Part two: believe half of what you see and none of what you hear

... I realized that I was Mormon and always would be, It had nothing to do with what I thought, just who I was. I did not have to think about any of the “problems” ‘cause they did not matter, what mattered was my family and I did not and could not really know anything with 100% confidence. If the church wasn’t true then I’d still live a good life and if it was...

So I was a practicing non-believing Mormon, went to BYU, had church callings and told my bishops how I felt... Two of said bishops confided in me that they were in a similar boat... this made me feel better, well sort of.

I learned to cope with church meetings by finding interesting people to talk to, sleeping through many meetings and just leaving rather than wrestle with the crazy talk and dumb headed beliefs that lead to conclusions I was not willing to embrace i.e.. that the the church and all of its beliefs were a thing made up by people.

Then one day my girl friend, who I planned on marrying, asked me what I thought of the church and the Book of Mormon. I couldn’t give just my cover story of “good leaders good plan for life” and had to vocalize what I really thought, something I’d never really done, I would tell people about my concerns... but what I really thought...

I put it all into words... “the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith and is not a record of ancient America, Church leaders are good people but what they are teaching in not what they report it to be.” it felt good to finally get it off my chest.

... more later