Faith Transition

"I know you don't get me, I know you don't understand, I know you're afraid for me. But please trust me. Somehow or another, even though I don't have it all figured out, I feel like I'm on a good path. I feel like God is with me. God is still working with me in this journey of mine."
– Dan Wotherspoon

About one month ago, I stopped attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka "LDS" or "Mormon").

Why?  The short answer is that after over two and a half years of significant study, heartache, tears, and pleading in prayer, I no longer believe in the unique claims of the LDS Church.  At some point, the question "is it true?" shifted to "does it work for me?"  I actively sought out various reconciliations and perspectives on how to make it work for me, but I've ultimately concluded that for my own mental health and to better be present for my family, I need to take a break. 

Why share publicly?  I debated whether to "go public" with this decision. I have no desire to hurt anyone else in their faith.  I love and support my friends, family, and neighbors for whom the Church works wonderfully and truly makes them better people.  I fully believe that in many aspects of my life, I am a better person for having been associated with the Church and will forever be grateful for members of the Church who have influenced my life for good.  I also believe in being honest and transparent.  In being open about my journey, perhaps I can help someone who has gone through or is going through a similar struggle who may not have someone to reach out to. If you have/are experiencing this or want ideas on how to better support someone you love who may be going through a faith crisis, please reach out to me directly and I would love to help in any way I can.   My hope is to be able to help build bridges between active believing members, nuanced members, and post-Mormons.

How can I help/minister to you?  I value the friendships and associations I have with family and friends who are members of the Church. Please continue to invite me to service activities or significant milestones such as baby blessings, baptisms, ordinations, missionary farewells, etc. You do not have to avoid talking about the Church around me. Continue to provide love and support to Sarah and the kids. Feel free to stop by to visit and say hi anytime. I welcome scheduled visits to my home and am willing to discuss my story and/or concerns openly to anyone who is genuinely interested. I will do my best to answer honestly while being respectful of differing beliefs and reconciliations.

Come back! We're concerned for your family. I appreciate your genuine concern. I still plan on attending periodically to support my family, particularly for things like the primary program. I could foresee, after a period of healing, returning to attending periodically to support my family, but I don't foresee a return to beliefs in unique LDS truth claims. I also never anticipated coming to this point, so I'm open to being wrong. 

What faithful resources are available to effectively help those who question? 

These are all strongly biased in favor of the Church and are safe resources for believing Latter-day Saints. Whether they are "effective" will depend on where each individual is at in his or her faith journey. At a minimum, I would think every member should be familiar with the Gospel Topic Essays on ChurchofJesusChrist.org, which provide a brief introduction to some of the more challenging issues in the Church. I also HIGHLY recommend David Ostler's new book listed below.

ChurchofJesusChrist.org

Gospel Topic Essays

Books (all sold at Deseret Book)

Bridges: Ministering to those Who Question (David Ostler) This should be a must-read for all ward councils and anyone wanting to understand faith crisis members. See his website as well.

Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt (Patrick Mason)

The Crucible of Doubt: (Terryl and Fiona Givens)

Rough Stone Rolling (Richard Bushman)

Talks/podcasts

Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces - Eric Huntsman BYU Devotional

Marriage on a Tightrope Podcast (mixed faith marriage resource - safe for believer and non-believer)

Mormon Discussions Podcast - 15 Ways to Help

Maxwell Institute (BYU) podcast
Secular Buddhism Podcast (Mindfulness)

Facebook/Other
Uplift Community of Faith
Faith Matters
Others upon personal request/inquiry

Other non-LDS (but faith affirming) resources: Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, Peter Enns, Reza Aslan, Karen Armstrong, James Fowler

What critical resources have you found helpful?

Please reach out to me privately. 

Have you been offended?

No

Are you planning on resigning your membership?

No, I have no current plans to resign my membership officially.

What next?

This is a great question.  The short answer is that I don't know, but I'm optimistic about the future. I have no intention of joining another religious community at the moment, though I would like to visit other church services from time to time to gain additional insight and perspectives.  Two that I am interested in observing are Community of Christ (formerly RLDS) and the Unitarian Universalist Church.  I would consider myself in the "spiritual but not tied to one religious tradition" category and hope to gain insights and seek the best from various religious traditions - including the LDS Church.  Most recently I have found great peace in Buddhist meditation practices and teachings regarding being present, gratitude, the nature of suffering, and the Four Noble Truths.  Essentially, I seek after anything that is virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy - and there are so many such things in the world outside of Mormonism that I have not yet explored.

How has this impacted your marriage and family relationships?

A faith crisis can be an all-consuming, time-intensive, emotional process.  I've cycled through all of the stages of grief a few times - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I have been open with Sarah throughout this entire process.  She's seen me in the angry/frustrated phase, the crying-myself-to-sleep phase, and finally to a place of peace and reconciliation. Most of the strong emotions have subsided but still surface occasionally with certain triggers, which is part of my decision to stop attending church weekly.  Sarah has been amazingly supportive of me and my love for her has grown tremendously as a result of sharing this journey with her.  We disagree respectfully from time to time, but we share a core of common values: gratitude, compassion, service, love and family that transcend any differences we may have in beliefs.  So long as the Church works for her, I will support her in anyway I can. I have shared my shifting beliefs with my kids, particularly my oldest Madison.  I don't go into details, mostly that Dad believes some things differently, but I love and support her in everything she does. We have had family lessons discussing different beliefs and the value we can get from learning from those with different perspectives. I have encouraged my kids to ask questions and will honestly answer their questions as they arise.

