What was your first crack

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Meilingkie
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What was your first crack

Post by Meilingkie » Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:08 am

Some people asked me what my beginning was on the path to disaffection. And I feel it´s appropriate to start telling a bit about it.

In 1997 I was baptised, I was a very rare bird which is called a young Dutch convert, a golden one at that. 22 days from first talking to missionaries to baptism. Back then I was attending Tilburg University´s Law School, specializing in Taxation Law.

I quit college in 1998 shortly after proposing to my wife. That´s a whole different set of stories in and of itself.

But where did the first major crack appear, and why some of you asked me by PM?

Every April there is an all-Dutch Church Volleyball-tournament in Groningen. And while there in 1999 I met up with my former EQP, and I asked him how things were going with his family. As a newly-minted convert I had had a terrible crush on his daughter, who had gone inactive in the late summer of 1997 and I asked what happened.

What happened is a sordid tale I will now share.

My former EQP was the brother in law of my Stakepresident, but so was the accused in a Court of Love which was held. My friend attended the Court as one of the 12 HC-members was not in, and he found himself very unhappy after that night.

So this one brother was led in, and SP stated the issue was one of adultery. This guy, very widely known in Holland and from a very prominent family had had an affair. Well, who doesn´t you might ask. However he was a member of the HC and had a girlfriend. Who was the Stake Primary president, oops.... And they lived in the same village and attended the same ward.
Many were not surprised when it leaked,on the contrary. It was and is still seen as a real love-match.

Regardless, there were victims, foremost the wife, who presented the SP and the HC with a nice box. The contents of which were splayed out on a table for all to see and peruse.
Loveletters, tapes, lingerie, the whole 9 yards. From him to her, and back.
Denial was impossible. Or so it seemed.

The defendant said an Angel had appeared to them and said it was OK. That his wife wasn´t in tune with the spirit. That his girlfriend was his true love, God approved. etc. etc.

SP engaged in talking, supplicating, asking, demanding, and in the end shouting. But defendant calmly stated he had been granted approval from the Most High God.

So in the end, when the sun had risen again on a late June morning all members of the High Council sustained a motion of the Stakepresident to not continue and to acquit the hunchbacked whoremonger.

It sickened the family, it sickened me personally.
Where was the Gift of Discernment?
It had been going on for 4 years already.
It soured the marriage of my EQP who wfelt he had to sustain his BIL the Stakepresident, and his wife, who was the Sister of the wife who had been betrayed.
They soon divorced, my friend and his wife.

As for the guy who fooled around, he moved out to another stake and was called in the High Council 3 months later by his new SP. Who incidentally also was his BIL.
3 years later the new couple were called as ordinance-workers at the The Hague Temple.

Revolting to say the least.
This history proved to me that inspiration is fleeting at best.
That the Church is made up of men, who act like men, and not like God.
If God is present in His Church, then He has been relegated to the broom-closet.
"Getting the Mormon out of the Church is easier than getting the Mormon out of the Ex-Mormon"

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Rob4Hope
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Rob4Hope » Sat Apr 22, 2017 11:53 am

Mel....I can't even begin to understand how what you wrote could happen...what a CRACK!....the Grand Canyon man...!!!

My story is less dramatic, but happened at an emotional level as opposed to intellectual. I had been taught my whole life to defer to authority, and that is exactly what I did. But there were teachings that affected my marriage which had been strained from the very beginning. Eventually I sought help for the marriage problems, and the only thing that happened was a reinforcement of deferral doctrines--Just follow the Prophet. But, the prophet wasn't answering my questions!...

Eventually I rebelled full on...and I mean REBEL!....eventually went through my own court of love (what a joke) and the greatest thing that could have happened did--I was put out. Finally, on the outside, I took some time and began to look at things more objectively--and at that point realized the cracks had been there all along, but were being held together through coercion and intimidation.

