Why I choose to Leave

As some of you know, Molly and I have chosen to no longer participate with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and we would prefer that none of our children were participants either.  This is a personal conviction that we have not come to lightly, but is one that we now hold firmly. 

The reasons for this are too many and too detailed to do them real justice here, but for me it basically came down to three questions:  Is the church what it claims to be?  If not, do I still get enough good out of it to make it worth the effort for my own benefit?  If not, is it worth staying in for the benefit of my children? 

To answer these questions for myself I have spent literally thousands of hours studying the issues of the church and through study and prayer have come to the firm conviction that the foundational elements of the church are not true and that the church consistently and purposefully misleads people about many of these foundational events.  After coming to that conclusion, I stayed active and held callings for about a year and a half to see if I could make it work as a non-believer before finally deciding that I was not personally finding fulfillment or providing any appreciated contribution.  After much reflection on church culture, and nudged somewhat by recent policy changes, I also no longer feel like the church is a good enough place to raise my children.

I want you all to know that we love and respect you and that our decision to separate from the church in no way reflects a desire to separate ourselves from any of you or your lives in any way.  We hope that remains your desire towards us as well. 

Let me start off by saying that my study of church history has led to some terribly inconvenient conclusions.  Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God.  The Book of Mormon is not the literal history of ancient Americans.  The Book of Abraham found in the Pearl of Great Price was not translated from ancient writings of Abraham “written by his own hand, upon papyrus” as claimed by Joseph Smith.  Countless verses in the Doctrine and Covenants that claim to be the very words of Christ himself were changed and edited several times as needed by Joseph Smith to keep up with his evolving doctrines and his claims of priesthood authority.  I do not believe that polygamy, which is hushed and ignored today but which cannot be ignored when looking at the foundation of the church, was commanded or sanctioned by God or that it will be practiced in the afterlife.  I do not believe that learning secret passwords or phrases and masonic handshakes or gestures are required to obtain exaltation.  I do not believe that the LDS church is God’s one true church or that the leaders of the church today have any more of a connection to God then you or I do.  I do not believe the church has a monopoly on bringing anyone happiness in this life or the next.

Having said all that, I acknowledge that Joseph Smith led an extraordinary life and accomplished a great deal in his short life.  He was a charismatic leader with some original ideas and he was able to inspire people to action.  Some of those actions were admirable.  I believe that some of the teachings of Joseph Smith and his successors, as well as some of the teachings of the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants can inspire people to live better lives and to be better people.  As I said before, I don’t believe the scriptures brought forth by Joseph Smith are what they claim to be, but good teachings can be found there if you are looking for them, in much the same way that you can find inspiration to be a better person in other works of good literature.  I believe that good people acting together can accomplish great things and that the church can at times be a vehicle for that action.  I believe that the leaders of the church today are generally good men doing what they think is good for the church and for humanity in general, even if that means misleading others at times.

It cost me a great deal of angst to consider leaving the church behind.  It was such an integral part of my life and I had spent so much time, money, and effort trying to build the church up.  I have invested more of my life into the church than to anything else.  I believe the church was a positive contributor in the effort to make me a better person growing up.  There were many times when I had wonderful and meaningful experiences at church sponsored activities.  I felt loved by God and by other people.  I learned to serve and to love others.  The church gave me a sense of belonging to something bigger than myself and taught me that there are things more important than an individual’s personal desires.