My parents have been very supportive of both me and Sarah, and I am extremely fortunate to have married into a wonderful family who also continues to provide love and support.

Why is Church hard for you?

This is difficult to explain, particularly for those for whom the Church brings them significant peace, renewal and motivation.  Once one no longer believes the Church is "true" much of the messaging of the Church can come off as very elitist, self-assuring and exclusionary. The focus on the "one true Church" or "Satan's grasp" on the "evil world" or that all you need to do is go to church, pray and read the scriptures and you'll never "fall away" may come off as hurtful to someone who no longer believes in such things and never prayed so intently or read so much in their life as during a faith crisis.  Sure, there are bad things in the world that we need to work together to fix, but an intense focus on the "evil" in the world leads people to feel morally superior to and/or separated from outsiders.  I have felt that if I speak up and share my concerns, I risk hurting someone and their faith. If I don't speak up, I hurt myself. I love my local ward members, but my Sundays for the last months I attended often left me feeling drained, frustrated or angry toward the Church, and I often left with a physical headache. In the end, Sarah and I came to a mutual conclusion that it would be best for me to take a break from attending Church.  I still help in the mornings getting kids ready to go and have used the time largely to catch up on cleaning the house. I have been able to focus on being more present for my family when they come home. 

How does this decision impact your lifestyle, morals and values?

This faith transition has caused be to think more deeply on what are the values that mean the most to me. These include gratitude, compassion, service and love.  These core values have been strengthened through this process as I've shared my story and listened to others who have felt marginalized. I find myself to be less judgmental and more understanding of those whose lifestyle is different than my own.

This faith crisis is not a result of any desire to go out and "sin."  However, as I no longer believe in the Church as my ultimately authority on right and wrong, I get to evaluate for myself what I think is best for my life.  For the most part, I don't think most of how I live my life will change. On issues such as the word of wisdom, I will have to evaluate personally what I feel is best.  I tried coffee recently and wasn't that impressed.  I may try green tea as it seems to have great health benefits.  I don't drink alcohol and have no desire to ever try smoking. I try not to lie, have no desire to cheat, steal, or kill anyone.  Mostly, I'm the same person I have always been.

Are you happier?

This is a tricky question.  Having a shift in religious beliefs can be extremely disorienting and painful.  But through that pain, I have gained a deeper understanding of life and more compassion for others with "sorrows that the eye can't see" (which we all carry with us at some point).

Pre-faith crisis, I read a few great books on happiness. Ironically, I think the endless pursuit of "happiness" as an objective may sometimes cause more discontentment as the very fact that we are "seeking" happiness implies that we are not happy in our current condition, and so peace has become more of my objective.  I like some of the teachings derived from Buddhism describing "suffering" as "wanting things to be other than they are."  Conversely, greater peace for me has come from accepting and being grateful for things as they are rather than trying to force them to be something they are not. For anyone interested, I would highly recommend the Secular Buddhism podcast with Noah Rasheta, which would be beneficial for believer and non-believer alike.

So, am I happier? Some days, yes, and some days, no. But in general I have found a greater sense of peace recently than I have felt before.

What triggered your faith crisis?

In short, friends and loved ones leaving the Church and seeing the trauma the Church had caused through certain unhealthy practices such as disciplinary councils.  This is intentionally vague as it relates to other people and I don't feel comfortable sharing other people's stories.  From there, I began an intense study of the foundations of Mormonism that consumed almost all my free time for a year and a half or so.  I think it largely started with Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy and polyandry, then institutional racism and the priesthood ban, the prophetic mantle, Book of Abraham papyri, First Vision accounts, Joseph Smith's other translation attempts (Kinderhook plates, JST, etc), LGBT issues, Book of Mormon historicity, historicity of biblical texts, historicity of Jesus, and several other issues.

At times, I felt hurt, lied to, and betrayed by the Church that I loved and cherished. I participated in various Facebook groups designed to faithfully support people in a faith crisis, read or listened to a couple dozen books, listened to hundreds if not thousands of hours of podcasts (faithful and critical), read numerous apologetic articles, and reached out to a few trusted friends, some of whom were wonderful at listening and providing support and others quickly cut off communication regarding Church topics. Having friends cut off communication regarding the church hurt. I cried. But I don't blame them for not being in a place to be able to listen, especially while I was in my hurt and angry phase.

I ultimately concluded that I could not reconcile God being the author of such confusion, chaos, and immorality. I have a separate blog I started around March 2018 where I have written out my thoughts and research on various topics, which has helped me process my thoughts, but in order to keep this post relatively safe for active believers, I have not posted that blog publicly or linked here. (If anyone is interested enough in reading this blog, I would be happy to provide the link privately).

