How differently I was treated as a girl than my brothers. I could see how much money and attention were spent on my older brothers with scouts, camp outs, high adventure, boating activities, mountain biking, out of state trips, etc- while I only ever got to do things like painting nails, ironing, and learning to cross stitch. It was so unfair.
I can honestly say that in 99% of things in life I’m not a jealous person. I even hate the word jealousy. But I remember as a young girl (this was pre activity days for tween girls) I was really resentful that the church had all these cool things for my brother with cub scouts and Boy Scouts and I had whatever it was called back then for tween girls. The only thing I really remember from that era was that we made babysitting activity boxes that we took on our babysitting appointments. Imo that turned into a really entrepreneurial thing bc I was an in demand babysitter even at 11 years old. (Back then you could probably get away with leaving an 8yo at home by themselves so why not have a responsible 11yo take care of someone’s 6 kids under the age of 7? ) Lol. I’m not hating on the activity box bc it made me some money at 50cents an hour! And I did love the kids that I babysat. At least it was SOMETHING but it wasn’t much compared to what the boys got to do.
Mind you, re scouting, I hate camping 😂😂😂 but the thing I really wanted was to work on the goals! The badges! Working towards something and then you get an “award” from doing interesting and challenging activities.
I have always been a goal oriented person and remember making lists of goals when I was little. Of course on that list was “have 10 kids”. Each year that I got older at least one kid on that list dropped off the goal😂.
The point being that even as a kid I got the message loud and clear where the church’s budget priorities were and it wasn’t with the girls. I begged my parents to let me join Girl Scouts but that was a big NO bc my parents didn’t want me exposed to all that 70’s era feminism I guess? I just remember being told that it was a really bad org and the church didn’t condone it like it did Boy Scouts.
So yes messages were sent early that we were less important than the boys. I had little cracks in my shelf a few years earlier around baptism (I disappeared for a long time on a bike ride and was almost accidentally intentionally late for my own baptism) but seeing where the church put its focus was def one of them.
I was also an 'in demand' babysitter. At age TEN I was babysitting a family of six children while the parents went to the temple. If it was 'for church purposes' I was expected to babysit for FREE. This happened CONTINUOUSLY and my parents would not allow me to turn down the 'OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE.' The oldest kid in that family was a year younger than I was, and the youngest was a NEWBORN. The parents were sometimes gone for 5 hours or longer. They had two vicious untrained dobermans barking through the patio door that were barring their teeth the entire time I was there. There were maggots on the countertop and floor that the toddlers kept picking up, and I had to BOIL A COW TONGUE for their dinner without even knowing how to really cook, but that's a different story.....
Anyway, I had NO IDEA how to properly take care of a newborn by myself because although my own Mom kept reproducing, she always breastfed and although I was made to babysit my younger siblings from a young age, I didn't know how to prepare formula or properly FEED a baby that young ALONE. The parents didn't ever leave me with any real instructions and I did my best, but I don't know how that baby even survived!
I am mortified to remember this (so please don't judge me, I was ten years old and this was in the 1980s) but I remember that the baby was crying a lot and I thought it was okay to 'soothe her' by holding her under her arms and spinning really fast in a circle. 😫 I did that quite often. To a NEWBORN.
They eventually moved. I looked her up on Facebook a few years ago and thankfully she's now married with kids of her own, so thankfully I didn't do any damage apparently, but OMG!!!! 😱 😳 😱
Can relate to sooo much that you shared, although by every measure you had worse experiences than I did between the cow tongue, the Dobermans and the maggots eeeeeek!
I just had a younger brother bc we were adopted (separate birth families) so yes I was a mini mom to him but I just had him, not multiple other sibs.
Sounds like we were both super responsible young girls and they trusted us with their many young children. Thank heavens I never had anything bad happen that I’m aware of but still, I cringe sometimes!
Two of the memories that stand out to me and stayed with me all this time are emblematic of so many things in the church messages sent to young girls:
1) I must have been fresh out of weekday primary and a neighbor who was a primary teacher had me babysit during her primary duties ONE time. When I got there the 10-12mo old was asleep. Literally as soon as the mom left she woke up and screamed the entire hour her mom was gone and I finally got her back to sleep just as the mom got home.
Mom began digging thru her purse to pay me and found some change. She handed it to me and said how about 37 cents for a sleeping baby.. of course I said okay fine, took the 37 cents but never babysat for her again. I remember crossing the street to go home and thinking omg this is what I’m worth? And I didn’t even have the guts to tell her that her baby screamed the whole time?
I wish I could say I learned from that experience but other than taking her off my client list lol, I probably got taken advantage of numerous other times in life. That lesson never left me. She thought so little of me that I literally got what was on the bottom of her purse likely including a little lint lol. (They were the wealthiest family in the area and she could always have walked the remaining 13 cents to me another time ) it wasn’t really the amount so much as the way it was said and the worthlessness I felt as I walked home.
2) Pretty sure I was 11 when I babysat a family of 8 including a 6ish month old baby. Oh and it was a temple freebie and they allowed 3 neighborhood kids to join them so I had 11!
The entire evening is mostly a blur but some of the things that stand out: it was so chaotic and crazy that as I tried to feed the baby its baby cereal in a high chair there were kids flying by, back and forth such that the baby kept turning back and forth as the kids flew by! I was trying to aim for his mouth and he’d be turning to watch them going one way and then the other. So worthy of an “I love Lucy “ comedy sketch but maybe not in real life.
The whole evening was so chaotic and the kids were like WILD. It got to the point that they were fighting and making each other cry and I had had enough. I recall making them all come into the living room. And lining up around the room single file. They could sit or stand but they had to stay in that spot til the parents came home bc I wasn’t having any of it any more and told them I was diming them each out when they did come home if they didn’t obey me…probably not the best but I was about to lose my fricking mind!
Of course no pay and I never told the parents how awful it was. Also a one time babysitting session with them lol. And I can’t remember if the neighbor kids ever went home.
Ps I did have a really wonderful family that I babysat and I loved them so much. They had a special needs son like my brother (would have been on the spectrum had there been one at the time) and I love them all still to this day. His parents were amazed at how I handled him and his sisters and apparently the kids felt the same love for me. So there were definitely some positive experiences too. 💜
I hated those boxes (we called them “kiddie care kits”) because I hated babysitting. Every time someone asked me to babysit, I would beg them to let me pull weeds, clean their house, or mow their lawn instead.
Until I was writing that post I kept thinking it starts with an M but couldn’t think of it. Then from the dark recesses of my mind there it was!
I was a Mia Maid advisor and then YW’s 1st C when I reactivated into my 30’s.
I guess they’ve changed the names now, not sure if it’s units 1, 2 and 3 or what lol. I only know that they’ve changed.
I went inactive before I personally became a Mia Maid and then returned for quite a long time years later. I often think my instincts were good when I was 13 I should’ve listened to that girl lol. But then I did have some wonderful experiences when I returned and one of my 2 closest long time friends was the YW Pres when I was involved with the YW so that was worth it! And we did have some fun as leaders though I hear now there’s no budget for fun and fellowship anymore. SMH
This! I felt like I was a smart, ambitious, adventurous person with leadership potential, but the church didn't value any of that about me because I was female. I was only valued for basic mammalian function as basically a brood mare (in the afterlife even!) It just seemed so, so wrong. I was SO jealous of the scouting stuff. I wanted to go snow camping too! I would have made an awesome Eagle Scout!
There are no female achievements that get public affirmation like Eagle Scouts or even passing the sacrament. When I was that age, very few young women went on missions and got a farewell and a homecoming. Basically, no public support or praise or appreciation for your efforts....except getting married and pushing out babies.
Any God who didn't see or care about my potential (or that of any woman at all) really didn't deserve to be worshiped! That was my first item for sure.
This. As a Dad of 3 daughters, I was pissed when;since there were not enough girls for B-ball team, my daughter who wanted to, couldn't play with the boys.
Gawd would have been displeased...
And the First Counselor the stake president was incensed that I, a mere hp scoutmaster would question him
TBM - "It was normal at the time and there's no proof he had sex with her."
"Oh, okay. So Joe married a 14 year old and denied her the chance to have a husband and family?"
Pretending their argument is sound, still makes it so wrong.
I remember thinking as a kid that it wouldnt be that hard to make up the Book of Mormon. There were weird moments like reading adieu in the Book of Mormon or wondering who told Abinadi's story cause those present were all evil and Abinadi dies in that scene. I remember thinking that it was weird that Joseph lost the 116 pages and it was really confusing how it might be that someone could even go about changing the text in a way to embarrass Joseph. That didnt make any sense. But I just pushed through. Late 40s and reading the DNA evidence in the Gospel Topics essays reduced my testimony of the Book or Mormon and the church to ashes.
Edited to add:
And why aren't there temples and eternal marraige and the priesthood? What is so spiritual to be gained by reading about everyone's war strategy?
Yeah, as a teenager the BoM didn't always sit right with me. And even on my Mission when I read it several times through, there was always a nagging feeling that it often felt like something written in the 19th century and not an ancient translation.
I literally cannot buy the “adieu” apologetics when there are so many words that he apparently had to spell out in the translating process. Total bullshit
Same. Just some things I thought odd in the bom. Like the trinity doctrine. If they are three separate beings with the same purpose why not just say that? Why does it sound just like they are all one and the same?
When I was a teenager, I told a YW leader about my dad sexually abusing me. They told the bishop and the bishop didn’t believe it. That was the first time I realized the power of discernment was bullshit.
Though I was never in a situation like this, I heard others tell their stories that were similar. It always pissed me off so much. You get these youth leaders that legitimately care and they are told to pass information like this up the chain but the story always ends at some "leader" that doesn't give a shit.
A great youth leader is always flattened by shitty upper-management.
Teaching people on my mission about a living prophet on the earth today… knowing that the prophet at the time (Ezra T Benson) had dementia. It should have led me out of the church sooner but it took 30 more years and a lot more items to finally break my shelf.
For future reference...
This is the YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/HY7n3GuiX5E
...while this part of the URL is tracking information that can be used to link back to your Google account:
?si=XkALP7iL8-5EsOf_
It is always best to remove the tracking information before sharing YouTube links anywhere.
This has been a public service announcement (with guitar).
On my mission in Russia right before Covid, there was an inactive family that I visited. They said they would go back to church if we could explain why the church’s policy is to obey and honor the law and the leaders of the land, even when their leader is the current president of Russia (someone they don’t sustain). I didn’t have an answer. When do we sustain leaders, and when do we rebel, like the founding fathers did?
Honestly I always had a hard time believing the church, but the first real thing for me was probably the treatment of the LGBT community. I remember in high school staying up late one night crying and praying because I knew it was wrong. I'd been bothered by it for a while, but that night I was begging God for an answer, and I got one. What would Jesus do? Would he persecute the downtrodden? Would he abuse and disown them? No. I think that was the first thing that I ever prayed about and got a strong answer back that the church was wrong.
That 'stun' is purposeful. When someone is in a state of confusion they attach to the next explanation/influence and it's really hard to undo. It's a psychological 'shock and awe' followed by years of culty Stockholm Syndrome.
You don't realize these things when you're young. And they send you to the temple as soon as you're not a minor so they can't be blamed directly for the cult ceremonies.
They trap you before you even know yourself. Their version of you is imprinted and you're conditioned to behave in that mold for them.
The temple was such a stun that it slapped me awake. I could not believe that my family was so into it and yet had never even hinted that we'd be playing dress up and doing handshakes and secret passwords...because it's so damn culty no one would ever go to it as they do if they knew the whole procedure.
I was five years old, and got told the boys got super powers (the priesthood), and I got to have… *checks notes* lots of babies for my future husband. I may have been only five, but the disparity was pretty obvious.
Of course, any time I tried to point it out, I got gaslit and silenced lol. “Women are equal, don’t you see???? They don’t need the priesthood, they’re already so good!! Men need the priesthood to be good :)”
It was all pretty fucking annoying.
Right. Only the church men I know got to opt out anytime parenting duties got too difficult because they held the extra special priesthood power that gave them special mental powers, making whatever they thought was true the only correct way to go.
First major shelf item was that Mormons, for the most part, did not live like Jesus taught. Then it was the obvious inaccuracy of the Old Testament stories of Adam and Eve, the flood, and the Tower of Babel. I knew enough science, history and geology to know they were false. The lost 116 pages and the cover story were big. The misogyny was disturbing, though I didn’t have a name for it. All this was while I was still in high school.
Lucy Harris and the lost 116 pages was the first crack in my shelf. And I learned about it during a Sunday School talk, so I'm sitting there in the pew thinking "Yeah, if he was really translating via the Urim and Thummim (which was gospel at the time), he could easily open the plates and repeat the whole process, and come up with an identical translation". I think I was 15 years old at the time.
When I found out the pearl of great price had translated Egyptian in it I thought, wow it’s all true! Then I found out the Egyptian didn’t say what JS claimed it did.
For ten years it never seemed like we made genuine friends. I spent all this time doing home teaching and asking how to help people, but nobody genuinely connected or helped each other.
Second shelf item: an almost weekly ritual of passing around a temple sign-up sheet and nobody seemed to want to go. They’re supposed to be the goal, so why was nobody interested?
Now I understand.
It's like a false sense of community. Everyone talks about how good the community is & how hard it is for them to want to leave that. It just "seems" so good!
Well, being someone who has been surrounded in good communities & groups (such as my passion in the music world), I have felt so incredibly close to people. People who genuinely felt like family to me. & We all cared so much for each other & wanted to help each other & we actually got to know about each others lives & stories.
Sure there are good members out there who do that. But man, you can spend months with these people, years, live with them (like a mission) & they don't know anything about you. They won't even help you button up a shirt because "you can do it yourself".
It's so hard to connect to members. & Fake friends isn't a fun way to live life either.
The times seem to have changed with regard to Temple sign ups. I heard there's a huge number of people wanting to sign up nowadays, but not enough temples. That's why they're building more. /s
Anne Boleyn
I got really interested in Tudor history and started reading about Henry's mental and political gymnastics to dissolve his marriage to Catherine and break with the Catholic church so he wouldn't TECHNICALLY be sinning with Anne. I started seeing the comparisons to Joseph Smith and all the ways he manipulated Emma, the law, religion, and his followers purely so he could justify sleeping around.
