Flaming Meaux 2.0

[Flaming Meaux]

Well, well, well...

It's been about 10 years since I began my journey away from Mormonism, and a little more than eight since I registered on the old New Order Mormon forum. My how time changes one's perspective on things--and how odd it is to reflect that if I were to travel back in time to visit myself, the old me would be completely blown away and highly skeptical that his worldview would shift so much over the next 10 years.

I'm not super active on the forums (then again, I suppose I never really was), but will occasionally post on topics of interest. Often times I'll begin typing out a lengthy post, pause and reflect, and then decide to just not submit it. It's really too bad, I suppose, as I frequently enjoyed going back and reading some of my old posts on the old site just to see how my thinking had changed from the early days of disaffection. It was kind of like reading a journal--I really wish I would have preserved some of that content.

Nonetheless, backstory: BIC, five of six kids born to a typical more-conservative Mormon family in northern Utah. No caffeine in the house, no rated "R" movies, daily family scripture study and prayers (or at least noble attempts at the former--we did read the whole BoM as a family at least a couple of times growing up, with several other starts that petered out around the Isaiah chapters in 2nd Nephi). Served a mission in Michigan, to my great disappointment (the experience ended up being generally positive and I met some great friends, but after my three older brothers served in foreign locales let's just say a call to Lansing, Michigan was more than mildly disappointing).

Returned and completed an undergrad degree at the U, then moved to the east coast to work for a couple of years. I met my wife in Philadelphia in a singles ward. Shortly after marrying (in the temple) I moved back to Michigan to attend law school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and suffice it to say that the training to critically examine the basis for particular positions didn't particularly help my testimony. I really got into church history during this time period and started devouring a lot of the historical stuff, which again, doesn't tend to be supportive of the Mormon world view that is cultivated in traditional Mormon families in northern Utah (at least in my experience).

Ultimately, I remained an active non-believer for a few years, and then just stopped attending all together. Personally, the costs of playing the game were more than the costs of trying to live authentic, though neither path was particularly easy. My wife was about as true blue as they came, despite being raised inactive and really having little to do with the church until high school. She took a hard right towards gospel rigidity as I started pulling away, and it was a big strain on our relationship for several years.

However, things got better over time. She still attends on and off, and on some level still believes in the gospel even though she is pretty bitter with the direction of the institutional church over the past several years. We've moved around a lot since I began my professional career and we've never exactly been in any place that was a Mormon stronghold, so in some ways she's had to be more reflective about her beliefs because not many people share them. When we lived in Philadelphia it was easier to exist as a liberal Mormon, but since relocating to a fairly conservative pocket in mid-Michigan around five years ago well--let's just say she's had to work a lot harder to feel like she's influencing the church for the better. After I decided to stop attending I decided to be open with church leadership or those who were interested that I no longer attended because I didn't believe in the church or the gospel. While I still nominally have church leaders (as I never formally resigned), a definite statement that one does not believe in the church for reasons that are both substantial and numerous is something they typically grasp. I've never had doctrinal discussions with any of them as they've been kind enough to leave me alone, and I'm not at church stirring the pot so I think all sides are happy. Occasionally there will be a zealous new EQP assigned to "fellowship" me (and, if we are coworkers as we tend to be in the one-horse town in which I am employed, I'll at least have lunch with them on one day), but after about an hour of conversation they've tended to drop the idea of winning me back to the faith.

Over the years, more and more of my family left the church, where now only one of the six kids would actively identify as Mormon (but he's a bishop). The rest of us run the gamut from unaffiliated to Christian (be it a more mainstream or in one case a more new-agey variety) to secular. All of the kids, outside of the one that has remain affiliated with the LDS church (he seems to have taken affirmative steps to distance himself from the rest of us), are pretty close, but all the disaffections did their part to take a toll on my parents, I think (they split after nearly 50 years of marriage which, while I'm sure it was due to a number of factors, I think they had been holding together in part because of the eternal family concept for a few years, only to see more and more seats at the Celestial Table empty as yet another child announced they were disaffiliating with the church). My dad's handled the transition better than my mom--her worldview really just doesn't have any space in it for someone who doesn't think the church is all that she believes it is.

Anyway, for those new to the process--hang on. It will likely be a fairly bumpy ride for years, and several years hence you'll probably look back and be satisfied that you are in a better place personally for undergoing the process, even though there are likely to be personal or relationship costs in the interim. I wish you luck!

[Hagoth]

Great to hear from you Meaux! I noticed a rerun of that Simpsons episode on TV recently and I thought of you. I'm glad you found your way here.

[Red Ryder]

Welcome FM!

I love updates like this. It shows that the best way out is to get up and walk. Tell them you don't believe and move on with life as time provides the right amount of distance.

Glad to hear from you.

[Flaming Meaux]

Welcome FM!

I love updates like this. It shows that the best way out is to get up and walk. Tell them you don't believe and move on with life as time provides the right amount of distance.

Glad to hear from you.

