Beside my religious awakening, I am also experiencing another major challenge/ change in my life and I can't help but feel that God is trying to teach me a lesson as I no longer believe in the Church, drink coffee, tea, etc....I need Him now more than ever but I can't overcome the belief that He will not guide me anymore because I am no longer part of the LDS fold. So lonely!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2012 09:19AM by angelina5.

What about those millions who feel his guidance but never heard of mormonism?
I believe your fears are unfounded.

Psalm 22:1

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?

My favorite Psalm. He heres you. You have been programmed to think LDS is true. God doen't punish. Breath. It will get better. Being brainwashed by the morg takes time.

A part of my brain knows that but it is yet to become a convincing reality for me. Thank you!

it sounds like you stop believing in mormonism, but still believe in God. if that is the case, I don't think God will punish you. he is proberly jumping for joy. You should be thankful that God got you out of the cult. he is very smart, so just be happy. as time goes on you will feel better. That is what a cult does to people. your feelings are certainly normal from what other people have gone through

In times of stress, mormonism programs us to react to stress and fear by leaning on God. I think God, if there is one, would want us to be strong and confident and not totally dependent on thinking some unseen power will handle life for us. Try to take challenges a day at a time or an hour at a time if need be. Every time you reach your time goal you'll be that much stronger and ready to face life with God as a team member or inspiration, not as a power to micro manage an individual's life challenges.

Angelina5, you are not alone. God is not punishing you. You are simply going through a very challenging time of your life right now. I wish there was something I could say that would help, and magically take all your pain away but there is not.

You are going through a tough time with both the divorce and learning the truth about Mormonism at the same time. I believe you told us that there was a custody battle involved as well. That is a lot to have on your plate at once. From what you have told us about your ex, he is probably not making it any easier on you.

You are a strong woman from a strong people, with a proud history of surviving a lot of tough situations. You have what it takes. Hold in there, and stay strong. Just remember, France gave us the Louvre, Mormonism gave us City Creek Mall. Where do you think God really is?

Hey you!! Thank you!!! Your words are so appreciated. The custody is no longer an issue, thankfully. But I am at an important crossroad in my life. You are too funny AND right!!

I never believed in the church, was BIC. But still held onto the belief that GOD was there and would help me.
So in a way I felt as you did, when GOD didn't help me when I prayed I thought it was some wrong doing on my part.

6 years ago I had to help my daughter with an addiction problem, we almost lost her. So I dug in and took care of her. Prayed for help, and in my mind "he" was with me.

Later that same year I started to have pain, day and night. Prayed for 3 years for help.
I went through all kinds of thoughts and wondered why he helped with my daughter. And not me. Did I deserve the pain, was it a lesson? blahblahblah. DUring the last year of the praying it was more like yelling and calling him out.

My son who I raised with no religion told me when I mentioned the praying, said you need a doctor. He also pointed out that since he watched me take care of my daughter that it was me doing the work, and a mothers loves gave mem the strength.
Had an MRI and saw that no amount of praying could fix what was broken.

It was then that the rest of the GOD thing crashed. SO even though I never beleived the mormon part, I still had so much
of the other stuff buried inside.
The worst part as you said is doubting yourself.
In the 3 years since then I have been happier and more at peace
because I don;t have the fear and guilt hanging over my head of being punished. Or rewarded by GOD.

You have inside of you what it takes to make good choices. And the more time away from the church you will see you are and can be amazing.

I found it helpful to totally reject the mormon god.
I told myself (and anyone who asked) that I just did not believe in him anymore.
Just took him totally out of the picture.
God could stay, but the morg god was gone. *poof*
(That also helped explain quite simply why I didn't believe in the church anymore. If the morg god doesn't exist, he can't really have a church now can he.)

I have a good TBM friend who has a life threatening disease ... God has nothing to do with his suffering. It's called life. When you get your first random check in the mail, it will hit you that it had nothing to do with you paying or not paying tithing. Trust me ... it's all in your head. Drive on ... it will get better.

It's best to just do your best to deal with whatever comes your way without wondering if it was a reward or punishment.

Good things are often seen as a reward or blessing to the "righteous". For the wicked, they are lures or tempations of the adversary, or temporary rewards.

Bad things could be seen as a punishment to the "wicked", but to the "righteous, they are a trial.

The only difference is if you classify yourself as righteous or wicked.

What I'm saying, is that no matter WHAT you believe or how you conform to expecations of that religion, you could find a religious explanation for the good and bad in your life that would support your beliefs, no matter WHAT those beliefs are.

But it wouldn't get you any closer to dealing with life effectively, or any closer to understanding the truth.

An incorrect explanation of why things are happening in your life just makes it harder to deal with it.

So just figure out what you truly believe, and don't read too much into things you can't control.

I'm sorry for what you are going through. Crap happens. Even if you don't buy into false religion like Mormonism. Sometimes crap happens BECAUSE you don't believe in Mormonism, because people GIVE you crap for leaving. But that doesn't make Mormonism true.

