3 years ago my wife stopped attending church. I continued attending with kids.
2 years ago I accepted a job in Asia and we moved out there at the start of 2012 (we've recently returned to UK).
Asia turned my LDS world upside down. We were in a big expat unit of around 200 members. It felt very different to what church had always been like. I guess the environment of being expats might have accentuated it, but it felt like a real "us and them" attitude. We're right, the world out there is wrong, shut up.
The "world out there" was certainly different. But I quickly discovered it was not wrong. Amazing, diverse people with fascinating beliefs and philosophies. Happy, fulfilled, progressing, "Christlike" people who had barely heard of Christianity, never mind Mormonism.
It puzzled me for a while. We visited several different countries/regions with a range of cultures and religions. How could these billions of brilliant people be living a life of second bests? How could Mormonism, this predominantly Western religion enhance these people's lives, loves and perspectives?
At the same time I was seeing my wife, still not attending church, find a fulfilling, enriching, happy way of life. Her new view of the world was still a positive one supporting personal progression.
One day, June 2012, something broke inside me. We were on holiday in Philippines. Sitting alone in sacrament meeting while my wife and kids were back at the hotel.
A chapel full of impoverished Filippinos, a couple of tourists and one white retired businessman stood at the pulpit, berating the congregation at not being good enough. His message seemed to boil down to: "You are not like me. So you are wrong and need to change"
It epitomised everything that was bothering me about Christianity and Mormonism's Western imposition. A complete insensitivity and lack of appreciation for other cultures and perspectives.
I know the speaker didn't represent the church. But that day he captured, in one talk, what had been bothering me for several months.
As the congregation sang "I have a family here on earth..." I stood up, walked out, and went back to the hotel, wondering if I'd ever feel the same about the church.
When the holiday finished I decided it was time to investigate the origins of Mormon attitudes and behaviours. My wife had wonderfully and generously never imposed anything on me. Had never pushed me to read the things that had bothered her and lead to her changed perspective. I love her all the more for the respect she had given me to walk my own path. My decision to start investigating our origins was entirely my own.
I studied history at University, I'm also a market researcher by profession. I understand the importance of looking at information from many angles. I appreciate the impact of subjectivity and the influence of analysing data with a conclusion already set.
If someone is convinced Joseph was a prophet, a study of history will probably unfold to confirm that.
Equally, if someone is certain he was a fraud, they are more likely to see the evidence that supports that.
I decided to give myself at least 1 year. I would study every key aspect of history and doctrine I could. I would read many sides of the same story. I would go to the original source, in context, where possible. I would, like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, make myself say "On the other hand..."
I was aware that in starting the process, I had subjectivity just like everyone else. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to go through the study process and still stay at church. But I also wanted to understand what the church was. What it really taught and what part in played in my life.
Within a few weeks of digging and reading I was spiritually crushed.
I had never had any real interest in Mormon history and knew very little of it. I had visited FAIR a few times to try to answer questions a few friends and family had raised in the past. I was aware of the multiple first vision accounts and had squared that. I was vaguely aware of Joseph's polygamy but considered it to be more dynastic sealings. I knew the Sunday School church hostory manuals skipped the awkward bits but had felt no desire to find out what those awkward bits were. I knew very little about Mormon history and origins.
After the holiday I wrote a list of questions. I started reading the old FARMS archives, Nibley's "complete works" (by topic), FairMormon, Wikipedia and a few critical websites (which I won't list out of respect for the readers who prefer to avoid them).
It felt like one bit at a time, everything I thought I knew about the church was violently dismantled. It wasn't only the critical websites that hurt. They were the ones I used the least and the ones I treated with the most scepticism. I would always go and look up the original sources they quoted in context and recognise that often they were being selective and the big picture was a better picture than they were painting.
Despite this, I was in a full blown crisis of faith. I felt lied to. I felt like I'd suddenly been wrenched out of a bubble of ignorance. A bubble I'd been very happy in but now that it was popped, was never going to be an option.
There were several FARMS ad FAIR articles that confirmed the worst. In their well-intentioned attempts to answer the question or criticism they only compounded, for me, the severity of the problem.
I felt physically sick. One night, while reading a FARMS article ("A nation now extinct...") I genuinely thought I was going to vomit.
I felt angry, frustrated, duped, belittled. I lost confidence in church manuals, teachers and leaders.
I would sit in a lesson, or sacrament meeting and want to stand up and scream when I heard the simplistic, unfounded, whitewashed, misrepresentative nonsense that people were saying. Things that, until a few weeks and months earlier, I was also very happy saying. Nonsense is probably the polite word for it.
I seriously considered resigning my membership in the early days. I felt like I was losing every aspect of belief.
I walked right up to the face of Atheism and seriously considered it a possibility for about a week. As much as I think I wanted to, possibly as a way to ease the pain and confusion, I couldn't do it. Deep down, I knew I still firmly believed in a creator. A divine source of life and purpose.
Having stripped everything right back to that simple core I slowly started to rebuild my house of faith.
I decided I also still believed in Jesus Christ. In 2011, I had made an extensive study of the New Testament. I had developed a lasting love for the behaviour model of Jesus, as well as the personal conviction, through experience, of the healing, invigorating power of the atonement's principles of grace, change, restoration, forgiving and forgiveness.
We are rightly taught that Christ should be the cornerstone of our faith. When everything else crashed down, my foundation remained.
My confidence in Joseph Smith and with it the Book of Mormon, the keystone, had broken. With the central piece removed, the rest of my house of faith fell.
I decided to take time to try to rebuild my faith, one brick at a time. I reminded myself I had promised to give it a year.
As much as I wanted to throw away every brick that had a Mormon stamp on it, I recognised they had fallen, some had cracked but I hadn't properly tested each one. I didn't want to look back in 40 or 50 years time and regret making a life-changing decision in a matter of a few weeks or months.
So I started going back through it all a second time. If I was going to rebuild my house of faith I wanted to test each brick before adding it back in or discarding it.
I joined a few boards and blogs towards the end of 2012. MormonDialogue was a rough ride, but immensely useful for testing my conclusions. They keep you honest. It made me reference and back-up every conclusion I was reaching.
Staylds was another essential forum. It helped me realise I was not alone. That there were 1000s of Mormons who were just like me. Trying to work through the confusion while also staying active. I started a thread where we collected 100s of scriptures and quotes that showed a more universal, inclusive face of Mormonism.
There were a few other websites that were useful places to continue the exploration and debate from many angles.
And so... Here I am today. My house of faith is still a building project. I'm not sure it will ever be finished and it could still change in shape.
Some of the bricks of past perspectives can still be seen, intermingled with new ones I've added. It looks very different from what I had 2 years ago. But it suits me. It works. I like it.
I believe God is the greatest educator. I believe he designs, for each of his children, a personalised curriculum. We still have the agency to accept, adapt or entirely reject it.
I believe that my faith transition, or faith reconstruction has been guided and assisted by God. I believe I remain on the path to godliness.
I recognise that the mode of transport for travelling that path has changed. But I don't believe that matters. It is, for me, the direction of travel that is important.
I embrace and celebrate the diversity of perspectives available to the multi-faceted human race. With seven billion individuals it's not possible to have a "one size fits all" paradigm or framework. But I believe it is possible to have a "seven billion sizes fits each one of us."
Although there are many aspects of Mormon doctrine, origin and perspective that I didn't add back into my house of faith, I believe my personalised paradigm still fits in an LDS community.
I appreciate LDS leaders who, past and present, have preached the principles of diversity, independence and individual accountability.
I press forward, hoping to embrace and continue adding to that diversity.
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