The biggest crack is the lack of personal responsibility to the LDS church takes for its teachings and the affects of those teachings. A contemporary example is the LGBT issues, and what is happening as a result of that. Big mess.....

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Mad Jax
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Mad Jax » Sat Apr 22, 2017 6:24 pm

From the very beginning of my conversion. I got hit with the usual suspects (Kingdom of the Cults, Godmakers, etc).

The problem was, many of the things in those sensationalist products turned out to be salesmanship for the converted in evangelical churches. So many of the "criticisms" of the church were countered relatively well. I had problems, but I was always able to reconcile enough of them to believe that our heavenly father would continue to assuage the remaining doubts as he had always done.

The first real crack came with science and the inability of the biblical narrative to possibly be literally true. Simply put, abiogenesis and cosmic origin theory are very realistic and viable theories/hypotheses, and evolution is so clearly true that it takes Olympic level mental gymnastics to deny it. After that I realized how much rationalization and mental jiggery pokery I required to believe in the literal biblical timeline, and that I was applying rationalization to a belief in god. So god collapsed for me before the church did, but of course the church went with it after its foundation disappeared.

I don't go after anybody for still believing in god, in fact I think it's possible that there's some philosophical ground on the subject I haven't explored. But I believe firmly that if there is some kind of god, he's okay with me leaning on the side of non-belief.
Free will is a golden thread flowing through the matrix of fixed events.

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PalmSprings
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by PalmSprings » Sun Apr 23, 2017 1:30 am

Wow well written story Meilingke. But I must report that I have heard about things and personally witnessed things happen in church courts that are very disturbing. But that one tops the cake!

As far as a single event that started my exit from the church, I can't quite pinpoint. I suppose in the beginning it would boil down to the lack of compassion and complete lack of concern for mine and others well-being. If I may, let me share my tale of woe. (Condensed version)

My childhood was very traumatic and turbulent. Born of narcissistic parents who never went a day without a fight. My dad who supposedly was a golden Mormon boy growing up, had an extremely short fuse which lead to verbal and physical abuse on countless occasions. Mom with a Bi-Polar/personality disorder was never happy and would burst into tears at any given moment or take it out on us or dad. To make a long story short, after years of abuse and living in this hostile atmosphere, I developed an acute case of depression, low self-esteem and PTSD.

Relatives on both sides of the family could "sense" there was something wrong in our household. But my parents had one thing in common, they were experts in living by appearance and deception. And since my dad was the "golden boy," his parents and brothers never blinked an eye. As I became an adult this meant I was in for real trouble. I realized that if I was going to survive, I had to take care of my mental health. So where did I turn for that help? The church leaders are inspired by god and are servants of Christ, so they should have answers. Nope! Big mistake! At every turn I was chastised for not honoring my Father and Mother. I was told I was "crazy" and that my mind wasn't right. And that I had to "repent" for saying such evil things against my parents, etc etc etc.

So I literally spent years in various places around the world, being rejected and chastised for something I had never done. I felt "unworthy" because I was never going to live up to the gospel standards. (A common side effect from being a member but compounded by my upbringing) During this time period my depression would become so great at times, that it would paralyze me. It also caused me to contemplate suicide on countless occasions. It just didn't make sense, I was doing what was "right" according to the "lds gospel" but I'm poor, mentally ill and a complete loser.

Then one day I had an epiphany inspired by Q on Star Trek. When Picard realized the meaning of his own paradox Q said: "For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered." That caused me to think , what if the church itself is the main trigger for my depression? Bingo! It's been a few years since I have been to church and my troublesome past is behind me.

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Grace2Daisy
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Grace2Daisy » Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:34 pm

This was not my first crack. . . . but as you might tell from reading this, it was responsible for quite a few cracks in various other people.

The bishop in our small ward in Idaho was called when he was very young. He immediately caused issues in the ward by calling his mother as the RSP, his father as the HPGL and his brother as the EQP. That seemed odd, but it was clear that in his mind his own family was the only ones worthy to be the leaders in the ward.

