Unwavering Faith

I l istened to another exit story found here , and this was about a guy who left the church and redefined his Christian views which aligned more like those of the Baptists.  While listening, there were a few things he mentioned that resonated with me at this time: Mormons teach that grace is sufficient before, during, and after all we can do (talk by Brad Wilcox). However, the Bible teaches grace is sufficient when we accept Christ without any further actions on our part. He called this the Impossible Gospel concept, that through Mormonism, you need to be constantly moving or doing something to qualify for this grace whereas in mainstream Christianity, it is available to you at the mere mention of Jesus' name.   “ No success can compensate for failure in the home .” A classic Mormon quote that hurt this man when his marriage broke down as he navigated his conversion.  Whilst the spirit in which this quote is given highlights the family’s importance, the secondary and impl...

The Stories of Others As I undertook my own faith transition, I began listening to the stories of others and how they felt during the process. I found this helped me because all I wanted to do was talk to people about the experience I was going through, but I didn’t know who to turn to. I didn’t want to stir up problems with believing members, and I didn’t want to explain the nuance to people who hadn’t been in the church.  This video here was  about a bishop who  didn’t consider himself to be a spiritual person, who  read the gospel topic essays , and found them to be deeply troubling. This was one of the first times I heard about these essays , which are written by anonymous authors and published on the church website in a not-so-obvious  place. I heard someone mention that it’s the church’s liability protection for when people say, “Hey, the church never taught that.” The topics range from the wives of Joseph Smith, the translation process of the Book o...

I knew that making the decision to move myself way from church was probably going to mean I would have discussions with certain people, and that I would have to answer the question “why are are leaving the church?” I had a dinner organised with a close friend that night and had a feeling that this topic would come up at some point. And so, I began reflecting on what the exact reason was so that I could in a simplified way relate that to them. At this stage, I did not have a summed up response. I then got a phone call from an old coworker where this question was asked. I ended up using this conversation as a test run  for how the coming dinner might go. I even said this to him, to which he laughed. Our conversation was extremely civil and was largely centred around the guilt and shame cycle that I experienced particularly as a youth around masturbation, which again, I believe is a normal thing and something that is the business of a young person. Something surprised me in his respon...

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...