Dear Visitor,
In 2008, after years of soul-searching, profound thought, study and spiritual reflection, I officially resigned from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made, especially since I had invested so many years of dedication and service within the Mormon church. When I left Mormonism, I started an amazing new journey in life, an on-going journey that I will share here, on this website. In fact, I discovered my own life for the first time, and a marvelous new world...[ click here for more ]
Why I Left the Mormon Church – Part 2 - My Wife’s Family Roots
“Why I left the Mormon Church” can be summed up in one simple, profound statement:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints literally broke my heart.
This is part 2 of “Why I Left the Mormon Church” — part 1 can be found here: http://mylifediscovered.com/2009/03/31/why-i-left-the-mormon-church-part-1/
In part 1, I provided a brief background of my deep family roots, the purpose of which is to help frame how invested I was in Mormonism, going back generations, and reinforced with new convert enthusiasm. Here, in part 2, I’ll discuss a little about my wife’s family background, and some of the similarities to my own, along with the beginnings of some of the threads that led me to some discoveries about myself.
This is a very difficult subject to approach, since I know that eventually some of my wife’s family may read what I write here. I’m sure some of them will take issue with some of what I write.
As I mentioned in my first post after leaving Mormonism, I choose to walk within the lines of anonymity as best as possible for now, since I don’t want to hurt my family by having to retread some of the experiences we’ve shared, or events that I know about in my wife’s family. I want to be as respectful as possible, and will try to avoid any highly sensitive areas in this post.
Having said that, the story of my journey out of Mormonism wouldn’t be complete without giving some of the background of my wife’s family, as I understand it and have experienced it during my marriage. This is part of the back-story, and shows how deeply entrenched both sides of my family are in Mormonism, and how difficult it was for me to even begin seeing how damaging Mormonism was for me, personally.
Like with my side of the family, my wife’s family is made up of genuinely good people, and as I discussed in part 1 of Why I Left the Mormon Church, it made it that much more difficult to see the problems of Mormonism, and that much more difficult to stand up and walk out of Mormonism for good.
To be as fair as possible up front, my wife comes from a strong, and in some ways traditional Mormon family, made up of good people, with many similarities to my family. They also have a long history in the church dating back many generations, with their own established base and legacy of traditions and well-known, respected Mormon scholars and leaders to cement their family’s investment into Mormonism. In fact, in some ways, her Mormon family heritage was even more strongly defined than my own, which says something right there. Her family has a few recent higher-profile Mormon luminaries (for lack of a better term). That made Mormonism even “more right” in the minds or at least words of some her family members.
Sure, they have their own normal personal challenges and relationship issues just like any other family. And there’s always the “black sheep” so to speak. But they generally try to do what’s right, by their individual points of view, and all of them are decent, talented, hard-working people, worthy of emulation in a lot of ways by many people, in or out of the Mormon church.
There’s a lot to like about my wife’s immediate family. They are generally pretty close to each other, and they can be fun to do a variety of things with. They value education and pursue their interests for the most part, so it’s easy to engage with them in their areas of interest. A couple of them like to talk mostly about themselves, which is fine if you have the self-confidence to just listen, but even those are decent, interesting folk and good representatives of the human race. They are also all generally good at what they do. Most of them are now vocal about their opinions as adults (although this wasn’t remotely the case when I met some of them as children), and are not afraid to share their opinions with almost anyone now. Some of them are genuinely patriotic, and clearly care very deeply about their country. In some ways, they are another example of what a good Mormon family can produce for society.
I have tried to appreciate and love all of them, although at times I’m sure I’ve had my own issues with some of them. It’s not relevant specifically with whom, but there have been times when my own view was clouded by my perception of some of their behavior, and I had to work on my own judgmentalism. I definitely have especially deep, loving feelings for some of them who I feel are superb humans to the core, Mormon or not Mormon was and is irrelevant to me. I wish for the best for all of them, even the ones who are so strictly and deeply enmeshed in Mormonism they have little chance of seeing anything but their own Mormon-enlightened path. No matter how unhealthy I consider that to be, I hope for their profound happiness and peace in life.