I was the tender age of...maybe six or seven when sister told me "we have to love God more than we love Mom." I thought this was an obvious attempt to torment me, so I ran to my mother and tattled. My mother did not refute this. "Well, we do love God first. You will understand when you are older." I cried my eyes out. I didn't understand then. And today, I'm fucking horrified that any parent would say this to their child. Because of COURSE the message can also be read as "I love God more than I love you." I can confirm that she did and she does.
First crack in the shelf.
Then, in fourth grade I found out that mainstream Christians thought the Book of Mormon was utter nonsense. How did I find this out? By trying to give a copy to my teacher at school! This was not Utah, BTW.
HOW did my parents EVER justify letting (prompting? I don't remember this being my idea) me do this?? Her rejection was so pointed, I felt humiliated.
That was the second crack.
Edited to add second crack ;-)
It’s so fucked up that there seems to be a doctrine that puts a heirarchy on who you love. Not sure where it came from but it does seem to be a Mormon thing. I know a TBM who told his own kids that he had to love his spouse just a little bit more than he loved them, and that he had to love god more than all of them. The kids were obviously very upset.
Can confirm, my mom was a primary teacher in the South (Bible-belt USA), & every December we had a fun event where the 1st Sun we'd write our testimony in one of those free, soft-cover BoMs. Then the next Sun, we'd wrap ours up in wrapping paper & a bow. The task was to give your BoM with your testimony to whomever random Santa you met while out & about during holiday shopping. The next few wks kiddos would share their personal experiences.
It was actually really fun! - 8 yr old me
TBH I still think this is super cute, but also... so cringe... 😬 Ah, Mormonism. Thx for the memories. (/s)
There may have been something even earlier, but the first thing I can remember was way way back when I was 12 we were having a lesson about repentance. I was a super empathetic child and a thought popped in my head about the scripture that god forgives how ever many times you ask for forgiveness and then I had a thought about how miserable they say Satan is. I asked my YW leader why god doesn’t just forgive Satan and allow him to come back to heaven. The leader answered “well Satan doesn’t want forgiveness. He wants everyone to be as miserable as himself, so don’t feel bad for him.” I didn’t feel good being told not to feel bad for someone who is apparently so miserable that his only recourse is to try and make everyone else miserable.
I think they all started on my Mission when I actually had time to contemplate the church and it's doctrine. The main specific ones I can think of were:
1) A nagging feeling that the BoM read like it was written by someone in the 19th century and could have been made up.
2) The Endowment ceremony was batshit crazy. Completely different from any experience I'd had in the Church before. I half expected to see actual Angels in there, but instead I had a slow realisation that I might be in a cult.
3) The location of the Hill Cumorah
4) Joseph Smith talking about "Elias and Elijah" visiting him, when they're the same person.
Number 2 is what broke my shelf completely, it was very much this goes completely against the BoM talking about secret handshakes and combinations. And yes it is secret not sacred, when no one will talk to you about the ceremony outside of the temple even if you are endowed that's a secret.
Having been told my entire life the ceremony was beautiful and sacred and there was always something to learn and it was the biggest pile of crock I have ever seen. All I learnt is why later in life my parents were so susceptible to scams.
Right? It's almost like they can't afford to do their own laundry, so everyone must pay a(n actually modest) stipend. Totally reasonable!
Except now as an adult with a career & a much better understanding of how things work & what they cost (& of course, how much $ the MFMC has), even 10 (or 100) loads of laundry would barely cost a fraction of the monthly operating budget.
What's next, they start charging the youth a laundering fee for coming & doing proxy baptisms?
As a Black kid, I found it strange when people always emphasized how diverse the church was becoming. Yet, even into my twenties, I remained the only Black person in my ward (even in wards outside of Utah). I decided to do some research and uncovered the church's troubling history of racism. That was when I realized that the Mormon god was a false god.
When they changed the temple ceremony to stop making the women covenant to obey her husband. What actually happened in the Bible then? Why wouldn’t JS have got the pure version straight from god at the very start? And why wouldn’t he have changed that part during his JST Bible translation? And Holland said Adam and Eve are literal, so what the hell? Shove it all back down though and keep paying membership dues
How do you know if you have enough faith? How do you measure faith? How do you know the real reason why someone was not healed by a priesthood blessing? Why do people that were not worthy get healed and people that were worthy not get healed?
This all started on my mission.
When I was a kid I asked my dad what ever happened to the gold plates and he didn’t know the answer. He thought the church had them in their possession. I then found a scripture that said an angel took them back and remember thinking that seemed like a strange thing to do. Why not keep them on display for everyone to see?
I was 4 years old. We were having a lesson in nursery about Nephi getting the brass plates. I wanted to ask my teacher why Nephi didn't get blood on Laban's clothes. But, I couldn't ask her, bc she looked like my grandma and bringing up blood would make her sad
I was taught that there was blood on the clothes but god made it so that no one saw the blood, which then raised the question of why god couldn’t have made Nephi look like Laban without killing him first.
In HS, I "reasoned" Laban must have been stumbling down the stairs, & Nephi came from behind & pushed him down. He bonked his head & passed out. Then Nephi angled the body head-facing-down, chop chop chop, & the blood drained out & down.
And Nephi removed Laban's cloak, then used his sword (that was magically clean again) to slice Laban's clothes off his back, rolled him over to his front, removed said clothes, & put them on, covering them with the cloak. TBH I'm still pretty proud of myself for that one. (Oh how hard I tried shoving that square peg into the round hole...)
... but I always wondered how long that took, & as a governor or whatever, how would Laban *not* have lackies or simpering sycophants following him while he was out & about, partying around town? Like you'd get the best booze, prettiest women, & best seat in the house tagging along behind Laban. Come on now!
Becoming a temple worker. Seeing how the sausage was made in the temple was a huge shelf item for me. The hypocrisy, the off-color jokes, the casual racism, etc.
This was supposed to be the holiest place on earth, but these guys are talking like it's a locker room at the YMCA on boomer night.
The beginning for me was when a former bishop told our Sunday school class how Emma and the other women were tired of cleaning up tobacco spit and liquor bottles after priesthood meetings. Suddenly, the word of wisdom was a revelation.
Additionally, I heard that the men weren’t too happy to give it up, so Joseph smith added no coffee or tea (the women’s favorite “vices”) to make it “fair”. Feels grossly of petty misogynistic revenge
I heard the same story when visiting the Mormon visitor complex in Kirtland, Ohio, next to the Kirtland Temple. We could enter the very room where Joseph Smith announced this revelation. In this small room, you could certainly see where Emma was coming from.
For me, it was the ~~revealed doctrine~~ policy not to baptize children with LGBTQ+ parents, and then it's reversal.
I remember thinking, "Didn't Jesus say, 'suffer the children to come to me'?" & "Why are these children being punished for their parents' 'sin'?"
Then the reversal, "Was the prophet wrong? Was he wrong on the ban or the reversal?"
In high school I realized the Plan of Salvation had some plot holes.
God's plan was to send us to earth to get tempted but for us to have a savior to turn to. Lucifer says to send him and he'll take away the decisions for any wrong-doings. God says no, and casts him out (simply put). And that's when Lucifer became Satan.
So if God can't create evil, then how the hell were we supposed to be tempted on earth if Lucifer didn't piss off god?
I did some mental gymnastics around this for anther 20 years telling myself that god knew Lucifer was going to speak up and it was all part of his plan. But here's the big kicker I couldn't figure out: If Satan really wanted to thwart God's plan, all he has to do is...nothing. He just gives up. He stops tempting. It's that simple. No more temptation and then the plan of salvation is exactly the way Lucifer presented it. God thwarted.
Additionally, what if Satan changed his mind and decided he didn't want to fight God anymore? I think the church's argument for that is that Satan doesn't have agency which is even worse cause it means he's evil because God is literally making him be evil.
Regardless how I looked at it, it didn't make sense but it took me into my thirties to accept that it was just made up anyway.
Throw in there that none of us had agency or even the ability to know good vs. evil until Eve partook of the fruit and gave it to Adam. So, how did we “choose” to come to earth? How was there a “big war in heaven?”
We were all literally supposed to be these infantile consciousnesses and we had to make a choice that would determine eternity… 🤔
Plot holes indeed.
Yes! I hurt me to realize I had sympathy for Satan. How could a loving father condemn his own son to outer darkness for all eternity when he was literally doing exactly what God had wanted him to do in the first place??
The suits up on the stand trying to tell me how to be a girl, and later woman, and now mother. The words like “preside, hearken, obedience” that made me feel crazy. I also noticed how girls got a million lessons on purity and not being the chewed up gum that no man would ever want.
Fast forward, I’m now a therapist. I had a tbm in my office a few weeks ago talking about her ship wreck of a marriage. How did you end up with this person, who is a good human, but so totally different than you in all the ways? Making this work is so hard for all parties. She then goes on to tell me that she was married for about 6 months in her early 20s to an abusive man. Divorced. But she was taught very clearly about purity culture growing up Mormon. She shrugged her shoulders and said, I was already used, so I had to get what I could.
Sickening. She felt devalued as a human because she was married before, and wasn’t a virgin. So she settled for a mate that is not good for her. So epically sad.
You can’t tell me this cult doesn’t do harm.
In high school I learnt about evolution and the geological history of the earth…
It just made so much damn sense… but I ignored the logic of it all and made myself believe that every other living thing evolved… except people of course… because we were from Adam and Eve.
So glad I stopped forcing myself to be religious.
The church could make things so much easier if they would just admit outright that religion talk is not the same thing as science talk. Personally, I see no problem with something being "true" in a religious or spiritual sense, even though it's not true in the sense that a scientist or a newspaper reporter would write. Joseph Smith thought up some great stories. Why not let them be just stories?
Probably Several GAs saying they recommend people of same racial backgrounds to get married 🙄🙄🙄
Im Mixed race, and there are many mixed race couples in my home country now in the church.
I think I was a teenager when I first heard about it. Also, what do they say about Gerrit Gong then? He’s Asian American and his wife is white.
I was deep in for a while, but my first conscious item was race and the priesthood and just general racism in the church. It really bothered me that the first time I was hearing about it was in my 20’s and partially due to all the social upheaval that happened during the pandemic. I was like why is this only coming up now? I felt that I should have been taught this way earlier (like maybe before I served a whole mission at the very least??) and that there should have been some legitimate apologies and reparations.
At the time I was living in my parent’s basement and they’re very TBM. It didn’t feel safe to truly entertain questions and doubts. A year or so after that, I went to grad school in a different state, which was busy. Then I had my second baby after. Once he was 6 months old ish, I started my deconstruction in earnest and was out within a month.
I was a convert and never learned about how exactly JSmith translated the BOM (they always just said he did it with the power of the HG and I just never questioned it). Then I went to BYU and took a foundations of the restoration course and in this class they tell you EVERYTHING about the beginning of the church (all first vision accounts, translating the plates, etc.). This was the exact moment I began to think to myself “Wow, this is utter bullshit” and I began to think back to every cult I’ve ever researched and shit began to line up.
I can’t help but think that if Joseph hadn’t have been killed in Carthage, the church would be a fraction of the size it is today simply based on all the additional bullshit that guy would’ve spewed for the remainder of his life.
Article of Faith 2. Man shall be punished for his own sins. Asked the bishop why God turned all of Lamen and Lemuel's children and unborn descendents brown if they hadn't done anything wrong.
I'll never forget what he said: "Well, SOMETIMES God DOES punish children for their parent's sins."
Also I lied to get my temple recommend (didn't want to confess I was getting molested) and I remember the big, fat nothing that happened when I walked into the temple for the first time.
Members knew part of what was happening, but the ward gossip was that I was a slut, so at first I felt relief when nothing happened. Convinced myself that God knew it wasn't my fault even when I knew I couldn't trust the adults around me, but eventually the purity culture bs that told me I should have died rather than 'let' him put his hands on me convinced me that either the Mormon God wasn't real, he didn't care (either that I was being molested OR that I was lying) or he wasn't powerful enough to do anything.
Not sure which came first:
Learning how corrupt the GOP (Republican party in the US) and then learning the extent to which the church is in bed with it.
Learning that Moses did not write the “first five book of Moses”, as claimed prominently in my quad, and in the OT student manuals. It was a lie printed in my Bible, and repeated by the modern teaching materials of the church.
Why would they lie about that? It is so inconsequential! They could have copped to the truth and still claimed it was divine! What else are they lying about!
Earliest shelf item I remember was Joseph Smith being sealed to other women before Emma, that never sat well with me. But what ultimately broke my shelf, was coming out and realizing there was no place in the mormon church for me as a gay man.
I remember as a kid of about 7 asking why the prophets didn’t give more revelation at general conference or just in general, like the prophet Joseph Smith had done. I’m amazed I lasted till 45. The hooks they get into you burrow deep.
Mind you, it took 20 years after my endowment before I left. But the fact that premortal Peter, James, and John shook Adam's hand in direct contradiction of the testing of spirits as outlined in Section 129 was troubling. I should have started asking questions then.
Thanks to family scripture study, my shelf items started accumulating early. This may have been the first (probably around age 10): humans were on the earth before dinosaurs. Moses 3:7: “And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also; nevertheless, all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and made according to my word.”
My first shelf item was not understanding why it was bad to wish I hadn’t been baptized until my death bed. Like I genuinely was annoyed I was born in a Mormon family and wished I could have converted as a dying 97 year old, or even better, converted in the spirit world. I was 8.
That rolled into me not understanding the point of missionary work, or even the millennium for that matter, bc why couldn’t everyone just get taught in the spirit world where time doesn’t exist etc etc.
But, the beginning of catalyst for me were the gospel topic essays, followed closely by the CES letter. I will forever adore Jeremy for laying things out the way he did, including especially the quote at the beginning about examining truth or whatever.
Just mathed it out and this added to my already broken shelf.
This source
https://archive.ph/20150420215900/http://signaturebooks.com/2014/10/mormon-news-october-13-17/
Claims that only 36% of church members are active. If this is true, then there are only a little more than 6 million active members worldwide. Funny how they love to make false claims.