As I considered leaving, I worried a lot about my future without the church.  I worried for my children’s futures.  Looking at what the church gave me made we wary of not having that in my life in the future and made me wonder what kind of lessons and experiences my children would miss out on if I took the church out of their lives.  Also, I did not want to disappoint my parents and grandparents, who had sacrificed a lot for the church in their own lives and had made many sacrifices to make sure the church was part of my life.  I did not want them to feel like their efforts were for nothing or that I was rejecting what they considered the most important part of themselves and of me.  I really did not want to lose their respect.  I did not want to lose the respect of others in my community.  I knew leaving the church would bring a lot of judgement on me from all my friends and family and that it might mean that no matter how I lived my life outside of the church, the mere fact that I wasn’t sitting in a certain building three hours a week would cause me to be looked at as someone less worthy as a human.  I would be seen as someone who had lost his way and who was living a meaningless life with no chance for lasting joy or happiness.  And I would be seen as cruel and selfish for taking the opportunity of salvation away from my children. I would be seen as putting them in harm’s way outside the safety of the church.  On top of that I was worried that this action would feel to others like I was purposefully stepping away from them and their lives and they would feel that I loved and respected them less.  All of that is very overwhelming and heavy on my mind.

Out of all the various worries I had, my biggest was for my children and their children and so on.  Even though I had come to accept that the church was not true, I had to decide whether the good influences in the church outweighed the misinformation and bad influences in the church and whether good happy lives were possible outside of the church.  After looking hard at people outside the church (99% of Americans) I decided it was very unfair of me to categorize all of them as living sad, unfulfilling lives full of bad decisions.  There are so many good, smart, caring people out there who live normal, productive, happy, fulfilling lives without having to deal with some of the harmful aspects of the church and who make it just fine without the benefits of the church.  That realization makes it much easier for me to move away from the church and from some of the damaging teachings it holds to.

I guess in order to convey to you the sense that I have thought about many issues in great detail, I will discuss several of the teachings or general culture of the church that I feel to be detrimental to the well-being of my children.  You may not all agree with my conclusions, but at least you will understand my thoughts.

The main focus in the church today is obedience to the current leaders, regardless of whether your conscience aligns or your brain agrees with what they are asking you to do.  You are encouraged to pray about their guidance, but if the feelings of your heart and mind still hold firm to something that is contrary to the direction from the leaders, you are told you are being too proud and that your answer is wrong and to keep praying and obeying until your answer from God changes.  You are told that your strict obedience to their word will bring you to God even if they are wrong in their counsel.  That is extremely dangerous thinking that robs people of morality and has led to terrible atrocities in the past.  Obedience to something that you do not feel is right is immoral behavior.  And it is encouraged in the church.  You are taught over and over that if you disagree with what the current leaders are saying (which may very well be in direct contradiction to past leaders or future leaders) that you probably just don’t understand because you can’t see as clearly as they do.  This creates a feeling of inferiority among people and leads to not trusting your own moral compass or your own intellect.  I don’t want my children raised to believe that they should simply obey when their conscience tells them otherwise.  I don’t want my children raised to believe that they do not have to think about what they are being asked to do.  I want them trained to learn to make moral decisions on their own.  To think about how their actions affect other individuals and humanity in general and to act in a way that they take ownership of and can be proud of.  I don’t want them to be afraid to speak up when someone in a position of power tells them to do something they feel is wrong.  I don’t want them to be obedient; I want them to be moral.

You are taught not to lie in church lessons, but then encouraged to lie to strengthen your testimony or to convert others.  Quotes like, “your testimony is found in the bearing of it” are often stated by church leaders.  You are told that if you don’t know for sure that the church is true or that Joseph Smith was called of God, you should tell other people you do know it is true and that will bring you the testimony you have been looking for.  This isn’t gaining a testimony.  This is bearing false witness.  It has been proven by scientific experiment that your conviction of anything will increase the more you insist to others it is true, even if you know from the beginning it is a lie.  You will start to believe your own lie.  I don’t want my children raised to believe that repeating a lie often enough will make it true.  I don’t want my children raised in a culture that praises them when they lie to appear more faithful.

