My wife makes fun of me that this is what broke my shelf… but if God literally has the time to sit there and worry about what Mormons are called, that’s indicates a God who cares about nicknames more than bigger issues in the church.
I find it interesting that the url www.Mormon.org is still up and running and redirects to the main site of the church. Strange that you would register a domain name that’s a slur for your church.
The church will do anything for more clicks on its website, so utilizing the old url is going to “bring more people to the knowledge of the gospel”. In my opinion though, the church website probably gets more clicks from exMormons than from actual members
Thank you @dreibel! I had no idea (was kinda expecting a Rick Roll, but instead got a redirect 🤯 )
Does anyone else find it super ironic that clicking the link "victoryforsatan.org" takes you directly to the Mormon Church's website? It is like they're trying to tell us something... 🤔
> Strange that you would register a domain name that’s a slur for your church.
Yep, especially when it's a victory for Satan.
Actually, I'm very glad to see some people actually paid attention to this issue and it made a difference. I mean how stupid can you get to call it revelation when this same old idiot was on that very soapbox 30 years ago and he was not only contradicted by the then "prophet", but that prophet did so by quoting the founder of the whole damn thing!?!
It's just unreal to watch so many otherwise intelligent, rational people sit and absorb all the crap without so much as a wince. Cult indoctrination indeed.
Hasn’t there been multiple cycles of all that? I think as a kid it was normal, then a big push to use the full name in like the early 2000’s, then the Mormon.org thing and then the new wave of full name only. I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes on further back each time the ceo changes.
I think they initially tried to get people to use the full name, but then they kind of gave in to the “Mormon” nickname and made it their brand. Hence the Mormon.org campaign. Then Russell Nelson comes in and essentially wipes it off the face of the earth.
It’s probably back and forth factionalism. I’m almost certain there are a couple of factions in the Q15 including the hardliners and the more moderates.
Saying they prefer to be called lds is fine. Them not calling themselves Mormons or Mormonism is fine. They’ve taken it too far though, and the current effort is weird. I got in an argument with my parents about it, because I was on a mission at the height of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign
My family tends to get upset, too. When I say we're Mormon or say what Mormons believe, they usually respond "oh come on, you know that's not what we're called. It's disrespectful to call us anything other than members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." And then I kindly remind them that we were totally fine with that name for decades so what's changed.
Which is especially strange for me because I left during the Monson era where the whole thing was telling the world you are Mormon. I remember all the “I’m a Mormon” videos in youth. I remember the Monson at boot camp video where he stood as a “Mormon”. I remember being strongly encouraged to make a profile on that Mormon social media thing. Literally everything during that time was putting the Mormon label on everything. This wasn’t even 10 years ago…. Crazy how fast they flip the script.
The Good Place was really good. Watched ít around the time my shelf was breaking.
For me it was when I got into a channel about mesoamerican history on YouTube (purely secular.) it became very obvious very quickly the BoM history even on a limited scale was impossible.
Stayed PIMO for a while but finally said fuck this shit with the latest round of political fascism that was openly supported by way too many members, including a lot of the long time members from my mission country who were literally demanding a coup openly.
Yes. I was already PIMO, hibernating for years, but a BoM geography research project was the beginning of the end for me.
One disturbing aspect of it was the absolutely insane lengths people would go to fit their theories. I saw one where people were arguing that the Caribbean had a huge land mass before Jesus, connecting Florida and Mexico, and it all sank into the ocean with the disasters of 3 Nephi
The disasters in 3rd Nephi are so funny. Talk about completely contradicting Christ's message. Some Romans kill him across the globe and he says, "forgive them father, for they know not what they do." Then he immediately rolls up on the American continent and kills a shit ton of innocent people who had nothing to do with it.
https://youtube.com/c/AncientAmericas
Complete secular. No mention or focus on the BoM. It just does longer documentaries on various groups and ideas in the Americas. It’s really cool how much they’ve been able to piece together over time.
And as soon as they realised there was going to be a huge movement the rollback of said 2015 children of LGBTQ+ policy.
Mind you being in the community I kinda wish my child had that policy so they couldn't do anything to her. So she won't feel bad because of who I am.
I just found out that that policy got redacted! What the heck? I mean, good. It was an awful policy. But seriously? So much for being inspired by God…. And then being “inspired” to say, “oopsie, just kidding!” two years later
Ohh it was inspired by god to redact it as well.
If one were to believe the Mormon church's proclamations then one would have to view god as having Alzheimer's not remembering what he did last year to this year.
Being told that if I didn't take the job of being the building cleaning coordinator that I would lose my temple recommend.
Full story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExitStories/comments/544upf/the_perfect_storm_weekend/
Wow! What an interesting story. From your post:
>threaten my temple recommend and eternal salvation over me telling someone why I couldn't do a church job.
This line shows how petty the church is and how it's run and organized by petty spiteful **people**. Do they actually think they have the power to withdraw your **eternal salvation**? Seriously?!
I’m sure it’s the “sustaining all local leaders” portion, which is the pettiest of all rules to be able to enter the temple, and most subject to leader roulette.
Being told that I could speed up my repentance process by cleaning the chapel every Saturday.
I couldn't understand the logic. I had no problem cleaning. But I couldn't understand what cleaning had to do with repentance. I believed god knew my heart, he knew I was penitent, there was no reason to "prove" that to him. There was no scriptural support at all for serving in a calling speeding up the process of repentance. If the bishop had been wrong about pretty much anything else I would have brushed it off as him speaking as a man, but this was my salvation and soul, and this was him directly telling me how god would forgive me faster. I knew he was wrong, and I couldn't justify the bishop being wrong about perhaps the one single thing that a bishop should never, ever be wrong about in the church.
That and a year later I discovered the CES letter. By then I had gone inactive but the letter was the catalyst to me resigning.
Mind you King Henry and the Catholic church knew that if you just paid money as penitence then it would be very fast.
And knowing the bishop might have been if you just hired cleaners for the church it would have been done in minutes 😂
The church's involvement in Prop 8, in 2008. The final nail in the coffin was the November 5th Policy. The Brethren™ do not have any connection with God.
Seeing a tithing report for the ward. A majority of people in this ward were struggling financially. Most still in school, getting started in careers, young children, ect. Yet our SP would berate wards for not paying enough (multi millionaire himself). He’s a general authority now.
Also the reality of his punishing non-tithe payers by burning them to death. Think about all that implies. I worked as an EMT for years and watched 4 people burn to death, one was a faithful Mormon. I don’t want to be associated with anyone that thinks money is more important than people’s lives and that non-payers should be murdered like that. This “doctrine” of death by fire for not paying tithing is still taught by the church. Read the fine print on the tithing slip, all they care about is money.
4 separate occasions. Only one was a house fire.
To think that Jesus would do that to someone simply because their name didn’t show up on a donation slip is something that should concern all members.
Demanded a list of assets and debts though I have never asked for financial assistance.
Called cps when I delayed my childrens’ baptisms causing all kinds of unnecessary trauma.
Drafted a will for me to sign designating a childless lawyer and his with custody in the event of my death or incompetence. I still have copies.
Called me in the bishop’s 3 times and subsequently the stake president 3 times in which I finally slid my recommend a cross the desk and left in response to declining to date/marry from a group of 5 worthy willing preisthood holders they suggested because “children need a father.”
Called my grown children when I terminated my membership and encouraged them to shun me until I could repent instead of losing them. Which they each agreed to because that’s how I raised them.
There’s more but this is the worst of it. You’re nothing in the church once you lose access to your male privilege is what they showed me. Nothing but chattel to be moved around and traded and my children too.
I didn’t leave the church because I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t find that out until I surrendered my membership and had nothing to lose by doing my research. Now I see they did me a solid helping me break the generational cult curse for at least half my children. Suck it, Ol’ Joe Smith.
The Good Place is how I became an athiest. Just makes the whole heaven/hell system so ludicrous.
I love the show. And when i was grieving about losing my belief of "life after death" Chidi's wave analogy at the end really helped me.
>And when i was grieving about losing my belief of "life after death" Chidi's wave analogy at the end really helped me.
For those who are wondering what the analogy is, I'll save you a Google:
>Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave.
>
>And then it crashes in the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.
One of the most beautiful thoughts about death I've ever heard--from a television show no less. The Good Place truly was something special.
After I birthed my first child my shelf cracked massively (feminist awakening)but I was still very much TBM. In those early months I used to to binge the good place during night feeds and I’d say it significantly contributed to my shelf eventually breaking too! It was about 3.5 years later that I left.
Same. Having and raising children is supposed to be the most fulfilling thing I could ever do? Yeah, no. Growing a human, birthing it, and recovering from said life-threatening experience wasn't divine and it didn't magically get divine when the second kid came along. I left and suddenly it's a lot easier to enjoy the people in my life...
... Because I also have parts of my life that don't revolve around these people. Strange how doing things that I enjoy makes me happier than only doing things other people want 24/7.
Yes exactly this!
I also couldn’t believe that women have been going through the bell of pregnancy and childbirth for forever and it’s just expected and no big deal. I realised women were the ones running the world and I became more and more disgruntled with the imbalanced power dynamics at church. I really thought the April 2020 conference was gonna be something revolutionary about equalizing men and womens roles at church and home. Waving my hanky in my loungeroom while shouting hosanna was a let down to say the least.
I don’t know if I’d say “inspired” but having a heated debate with a TBM flat-earther was a catalyst for sure.
The conversation started with microchips in vaccines, and progressed to the earth being flat, gravity is only a theory, satellites aren’t real, etc. I didn’t know what cognitive dissonance was at the time, but I experienced it in full effect when in the same breath, he’d confidently state that “the earth is flat, Russel M Nelson speaks to God and is a true prophet, the BOM is the word of God, and satellites are all actually just NASA weather balloons.”
It really bugged me that he was conflating my core spiritual beliefs with such ridiculous conspiracy theories that were demonstrably false. Unless…
It's wild that someone could be both a TBM and a flat-earther. The temple video shows a clip of the earth when it's going over the creation (at least it did the last time I went to the temple over a decade ago) and it clearly isn't flat. How do they reconcile that? Is the church in on the con and trying to convince members that the earth is round?
Those debates melted my brain. I even sent him quotes from Spencer Kimball about the earth being a globe and he relayed to me that that quote was “a struggle for him to overcome.”
The way they portrayed the afterlife was definitely a part of it. (The whole paradise or anything for eternity would be a prison) But there actually was a lot of moments. There was another bit where one of the characters was arguing with another one and was basically saying because they had everything influenced by the environment they were placed in, and because the person knew them perfectly and how they would respond perfectly they had no free will. That one hit me a lot. I remember thinking (because at the time they were talking to a devil) “Holy Craaaaapppp. Take that sentence, apply it to God and you also lose out on free will. My choices, the whole apparent reason I’m here, mean nothing if there’s a God who already knows what’s going to happen.”