There were five young men in the ward and he was extremely hard on on four of them (the fifth was the only one who lied to him), eventually disfellowshipping them in practice only, in other words they were not disfellowshipped officially. He told each of the parents of their transgressions, which caused an amazing amount of conflict in the homes. The conflict cause one to leave home, one tried to commit suicide, one is now 24 and has yet to have any meaning relationship with a woman again. Four of the five left the church, and the relations with their parents were fractured.

He served his five years as bishop, but asked if he could continue to serve telling the SP he felt he still had things to accomplish.

After all the hardship he caused the youth for their "sexual transgressions" he has admitted to having sex with a married woman in the ward while bishop. He had eight kids and she had six, and she has now admitted number six was the bishops. Her husband has filed for a divorce, the bishop was greeted with open arm by his wife and family and is living with his wife and kids.

He was excommunicated and she was disfellowshipped (go figure). He tried to use the very same tactic that Meilingkie described, he was told by God to live a higher order. The former bishop, his wife and his concubine, all sit in a long pew together during Sacrament meeting. And they don't understand how people have an issue with this.

The hypocrisy? Destroying the relationship of four young men and their parents while he was a practicing adulterous who fathered a child to a woman who was married. Not to mention sitting on the stand week after week judging ward members for their inadequacies.

Cracks all over the ward. . . . . . and it continues.
"What is truth?" retorted Pilate. John 18:38

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Abinidied
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Abinidied » Sun Apr 23, 2017 7:31 pm

Wow Meilingkie!!! What a sordid tale of bull sheesh! Your story speaks volumes about patronage appointment in the church. I've seen a similar situation where I live but not nearly as crazy - thanks for posting!

I just posted my initial crack in my shelf in response to some good advice from Red Jay. He ended his post with, Adieu. That's it! One frickin' word cracked my shelf some 40 years ago. I'll repost the details here as it seems to fit your query. I'll add a bit to flesh it out.

My repost: A number of years ago while examining my flawless shelf, I noticed a slight crack. I couldn't remember how I cracked it until I was one day marvelling at Jacobs valediction in French. Thinking, 'Come on, Jake. You know throwing some French in aint gonna fool Joseph Smith'. I had tried to build Jacobs extraordinary linguistic skills into a faith builder (because that's what we were all taught to do), but couldn't get past the idea that it said a lot more about JS's savantish story telling skills. I first read this (adieu) forty years ago on my mission, and thought, "What the hell!?" which thoughts I did not feel compelled to confess to my MP. After all, missionaries are not allowed to have cracked shelves . . .

I patched up the crack, but as I read the BofM, saw the biblical repeats, tried to get answers to hard questions from FAIR, and developed my own thesis, I found my shelf was getting pretty unstable. I found apologistic response left me woefully wanting as their double speak and yawning philosophies made little sense to me. I then stumbled across race and the priesthood essay and again said to myself, "What the hell?" Some six months later (late 2016) I was visiting my oldest son (he's 35 and left the church when he was 15).We talked until 2:00 a.m. He pulled up the CES letter and said, 'Have you seen this?' I hadn't. I wasn't 5 minutes in when the shelf came down. My first instinct was to defend the church. That's when it hit me that my grey matter had been seriously tampered with going back several generations. I felt betrayed, manipulated, violated, and robbed of my retirement income (to the tune of six figures times two-ish). What . . . the . . . hell . . .

