Sarah was talking with her brother last night about reasons she chose to step away from the church. Many of them seem to be connected to disappointment in decisions others have made. There are probably better words that describe each of the different emotions connected to each piece of the puzzle, but I think disappointment as a big umbrella emotion may work.
This made me reflect on why I stepped away.
I wonder when I would say that I stepped away. I think I took many steps over a long period of time. There was no single leap.
I believe I decided some time ago that I was not finding truth in the assertions of the LDS faith. I was not finding truth for myself, and I was seeing others having the same experience.
What assertions?
1. My emotions were God’s way of speaking to me.
- I had too many experiences where my emotions did not convey truth – experiences where either I was convinced of something that didn’t work out or where I looked back and realized I was just being emotional.
- I saw too many people interpret their emotions as truth-telling for conflicting claims – I met people from my own or other faiths who had equally strong convictions of different religious truths because of strong emotions they had experienced.
- The church’s explanation of these conflicting emotional experience is not reliable – I was not able to reconcile the teaching that emotional experiences inside the walls of the LDS church were meant to convey truth of the LDS faith while those outside the walls of the LDS church were meant only to convey partial truths of other faiths.
2. God speaks directly to church leaders.
- I was a church leader and did not feel God was speaking directly to me.
- I had church leaders in whose decisions I was disappointed and whose decisions I could not be convinced came from God, despite their assertion.
- I was not able to feel good about the decisions, assertions, or directives others gave. This was the way the church told me I should reconcile whether something was truth. Their process did not validate their own claims.
3. Jesus Christ is the only pillar of worship that brings happiness and joy in this life and the next.
- The LDS version of Christianity does not bring joy and happiness to all of the people that are involved in it.
- I regularly meet people who are not Christian and who have joy and happiness.
- I am unable to find a way for people to reliably validate one religion over another.
To me, when these assertions do not seem to be aligned to truth, the claim of the LDS religion to be the only true religion falls.
If the LDS religion’s claim to be the only true religion cannot stand, I am unable to commit to its tenets with the zeal I once did.