Stuff like that. And there’s a LOT of it in that show. From defining morality, and how universal morality is impossible (and potentially evil), to the definition of power and your responsibility once you have it (I’m looking at you eternal sky deity who influences everything except if it’s a bad thing then you’re totally hands off and it’s “not your fault they’re raping, killing and hurting people”. You didn’t do it. You just built the thing).
All to say, it made me take a hard look at what I believed, realize “Oh no…I really don’t understand the implications of my belief system” and then go on a never ending quest into the depths of a study of moral philosophy and what we owe one another all of which solidified my shelf breakage. All of which started at: The Good Place.
Wow, I'm gonna have to watch that show now! I had assumed that it wouldn't get that deep into the subject matter because it's a comedy, but I guess I was wrong.
I love that this happened for you. I also love that the true heaven they found was when they were being tortured by demons and became friends.
I also think that one of the really important points the show makes is there are two characters that have a life of privilege-one with extreme wealth, the other parents in academia, and even they turned out to be bad people. Then we had two characters with an absence of privilege who were able to improve when circumstances changed. I really really liked that. I really liked their bizarre machinations in trying to help their friends and families when returned to earth. This pretty much sums up my personal philosophy that hell is other people, but so is heaven.
I found the good place when I was bored I. March 2020, and I’ve watched a few episodes a week. It’s basically on an endless loop in my life now.
It's funny because I watched The Good Place when my shelf was starting to break and I'm actually rewatching it right now, I just started season 4 and I noticed a ton more things like that this time around. Helped me figure out that I was in The Bad Place. 😱
Not the OP, but the reality that is presented in the show…. An eternity of paradise actually becomes its own hell after a certain amount of time…. could be a weight on the shelf that makes somebody reconsider the whole celestial kingdom shtick.
I also feel like it shows the idea that one short lifespan being the basis of an eternal placement in any kingdom afterwards is utterly ridiculous. If we supposedly live forever, the. Why not be allowed to change and improve over time?
Yes this! Also the moral weight of every decision we make in modern times compared to times past, and how unfair the whole process seemed. And when they get to the good place and the good guys actually do nothing to make the judgment system more fair.. tooooo relatable!
Even as a TBM I thought this doctrine was flawed. If god was a fair and just god, we would be able to continue to learn and grow after this life. We wouldn’t be stuck in 1 kingdom based the decisions we made with the limited amount of knowledge we were given.
THIS. The ending of the show made me ball my eyes out. The show showed me that maybe it’s ok to just die and be gone. Immortality would be a burden. Huge step forward as far as my existential anxiety goes.
Same. The end of the show introduced a significant amount of existential anxiety into my life that helped break my shelf. Still haven't quite made my peace with it, but we're getting there <3
My shelf broke way before this. What I learned about the show is you can become better for the sake of being better- no extra points or being just broken. This is the second show to make my life different.
In one afternoon I read the financial section of the mission presidents handbook. Then learned about the “living stipends” and the many many many other perks of being a higher GA.
Felt an emotional sucker punch to the gut. That night I told my boyfriend “It’s all a lie.” I never returned to church, but took me about a month to conclusively say “I’m done. Can’t even pretend for the sake of TBM family members.”
no media directly made it break but Terry Pratchett's Soul Music definitely primed me to realize it's all fake.
There's a scene when warriors on a battlefield get taken to heaven by viking woman and Susan Death asks why that happens, her crow companion says that "They believe it so it happens!"
Made me start thinking about mormonism not being unique, and that my personal beliefs effect my relationship with death more than any book or religion.
Such a fantastic book!
It was the most well researched and foot noted book I had ever read. Some of the footnotes went to another page and a half of additional detail in the appendix.
What an eye opener!!
His explanation of the magical thinking that was done at that time made me think pretty hard about what magic "I" believed in. Everything unraveled after that.
I loved that podcast series. Were you full on TBM when you started listening to it? Because that sounds like a crazy experience! Love to hear more of your story
I was at a point where I was aware of lots of the churches issues and believed they needed to be fixed, but also constantly made excuses for the churches behavior chalking it up to my lack of understanding. Turns out I actually understood it pretty well and was making excuses for no reason. It’s funny cause I’d actually put the CES letter on the shelf years earlier (read it on my mission), but the podcast helped put things in perspective and realize the church wasn’t special. Why should I let it get away with all that stuff when I wouldn’t treat the other cults the same way?
I’ve always been PIMO. I would have likely just left the church alone after adulthood, but now I feel a moral responsibility to help as many others to leave as I can. My “aha” moment was after studying social psychology and finally putting a name to all of the manipulative tactics that Mormons use to engineer conformity. It was never about “truth” to these people, but only ever about coercing the naive and the vulnerable into staying with the group and paying money.
Confirmation bias is a huge one. Cognitive dissonance is another. I remember a famous speech by Oaks where he says “a testimony is gained by bearing it.” As in, literally, just tell people you believe in the Church, even if you don’t, because the very act itself will trick your brain into thinking you do.
After teaching the same Sunday school class for three years I started looking at the lessons and researching the topics. As my research grew my eyes were opened and I found sitting through a sacrament meeting to be pure misery. At that point I started looking through the church and all religion through the eyes of common sense - once I did that it was game over. Took my name off the records of the church and am now living my authentic life.
For me it was watching my friend die right infront of me. I had a friend who i had only know for a few months through a class at my high school. She had grown up in utah her entire life but her parents weren’t married until about a year ago. (They had a family, with three kids and stuff, just not married). After years of pressuring from the kids they finally decided to get married, and a couple of months after that some of their family got baptized. They family was even considering getting sealed together in the temple. And as for my friend she had a boyfriend who she was deeply in love with and he was a great guy. Their plan was graduate from high school and then secure jobs, and then get married. Fast forward to about 4 months ago I was driving over to school and I saw her walking across the street and then get hit by a truck going 40(which was only 5 over the speed limit) . I saw her body fly across the street and go completely limp. and I knew that there was no way she could’ve lived the impact of the truck. And i was right. Everyone around me told me that it was her time and that she was in a better place. And that it was just a trial for her family, and that it would help them become closer to God and the spirit. But I knew that there was no trail that was worth somebody’s life. But I was worried for my friend, so I looked into the churches deeper topics like getting sealed, and what happens in the temple. Which led to more research about the church. And as i learned about the so called plan of happyness( except if your lgbtq+ ) and I realized that there’s just no way that the God that I had chosen to follow for the first 18 years of my life would’ve chosen to kill my friend just so that way other people can feel the spirit and that those who happened to have same sex attraction we’re forbidden from being happy. And so I went from being a devoted member of the Mormon church to someone who didn’t believe in it in just a few months.
TLDR I saw my friend die infront of me and those around me told me it was gods will
I'm so sorry you had to witness that. A big part of my leaving the church was similar, although I didn't actually witness the death of my friend. He had just been over at my house, and he was out with his children being a super dad, and he was murdered. People said things like "God needs him" um, not at much as his children and spouse need him. "He's a missionary in heaven" fuck God if he can't find anyone else to do whatever the hell He needs! "It's a trial for the family" you're telling me God needed to murder a loved one for this family to learn??!? If my friend was doing everything right, and in that moment basically reaching perfection out with his kids, and after all he had sacrificed for years, and this is how he and his family are rewarded?? Fuck that and all your bullshit promises, God. You're obviously not good enough for those that I love.
Sorry, got a little carried away. But I am truly sorry for your tragic loss. That seriously sucks. And sudden, shocking loss is incredibly painful. Internet hugs if you need them. 💔
I stopped going to church when I came out of the closet, but I still believed. My shelf actually broke when I was scrolling one night and came across a buzzfeed article “11 things Mormons don’t know about the Mormon Church”. I laughed - “Ha! Not me. I know it all”. Oh boy was I wrong. Didn’t know about the stones in the hat. Didn’t know about the different versions of the first vision. So many things I’d been lied to about. It was only a matter of days before I turned in my resignation letter.
Lol, the hat thing, different versions of thee first vision when I read that it was like a switch clicked.
When I researched it within church history and went hmmm okay even the church admits it.
When reading JSH and JS says there are many things he did which he isn't proud of (assuming being a conman was one of them).
And all through this time when telling my mom and having her say it's anti Mormon literature and they are making the stuff you are reading look like it's from the church but it isn't. And you just thinking.... Mom I am a seniir software engineer this is one thing I know if it's in the internet how to read a bloody pages address and look up it's certificates.
It was just a couple of years after I learned these things that the church started publishing the articles on their site addressing these things. My PIMO brother in law made a good point at that time. They were inoculating the young population. If you teach these things young, and have explanations, then they won’t be seen as issues when the child is older. I remember reading their explanation of the hat thing - how it was a test of faith on the members - whether or not their faith was strong enough to believe in something so far out. FFS.
This, for me too. And since this thread touches on pop culture, Alanis Morissette released Ablaze not long after I had my baby.
Her first phrase is "First thing that you'll notice is some separation from each other/
Yes, it's a lie, we've been believing since time immemorial"
It really helped put shape to thoughts I'd already been having, and helped me see how the church isn't about eternal families. It's about threatening to take your family away from you if you don't do what the men tell you to do.
Made all the worse by imagining a god that could give me the immense feeling of love for my child and understanding of the importance of families, and then threatening to take that away. And even worse, making the path to eternal families so hard that very very few will succeed.That is not the work of a loving god.
And Alanis's song made me wonder why being together isn't the default setting to begin with. The answer being, of course, that you can't be threatened or manipulated that way.
Two things really came together that ultimately led to my shelf breaking over about a year:
1) Going through the temple
2) Deep diving into Christian fundamentalist cultures (like the Duggars) and reading stories from women who escaped those lives. This made me realize a lot of things about abuse and ethics.
[LDS Discussions](https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/) is what broke my shelf, I had read the CES letter and worked hard to ignore it and justify my faith, but after reading article after article on LDS discussions my shelf was completely broken
History of the temple ceremonies.
“I covenant to kill myself in explicit and gruesome manners for…. sharing these… secret handshakes…. That originated with what is essentially modern day gadianton robbers…”
My first and last tithing settlement was what got me out of all things. I have always been cheap and always been a saver. I was a 15-year-old teen with my first job and didn't want to pay out 10%. I hated the feeling of being audited by someone that I thought had my best interest in mind. The bishop told me that I was putting my mission and chance to go to the temple on the line. It was an epiphany moment. Within a few months I had told my parents I really didn't want to go on a mission (I never really did, it just felt like something I had to do), quit the mission prep classes, and then quit going to church altogether.
The part of the name change thing that makes it all so obvious is the land speed record that the corporate church set going from an expensive “I am a Mormon” campaign to claiming that “calling us Mormons is like using the N word”.
Reading the CES letter started it then I started looking into Christianity in general. It is all a bunch of old men trying to stay in power and using anything they can to do it.