I've been out for three months, but really have had doubts most of my adult life that I kept entirely to myself. I have lied, manipulated, and testified about things I thought would clear up my stupored thoughts, but led me to live a very conflicted life. I have probably lost a lot of relationships because of my disaffection, but every day without conflicted thoughts and broken behaviours, is what I imagine the true church to be (realizing, of course, that imaginings can be Utopian fictions that are nothing more than a flicker of hope in something better than what is).
Cum omnia defecerunt, ludere mortuis. (When all else fails, play dead.)
--Red Green

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Dravin
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Dravin » Mon Apr 24, 2017 6:35 am

My first crack, or at least conscious crack, was reading a scientific paper and evaluating the evidence for the hypothesis when the thought occurred to me, just what evidence does the church have for it's claims? If I encountered these evidences in a context outside of the church, say a scientific paper on the timing and events of the Sevier orogeny, would I find it compelling? Or would I laugh myself out of my chair? It started me down the epistemological rabbit hole.
Hindsight is all well and good... until you trip.

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Re: What was your first crack

Post by FiveFingerMnemonic » Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:58 pm

This brings up an interesting classification of cracks. Either they are social/behavioral/cultural or historical/scientific. For me it was a gradual buildup of negative social/cultural reinforced by historical/scientific things. In other words, "hey here's some effed up behavioral issues or unfulfilled promises", followed by "I really need to look into why that (behavioral issue) could happen in the only true church" followed by OMG truth claim rabbit hole!

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TestimonyLost
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by TestimonyLost » Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:53 am

My first crack that lead directly to my multi-year faith crisis was some combination of what I learned reading Rough Stone Rolling and learning about the Book of Abraham problem (thanks BCC!). However, as I've reflected on my whole life I can identify cracks along the way that helped prepare me for my faith crisis (this sounds like the beginning of a testimony).

Stories in the scriptures like Noah's ark never made sense to me when I was a teenager.

The dressing up and the prayer circle in the temple really threw me for a loop. Never got used to the chanting in the circle.

I voted for John McCain in the 2008 US presidential election solely because I felt the church wanted us to vote for whoever would fight gay marriage. I felt horrible about the decision for weeks. I knew I'd gone against my better judgment. I swore I'd never privilege someone else's judgment above my own.

I read Rough Stone Rolling the very next year and I believe I was more open to what I learned from it than I would have been before the 2008 election.

Thoughtful
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Thoughtful » Tue Apr 25, 2017 12:23 pm

FiveFingerMnemonic wrote:
Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:58 pm
This brings up an interesting classification of cracks. Either they are social/behavioral/cultural or historical/scientific. For me it was a gradual buildup of negative social/cultural reinforced by historical/scientific things. In other words, "hey here's some effed up behavioral issues or unfulfilled promises", followed by "I really need to look into why that (behavioral issue) could happen in the only true church" followed by OMG truth claim rabbit hole!
This. I would complain about hating the culture, until i realized what I actually hated was the doctrine/ history that the culture was a product of.

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RubinHighlander
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by RubinHighlander » Tue Apr 25, 2017 2:07 pm

Meilingkie wrote:
Sat Apr 22, 2017 10:08 am
This history proved to me that inspiration is fleeting at best.
That the Church is made up of men, who act like men, and not like God.
If God is present in His Church, then He has been relegated to the broom-closet.
Wow dude, quite a sad story there. Thanks for sharing.

My crack started when I was in my final years in grade school, working as a dishwasher at the local college. I worked with a guy for a few months who was a born again Christian. When he found out I was LDS he started picking away at me with various anti-mormon things like "Hey, did you know that Brigham Young believed that Adam was God?" and also something about our belief that God had sex with Mary the virgin. I really had no fetching clue what he was talking about, but it stuck with me in the back of my mind. I was ignorant of any church history outside of the correlated church films. I just blew it off and it really gave me animosity toward bornagains and I saw them as evil characters in Satan's game.

The crack widened in high school as I became interested in the fossil record, geology, and was introduced to evolution; basically most of the science never could be reconciled in my mind with the creation story and scriptural literalisms. But I just blew it off and did the gymnastics to make it work somehow.

Next up was the first trip to the temple in the early 80's with it's naked anointings, pay lay ale, slitting of throats and disembowelings. Man was I freaked out! In them days there was no temple prep, it was throw them into the deep end and hope they can swim.