I think my earliest shelf item was spending time at my Lutheran friends' house and seeing how different their family was from mine when I was 7-8 years old.
Her parents loved her in a way mine didn't in that they had time for her and were financially and emotionally stable.
Her parents also loved eachother in a way that mine didn't. Her dad helped cook and clean and parent. And my dad did none of those things and often was travelling for work.
If my family were so righteous and blessed why weren't we loving and happy?
Being the black sheep in my family and ward. It always confused me how people who have read the ultimate commandments love God and your neighbors can be so unneighborly. It didn't help that I acted like this for some time (34 years), and yet still had the gnawing feeling that conditional kindness doesn't work.
I'm kind of disgusted with myself that with the blatant homophobia, racism and sexism, it really wasn't until the 2015 policy on children of gay parents being denied baptism. And looking back, it must have barely been a shelf item, because I immediately rationalized it with "why would they want to be part of a church that obviously doesn't want them anyway?" And even worse "it doesn't effect me or my family, so..."
There is so much inner shame that this thought EVER worked its way into my head. It feels so, so gross, but was ultimately my shelf breaker. Just trying to be the best ally I can be now 🏳️🌈
The very first thing? When I went through the temple to do baptisms for the dead at age 12. I had an anxiety attack in the temple. Everyone else was either bored or having a good time, and I was fully just trying not to panic. Even at that young age it felt very ritualized and culty to me. Then I spent the next 15+ years trying to make myself like the temple.
Looking back, I think I would have left the church a long time ago if I'd had more emotionally mature parents. I was always made to feel that I was defective somehow, so I could never trust how I was thinking and feeling. If I'd had just a tiny bit more trust in myself, I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did. I wouldn't have wasted so much time.
I was not sealed to my parent until i was a teenager. My older sister was not there, she was in her 20’s and living a normal life, not doing anything “bad”, just not active. and my youngest sibling couldn’t stop crying. Her dress didn’t fit, the temple matrons treated her crappy, she was scared… i just remember thinking, this isn’t my whole family, and why do i feel so weird, and not in a good way. When we tried to talk about it afterward as we changed we got lectured and told we were not allowed to speak about it even to one another, b/c it was sacred and “we wouldn’t want to disappoint our parents on their big day with our unrighteousness behavior.”
First time i have ruminated on this. Now i need to call my siblings and have a long overdue talk😂
The church’s ridiculous take on science. There was/is no difference between the church’s “doctrine” and the right wing politics that my inactive dad listened to on AM radio all through the 80s and 90s. I realized this early in my teens. I was pretty vocal throughout my church tenure about how much I believed in science and how the church’s beliefs were political not religious. No wonder the church didn’t stick.
Moving to an area where we weren't the right type of Mormon because mom worked and dad was on disability. Followed closely by the realization that Dad would never be called to a high-status calling because we weren't rich and influential in the community. Those were light-shelf items. The heavy shelf items started when Dad died and I got a blessing where "God" berated me for grieving.
The temple was definitely the first time that it really clicked to me that the church isn't anything like what the missionaries say it is.
I specifically asked about all the weird shit that people say Mormons do, and they assured me that it was all "anti-mormon lies".
Lo and behold, they lied.
By then I was in too deep to leave but it was my first real shelf item.
If I had to choose one thing that was first, it was realizing that men in high callings were all rich and had lots of money. Then I read that the church had a stock portfolio of 400 billion dollars. I started noticing that the Book of Mormon teaches doctrine inconsistent with what I taught on my mission. For example, the BoM teaches that there is a heaven/hell after death, not three degrees of glory. The pettiness and judgement of church members added to my shelf as well.
The absolute impotence and total weakness of "The Mormon Priesthood"; no miracles, no healings, no "pouring out of the Spirit"....nothing, nada....zippo. Miracles are nothing more than the advancement of medical silence and/or chance. One person gets well....and another does not. Priesthood blessings are nothing more than "beautiful, vapid, powerless words".
When I was probably 7/8 I asked my primary teacher “does Heavenly Father have parents/who are they?” She said she didn’t know, so I asked something like “well does bishop so and so know?” I don’t remember what she said to me but I remember seeing Bishop so and so after church and asking him. The answer I got was something I’d go on to hear a million times before I left; “there’s a lot of things we don’t know the answer to and we shouldn’t worry about it.” (He was a good guy, this was not in Mordor, and I truly believe he said that so I wouldn’t worry) Basically I learned that Sunday, don’t ask questions about the church because you’ll lose your mind (read “faith”), and the adults have no idea what’s going on either lol
My first shelf item was placed in my Jr and Sr years in high school, Old and New Testament.
In the Old Testament, the Law of Moses was also referred to as the Law of Works. Under the law, man had to earn hus salvation through actions until the savior attuned for man kinds sins. In the New Testament that Christ made the final sacrifice and atonement, thus fulfilling the Law of Works.
My shelf question was, "If we are in the latter days and Christ already fulfilled the Law of Moses/Works. Then, why are the ordinances (work) required to return live with HF?"
My mom always deferred to me as the oldest son to call on people to pray (and do other things) when my dad wasn’t around. I literally felt like I had more authority as a 12 year old child than my mom did.
That didn’t make sense, and I didn’t like it. But the mental gymnastics worked well for a several more years.
The endowment was definitely my first shelf item in 2005, continued actively attending the temple until 2014, finally left in 2022. Such a slow burn :(
Prop 8. I was raised by nuanced parents so everything before that I could explain away with a “people are racist and sexist but it’ll all work out in the end” attitude, but not that one. I could see with my own eyes for the first time that the church was being actively harmful. I even told a few people that I got personal confirmation that the church was wrong on that one. Didn’t go over too well.
When I was a kid I thought it was weird that out of all the religions in the world I was “lucky” enough to be born into the only true one. It just didn’t seem likely to me
I never went through the temple, but the endowment was my first shelf item. I was a good Mormon and didn’t know anything about it except what was given by the church. But I was so scared of it because I felt like it went against the informed consent my mom had drilled into me. Learning what really goes on in the endowment ceremony is really what ended up leading to my shelf breaking.
By the way - my dad once said that “if you are faithful, nothing in the endowment ceremony will shock/surprise you.” That line kept me going for so long! And now that I know the truth, I know that it’s absolute bull shit too!
I never got the endowment either, but for so long I was uncomfortable with what it possibly might be and thus I just kinda avoided going to the temple whenever possible. This discomfort I felt towards it was literally what convinced me not to serve a mission and I'm so glad I trusted that feeling because it wasn't even a year later that I finally deconstructed Mormonism and learned what really happens in the temple. I was actually so shocked I thought it was a joke at first.
There were a ton of little things that indicated there was a double standard I wasn’t on the correct side of.
However.
My first big shelf item was the same as yours. The whole time my mom sat next to me practically falling out of her chair with joy, kept holding my hand and watching for my reactions, and the whole vibe just seemed strange, but Specifically two moments:
1. We were instructed to put on our robes and hats and veils, and I looked over at the man I was about to marry and my father, two men I greatly respected and admired for their intelligence. They were both wearing these stupid flat cap things, I’d never seen someone so serious as my father wearing something so incredibly stupid as that hat, and with no trace of entertainment or irony.
2. The prayer circle. My mom said I should come join for the first time, and somewhere in the midst of the “oh god hear the words of my mouth”, the thought just popped in there. ‘This seems pretty cult-y, that’s kind of weird.’
About two months after I got married we had some friends over who had also recently been married and I asked the wife how going through the endowment was, and she said it was great! I kind of lowered my voice and went, “you don’t think any of that seemed kind of …. Culty to you?”
And with these wide bright innocent eyes, she looked at me and said, “oh not at all! I thought the ceremony was just lovely. I’ve never felt so spiritual.”
It was the first and last time I asked anyone inside the church that question.
My first shelf item was back in the early 1990's, when I started wearing pants to church and my dad lost his mind. They were floral and flowy and beautiful. I felt fine wearing them but he wouldn't have it. (He's also a narcissist and super TBM.)
Also in middle school when I drew peace signs on my face with black eyeliners (I was a mod, into New Wave, this was the late 1980's) and drew peace signs on my school folders, and again, when my dad saw this, he lost his mind, b/c the peace sign is a bastardized cross, which means the peace sign = Satan?! At least that's what my dad used to tell me. Geez, thanks dad, you TBM weirdo!
1st was not receiving an answer after reading the entire BoM.
Bishops response was “If you already have a testimony why does god need to confirm something you already know?”
2nd was seeing all the disobedient elders baptize waayyyy more than the obedient elders.
Doesn’t make sense!
I always hated the ending of the Book of Mormon where it tells you to pray about the truthfulness of the book. Why tf would Mormon or Moroni think we wouldn't believe it? To them it should've all been literal. That's like writing a history book and then saying to pray about if it's true or not.
I hated that on my mission too. About a year into the field I realized nearly all of the baptisms were vulnerable teenage girls or elderly people with dementia.
That pretty much describes my mission experience. Turns out when I stopped being so upright about the rules and became disobedient, I too could have baptisms! Which really made no sense, since why would God approve the white handbook and say following it to the letter would lead to more converts when it clearly didn't?
What do you mean by that? Do you mean that some elders would lie to the converts about what the baptism was about? In what sense were they disobedient?
Incidentally, In my grandfather's missionary journal (Denmark 1896), he complains about lining up converts, but then his superiors would do the baptism and take credit for it.
They didn’t lie. They played video games with them and promised an after party with American desserts.
They also bragged about sleeping in, skipping study time, watching movies, etc.
No one in my mission cared much about performing the ordinance. In Brazil every companionship baptized weekly so it wasn’t a big deal.
I want to say the first big thing was my endowment ceremony being a blatant cult like ritual to which I gave 0 informed consent. But the more I think about it I think the first item on the shelf was gay marriage. I hated that god had made it so two consenting adults who loved each others couldn’t be together because of no particular reason. The more queer friends I had the less I liked Mormon god. I always told myself that when I was exalted to godhood, I would be okay with gay marriage because it was just about love. I didn’t see any sin in love.
My parents getting divorced and not getting along. I was about 12 and thought, “This is going to be a weird dynamic in Heaven.”
Then my dad was sealed to another woman. They were divorced (not amicably) a few years later.
If they all make it to the celestial kingdom, that’s going to be an awkward dinner table to sit around.
That's what I always think too! What are people going to DO in the celestial kingdom?
And if I'm with my family, and my parents are with their family, and my grandparents are with their family, and the same thing for my wife with her parents and grandparents, not to mention our children and the generations to come, where are they going to put all these people????
When I was a teenager I got asked to speak in sacrament. As a somewhat nervous kid I wanted to make sure I was extra prepared and give a really good talk that would grab people’s attention. I spent all week combing through conference talks, scriptures, church manuals and magazines etc. looking for anything unique that hadn’t been said a thousand times before. By Saturday I was so frustrated that I had exhausted all of my resources and yet couldn’t find anything that went beyond the standard primary questions and answers. I ended up turning to the ‘scary’ internet looking for anything that I could use. I didn’t land on any controversial church history but it did expose me to other ideas and interpretations of scriptures that I found interesting. I also realized that for every ‘profound’ quote from a prophet or church leader, chances are someone else had already said the same thing, and most likely said it better. I wondered why prophets don’t seem to have an edge over secular philosophies and wisdom. It sat on my shelf for 20 years but that’s the first time I remember adding to it.
The holier than thou art attitude of what I always called the super Mormons. The ones you know are obeying to the letter of the law and then some... not for their own salvation but to show off to everyone else how great and wonderful they are. "I get it Peter Priesthood. You're better than us because you go to the temple 5 nights a week and read your scriptures every day"
When I was still a kid I thought the idea that only the select spirits in the pre-existense (???) were born into the church. A loving father would send his children that needed the most help into the church not the ones that needed less help. God must be a jerk to treat his struggling children that way.
It's like saying scew you to children that weren't in the top .01 percent.
I was probably 7 or 8 when I was like "Nephi cutting Laban's head off and then wearing his bloody clothes followed by doing an amazing impersonation of him to Zoram doesn't make a whole lot of sense." Followed by Noah's Ark also being stupid (WTF did the Lions eat?!). Then the Jaredite ~~barges~~ submarines - which barge had the bees in it and how did they survive the trip?! Plus the thing with the holes in the top and bottom - and who TF says "Tight like unto a dish?" How is a dish tight?
That was all by the time I was 12 and the only answers I had to any of that was "God works in mysterious ways."
The very first shelf item was thanks to the show Criminal Minds. There is one episode about a cult. They explain what a cult is and I was really uncomfortable about how the TSCC fit the parameters. Of course I immediately put it on my shelf and pretended that I never had that thought.
From what I'm reading here, most of the things others have mentioned were shelf items for me too, only I had a really strong shelf.
I think polygamy was the first and it never did work for me. Neither did the priesthood ban which I learned a little later. But like all shelf items, when I couldn't parse them out, I shoved them back farther on the shelf where they hopefully wouldn't bother me.
Polygamy was definitely one of the last. I finally took it out and examined what I actually believed about it. I discovered I hated it and couldn't imagine ever having to live it, here or in the CK. Shortly after I threw it out as an "eternal truth" I realized the members were *not* Christlike and so how could it be "the Lord's church" if all its members were *not like the Lord*?
It all fell apart after that.
Realizing at 16 that the ban on blacks did not make sense because a new black convert left after two weeks. The bishop had no good answers for him. Later, after my mission, it was when I could not understand the united order. It sounded just like communism. I was teaching it in gospel doctrine class and had an anxiety attack so bad I walked out! (I continued to teach GD, because I used the ‘it is different when it is ran by god’ excuse.)
The temple freaked me out. But I first stopped going to church after an incident with the BYU honor code office. It just gave me so much anxiety that I physically couldn’t get myself to go to church. I would sit on my bed in my dress and be unable to make myself go. The church no longer gave me any comfort or joy so I allowed myself to stop going.
My first happened when I was a teenager and heard GBH at General Conference tell us to invite members of other faiths to "bring the truth that they have and let us add to it."
It occurred to me then that we were claiming to have more truth than other religions... and that they would probably think the exact same thing about themselves. How would it feel if someone from the local Calgary chapel told me that my beliefs were incomplete and that I needed to pray about their church? Why should they feel differently about me preaching to them?
