I’ve read it, but I don’t see the logic in such a statement. First of all, how do you know my testimony isn’t derived from logic? Second, whether or not it is, how can you say with certainty that this disables me from being able to see whether another person is being logical or not? Certainly you could make the case that I am biased, but making the case that I am biased and declaring unequivocally that I am not only biased but utterly lack the ability to interpret facts correctly are two different things.

“People mentioned pain because leaving the church is walking away from easy path to engage in a difficult one. Lazy people don’t do that.”

I think that fundamentally this is true, but in this case, perception is reality.

“You must admit that staying in the church is mentally lazy compared to leaving. In the church all you have to do is follow the brethren. You don’t actually have to make tough decisions about spirituality for yourself. The church provides easy answers for spiritually lazy people.”

Granted, I can’t speak for everyone, but my experience, and as best I can tell that of everyone I’ve met during my 35 years in the LDS Church, is that it’s quite challenging to remain a faithful member of the church. To claim that all one has to do is follow the brethren is kind of like saying that all one has to do to be in the NBA is to make sure the ball always goes in the basket. Touch decisions about one’s spirituality and membership in the church are made on a daily basis. The church does provide a lot of answers that can make life easier, but only in the same way that “eat less and exercise more” is an easy answer to the question “How do I lose weight?” Anyone who has been a member of the LDS Church and thought it was “easy” could only say so in the sense that it’s easier to live with the consequences of righteous living than that of a wicked lifestyle and all the trials the latter brings.

You don’t have the ability to determine if another person’s logic is flimsy because your testimony isn’t derived from logic in the first place.

Testimonies are not derived using logic.

People mentioned pain because leaving the church is walking away from easy path to engage in a difficult one. Lazy people don’t do that. You must admit that staying in the church is mentally lazy compared to leaving. In the church all you have to do is follow the brethren. You don’t actually have to make tough decisions about spirituality for yourself. The church provides easy answers for spiritually lazy people.

I’ve heard people say they left the church because they found out it wasn’t true, but each time I’ve looked deeper, I’ve found that the “logic” behind their reasoning is quite flimsy, and that the real reason is laziness or being offended, but very few people want to admit to either of those reasons, even to themselves.

Leaving the church wasn’t particularly painful for me. Being in the church was. I felt like shackles had been removed from my feet the minute I knew the church was false. Everyone’s experience is different, yours, mine, and Molly’s.

When I learned about the Book of Abraham I was immediately interested. Here was a book Joseph Smith claimed to translate from a manuscript that had recently been rediscovered. It seemed that it would be an easy matter for a scholar of ancient Egyptian writing to re translate the manuscript, and prove or disprove that Joseph Smith’s translation was valid.

The missionaries who were proselytizing me gave me several articles about the Book of Abraham and the recently rediscovered manuscript by a Mormon scholar named Hugh Nimbley. Nimbley could read the ancient Egyptian language. I expected Nimbley to be triumphant at this proof that Mormonism was true. Instead he wrote with an apprehensive tone that indicated that he was hiding what he did not want to acknowledge.

I had already heard about the Egyptian Book of the Dead. I suspected that Joseph Smith’s manuscript was of the Book of the Dead. A nearby library had a copy that had photographs of the Book of the Dead along with the English translation. It was easy for me to see that the Book of the Dead was very similar to Smith’s manuscript.

When I confronted the missionaries with this, they had no answer other than, “We know it’s true because we feel it very strongly.”

Since then I have learned on the internet that several books have been written that verify my suspicions about the Book of Abraham and the Book of the Dead. I am sorry that Mormonism is a collection of lies, because I wanted very much for it to be true.

Since then I have talked to several other pairs of missionaries. When I tell them about the Book of Abraham they do not seem to understand what I am talking about. On the few occasions that I have talked to a Mormon who had the intelligence to understand me, that Mormon indicated concern. I suspected that he had doubts about the truth of his religion and that he was trying to suppress those doubts.

I wasn’t hurt or offended by the leaders and friends who didn’t or couldn’t help me at the time. I included that to show that I really did TRY to do everything I had been taught to do, and that I certainly didn’t leave because of lazy. As for offended, I think initially I felt betrayed by God. That He would raise my hopes and then dash them. It would have been one thing to be told “no” but it is quite another to think you have been told “yes” and then as you reach for what you’ve been promised, have God snatch it away. I could not make sense of that. That wasn’t the God I knew or believed in. Like I said, it was a two year struggle to try and make sense of it. For most of that time, I assigned the short-coming to ME, not God. I felt that I must have failed somehow, not had enough faith, not been diligent enough, etc. At one point, I actually entertained the idea that it was a giant trial – and that the reason no help was forth-coming was that God wanted me to find the strength to weather this in me and in my faith. But, like I said, I could not make sense of a God who could be so cruel. THAT is what kept me “stuck in my grief for so long.” I was grieving the loss of my faith, and the loss of the loving God I had believed in all my life.

I’m not going to bore you with the whole long story again. I eventually came to the conclusion that the LDS church isn’t true. Really, just that. It’s not true. And so I left. Not because I’m too lazy to live the commandments (which I continued to do for quite a while after leaving “just in case”) or because someone offended me (I have way more of a backbone than that). I left because I have come to the conclusion that the church isn’t true.

As for not leaving it alone, it’s hard to leave it alone when you regularly find remnants of the indoctrination making your life difficult. I NEVER speak against the church when I am among members, out of respect for them and their beliefs, but I ABSOLUTELY speak against the church when I am with like-minded people, who are going through or have gone through, what I am going through. I have not told a single one of my LDS friends that I left the church because I think it’s a big made up lie. Many think I’m just inactive, some know that I had trouble reconciling my experience with a loving God and think I’ll be back when I “figure things out,” and a few know I’m gone for good, but don’t know why.

Once again, Shalom!

Imagine two students looking at an animal swimming in a fish tank. The animal has gills, scales, fins, and fishy looking eyes. The teacher says, “That is a bird.” Both students believe the teacher because he is in authority. Both students ask many questions and figure ways to justify that the things that look like scales could be feathers and the fin like appendages could be wings. Eventually one of the students says, “I don’t know if the teacher is lying or simply repeating falsehoods that he believes but that animal is not a bird.” The other student continues to believe it’s a bird but realizes that it requires a huge amount of mental energy to believe it’s a bird. In addition, he has to sacrifice his own personal integrity to a degree to continue his beliefs. He must redefine certain parts of the English language. Words like logic must take on different meaning than they do in the dictionary. Lots of people make fun of him for still thinking that fish are birds but he is willing to make the sacrifice.

The first student is not worried about it. It’s a fish and the teacher was wrong.

This is where the word lazy comes in. It is easier to believe your own eyes and ears than it is to morph your senses to meet your expectations. All the facts point to the idea that Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other church leaders were perverts. That is how it appears. I spent a lot of time trying to morph them into prophets like Abraham that made a mistake or two but no matter how much head strain I exerted, they still look like perverts.

I have stopped exerting the energy needed to morph perverts into prophets. Josh continues to make those mental back flips and figures anybody unwilling to do that work is lazy. I quit making mental back flips. I don’t see that as lazy but can see how Josh sees that way because he continues to do the work of making a fish into a bird.