On my mission there was more exposure to more anti-mormon things about Joseph being a treasure hunter, etc. Things I had brushed off as ridiculous lies to later be shown to me as true were even more bitter to swallow as I made my transition out.

All these things and more I managed to keep on my shelf for many years. The social crap started piling up when I became a second/third class mormon citizen after my divorce, then on to a melded family. Then the DNA evidence, then talking to my many friends and peers who had left and were so happy in their lives...no need to hit the whole list, most of us here have very similar stories.
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wtfluff
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by wtfluff » Tue Apr 25, 2017 3:08 pm

Honestly, my first real crack was literally: Life, and the reality of life.

No matter how hard I tried to mormon, it just didn't work for me. None of mormonism's grand and wonderful promises actually came true.

Even so, I continued to mormon as hard as I could, because if it wasn't working, it was obviously my fault, right? This went on for years.

Then, I asked Google an innocent question about polygamy, and within a couple of weeks my "testimony" of mormonism was obliterated.

Here I am... 5 years later, and still no clue...
Last edited by wtfluff on Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Silver Girl
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Silver Girl » Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:04 pm

Well, I can't top Melingkie's story - what an incredible insight to the church!

I was a Golden Convert - a "Dry Mormon," they said, and I jumped in full force with regular attendance, tithed from Day One, went to the temple as soon as I was in long enough. Etc. etc. I didn't particularly like the garments, but I wanted to be true to my promises (covenants). Did not realize then that it was only a one-way deal.

The shelf had a few chips or dents in it before the big fault line split it it irreparably. Somewhat as mentioned in the OP, I saw too many instances of very harmful, dishonest people being readmitted to the church, despite knowing they could never answer even the most basic of TR questions with any truthfulness. I went through pure hell in one calling (in several, actually, in terms of time and exhaustion). In this particular calling, someone markedly incompetent was put in a position where she abused all of her counselors and other team members. Abused us to the point of tears. That was one of those, "This can't be happening - surely it will be stopped" moments in life. I knew for certain that all callings were not inspired. But being a TBM, I didn't back away from the game.

More fractures appeared when I finally realized that callings basically fed into egos. The guys all wanted the corner office, and the women wanted to be in charge of a bunch of women or kids. All the jokes about not wanting to be bishop (har-har!) were so, so fake.That bothered me quite a bit. But it still wasn't the massive crack that sent the shelf to the floor.

In the fall of 2014, somebody (I still don't know who) anonymously emailed the essay on Plural Marriage in Nauvoo to a bunch of people. I don't even know how many people got it. Sometime before that, the essay on blacks & the PH was sent, but I was so ignorant about the real history that I thought, "Oh, that's nice - they didn't really mean that after all!" The Nauvoo essay devastated me. I literally gasped for air and cried out when I read it. This was MY CHURCH, and it had lied, lied, lied.

After a few months of complete shock and not knowing who I could talk to, I reached out to someone I knew had left the church and would at least somewhat understand. That's how I learned about NOM - I'm forever thankful for that! This group was the perfect place for me at that tender time. Reddit was too harsh, and I didn't feel right on some of the others, but this place felt right (the original NOM). I joined on Feb. 1, 2015 & posted like crazy. After several more months of reading everything I could find, I was out. I resigned.

Each new thing I learned validated that the whole thing was a sham, and I guess those were additional cracks. But the big crack, the deal-breaking crash that left shards of the shelf all around my feet, was the Nauvoo essay. At first, the main issue (believe it or not), was that the church had lied. As I pursued things further, it was also clear that JS was nowhere near being a decent human being, much less a prophet of God.

Long post, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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Fifi de la Vergne
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Fifi de la Vergne » Thu Apr 27, 2017 1:52 pm

From the time I was baptized as a young adult, I read church history and doctrinal books voraciously (although with a firm belief that any "problems" either had been answered or could be). So I knew about a lot of the problems but they didn't affect me other than superficially. I was all in.