I’m sure they are all good people. Yes, they have their problems like anyone else, they are after all, only human, just like my family. If you had a fair chance to get to know the good things about them, and there are many, chances are you’d walk away with a generally positive view of them as basically smart, confident, decent, productive human beings. Good folk, good family, worthy of emulation by many Mormons, and yes, another Mormon success story in some ways, similar to my own family once again.
In fact, I’ll be very honest and admit that to a small degree, her good family name in the church was an attractive quality when I met my then-future wife. I knew she came from “a good, solid Mormon family” and that she knew what it was like to have a solid Mormon legacy to draw strength from so that we could potentially start our own solid little Mormon family unit if we got married. I thought it was a common base that would be a benefit to us, not a detriment at the time.
Mormonism is great, isn’t it? Case closed once again.
Not so fast.
On closer inspection, we can begin to analyze the complexities of relationships, where Mormon family history and big one-track personalities intersect with the bright, impressionable, open minds of childhood. The natural growth and development of unique personalities are sometimes derailed and strongly pushed onto paths that may not resonate for them. And sometimes good, talented people can learn to develop patterns to doubt themselves, and question the innate goodness they already have, with or without the Mormon church in their lives.
Through years of observation, I noticed that my wife’s family, while sincerely well-intentioned, was not very open-minded to things outside their world-view. No surprise there. The pattern persists today, in different forms. But I supposed that’s normal enough, in any religion or society, right?
What surprised me was the degree to which some of them were close-minded on certain issues. This close-mindedness manifested itself in black-and-white language, a clear pattern of judgmentalism, control issues, self-esteem issues, and other self-reinforcing patterns that for me were very unpleasant to witness at times. Over the years, this mellowed as each individual family member found their own voice and began to develop their own identities.
My father-in-law, in particular, had surprisingly myopic views for someone so educated and intelligent. In the early years, but to a lesser degree in recent years, his brand of close-mindedness was more overt, and he tended to project one view so strongly, with such a strong voice, that it almost smothered other people around him at times. For strong, self-confident adults it was tolerable — fine at best, and annoying or mildly offensive at worst. For children, it was clearly unhealthy. It progressed from his outward confidence to self-righteous declaration sometimes, then ultimately bordered on (and occasionally crossed the border into) clear arrogance and a pompous, yet infantile behavior pattern that reminded me of a very socially inept teenager. Quite the paradox compared to the Jesus he genuinely loved. Couple this with the patriarchal paradigm of Mormonism and you can get some very interesting results.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I consider my father-in-law to be a good man. It took me many years to understand why that might be happening with him, and even more years to begin to gain the compassion to understand some of his life story and the roots that seem to have affected and reinforced his behavior. The same goes for my mother-in-law, and her profound life-story. She has a fascinating story and I’ve only begun to understand glimpses that help me grasp why there were certain patterns in my wife’s family.
And by extrapolation, I gained a picture of what issues were preeminent in my wife’s childhood which would later affect my marriage in ways I could have never imagined. I will try to gently, respectfully elaborate on that in a later post, and that is a complex, powerful topic that is relevant to my journey out of Mormonism.
Coming to know my wife as the wonderful person that she is, the way I do now, it is clear to me that while Mormonism in its broad, generic strokes, may have had some good impact on her family, there is another, unfortunate similarity with my family when you examine the details. Mormonism exacerbated some problems and reinforced a number of very negative issues, in some cases, quite profoundly. In her family’s case I can see a few tough challenges they’ve dealt with (and continue to deal with to a degree) – including the place and role of women in a marriage and in the family, self-esteem challenges, and basic control issues. There are others, just as there are others in my own family.
My own side of the family dealt with different issues, but no less profound. Again, this is not an indictment of any individual, and I want to reiterate that I love my family, including my wife’s family, and hope for the best in their lives.
Now, I know from observation and conversation that my wife’s family love each other, are proud of their father, love their mother, etc. I’ve seen the gradual mellowing over the years, as each of my wife’s siblings have gone out on their own, but the patterns re-emerge as echoes all too often.
The judgmentalism I had observed in my wife’s family was easy for me to see early on, and it made it very easy to miss my own judgmentalism! This powerful concept of judgmentalism is a common thread in Mormonism, and I discovered that it inhabits the culture so profoundly and subtly that some of the best and brightest Mormons just can’t see the tendrils of it deeply wrapped around their world-view.