Well, I suppose it depends on the circumstances, but certainly in my case I tend to agree.

For me, when I was living life as an active non-believer, it was not satisfying for me--and ultimately it wasn't satisfying for my wife either. She wanted me to attend, but really she wanted me to attend as a believer. While in the beginning me 'supporting' her belief took the form of me attending church as a nonbeliever, ultimately this was unsatisfying for me and unsatisfying for her as she knew I was internally rolling my eyes at most of what was said, and while I'd sit in the pew, I declined to participate on any meaningful level (from a believer's perspective, at least). Since neither of us were satisfied anyway, I decided it was a better 'support' for her belief to let her be as active as she wanted to be and not try to push her to re-evaluate the church on my timeframe. I kept critical remarks about the church and its doctrine largely to myself, but it was easier for me to do this when I wasn't being exposed to the nonsense on a weekly basis.

Even now, I still have to be careful with how far I go. My wife is part of a group of liberal Mormons in town that meet every so often to rant about the over-conservative nature of the institutional church and its position on gays, women, use of tithing funds, or whatever. In these conversations, I'm generally free to join in to rant about the issues (well, the aforementioned issues at least) to the same extent as anyone else there, but if I extend into other doctrinal issues I've found it doesn't go over well. We'll still have the mishies over for dinner occasionally, but my wife invites them at the express condition that they don't try to win me back to the faith and they respect where I am--so they come, we eat, laugh, talk about non-religious stuff, and everyone gets along. My wife is trying to do her part to respect where I'm at now, and I try to do the same for her. If she doesn't feel like going to church, I don't encourage her to go anyway, but neither do I give her other reasons why she should stay home. When she stays home and then gets made into a 'project' by the local relief society, I listen while she complains about it but I don't try to add in my two cents about why the church's inability to respect that people have other more worthwhile things to do on Sunday (than sit in a rote recitation of all the reasons why one already has the entire universe figured out) seems a little too much like Scientology for my liking.

I will say, though, that nothing got any better until I just decided to take action and live authentic. When I was pretending, I suppose all the TBMs in my life at least had the hope that I was just going through a 'phase' and that, sure-as-shootin', I'd be back to doing my home teaching in no time. I didn't like only being appreciated for someone I was pretending to be, so I took action and let the chips fall where they may. That's not necessarily great for a relationship in the short term--my wife certainly considered divorce or at least not bringing any children into the marriage. It was rough, but at the same time, it would have been relatively easy for her to leave (because we had no kids at the time, had only been married a short time, etc.). For a combination of reasons, she decided to stay and had to evaluate the marriage on more than just whether or not I was a 'worthy priesthood holder' in the TBM worldview. That allowed us to build on something more than just our membership in the same religion, which, admittedly, was largely what we had in common originally. We have a better marriage now than then, and a fantastic little boy who absolutely delights us.

Leaving and being open about leaving also made it easier for some of my other siblings to later leave. I had an older brother who left before me (though he was less open about it), and it meant that when I left the whole bit about leaving the church wasn't as novel for my parents. Granted, he remained a theist and started attending another church, so in some ways my departure was both easier and more difficult (easier because, as I was attending no church rather than an opposing church, they still had some hope that I'd at least return back to Mormonism in later life until they became more aware of what my philosophical position on the issue was; harder because, as someone who doesn't believe in an interventionist God or the concept of Christ's atonement, they had more serious reservations about my spot in the afterlife). After having two brothers out, one of my other brothers and both of my sisters ultimately left and it was even easier to tell my parents about it. So there are sometimes collateral benefits of being out and open for those who are in the not insignificant group of Mormons who are dissatisfied with the whole thing but keep going along with it because everyone else around them is at least pretending to be happy with it.

Over time I feel like my relationship has really improved with my father--we exchanged some fairly direct and curt words in the beginning. I absolved him of all responsibility at the judgment bar of God for not continuing to offer me orange juice which, I assured him, I was not partaking of because I didn't like the taste of it and not because he hadn't offered me any. He accused me of feeling like I was smarter and superior for having everything figured out and for believing that I therefore had a responsibility to correct the thinking of the 'poor lesser folk' who thought differently. I explained why that was an astounding accusation coming from someone who asserts, without objective evidence, that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the LDS church is God's one true church on the earth and who continued to try to win me back to the faith even after I had made my position on the matter clear. And so on. After that, we started building our relationship on things that aren't church based, and things have gotten better with time.

I lost a lot of friendships through the process, but as an INTJ (a group that, at least anecdotally, appears to be over-represented among the disaffected as compared to the general population), I'm not exactly the person feels like I need a lot of friends, and ultimately I decided I didn't want the superficial type of friendships that were only based on attending the same building on Sundays. I've actually found better friendships outside the church than within it, at least in terms of friends that you can be completely 'real' with--particularly when you find someone who has disaffected from another conservative faith and understands what that is like.

Everyone certainly has to evaluate all the variables in their own particular circumstances, but I tend to be an advocate for authenticity.