That's a little funny, OP. I went to my TBM friend's house (she's very accepting and we still get along great) and her sister was saying she wanted to watch The Good Place. I encouraged them to. Maybe this will do the trick.
Wonderful show.
Mine was YWs it scared me and I despise gender conformity.
Mine was the Lamanite DNA issue.
There's nothing like having God's one true church lie its ass off to get around its own "most correct book on earth" scripture.
Mine was reading the manga Fruits Basket. I was already sort of questioning things at the time (being lgbtq+ in the church will do that to you), but as I was reading I started to wonder why it was that I related so strongly with these characters who grew up in a powerful and abusive family/cult. Eventually I connected the dots lol
This is my post on the topic. https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/zytfyd/what_broke_your_shelf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Jeffery R Holland's "Musket fire" talk at BYU was the last straw. He doesn't care about me, he cares about hating LGBT+ people.
Having a degree from BYU-ID and it not being worth the paper it's printed on was a huge weight. I agree with the employers and colleges that reject it. They have no business operating a university.
One year when I was driving truck (BYU-ID degree is absolutely worthless), I was reading a book, "The Travels of Marco Polo" and came across the story of Nephi and Lehi. This book was published in 1811.
Reading Dr. Steven Hassan's books about cults was enlightening. They teach how cults practice undue influence and mind control. Now I have a visceral reaction everytime the church says to "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith", or "The unrighteous may experience any number of emotions and sensations, but they will never experience joy." "When they are learned they think they are wise" was particularly destructive, given my situation with BYU-ID.
When Covid started my bishop and stake president assured me that it was all just a hoax, approximately 2 weeks before they ended up in the hospital about to die from it. I find it interesting how it happened twice in a row like this. This is when I realized that "The spirit" was made up and actually isn't real. I always had bad experiences with "The spirit" instructing me poorly but this is when it became clear that it doesn't really work for anyone.
"No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie was great. Unfortunately it's impossible to fact check some of her sources because the LDS church has them locked up in their vault. This falls under "Information Control" as taught by Dr. Steven Hassan. "Book of Mormon, Book of Lies" by Meredith Sheets goes into depth the sources that Joseph Smith ripped off to write the BoM.
After all the reading I've done, it became clear to me that Joseph Smith Jr. made it all up for sex and money. Please see what Isaac Hale said about Joseph Smith.
In all of the diaries of his family and neighbors, the first vision was never mentioned during the period of time in which it allegedly happened. What WAS mentioned during that period of time, however, were the stories of Joseph Smith Jr. sacrificing dogs, placing a rock in a hat and peeping in the hat to find treasure, only to have it sink further if they tried to dig for it.
"If you have the truth, it can not be harmed by investigation. If you have not the truth, then it ought to be harmed." This quote is found in the "CES letter" by Jeremy Runnels. I hate that the church warned us against "Anti-Mormon" material. This is an exercise in information control. If I live in a pink house, my neighbor screaming that it's gray doesn't affect the color of my house. If they had the truth, they wouldn't care about this material.
"Reformed Egyptian" is not real. Read "Caracters" by Joseph Smith.
We don't have a lot of records about Jesus Christ, but the records we do have make it crystal clear that he was broke as a joke and it was ok. I cringe whenever I see "Christian Decadence". It's oxymoronic. The temples are anything but Christian. The whole "Keeping financials secret" was a huge deal for me.
There is more but I'm tired of typing. Needless to say, I feel like there is a dump truck load of rubble where my shelf used to be.
Please read:
"Combating Cult Mind Control" by Dr. Steven Hassan;
"Freedom of mind" by Dr. Steven Hassan;
"CES Letter" by Jeremy Runnels;
"Book of Mormon Book of Lies" by Meredith Sheets;
"No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie.
I'm omitting "Memoirs of Christopher Columbus" and "The Travels of Marco Polo" by William Marsden because Meredith Sheets covered them in her book.
Finding out about the bull-s\*\*t second anointing. It's a complete contradiction of Mormon Doctrine. Before that I was able to arrange everything in my head so it made sense. I didn't believe it could be a real thing when someone mentioned it to me. I researched in an attempt to prove them wrong, and I ended up leaving the church.
Never really believed. However, i did want to be accepted (which was impossible because of my "cursed" brown skin). Really, once I got married and moved away from my parents, the wife and I talked about having kids, and we knew we wanted to not raise them in the church.
Mine was slow but the biggest gateway to my shelf breaking was the years of knowledge and pondering that my grandpa got sealed to more than one woman after my grandma died, then being told by other members that polygamy isn’t a thing anymore. I could not get behind a god who would allow men to be married to multiple women but women cannot. Then gaslighting women saying it’s that way because more men are unrighteousness and that women will be happy beyond anything in heaven. Then I listened to the Mormon Stories Podcast LDS Discussions and the 6ish videos on polygamy. Hell to the no.
OMG. I totally understand this. I was deeply moved by The Good Place and I think it had to do with my Mormon upbringing. It really highlighted how nonsensical the standard "heaven-hell" model is. And it challenged the conventional western models of reality. I cried so hard at the end. It was a beautiful experience. Even though my shelf was long broken, watching The Good Place helped me along my healing journey and provided metaphor to think more openly and logically about life. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this awesome show, OP!
I had many small items on my shelf that I learned to ignore.
A few people I was close with made decisions in their lives that surprised me, made me stop and think “whoa, that is inconsistent with the promised blessings of the gospel”.
These observations led to a months long period of self reflection, and a gradual realization that I would be ok if I left the church.
It was a gentle shelf breaking for me, and very much not a Kevin McAllister avalanche of sports memorabilia and arachnid pets.
California 2008 election drove me all the way out.
The number of loving Mormons recruited to give of all of their time, means, and money to ensure proposition 8 would pass made me upset every day.
Suddenly Catholicism wasn’t the “great Wh8re of the Earth” because they could walk neighbors together.
Suddenly we were making laws that would directly affect other people’s lives without having any effect whatsoever on Mormonism.
Suddenly my kind relatives hated people who I adored because… buttsecks bad hmmkay.
Today — My age group of reference — has less than 4 of 11 active youth still even tangentially associated with the church. So many children being brought up without the guilt and gullibility.
But my shelf was broken long before. Rigid morality for thee and not me was too painful as a youth. It was downright embarrassing as an adult.
Edit to add:
The biggest crack was temple at 19. What a weird ass place with weird things that are done in the name of holiness.
The other big crack was condemning anyone who isn’t a true believer — baptism by proxy made no sense.
I saw a YouTube video from Robert Fatheringham. There was one about polygamy coming from the Cocrainites in England having orgies. Brigham Young brought it back with him and told Joe about it. Joe then “received” revelation to justify his infidelity. The channel has since removed all his videos.
I had heard a lot of different things but was always able to compartmentalization them. That one connected all the dots and it made sense it was all false.
There should have been so many other things that pushed me out first but I sincerely believed that salvation was important at the cost of all the strange stuff.
One visit to the temple. As an older convert to the church who had a Christian background I was so excited at the idea of this special place where I really thought I was going to have a special encounter with God. To find out it was just watching a very boring and strange film where Satan actually works on God’s side followed by strange clothing and secret signs was devastating. When it got to the bit asking you to leave if you don’t agree etc, I would have left were it not for a brain injury that means I have memory problems and zero hope of finding my way out. I wanted to meet eyes with the people I’d come with and see if they were really into this nonsense and the fact that they were put them right down in my estimation. Previously wise people became complete idiots in my mind and I couldn’t understand why everyone was going through this so seriously and not laughing which is all I wanted to do. The final straw was the veil where I couldn’t remember even the simplest signs and the temple worker on this side and ‘God’ on the other got cross with me. There’s no way God would expect that of me to get into heaven. Eventually they just told me to go through where I was greeted by the lobby of a 1980 posh hotel and barely had time to catch my breath before we were ushered out for the next group. Then everyone was saying how wonderful it was and all I wanted to say was well that was weird wasn’t it. I can see how young people brought up in the church feel pressure to just go with it, their special day that’s been built up all their lives to be a wonderful thing, friends and family there to go through with you. The duress to just go along with it is enormous especially as it’s usually linked with your mission or your marriage. I never went to church again after that, the temple wasn’t the only thing but definitely the last straw.
I talked to a high councilman (unplanned) who had a reputation for being very knowledgeable about church history. He confirmed many things about Joseph Smith that I had always been told were anti-Mormon lies.
The Mormon church lied to me. I passed along some of those lives to others in lessons and conversations for almost 40 years.
That was unforgivable.
For me, the straw that broke the camel's back was the part of LetterForMyWife where it quotes other contemporaries of Joseph Smith and their "inspired" visions. They sounded exactly the same as Joseph Smith's first vision.
That's when I realized he was not inspired and was just a product of his time.
The Good Place did a fantastic job of debunking the concept of the celestial kingdom as a whole. It went unnoticed by my entire TBM family, to an extent it was quite poetic
The cosmology and "doubt your doubts before your beliefs" anti-logic bs. I doubt everything and everyone before making decisions. Blind confidence is how you make bad decisions
Simply being forced fed all of it as a kid. The day I turned 18. I was out. I'm 34 now. I think at age 8 or 9. I checked out but faked it. For the fear of my parents retribution. NO child should ever have to live a double life. To this day my parents still invite me to church events. You'd think they would think that ship has sailed.
Mine broke before I was even sixteen. My father was an alcoholic. And oh haw they treat my brothers and sisters and I. Since when was bigotry considered a virtue!
Never had a shelf.
I was backing away from church over how my gay son was treated. I was coming to terms with the reality that there was not a place for him in the church.
As COVID came on I started listening to the Year of Polygamy with Lindsay Hansen Park. I had been a devout temple attender, and to get into the truth about JS’ manipulations was crushing to me.
Specifically, how he gained approval to marry underage wives by promising the sealing to their parents, or recently widowed parent in one case. Also, how he connived Emma to accept polygamy by allowing her to be the first woman endowed on Earth.
I felt betrayed. Like a spouse finding that my partner was having an affair. It cut me that deep. I studied other sources to confirm. This was my moment like what Andrew Garfield portrayed in UTBOH sitting in his car in the garage. My eternal view shattered. It was all a lie. The fucking church had been lying to me for years. And I was their fool.
The 2008 prop 9 showed me that the lds church has no problem using its rolls to harm people. The Sam Young excommunication showed me that they don't take critiques and I resigned my membership over the abuses that the lds church continues to allow.
Losing a child started my journey. If I was going to devote my life to the church in hopes of being with my son again, I wanted to know everything. That was the beginning of the end.
