Unwavering Faith

Leaving Mormonism means also Leaving God During the month of May, I can see several instances where I started to shift in my thinking and perception on topics and viewpoints. For example,  I listened to episode 1544 of Mormon Stories that talked about the leaked talk that Brad Wilcox gave at the Alpine Stake in Utah. The commentary offered made some points that I resonated with, one of which being that the doctrine of Jesus and God from the Mormon view creates a version of Jesus and God that cannot be easily transferred to another branch of Christianity. I would say that because of the way to church teaches its members that it is the only true church with the most correct doctrine, and if someone decides to leave the church, at least for me, it ruins the concept of God and Jesus. I believe this is true for me because when I was taught about the God and Jesus and their nature and place in the grand Plan of Salvation; it was literal. In a corner of the universe, these beings existed ...

As I continued my journey of reassessing my faith, I stumbled across the Mormon Stories podcast through my YouTube searches. I believe it came up in my suggested videos. And I like to start things at the beginning, so I went to the very first episode where John Dehlin talked about his missionary experiences, and some of the unorthodox things that happened there involving something called football baptisms, where missionaries would play football or soccer with young kids and then go “cool off” in the baptismal font. This was recorded while John was still a member of the church and so was presented with that in mind. I appreciated the positive and progressive tones the podcast had, and so I listened to a few more episodes.  While listening to episode 3, I began to consider if I should give prayer another go as I undertake this spiritual investigation. Very quickly, my mind waved a red flag; that this is my conditioned response when I have questions, that I need to ask God. From the ...

 After we got back from New Zealand, we caught up with some friends of our who had already decided to step away from church. If I was to go back to my believing Mormon brain , I would have said they yoyo’ed in their activity and faith. I now see that they were just making realtime decisions based on their situation at he the time. There was at first a surprise reaction, because I guess we came across as the types of members that were “strong” in the gospel, and to flip around to not believing in it that much to the point where we would stop attending really surprised them.  As we continued to talk about it, we agreed on a few things that we found problematic. What is interesting is that these issues existed but in a shelf capacity , meaning we did not give them space in our mind, so we put them over on our “We don’t know the answers to these questions yet” shelf. Most if not all Mormons know about this shelf  concept as taught by Spencer Kimball’s wife.  Here were tw...

Having heard many stories now of people transitioning out of faith, the experience of telling their still believing family members, particularly parents, was always one of the hardest things.  My wife and kids and I flew to have a holiday with my family in NZ and we felt this was a good time to share our decision. When I told them, my mum (who made church her whole life through her difficult experiences and helped me dad convert before they got married, which is the totally normal thing to pursue in Mormon culture) went, “Mmm interesting. Your dad and I have been thinking the same thing.” I was both astonished and relieved! This opened up a range of things to talk about and unpack. We shared a diminished connection to attend and participate in church, and how that might look moving forward. My parents shared the coldness they often felt in their ward in New Zealand and how little they got from attending. I never thought my parents would arrive at this stage, but here it was happeni...

With my new decision to suspend my attendance from church and maintain an active effort to live  the gospel, I found myself open to new and sometimes opposing views, and a greater appreciation for those feeling a heavy sense of guilt from “not quite living the gospel.” And I should clarify that my efforts to not actively  live the gospel  did not mean I was drinking alcohol and coffee and participating in all activities the church would be opposed to; that would come later. Rather, I stopped paying tithing, stopped attending church, took my name off the ward contact list, requested a release from my stake calling, and told myself it was ok to stop praying (because up until this time, I was beginning to feel more and more estranged from the idea of praying to a being I may no longer believe in). During this time, I met with a family member who was in hospital, and had been for an extended period of time. We spoke about the feelings of guilt and shame, the differences betwe...

 I was taught to stay away from all material that was not faith-promoting, labelled as anti-Mormon material . Particularly, if I saw any videos that were titled “ Why I left the church”  I quickly swiped away. I very much employed this thinking, until one day I saw one that made me think, “Oh let’s watch one and if it’s an angry one I’ll skip it.”  The video is linked here . It was not at all what I thought when it came to “anti-Mormon material.” The presenter started off by telling his story, and then shared the experiences he had that caused him to wonder. I had often given room for the thought “imagine if the church wasn’t true” but then quickly would come up with reasons to counter that thought, usually drawing upon the experiences I had had prior. But this time, I actually took that thought seriously. In the video, he mentioned that it was the experience of having his son that made him wonder if he wanted this for his child. And so he doubled down  and real...