In fact, this is one of the self-reinforcing quasi-paradoxes in Mormonism — that sometimes the brighter, the more valiant, indeed, even sometimes the more successful you are (professionally or within the church itself), the easier it seems sometimes to completely miss this judgmental prism that sometimes develops. Doctrinally, it’s not directly encouraged in many Mormon teachings (although that’s debatable, as I will address in a future post regarding common misinterpretations of the concept of “judging wisely”). But culturally, if you’ve been infected or programmed this way, in my view, it tends to self-perpetuate.
I was blind to the depth of my own judgmentalism, and it was easy to judge some of my wife’s family members, those that I considered master practitioners of judgmentalism themselves. Ironically, it would take me years just to make the discovery of how profoundly that unhealthy thinking process had penetrated my life and the lives of many Mormons I knew. It was oh so easy to be right all the time when you knew you had the truth.
Indeed, the very mantra of Mormon fast and testimony meetings, where so many people stand and share their testimonies of the church and begin with “I know this is true…”, just reinforces a thinking pattern that can lead to so many unfortunate and long-term side-effects. I could spend hours listing elements in Mormon culture and practice that reinforce this all-too-common issue.
Adding to all of that, just like with my family, was again the warranted assumption that my wife’s family was made up of good, decent people. It didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t dawn on me to even remotely consider that Mormonism had affected my wife’s family… they were good people! Ergo, Mormonism was good! But like with my own family, I had enough lucid moments that I knew something was off with Mormonism. That so many of us, with our own bright minds and aspirations, couldn’t remotely comprehend the filter that covered our eyes, the “one way” many of us viewed the world.
And if we’re so right, then the other person has to be… wrong.
And not just wrong in the deed or wrong in the words coming out of their mouths, or wrong in their opinions, but sometimes even wrong inside. Oh, I’d never admit to this, I’d never even consciously think this… but now I can see where this thinking pattern could lead sometimes… As in, something is wrong with them…. and then, sadly, something is wrong with you.
As a lucidly aware recipient and dealer of judgmentalism, I now understand where it can take both parties. Therein lies one of the most insidious threads that can lead to some deep damage later on in life. A thinking pattern I can now fortunately recognize in myself and others, and I never want to return to it again. I still consciously wrestle with it sometimes — after all, it was wired into me, but I have made steady progress, and hope to extinguish the last remaining vestiges of it.
And I was oblivious to its real implications, and often blind to my own judgmentalism. Underneath I knew both my family and my wife’s family were good people, which made it so difficult to diagnose some of these issues, and how the whole paradigm of Mormonism on a philosophical level, seemingly contrary to its own stated teachings, actually served to magnify some of these issues.
This is a paradox about which many devout Mormons will certainly disagree with me. I was completely unaware of this for years myself, and would have heartily disagreed with this point of view not too long ago. How could it then surprise me that even the best-hearted, most intelligent Mormon could debate this point? I’m more than willing to admit that you may well be one of the many exceptions. You may be one of the ones who never, ever manifested judgmentalism. And I congratulate you. I never said this was universal, but I do see it as common, even among the best of heart and brightest of mind. This may simply not be your experience in Mormonism. And I can only say I genuinely wish you the best with your point of view. This is my point of view, this is part of what I experienced. Dare I invite you to continue with my story, and read more about why I now think the way I do? Please feel free to do so.
And now this is the point where someone might actually say “Ahhhh, so that’s what’s wrong with him. The sin of pride. There! He admits to being judgmental, and even blind to his own judgmentalism. Therefore he couldn’t feel the spirit and therefore he lost his testimony.” Well, if that’s how you want to read what I’ve written, then may I humbly suggest the rest of my story is not for you. However, as a parting comment, I think that if you thought anything remotely like that, you’ve just proven what I’ve been trying to say in the last several paragraphs.
So how did I begin to gain a bit more clarity about this? How did I come to challenge my own assumptions, and wrestle with my own absolute convictions? In the coming pages, I will begin the explanation of the events that caused me to ask some very tough questions, and the surprising answers I discovered.
