For those of you who are reading this and are still active members of the LDS church I feel compelled to warn you. I am doing this blog to release my story, as no one has ever asked me and it is time I let it go and move on. To do this I intend to tell my whole story, including what I found that was so damaging to my testimony as to cause me to leave the LDS church. Although there is too much information that I know now to include this post will likely contain the most damaging of the “deal breakers”. I was once proud and thought that nothing could ever convince me to leave the church. Before reading on you need to honestly ask yourself – “If the church wasn’t true would I want to know?” because that is exactly what I learned for myself.
I was terrified; my happy little world was coming to an end. Oh yeah, and I got pregnant so I needed to make some decisions and fast. At this point I still had a strong testimony of the church, the priesthood, and the gospel as I knew it. We were still paying tithing and fast offerings, fulfilling our callings, and attending church, although it was difficult to see how upset Jay was after (he has a severe speech disability that made him very difficult to understand so he often felt ignored and invalidated). He also had a very difficult time with some of the lessons; a particular one was a detailed account of the Crucifixion. Seriously, who teaches 3 year olds that their hero (Christ) had nails driven through his hands and feet and was left hanging on a cross to die? I tried to take everything in stride and we genuinely have an AMAZING ward that tried very hard to make Jay and us feel welcome. This ward has been the best ward we’ve been in since being married, there was never any offense and everyone was very kind and welcoming. I knew I would still be accepted if I stayed and Davin left, I knew that Davin would support me no matter what I chose, but I also knew that there was more to this than I was allowing myself to see.
Early on in my life I had come to a conclusion that Brigham Young did a lot of things that I didn’t agree with and like many Mormons I came to think of him as kind of a blackish spot in Mormon history. He did some amazing things but also did some horrific things (most of which I had apparently been sheltered from). So with this I had already decided that prophets weren’t perfect, that they were men just doing their best. I did still believe that they personally communed with Christ and were the voice of the Lord but that they were still imperfect in an almost perfect sort of way. Somehow Brigham Young just had his own category in my mind as Prophet, Seer, Revelator, and occasional bad guy. So when Davin had some questions after reading the Journal of Discourses I wasn’t too surprised. I just wrote them off as a confirmation as to why the church doesn’t make it as available as many of the other prophets’ writings. Then I learned about the blood atonement:
“You say, "That man ought to die for transgressing the law of God." Let me suppose a case. Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin through both of them, you would be justified, and they would atone for their sins, and be received into the kingdom of God. I would at once do so in such a case; and under such circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands.” (Journal of Discourses Volume 3)
“It is true that the blood of the Son of God was shed for sins through the fall and those committed by men, yet men can commit sins which it can never remit. As it was in ancient days, so it is in our day; and though the principles are taught publicly from this stand, still the people do not understand them; yet the law is precisely the same. There are sins that can be atoned for by an offering upon an altar, as in ancient days; and there are sins that the blood of a lamb, of a calf, or of turtle doves, cannot remit, but they must be atoned for by the blood of the man.” (Journal of Discourses Vol. 4 – you can read it all if you’re interested in BYU’s electronic library)
Wait a minute… did I read that right? Brigham Young taught that the Atonement of Christ wasn’t good enough? That people still needed to do sacrifices, including that of their own blood, for their sins? That’s not what I was taught! I was still able to distance myself and the church I knew from it though because, well, I already had Brigham Young in that “other” category. Then the Mountain Meadows Massacre came up in a conversation with a friend. Once again I tried to sweep it under my mental rug. (Then again how do you sweep a massacre of 120 unarmed people, most of which are women and children then desecrating their grave under the rug?) Eventually there was a pretty big pile of concerns under that rug and the pile was growing at an alarming rate.
One night Davin and I were talking about some of the religious questions he was dealing with. I had forced him to keep most of his concerns to himself and it was doing damage, there was always a white elephant in the room and it was getting huge so we decided to hash it out. He decided to show me a website: The Wives of Joseph Smith it seemed innocent, informative, and well cited so I didn’t see a problem with it. Then he read me a story about Lucy Walker, one of the young wives of Joseph Smith (he had around 44 wives on record, 11 of which were under 20 and a handful of 14 year olds). It killed me that a “prophet” of God could coerce a 16 year old girl into secretly marrying him by holding her family and her salvation over her head after splitting up her family. But I was not to be deterred. I told him that if it bothered him he shouldn’t keep reading these things, after all, the church encourages us to only look at things that are faith promoting for a reason (I now know that reason!). We talked about the BOM, Joseph Smith, the priesthood, the current church, tithing, etc. In short he was done with the church and I was done listening so the conversation ended and I was left with a lot to sort through. Unfortunately, he was left feeling invalidated yet again. (Not exactly my strongest moments as a supportive wife.)
During this time one of our friends who had also been questioning the church for a while started running with Davin. After the run they would hang out and talk about the church, church history, and their current issues with the church or recent discoveries for a while. This was very therapeutic for them since they didn’t really have others to validate them (it’s not like their wives were really listening!). I would often listen and try to be involved in the conversations but found myself uneducated and badly informed. I knew Davin to be a smart guy, he’s not the type to jump to conclusions, he does very thorough research, and he wouldn’t put our marriage at risk over bad information. Our friend was very much the same type; the only difference is he was once the epitome of a devout Mormon, Peter Priesthood himself. So I decided it was time I found these answers for myself. The caveat to this was I had determined to only use sources I felt the church would approve of and no matter what I found I would not be bitter.
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