I don’t want my daughters raised in a culture that teaches them they are not as important to God as men are.  They will often be told in explicit terms that they are just as important, but have different roles then men, but they are shown in many ways that it just isn’t true.  I don’t want them going to the temple to see that only men had anything to do with the creation and that heavenly mother doesn’t participate in anything after this life.  I do not want them going to the temple to learn that women have to veil their faces before coming into the presence of God or praying to the Lord, while men do not.  I do not want them going to the temple and being anointed to become a queen and priestess to her husband, while the men are anointed to become kings and priests to God. I do not want them going to the temple and covenanting to hearken unto the counsel of their husbands, while their husbands make no such covenant to hearken unto them.  I do not want them to experience a temple marriage where a women promises to give herself unto her husband and the man is simply told to receive her.  I do not want them to feel the injustice at having their husband know their new name while never being allowed to know their husband’s.  I do not want them ending up with a man who takes these teachings found in the temple to heart and rules over his wife using the temple wording as an excuse for his controlling behavior.  I want them to be able to be participants in the important milestones of their children’s lives, not just spectators.  I don’t want them being told that the most important thing they can do in life is prepare to be a stay at home mother or to be shamed or looked down on if they decide to work outside the home.  I don’t want my daughters to experience the frustrating feeling that in everything they do in the church, they will have to get the approval of a man first.  In all, I don’t want them to experience the blatant sexist roles in the church.  And I don’t want my son exposed to any of those sexist ideas either.

I don’t want my children to grow up believing that their sense of worthiness is based on the opinion of an untrained clergyman.  I don’t want them to feel like their personal salvation is controlled by any person other than God himself.  I don’t want my teenage children to feel obligated to answer questions of a sexual nature in a closed door meeting with a grown man.  No matter how good that man is or how pure his motives are, even Bishops are sexual beings and their position of power creates a dynamic that is rife with the possibility of abuse. 

I believe most Bishops are good people who try to pass on good advice, but the fact is they are just the plumber or businessman from down the street and they have no training in proper methods of counseling or psychology and often struggle to give helpful advice and in some cases give terrible advice.  If we are depressed, or have bad children, or an abusive spouse, or are struggling with what to do with our lives in any number of ways we are told we should rely on the counsel of our Bishop.  I believe this is unhealthy in several ways.  First it creates a reliance on an untrained professional to tell us what to do in matters that are many times not even spiritual in nature.  Second, it keeps people from getting help from real professionals.  Third it creates a culture where the Bishop is seen as someone who can tap into God to give you personal advice that you couldn’t get to on your own.  Fourth, it creates a lot of work and stress for a lot of overworked and overstressed people who are called as Bishops.  I don’t want my children to grow up thinking that a Bishop is the most qualified person to give them marital or other personal advice.  I don’t want my children growing up in a culture that emphasizes one man’s ability to receive direction from God for them in their private lives that they are not able to tap into on their own.

I don’t want my children to grow up believing that their feelings on something indicate how true or false that thing is without looking for external evidence.  Feelings have been shown time and time again to be a terrible indicator of truth.  Feelings are easily manipulated by those who know how, and the church spends a lot of time and money with focus groups figuring out how to tap into those feelings and then tries to control the narrative about what those feelings mean.  All faithful believers in the many religions in the world know in their heart that what they believe is true, regardless of how many people have experiences that contradict their own and regardless of what other indicators are.  We know they can’t all be right.  Some of them have to be wrong, and Mormons are just as likely as anyone else to be in that group.   I want my children to have faith, but not blind faith that ignores all contrary evidence.  I want my children to be able to think critically about a topic and resolve to find good reasons for or against a thing before they make a decision about it.  I want my children to apply the same level of skepticism to their belief system as they would to any other issue and to make changes to their beliefs if they don’t hold up under the scrutiny of that skepticism.  And I want them to be able to do it without feeling like they are betraying God or feeling guilty for digging into questionable topics.  I want them to believe that if there is truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. 