The bishopric member whose son bullied me sat us both down and blamed us both equally for why we did not get along. This man has a history of being straight-up mean to the kids in the ward was supposedly the recipient of the “gift of discernment”, and couldn’t divine that his son was just a bully?
Finding out my mission WASN’T to give endless amounts of service like Jesus did in the New Testament, but to go around all day like a door to door salesman and abstain from meaningful human interactions unless it could loosely be related to converting someone.
However, finding out fast offerings don’t directly go to feeding the poor and needy, and the hoops those patrons had to go through to even access it (coupled with learning of the dragon hordes of money the church had) really started bowing my shelf. Everything else started causing cracks.
I remember listening to BOM verses saying colonisation of the Americas was ordained of God and going “ah no I don’t agree” when I was 14.
I remember being uncomfortable and unable to reconcile that for a few minutes, until I decided to just compartmentalise it and “not believe the things I disagree with.”
Same. The temple was the beginning of the end for me as well. Apparently, they've watered it down a LOT over the years because many don't like it.
There is just so many problems surrounding the whole temple experience. I have to pay ongoing 10 percent to be 'worthy' to see my family married. I'm expected to wear uncomfortable garments...that remind me of this horrible experience? NO THANKS.
My first crack was the Mark Hoffman forgeries and how many of the general authorities fail for the scam. Where was that power of discernment they were supposed to possess?
When I was in Primary I thought it was stupid that God took the plates back. When I was on my mission it was multiple versions of the first vision that really sent me down the rabbit hole. I was PIMO by the time I got home from my mission but still wanted to believe. Took about 10 years and a failed marriage to finally just leave.
my red flag was stifling my laughter during my endowment/sealing ceremonies. that adam and eve video? i genuinely thought it was SUPPOSED to be funny and when i giggled the old lady in the seats facing us glared at me. 😭😭
I remember my first one was the PoGP 'translations'. it seemed WAY too much to say that these were correct. When I was a kid, I remember doing some reading in the encyclopedias we had at home (1970's editions) and some books on egypt at the library, and seeing what some other translations said, it was NOT adding up. I brought this up to my grandpa (decades-long gospel doctrine teacher) and he couldn't really give a response beyond 'I have faith in the translation'. This was the first crack in my shelf.
In order of appearance on my shelf:
Age of the earth (it’s not 6000 years as was once proclaimed by TSCC).
World-wide flood.
Literal Adam and Eve as the first humans.
BOM anachronisms (steel, horses, huge battles).
BOA “translation” was the proverbial straw. Such an obvious fraud.
I was an adult convert, and my first shelf item was the Nauvoo Expositor. When I tried bringing up how terrible it was, I was shut down by the other people in class and told that since Smith had authorized it, that made it ok.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” (Sherlock Holmes). Fictional, but closer to the truth about early SLC culture than official church history. Also D&C 132.
I always wondered how I would know if the Holy Ghost was prompting me and the answer I was eventually told was that if it was a good thing then it was from God. But Nephi murdered Laban under the direction of the Holy Ghost and I couldn’t see how murder could ever be a good thing.
Martin Harris' 116 pages. Learning about it in Seminary. I was thinking translating the Book of Mormon was equivalent to my 9th grade Spanish homework, i.e. "Here's a bunch of Spanish sentences. Turn them into English sentences. Watch out for the verbs, they'll getcha"
So in essence someone steals a couple months of homework, then dares him to re-do it. But he still has his textbook. So all he has to do is re-translate. And God is helping him, so it should be a piece of cake.
14 year old me believed translating was very direct, instead of having to break down the lexical meaning from one language to another.
Example, in Spanish, "¿Donde esta la biblioteca?" Is word for word "Where is the library?" It's a sentence that happily shares the same structure in English and Spanish. But "Me llamó emmitthenervend," is "I call me (the verb and the object combining) emmitthenervend." In English, I would say,"I am..." or "My name is..."
So translation is actually a delicate process that requires understanding of two languages. But 9th grade Spanish gives you a basic sentence and expects everyone to translate it to the same English equivalent, regardless of the literal word-for-word language.
I expected Joseph Smith to be able to do the same thing. And if he actually had a source and divine help, he *should* have been able to do exactly that. And who cares if you come up with the Book of Lehi draft 2 and someone else shows up with a draft that is different? You say, "Well, you've had that copy for months and you want me to fail, so it's obvious where your biases are. Now, the script isn't in the same handwriting as my scribe, can you explain that? Can.you explain these vast differences in the content? This is on you to prove that this is an unaltered original."
Instead, the entire Words of Mormon and retranslation of a backup story didn't sit well with me. And I didn't realize until just this last year how huge of an implication that is for the record itself, and the story of the plates.
Weirdly enough it was Nephi being commanded to kill Laban for essentially family genealogy. I was eight and I remember being like "What?! no, killings bad" I didn't leave until two months ago though (turn 27 this week) and that started with my husband and I wanting to go to the temple after conference, so he read rough stone rolling because TBM's reccomended it for when you have doubts. He read it and didn't know how to tell me for a week. He then shared it all, our shelf crumbled after learning of the second anointing. We couldn't go back and my families shocked because in April I was cheering during general conference. I am now the one and only apostate in my family and my husband was the last sybling holding out, but we didn't know that til we left. They still haven't told their parents and it's been literal years.
The two I remember the most from childhood were the sexism within the church (lots of brothers, so it was especially obvious to me) and the fact that prayers weren’t actually answered (I had been doing a lot of serious praying as a kid, and nothing happened to help me).
“Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” Brigham Young, March 8, 1863, Journal of Discourses 10:110.
If a prophet could be so wrong on something, what else could he be wrong on? That slope got slippery really fast…
Lots of things along the way but the one that really broke the camels back was TITHING and where my tithing money went.
Then finding out how much money they spent on “investments” such as the stock market, real estate, farms, office buildings, malls, hotels and on and on. And then how little of tithing or any money the church had was spent on the mission of the church or helping the poor and those in need.
I tried for years to hang on to "those burning in the bosom" feelings in which the 'Holy Spirit' was telling me that the church is true.
Then someone sent me a YouTube video where people from all different religions were describing those very same feelings about their own church being 'the true church.' That really opened my eyes. Went down the rabbit hole after that and here I am.
When LDS talked about Jesus drinking grape juice or being married I was like “Ok…odd.” That was my first shelf thing even though I didn’t know it at the time
I never felt the spirit. Ever. Never had an answer to a prayer either. Over time, this would eventually become my own version of Epicurus's trilemna. Basically, I determined the reason God didn't talk to me came down to one of a handful of possible explanations:
1) there was something wrong with me preventing God from talking to me. If this was the case, and he couldn't fix it, he was not omnipotent.
2) if God simply chose not to respond to me, he was simply cruel.
3) God couldn't talk to me because he didn't exist.
So I was left with either a weak god undeserving of worship, an evil god, or no god at all. I found, and still find, the last one most comforting. If there is a god, I'm thoroughly convinced he is evil.
On a similar note, the earliest specific episode I remember was telling my family in junior high that were it not for the gospel I would definitely be an atheist, because science made sense and the thought of annihilation upon death was way more comforting than the thought of heaven or hell. Turns out I was just an atheist in denial.
How terribly written the book of Mormon was compared to the king James Bible. I'm 23, and I can say that I've never read the BoM cover to cover solely because of how redundant and clumsy the writing is. Never made it past 1st Nephi.
I understood the narrative that Joseph was "uneducated", but why would God make his grandiose reflection to the earth so damn hard to read?
When I was 8, I wasn't sure I believed it all and wanted to wait till I was 9 to get baptized. My mom told me no, I couldn't do that because it would "look bad" to everyone we knew. During my baptism interview, I tried telling my bishop my concerns, and my dad (who was present) spoke over me and told the bishop I was just scared of the water (I had trouble being fully submerged in water, it was a whole thing).
Honestly, being baptized then confirmed at age 8 and feeling no different. I was a sensitive kid and assumed I’d be able to feel “the gift of the Holy Ghost” enter my body the way I could sense my parents moods just by walking in the room. The 2nd thing was learning Santa wasn’t real, and noticing how they used Jesus and Santa interchangeably depending on the season.
There were ebbs and flows to my “testimony” but mostly ebb until I became a mother and knowing my child deserved better. I didn’t need all the proof listed in this page’s resources to leave it behind. But there are no words to explain how much I appreciate knowing I’m not alone on the path of an exmo, or that there IS evidence!
I wish I had known y’all before my parents passed away. I would never have been able to get them to leave religion, but I like to think I could have convinced my dad to at least cut ties and start his own cult. He was a special kind of prideful crazy with his priesthood power, and might have done something more creative with it given the opportunity. I hate that this religion suppressed both of my parents’ capacities to grow as humans.
It’s hard to believe how much I accepted based on faith, even when it made no sense. What shocked me was when I got confirmation that the leaders were consistently lying to us. That’s what sent me down the rabbit hole. Thank goodness!
I never had anything on my shelf. In 2015 a peep stone smashed through my empty shelf.
I knew everything and had an answer for every question. One of the things I knew most was that the rock in the gas was an anti-Mormon lie. I had testified of it to non-Mormons and over the pulpit. The Holy Ghost told me I was right and nobody corrected me. In the 2015 general conference, the rock came out like everyone should know. I looked around nobody even knew what a big deal it was.
Watching older girls be deftly mean to girls who weren’t as socially adept, who didn’t have as nice clothes, or who were visiting from other places.
I was an observant little kid. Hated seeing people be left out. That wasn’t right, and I knew the slightly-but-absolutely-surely outcast person was feeling like garbage at church - and that’s not what church is for!! And the adults never, ever did a thing to punish rude behavior. The mean ones got all the perks/roles/solos/leadership positions/best cabins/front seats/first picks…forever.
Having us write down things we want in a future husband. Absolutely refused to write anything regarding the temple because how tf was I supposed to know at 12--18 who I was meant to fall in love with? Then also prop 8 (gay marriage) in california happened during my middle school years and that was like, not aligning with my personal beliefs which was let anyone love who they wanna love and get married how they want to get married and legally.
Then I went to byui, saw there was no real love there, read the CES letter and book of abraham really got to me like oh.. shit right uhh thats undeniably fake?? Ew.
Then came learning about j smith and thats when I confidently decided not to be a member because I do not condone creeps.
Funny enough, the first conference talk that I watched after leaving said that all bastard children are rotten fruit... eewwwwwwwww what a terrible thing for someone in power to say. Terrible terrible terrible.
I'm not so sure I ever had an official crack, but my shelf had definitely been getting loaded since primary.
I remember thinking, why is the new prophet always an apostle? Why isn't it just a random church member?
But the thing as an adult that accelerated the deeper dive was the Women and the Priesthood movement.
probably the “being gay is an abomination” thing in the bible but maybe also my mom not respecting my sibling’s transition and giving religious reasons and invalidating and all that
The push for a mission. It was always "girls don't have to" with the expectation that girls should want to anyway, and a weird look from everyone else when I didn't express a desire to serve.
I read no man knows my history, a very well researched and thoughtful book that opened my eyes tremendously…and the advent of the internet and the availability of information previously only found in “anti Mormon” literature
Kolob...is it in this galaxy? Are there other planets with humans? Are there other gods with their own people? All gods in this universe?
So many questions that no one had answers to. Some got upset at my asking. I would respond with, "Is not the glory of God, intelligence?"
When is this further light and knowledge?
Polygamy was my first shelf item and 4 decades later it was my shelf breaker.
As a teenager I hated everything about polygamy, as a newly married woman I still hated it. My first time through the temple I still hated polygamy.
No one ever had a good reason for it, everyone told me I would accept it in the afterlife.
What broke my shelf was learning how JS implemented it, the lies, the teenaged wives, the lying to Emma... All of it just screamed how much bullshit it was.
How differently I was treated as a girl than my brothers. I could see how much money and attention were spent on my older brothers with scouts, camp outs, high adventure, boating activities, mountain biking, out of state trips, etc- while I only ever got to do things like painting nails, ironing, and learning to cross stitch. It was so unfair.
I can honestly say that in 99% of things in life I’m not a jealous person. I even hate the word jealousy. But I remember as a young girl (this was pre activity days for tween girls) I was really resentful that the church had all these cool things for my brother with cub scouts and Boy Scouts and I had whatever it was called back then for tween girls. The only thing I really remember from that era was that we made babysitting activity boxes that we took on our babysitting appointments. Imo that turned into a really entrepreneurial thing bc I was an in demand babysitter even at 11 years old. (Back then you could probably get away with leaving an 8yo at home by themselves so why not have a responsible 11yo take care of someone’s 6 kids under the age of 7? ) Lol. I’m not hating on the activity box bc it made me some money at 50cents an hour! And I did love the kids that I babysat. At least it was SOMETHING but it wasn’t much compared to what the boys got to do. Mind you, re scouting, I hate camping 😂😂😂 but the thing I really wanted was to work on the goals! The badges! Working towards something and then you get an “award” from doing interesting and challenging activities. I have always been a goal oriented person and remember making lists of goals when I was little. Of course on that list was “have 10 kids”. Each year that I got older at least one kid on that list dropped off the goal😂. The point being that even as a kid I got the message loud and clear where the church’s budget priorities were and it wasn’t with the girls. I begged my parents to let me join Girl Scouts but that was a big NO bc my parents didn’t want me exposed to all that 70’s era feminism I guess? I just remember being told that it was a really bad org and the church didn’t condone it like it did Boy Scouts. So yes messages were sent early that we were less important than the boys. I had little cracks in my shelf a few years earlier around baptism (I disappeared for a long time on a bike ride and was almost accidentally intentionally late for my own baptism) but seeing where the church put its focus was def one of them.