Sincerely,
My Life Discovered
Why I Left the Mormon Church – Part 1 - My Family Roots
“Why I left the Mormon Church” can be summed up in one simple, profound statement:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints literally broke my heart.
But where can I begin the story of how this happened, how the Mormon church was such an unhealthy, damaging part of my life? How do I describe the deep disappointment and even anguish I have experienced? How do I describe the growing peace that I am now experiencing having left the Mormon church? How do I tell a story this personal?
Well, I can only give it a try. And with every true life story of tremendous change and healing, there is always a vital and far-reaching back-story. In Part 1, I will begin that back-story, and there will undoubtedly be many more parts I will share with you, which will fill many pages of personal, heart-felt reflection.
The purpose of this background is to summarize how invested I was in Mormonism. And it all starts like the stories of many life-long Mormons: with family.
I am very fortunate to have a very good family. I write that with the clarity that I have seen enough good and bad in the world and in the lives of people I know at this point in my life, to know the gradations of good are sometimes very difficult to discern, let alone appreciate.
For now, I will focus just on my side of the family, and save the discussion of my wife’s family for later.
Time, the great teacher and healer, has given me the following perspective about my family: I have excellent parents, wonderful siblings, and a great extended family overall. We’re all responsible adults now, most with our own families, and we all get along quite well, generally speaking. Notwistanding normal personal differences, issues and classic family frictions that come up, it is obvious that we love each other. For all my parents’ self-admitted shortcomings, they did a good job, and everyone in the family knows it, deep down. My parents’ hearts were in the right place, and that matters a lot to me, no matter what I thought (and think) of some of the decisions they made.
Everyone in the immediate family has grown up to be respectful, hard-working, decent, loving, intelligent and reasonably open-minded people, each with distinct personalities and talents that I appreciate and more often than not, also treasure. Yes, it’s a remarkable family. A good family.
You might consider us a model Mormon family in some ways. Or at least a model of what a “good Mormon family” can ultimately produce for society, and the goodness keeps coming. With each passing year I learn new things about my siblings, and I am honored to be counted among them. To top it all off, we support each other well, even in areas that some other Mormon families might be surprised at. So to some, this is even more reason to think of us as a Mormon success story. Of course, that depends on your perspective.
On my father’s side, my family has been Mormon for generations, basically from the beginning, back to the pioneer days. On my mother’s side, we have a story of sincere converts. That says a lot right there.
The typical multi-generational, deeply-rooted Mormon family has many similarities to mine. The committed brand of convert family also has many similarities to mine. A history of service and dedication, tradition and even respect, mixed with recent-generation trust and faithfulness make for a potent combination. There is enough Mormon family history here to have generated a reinforced, embedded heritage, along with the added bonus stigma of having typical ”leaders and scholars” in the family along the way. Add that to enough fresh-blooded (and often, unfortunately, blind) hopeful enthusiasm and it is easy to solidify the perception of the Great Truth our family had embraced.
I love my family. No doubt about it. And that includes grandparents, parents, siblings, their families, and so forth. And I have nothing but the best hopes and wishes for them, and wish for their profound happiness and satisfaction in life, whatever paths they choose. I feel this way even for those who take the traditional paths in Mormonism, no matter how unhealthy and even damaging I believe it to be for most people.
Some might stop right there and say to me, “So why did you leave the Mormon church? How did you lose your faith? Was it sin? Did someone offend you? How could it have been so bad? Where’s this so-called unhealthy, damaging Mormon church? Just look at your family… they’re good people, so how can Mormonism be bad? No, I don’t buy it.”
The self-proclaimed “scriptorian” variety might add something like this oft-misused maxim, “By their fruits ye shall know them,” and continue, “so there’s no way Mormonism could have been bad for anyone in your family… just look at the fruits of your collective upbringing, what it brought into your lives. You should be grateful for all the good things Mormonism brought you. Your family is made up of good people doing good things, therefore Mormonism must be good.”
Right?
Not so fast.
It’s not that simple, and there’s so much more beyond that to explore. But if you want to stop here after this initial background summary of my family, be my guest. If you want to avoid looking at some much more difficult relationships, realities and history, and don’t want to attempt to understand my story at all, please, stop reading now. If you want to dodge the hard questions, and avoid considering a far more challenging logical and emotional arc than crediting Mormonism with the goodness of my family, go ahead. If you want to gloss over everything here with the veneer of saccharine cause-and-effect reasoning, please don’t bother with this story.