The church teaches that happiness can only be found within the confines of the gospel, which means to them, the church.  They teach that the only path to truly happy families is by making and keeping sacred covenants in the temple.  They teach that God himself believes that all other creeds and religions are an abomination to God.  Though they may not explicitly state it, the previous teachings create a divide between church members and everyone else.  Church members come to truly believe that any family outside the church has a counterfeit marriage and the joy they feel as a family is only a fraction of what it could be.  Youth are taught to only hang out with youth with the same standards and that translates in most cases to mean only people who are church members.  Church members are isolated from the many wonderful and charitable people outside the church by these teachings and they are unable to experience the joy and love found in other faith traditions and lifestyles.  These teachings foster a superiority complex among members and non-members are judged and looked down on as inferior in moral reasoning, less blessed by God, and only superficially happy.  I do not want my children to grow up with this type of superiority complex and judgmental attitudes.  I want my children to judge people based on how they treat others instead of on what they are drinking or whether their shoulders are bare.  I want them to recognize the joy and love that is in the world outside the bubble of their culture.  The culture and teachings of the church make this nearly impossible to do as a member.

Much of church history has been sanitized for popular consumption in church approved books.  Many prophets and apostles have taught deplorable things or strange doctrines that most members will never hear about and that the church no longer teaches or emphasizes.  Many doctrines and many saving ordinances in the church have changed over time.  What one prophet calls an eternal truth may be disavowed and called false doctrine by a prophet 50 years later.  And yet church members have learned to ignore or deny that these contradictions and crazy teachings exist.  If they are cornered and shown they exist, then church members insist they aren’t important.  When their importance is shown, then they dismiss it by saying it is nothing new, as if that resolves the problem.  The double-think required to get around some of the history and teachings of the church is mind melting.  It forces us to leave any critical thinking at the door.  Arguing that the church might have been crazy in the past, but it is ok today doesn’t make it better.  If the church was crazy yesterday , how can we have any confidence that it is sane today?  If the doctrine of yesteryear is bad, how could the church of yesteryear be true?  Instead of truth being added to what was previously revealed, we get backing away and denials that those things were taught or ever important.  I do not want my children raised in a church where they have to turn their brain off or be forced to create elaborate and illogical answers to why 1+1 really equals 3 in some cases (when God wants it to).  I don’t want them to be made to feel like they are the crazy ones if they can’t make sense of the contradictions.  I don’t want them taught their whole lives that something is an eternal unchanging truth of God, only to find later in life that those “eternal” truths have changed many times over the course of history.

The church marginalizes people on the LGBT spectrum.  Prophets once claimed LGBT people don’t exist, and now claim that they might exist but aren’t worthy of exaltation if they act on their most fundamental urges for love and family or for clarity in their identity.  They are not allowed to participate fully in the church.  The church not only does not want gay couples in its congregations, it has even forbidden the children of gay married people from participating in essential church rites, whether they identify as gay themselves or not.   The church actively fights against equal rights for LGBT people and encourages its members to do the same.  This creates members who cast judgement on LGBT people for simply existing.  LGBT people aren’t talked about openly with love and understanding.  They are whispered about by the adults and mocked by the children.  You have been told that you are “allowed” to support LGBT causes privately, but if you support them openly, you will be subject to church discipline.  The proclamation on the family is not canonized but is still treated as scripture in the church.  It states that gender is an eternal part of your identity and completely disregards all whose parts are ambiguous and all transgender people who feel that their eternal self doesn’t match the parts on their human body.  I have been on both sides of the LGBT equal rights debate, and one day when I was on the side of tyranny and oppression, I tried to write out a good logical analysis why I believed gay people should not be allowed to marry.  After writing reason after reason, and then looking critically at my reasoning and discarding everything that didn’t hold up under the scruples of logic or the analysis of scientific study, the only answer remaining was that the leadership of the church didn’t want them to have equal rights, so God must have his reasons which were incomprehensible to me.  I recognized that this appeal to authority was also a logical fallacy and that if I couldn’t defend my own thoughts on the issue, I shouldn’t hold onto them.  From that point on, I realized that I was simply being unfair.  I don’t want my children growing up with a belief that LGBT people, through no action of their own, are inherently less worthy as humans, or that they should not have the same rights to find love and be married as the rest of the population.  I don’t want my children growing up without compassion to the real hardships these people face.   If one of my children comes out as LGBT, I don’t want them in a shame filled and hurtful environment, where they will be seen and treated as freaks.  If any of your children come out as LGBT I want them to know my house is a safe place for them, where they will be treated with dignity and respect.

