Wednesday, October 22, 2008

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

6 comments:

djinn said...

" I was recently posed with an interesting dilemma from one such friend: attend a birthday dinner with some mutual friends or attend the ward activity. Our ward has gone from about 300 on Sunday to around 175 in the past six months. When I talk with my good friends in the surrounding 6 wards they say the trend is the same with declining attendance. I am just sad." (stolen from a comment at Times and Seasons about the Calendar guy having his degree yanked from BYU.)

Got that? 300 to 175 at church in 6 months! A tipping point has been reached

djinn said...

New inflammatory post at my blog. Maybe my rat should be holding a machine gun. But, a good argument:

To set the stage, Jesus is at the Garden of Gethsemane with his apostles Peter, James, and John, the apostles asleep. Roman soldiers led by Judas (suddenly former apostle) come and take Jesus away after that famous kiss. All of Jesus' apostles flee. Then there are these two verses:

Mark 14:51 And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him:
Mark 14:52 And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

What is going on? Naked boy, apostles asleep? The only one to try to save him from the guards? Hmmmm........... Hmmmmmmm............. How often did Jesus preach against Homosexuality? Let's see. That would be ZERO.

djinn said...

I guess no one in the family will be visiting now.

djinn said...

http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=2082#comment-546944

Read from roughly comment 190.

djinn said...

I'm a bad, bad, rat. But at least I have fetching pearls and a loverly heart--admittedly floating out of my body.

djinn said...

Call me. I think my phone is charged