It's hard to rewire those old scripts about rewards and punishments. I found that I had to make a conscious effort to challenge those sorts of things for quite a while until they stopped coming up.

and it does take time to unwind the tentacles of mormon brainwashing, since they are also profoundly unconscious.

Here are some examples:

"Bad things happen to me, ergo, I am at fault." Mormonism teaches that somehow there is a magical, constant universal judgment at play in the cosmos punishing and rewarding according to some capricious, unknowable formula. The analysis depends on behavior and thoughts and intents and shoulds and shouldn'ts and dreams and fears and wants and desires --- and well, you get the picture, it is a crazy-making morass of abusive insane guessing-game @#$%& without any possible rational or useful basis. This is a psychological cult device to create fear and dependency.

"I am somehow at the center." A great idea, but the truth is you're just another sincere person living your life, trying your hardest, encountering problems, experiencing happiness, being human. You are not "special" and you are just in the flow of circumstances and context in this world like all the rest of us. Stuff happens: windfalls and doo-doo alike, and the universe is not pre-occupied with you or with any other person's particulars. Mormonism wishes for you to believe that god and the universe thinks you are special (as long as you are worthy), and that it is somehow a VIRTUE to be obsessively super-focused on your own private little world. This is a psychological cult device to create compartmentalized thinking and to separate you from your instinctual center.

"I know what god is like." If you are a BIC mormon, then it is likely everything you ever learned about god and your entire existential world view you got from mormons. Once it is clear that mormonism is entirely false from the beginning, there is no reason anymore to imagine that its views on god are any more valid than its views in people getting their own planets. Its all bullshit, but it is often difficult to be clear with oneself about the origin of one's belief system and it is very easy to hold on to concepts and dependent conclusions that "feel" good, but in fact have their origins in mormonism. It may end up that the mormons got a few things right, but it is about as likely that a random monkey happened to write Shakespeare, and besides, I for one will want to have ample evidence in any case.

Extracting your personality from the insidious mormon cult-think takes time and effort. There always seems to be another layer of programming that emerges and must be dealt with. But it does get easier and each time a "layer" can be shot and killed, confidence, wholeness and a restored authenticity is the result.

I think we have learned to punish ourselves well. It is our thoughts that damage us not God. Love is.

I think God doesn't deserve unwarranted respect. Even if he created us, it does not imply that he should be able to find us lacking and condemn us for it. And if he does, what does that say about his powers of creation, that he makes a flawed creation and condemns the creation for it?

I realized soon after learning that the Church was not true, that if God really would punish me and my children because of choices we were intelligently making with the minds he gave us, then he did not deserve my respect. I think he ought to earn respect the same way people do, by being a thoughtful, caring individual.

I personally would like to believe in a loving God, one who values us unconditionally the way I value my own children.

The greatest thing I gained by leaving Mormonism was letting go of the fear that I wasn't good enough to God.
Believe in yourself and hang in there.

+1

It sounds like Angelina's God is a real jerk.

There are 86,400 seconds in a 24-hour day. Divide that number by 7 billion, the number of people on Earth.

The answer is 0.000012342857 this is the amount of time in seconds that God has for you each day.

Divide that number into 1. The answer is 81,018. That is the fraction of a second that God has for you each day.

1/81018 of a second per 24 hours is the amount of time that God has to spend worrying about how to punish you. If you live to be 82 years old, your lifetime allocation of God's time is less than 3/8 of one second.

The only reasonable conclusions are (1) that God is an imaginary being who almost certainly does not exist and (2) if somehow God does exist he doesn't have enough time to worry about how to punish you.

If you REALLY want to worry about something bad happening to you, then worry about a one ton meteor coming down from outer space that hits you and kills you. That is a more realistic thing to worry about.

that was the best damn explanation ever. LOVE IT.

It comes from the character of Marcus Cole, from the telelvisions eries Babylon 5:

"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life *were* fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

I left last November, and still butt heads with this issue.

There was a problem that came up, and my first thought was God was punishing me for leaving the church. I actually felt fear. I tried to talk some sense into myself. Telling myself this is life. I occasionally had this problem when I was active, prayed about it, and it was resolved. That was a testimony builder.

This time was different. I had the thought I was being punished. However, just like in the past, it resolved itself.

Wow! It's just life! Stuff happens. Both good and bad. Sometimes it straightens itself out, sometimes we have to work at fixing problems. God isn't staying up nights trying to figure out what misery he's going to unload on me next.

I'm going to rant a little, be advised.

This is a bi-product of mormonthink. If something sucks, it's because you screwed up, not because bad stuff happens anyway, totally autonomously from your behavior.

The saying "into each life, a little rain must fall" doesn't come with a codecil of 'if you're bad.'. Bad things happen because you cannot control certain aspects of your existence. That's just life; some good, some bad. Take the good with you wherever you go, leave the bad buried where it fell.

Thinking that god has abandoned you because you left the church is likely not any kind of abandonment. It's just that now, instead of every minute aspect of your life being determined by an exterior force, your life is open to being determined by YOU.
You get to decide where you go from here, and how you're going to lead your life. Before, you were expected to twist & turn until you fit someone else's ideals. But now, the ideals are up to you.