The church in the past has been wholly anti-science and remains skeptical of science today.  It makes a lot fewer claims today on things that can be disproved and has backed away from past teachings of prophets claiming that scientific dating techniques and evolution are tools of Satan meant to deceive and confuse.  But the church still holds to beliefs that have been proven impossible and untrue, such as a global flood that covered the entire earth and killed everything alive a mere 4500 years ago, that the tower of Babel is the source of all the various languages on earth 4000 years ago, that there was no death in the world prior to the fall of Adam and Eve 6000 years ago.  Our scriptures still contain “revelation” that the sun gets its light from an outside source (Book of Abraham), that the earth is 6000 years old (D&C 77), that Adam was the first man on earth (Moses & Genesis), that the whole human race came from the descendants of two people who lived 6000 years ago in Missouri (Moses and D&C).  When asked about specifics, recent prophets have said to have faith in the scriptures when there are apparent contradictions between scriptures and science.  I do not want my children to grow up in a world where they have to compartmentalize religious truths from scientific truths.  I don’t want them to be taught things at church that are handily disproven simply by carefully observing the world around them.  I don’t want them growing up feeling like they should avoid the study of science because it conflicts with their religious beliefs.  I don’t want them going to institute class and being told to be wary of what they are learning in geology class.

As a side note, my ascent out of the church started while reading the church’s essays on historical topics found at https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng.  If you haven’t read these, you should.  Of these essays, Elder Ballard said, “It is important that you know the content of these essays like you know the back of your hand.”  I found that they are the best answers the church has to some of the more controversial topics.  Though it wasn’t the case for me, many faithful saints have read these and it has increased their faith and understanding.  Reading through the footnoted source documents made me realize there is a lot of misdirection and half-truths in these essays.  There has to be in order to portray these things with a positive spin.  But if you read the source documents that are cited in them, it is much easier to get at the truth.  The four main essays that I found difficulty with are:

• The Translation and Historicity of Book of Abraham (https://www.lds.org/topics/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng), which admits that Joseph’s translation doesn’t match the words on the papyrus in the least.  They couch it in a lot of apologetics on why we should still consider it scripture, and how we don’t really know how he got his translation, and even throw in false statements about missing most of the scroll, but it doesn’t change the fact that the translation of the figures in the book and Joseph’s Egyptian grammar and alphabet book is 100% incorrect.  Once I read the actual source documents from the time period, it was obvious that the Book of Abraham was simply a fraud carried out by Joseph Smith that couldn’t be proven false at the time, but is easily proven false today thanks to the Rosetta stone.  This makes everything else Joseph Smith said suspect in my mind.  He obviously did not have the gift of translation from God.  And he was obviously gifted at making up stories that on the surface sound scriptural and ancient.

• Race and The Priesthood (https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng), which admits that men who claim they are speaking for God can be totally wrong about God’s thoughts on a subject for almost 140 years.  The essay disavows the doctrine that race has anything to do with righteousness, contradicting the teachings in the Bible, Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants, not to mention nearly every prophet from Brigham Young to Spencer Kimball.  This is troubling to me because it not only casts doubt on current discriminatory policies which the leadership claim are from God, but it also casts doubt on the histories written in our scriptures.

• Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo (https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng), which admits Joseph Smith had as many as 40 wives, some of whom were as young as 14 years old and some of whom were already married to other men at the time Joseph convinced them to also “marry” him. It also confirms that Joseph Smith was publicly decrying anything other than monogamy in public but in private was manipulating women into marriage by claiming the work would be destroyed and he would be destroyed if they didn’t marry him.  His “carefully worded denials” are lies and would straight up be called lies by church leaders if anyone else tried to use them in any other context.  The stories of many of these women are heartbreaking.  As a side note, during the time frame that Joseph was claiming that God was sending angels with swords to force him into marrying yet another teenager, others in the country are facing the Great fire of New York, the battle of the Alamo, cholera epidemics which killed thousands, the trail of tears and Indians being wiped from the face of the land, the Irish potato famine, and one of the greatest financial crises of the 1800’s.  All of that misery and destruction, but God’s main priority was sending angels to get Joseph another wife.  Call me incredulous.

• Book of Mormon Translation (https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng), which admits that Joseph Smith mainly used a seer stone placed in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon, not the Urim and Thummim found with the plates as is the common narrative.  It also acknowledges that this was the same stone he used to look for buried treasure before obtaining the gold plates.  The essay tries to imply that looking for treasure with seer stones was a common and accepted thing in Joseph Smith’s day, which is untrue.  Incidentally, no buried treasures were ever found for his customers using his seer stone and Joseph was even tried and convicted in 1826 for being a “disorderly person and an imposter” for charging people to look for buried treasure with the same rock in the hat method he used to translate the Book of Mormon.  Another troubling thing mentioned in the essay is that the plates weren’t used, read from, or looked at in any way in the translation process.  I have to wonder why they would have been passed down for a thousand years and why Mormon and Moroni would have slaved for good portions of their lives compiling them, protecting them, and burying them just to sit in a box or covered on the table or sometimes not even in the same house while Joseph simply received revelation about what they said through a rock in a hat.

There are many other problems with the narrative of the foundation of the church, with the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and with the Church’s continued role as God’s one true church on the earth.  If you want more information, I found that there are several good sources with links to actual source documents and discussion on both sides of the issue at www.mormonthink.com, www.cesletter.com (and more convincingly at http://cesletter.com/debunking-fairmormon/), and many others.  A purely one sided, LDS faithful place for more information on controversial topics is http://en.fairmormon.org/Main_Page.   Some awesome podcasts about these subjects are found at www.mormonstories.org (episodes 268-270, 348-349, 571, and 638-639 are some of my favorites, but there are many others) and www.yearofpolygamy.com (start at the beginning and at least listen through episode 10).

Remember that despite what the leaders of the church might say, the internet is not the enemy.  It is a useful tool for finding information.  Some of that information is accurate and some is not, but you and I are capable of determining which is which.  What should be more worrisome to most members is that the church routinely tells people not to look at information from outside sources.  The reason for this is to protect the church, not to protect the truth.  Anytime someone tells you that you should never look at outside sources while investigating if what they are telling you is true, it should be an immediate red flag.  The church’s stance on access to information can be summarized in the words of Boyd Packer when he said, “There is a temptation for the writer or teacher of church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not.  Some things that are true are not very useful.”  True history may not be useful to the church, but it is useful to anyone looking for the truth.

In summary, though the church has at times been a good thing in my life, I cannot in good conscience continue to commit my time and efforts to an organization that blatantly misrepresents truth, consistently tramples on the civil and religious rights of good people, and creates an unhealthy environment to raise my children.  We will find good lives outside of the church where mental gymnastics, bigotry, and unhealthy teachings are not required.

Removing ourselves from the church will probably mean that we do things that you don’t agree with and you might feel inclined to let us know or to try to teach our children the things that their parents aren’t teaching them.  It is likely that we will feel that some things you are doing aren’t things that we would do either.  Let’s please try to love and respect each other regardless.  We will try not to be upset when we see you sacrificing for the church or posting things online we don’t agree with, and we ask you do the same for us.  We all have to be true to what we feel is right, and I believe we can do that with as much love and respect for each other’s choices as we always have.