Unfortunately, I know far too many people, including confident so-called intellectuals, that will stop right here on an intellectual level. Case closed. Mormonism is fine. See what a good family so-and-so has.
Of course, things weren’t perfect, in the family or in the Mormon church. Of course life has difficulties. Of course there are challenges, and the normal tough blows of life from time to time. Of course. Life can be hard for anyone, whatever the back-story, whatever the upbringing, whatever the religion.
Mine was a family I could basically take great public pride in while growing up, even with the periodic flashes of total lucidity I had when I noticed the common dysfunctional elements that were there as well. We were, after all, imperfect, and there was always room to improve. That’s what I said to myself growing up when I noticed that some things going on in my family and in the church were just not right for me, on a visceral level.
Oh, I knew we were good people, but there was something on a very deep level about my family’s investment into Mormonism that didn’t resonate with me. And like any good Mormon, I internalized my glimmers of rational, heart-authenticated clarity with a dose of dutiful guilt, then smothered it over with a redoubling of my righteous, sometimes self-righteous, and yes, even humble and sincere Mormon efforts.
My family, like every other family out there, was (and is) a flawed family. It wasn’t a big surprise when I finally, really understood that truth in all its simple beauty and humble, life-affirming fragility. Yes, my family was flawed, but oh so good. For all that innate goodness, for all that intelligence, for all those bright aspirations in my family, Mormonism was the fog in our lives, the heavy grease that stalled and even sometimes choked the limber, graceful motions of our beautiful lives. Mormonism subtracted from us, and gave us little in return but more of itself.
Now, some (or many!) in my family may completely, utterly disagree with that point of view, and I respect that they have their opinion about it. To phrase it honestly any other way than the way I phrased it above would be disingenuous of me. But out of respect for their point of view, I’ll simply add: This is how I perceive it. This is how, after much reflection, I experienced it. This is how it was for me.
And I am of the opinion, that it was this way for several of my family members as well, quite literally. I’ll save the examples for another day.
And again, I come to another point in my story where I might lose more readers. If you have a profoundly different experience with Mormonism, and you consider my description above to be the complete opposite for you, that’s perfectly fine. I understand where you are coming from. I never imagined I could be where I am now. I didn’t think it was possible to think and feel the way I do now, even in my glimmers of lucidity growing up. If you can’t possibly entertain that someone might experience Mormonism the way I have without the result of sinful thinking, “something wrong with them,” or allowing myself to be tempted by The Adversary, lulled away by worldly, rational thoughts, then this story is not for you. At least not at this time. (Which, by the way, you haven’t even read my story yet so how can you really know?)
If you have a single, judgemental thought or assumption about my story so far, or even a phrase that begins like this: ”Well, he must have…”, then you might as well stop now. There’s not much point for you going on.
But for those of you who might want to continue, I can say I will try as hard as possible to explain how I came to this point of view. And while you may not agree with me, I’m certain that by the end of this story you’ll at least see why Mormonism was and is utterly incompatible with me, and how it was inevitable that I started a journey into a new life outside of Mormonism. And if you listen, yes, even to that “still small voice,” you might actually agree that my choice to leave the Mormon church was indeed good for me. In fact, my journey out so far has been one of the most healthy, peaceful, enlightening, life-affirming and good things I’ve ever done.
What got me here to this profoundly better state that I am in now, was in spite of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Furthermore, what roots my family in goodness, love, support and kindness isn’t anything unique or special that Mormonism brings to the table, and in many cases, has nothing to do with Mormonism at all. And in fact, the deepest problems and challenges I’ve faced personally, and some of the hardest things some of my dearest friends and loved ones have dealt with are directly because of or were exacerbated by the Mormon church, its culture, doctrines, and even some of its leaders.
Indeed, my fine “Mormon” family is fine in spite of Mormonism. This is part of the back-story. This is part of what makes me who I am. This is part of why it took me so many years to see what Mormonism had done to me, to some of my friends and family, and why it was so difficult for me to stand up and leave.
