If you can't trust me - the feeling is mutual.

Things were spinnin' 'round me

And all my thoughts were cloudy

And I had begun to doubt all the things that were me

Been in so many places, you know I've run so many races

Looked into the empty faces of the people of the night

Somethin' is just not right

'Cause I know that I've gotta get outta here

I'm so alone

-Jim Croce

by Terryl Givens Professor of literature, author, and faithful member:


We have been set up.
The manuals distributed throughout the CES (Church Education System) and the sunday school program are deplorable... they are full of errors and misinformation. I don't think there is a deliberate campaign of disinformation going on...
The best scholarship taking place in the church history department hasn't filtered down to the level of the curriculum. And everyday that it doesn't the church is going to lose more mormons.
The problem is not information, the problem is betrayal. Nobody really leaves the church because there isn't enough information available to answer a question - and that's one thing that I don't think the church has gotten yet.
People leave the church because by the time the question arises it is too late.
If you are 45 and you learn for the very first time that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon using a peep stone you have every right in the world to feel betrayed. Why wasn't I taught the truth in seminary or in sunday school?
I haven't heard a good answer for that, there isn't really an excuse for the church not to be moving faster to revise and update more truthful manuals.

from episode three here

I heard once that faith crises tend to happen in those who "care too much" - That might be a stretch, but I would say that I have gone through intense periods of re-dedication, wanting to read everything I could get my hands on: my scriptures, all CES manuals, books about the scriptures (old and new) and on and on. Many Sunday afternoons with my scriptures on one thigh and another book on the other thigh saying something that always started with "hey Kyle, did you know...."

I also thought of myself as a pretty good missionary - I like to meet folks and talk to folks and share what I feel is awesome about my religion.  Growing up in the south meant defending my religion almost all. the. time.

I have defended my faith, my religion, its history since I was a very little girl.  The time my Aunt refused to offer me anything but iced tea with my lunch while my mom was out shopping. Because "its what everyone else is having and you just need to get over it." 

I defended it again when I went to vacation bible school with my cousins since we'd have 'so much fun' and the ladies in charge caught wind that I was LDS and hammered me with doctrinal questions. 

I defended it ALL through high school especially every time the local baptist church distributed anti-cult materials labeling us as enemy numero uno.

I reached for my scriptures and read straight from them in college whilst defending. I remember one conversation of the pre-existence my roommate sticking fingers in her ears like a kid because just the thought sounded "evil" to her. (still don't get that one)

I defended, I defended, I defended.

Recently, when I found Joni's blog here I was fascinated reading about her journey through other faiths and even daydreamed about doing it myself.  When she got to Mormonism, I went to church with her. We met on her side of town and I was actually pleasantly surprised to see a much more diverse ward than what I had become accustomed to in Texas.

When she finished her time and wrote a synopsis of our faith - I was a little shattered. It by far was not all "glowy".  I became ready to really investigate all the things I had spent my life defending.  And I got the courage to go to sources other than only LDS printed publications and Deseret approved sources.

Which is where two roads diverge in a wood I guess you would say. Some faithful adherents will not be able to understand this, because if you stray from the Church you stray from righteous influences. But I'm not buying that anymore. I'm not an Amway salesman only reading material from Amway.

What I found was hard to swallow.

A lot of what I was defending I didn't have all the information available.

• How did I get to my mid-thirties not knowing Joseph Smith had 30 wives, some that were married to other men, several that were teenagers

• The story of Helen Mar Kimball alone sat like a rock in my stomach (from her journal):

Helen was now fourteen when her father approached her. She wrote: “My father was the first to introduce [plural marriage] to me, which had a similar effect to a sudden shock of a small earthquake…… Without any preliminaries [my Father] asked me if I would believe him if he told me that it was right for married men to take other wives…The first impulse was anger…my sensibilities were painfully touched....

