The Unreal

I’ve contemplated making this post for a very long time. It’s been on my mind for about four years.

In the past, I’ve labeled myself as the LDS Yogi. I’ll leave the previous pages and posts that refer to the LDS religion as they are. They reflect the way I viewed life at the time. However, describing myself as an LDS Yogi is now highly inaccurate and inappropriate.

Interestingly enough, the foundation for leaving Mormonism and the dramatic shift I have experienced was created by Mormonism. The Mormon church very clearly demonstrated that the Catholic and the Mormon churches were the only possibilities for teaching the truth about Christ and the gospel. The Catholic Church was grossly lacking in many areas and so the Mormon church was the only option.

The existence of God has never been a question. My own direct experience with God makes any question on that front impossible. Two unrelated events, however, completely dismantled any trust or belief in the Mormon church or, for that matter, Christianity.

Unconditional Love

The first dent came when Russel M Nelson declared that God’s love was conditional.¹ I immediately knew that whatever he was talking about was not the God I knew.

God is Love² and that absolutely.

POX 2015

In November 2015, the church issued the policy of exclusion. In January 2016, Russell M. Nelson declared that the policy was revelation received from God by then prophet Thomas S. Monson.³

I strongly disagreed but accepted this as out of my hands. Revelation is revelation, right?

On April 4, 2019, the church officially announced, "changes to recent Church policies related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members."⁴ The direct revelation was now merely a policy that was being changed.

POX Fallout

While I was thrilled that the policy had been changed, it created an immediate, inescapable realization:

Either Nelson lied in 2015 and there was no revelation, it was always just a policy OR God changed his mind/made a mistake.

The doctrine of the church has declared that no prophet will ever lead the people astray. He will never lie.⁵ This is declared over and over and over.

God is unchanging and cannot lie.^{6, 7, 8, 9}

However, both cannot be true in light of the 2015 "revelation" and subsequent 2019 "policy change." One belief had to be false.

I’ve had direct experience with God that confirms the unchanging nature of God. That is as obvious to me as the sun at noon on a cloudless day.

The only option was that the prophet was false. If the prophet was false, the whole thing was false and everything Mormon and Christian began to crumble.

Attacking the Victims

On March 21st of 2019, I woke to the story of McKenna Denson. I could not believe what I was seeing, the church was attacking a sexual assault victim and supplied the defense team of her attacker all the information they had gathered.¹⁰

There has been plenty of secrecy around the church and sexual abuse coming to light in recent days.¹¹ Especially around the church defending its practice of not reporting abusers to law enforcement despite the actual doctrine of the church, found in scripture, saying that people should be delivered to the law of the land.¹²

The Final Question

Throughout 2019 I tried to reconcile everything I’ve written with somehow continuing to believe. As I prepared to teach the final Gospel Doctrine class of 2019, which referred to the first Book of Mormon prophets Lehi and Nephi, two questions came into mind:

How would the news report the actions of Lehi and Nephi if that happened today? Fringe religious fanatic murders local leader to steal priceless artifact, kidnaps household servant. "Yeah, but he was just doing what God commanded," I thought to myself.

Then came the second question: Would I recognize a Lehi if one appeared today?

I asked the second question at the end of the lesson I taught that day. The answer I heard kicked the last leg out from under any belief not founded on my own direct experience:

"That would mean ignoring the words of the prophet to follow some unknown. We should always follow the living prophet." This was the answer of the local BYU religion professor. No one should have followed Lehi, they should have all followed Jeremiah, the "living prophet" of the day, only there were often multiple living prophets during the history of the narrative of the Bible.

The house of cards blew away. I left that class and met immediately with the bishop. I informed him that he needed a new Gospel Doctrine teacher because I would not be back.

The Real

As a Mormon, I had a need to convert people to "the truth" and I spent two years doing so seeing more than 50 people join the church as a result.

Today, there is no such need to convert anyone to anything. I freely tell people what I have experienced with God with no expectation that they do anything about it.
 

Awake to the knowledge that God is your Self
Let all of your actions be guided by Him
Surrender your life in the service of God
And your heart will be filled with the light of His Love.

That man who has seen God sees God everywhere
He worships the Self in all hearts as his own
This is the best mode of worship indeed
To treat all as God in one’s thought, word, and deed.
 
Atma Gita
 

The Bible and Book of Mormon did get two things absolutely correct:

God is unchanging and God is love.

God absolutely loves you and God absolutely loves me.

Jai Bhagwan