Hi, I'm Brik

There have been things that have bothered me about the church for a long time. I had a shelf before I realized what that meant. Sometimes the story with Joseph Smith seemed so implausible, and I knew I would never have joined if I hadn't been born into it. After being taught how to research in high school, and to look at both sides, it seemed wrong sitting in seminary and learning that we should never look at outside sources. That put up a red flag for me, but my family and several of my friends were Mormons, so I was always too afraid to look into it. I figured that it wasn't really hurting anything, and it was easier to just not question. I had a hard time with things like the November policy. I put a lot of that kind of stuff on my shelf. It wasn't really until Sam Young that I realized how dangerous and toxic this environment can be. My children are approaching the ages of bishop interviews, and so it was time for me to really evaluate the truth claims of the church. And it all fell apart. I could forgive a lot of the history, but the fact is, it's not the narrative I was given. They lied. If you look at the gospel topics essays and look at the sources in the footnotes, they're still lying. Someone claiming to have the truth shouldn't lie.