When DH and I were young parents, we were in a ward with an interesting mix of Utah professional students, also mostly newly married, and members native to our Midwestern location who were often converts. We weren't in the best part of town, and the socio-economic status of our investigators reflected that. My shelf, which I hadn't even known existed, took a major hit in Gospel Doctrine one Sunday when our teacher (dental school student from Utah) went right ahead and taught from 2 Nephi 5:21, even though we had an African American woman visiting the class as an investigator. I remember stiffening in disbelief as he launched into it, and the shame I felt when the woman got up and left in the middle of his lesson.

I also remember how hurt and surprised this young man seemed after the class when he discussed it with one of his friends. "I had to teach it, didn't I?" he kept saying, or something like it. I'd never liked the doctrine, but that was the first time I had to actually confront the pain it caused to real human beings. I knew that I would never have been able to present that lesson with that woman present. It was a major crack, and it was a few months later that I told DH I would not teach our kids that doctrine, and that I didn't want him to, either.

It was several years later that I watched a situation in our ward unfold as a young man, the son of a very close friend, came out as gay. His dad really struggled, and I thought to myself that if it were one of my kids, it wouldn't even be a choice between church and child. I would take the child by the hand and say we are getting out of Dodge. After that acknowledgement to myself (and it was the first time I'd allowed myself the thought) that there was a limit to my belief in the church and my acceptance of its teachings, it was a matter of weeks before the whole thing evaporated in a single thought: On my god; this whole thing is a farce.
Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous Yes to one's own true being.

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Oliver
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Oliver » Fri Apr 28, 2017 2:21 pm

Whew! The first hairline cracks started on my mission. The disconnect between obedience and success was very stark. Plus, there was a continuing, nagging feeling that what I was representing wasn't all above board.

After my mission, things like Fawn Brodie's book, the Hoffman affair, historical and scientific incompatibilities continued to widen the cracks. These things created a filter through which I could give my doubt legitimacy.

But it was the actions of church leaders, both local and beyond, that completed the break. I have known local leaders whose business practices were less than ethical and some who committed sexual transgressions. I could deal with this by reminding myself that it wasn't my place to judge, that they were seeking the same redemption that I was and that someday they might well repent and be forgiven by those affected.

But the wedge that finally completed the break? Watching Hinckley feign ignorance about some embarrassing church teachings on national TV. Here was the perfect opportunity to bear witness to the greatness, indeed the truthfulness, of this work. That the spirit would surely testify that here indeed was a prophet of God and that doors would open. If only he would bear witness with courage and conviction. Instead, what we got was an old man who was used to being insulated from the rocks that are chucked daily at the members in general and at the missionaries in particular.

That did it for me. I well remember (with some shame) the missionaries in my mission that were castigated for lack of courage and conviction. I'll forgive the 15 when they come clean and truly apologize for their role in the deception. And we all know how long I (and others) will be waiting.
So what do you do, with good old boys like me?

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SeeNoEvil
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by SeeNoEvil » Sat Apr 29, 2017 3:57 pm