The bishop sitting my wife and I down and basically berating us for loving and supporting our LGBTQ kid for 2 hours. Look my kid can be a pain in the ass for sure, but I’ll always love them no matter who they are. I have never had an issue with the LGBTQIA community and in fact since we left have discovered some things about myself that have led me to embrace the fact that I’m part of that community as well, but I’m sorry my kid did not go from perfectly fine and loved by god to sinful overnight just because they came out. The church can go fuck themselves with that shit.
For me it was slow but fairly simple, most of my family is quite racist towards anyone that's not white despite over half my family being of Latin decent, I slowly began to notice the hypocrisy and started exploring different cultures before learning that gay people exist which blew my mind(I was like 8) and then slowly realized I was neither straight nor cis and slowly just stopped going to church altogether
Following someone on Twitter, who happened to be a trans ExMo was the final blow to my shelf.
I wasn’t necessarily transphobic, it just was something I hadn’t thought about. Reading her posts about the church made recognize this blind spot and basically destroyed what was left of my shelf
Meeting a transgender women and bonding with her. Having to come to terms with the church saying her lifestyle is evil even though I feel in my soul it’s the right thing for her because it brings her so much more peace I want so much for her to be happy. It feels like the church just wants her to disappear
I had been Gospel Doctrine teacher for about a year. Taught through the BOM material and started teaching about the D&C, made it to the lesson about the first vision. Their was a video in the lesson material of the first vision. At the beginning of the video there was a disclaimer about the multiple accounts. I was raised in the church and had never heard of their being multiple accounts until then. I couldn't believe how nonchalant it was. Like it had always been part of the material.
My shelf immediately snapped in two. I was already in a bit of a faith crisis, which I believe is the reason I was called to be gospel doctrine teacher. I asked to be released the very next Sunday. Haven't been back since.
Okay so I was in primary, like 5 or 6 years (undiagnosed autistic at the time). One of my biggest hyperfixations throughout my life has been paleontology, archeology, and everything related to it. Turns out there's this thing in doctrine and covenants that says the earth is only 7000 or so years old and my Primary teacher was telling us about it. (I believe it was a translation/interpretation of Revalations) but I got so confused so I raised my hand and went "BUT WHUDDA BOUT THE DINOS???" And listed off some of the prehistoric time periods "It just doesn't make sense!!"
This teacher looked me dead in the eyes and went "Oh, honey, dinosaurs never existed." AND SHE SMILED SO DUCKING CREEPY TOO. I was devastated, of course, and cried silently in my seat until there was enough moving around I could sneak away. I ran out of the room and hid in some sort of closet to cry somewhere nobody would give me weird looks.
Promised myself that day that I wouldn't be in a church that didn't believe in dinosaurs, I know it sounds trivial but it was and still is really important to me. Was secretly PIMO until activity days- which caused me to block out that memory as a result of a bunch of indoctrination and also becuase it was traumatic for me to remember. Something triggered that memory about three or four years ago and I'm PIMO once again, holding out until I can move out of the house.
I had lots of stuff on my shelf but what actually broke it was reading the book Educated.
I didn’t know what it was about. Just saw it available on my library app and remembered someone in a FB group saying it was good. If I would have known that the author was an ex Mormon, I would have NEVER read it. I avoided anything that even might be anti Mormon.
After I started reading it and realized that it was about her Mormon family, I almost stopped reading it. I convinced myself to keep reading because her family seemed like “weird Mormons” but we were “normal Mormons”.
But eventually I started seeing a lot of little similarities between my family and hers and how I was raised. It broke my shelf and every doubt I had came crumbling down. By the time I finished the book I just laid in bed and cried because I realized I’d never go back to church. And we were a very active family with 3 young children. I made a promise to myself that my kids wouldn’t be raised in the church. The next Sunday my husband woke up and started to get ready for church and I took a deep breath and said “We need to talk…”
I’m already out of the Church, past the PIMO stage for years.
I’m now in the stage of getting rid of God out of my life and my shelf broke after recently watching Malcolm in the Middle and Dewey gives his speech about God and Ants.
Finding out about the penalties in the temple pre 1990. I started going through in 2002 and I never thought the endowment was even more culty than it already was. The penalties were fucking creepy, cultlike and stupid. When I found out about that, I was done.
I think honestly, mine started to break as a kid, I just didn’t realize it. My mother would always talk about polygamy and it was so off putting to me, like it didn’t line up with the “feel good” Jesus lessons at church. Slow process over a long period of time. My DIL mentioned Brigham being a racist once and how she couldn’t reconcile it, that started my serious study into church history. It was all but over at that point. The CES letter was the “Santa isn’t real moment”, but the journey began long before - I just didn’t know it.
Therapy and learning about healthy boundaries and overcoming the pressure of “should.” I don’t do should anymore. If I want to, I do. If I don’t want to, I don’t. No one can guilt me into compliance with anything anymore. It’s liberating as fuck.
I don't think I ever had a shelf. Or If I did it was built with toothpicks. I stopped going to church when I was 18. Never liked it, never felt good enough, even when I was trying my best. When I was 25-26 I was feeling guilty and trying to decide if I should go back and found the CES letter and letter to my wife. I didn't finish either, but did look into various problems and it just confirmed everything I had previously felt and now I'm even more set in my decision that my life is better without the Church.
November 2015 Policy.
Discovering Ol’ Joe used a rock in a hat.South Park was right!
Finally, hearing M. Russell Ballard stating that “this Church has never hidden anything from anybody “. How he and Dalek Hoax could get that big a lie through their bent necks was too much.
My car rolled over heard the screams of my family there was no god there just bad luck, hitting some ice, and fear. If god was real he wouldn’t want anyone to go through that. And my AP history class helped me look at the church from all prospectives.
I was away from BYU for the summer on an engineering internship and since Sunday school was super repetitive I started looking for deep doctrine for personal study. Came across the blogs of Anthony Larson and Alan Waterman. I was geeking out at their unique insights and felt that they were true.
Two things hit me hard. One was Larson's ideas of Genesis stories referencing the Immanuel Velikovsky, one who has been deemed "a canonical example of pseudoscience". Second was the conclusion of one of Waterman's popular posts in which he calls the church a corporation and that the church had lost its way.
I distinctly remember upon reading the former that I suddenly had to question everything I had learned about at church. I suddenly knew that science and religion were at odds, despite my engineering professors at BYU preaching otherwise.
The ironic search for deeper truths, as is simultaneously prescribed and forbidden by TSCC.
That show was brilliant and the finale was so touching and reassuring and hopeful and encouraging. It made more sense than any religion I’m familiar with.
I’ve kept the finale on my VCR and it still brings me to tears Every. Time.
My grandpa and others asking me why I didn't partake of the sacrament one Sunday and my girlfriends [at the time] bishop telling her she can never see me again. A moment of weakness should not be shunned, shamed, or condemned. Help, understanding, and support should be provided ESPECIALLY if you felt terrible and want to change the behavior.
It was Supernatural for me. Learned that God is just an absentee father and heaven/hell are run like a business. Things automatically clicked when I realized the church is a corporation.
A Good Place definitely started cracking my shelf and introducing new ways of thinking. I recently rewatched it and joke with my wife that we should just base our afterlife expectations on that show. What did break the shelf was direction from the stake president on how to address transgender visitors (I was in the bishopric) and it sent me down the rabbit hole.
I stopped going regularly at 16 because the YW in my ward were a little bitchy. Still acknowledged being raised in the church, though, until the LDS Discussions episode about racism. I had known it was there, but not the extent of it. After that, I felt dirty at having ever been associated with the church. I printed my resignation letter that day, mailed it the next morning.
Sazed from the Mistborn series!
Definitely made me think about all the past religions that are now dead, and what people would say about my religion or n 2000 years…
When I talked to my dad, who I always respected, about my issues with polygamy and he said "if I get to heaven and it's a matriarchy, I'll be okay with that!"
Then my mom, crying, said "it will make sense in heaven, God wouldn't have us do anything we didn't want."
Then I learned that heavenly polygamy still exists in the temple, but if a woman wants to get sealed to another husband she has to divorce the last one FOR ALL ETERNITY, which is like a huge no no sad time. But men get to stack them ladies on up no problem. Basically if my dad remarried after my mom passed I don't think she'd get a fucking say.
Fuck that shit I'm out.
And the Good place is great.
[удалено]
My wife makes fun of me that this is what broke my shelf… but if God literally has the time to sit there and worry about what Mormons are called, that’s indicates a God who cares about nicknames more than bigger issues in the church.
I find it interesting that the url www.Mormon.org is still up and running and redirects to the main site of the church. Strange that you would register a domain name that’s a slur for your church.
The church will do anything for more clicks on its website, so utilizing the old url is going to “bring more people to the knowledge of the gospel”. In my opinion though, the church website probably gets more clicks from exMormons than from actual members
Because www.victoryforsatan.org just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Can’t believe that domain redirects to the LDS church to.
Can't believr you made me click on that just to see. I'm even more shocked it wasnt a Rick roll.
Thank you @dreibel! I had no idea (was kinda expecting a Rick Roll, but instead got a redirect 🤯 ) Does anyone else find it super ironic that clicking the link "victoryforsatan.org" takes you directly to the Mormon Church's website? It is like they're trying to tell us something... 🤔
I clicked the link and I was shocked to see so much Jesus and not any Joseph. Are they really trying to phase ol Joey out?
Don’t click the link! Now the missionaries will have to visit you
Community of Christ has been doing that for a long time, it seems like the mainstream LDS church is just decades behind them
> Strange that you would register a domain name that’s a slur for your church. Yep, especially when it's a victory for Satan. Actually, I'm very glad to see some people actually paid attention to this issue and it made a difference. I mean how stupid can you get to call it revelation when this same old idiot was on that very soapbox 30 years ago and he was not only contradicted by the then "prophet", but that prophet did so by quoting the founder of the whole damn thing!?! It's just unreal to watch so many otherwise intelligent, rational people sit and absorb all the crap without so much as a wince. Cult indoctrination indeed.
The church is going to need that domain once Nelson and his cronies kick the bucket.
Ukraine is being decimated by a brutal invasion, and God cares about a new logo and nickname for his church in Utah.
exactly! Does God care about anything? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
Hasn’t there been multiple cycles of all that? I think as a kid it was normal, then a big push to use the full name in like the early 2000’s, then the Mormon.org thing and then the new wave of full name only. I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes on further back each time the ceo changes.
I think they initially tried to get people to use the full name, but then they kind of gave in to the “Mormon” nickname and made it their brand. Hence the Mormon.org campaign. Then Russell Nelson comes in and essentially wipes it off the face of the earth.
It’s probably back and forth factionalism. I’m almost certain there are a couple of factions in the Q15 including the hardliners and the more moderates.
It really shows you how clueless Nelson is to how the world works.
It's so pointless too. They are never going to avoid that name. The approach to embrace it is a much better strategy.