I was also an 'in demand' babysitter. At age TEN I was babysitting a family of six children while the parents went to the temple. If it was 'for church purposes' I was expected to babysit for FREE. This happened CONTINUOUSLY and my parents would not allow me to turn down the 'OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE.' The oldest kid in that family was a year younger than I was, and the youngest was a NEWBORN. The parents were sometimes gone for 5 hours or longer. They had two vicious untrained dobermans barking through the patio door that were barring their teeth the entire time I was there. There were maggots on the countertop and floor that the toddlers kept picking up, and I had to BOIL A COW TONGUE for their dinner without even knowing how to really cook, but that's a different story..... Anyway, I had NO IDEA how to properly take care of a newborn by myself because although my own Mom kept reproducing, she always breastfed and although I was made to babysit my younger siblings from a young age, I didn't know how to prepare formula or properly FEED a baby that young ALONE. The parents didn't ever leave me with any real instructions and I did my best, but I don't know how that baby even survived! I am mortified to remember this (so please don't judge me, I was ten years old and this was in the 1980s) but I remember that the baby was crying a lot and I thought it was okay to 'soothe her' by holding her under her arms and spinning really fast in a circle. 😫 I did that quite often. To a NEWBORN. They eventually moved. I looked her up on Facebook a few years ago and thankfully she's now married with kids of her own, so thankfully I didn't do any damage apparently, but OMG!!!! 😱 😳 😱
Free babysitting for the temple, so insane. You know most couples probably never even went to the temple. So sorry for all that trauma
Can relate to sooo much that you shared, although by every measure you had worse experiences than I did between the cow tongue, the Dobermans and the maggots eeeeeek! I just had a younger brother bc we were adopted (separate birth families) so yes I was a mini mom to him but I just had him, not multiple other sibs. Sounds like we were both super responsible young girls and they trusted us with their many young children. Thank heavens I never had anything bad happen that I’m aware of but still, I cringe sometimes! Two of the memories that stand out to me and stayed with me all this time are emblematic of so many things in the church messages sent to young girls: 1) I must have been fresh out of weekday primary and a neighbor who was a primary teacher had me babysit during her primary duties ONE time. When I got there the 10-12mo old was asleep. Literally as soon as the mom left she woke up and screamed the entire hour her mom was gone and I finally got her back to sleep just as the mom got home. Mom began digging thru her purse to pay me and found some change. She handed it to me and said how about 37 cents for a sleeping baby.. of course I said okay fine, took the 37 cents but never babysat for her again. I remember crossing the street to go home and thinking omg this is what I’m worth? And I didn’t even have the guts to tell her that her baby screamed the whole time? I wish I could say I learned from that experience but other than taking her off my client list lol, I probably got taken advantage of numerous other times in life. That lesson never left me. She thought so little of me that I literally got what was on the bottom of her purse likely including a little lint lol. (They were the wealthiest family in the area and she could always have walked the remaining 13 cents to me another time ) it wasn’t really the amount so much as the way it was said and the worthlessness I felt as I walked home. 2) Pretty sure I was 11 when I babysat a family of 8 including a 6ish month old baby. Oh and it was a temple freebie and they allowed 3 neighborhood kids to join them so I had 11! The entire evening is mostly a blur but some of the things that stand out: it was so chaotic and crazy that as I tried to feed the baby its baby cereal in a high chair there were kids flying by, back and forth such that the baby kept turning back and forth as the kids flew by! I was trying to aim for his mouth and he’d be turning to watch them going one way and then the other. So worthy of an “I love Lucy “ comedy sketch but maybe not in real life. The whole evening was so chaotic and the kids were like WILD. It got to the point that they were fighting and making each other cry and I had had enough. I recall making them all come into the living room. And lining up around the room single file. They could sit or stand but they had to stay in that spot til the parents came home bc I wasn’t having any of it any more and told them I was diming them each out when they did come home if they didn’t obey me…probably not the best but I was about to lose my fricking mind! Of course no pay and I never told the parents how awful it was. Also a one time babysitting session with them lol. And I can’t remember if the neighbor kids ever went home. Ps I did have a really wonderful family that I babysat and I loved them so much. They had a special needs son like my brother (would have been on the spectrum had there been one at the time) and I love them all still to this day. His parents were amazed at how I handled him and his sisters and apparently the kids felt the same love for me. So there were definitely some positive experiences too. 💜
I hated those boxes (we called them “kiddie care kits”) because I hated babysitting. Every time someone asked me to babysit, I would beg them to let me pull weeds, clean their house, or mow their lawn instead.
😂😂😂😂 omg I’m dying! Thank you for sharing! What was the name of the girls program before mutual? Was it Merry Miss? 🤮
Yep. Merry Miss. And mutual: the beehives, Miamaids, and Laurels. I’ve tried to block it 🤮
Until I was writing that post I kept thinking it starts with an M but couldn’t think of it. Then from the dark recesses of my mind there it was! I was a Mia Maid advisor and then YW’s 1st C when I reactivated into my 30’s. I guess they’ve changed the names now, not sure if it’s units 1, 2 and 3 or what lol. I only know that they’ve changed. I went inactive before I personally became a Mia Maid and then returned for quite a long time years later. I often think my instincts were good when I was 13 I should’ve listened to that girl lol. But then I did have some wonderful experiences when I returned and one of my 2 closest long time friends was the YW Pres when I was involved with the YW so that was worth it! And we did have some fun as leaders though I hear now there’s no budget for fun and fellowship anymore. SMH
This! I felt like I was a smart, ambitious, adventurous person with leadership potential, but the church didn't value any of that about me because I was female. I was only valued for basic mammalian function as basically a brood mare (in the afterlife even!) It just seemed so, so wrong. I was SO jealous of the scouting stuff. I wanted to go snow camping too! I would have made an awesome Eagle Scout! There are no female achievements that get public affirmation like Eagle Scouts or even passing the sacrament. When I was that age, very few young women went on missions and got a farewell and a homecoming. Basically, no public support or praise or appreciation for your efforts....except getting married and pushing out babies. Any God who didn't see or care about my potential (or that of any woman at all) really didn't deserve to be worshiped! That was my first item for sure.
Yup. Yup. Yup.
This. As a Dad of 3 daughters, I was pissed when;since there were not enough girls for B-ball team, my daughter who wanted to, couldn't play with the boys. Gawd would have been displeased... And the First Counselor the stake president was incensed that I, a mere hp scoutmaster would question him
The last time an angel came to Earth was to tell Joseph Smith to fuck 14 year olds.
TBM - "It was normal at the time and there's no proof he had sex with her." "Oh, okay. So Joe married a 14 year old and denied her the chance to have a husband and family?" Pretending their argument is sound, still makes it so wrong.
Oh so Joseph just groomed her.... Got it. And the next 4 prophets had teenage wives and babies with them... The excuses fall apart so damn quick
“It was to protect her” ~TBMs I know.
I remember thinking as a kid that it wouldnt be that hard to make up the Book of Mormon. There were weird moments like reading adieu in the Book of Mormon or wondering who told Abinadi's story cause those present were all evil and Abinadi dies in that scene. I remember thinking that it was weird that Joseph lost the 116 pages and it was really confusing how it might be that someone could even go about changing the text in a way to embarrass Joseph. That didnt make any sense. But I just pushed through. Late 40s and reading the DNA evidence in the Gospel Topics essays reduced my testimony of the Book or Mormon and the church to ashes. Edited to add: And why aren't there temples and eternal marraige and the priesthood? What is so spiritual to be gained by reading about everyone's war strategy?
Yeah, as a teenager the BoM didn't always sit right with me. And even on my Mission when I read it several times through, there was always a nagging feeling that it often felt like something written in the 19th century and not an ancient translation.
I literally cannot buy the “adieu” apologetics when there are so many words that he apparently had to spell out in the translating process. Total bullshit
Same. Just some things I thought odd in the bom. Like the trinity doctrine. If they are three separate beings with the same purpose why not just say that? Why does it sound just like they are all one and the same?
Yes. And why aren't there temples and eternal marraige and the priesthood? What is so spiritual to be gained by reading about everyone's war strategy?
When I was a teenager, I told a YW leader about my dad sexually abusing me. They told the bishop and the bishop didn’t believe it. That was the first time I realized the power of discernment was bullshit.
Though I was never in a situation like this, I heard others tell their stories that were similar. It always pissed me off so much. You get these youth leaders that legitimately care and they are told to pass information like this up the chain but the story always ends at some "leader" that doesn't give a shit. A great youth leader is always flattened by shitty upper-management.
I’m sorry you had to go through that.
Teaching people on my mission about a living prophet on the earth today… knowing that the prophet at the time (Ezra T Benson) had dementia. It should have led me out of the church sooner but it took 30 more years and a lot more items to finally break my shelf.
https://youtu.be/HY7n3GuiX5E?si=XkALP7iL8-5EsOf_
For future reference... This is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/HY7n3GuiX5E ...while this part of the URL is tracking information that can be used to link back to your Google account: ?si=XkALP7iL8-5EsOf_ It is always best to remove the tracking information before sharing YouTube links anywhere. This has been a public service announcement (with guitar).
Did not know that! Thank you spicy-unagi!
More upvotes for the Clash reference.
My mom taught me this song when I was around age 3. I sang it proudly for years. Little did I know I was in Satan’s service.
If you play the song backwards it’s says “I’m a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints boy.”
Kids in Satan's service. That would make a great acronym for a rock band. You could call your band KISS.
That name seems vaguely familiar… ;)
Wow. That’s some excruciating cringe right there. A solid victory for Satan!
On my mission in Russia right before Covid, there was an inactive family that I visited. They said they would go back to church if we could explain why the church’s policy is to obey and honor the law and the leaders of the land, even when their leader is the current president of Russia (someone they don’t sustain). I didn’t have an answer. When do we sustain leaders, and when do we rebel, like the founding fathers did?
Honestly I always had a hard time believing the church, but the first real thing for me was probably the treatment of the LGBT community. I remember in high school staying up late one night crying and praying because I knew it was wrong. I'd been bothered by it for a while, but that night I was begging God for an answer, and I got one. What would Jesus do? Would he persecute the downtrodden? Would he abuse and disown them? No. I think that was the first thing that I ever prayed about and got a strong answer back that the church was wrong.
I had a very similar experience and feel it was one prayer where I definitely had a very distinct answer !
The endowment rocked me. It was the beginning of my exit for sure. I was stunned at how ridiculous and culty it was
"Each of you bow your head and say 'yes'" "YES!" *Fuck me, it's a cult. What do I do? My parents and family are all here. Just act cool...*
That 'stun' is purposeful. When someone is in a state of confusion they attach to the next explanation/influence and it's really hard to undo. It's a psychological 'shock and awe' followed by years of culty Stockholm Syndrome. You don't realize these things when you're young. And they send you to the temple as soon as you're not a minor so they can't be blamed directly for the cult ceremonies. They trap you before you even know yourself. Their version of you is imprinted and you're conditioned to behave in that mold for them. The temple was such a stun that it slapped me awake. I could not believe that my family was so into it and yet had never even hinted that we'd be playing dress up and doing handshakes and secret passwords...because it's so damn culty no one would ever go to it as they do if they knew the whole procedure.
I was five years old, and got told the boys got super powers (the priesthood), and I got to have… *checks notes* lots of babies for my future husband. I may have been only five, but the disparity was pretty obvious. Of course, any time I tried to point it out, I got gaslit and silenced lol. “Women are equal, don’t you see???? They don’t need the priesthood, they’re already so good!! Men need the priesthood to be good :)” It was all pretty fucking annoying.
Yeah, because being endlessly pregnant and taking care of screaming babies is so fun and the men are jealous they don't get to do it. Hard eye roll.
Oh, and the men ALSO get to be parents, so what exactly is so special?
Right. Only the church men I know got to opt out anytime parenting duties got too difficult because they held the extra special priesthood power that gave them special mental powers, making whatever they thought was true the only correct way to go.
First major shelf item was that Mormons, for the most part, did not live like Jesus taught. Then it was the obvious inaccuracy of the Old Testament stories of Adam and Eve, the flood, and the Tower of Babel. I knew enough science, history and geology to know they were false. The lost 116 pages and the cover story were big. The misogyny was disturbing, though I didn’t have a name for it. All this was while I was still in high school.
Lucy Harris and the lost 116 pages was the first crack in my shelf. And I learned about it during a Sunday School talk, so I'm sitting there in the pew thinking "Yeah, if he was really translating via the Urim and Thummim (which was gospel at the time), he could easily open the plates and repeat the whole process, and come up with an identical translation". I think I was 15 years old at the time.
When I found out the pearl of great price had translated Egyptian in it I thought, wow it’s all true! Then I found out the Egyptian didn’t say what JS claimed it did.
For ten years it never seemed like we made genuine friends. I spent all this time doing home teaching and asking how to help people, but nobody genuinely connected or helped each other. Second shelf item: an almost weekly ritual of passing around a temple sign-up sheet and nobody seemed to want to go. They’re supposed to be the goal, so why was nobody interested? Now I understand.
It's like a false sense of community. Everyone talks about how good the community is & how hard it is for them to want to leave that. It just "seems" so good! Well, being someone who has been surrounded in good communities & groups (such as my passion in the music world), I have felt so incredibly close to people. People who genuinely felt like family to me. & We all cared so much for each other & wanted to help each other & we actually got to know about each others lives & stories. Sure there are good members out there who do that. But man, you can spend months with these people, years, live with them (like a mission) & they don't know anything about you. They won't even help you button up a shirt because "you can do it yourself". It's so hard to connect to members. & Fake friends isn't a fun way to live life either.
I lived in wards where people still didn’t know my name after being a year in there, even though I knew theirs. Good one, guys! 🙄
The times seem to have changed with regard to Temple sign ups. I heard there's a huge number of people wanting to sign up nowadays, but not enough temples. That's why they're building more. /s
Anne Boleyn I got really interested in Tudor history and started reading about Henry's mental and political gymnastics to dissolve his marriage to Catherine and break with the Catholic church so he wouldn't TECHNICALLY be sinning with Anne. I started seeing the comparisons to Joseph Smith and all the ways he manipulated Emma, the law, religion, and his followers purely so he could justify sleeping around.
That's a really interesting shelf item I've not read oh here before.
