were fuggin simps, man. Were there no unattractive women in this city haha, were they really all just Lamanite cat-nip? or maybe all the uggos got killed off first lol... you read it this way and can't help but think to yourself: "yeah, a misogynistic polygamist definitely wrote this." or is it just that all the "darkies" were enamored by the obviously superior white genetics of the Nephite women? like, holy racist fuck!

Another thing that keeps catching me by surprise is this overwhelming urge to constantly reframe my life inside of "God's plan". I had no idea how much comfort I used to find in thinking "oh, this event or feeling happened because God is trying to prepare me for x or teach me about y or bless me with z." Now that I don't necessarily believe in Heavenly Father, and am seriously questioning the existence of God at all, I find myself... falling. It's like a weird, physical sensation where my heart drops, like when you get woken up from a dream by falling out of bed... that split second of no gravity, of being pulled down, it feels like that. and i have to catch myself. its like a crutch has been kicked out from under me. especially with morals. suddenly, I have no absolute authority for moral choices. its freeing, in a way... but also really scary. like, I was just on a date, and I told her I was recently ex-mormon and she was like "well, congrats, you can do whatever you want now." and it hit me: I can do whatever I want. I can have a mojito, I can smoke a cigarette, I can drink some tea, I can wear comfortable underwear, I can keep all of my income! the list is literally endless. yet I still felt uncomfortable. we were at a pub, she was really sweet about the whole thing and suggested maybe I have my first beer... I couldn't do it. I wanted it to be special, I didn't want to do it by myself, so I said no and she was fine with it.

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced either of these things? were you only feeling liberated after leaving the church, or do you recognize that feeling I described of being shocked at how your old mental habits still exist such as looking for reasons behind everything? did your awareness of problems with the church only grow after you left, or were you already pretty well aware of all the possible problems?

ok, I'm firmly PIMO. But my brainwashing is putting up a good fight and I need your help again. I'm like Dwight Schrute when he shoots his mother's corpse before lowering the casket into the grave: I want to make sure this testimony is actually dead, I don't want any nagging fears that the thing I buried was in fact the true living gospel. You guys obliterated my confidence in the Book of Mormon...

So one last thing that is nagging me that I need help overcoming is Joseph Smith's behavior. The church often uses his apparent willingness to die for his church (apparently he admitted he "went as a lamb to the slaughter", which apologists take as a literal admission of anticipation of death but could be just another plagiaristic abuse of scripture to shine-on his groupies), and the fact he was apparently looking for comfort in the Book of Mormon when he was murdered, as justification for its truthfulness. As Jeffrey R. Holland so emphatically exclaimed, "HE. WOULD. NOT. DO. THAT."

Barring the fact that literally every other religion has the same story (a quick google search suggests not a single pope has renounced the faith in its thousand-year history, the Prophet Muhammed's last words were apparently a prayer to Allah rather than a confession of dishonesty, not even the founder of Scientology renounced his movement when he was at death's door, etc.), there is reason to believe Joseph Smith would willingly march to his death as a fraud. If he was a liar, the guilt alone must have been immense, but there was no way out. I used to be a compulsive liar, and it often made me suicidal because my physical and social welfare often became tied up in mistruths. It was a constant state of anxiety, fearing I would lose all my physical security if truths were discovered. It felt like death was the only escape, and telling the truth often wasn't seen as worth the pain. Death was better. I'm sure Joseph felt the same thing. Plus, the fear of being caught, and what his followers would do to him if he fled with them to Utah and they found out he was a fraud... that fear must have been immense.

At the same time... he didn't exactly behave like other movement leaders. Sure, he bought land and apparently tried to fvck a couple teenagers, but compared to what we see from people like megachurch pastors... well, he appears to have exhibited a significant amount of restraint. there is no documentation of him wearing luxury and expensive clothes, owning mansions (in fact, he was often homeless), etc.

Now, again, the same goes for lots of historical figures, like Confucius, or Christ, or Ghandi... the only problem is: they apparently genuinely believed their philosophies.

Where this becomes an issue with Joseph Smith is: how could you genuinely believe a philosophy that you know you made up. If you know the Book of Mormon is a fraud, how are you as frugal and self-denying as people who actually believed what they taught? And what on Earth would motivate you to do so??

If somebody could help me square this away, it would be much appreciated. The only thing I could think of was that Joseph maybe actually did find some old metal plates and pretended to translate them using his old stories he'd tell family, forging a new religion from it because he actively disliked existing options for Christianity. What do you guys think??

https://preview.redd.it/c0h1ctgg2rxg1.png?width=1400&format=png&auto=webp&s=356ce8b9475d59ac2f2b44e3eb79141b44009337

Why 10%? Why not based on income? Why not 1%? Why not have contribution options (can't pay? its ok, you can volunteer at Deseret book once a month on Sunday or something)?

I'm a little late to the party but I just realized the reason its 10% is to keep the poor out. I don't know how I didn't recognize this before. But it perfectly explains why the church has so many wealthy members. Anybody below the poverty line can't afford to join. 10% of $12k/year is not the same burden as 10% of $20 million. Mitt Romney can afford to stay in the church, any convert working at a gas station cannot.

One day I realized if I hadn't paid my tithing I could have used that money to pay off student loans (currently $25k remaining). And I realized that all the "blessings" from tithing were likely just luck or prudence. E.g., my accountant saved me $8k on taxes last fiscal year. When I told my TBM mother, she said "See? tithing comes with blessings" as if millions of other people don't use accountants for this exact reason. Why doesn't the Lord want me to be debt free? Isn't debt the exact reason He allegedly ordered the prophets to institute tithing in the first place, to rescue the church from debt?

I can't believe I used to believe this.