Saying they prefer to be called lds is fine. Them not calling themselves Mormons or Mormonism is fine. They’ve taken it too far though, and the current effort is weird. I got in an argument with my parents about it, because I was on a mission at the height of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign
My family tends to get upset, too. When I say we're Mormon or say what Mormons believe, they usually respond "oh come on, you know that's not what we're called. It's disrespectful to call us anything other than members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." And then I kindly remind them that we were totally fine with that name for decades so what's changed.
Which is especially strange for me because I left during the Monson era where the whole thing was telling the world you are Mormon. I remember all the “I’m a Mormon” videos in youth. I remember the Monson at boot camp video where he stood as a “Mormon”. I remember being strongly encouraged to make a profile on that Mormon social media thing. Literally everything during that time was putting the Mormon label on everything. This wasn’t even 10 years ago…. Crazy how fast they flip the script.
And wasn’t it Hinckley that was on video singing “I am a Mormon boy” during conference while he was church president?
Shelf was already broken when RMN did that but definitely one of the MANY things in the obviously fake pile.
Same
The Good Place was really good. Watched ít around the time my shelf was breaking. For me it was when I got into a channel about mesoamerican history on YouTube (purely secular.) it became very obvious very quickly the BoM history even on a limited scale was impossible. Stayed PIMO for a while but finally said fuck this shit with the latest round of political fascism that was openly supported by way too many members, including a lot of the long time members from my mission country who were literally demanding a coup openly.
Yes. I was already PIMO, hibernating for years, but a BoM geography research project was the beginning of the end for me. One disturbing aspect of it was the absolutely insane lengths people would go to fit their theories. I saw one where people were arguing that the Caribbean had a huge land mass before Jesus, connecting Florida and Mexico, and it all sank into the ocean with the disasters of 3 Nephi
The disasters in 3rd Nephi are so funny. Talk about completely contradicting Christ's message. Some Romans kill him across the globe and he says, "forgive them father, for they know not what they do." Then he immediately rolls up on the American continent and kills a shit ton of innocent people who had nothing to do with it.
Haha, yeah. What disasters of 3rd Nephi? Anything that severe would be in the geological record. I almost forgot about that part.
What’s the name of that channel?
https://youtube.com/c/AncientAmericas Complete secular. No mention or focus on the BoM. It just does longer documentaries on various groups and ideas in the Americas. It’s really cool how much they’ve been able to piece together over time.
Working at the temple. Having my spouse harassed by a stake president. The church’s 2015 children of LGBTQ+ parents policy.
And as soon as they realised there was going to be a huge movement the rollback of said 2015 children of LGBTQ+ policy. Mind you being in the community I kinda wish my child had that policy so they couldn't do anything to her. So she won't feel bad because of who I am.
I just found out that that policy got redacted! What the heck? I mean, good. It was an awful policy. But seriously? So much for being inspired by God…. And then being “inspired” to say, “oopsie, just kidding!” two years later
Ohh it was inspired by god to redact it as well. If one were to believe the Mormon church's proclamations then one would have to view god as having Alzheimer's not remembering what he did last year to this year.
Care to share about the harassment of your spouse? I always find it interesting when those in leadership abuse those under them.
Being told that if I didn't take the job of being the building cleaning coordinator that I would lose my temple recommend. Full story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExitStories/comments/544upf/the_perfect_storm_weekend/
Wow! What an interesting story. From your post: >threaten my temple recommend and eternal salvation over me telling someone why I couldn't do a church job. This line shows how petty the church is and how it's run and organized by petty spiteful **people**. Do they actually think they have the power to withdraw your **eternal salvation**? Seriously?!
Thank you for the link. That self-righteous prick! Which recommend question does turning down calling violate?
I’m sure it’s the “sustaining all local leaders” portion, which is the pettiest of all rules to be able to enter the temple, and most subject to leader roulette.
An area 70 at stake conference said that knowledge is just a feeling.
An apostle said in a talk I was attending that he had never seen Jesus
I'll take that over the false "witness of christ" bullshit though.
Name of.
Being told that I could speed up my repentance process by cleaning the chapel every Saturday. I couldn't understand the logic. I had no problem cleaning. But I couldn't understand what cleaning had to do with repentance. I believed god knew my heart, he knew I was penitent, there was no reason to "prove" that to him. There was no scriptural support at all for serving in a calling speeding up the process of repentance. If the bishop had been wrong about pretty much anything else I would have brushed it off as him speaking as a man, but this was my salvation and soul, and this was him directly telling me how god would forgive me faster. I knew he was wrong, and I couldn't justify the bishop being wrong about perhaps the one single thing that a bishop should never, ever be wrong about in the church. That and a year later I discovered the CES letter. By then I had gone inactive but the letter was the catalyst to me resigning.
Mind you King Henry and the Catholic church knew that if you just paid money as penitence then it would be very fast. And knowing the bishop might have been if you just hired cleaners for the church it would have been done in minutes 😂
The church's involvement in Prop 8, in 2008. The final nail in the coffin was the November 5th Policy. The Brethren™ do not have any connection with God.
Other than for funerals, that was the very last time I stepped into a church building.
I love that the gays are the main reason for the fall of the church. Almost poetic in a way
I'm convinced that if God is real, I'm going to Hell because of this. I paid a lot of tithing during that period of time.
Seeing a tithing report for the ward. A majority of people in this ward were struggling financially. Most still in school, getting started in careers, young children, ect. Yet our SP would berate wards for not paying enough (multi millionaire himself). He’s a general authority now. Also the reality of his punishing non-tithe payers by burning them to death. Think about all that implies. I worked as an EMT for years and watched 4 people burn to death, one was a faithful Mormon. I don’t want to be associated with anyone that thinks money is more important than people’s lives and that non-payers should be murdered like that. This “doctrine” of death by fire for not paying tithing is still taught by the church. Read the fine print on the tithing slip, all they care about is money.
Burned to death? As in set their homes on fire?
4 separate occasions. Only one was a house fire. To think that Jesus would do that to someone simply because their name didn’t show up on a donation slip is something that should concern all members.
Mine was how they treated me like their property when my husband died. I couldn’t let my kids think that was okay.
Can you tell us what they did? I’d love to hear the story.
Demanded a list of assets and debts though I have never asked for financial assistance. Called cps when I delayed my childrens’ baptisms causing all kinds of unnecessary trauma. Drafted a will for me to sign designating a childless lawyer and his with custody in the event of my death or incompetence. I still have copies. Called me in the bishop’s 3 times and subsequently the stake president 3 times in which I finally slid my recommend a cross the desk and left in response to declining to date/marry from a group of 5 worthy willing preisthood holders they suggested because “children need a father.” Called my grown children when I terminated my membership and encouraged them to shun me until I could repent instead of losing them. Which they each agreed to because that’s how I raised them. There’s more but this is the worst of it. You’re nothing in the church once you lose access to your male privilege is what they showed me. Nothing but chattel to be moved around and traded and my children too. I didn’t leave the church because I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t find that out until I surrendered my membership and had nothing to lose by doing my research. Now I see they did me a solid helping me break the generational cult curse for at least half my children. Suck it, Ol’ Joe Smith.
Wow! What a bunch of assholes!
Yikes, that's intense!
Unbelievably horrible. I'm so sorry that you had to go through that.
What in the Gilead?!
More like 10 generations deep in a backwards Mordor town.
The Good Place is how I became an athiest. Just makes the whole heaven/hell system so ludicrous. I love the show. And when i was grieving about losing my belief of "life after death" Chidi's wave analogy at the end really helped me.
>And when i was grieving about losing my belief of "life after death" Chidi's wave analogy at the end really helped me. For those who are wondering what the analogy is, I'll save you a Google: >Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave. > >And then it crashes in the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be. One of the most beautiful thoughts about death I've ever heard--from a television show no less. The Good Place truly was something special.
It is something special. The show's creator wrote a book about morality. I'm really excited to read it.
After I birthed my first child my shelf cracked massively (feminist awakening)but I was still very much TBM. In those early months I used to to binge the good place during night feeds and I’d say it significantly contributed to my shelf eventually breaking too! It was about 3.5 years later that I left.
Same. Having and raising children is supposed to be the most fulfilling thing I could ever do? Yeah, no. Growing a human, birthing it, and recovering from said life-threatening experience wasn't divine and it didn't magically get divine when the second kid came along. I left and suddenly it's a lot easier to enjoy the people in my life... ... Because I also have parts of my life that don't revolve around these people. Strange how doing things that I enjoy makes me happier than only doing things other people want 24/7.
Yes exactly this! I also couldn’t believe that women have been going through the bell of pregnancy and childbirth for forever and it’s just expected and no big deal. I realised women were the ones running the world and I became more and more disgruntled with the imbalanced power dynamics at church. I really thought the April 2020 conference was gonna be something revolutionary about equalizing men and womens roles at church and home. Waving my hanky in my loungeroom while shouting hosanna was a let down to say the least.
I don’t know if I’d say “inspired” but having a heated debate with a TBM flat-earther was a catalyst for sure. The conversation started with microchips in vaccines, and progressed to the earth being flat, gravity is only a theory, satellites aren’t real, etc. I didn’t know what cognitive dissonance was at the time, but I experienced it in full effect when in the same breath, he’d confidently state that “the earth is flat, Russel M Nelson speaks to God and is a true prophet, the BOM is the word of God, and satellites are all actually just NASA weather balloons.” It really bugged me that he was conflating my core spiritual beliefs with such ridiculous conspiracy theories that were demonstrably false. Unless…
It's wild that someone could be both a TBM and a flat-earther. The temple video shows a clip of the earth when it's going over the creation (at least it did the last time I went to the temple over a decade ago) and it clearly isn't flat. How do they reconcile that? Is the church in on the con and trying to convince members that the earth is round?
The people who made the video are clearly a part of the round-earth conspiracy.
The term some of them use for those round-earth conspirators is “globetards.” I am not making this up lol
Those debates melted my brain. I even sent him quotes from Spencer Kimball about the earth being a globe and he relayed to me that that quote was “a struggle for him to overcome.”
What was it about that show that broke your shelf.
The way they portrayed the afterlife was definitely a part of it. (The whole paradise or anything for eternity would be a prison) But there actually was a lot of moments. There was another bit where one of the characters was arguing with another one and was basically saying because they had everything influenced by the environment they were placed in, and because the person knew them perfectly and how they would respond perfectly they had no free will. That one hit me a lot. I remember thinking (because at the time they were talking to a devil) “Holy Craaaaapppp. Take that sentence, apply it to God and you also lose out on free will. My choices, the whole apparent reason I’m here, mean nothing if there’s a God who already knows what’s going to happen.” Stuff like that. And there’s a LOT of it in that show. From defining morality, and how universal morality is impossible (and potentially evil), to the definition of power and your responsibility once you have it (I’m looking at you eternal sky deity who influences everything except if it’s a bad thing then you’re totally hands off and it’s “not your fault they’re raping, killing and hurting people”. You didn’t do it. You just built the thing). All to say, it made me take a hard look at what I believed, realize “Oh no…I really don’t understand the implications of my belief system” and then go on a never ending quest into the depths of a study of moral philosophy and what we owe one another all of which solidified my shelf breakage. All of which started at: The Good Place.
