Dear Friends and Family,
I know that Kenny approached some of you about two weeks ago and stated that I was starting to have trouble with my faith. The truth of the matter is that I have been having trouble with faith ever since I was exposed to how the leadership really works in the church on my mission. I’ve been lying about how I felt ever since, but I always believed it was true, but couldn’t fit what I felt into how I was treated. I thought that all I needed was to focus on the gospel more and try harder, but nothing ever came. I barely made it out of my mission by my own sheer will and a determination to not let you down while being a good example for my siblings. I kept the faith, but I never really felt joy or happiness even though I was trying.
In the first semester of college, I was trying to teach one of my roommates about the church, he seemed to think it was all crazy, and I said something I was feeling but wasn’t registering. I told him that “If I hadn’t been born into the church I probably wouldn’t have joined it.” I have reflected on that moment a lot, as I was being very honest to myself when I said that. I continued to fade in and out of depression during my college years and I found it very hard to feel joy regardless of how well I was following the gospel.
I had lost trust in God, I hadn’t felt that he truly cared, as I was hurting and he never sent relief. Many times I prayed for a leader, any leader, to come and help me through inspiration, none ever came. Internally, I pleaded in interviews for them to discover my pain through asking the right questions. They never asked the questions. I sought counseling through the church to overcome my problems and they didn’t have the answers.
While on my mission, I had the opportunity to talk to a LDS Apologetic and I was introduced to a lot of problems with church history and the doctrine of the church. I felt that my faith would be impenetrable with all the knowledge he had given me and that there was an explanation for everything that seemed to be at first a major problem with the Book of Mormon or the church. He seemed to have an answer for all of these problems, but I never researched anything he mentioned further. I had heard of the Adam-God theory, Joseph Smith’s many wives, and explanations for why the iron swords in the Book of Mormon weren’t found.
Despite all this, my testimony slowly was dying with the inconsistencies I was seeing in the leadership of the church and what the church taught. The church taught that all the leadership had the power of discernment, and that they represented the Lord during interviews. I was assured that I couldn’t lie to them, because they would know. I had faith of that on my mission when I first approached my mission president informing him that I felt depressed. He said I wasn’t depressed and that I just needed to go out and do the work, stating that this is where happiness came from. I remember asking him for a blessing at this time to help with the depression, but I only got worse. I thought that my God was a God of miracles, but why he couldn’t even raise the depression of a devoted and confused missionary. Weeks later, I insisted that I needed to see someone as I was having suicidal thoughts.
Later on in my mission, near the end, I was placed with two companions that didn’t think depression was real and thought that everybody claiming it in the mission was making it up. These two missionaries practically worshipped the Mission President and their attitudes matched most of the leadership in the mission. Before this happened, I had realized that the mission president only called leadership that wouldn’t disagree with him. They never thought for themselves and obeyed blindly. I determined that my two companions views reflected what my Mission President felt.
In college and afterwards, I saw many examples of people who had committed what the church considered sin, and without remorse continued to practice temple attendance. I was taught that the person inspecting temple recommends should be able to prevent unworthy people from entering the temple. They didn’t, they never stopped anybody who the computer didn’t tell them too.
This and many doctrinal questions loomed on my mind. One of the main reasons that I never fully explored these doubts was that I knew that coming to the conclusion that the church wasn’t true would rip my family apart. I really love my family and that was the last thing I wanted. Eventually living the lie was too much for me and it was causing sincere depression to keep living something that I didn’t believe anymore. This was causing real problems for my marriage and I had to find the answers.
I first faced the worst case possibility that I would loose my wife, my son, my parents, and my extended family and friends. I also considered that under LDS doctrine that I might end up in the 2nd kingdom of heaven and that I wouldn’t be able to see my wife and son for all eternity. I decided that I was fine with the 2nd kingdom, as it was always stated that it was supposed to be far better than this world anyways. I realized that I could live with losing everything else that I already had in this life if it meant that I could genuinely be who I am and not always feel guilty for being me. It would hurt, but It would hurt a lot less then what life was currently for me. I finally gave myself permission to consider that the church might not be true.
That’s when all the pieces fell into place. All the doctrinal inconsistencies answered their own questions. Even though I internally felt that I had the answer, I didn’t want to just take it on faith that the church wasn’t true, after all I was betting my whole life and afterlife on that conclusion. I read books about the church and I followed the references to church websites to find the truth. I soon found that the church explanations and official versions of it’s history were very incomplete and misleading. I was never informed that Joseph Smith Jr. was married to women that were still married to their first husbands. This wasn’t all that I learned, but the mountain of evidence was clear to me. The church couldn’t be true because Joseph Smith wasn’t a prophet and the book of mormon was not inspired.
Finding this out scared me, because I was worried about divorce from Denise and being shunned by my family for being truthful. I also encountered rage at the wasted time, energy, false guilt, hurt feelings from leaders, and more from the church. I also felt that I wanted my family to know the truth, to leave the church because I knew it wasn’t true and was damaging their lives. I could not sit by quietly and just disappear while my family was deceived. I loved them too much to allow that without a fight. I knew most of them would be hurt by my leaving alone and that it would probably hurt them more to have me publicly oppose the church. I knew it would personally hurt Mom as the church heavily ties women’s successfulness in church to how well her children do in the church. This teaching isn’t what women should feel about their children or family.
I eventually confronted Denise with these new beliefs and we decided we’d leave the church together. She always hated how she felt each week for not being the mom that the church wants every mother to be. She, at first, had started wanting to leave quietly, which I was supportive of, but after she had gone to church, she couldn’t sit there and listen to the lies and contradictions that they taught. It took us a week debating and talking about our future before we finally concluded that we needed to let friends and family know that our beliefs had changed as it affects our relationships. We really wish it could have been smooth and non-confrontational, but the church engenders such deep feelings that we didn’t think that would be possible. We also had our own integrity to consider, we could not go on letting other people think we believed still, it would be too dishonest to allow people to think we shared the same fundamental belief that the church was true.
Contrary to what the church teaches, we did not become evil doers. We still very much value our marriage, family, friends, honesty, integrity, service, and supporting good causes. I’ve felt incredibly happier and I’ve been able to spend a lot more time playing with Zach. I also feel free to explore any interest that I have, regardless of whether it will damage my “faith” or not, as I am only interested in finding truth in the world and being with my wife and son. I have a new perspective on life and I feel I now cherish time with Denise and Zach all that much more as I feel that this life is the only one that I will ever get. I truly hope that you all will still want to be a part of my life, but I understand if you aren’t ready for that yet given my new position.


If you are interested in knowing the facts that I have found then please feel free to ask me in person, over the phone, email or via facebook messaging. We would be happy to show you these findings but we do not wish to have conflict and wish that you’d allow us to voice our opinions as openly as you have in the past for the church and politics. We also request that we restart relationships not based on a religious commonality, but work on growing our relationships as a family and as friends. We would love to find other things in common with each of you and are very excited for the possibilities of learning about each other.


------------
Denise goes by Kenny or vodkamdew



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2013 03:03PM by jonathantech.