Holy Moly Meilingkie! That is one heck of a shelf breaker! What is in the water over there? !! My story pales in comparison to the rest of yours! My story is similar to PalmSprings. As I read it I had to ask myself are you one of my siblings??
PalmSprings wrote:
Sun Apr 23, 2017 1:30 am
My childhood was very traumatic and turbulent. Born of narcissistic parents who never went a day without a fight. My dad who supposedly was a golden Mormon boy growing up, had an extremely short fuse which lead to verbal and physical abuse on countless occasions. Mom with a Bi-Polar/personality disorder was never happy and would burst into tears at any given moment or take it out on us or dad. To make a long story short, after years of abuse and living in this hostile atmosphere, I developed an acute case of depression, low self-esteem and PTSD.
For me I guess it all started back in my early teenage years. Any thing church, was always boring and I would sit there and day dream... A lot! Especially in seminary! Of course I mulled over and over the crazy stuff my family (especially my father) did and hid from the rest of the world. I wasted years trying to figure out how my crazy family fit into God's plan for me and what I was supposed to learn from it. When I left to go to BYU I was still under the assumption that it was man that had it all wrong and God's church was the real true one here on earth. I married in the temple and over night the sweet guy I married in Gods temple turned into a narcissistic monster which even my own bishop told me if I was a better wife this would not happen. So I spent years and years trying to be that better Mormon wife. I was one heck of a valiant daughter of God doing all I was supposed to do and be but the abuse got worse and worse... that is until I woke up one day 21 years later and asked myself, "what in the heck goes on in Priesthood?" To give you a better picture why the priesthood became the big ticket item on my shelf my husband's favorite saying was, "I hold the priesthood, therefore you must obey." Yeah, you read that right.... I must obey him! Sigh. This was the days before internet so my searching was limited to my own personal library of church approved literature. As I search for answers and asked all the right questions with no answers I was treated like I was the crazy one and my shelf got heavier and heavier.

Fast forward to 2011 when I read a story about Mark Hoffman and how he duped the prophet. Guess that was the final straw that sent it all crashing down and down it went hard. I am now out of that marriage, out of the church and am alive to share my story. I always find it interesting the path we all take to get us here to this point where our lives have crossed and we pause to lend support, to listen to each others stories of pain, frustrations, and hope. Most likely we would have never crossed paths had it not been for the lies of Joseph Smith.
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... The real question is, what will you do with this moment?" - Unknown

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Meilingkie
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by Meilingkie » Sat Apr 29, 2017 11:10 pm

SeeNoEvil wrote:
Sat Apr 29, 2017 3:57 pm
Holy Moly Meilingkie! That is one heck of a shelf breaker! What is in the water over there? !!
This is just one story, I have quite a few more, shelfbreakers all of them.
A good memory is a blessing and a curse.
"Getting the Mormon out of the Church is easier than getting the Mormon out of the Ex-Mormon"

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redjay
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by redjay » Mon May 01, 2017 10:29 am

Have explained elsewhere my general story.

However, upon finishing an MSc and looking for a job that never came, a fellow class member said they had got a job (in the field we'd been studying) and said the words "it's funny how it happened actually..."

So it seemed fate, coincidence, providence or whatever had 'blessed' this guy (not a member)

While I had served a mission, was married within weeks of returning, did not delay my family, was paying tithing on my meagre income; and I did not get the 'blessing'???

My head couldn't really compute that situation.

RJ
At the halfway home. I'm a full-grown man. But I'm not afraid to cry.

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LSOF
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Location: Mare Crisium
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Re: What was your first crack

Post by LSOF » Sun May 14, 2017 12:06 am

Learning in school that there were no horses prior to Columbus. Learning about the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas, and that they were not Christian Jews who travelled to the Americas by boat to try and escape the Babylonian captivity.
"I appreciate your flesh needs to martyr me." Parture

"There is no contradiction between faith and science --- true science." Dr Zaius

Pastor, Lunar Society of Friends; CEO, Faithful Origins and Ontology League

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dispirited
Posts: 57
Joined: Fri Oct 21, 2016 10:01 am

Re: What was your first crack

Post by dispirited » Mon May 15, 2017 12:40 pm

I was preparing a lesson on JS and the first vision. The lesson manual didn't seem like I could do 30 min on the information provided so I googled first vision and I found out that there were over 4 versions. I was blown away. In the 46 years I had been a member I had never heard or read this. The first version, and the only one written by JS own hand in his diary, didn't mention god and Jesus, just a flying angel! I didn't stop reading for 2 weeks and told my wife I didn't believe. It's been over 5 years since then and I'm still going so she won't have to sit by herself, but I've been able to set boundaries that make it work for each of us.

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