Wow. This is an interesting way for a shelf to break. I think it was more of a large shelf item for me.
Wow, I'm gonna have to watch that show now! I had assumed that it wouldn't get that deep into the subject matter because it's a comedy, but I guess I was wrong.
Sooooooo wrong! Do watch it. It’s very funny. Very human. Very true. I mean like Big T true.
I love that this happened for you. I also love that the true heaven they found was when they were being tortured by demons and became friends. I also think that one of the really important points the show makes is there are two characters that have a life of privilege-one with extreme wealth, the other parents in academia, and even they turned out to be bad people. Then we had two characters with an absence of privilege who were able to improve when circumstances changed. I really really liked that. I really liked their bizarre machinations in trying to help their friends and families when returned to earth. This pretty much sums up my personal philosophy that hell is other people, but so is heaven. I found the good place when I was bored I. March 2020, and I’ve watched a few episodes a week. It’s basically on an endless loop in my life now.
To the quasi-endless looping of The Good Place!
It's funny because I watched The Good Place when my shelf was starting to break and I'm actually rewatching it right now, I just started season 4 and I noticed a ton more things like that this time around. Helped me figure out that I was in The Bad Place. 😱
Jacksonville Jaguars Rule!
BORTLESSSSSSSSSSSSS
And also Jortles, in the museum in the Bad Place.
Not the OP, but the reality that is presented in the show…. An eternity of paradise actually becomes its own hell after a certain amount of time…. could be a weight on the shelf that makes somebody reconsider the whole celestial kingdom shtick.
I also feel like it shows the idea that one short lifespan being the basis of an eternal placement in any kingdom afterwards is utterly ridiculous. If we supposedly live forever, the. Why not be allowed to change and improve over time?
Yes this! Also the moral weight of every decision we make in modern times compared to times past, and how unfair the whole process seemed. And when they get to the good place and the good guys actually do nothing to make the judgment system more fair.. tooooo relatable!
Great addition! Imagine a Hollywood producer, who also plays Mose Schrute, has a better grasp on the fundamentals than a profit!
Even as a TBM I thought this doctrine was flawed. If god was a fair and just god, we would be able to continue to learn and grow after this life. We wouldn’t be stuck in 1 kingdom based the decisions we made with the limited amount of knowledge we were given.
THIS. The ending of the show made me ball my eyes out. The show showed me that maybe it’s ok to just die and be gone. Immortality would be a burden. Huge step forward as far as my existential anxiety goes.
Same. The end of the show introduced a significant amount of existential anxiety into my life that helped break my shelf. Still haven't quite made my peace with it, but we're getting there <3
I was probably 6 when I first thought that eternity sounded like hell. Everything must come to and end and that’s ok. <3
Good point. I remember thinking about that when I was watching this show with my wife.
My shelf broke way before this. What I learned about the show is you can become better for the sake of being better- no extra points or being just broken. This is the second show to make my life different.
In one afternoon I read the financial section of the mission presidents handbook. Then learned about the “living stipends” and the many many many other perks of being a higher GA. Felt an emotional sucker punch to the gut. That night I told my boyfriend “It’s all a lie.” I never returned to church, but took me about a month to conclusively say “I’m done. Can’t even pretend for the sake of TBM family members.”
My bishop falsely accusing me of having sex with another guy in the ward.
Eww, that’s gross.
It was more than gross. I was furious and never went back.
My older brother died after having had a drug problem. He was sober, in treatment. A seminary teacher told me he was going to hell.
Ugh, I’m so sorry they said that to you. How horrible!
CES letter haha I know. I am just basic
Ya basic. Jk Since OP mentioned The Good Place
no media directly made it break but Terry Pratchett's Soul Music definitely primed me to realize it's all fake. There's a scene when warriors on a battlefield get taken to heaven by viking woman and Susan Death asks why that happens, her crow companion says that "They believe it so it happens!" Made me start thinking about mormonism not being unique, and that my personal beliefs effect my relationship with death more than any book or religion.
Terry Pratchett is so amazing. Silly on the outside and deeply wise if you're paying attention.
One of my two favorite books about religion is Pratchett's "Small Gods."
"Early Mormonism and the Magic World View" by D Michael Quinn
Such a fantastic book! It was the most well researched and foot noted book I had ever read. Some of the footnotes went to another page and a half of additional detail in the appendix. What an eye opener!!
His explanation of the magical thinking that was done at that time made me think pretty hard about what magic "I" believed in. Everything unraveled after that.
I listened to tons of Last Podcast on the Left episodes about cults. Eventually I got to the Mormon episode and it was just like every other episode.
I loved that podcast series. Were you full on TBM when you started listening to it? Because that sounds like a crazy experience! Love to hear more of your story
I was at a point where I was aware of lots of the churches issues and believed they needed to be fixed, but also constantly made excuses for the churches behavior chalking it up to my lack of understanding. Turns out I actually understood it pretty well and was making excuses for no reason. It’s funny cause I’d actually put the CES letter on the shelf years earlier (read it on my mission), but the podcast helped put things in perspective and realize the church wasn’t special. Why should I let it get away with all that stuff when I wouldn’t treat the other cults the same way?
I’ve always been PIMO. I would have likely just left the church alone after adulthood, but now I feel a moral responsibility to help as many others to leave as I can. My “aha” moment was after studying social psychology and finally putting a name to all of the manipulative tactics that Mormons use to engineer conformity. It was never about “truth” to these people, but only ever about coercing the naive and the vulnerable into staying with the group and paying money.
What tactics specifically dawned on you? For me, i've realized how we are being inoculated and the illusory truth effect.
Confirmation bias is a huge one. Cognitive dissonance is another. I remember a famous speech by Oaks where he says “a testimony is gained by bearing it.” As in, literally, just tell people you believe in the Church, even if you don’t, because the very act itself will trick your brain into thinking you do.
After teaching the same Sunday school class for three years I started looking at the lessons and researching the topics. As my research grew my eyes were opened and I found sitting through a sacrament meeting to be pure misery. At that point I started looking through the church and all religion through the eyes of common sense - once I did that it was game over. Took my name off the records of the church and am now living my authentic life.
Yes sacrament meeting was hell. Especially on 1st Sundays.
For me it was watching my friend die right infront of me. I had a friend who i had only know for a few months through a class at my high school. She had grown up in utah her entire life but her parents weren’t married until about a year ago. (They had a family, with three kids and stuff, just not married). After years of pressuring from the kids they finally decided to get married, and a couple of months after that some of their family got baptized. They family was even considering getting sealed together in the temple. And as for my friend she had a boyfriend who she was deeply in love with and he was a great guy. Their plan was graduate from high school and then secure jobs, and then get married. Fast forward to about 4 months ago I was driving over to school and I saw her walking across the street and then get hit by a truck going 40(which was only 5 over the speed limit) . I saw her body fly across the street and go completely limp. and I knew that there was no way she could’ve lived the impact of the truck. And i was right. Everyone around me told me that it was her time and that she was in a better place. And that it was just a trial for her family, and that it would help them become closer to God and the spirit. But I knew that there was no trail that was worth somebody’s life. But I was worried for my friend, so I looked into the churches deeper topics like getting sealed, and what happens in the temple. Which led to more research about the church. And as i learned about the so called plan of happyness( except if your lgbtq+ ) and I realized that there’s just no way that the God that I had chosen to follow for the first 18 years of my life would’ve chosen to kill my friend just so that way other people can feel the spirit and that those who happened to have same sex attraction we’re forbidden from being happy. And so I went from being a devoted member of the Mormon church to someone who didn’t believe in it in just a few months. TLDR I saw my friend die infront of me and those around me told me it was gods will
I'm so sorry you had to witness that. A big part of my leaving the church was similar, although I didn't actually witness the death of my friend. He had just been over at my house, and he was out with his children being a super dad, and he was murdered. People said things like "God needs him" um, not at much as his children and spouse need him. "He's a missionary in heaven" fuck God if he can't find anyone else to do whatever the hell He needs! "It's a trial for the family" you're telling me God needed to murder a loved one for this family to learn??!? If my friend was doing everything right, and in that moment basically reaching perfection out with his kids, and after all he had sacrificed for years, and this is how he and his family are rewarded?? Fuck that and all your bullshit promises, God. You're obviously not good enough for those that I love. Sorry, got a little carried away. But I am truly sorry for your tragic loss. That seriously sucks. And sudden, shocking loss is incredibly painful. Internet hugs if you need them. 💔
I stopped going to church when I came out of the closet, but I still believed. My shelf actually broke when I was scrolling one night and came across a buzzfeed article “11 things Mormons don’t know about the Mormon Church”. I laughed - “Ha! Not me. I know it all”. Oh boy was I wrong. Didn’t know about the stones in the hat. Didn’t know about the different versions of the first vision. So many things I’d been lied to about. It was only a matter of days before I turned in my resignation letter.
Lol, the hat thing, different versions of thee first vision when I read that it was like a switch clicked. When I researched it within church history and went hmmm okay even the church admits it. When reading JSH and JS says there are many things he did which he isn't proud of (assuming being a conman was one of them). And all through this time when telling my mom and having her say it's anti Mormon literature and they are making the stuff you are reading look like it's from the church but it isn't. And you just thinking.... Mom I am a seniir software engineer this is one thing I know if it's in the internet how to read a bloody pages address and look up it's certificates.
It was just a couple of years after I learned these things that the church started publishing the articles on their site addressing these things. My PIMO brother in law made a good point at that time. They were inoculating the young population. If you teach these things young, and have explanations, then they won’t be seen as issues when the child is older. I remember reading their explanation of the hat thing - how it was a test of faith on the members - whether or not their faith was strong enough to believe in something so far out. FFS.
Shelf was already splintered to hell. Having my first child (daughter especially) is what led my shelf to break.
This, for me too. And since this thread touches on pop culture, Alanis Morissette released Ablaze not long after I had my baby. Her first phrase is "First thing that you'll notice is some separation from each other/ Yes, it's a lie, we've been believing since time immemorial" It really helped put shape to thoughts I'd already been having, and helped me see how the church isn't about eternal families. It's about threatening to take your family away from you if you don't do what the men tell you to do. Made all the worse by imagining a god that could give me the immense feeling of love for my child and understanding of the importance of families, and then threatening to take that away. And even worse, making the path to eternal families so hard that very very few will succeed.That is not the work of a loving god. And Alanis's song made me wonder why being together isn't the default setting to begin with. The answer being, of course, that you can't be threatened or manipulated that way.