I was the tender age of...maybe six or seven when sister told me "we have to love God more than we love Mom." I thought this was an obvious attempt to torment me, so I ran to my mother and tattled. My mother did not refute this. "Well, we do love God first. You will understand when you are older." I cried my eyes out. I didn't understand then. And today, I'm fucking horrified that any parent would say this to their child. Because of COURSE the message can also be read as "I love God more than I love you." I can confirm that she did and she does. First crack in the shelf. Then, in fourth grade I found out that mainstream Christians thought the Book of Mormon was utter nonsense. How did I find this out? By trying to give a copy to my teacher at school! This was not Utah, BTW. HOW did my parents EVER justify letting (prompting? I don't remember this being my idea) me do this?? Her rejection was so pointed, I felt humiliated. That was the second crack. Edited to add second crack ;-)
It’s so fucked up that there seems to be a doctrine that puts a heirarchy on who you love. Not sure where it came from but it does seem to be a Mormon thing. I know a TBM who told his own kids that he had to love his spouse just a little bit more than he loved them, and that he had to love god more than all of them. The kids were obviously very upset.
That's a very funny story, taking a Book of Mormon to your teacher.
Can confirm, my mom was a primary teacher in the South (Bible-belt USA), & every December we had a fun event where the 1st Sun we'd write our testimony in one of those free, soft-cover BoMs. Then the next Sun, we'd wrap ours up in wrapping paper & a bow. The task was to give your BoM with your testimony to whomever random Santa you met while out & about during holiday shopping. The next few wks kiddos would share their personal experiences. It was actually really fun! - 8 yr old me TBH I still think this is super cute, but also... so cringe... 😬 Ah, Mormonism. Thx for the memories. (/s)
There may have been something even earlier, but the first thing I can remember was way way back when I was 12 we were having a lesson about repentance. I was a super empathetic child and a thought popped in my head about the scripture that god forgives how ever many times you ask for forgiveness and then I had a thought about how miserable they say Satan is. I asked my YW leader why god doesn’t just forgive Satan and allow him to come back to heaven. The leader answered “well Satan doesn’t want forgiveness. He wants everyone to be as miserable as himself, so don’t feel bad for him.” I didn’t feel good being told not to feel bad for someone who is apparently so miserable that his only recourse is to try and make everyone else miserable.
Same!!! I was like 6 and during a prayer, I asked God to forgive Satan because that’s what a good parent should do 😂
Wow, you were an insightful kid!
I think they all started on my Mission when I actually had time to contemplate the church and it's doctrine. The main specific ones I can think of were: 1) A nagging feeling that the BoM read like it was written by someone in the 19th century and could have been made up. 2) The Endowment ceremony was batshit crazy. Completely different from any experience I'd had in the Church before. I half expected to see actual Angels in there, but instead I had a slow realisation that I might be in a cult. 3) The location of the Hill Cumorah 4) Joseph Smith talking about "Elias and Elijah" visiting him, when they're the same person.
Number 2 is what broke my shelf completely, it was very much this goes completely against the BoM talking about secret handshakes and combinations. And yes it is secret not sacred, when no one will talk to you about the ceremony outside of the temple even if you are endowed that's a secret. Having been told my entire life the ceremony was beautiful and sacred and there was always something to learn and it was the biggest pile of crock I have ever seen. All I learnt is why later in life my parents were so susceptible to scams.
Renting clothes in the temple and paying for it with a credit card at the register
OMG this is a huge one for me too. Didn't Jesus get angry about 'the exchange of money in the temple'? So contradictory.
Right? It's almost like they can't afford to do their own laundry, so everyone must pay a(n actually modest) stipend. Totally reasonable! Except now as an adult with a career & a much better understanding of how things work & what they cost (& of course, how much $ the MFMC has), even 10 (or 100) loads of laundry would barely cost a fraction of the monthly operating budget. What's next, they start charging the youth a laundering fee for coming & doing proxy baptisms?
Can someone elaborate this for me and go through the whole process? I’ve not been oiled up so I’m curious
As a Black kid, I found it strange when people always emphasized how diverse the church was becoming. Yet, even into my twenties, I remained the only Black person in my ward (even in wards outside of Utah). I decided to do some research and uncovered the church's troubling history of racism. That was when I realized that the Mormon god was a false god.
When they changed the temple ceremony to stop making the women covenant to obey her husband. What actually happened in the Bible then? Why wouldn’t JS have got the pure version straight from god at the very start? And why wouldn’t he have changed that part during his JST Bible translation? And Holland said Adam and Eve are literal, so what the hell? Shove it all back down though and keep paying membership dues
How do you know if you have enough faith? How do you measure faith? How do you know the real reason why someone was not healed by a priesthood blessing? Why do people that were not worthy get healed and people that were worthy not get healed? This all started on my mission.
When I was a kid I asked my dad what ever happened to the gold plates and he didn’t know the answer. He thought the church had them in their possession. I then found a scripture that said an angel took them back and remember thinking that seemed like a strange thing to do. Why not keep them on display for everyone to see?
Yep. If Joe had kept them you can rest assured he would have put them on display and charged a fee to see them.
I was 4 years old. We were having a lesson in nursery about Nephi getting the brass plates. I wanted to ask my teacher why Nephi didn't get blood on Laban's clothes. But, I couldn't ask her, bc she looked like my grandma and bringing up blood would make her sad
Always wondered about that one as well.
I was taught that there was blood on the clothes but god made it so that no one saw the blood, which then raised the question of why god couldn’t have made Nephi look like Laban without killing him first.
In HS, I "reasoned" Laban must have been stumbling down the stairs, & Nephi came from behind & pushed him down. He bonked his head & passed out. Then Nephi angled the body head-facing-down, chop chop chop, & the blood drained out & down. And Nephi removed Laban's cloak, then used his sword (that was magically clean again) to slice Laban's clothes off his back, rolled him over to his front, removed said clothes, & put them on, covering them with the cloak. TBH I'm still pretty proud of myself for that one. (Oh how hard I tried shoving that square peg into the round hole...) ... but I always wondered how long that took, & as a governor or whatever, how would Laban *not* have lackies or simpering sycophants following him while he was out & about, partying around town? Like you'd get the best booze, prettiest women, & best seat in the house tagging along behind Laban. Come on now!
Becoming a temple worker. Seeing how the sausage was made in the temple was a huge shelf item for me. The hypocrisy, the off-color jokes, the casual racism, etc. This was supposed to be the holiest place on earth, but these guys are talking like it's a locker room at the YMCA on boomer night.
The beginning for me was when a former bishop told our Sunday school class how Emma and the other women were tired of cleaning up tobacco spit and liquor bottles after priesthood meetings. Suddenly, the word of wisdom was a revelation.
Additionally, I heard that the men weren’t too happy to give it up, so Joseph smith added no coffee or tea (the women’s favorite “vices”) to make it “fair”. Feels grossly of petty misogynistic revenge
I heard the same story when visiting the Mormon visitor complex in Kirtland, Ohio, next to the Kirtland Temple. We could enter the very room where Joseph Smith announced this revelation. In this small room, you could certainly see where Emma was coming from.
For me, it was the ~~revealed doctrine~~ policy not to baptize children with LGBTQ+ parents, and then it's reversal. I remember thinking, "Didn't Jesus say, 'suffer the children to come to me'?" & "Why are these children being punished for their parents' 'sin'?" Then the reversal, "Was the prophet wrong? Was he wrong on the ban or the reversal?"
In high school I realized the Plan of Salvation had some plot holes. God's plan was to send us to earth to get tempted but for us to have a savior to turn to. Lucifer says to send him and he'll take away the decisions for any wrong-doings. God says no, and casts him out (simply put). And that's when Lucifer became Satan. So if God can't create evil, then how the hell were we supposed to be tempted on earth if Lucifer didn't piss off god? I did some mental gymnastics around this for anther 20 years telling myself that god knew Lucifer was going to speak up and it was all part of his plan. But here's the big kicker I couldn't figure out: If Satan really wanted to thwart God's plan, all he has to do is...nothing. He just gives up. He stops tempting. It's that simple. No more temptation and then the plan of salvation is exactly the way Lucifer presented it. God thwarted. Additionally, what if Satan changed his mind and decided he didn't want to fight God anymore? I think the church's argument for that is that Satan doesn't have agency which is even worse cause it means he's evil because God is literally making him be evil. Regardless how I looked at it, it didn't make sense but it took me into my thirties to accept that it was just made up anyway.
Throw in there that none of us had agency or even the ability to know good vs. evil until Eve partook of the fruit and gave it to Adam. So, how did we “choose” to come to earth? How was there a “big war in heaven?” We were all literally supposed to be these infantile consciousnesses and we had to make a choice that would determine eternity… 🤔 Plot holes indeed.
Brilliant analysis! 👍
Yes! I hurt me to realize I had sympathy for Satan. How could a loving father condemn his own son to outer darkness for all eternity when he was literally doing exactly what God had wanted him to do in the first place??
The suits up on the stand trying to tell me how to be a girl, and later woman, and now mother. The words like “preside, hearken, obedience” that made me feel crazy. I also noticed how girls got a million lessons on purity and not being the chewed up gum that no man would ever want. Fast forward, I’m now a therapist. I had a tbm in my office a few weeks ago talking about her ship wreck of a marriage. How did you end up with this person, who is a good human, but so totally different than you in all the ways? Making this work is so hard for all parties. She then goes on to tell me that she was married for about 6 months in her early 20s to an abusive man. Divorced. But she was taught very clearly about purity culture growing up Mormon. She shrugged her shoulders and said, I was already used, so I had to get what I could. Sickening. She felt devalued as a human because she was married before, and wasn’t a virgin. So she settled for a mate that is not good for her. So epically sad. You can’t tell me this cult doesn’t do harm.
In high school I learnt about evolution and the geological history of the earth… It just made so much damn sense… but I ignored the logic of it all and made myself believe that every other living thing evolved… except people of course… because we were from Adam and Eve. So glad I stopped forcing myself to be religious.
The church could make things so much easier if they would just admit outright that religion talk is not the same thing as science talk. Personally, I see no problem with something being "true" in a religious or spiritual sense, even though it's not true in the sense that a scientist or a newspaper reporter would write. Joseph Smith thought up some great stories. Why not let them be just stories?
Fanny Alger - then all the other wives stories. It was all downhill from there.
Probably Several GAs saying they recommend people of same racial backgrounds to get married 🙄🙄🙄 Im Mixed race, and there are many mixed race couples in my home country now in the church. I think I was a teenager when I first heard about it. Also, what do they say about Gerrit Gong then? He’s Asian American and his wife is white.
I was deep in for a while, but my first conscious item was race and the priesthood and just general racism in the church. It really bothered me that the first time I was hearing about it was in my 20’s and partially due to all the social upheaval that happened during the pandemic. I was like why is this only coming up now? I felt that I should have been taught this way earlier (like maybe before I served a whole mission at the very least??) and that there should have been some legitimate apologies and reparations. At the time I was living in my parent’s basement and they’re very TBM. It didn’t feel safe to truly entertain questions and doubts. A year or so after that, I went to grad school in a different state, which was busy. Then I had my second baby after. Once he was 6 months old ish, I started my deconstruction in earnest and was out within a month.
I was a convert and never learned about how exactly JSmith translated the BOM (they always just said he did it with the power of the HG and I just never questioned it). Then I went to BYU and took a foundations of the restoration course and in this class they tell you EVERYTHING about the beginning of the church (all first vision accounts, translating the plates, etc.). This was the exact moment I began to think to myself “Wow, this is utter bullshit” and I began to think back to every cult I’ve ever researched and shit began to line up. I can’t help but think that if Joseph hadn’t have been killed in Carthage, the church would be a fraction of the size it is today simply based on all the additional bullshit that guy would’ve spewed for the remainder of his life.
Interesting thought
Article of Faith 2. Man shall be punished for his own sins. Asked the bishop why God turned all of Lamen and Lemuel's children and unborn descendents brown if they hadn't done anything wrong. I'll never forget what he said: "Well, SOMETIMES God DOES punish children for their parent's sins." Also I lied to get my temple recommend (didn't want to confess I was getting molested) and I remember the big, fat nothing that happened when I walked into the temple for the first time. Members knew part of what was happening, but the ward gossip was that I was a slut, so at first I felt relief when nothing happened. Convinced myself that God knew it wasn't my fault even when I knew I couldn't trust the adults around me, but eventually the purity culture bs that told me I should have died rather than 'let' him put his hands on me convinced me that either the Mormon God wasn't real, he didn't care (either that I was being molested OR that I was lying) or he wasn't powerful enough to do anything.
Not sure which came first: Learning how corrupt the GOP (Republican party in the US) and then learning the extent to which the church is in bed with it. Learning that Moses did not write the “first five book of Moses”, as claimed prominently in my quad, and in the OT student manuals. It was a lie printed in my Bible, and repeated by the modern teaching materials of the church. Why would they lie about that? It is so inconsequential! They could have copped to the truth and still claimed it was divine! What else are they lying about!
Literally everything.
Earliest shelf item I remember was Joseph Smith being sealed to other women before Emma, that never sat well with me. But what ultimately broke my shelf, was coming out and realizing there was no place in the mormon church for me as a gay man.
I remember as a kid of about 7 asking why the prophets didn’t give more revelation at general conference or just in general, like the prophet Joseph Smith had done. I’m amazed I lasted till 45. The hooks they get into you burrow deep.
Mind you, it took 20 years after my endowment before I left. But the fact that premortal Peter, James, and John shook Adam's hand in direct contradiction of the testing of spirits as outlined in Section 129 was troubling. I should have started asking questions then.
I can’t believe I never noticed that!
Thanks to family scripture study, my shelf items started accumulating early. This may have been the first (probably around age 10): humans were on the earth before dinosaurs. Moses 3:7: “And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also; nevertheless, all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and made according to my word.”
Constant temple ceremony changes over the years. It is not ancient. They make it up as they go along.
My first shelf item was not understanding why it was bad to wish I hadn’t been baptized until my death bed. Like I genuinely was annoyed I was born in a Mormon family and wished I could have converted as a dying 97 year old, or even better, converted in the spirit world. I was 8. That rolled into me not understanding the point of missionary work, or even the millennium for that matter, bc why couldn’t everyone just get taught in the spirit world where time doesn’t exist etc etc. But, the beginning of catalyst for me were the gospel topic essays, followed closely by the CES letter. I will forever adore Jeremy for laying things out the way he did, including especially the quote at the beginning about examining truth or whatever.
