Hi

My faith Crisis: I went through my faith crisis. I honestly don't remember what started it all. I remember being bored at church and I found myself disengaged and just playing on my phone all throughout church. I didn't know why I wasn't interested in what was being said, maybe because we hear the same topics all the time? Nothing new and interesting to me? I guess church felt very stale and stagnant. Well, one day I was questioning something about the church, and went to the dreaded "Google".

Long story short, I ended up on mormonthink.com. I read through a lot of different topics that I had never even heard about, and they made all these claims that I couldn't believe. This shattered my world, and blew my mind. I didn't know even how to react. So the first place I went after that, was lds.org. I looked for all these different topics that I was never taught my entire life, and was looking for clarification. I found that over the past few years, the church has put out a series of topics addressing difficult church history topics called the "gospel essays". I would encourage everyone to read these. There's actually a lot of information that I was never taught in these essays. This actually helped to validate some of the things that I was learning about.

Long story short, I was all over the internet (because that is our research medium now, books are unfortunately history), and learned about a lot of topics in church history that I was uncomfortable with. I went on a personal crusade trying to disprove that these things weren't true. But I couldn't. I've spent countless hours researching the history of the church... really too many to count. One thing that I have discovered and come to realize that I didn't understand until now, is that I have a choice in what I believe. Up until about 7 months ago, I felt like I didn't have a choice, that I HAD to believe what I was taught all growing up, and what was expected of me. I apparently had a very large expectation that was placed upon me (and I'm not sure honestly where it came from, if it was my mom and dad, or if it was the church, or if it was just me), and felt that I HAD to do what I was expected to do regarding the church, JUST for that reason, because it's what everybody does, and that it's what's expected. FINALLY, I realized that I can have my own sort of testimony and draw my own conclusions about the church.

My brain likes to study both sides of a topic, and then make an educated decision based on my research. So I did. I studied BOTH sides of the gospel topics that have bothered me, and have made some conclusions of my own. I believe that there is the whitewashed LDS version of the history of the church that I was taught my entire life, and that there's the 'anti' version of the church, and that the truth lies somewhere in-between. I don't believe that only studying the scriptures, LDS talks, and lds.org is the entire picture of our religion, I believe that that is only one side of it. I did A LOT of research and formed my own conclusions. I've never done this before. Even going on a mission, I didn't truly have a testimony of the church, I went because it was expected of me, I was raised to believe that there was no choice in the matter, and that I WILL go on a mission, regardless of what I believed, so I didn't really look much into studying the gospel. Heck, I think I finally completed reading the book of Mormon for the first time in the MTC. So that is where I felt that I truly had a testimony.

NOW, I feel different. I still believe in some fundamental things from the church. I believe in a God, I believe in an afterlife, and I believe in being able to see my loved ones again. I haven't been to church in a few months. I am struggling to really figure out where I fit in, with regards to the church, because a lot of people believe in a Black and white church... meaning you either believe it ALL or you don't... you can't be in the middle. Well, I disagree with this. I do not see life as black and white. I see that there are many different personalities, thoughts, and opinions, and that EVERYONE should be accepted into the fullness of the gospel, regardless of what you believe or how you act. But this thought process doesn't fit well in the church. I'm very open to accepting people for who they are, regardless of their personal situation. The church SAYS that they do, but in reality, they don't practice this (IN MY OPINION ONLY), just look at the most recent November church policy regarding gay parents.

So literally it’s been hell trying to figure out how I still fit into the church because I am more open to differing opinions and thoughts and don't outright reject them just because they're not from my church. It’s been quite a trip, and it’s been very eye opening.

I’m very glad to have stumbled upon this forum. I’ve had some great discussions and learned many things. It’s been nice to be able to come here and vent to you instead of taking it out on my wife and kids in real life. I see a lot of negativity here, but understandably so. But there’s also A LOT of uplifting and supporting people. So thank you for the support! Hopefully I can be here until I’m ready to move on. Not there yet, but some day!

I made my own personal website of all the major challenges that I see with believing in the LDS church at postmormon.weebly.com. NOTHING PROFESSIONAL. It's just my own thoughts mingled with research. Lots of good links also.