Independence can be lonely sometimes, but it won't last long. You're gaining so much more than you're losing.

You have great wisdom and strength inside you, which comes through in your post. You understand that understanding of the mind is insufficient--that there is a deeper level, of the heart, of your Being/Soul. It is this deeper level that needs to be free of the chains of Mormon brainwashing.

To strengthen and heal yourself and your natural spirituality, go to nature. There is no doctrine there, yet almost everyone feels the presence of God in the mountains, on the beach. Go alone and do not be rushed. Go for a hike and pay attention to the sounds. Get away from people and try to identify every sound you hear. It is important to stay present, be in the moment, and not let the Mind lead you away into thoughts about the past or the future.

Sounds take place only in the present and training your attention to focus on the Now will enable you experience your connection with God. You were brainwashed to believe it came only through the priesthood, but you have stood tall and rejected that lie. Look at how beautiful you are as a human being and remember that the spiritual experience belonged to all times and has been recorded down through thousands of years of human history across the entire world. Wherever humans have existed, they have sensed that there was a higher level of being in the world, that humans existed on more than one plane of existence.

We share one dimension with animals, but then we look to the horizon and seem to require something called "meaning" in life. That hunger, that desire predates Joseph Smith by millenia. His egomaniacal puffery makes one wince when you think of the truly great spiritual leaders the world has given us across the ages.

I encourage you to explore the many ways people have connected with God that have nothing to do with paying 10%. Try mindfulness meditation. The military is investigating it to help the armed forces who come home with PTSD. Leaving Mormonism also produces people with PTSD. We are victims of emotional abuse and extortion--it is only natural to feel flat. You were told you were a participant in a global struggle against Evil, you were a Priestess, a Queen, a future Ruler in a vividly painted fantasy which they called "The Plan of Salvation."

Mindfulness anchors a person in the present, which allows healing. There's no Satanic battle raging for your soul. There's just you and the quiet of the forest. You and the sound of the wind in the trees. You and the Earth, like your ancestors before you--all survivors, all smart and well-adapted to this beautiful planet. You were designed to connect with a spiritual life just as naturally as you connect with water when you are thirsty.

In Mormonism, we sacrifice the glorious present for a future Celestial Kingdom, which we now realize is never coming. That can leave you feeling empty while standing in a garden by a waterfall with swans.

This life right here is AMAZING!

((hugs))

Anagrammy

There is always a price to pay for honesty and truth. Suffering happens to good people and it isn't God being mad at you for living an authentic life. Do you think He cares if you have a cup of coffee or even a glass of wine? He could care less. Would you care if you were God?

Good times, bad times. Sometimes a whole lot of bad at any one given time.

It's true that life is unfair. It can be unfair in a good way (you get an unexpected and undeserved windfall,) and unfair in a bad way (a loved one is struck with a terminal illness.) You have to prepare as best you can for different eventualities, and love the people that you're with for as long as you have them.

It saves a lot of time and mental anguish if you can let go of expectations. If you expect the universe to reward you for being a good person or for enduring so many tough times, the universe may have a rude awakening for you. Or not. It's really rather random.

It helps to keep things in perspective. I was recently reading about an African who was the son of a tribal chief of the Songhai Empire (Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima.) In the late 1700's, he was sent to Timbuktu to study, and he became literate in Arabic, studied mathematics, medicine, etc. During a tribal war he was captured, sold into slavery, and transported to America. He was a slave for more than 40 years. Eventually he was freed and made his way to Liberia. He wanted to return home, but he was never able to find his way.

Whatever we have to endure, it is easy to find people who have had it far, far worse.

You are made of tough stuff. You come from a long line of people who were also made of tough stuff. You will get through this. You will be okay. And someday good fortune (possibly random and undeserved) will strike once again. Be ready for it!

I'm reminded of George Costanza in "Seinfeld."

He has a slight discoloration on his lip and he worries that it's cancer. He says to Jerry, "It's God punishing me!"

Jerry replies, "I thought you didn't believe in God."

George says, "I do for the bad things."

"What's God got to do with it?"

Why would you ever think that a deity is involved with your daily struggles? Do you really imagine that an immortal supreme being is following the minutiae of your life with a celestial microscope? If so, you need to put your feet on the ground. Otherwise, you're floating.

Bad things happen to good people all the time. If there is a god I doubt it cares anything about Mormon worship practices.

I ask because besides what particular denominations teach many religious people project onto God their experience of their parents without realizing it. I found it very help as I was leaving Mormonism to consider other images and metaphors for God. For me at that time Rev. Matthew Fox's book Original Blessing and then Wicca and NeoPaganism broke up the old images of a male, punative God. I'm not pushing either of these approaches, just saying there are alternatives to what you have experienced to this point. Suckafoo's question above was also a starting place for me. I hope you feel some relief soon.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2012 01:30AM by robertb.

is there a god?

if there's one out there, he's like a drunk stepfather who randomly attacks the little ones in the house just to show how macho he is.

he's upset with you and he's upset with millions of kids dying of starvation right now.