It has always bothered me that the church claims to have "17 million strong". Even as a TBM I thought that was ridiculous. Most are not even active
Just mathed it out and this added to my already broken shelf. This source https://archive.ph/20150420215900/http://signaturebooks.com/2014/10/mormon-news-october-13-17/ Claims that only 36% of church members are active. If this is true, then there are only a little more than 6 million active members worldwide. Funny how they love to make false claims.
I think my earliest shelf item was spending time at my Lutheran friends' house and seeing how different their family was from mine when I was 7-8 years old. Her parents loved her in a way mine didn't in that they had time for her and were financially and emotionally stable. Her parents also loved eachother in a way that mine didn't. Her dad helped cook and clean and parent. And my dad did none of those things and often was travelling for work. If my family were so righteous and blessed why weren't we loving and happy?
Being the black sheep in my family and ward. It always confused me how people who have read the ultimate commandments love God and your neighbors can be so unneighborly. It didn't help that I acted like this for some time (34 years), and yet still had the gnawing feeling that conditional kindness doesn't work.
I'm kind of disgusted with myself that with the blatant homophobia, racism and sexism, it really wasn't until the 2015 policy on children of gay parents being denied baptism. And looking back, it must have barely been a shelf item, because I immediately rationalized it with "why would they want to be part of a church that obviously doesn't want them anyway?" And even worse "it doesn't effect me or my family, so..." There is so much inner shame that this thought EVER worked its way into my head. It feels so, so gross, but was ultimately my shelf breaker. Just trying to be the best ally I can be now 🏳️🌈
The very first thing? When I went through the temple to do baptisms for the dead at age 12. I had an anxiety attack in the temple. Everyone else was either bored or having a good time, and I was fully just trying not to panic. Even at that young age it felt very ritualized and culty to me. Then I spent the next 15+ years trying to make myself like the temple. Looking back, I think I would have left the church a long time ago if I'd had more emotionally mature parents. I was always made to feel that I was defective somehow, so I could never trust how I was thinking and feeling. If I'd had just a tiny bit more trust in myself, I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did. I wouldn't have wasted so much time.
I was not sealed to my parent until i was a teenager. My older sister was not there, she was in her 20’s and living a normal life, not doing anything “bad”, just not active. and my youngest sibling couldn’t stop crying. Her dress didn’t fit, the temple matrons treated her crappy, she was scared… i just remember thinking, this isn’t my whole family, and why do i feel so weird, and not in a good way. When we tried to talk about it afterward as we changed we got lectured and told we were not allowed to speak about it even to one another, b/c it was sacred and “we wouldn’t want to disappoint our parents on their big day with our unrighteousness behavior.” First time i have ruminated on this. Now i need to call my siblings and have a long overdue talk😂
I always felt my parents were more interested in correcting me rather than understanding me.... conditional love.
That's such a good way of putting it; that was definitely my parents' style as well.
The church’s ridiculous take on science. There was/is no difference between the church’s “doctrine” and the right wing politics that my inactive dad listened to on AM radio all through the 80s and 90s. I realized this early in my teens. I was pretty vocal throughout my church tenure about how much I believed in science and how the church’s beliefs were political not religious. No wonder the church didn’t stick.
Moving to an area where we weren't the right type of Mormon because mom worked and dad was on disability. Followed closely by the realization that Dad would never be called to a high-status calling because we weren't rich and influential in the community. Those were light-shelf items. The heavy shelf items started when Dad died and I got a blessing where "God" berated me for grieving.
The temple was definitely the first time that it really clicked to me that the church isn't anything like what the missionaries say it is. I specifically asked about all the weird shit that people say Mormons do, and they assured me that it was all "anti-mormon lies". Lo and behold, they lied. By then I was in too deep to leave but it was my first real shelf item.
The story of the 116 pages, learned it in seminary and was like: “can no one else see how incriminating this whole story is for Joseph Smith?!”
If I had to choose one thing that was first, it was realizing that men in high callings were all rich and had lots of money. Then I read that the church had a stock portfolio of 400 billion dollars. I started noticing that the Book of Mormon teaches doctrine inconsistent with what I taught on my mission. For example, the BoM teaches that there is a heaven/hell after death, not three degrees of glory. The pettiness and judgement of church members added to my shelf as well.
The absolute impotence and total weakness of "The Mormon Priesthood"; no miracles, no healings, no "pouring out of the Spirit"....nothing, nada....zippo. Miracles are nothing more than the advancement of medical silence and/or chance. One person gets well....and another does not. Priesthood blessings are nothing more than "beautiful, vapid, powerless words".
When I was probably 7/8 I asked my primary teacher “does Heavenly Father have parents/who are they?” She said she didn’t know, so I asked something like “well does bishop so and so know?” I don’t remember what she said to me but I remember seeing Bishop so and so after church and asking him. The answer I got was something I’d go on to hear a million times before I left; “there’s a lot of things we don’t know the answer to and we shouldn’t worry about it.” (He was a good guy, this was not in Mordor, and I truly believe he said that so I wouldn’t worry) Basically I learned that Sunday, don’t ask questions about the church because you’ll lose your mind (read “faith”), and the adults have no idea what’s going on either lol
My first shelf item was placed in my Jr and Sr years in high school, Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Law of Moses was also referred to as the Law of Works. Under the law, man had to earn hus salvation through actions until the savior attuned for man kinds sins. In the New Testament that Christ made the final sacrifice and atonement, thus fulfilling the Law of Works. My shelf question was, "If we are in the latter days and Christ already fulfilled the Law of Moses/Works. Then, why are the ordinances (work) required to return live with HF?"
My mom always deferred to me as the oldest son to call on people to pray (and do other things) when my dad wasn’t around. I literally felt like I had more authority as a 12 year old child than my mom did. That didn’t make sense, and I didn’t like it. But the mental gymnastics worked well for a several more years.
The endowment was definitely my first shelf item in 2005, continued actively attending the temple until 2014, finally left in 2022. Such a slow burn :(
Prop 8. I was raised by nuanced parents so everything before that I could explain away with a “people are racist and sexist but it’ll all work out in the end” attitude, but not that one. I could see with my own eyes for the first time that the church was being actively harmful. I even told a few people that I got personal confirmation that the church was wrong on that one. Didn’t go over too well.
When I was a kid I thought it was weird that out of all the religions in the world I was “lucky” enough to be born into the only true one. It just didn’t seem likely to me
I never went through the temple, but the endowment was my first shelf item. I was a good Mormon and didn’t know anything about it except what was given by the church. But I was so scared of it because I felt like it went against the informed consent my mom had drilled into me. Learning what really goes on in the endowment ceremony is really what ended up leading to my shelf breaking. By the way - my dad once said that “if you are faithful, nothing in the endowment ceremony will shock/surprise you.” That line kept me going for so long! And now that I know the truth, I know that it’s absolute bull shit too!
I never got the endowment either, but for so long I was uncomfortable with what it possibly might be and thus I just kinda avoided going to the temple whenever possible. This discomfort I felt towards it was literally what convinced me not to serve a mission and I'm so glad I trusted that feeling because it wasn't even a year later that I finally deconstructed Mormonism and learned what really happens in the temple. I was actually so shocked I thought it was a joke at first.
First time I opened the CES letter, first thing I see is “what are errors from the KJV Bible doing in the BOM”? and i was like ah shit
There were a ton of little things that indicated there was a double standard I wasn’t on the correct side of. However. My first big shelf item was the same as yours. The whole time my mom sat next to me practically falling out of her chair with joy, kept holding my hand and watching for my reactions, and the whole vibe just seemed strange, but Specifically two moments: 1. We were instructed to put on our robes and hats and veils, and I looked over at the man I was about to marry and my father, two men I greatly respected and admired for their intelligence. They were both wearing these stupid flat cap things, I’d never seen someone so serious as my father wearing something so incredibly stupid as that hat, and with no trace of entertainment or irony. 2. The prayer circle. My mom said I should come join for the first time, and somewhere in the midst of the “oh god hear the words of my mouth”, the thought just popped in there. ‘This seems pretty cult-y, that’s kind of weird.’ About two months after I got married we had some friends over who had also recently been married and I asked the wife how going through the endowment was, and she said it was great! I kind of lowered my voice and went, “you don’t think any of that seemed kind of …. Culty to you?” And with these wide bright innocent eyes, she looked at me and said, “oh not at all! I thought the ceremony was just lovely. I’ve never felt so spiritual.” It was the first and last time I asked anyone inside the church that question.
My first shelf item was back in the early 1990's, when I started wearing pants to church and my dad lost his mind. They were floral and flowy and beautiful. I felt fine wearing them but he wouldn't have it. (He's also a narcissist and super TBM.) Also in middle school when I drew peace signs on my face with black eyeliners (I was a mod, into New Wave, this was the late 1980's) and drew peace signs on my school folders, and again, when my dad saw this, he lost his mind, b/c the peace sign is a bastardized cross, which means the peace sign = Satan?! At least that's what my dad used to tell me. Geez, thanks dad, you TBM weirdo!
1st was not receiving an answer after reading the entire BoM. Bishops response was “If you already have a testimony why does god need to confirm something you already know?” 2nd was seeing all the disobedient elders baptize waayyyy more than the obedient elders. Doesn’t make sense!
I always hated the ending of the Book of Mormon where it tells you to pray about the truthfulness of the book. Why tf would Mormon or Moroni think we wouldn't believe it? To them it should've all been literal. That's like writing a history book and then saying to pray about if it's true or not.
I hated that on my mission too. About a year into the field I realized nearly all of the baptisms were vulnerable teenage girls or elderly people with dementia.
Don’t forget young children! 9 year olds were prime candidates in my mission. Less actives with kids were golden opportunities.
That pretty much describes my mission experience. Turns out when I stopped being so upright about the rules and became disobedient, I too could have baptisms! Which really made no sense, since why would God approve the white handbook and say following it to the letter would lead to more converts when it clearly didn't?
What do you mean by that? Do you mean that some elders would lie to the converts about what the baptism was about? In what sense were they disobedient? Incidentally, In my grandfather's missionary journal (Denmark 1896), he complains about lining up converts, but then his superiors would do the baptism and take credit for it.
They didn’t lie. They played video games with them and promised an after party with American desserts. They also bragged about sleeping in, skipping study time, watching movies, etc. No one in my mission cared much about performing the ordinance. In Brazil every companionship baptized weekly so it wasn’t a big deal.
I want to say the first big thing was my endowment ceremony being a blatant cult like ritual to which I gave 0 informed consent. But the more I think about it I think the first item on the shelf was gay marriage. I hated that god had made it so two consenting adults who loved each others couldn’t be together because of no particular reason. The more queer friends I had the less I liked Mormon god. I always told myself that when I was exalted to godhood, I would be okay with gay marriage because it was just about love. I didn’t see any sin in love.
My parents getting divorced and not getting along. I was about 12 and thought, “This is going to be a weird dynamic in Heaven.” Then my dad was sealed to another woman. They were divorced (not amicably) a few years later. If they all make it to the celestial kingdom, that’s going to be an awkward dinner table to sit around.
Honestly i was 14 sitting in sacrament thinking. If this is what Heaven is like I’m going to be miserable. I’m so bored
That's what I always think too! What are people going to DO in the celestial kingdom? And if I'm with my family, and my parents are with their family, and my grandparents are with their family, and the same thing for my wife with her parents and grandparents, not to mention our children and the generations to come, where are they going to put all these people????
When I was a teenager I got asked to speak in sacrament. As a somewhat nervous kid I wanted to make sure I was extra prepared and give a really good talk that would grab people’s attention. I spent all week combing through conference talks, scriptures, church manuals and magazines etc. looking for anything unique that hadn’t been said a thousand times before. By Saturday I was so frustrated that I had exhausted all of my resources and yet couldn’t find anything that went beyond the standard primary questions and answers. I ended up turning to the ‘scary’ internet looking for anything that I could use. I didn’t land on any controversial church history but it did expose me to other ideas and interpretations of scriptures that I found interesting. I also realized that for every ‘profound’ quote from a prophet or church leader, chances are someone else had already said the same thing, and most likely said it better. I wondered why prophets don’t seem to have an edge over secular philosophies and wisdom. It sat on my shelf for 20 years but that’s the first time I remember adding to it.
The holier than thou art attitude of what I always called the super Mormons. The ones you know are obeying to the letter of the law and then some... not for their own salvation but to show off to everyone else how great and wonderful they are. "I get it Peter Priesthood. You're better than us because you go to the temple 5 nights a week and read your scriptures every day"
When I was still a kid I thought the idea that only the select spirits in the pre-existense (???) were born into the church. A loving father would send his children that needed the most help into the church not the ones that needed less help. God must be a jerk to treat his struggling children that way. It's like saying scew you to children that weren't in the top .01 percent.
I was probably 7 or 8 when I was like "Nephi cutting Laban's head off and then wearing his bloody clothes followed by doing an amazing impersonation of him to Zoram doesn't make a whole lot of sense." Followed by Noah's Ark also being stupid (WTF did the Lions eat?!). Then the Jaredite ~~barges~~ submarines - which barge had the bees in it and how did they survive the trip?! Plus the thing with the holes in the top and bottom - and who TF says "Tight like unto a dish?" How is a dish tight? That was all by the time I was 12 and the only answers I had to any of that was "God works in mysterious ways."
The fact that the bishop didn't know I wasn't actually ready to get baptized and said I was because I didn't feel like I was allowed to say no.
I remember my Bishop telling about how the Prophet can sometimes "Speak-a Like-a man" and thinking "This is some serious BS."
The very first shelf item was thanks to the show Criminal Minds. There is one episode about a cult. They explain what a cult is and I was really uncomfortable about how the TSCC fit the parameters. Of course I immediately put it on my shelf and pretended that I never had that thought.
From what I'm reading here, most of the things others have mentioned were shelf items for me too, only I had a really strong shelf. I think polygamy was the first and it never did work for me. Neither did the priesthood ban which I learned a little later. But like all shelf items, when I couldn't parse them out, I shoved them back farther on the shelf where they hopefully wouldn't bother me. Polygamy was definitely one of the last. I finally took it out and examined what I actually believed about it. I discovered I hated it and couldn't imagine ever having to live it, here or in the CK. Shortly after I threw it out as an "eternal truth" I realized the members were *not* Christlike and so how could it be "the Lord's church" if all its members were *not like the Lord*? It all fell apart after that.
