STORY OF THE WEEK

Thanks to a lovely youtube subscriber for giving me permission to share this profound story. REMEMBER, SEND ME YOUR STORY ON LEAVING MORMONISM OR ANY CULT!

I was born of goodly parents. Raised in the church, I was the kid who knew the answers to every question in Primary. I loved singing the songs and from a young age gospel knowledge came easily to me.

I grew up in the south, where Mormonism was very much the minority religion. I think it works best as a minority religion, to be honest. My best friends were not members or even religious, so I became known as the guy who didn't drink, swear or watch R-rated movies. I was an Eagle Scout and seminary class president.

Now at this point I'm probably sounding a little bit like Nephi, writing page after page about how awesomely righteous I was. I wasn't perfect, I'm just trying to lay the groundwork here. I wasn't what people would've thought of as 'apostate material'.

Though there weren't many Mormons my age, I was lucky enough that the only cute Mormon girl in the ward liked me and we dated through high school. Unfortunately, after two years, an awkward stumble to second base caused us no end of humiliating conversations with priesthood leaders and pretty much smothered our young love with divinely sanctioned guilt (the best kind of guilt!)

I served a mission in Europe, where I eventually figured out how to speak French and became an office elder, then a zone leader. This is about where I started to wonder if something was wrong here. I thought Mission Presidents were divinely inspired. But I wasn't a great missionary. I was serving a mission because I literally believed that God wanted me to do it, but that was my only reason. I really didn't want to be there. I hated tracting. I loved teaching people who were interested but I hated shoving my sales pitch in the face of people who weren't. I overslept. I didn't study every day. I even saw the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at a member's house. Why was the mission president raising me up through the 'ranks' as it were? I had always been charismatic but I thought that there must've been more 'diligent' missionaries that could've done the job.

I returned from the mission to BYU. This is where I discovered that I hate Mormon culture. I had never been around so many Mormons, and there were so many little things that seemed annoying or weird about the lifestyle. Still, I was determined to get married at the ripe old age of 24 and start my own little Mormon brood.

It never happened. I dated a few girls that I actually liked, but inevitably they would turn out to be somewhat unstable (though in retrospect the bizarre dating atmosphere in BYU probably makes everyone a little crazy). I ended up graduating single, a sin at least as bad as sloth in Mormon theology.

Still, all was not lost: I could go to grad school at BYU! Lo and behold, who should walk in to my first class of grad school but a beautiful single girl who had transferred from another university to get her masters at the Y! We hit it off and were inseparable. God was finally answering my prayers, after the trial of my faith!

Except...my faith wasn't exactly great. Sure, I still believed it was true, but I found church to be boring and was annoyed by the constant mission stories in singles ward Sacrament talks. (Helpful hint to all the overzealous RMs: it usually isn't necessary to say "When I was an AP in Argentina" before you begin your story). I usually left before the full 3 hours were done. I did my hometeaching faithfully, but reluctantly, and at the end of the month (it seemed as much an inconvenience for the people I visited as it was for me). I didn't read the Book of Mormon every day (I had read it 10 times on my mission, and really felt kind of like I had found everything there was to find in it). I wasn't even praying every night, morning, and meal! Oh! And of course there were other discretions that I won't name in mixed company, but suffice it to say it is worse than a disease according to every Priesthood session ever.

Naturally, this 'last chance' at marriage made me recommit to be the good Mormon priesthood holder. I went at it, to borrow the over-used Mormon cliche, 'with every fiber of my being'. Unfortunately, this girl suffered from borderline personality disorder, and after a heartbreaking rollercoaster of a relationship, we eventually went our separate ways.

So there I was, 27, single, and almost ready to graduate with a Masters from BYU. I was a pariah AND a menace to society (although it doesn't seem fair that Brigham Young would label single men a menace when he was taking all the women. If he didn't have more than 50 wives, maybe there would've been enough for all the menaces to society to have one too!). At this moment of despair, at my weakest point, Satan, the great tempter, that old liar, chose his moment to attack.

My cousin and I were discussing things about the church we both didn't approve of. I was in full apologetic mode, using chiasmus and other rhetorical nonsense to defend the faith of my fathers. To me, there was a great deal wrong with the CULTURE of the Church and with some of the PEOPLE, but the doctrine itself was true. Joseph Smith was a prophet, and everything else that came from that had to be true.

My cousin informed me about the Book of Abraham, that they'd found it, translated it, and it was nothing at all like what we have in the Pearl of Great Price. I finally decided to research this myself and suddenly it all fell into place. All the things that seemed weird, or wrong, or unsound about Mormonism...what if Joseph Smith had just made it up?

I needed to read more. I devoured Rough Stone Rolling, An Insider's View of Mormonism, and many other books. I probably read more about Mormonism that semester than I did for my master's thesis.

When I finally admitted that it was all a con, I was free. I wasn't a bad person because I wanted to skip church or thought it was boring. I wasn't a bad person for not reading the scriptures every day. I was free.

There's more, of course, but to make an already long story somewhat shorter, I took a job in Korea and got out of Utah. I live the life I want and no longer feel guilty about imaginary things. And in a weird way, not getting married young was a blessing (or would have been a blessing if I still thought a bearded immortal alien was handing those out). So many of my friends who go through this same journey are having to do it while trying not to ruin a marriage with a still-believing spouse. I got to do it as a free-roaming bachelor, and that has made it far easier.

That is my story. Sorry it is so lengthy, but I've never actually sat down and typed it out before. No one has ever asked for it. For anyone wondering if people can still find 'joy' as apostates, the answer, in my case, is "Yes, in fact, I've never felt better about who I am and what life is all about."