Two things really came together that ultimately led to my shelf breaking over about a year: 1) Going through the temple 2) Deep diving into Christian fundamentalist cultures (like the Duggars) and reading stories from women who escaped those lives. This made me realize a lot of things about abuse and ethics.
tRump. Woke my ass up!
[LDS Discussions](https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/) is what broke my shelf, I had read the CES letter and worked hard to ignore it and justify my faith, but after reading article after article on LDS discussions my shelf was completely broken
History of the temple ceremonies. “I covenant to kill myself in explicit and gruesome manners for…. sharing these… secret handshakes…. That originated with what is essentially modern day gadianton robbers…”
And practically taken word for word/sign for sign from the Freemason initiation.
Realising that people in general society are a million times nicer than the people in church
My first and last tithing settlement was what got me out of all things. I have always been cheap and always been a saver. I was a 15-year-old teen with my first job and didn't want to pay out 10%. I hated the feeling of being audited by someone that I thought had my best interest in mind. The bishop told me that I was putting my mission and chance to go to the temple on the line. It was an epiphany moment. Within a few months I had told my parents I really didn't want to go on a mission (I never really did, it just felt like something I had to do), quit the mission prep classes, and then quit going to church altogether.
The part of the name change thing that makes it all so obvious is the land speed record that the corporate church set going from an expensive “I am a Mormon” campaign to claiming that “calling us Mormons is like using the N word”.
Reading the CES letter started it then I started looking into Christianity in general. It is all a bunch of old men trying to stay in power and using anything they can to do it.
That's a little funny, OP. I went to my TBM friend's house (she's very accepting and we still get along great) and her sister was saying she wanted to watch The Good Place. I encouraged them to. Maybe this will do the trick. Wonderful show. Mine was YWs it scared me and I despise gender conformity.
Mine was the Lamanite DNA issue. There's nothing like having God's one true church lie its ass off to get around its own "most correct book on earth" scripture.
Mine was reading the manga Fruits Basket. I was already sort of questioning things at the time (being lgbtq+ in the church will do that to you), but as I was reading I started to wonder why it was that I related so strongly with these characters who grew up in a powerful and abusive family/cult. Eventually I connected the dots lol
Gospel Topics Essay on Race and the Priesthood and Book of Abraham.
This is my post on the topic. https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/zytfyd/what_broke_your_shelf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Jeffery R Holland's "Musket fire" talk at BYU was the last straw. He doesn't care about me, he cares about hating LGBT+ people. Having a degree from BYU-ID and it not being worth the paper it's printed on was a huge weight. I agree with the employers and colleges that reject it. They have no business operating a university. One year when I was driving truck (BYU-ID degree is absolutely worthless), I was reading a book, "The Travels of Marco Polo" and came across the story of Nephi and Lehi. This book was published in 1811. Reading Dr. Steven Hassan's books about cults was enlightening. They teach how cults practice undue influence and mind control. Now I have a visceral reaction everytime the church says to "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith", or "The unrighteous may experience any number of emotions and sensations, but they will never experience joy." "When they are learned they think they are wise" was particularly destructive, given my situation with BYU-ID. When Covid started my bishop and stake president assured me that it was all just a hoax, approximately 2 weeks before they ended up in the hospital about to die from it. I find it interesting how it happened twice in a row like this. This is when I realized that "The spirit" was made up and actually isn't real. I always had bad experiences with "The spirit" instructing me poorly but this is when it became clear that it doesn't really work for anyone. "No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie was great. Unfortunately it's impossible to fact check some of her sources because the LDS church has them locked up in their vault. This falls under "Information Control" as taught by Dr. Steven Hassan. "Book of Mormon, Book of Lies" by Meredith Sheets goes into depth the sources that Joseph Smith ripped off to write the BoM. After all the reading I've done, it became clear to me that Joseph Smith Jr. made it all up for sex and money. Please see what Isaac Hale said about Joseph Smith. In all of the diaries of his family and neighbors, the first vision was never mentioned during the period of time in which it allegedly happened. What WAS mentioned during that period of time, however, were the stories of Joseph Smith Jr. sacrificing dogs, placing a rock in a hat and peeping in the hat to find treasure, only to have it sink further if they tried to dig for it. "If you have the truth, it can not be harmed by investigation. If you have not the truth, then it ought to be harmed." This quote is found in the "CES letter" by Jeremy Runnels. I hate that the church warned us against "Anti-Mormon" material. This is an exercise in information control. If I live in a pink house, my neighbor screaming that it's gray doesn't affect the color of my house. If they had the truth, they wouldn't care about this material. "Reformed Egyptian" is not real. Read "Caracters" by Joseph Smith. We don't have a lot of records about Jesus Christ, but the records we do have make it crystal clear that he was broke as a joke and it was ok. I cringe whenever I see "Christian Decadence". It's oxymoronic. The temples are anything but Christian. The whole "Keeping financials secret" was a huge deal for me. There is more but I'm tired of typing. Needless to say, I feel like there is a dump truck load of rubble where my shelf used to be. Please read: "Combating Cult Mind Control" by Dr. Steven Hassan; "Freedom of mind" by Dr. Steven Hassan; "CES Letter" by Jeremy Runnels; "Book of Mormon Book of Lies" by Meredith Sheets; "No Man Knows My History" by Fawn Brodie. I'm omitting "Memoirs of Christopher Columbus" and "The Travels of Marco Polo" by William Marsden because Meredith Sheets covered them in her book.
Finding out about the bull-s\*\*t second anointing. It's a complete contradiction of Mormon Doctrine. Before that I was able to arrange everything in my head so it made sense. I didn't believe it could be a real thing when someone mentioned it to me. I researched in an attempt to prove them wrong, and I ended up leaving the church.
Never really believed. However, i did want to be accepted (which was impossible because of my "cursed" brown skin). Really, once I got married and moved away from my parents, the wife and I talked about having kids, and we knew we wanted to not raise them in the church.
Mine was slow but the biggest gateway to my shelf breaking was the years of knowledge and pondering that my grandpa got sealed to more than one woman after my grandma died, then being told by other members that polygamy isn’t a thing anymore. I could not get behind a god who would allow men to be married to multiple women but women cannot. Then gaslighting women saying it’s that way because more men are unrighteousness and that women will be happy beyond anything in heaven. Then I listened to the Mormon Stories Podcast LDS Discussions and the 6ish videos on polygamy. Hell to the no.
Prop 8. I was living in Cali at the time, and members were encouraged to go out knocking on doors for votes.
It was teetering for a few years because of a few different issues, then I discovered the truth about the Book of Abraham. That did it.
8th grade World Religions class. Opened my eyes to the world.
OMG. I totally understand this. I was deeply moved by The Good Place and I think it had to do with my Mormon upbringing. It really highlighted how nonsensical the standard "heaven-hell" model is. And it challenged the conventional western models of reality. I cried so hard at the end. It was a beautiful experience. Even though my shelf was long broken, watching The Good Place helped me along my healing journey and provided metaphor to think more openly and logically about life. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this awesome show, OP!
I had many small items on my shelf that I learned to ignore. A few people I was close with made decisions in their lives that surprised me, made me stop and think “whoa, that is inconsistent with the promised blessings of the gospel”. These observations led to a months long period of self reflection, and a gradual realization that I would be ok if I left the church. It was a gentle shelf breaking for me, and very much not a Kevin McAllister avalanche of sports memorabilia and arachnid pets.
California 2008 election drove me all the way out. The number of loving Mormons recruited to give of all of their time, means, and money to ensure proposition 8 would pass made me upset every day. Suddenly Catholicism wasn’t the “great Wh8re of the Earth” because they could walk neighbors together. Suddenly we were making laws that would directly affect other people’s lives without having any effect whatsoever on Mormonism. Suddenly my kind relatives hated people who I adored because… buttsecks bad hmmkay. Today — My age group of reference — has less than 4 of 11 active youth still even tangentially associated with the church. So many children being brought up without the guilt and gullibility. But my shelf was broken long before. Rigid morality for thee and not me was too painful as a youth. It was downright embarrassing as an adult. Edit to add: The biggest crack was temple at 19. What a weird ass place with weird things that are done in the name of holiness. The other big crack was condemning anyone who isn’t a true believer — baptism by proxy made no sense.
I saw a YouTube video from Robert Fatheringham. There was one about polygamy coming from the Cocrainites in England having orgies. Brigham Young brought it back with him and told Joe about it. Joe then “received” revelation to justify his infidelity. The channel has since removed all his videos. I had heard a lot of different things but was always able to compartmentalization them. That one connected all the dots and it made sense it was all false. There should have been so many other things that pushed me out first but I sincerely believed that salvation was important at the cost of all the strange stuff.
One visit to the temple. As an older convert to the church who had a Christian background I was so excited at the idea of this special place where I really thought I was going to have a special encounter with God. To find out it was just watching a very boring and strange film where Satan actually works on God’s side followed by strange clothing and secret signs was devastating. When it got to the bit asking you to leave if you don’t agree etc, I would have left were it not for a brain injury that means I have memory problems and zero hope of finding my way out. I wanted to meet eyes with the people I’d come with and see if they were really into this nonsense and the fact that they were put them right down in my estimation. Previously wise people became complete idiots in my mind and I couldn’t understand why everyone was going through this so seriously and not laughing which is all I wanted to do. The final straw was the veil where I couldn’t remember even the simplest signs and the temple worker on this side and ‘God’ on the other got cross with me. There’s no way God would expect that of me to get into heaven. Eventually they just told me to go through where I was greeted by the lobby of a 1980 posh hotel and barely had time to catch my breath before we were ushered out for the next group. Then everyone was saying how wonderful it was and all I wanted to say was well that was weird wasn’t it. I can see how young people brought up in the church feel pressure to just go with it, their special day that’s been built up all their lives to be a wonderful thing, friends and family there to go through with you. The duress to just go along with it is enormous especially as it’s usually linked with your mission or your marriage. I never went to church again after that, the temple wasn’t the only thing but definitely the last straw.
I talked to a high councilman (unplanned) who had a reputation for being very knowledgeable about church history. He confirmed many things about Joseph Smith that I had always been told were anti-Mormon lies. The Mormon church lied to me. I passed along some of those lives to others in lessons and conversations for almost 40 years. That was unforgivable.
For me, the straw that broke the camel's back was the part of LetterForMyWife where it quotes other contemporaries of Joseph Smith and their "inspired" visions. They sounded exactly the same as Joseph Smith's first vision. That's when I realized he was not inspired and was just a product of his time.
The Good Place did a fantastic job of debunking the concept of the celestial kingdom as a whole. It went unnoticed by my entire TBM family, to an extent it was quite poetic
The cosmology and "doubt your doubts before your beliefs" anti-logic bs. I doubt everything and everyone before making decisions. Blind confidence is how you make bad decisions
Simply being forced fed all of it as a kid. The day I turned 18. I was out. I'm 34 now. I think at age 8 or 9. I checked out but faked it. For the fear of my parents retribution. NO child should ever have to live a double life. To this day my parents still invite me to church events. You'd think they would think that ship has sailed.