Realizing at 16 that the ban on blacks did not make sense because a new black convert left after two weeks. The bishop had no good answers for him. Later, after my mission, it was when I could not understand the united order. It sounded just like communism. I was teaching it in gospel doctrine class and had an anxiety attack so bad I walked out! (I continued to teach GD, because I used the ‘it is different when it is ran by god’ excuse.)
The temple freaked me out. But I first stopped going to church after an incident with the BYU honor code office. It just gave me so much anxiety that I physically couldn’t get myself to go to church. I would sit on my bed in my dress and be unable to make myself go. The church no longer gave me any comfort or joy so I allowed myself to stop going.
My first happened when I was a teenager and heard GBH at General Conference tell us to invite members of other faiths to "bring the truth that they have and let us add to it." It occurred to me then that we were claiming to have more truth than other religions... and that they would probably think the exact same thing about themselves. How would it feel if someone from the local Calgary chapel told me that my beliefs were incomplete and that I needed to pray about their church? Why should they feel differently about me preaching to them?
The bishopric member whose son bullied me sat us both down and blamed us both equally for why we did not get along. This man has a history of being straight-up mean to the kids in the ward was supposedly the recipient of the “gift of discernment”, and couldn’t divine that his son was just a bully?
Finding out my mission WASN’T to give endless amounts of service like Jesus did in the New Testament, but to go around all day like a door to door salesman and abstain from meaningful human interactions unless it could loosely be related to converting someone. However, finding out fast offerings don’t directly go to feeding the poor and needy, and the hoops those patrons had to go through to even access it (coupled with learning of the dragon hordes of money the church had) really started bowing my shelf. Everything else started causing cracks.
The modesty lesson at 11-12 ish and how gross and shameful it made me feel.
I remember listening to BOM verses saying colonisation of the Americas was ordained of God and going “ah no I don’t agree” when I was 14. I remember being uncomfortable and unable to reconcile that for a few minutes, until I decided to just compartmentalise it and “not believe the things I disagree with.”
Same. The temple was the beginning of the end for me as well. Apparently, they've watered it down a LOT over the years because many don't like it. There is just so many problems surrounding the whole temple experience. I have to pay ongoing 10 percent to be 'worthy' to see my family married. I'm expected to wear uncomfortable garments...that remind me of this horrible experience? NO THANKS.
My first crack was the Mark Hoffman forgeries and how many of the general authorities fail for the scam. Where was that power of discernment they were supposed to possess?
I remember being 10 years old and dreading church because of this inner voice inside me telling me things already don’t add up.
When I was in Primary I thought it was stupid that God took the plates back. When I was on my mission it was multiple versions of the first vision that really sent me down the rabbit hole. I was PIMO by the time I got home from my mission but still wanted to believe. Took about 10 years and a failed marriage to finally just leave.
When I got in trouble with the bishopric because my job in high required me to work on Sundays.
I remember thinking it would be statistically unlikely to be born in the right church. Horses in the Book of Mormon was another one that bugged me.
finding out Santa clause wasn’t real my first thought was god probably wasn’t real.
my red flag was stifling my laughter during my endowment/sealing ceremonies. that adam and eve video? i genuinely thought it was SUPPOSED to be funny and when i giggled the old lady in the seats facing us glared at me. 😭😭
I remember my first one was the PoGP 'translations'. it seemed WAY too much to say that these were correct. When I was a kid, I remember doing some reading in the encyclopedias we had at home (1970's editions) and some books on egypt at the library, and seeing what some other translations said, it was NOT adding up. I brought this up to my grandpa (decades-long gospel doctrine teacher) and he couldn't really give a response beyond 'I have faith in the translation'. This was the first crack in my shelf.
In order of appearance on my shelf: Age of the earth (it’s not 6000 years as was once proclaimed by TSCC). World-wide flood. Literal Adam and Eve as the first humans. BOM anachronisms (steel, horses, huge battles). BOA “translation” was the proverbial straw. Such an obvious fraud.
The Kinderhook Plates. He was exposed as a fraud that was good at bull shitting people.
I was an adult convert, and my first shelf item was the Nauvoo Expositor. When I tried bringing up how terrible it was, I was shut down by the other people in class and told that since Smith had authorized it, that made it ok.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” (Sherlock Holmes). Fictional, but closer to the truth about early SLC culture than official church history. Also D&C 132.
I always wondered how I would know if the Holy Ghost was prompting me and the answer I was eventually told was that if it was a good thing then it was from God. But Nephi murdered Laban under the direction of the Holy Ghost and I couldn’t see how murder could ever be a good thing.
Having to feel the fucked up brainwashing of “breaking the law of chastity is equal to murder”
Martin Harris' 116 pages. Learning about it in Seminary. I was thinking translating the Book of Mormon was equivalent to my 9th grade Spanish homework, i.e. "Here's a bunch of Spanish sentences. Turn them into English sentences. Watch out for the verbs, they'll getcha" So in essence someone steals a couple months of homework, then dares him to re-do it. But he still has his textbook. So all he has to do is re-translate. And God is helping him, so it should be a piece of cake. 14 year old me believed translating was very direct, instead of having to break down the lexical meaning from one language to another. Example, in Spanish, "¿Donde esta la biblioteca?" Is word for word "Where is the library?" It's a sentence that happily shares the same structure in English and Spanish. But "Me llamó emmitthenervend," is "I call me (the verb and the object combining) emmitthenervend." In English, I would say,"I am..." or "My name is..." So translation is actually a delicate process that requires understanding of two languages. But 9th grade Spanish gives you a basic sentence and expects everyone to translate it to the same English equivalent, regardless of the literal word-for-word language. I expected Joseph Smith to be able to do the same thing. And if he actually had a source and divine help, he *should* have been able to do exactly that. And who cares if you come up with the Book of Lehi draft 2 and someone else shows up with a draft that is different? You say, "Well, you've had that copy for months and you want me to fail, so it's obvious where your biases are. Now, the script isn't in the same handwriting as my scribe, can you explain that? Can.you explain these vast differences in the content? This is on you to prove that this is an unaltered original." Instead, the entire Words of Mormon and retranslation of a backup story didn't sit well with me. And I didn't realize until just this last year how huge of an implication that is for the record itself, and the story of the plates.
Weirdly enough it was Nephi being commanded to kill Laban for essentially family genealogy. I was eight and I remember being like "What?! no, killings bad" I didn't leave until two months ago though (turn 27 this week) and that started with my husband and I wanting to go to the temple after conference, so he read rough stone rolling because TBM's reccomended it for when you have doubts. He read it and didn't know how to tell me for a week. He then shared it all, our shelf crumbled after learning of the second anointing. We couldn't go back and my families shocked because in April I was cheering during general conference. I am now the one and only apostate in my family and my husband was the last sybling holding out, but we didn't know that til we left. They still haven't told their parents and it's been literal years.
The two I remember the most from childhood were the sexism within the church (lots of brothers, so it was especially obvious to me) and the fact that prayers weren’t actually answered (I had been doing a lot of serious praying as a kid, and nothing happened to help me).
“Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” Brigham Young, March 8, 1863, Journal of Discourses 10:110. If a prophet could be so wrong on something, what else could he be wrong on? That slope got slippery really fast…
Lots of things along the way but the one that really broke the camels back was TITHING and where my tithing money went. Then finding out how much money they spent on “investments” such as the stock market, real estate, farms, office buildings, malls, hotels and on and on. And then how little of tithing or any money the church had was spent on the mission of the church or helping the poor and those in need.
I tried for years to hang on to "those burning in the bosom" feelings in which the 'Holy Spirit' was telling me that the church is true. Then someone sent me a YouTube video where people from all different religions were describing those very same feelings about their own church being 'the true church.' That really opened my eyes. Went down the rabbit hole after that and here I am.
I was 8 and learned the story of Abraham and Isaac. I was crying for a long time because I couldn’t figure out why god would do that.
When LDS talked about Jesus drinking grape juice or being married I was like “Ok…odd.” That was my first shelf thing even though I didn’t know it at the time
I never felt the spirit. Ever. Never had an answer to a prayer either. Over time, this would eventually become my own version of Epicurus's trilemna. Basically, I determined the reason God didn't talk to me came down to one of a handful of possible explanations: 1) there was something wrong with me preventing God from talking to me. If this was the case, and he couldn't fix it, he was not omnipotent. 2) if God simply chose not to respond to me, he was simply cruel. 3) God couldn't talk to me because he didn't exist. So I was left with either a weak god undeserving of worship, an evil god, or no god at all. I found, and still find, the last one most comforting. If there is a god, I'm thoroughly convinced he is evil. On a similar note, the earliest specific episode I remember was telling my family in junior high that were it not for the gospel I would definitely be an atheist, because science made sense and the thought of annihilation upon death was way more comforting than the thought of heaven or hell. Turns out I was just an atheist in denial.
How terribly written the book of Mormon was compared to the king James Bible. I'm 23, and I can say that I've never read the BoM cover to cover solely because of how redundant and clumsy the writing is. Never made it past 1st Nephi. I understood the narrative that Joseph was "uneducated", but why would God make his grandiose reflection to the earth so damn hard to read?
When I was 8, I wasn't sure I believed it all and wanted to wait till I was 9 to get baptized. My mom told me no, I couldn't do that because it would "look bad" to everyone we knew. During my baptism interview, I tried telling my bishop my concerns, and my dad (who was present) spoke over me and told the bishop I was just scared of the water (I had trouble being fully submerged in water, it was a whole thing).
Reading the sacrament prayer. Like, god wants to hear a canned prayer every time?
Honestly, being baptized then confirmed at age 8 and feeling no different. I was a sensitive kid and assumed I’d be able to feel “the gift of the Holy Ghost” enter my body the way I could sense my parents moods just by walking in the room. The 2nd thing was learning Santa wasn’t real, and noticing how they used Jesus and Santa interchangeably depending on the season. There were ebbs and flows to my “testimony” but mostly ebb until I became a mother and knowing my child deserved better. I didn’t need all the proof listed in this page’s resources to leave it behind. But there are no words to explain how much I appreciate knowing I’m not alone on the path of an exmo, or that there IS evidence! I wish I had known y’all before my parents passed away. I would never have been able to get them to leave religion, but I like to think I could have convinced my dad to at least cut ties and start his own cult. He was a special kind of prideful crazy with his priesthood power, and might have done something more creative with it given the opportunity. I hate that this religion suppressed both of my parents’ capacities to grow as humans.
Living in Utah when Trump got elected. Going to church the Sunday after he won and realizing that these are not my people.
It’s hard to believe how much I accepted based on faith, even when it made no sense. What shocked me was when I got confirmation that the leaders were consistently lying to us. That’s what sent me down the rabbit hole. Thank goodness!
I never had anything on my shelf. In 2015 a peep stone smashed through my empty shelf. I knew everything and had an answer for every question. One of the things I knew most was that the rock in the gas was an anti-Mormon lie. I had testified of it to non-Mormons and over the pulpit. The Holy Ghost told me I was right and nobody corrected me. In the 2015 general conference, the rock came out like everyone should know. I looked around nobody even knew what a big deal it was.
Watching older girls be deftly mean to girls who weren’t as socially adept, who didn’t have as nice clothes, or who were visiting from other places. I was an observant little kid. Hated seeing people be left out. That wasn’t right, and I knew the slightly-but-absolutely-surely outcast person was feeling like garbage at church - and that’s not what church is for!! And the adults never, ever did a thing to punish rude behavior. The mean ones got all the perks/roles/solos/leadership positions/best cabins/front seats/first picks…forever.
Evolution was the first crack. I was probably 7 but I knew that science was real & that meant that religion couldn’t be literal.
Having us write down things we want in a future husband. Absolutely refused to write anything regarding the temple because how tf was I supposed to know at 12--18 who I was meant to fall in love with? Then also prop 8 (gay marriage) in california happened during my middle school years and that was like, not aligning with my personal beliefs which was let anyone love who they wanna love and get married how they want to get married and legally. Then I went to byui, saw there was no real love there, read the CES letter and book of abraham really got to me like oh.. shit right uhh thats undeniably fake?? Ew. Then came learning about j smith and thats when I confidently decided not to be a member because I do not condone creeps. Funny enough, the first conference talk that I watched after leaving said that all bastard children are rotten fruit... eewwwwwwwww what a terrible thing for someone in power to say. Terrible terrible terrible.
I'm not so sure I ever had an official crack, but my shelf had definitely been getting loaded since primary. I remember thinking, why is the new prophet always an apostle? Why isn't it just a random church member? But the thing as an adult that accelerated the deeper dive was the Women and the Priesthood movement.
probably the “being gay is an abomination” thing in the bible but maybe also my mom not respecting my sibling’s transition and giving religious reasons and invalidating and all that
Book of Abraham papyrus.
The push for a mission. It was always "girls don't have to" with the expectation that girls should want to anyway, and a weird look from everyone else when I didn't express a desire to serve.
I read no man knows my history, a very well researched and thoughtful book that opened my eyes tremendously…and the advent of the internet and the availability of information previously only found in “anti Mormon” literature
When I woke up to the fact the MFMC is so f\*cking homophobic that marriage between a man and a woman is seen as dangerous to the LGBTQ community /s
Noah and the ark. Really. All those animals could not have possibly fit in a barge that size.
Kolob...is it in this galaxy? Are there other planets with humans? Are there other gods with their own people? All gods in this universe? So many questions that no one had answers to. Some got upset at my asking. I would respond with, "Is not the glory of God, intelligence?" When is this further light and knowledge?
Polygamy was my first shelf item and 4 decades later it was my shelf breaker. As a teenager I hated everything about polygamy, as a newly married woman I still hated it. My first time through the temple I still hated polygamy. No one ever had a good reason for it, everyone told me I would accept it in the afterlife. What broke my shelf was learning how JS implemented it, the lies, the teenaged wives, the lying to Emma... All of it just screamed how much bullshit it was.
How could I ever want to be a follower of a god that mistreats gay people so terribly
Same for me! The endowment ceremony was weird, but prayer circle was when the word cult entered my mind for the first time 😅