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22nd May 2022 - Jeremy Runnells - Views on God

The hearing of Jeremy Runnells

On this day, I finally watched the excommunication hearing video of Jeremy Runnells; and I feel for every person in the room where it happened. My first takeaway thoughts were that it appears that the leadership are fearful of the CES letter that Jeremy wrote, and understood its potential to unravel the Mormon doctrine. At this time, I had not read the CES letter but I had heard about the problems it raised. When I later read it, it was clear why it has given many people much to think about and consider, and why the church considers it to be anti-Mormon material.

As the video continued,  in what appears to be a hasty and cold move of holding a “court of love” for his apostasy, Jeremy refutes the claims and says that he has only sought answers to questions that were outlined in the letter, and that if it was wrong, to be told where so he can correct it. The room fell silent for a moment; no one answered, but instead continued to say, “You’re here to make a statement.” Jeremy then says it’s the gospel topic essays that are in opposition to the church because they tell a different narrative than that of the church. It appeared in this video that the leadership didn’t want to engage because they probably knew they had no counter argument beyond “just have faith.” They had no other answer; the church has no other answers. 

You can tell that Jeremy was getting upset because he felt as though he was being punished for expressing his doubts, for simply asking the question about some things that did not seem right. He finished by serving them his resignation from the church. An honest seeker of truth: being punished.  

My First TikTok and Views on God

I made a TikTok video about my finding out about tithing being 2% at first and then becoming 10%. It would become my first of only a couple of videos I wanted to make in order to be my way of speaking up about the issues I was discovering. I didn’t engage in this manner for that long, partly because of how tedious it was to make an informed video on the platform. Plus, I was one of thousands doing the same thing. 

I then posted this comment on social media:

 “I am definitely agnostic leaning to atheistic thinking partly because of the narrow view I had of god that was informed by Mormon dogma. And because this is the only view of god that I could give space for, since the Mormon church is the one true church (🤨), all other views of who god is we’re invalid. 
Now that I’ve left, I can’t see god as anything other than the Mormon god. And I cannot believe in that god anymore. Even if I just look at the Bible god, he is an angry, jealous, controlling being, sprinkled with conditional love. 
If god does exist, that version is not one I want to be involved with. Almost sounds like a bad relationship. Haha”

This described my view in god at this time, and how I didn’t want to put my beliefs into such a being. I was divided about being sad and liberated at the outcome of not just disbelieving the Mormon god, but the entire idea of god at all. Mormonism taught me the narrow view of god, labelled it as truth and that all other views of god were false. And so, when I abandoned the Mormon god, any view of god also was abandoned. I wondered if I this was normal or not for something on the path I was on. I had no idea that I would come across an article that described that very problem.

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