Lent Experiement
It's seems to be a annual right of spring in my life. Maybe it's a post New Years resolution. For the 3rd year I'm trying to give up something for the season of lent. I'm not doing this for religious observance, I'm still not convinced that I believe in god, let alone the uber god of my former Mormon religion. For me it's a exercise in self control. I test of will power.
My lent experiment this year is to avoid my hobby of challenging my former religion on LDS message boards.
Having spent so many years in the Morg (the Mormon Organization, aka borg) I really found myself comfortable in the culture. However when i discovered that the foundation that I had always assumed to be try was not even close to true my faith crumbled. I spend years reading the apologetic research of BYU, FARMS, FAIR, SHEILDS, Hugh Nibley, and as many other LDS authors as I could find. Almost all of my reading was based first on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, then the Book of Abraham, the temple ceremony, then on church history. The first half-dozen problems I put on the shelf. I believed in my heart of the basic beliefs of the church were true and that my research was going to bear that out. Boy was I mistaken. KJV in the BOM, archeology, can't read Egyptian, etc. . . .. Each new revelation hit me like a punch in the gut. It took close to 2 years before I was willing to admitt to myself what should have been imediately obvious. The church isn't true.
All that time and effort did do one thing for me. It gave me the foundation and intresting in LDS and opposing scholarship. Since then I've posted on LDS message boards from like Beliefnet, ZLMB, more recently exmormon recovery board and the FAIR message board.
On some forums I mostly answer questions and point people in the right direction. On others I like to play with the apologists to point out the absurdity of their research.
My lent experiment this year is to avoid my hobby of challenging my former religion on LDS message boards.
Having spent so many years in the Morg (the Mormon Organization, aka borg) I really found myself comfortable in the culture. However when i discovered that the foundation that I had always assumed to be try was not even close to true my faith crumbled. I spend years reading the apologetic research of BYU, FARMS, FAIR, SHEILDS, Hugh Nibley, and as many other LDS authors as I could find. Almost all of my reading was based first on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, then the Book of Abraham, the temple ceremony, then on church history. The first half-dozen problems I put on the shelf. I believed in my heart of the basic beliefs of the church were true and that my research was going to bear that out. Boy was I mistaken. KJV in the BOM, archeology, can't read Egyptian, etc. . . .. Each new revelation hit me like a punch in the gut. It took close to 2 years before I was willing to admitt to myself what should have been imediately obvious. The church isn't true.
All that time and effort did do one thing for me. It gave me the foundation and intresting in LDS and opposing scholarship. Since then I've posted on LDS message boards from like Beliefnet, ZLMB, more recently exmormon recovery board and the FAIR message board.
On some forums I mostly answer questions and point people in the right direction. On others I like to play with the apologists to point out the absurdity of their research.
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