Having said that, by the time you finish my story, you might also come to the understanding that I believe my chosen path is not necessarily the best choice for everyone. Shocking. Well, for me, anyway. Coming from the old point of view of the “one true” way, I have been pleasantly astonished at how many beautiful “ways” there are in my new view in life.
Yes, there are other paths, and I’ve come to appreciate that there is more beauty, more wisdom, more inspiration in the world than I ever dared allow myself to imagine… and there is much more goodness out there for one human soul to experience. It may be that via unique paths through or out of Mormonism, some of my own dear friends and family might arrive at a similar place that I might arrive at, wherever that may be in the distant future.
And so, even from a family momentum and family pressure standpoint, my investment in Mormonism was deep. To leave Mormonism, to even consider it, was tantamount to rejecting charished and long-revered parts of my deeply-rooted family history. And to add to that difficulty was the simple fact that I had such a good family. Even with a rough sense of our natural, human, imperfect nature, I knew my family to be good, and that obfuscated and compounded the complexities of the parts of Mormonism that were hurting us, and setting the stage for some deep damage and disappointment from the Mormon church, its teachings, culture and some of its leaders.
And I’m certainly not unique in this situation. My wife experienced some similar things with her good family. In the next installment, I’ll briefly summarize my current understanding of my wife’s family roots and the similarities to mine. Then, over the subsequent pages, I’ll describe the path that led me to my life-altering decision to officially leave the Mormon church.
Sincerely,
My Life Discovered
Welcome to my new website! This is my first official post here as a non-Mormon. As you can read on my About page, I made the life-altering decision to leave the Mormon church last year, and now, as I begin in earnest on my new course, I am ready to share my journey.
It has been a very difficult decision just to start this site and I struggled with the parameters I would follow about how much I would share. My journey out of Mormonism includes some wonderful, positive things, but it also includes some very personal and negative things. Some of those things are painful to discuss, and some experiences naturally involve shared experiences with dear friends and family.
For now, I have chosen to maintain a certain level of anonymity because some family, friends and dear associates (in and out of the church) would certainly be very hurt to retread some of the experiences we have shared. And some things would certainly embarrass the church, even in the best of light. So out of respect for my friends and family I will try to keep things a bit more abstract as best as possible.
For those who stumble upon this website and think that the purpose of this website is to attack the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or its members, you might be tempted to think how “convenient” it is that I am anonymous for now, i.e.: What would prevent me from fabricating my story since I will provide theoretically few personal connections to verify?
That’s a good point, and my simple answer is that this website is not meant for attack purposes or what you might consider “typical anti-Mormon” type of thinking in general.
In fact, in a way, this website is not primarily about Mormonism at all, but rather the journey into the marvelous new world I’ve been amazed to discover on the other side of the door after leaving Mormonism. I debated for weeks about the title/domain of this website, and considered many permutations with the word “Mormon” in the domain name. But then I realized the domain name should be defined by my future, not by my past. By the fact I have discovered my own life.
The primary purpose of this site is therefore simply to document and share my story — take it or leave it — and, yes, both the painful and wonderful things I have experienced, and will certainly experience in years ahead. There are other reasons as well, and I’ll expand on those in future posts, since I basically think this format is the ideal format for recording my running story as it happens. But again, the core purpose of this site is simply to share my story, from my eyes.
My intended audience includes many people, starting with my immediate family and loved ones — a few at first, but more of them in the future, since one day they will know who wrote this, as it happened. Additionally, the audience includes me. While there are many things I do want to forget in my past, there are some things that I don’t ever want to forget. And there are some lessons that came from experiences that I want to capture and explore here, and then continue to grow from them.
Also, my audience includes anyone else out there who might be interested, including people from my past and total strangers, or people who might be similar to me or who live in similar situations — my audience includes anyone that might benefit from reading about the journey of another kindred soul, whether or not they agree with my point of view or choices. I’ve often taken comfort and hope from reading about other people’s journeys, not to mention growing and learning from other people’s human experiences. Perhaps there will be some of that here, for others in return.
So, this is the tiny first step of this website. I will be posting much more in the months to come, and I also look forward to your comments.
If the story of this journey interests you, please feel free to return and read a bit more. If not, I wish you the best on your own journey, wherever it may lead you.