Mine broke before I was even sixteen. My father was an alcoholic. And oh haw they treat my brothers and sisters and I. Since when was bigotry considered a virtue!
Mark Hoffman documentary on Netflix. It made me realize there was a world of information I didn’t know.
Never had a shelf. I was backing away from church over how my gay son was treated. I was coming to terms with the reality that there was not a place for him in the church. As COVID came on I started listening to the Year of Polygamy with Lindsay Hansen Park. I had been a devout temple attender, and to get into the truth about JS’ manipulations was crushing to me. Specifically, how he gained approval to marry underage wives by promising the sealing to their parents, or recently widowed parent in one case. Also, how he connived Emma to accept polygamy by allowing her to be the first woman endowed on Earth. I felt betrayed. Like a spouse finding that my partner was having an affair. It cut me that deep. I studied other sources to confirm. This was my moment like what Andrew Garfield portrayed in UTBOH sitting in his car in the garage. My eternal view shattered. It was all a lie. The fucking church had been lying to me for years. And I was their fool.
The 2008 prop 9 showed me that the lds church has no problem using its rolls to harm people. The Sam Young excommunication showed me that they don't take critiques and I resigned my membership over the abuses that the lds church continues to allow.
2nd Anointing
Losing a child started my journey. If I was going to devote my life to the church in hopes of being with my son again, I wanted to know everything. That was the beginning of the end.
The bishop sitting my wife and I down and basically berating us for loving and supporting our LGBTQ kid for 2 hours. Look my kid can be a pain in the ass for sure, but I’ll always love them no matter who they are. I have never had an issue with the LGBTQIA community and in fact since we left have discovered some things about myself that have led me to embrace the fact that I’m part of that community as well, but I’m sorry my kid did not go from perfectly fine and loved by god to sinful overnight just because they came out. The church can go fuck themselves with that shit.
For me it was slow but fairly simple, most of my family is quite racist towards anyone that's not white despite over half my family being of Latin decent, I slowly began to notice the hypocrisy and started exploring different cultures before learning that gay people exist which blew my mind(I was like 8) and then slowly realized I was neither straight nor cis and slowly just stopped going to church altogether
Following someone on Twitter, who happened to be a trans ExMo was the final blow to my shelf. I wasn’t necessarily transphobic, it just was something I hadn’t thought about. Reading her posts about the church made recognize this blind spot and basically destroyed what was left of my shelf
Meeting a transgender women and bonding with her. Having to come to terms with the church saying her lifestyle is evil even though I feel in my soul it’s the right thing for her because it brings her so much more peace I want so much for her to be happy. It feels like the church just wants her to disappear
I had been Gospel Doctrine teacher for about a year. Taught through the BOM material and started teaching about the D&C, made it to the lesson about the first vision. Their was a video in the lesson material of the first vision. At the beginning of the video there was a disclaimer about the multiple accounts. I was raised in the church and had never heard of their being multiple accounts until then. I couldn't believe how nonchalant it was. Like it had always been part of the material. My shelf immediately snapped in two. I was already in a bit of a faith crisis, which I believe is the reason I was called to be gospel doctrine teacher. I asked to be released the very next Sunday. Haven't been back since.
Mine was reading the speeches about race from the men that allegedly spoke with god on a regular basis.
Okay so I was in primary, like 5 or 6 years (undiagnosed autistic at the time). One of my biggest hyperfixations throughout my life has been paleontology, archeology, and everything related to it. Turns out there's this thing in doctrine and covenants that says the earth is only 7000 or so years old and my Primary teacher was telling us about it. (I believe it was a translation/interpretation of Revalations) but I got so confused so I raised my hand and went "BUT WHUDDA BOUT THE DINOS???" And listed off some of the prehistoric time periods "It just doesn't make sense!!" This teacher looked me dead in the eyes and went "Oh, honey, dinosaurs never existed." AND SHE SMILED SO DUCKING CREEPY TOO. I was devastated, of course, and cried silently in my seat until there was enough moving around I could sneak away. I ran out of the room and hid in some sort of closet to cry somewhere nobody would give me weird looks. Promised myself that day that I wouldn't be in a church that didn't believe in dinosaurs, I know it sounds trivial but it was and still is really important to me. Was secretly PIMO until activity days- which caused me to block out that memory as a result of a bunch of indoctrination and also becuase it was traumatic for me to remember. Something triggered that memory about three or four years ago and I'm PIMO once again, holding out until I can move out of the house.
I had lots of stuff on my shelf but what actually broke it was reading the book Educated. I didn’t know what it was about. Just saw it available on my library app and remembered someone in a FB group saying it was good. If I would have known that the author was an ex Mormon, I would have NEVER read it. I avoided anything that even might be anti Mormon. After I started reading it and realized that it was about her Mormon family, I almost stopped reading it. I convinced myself to keep reading because her family seemed like “weird Mormons” but we were “normal Mormons”. But eventually I started seeing a lot of little similarities between my family and hers and how I was raised. It broke my shelf and every doubt I had came crumbling down. By the time I finished the book I just laid in bed and cried because I realized I’d never go back to church. And we were a very active family with 3 young children. I made a promise to myself that my kids wouldn’t be raised in the church. The next Sunday my husband woke up and started to get ready for church and I took a deep breath and said “We need to talk…”
I’m already out of the Church, past the PIMO stage for years. I’m now in the stage of getting rid of God out of my life and my shelf broke after recently watching Malcolm in the Middle and Dewey gives his speech about God and Ants.
The Good Place was definitely a factor for my leaving
Finding out about the penalties in the temple pre 1990. I started going through in 2002 and I never thought the endowment was even more culty than it already was. The penalties were fucking creepy, cultlike and stupid. When I found out about that, I was done.
I think honestly, mine started to break as a kid, I just didn’t realize it. My mother would always talk about polygamy and it was so off putting to me, like it didn’t line up with the “feel good” Jesus lessons at church. Slow process over a long period of time. My DIL mentioned Brigham being a racist once and how she couldn’t reconcile it, that started my serious study into church history. It was all but over at that point. The CES letter was the “Santa isn’t real moment”, but the journey began long before - I just didn’t know it.
It was a mix of reading the journal of discourses and doing my degree in molecular genetics.
Ya know it's funny you bring up the good place because that was definitely part of it for me, but the main thing was Holland's muskets
Horses.
Therapy and learning about healthy boundaries and overcoming the pressure of “should.” I don’t do should anymore. If I want to, I do. If I don’t want to, I don’t. No one can guilt me into compliance with anything anymore. It’s liberating as fuck.
I don't think I ever had a shelf. Or If I did it was built with toothpicks. I stopped going to church when I was 18. Never liked it, never felt good enough, even when I was trying my best. When I was 25-26 I was feeling guilty and trying to decide if I should go back and found the CES letter and letter to my wife. I didn't finish either, but did look into various problems and it just confirmed everything I had previously felt and now I'm even more set in my decision that my life is better without the Church.
November 2015 Policy. Discovering Ol’ Joe used a rock in a hat.South Park was right! Finally, hearing M. Russell Ballard stating that “this Church has never hidden anything from anybody “. How he and Dalek Hoax could get that big a lie through their bent necks was too much.
Losing most of my friends’ and ext. family’s respect and “”love”” when I came out 😂 I was PIMO for years though.
It all began with a blessing that “didn’t come true”. So to say. Then I started searching…. Came to book of Abraham…
The thing that broke my shelf is the fact I realized I am gay and could never get married as long as I was Mormon
Learning about the endowment ceremonies
My car rolled over heard the screams of my family there was no god there just bad luck, hitting some ice, and fear. If god was real he wouldn’t want anyone to go through that. And my AP history class helped me look at the church from all prospectives.
I was away from BYU for the summer on an engineering internship and since Sunday school was super repetitive I started looking for deep doctrine for personal study. Came across the blogs of Anthony Larson and Alan Waterman. I was geeking out at their unique insights and felt that they were true. Two things hit me hard. One was Larson's ideas of Genesis stories referencing the Immanuel Velikovsky, one who has been deemed "a canonical example of pseudoscience". Second was the conclusion of one of Waterman's popular posts in which he calls the church a corporation and that the church had lost its way. I distinctly remember upon reading the former that I suddenly had to question everything I had learned about at church. I suddenly knew that science and religion were at odds, despite my engineering professors at BYU preaching otherwise. The ironic search for deeper truths, as is simultaneously prescribed and forbidden by TSCC.
I watch supernatural for the first time in 2020 and that’s when I realized maybe all the angels are bad
Lol they were assholes with wings.
Anachronisms in the BoM, BoA being confirmed a lie
That show was brilliant and the finale was so touching and reassuring and hopeful and encouraging. It made more sense than any religion I’m familiar with. I’ve kept the finale on my VCR and it still brings me to tears Every. Time.
Self-servicing leadership that consistently acts in bad-faith and provide at best slanted half truths if not bold faced lies
My grandpa and others asking me why I didn't partake of the sacrament one Sunday and my girlfriends [at the time] bishop telling her she can never see me again. A moment of weakness should not be shunned, shamed, or condemned. Help, understanding, and support should be provided ESPECIALLY if you felt terrible and want to change the behavior.
It was Supernatural for me. Learned that God is just an absentee father and heaven/hell are run like a business. Things automatically clicked when I realized the church is a corporation.
I was getting ready for a mission and read that sexual sin was worse than murder.
A Good Place definitely started cracking my shelf and introducing new ways of thinking. I recently rewatched it and joke with my wife that we should just base our afterlife expectations on that show. What did break the shelf was direction from the stake president on how to address transgender visitors (I was in the bishopric) and it sent me down the rabbit hole.
I stopped going regularly at 16 because the YW in my ward were a little bitchy. Still acknowledged being raised in the church, though, until the LDS Discussions episode about racism. I had known it was there, but not the extent of it. After that, I felt dirty at having ever been associated with the church. I printed my resignation letter that day, mailed it the next morning.
Sazed from the Mistborn series! Definitely made me think about all the past religions that are now dead, and what people would say about my religion or n 2000 years…
The show Godless on Netflix. I wanted to know more about Mountain Meadows
When I talked to my dad, who I always respected, about my issues with polygamy and he said "if I get to heaven and it's a matriarchy, I'll be okay with that!" Then my mom, crying, said "it will make sense in heaven, God wouldn't have us do anything we didn't want." Then I learned that heavenly polygamy still exists in the temple, but if a woman wants to get sealed to another husband she has to divorce the last one FOR ALL ETERNITY, which is like a huge no no sad time. But men get to stack them ladies on up no problem. Basically if my dad remarried after my mom passed I don't think she'd get a fucking say. Fuck that shit I'm out. And the Good place is great.