Reorganized LDS

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by scottie

Seattle,

When you look back, what was the first thing that gave you a serious doubt about the LDS church and your testimony? I'm sure you've previously posted that, but I do want to search thru all of your posts.

Scottie

There was no "first thing," no moment of epiphany per se. I would say very generally that during college I became alienated from the LDS Church. If you're getting what you're supposed to get out of college two things happen:

First, you come away with an outlook of approaching the world with an uncompromisingly critical eye. Over two thousand years ago the Roman Lucretius wrote, "Our terrors and our darkness of mind must be dispelled by insight into nature and a scheme of systematic study." Korihor is a good example of someone with this outlook, and Joseph Smith was certainly aware of it. Socrates also had it. Lucretius noted that he learned his philosphy from the Greeks. The first one was Socrates, who said, "All I know is that I know nothing," and "the unexamined life is not worth living." That is what I am talking about, and this mindset very much appealed to me; I remember when I was hardly more than a tot (had to be before I was six, because we still lived overseas), and this wierd feeling would come over me that really mommy and daddy didn't, in fact couldn't have, the slightest idea about the cosmos. In other words, as a child instinct told me things weren't nearly as pat as mommy and daddy pretended. At these moments I'd get an intensely pleasurable sensation, and I remember gazing at my hand. So I was born a skeptic, and loved my college experience for introducing me into that culture.

Second, you develop an enhanced appreciation for high culture, everything from music, to art, to literature, to philosphy.

Ultimately, though, for me it was a value judgment. The values I learned in college have given me sublime spiritual satisfaction and release. But I've seen that the first value is at war with Mormonism, and the second is partially at war with it and much of the balance separated from Mormonism by a gulf. That is how I feel, anyway, in my marrow. Nobody is going to change my mind at this point.

In short, I decided I couldn't be happy in the Church because of what it was at a cellular level. Again, this is a personal value judgment and not anything anyone can really argue with me about. In order for the Church to appeal to me it would have to be something completely different from what it is. Of course I know many people who are just wired differently, and that's fine. Many of them see the same things I do but they ignore the Church's origins and stay with it because it makes them happy; for whatever reason the Church makes them happy though it has detracted from my happiness.

Bound up in what makes people happy in the Church may be familial and even career motivations, or psychological issues. I'm also willing to allow for something mysterious and sublime that just hasn't reached me. I've found that special mysterious thing elsewhere, in fact, that the Church just interferes with my accessing it. But that's just me.

By the way, as I've written before, I didn't even know about the Book of Abraham papyrus until long after I separated from the LDS Church; the same is true for when I read Brodie's book. My rejection of the Church is about who I am at a deep level.