So your faith crisis is the result of reading "anti-Mormon" literature?

Every source is biased.  In order to understand any significant issue (in religion, politics, academia, etc), it is important to look at all sides of the argument - faithful, critical and everything in between - while understanding the inherent bias of each source.  So, yes, some of my resources had a critical bias, but then I would carefully cross reference each "critical" source against a "faithful" source such as LDS.org, BYU studies, or Fair Mormon.  I would also try to follow all claims back to the original source documents where possible (such as Joseph Smith Papers) and understand whether the original account was first hand or second-hand, faithful or critical, and whether it came from a late source several years removed from the actual event. I had a strong initial bias toward faith-promoting sources and was careful about vetting the critical sources.  I would see what facts both sides ultimately agreed on and try to form my own conclusions. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with both sides at times. Eventually I did read sections of the strongly biased materials such as the infamous "CES Letter" and found that while largely factual, I was familiar enough with the issues to know where the critical sources were overstating their case, and in many cases felt that they did not discuss or did not adequately discuss my specific concerns. Similarly, I think the Church's new book Saints is a good read but having read the critical arguments, I knew where I felt they were glossing over or carefully leaving out significant troubling details.

What about spiritual witnesses? Did you not have a testimony or were you not fully converted?

Yes, I was "all in" with regards to the LDS Church and fully believed its teachings for most of my life.  I received what I interpreted in my Mormon context as strong spiritual witnesses confirming to me at the time that the Church was true.  This is why this faith crisis and transition has been very difficult as I realized that many of the things I once testified of or felt a strong conviction of were simply not accurate. I also realized that many other religions describe very similar powerful spiritual witnesses confirming to them the exclusive claims of their own religious system - in extreme cases, some were so convinced of their spiritual witness that they took their own life following a charismatic spiritual leader.  Of course, we can never truly know what someone else is feeling and each religion describes experiences in the context and language of their own tradition. So it's not my place to interpret or dismiss the validity of someone else's spiritual witnesses. For myself, I now interpret my spiritual experiences in a very different way as part of a broader human experience mostly related to what is referred to as "elevation emotion" in a secular context.  I have noticed that I still feel the same feelings I once attributed to the spirit, but as my beliefs have changed, so too have the circumstances in which I experience these feelings.

Do you believe in the Bible and the Book of Mormon?

I see a number of internal contradictions within the Biblical texts and conflicts with widely accepted science, archaeology, and history which lead me to believe that the vast majority of the stories of the Bible, and in particular the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament), are Jewish origin myths rather than historical events. So I don't believe there was a literal Adam and Eve, Tower of Babel, global flood, Jonah swallowed by a whale, mass exodus from Egypt, or that God and Satan made bets at Job's expense.

However, such stories withstood the test of time because they speak to the human condition.  For example, one application of Adam and Eve is as a teaching regarding faith crisis - seeking knowledge and understanding, even at the expense of losing the comforting blanket of blissful ignorance.  It is better to know and discover all truth, even uncomfortable ones.  The Book of Job is a moral lesson on being a non-judgmental friend and that sometimes bad things happen to good people at no fault of their own.  Similarly for the gospels in the New Testament, I see these as less of definitive narratives of the events of Jesus' life (they contradict each other in significant ways so as to preclude the possibility of perfect historical accuracy) but rather a model for how to live our lives. Jesus "went about doing good." And so should we.

I see the Book of Mormon in a similar light.  I do not believe the Book of Mormon is historical for a several reasons I won't go into here. I read the Book of Mormon again this last summer and realized that it largely does not hold the same value that it once did and many of the issues within the text stood out much more clearly, but I still see value in some of its teachings. Some of the passages in Mosiah about how we are all beggars and ought to give to others freely or mourning with those that mourn and comforting others resonate strongly with me. 

Do you believe in God?

Yes, but my definition of God is likely different than yours.  I think, for the most part, man has created God in his image more than the other way around.  In other words, our image of God looks like us, thinks like us, likes the people we like, shares our prejudices, biases, and our general worldview. At some point, we may fall into a trap of worshiping the image we have created as we become more dogmatic and certain about what we think God looks like, acts like, and thinks like.  I do not see God as an anthropomorphic white male deity who intervenes in the minutia of our lives.  Rather, I see the concept of God in a more mystical sense - God represents the connective, creative force in the universe that binds us together rather than separates us into distinct tribes. I would currently describe myself as an agnostic pantheist.  Agnostic in that I do not claim an ability to know with certainty that there is a God.  Pantheism is broadly defined in the statement that God is all and all is God. Perhaps 1 John 4 best summarizes my view of God: "God is love."

And if I'm wrong, I trust that any loving God would understand and judge me based on my heart and a desire to do good and move forward with my life rather than whether I believed in the right creed.

Do you believe in Jesus?

The short answer is yes but it's complicated. I think this question deserves its own post, so more to come.

I have more questions

If you made it this far, I am thoroughly impressed.  Feel free to reach out directly for any other questions. No question is off limits. I love discussing Mormonism. Send me a private message on Facebook, an e-mail, text, call, leave a comment below, stop by my house, etc. Thank you for your continued love and support for me and my family.