Then father “asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph…[and] left me to reflect upon it for the next twenty-four hours…I was sceptical-one minute believed, then doubted. I thought of the love and tenderness that he felt for his only daughter, and I knew that he would not cast her off, and this was the only convincing proof that I had of its being right. I knew that he loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure, virtuous and exalting in its tendencies; and no one else could have influenced me at that time or brought me to accept of a doctrine so utterly repugnant and so contrary to all of our former ideas and traditions….. Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet Joseph, he offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the alter.”

The next morning Joseph visited the Kimball home. “[He explained] the principle of Celestial marrage…After which he said to me, ‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.[‘] This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward.  

From Here

• How did I get this far without any knowledge whatsoever of the very serious problems with the accuracy of the Book of Abraham?

• How had I ever, ever, ever in a million years made allowances for the blatant racism regarding the the Priesthood ban against black men?

• There was more than one accounting of the first vision by Joseph... wha... what??? And they were drastically different? what????

• Joseph was not necessarily wrongfully imprisoned at the time of his death - he was  there for very real charges of destroying a printing press... owned by a man about to go forward with his story of Joseph Smith trying to marry his wife?

• Problems with the BOM witnesses...

But you want to know the really crazy thing? I think I could have worked through each and every single issue if the faith I was defending cared as much about me as I did about it.  I don't think anything I've written about is proof that the church is false. There is no organization, religious or not, immune to falsehoods and historical tough spots. But the covering up/whitewashing of our history is incredibly unsettling to me. It feels like betrayal.  
Agency depends on knowledge and accurate information. Instead, the information we have has been sent through the polishing rock tumbler so many times its hard to even know what is truth.  How much is correlation damaging us: read here

When the church does employ the expertise of top-notch historians they end up at odds with those historians. See Daymon Smith, D. Micheal Quinn, The September Six.

I guess the upper leadership leans more with Boyd K. Packer when he says 

"There is a temptation for the writer or teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful."

I'm sorry but I need to be trusted more than that.

This blogger put it perfectly: 

Polygamy wasn’t central in my leaving of the church, but the pattern of lying, avoiding, and covering unattractive doctrine and history was.  I heard the apostles speak and say things I knew were wrong but sounded good and bold.  Things I wanted to be true.  Things I had heard as a 14-year old in the Priesthood session of general conference.  Things I knew many others were accepting as true and factual.  I knew the Apostles weren’t ignorant and lost trust for the church authorities.  What I wanted in a church was honest, bold truth.  I didn’t care if the truth was difficult, I only cared that it was right.  The leaders are accountable for this, but my next words go to everyone: By attempting to fit in with the rest of the world, soften your edges, and make your message more palatable, you have lost any claim you had of being the unique and restored church of God.  Rather than teaching the world you are being taught by it, changing to conform to it, and trying to please it with flowery and well-designed statements aimed at obscuring your connection with unpopular things like polygamy.  In this you appear as a business with a good PR department, not a divine source of untarnished truth. -Jefferson Cloward
found here

This is a fantastic talk about having compassion for those who leave:

Many faithful, devoted, and dedicated members are leaving the church they once loved due to “unintentional consequences of their search for truth”. These were people who were fully committed temple going, tithe-paying members. In 2009 it is estimated that over 83,000 members left the church. Many members, including leaders, are resigning their membership, NOT DUE TO SIN OR WEAKNESS, but due to reading or listening to something which changes their PERCEPTION OF TRUTH.

Can our relationship with those who leave the church withstand these changes in THEIR BELIEF?

Imagine that “Everything that you had thought about yourself, others, and the world was built on a lie! All the time you were growing up you felt different and did not know why. The way you looked at life was based on who you thought you were and on what you believed to be true.” Your world would just crumble around you! You would not know what to trust, let alone who to trust! You would have to re-learn almost everything; the way you interacted with others, your values and more.

What if every major decision you made was based on what you thought was truth? There would be so much fallout your head would be spinning! You would most likely experience ‘rage’, ‘despair’, ‘grief’, ‘sorrow’, ‘anguish’, ‘more anger, mistrust, confusion’, and run through a ‘whole gamut of emotions’. The longer you were members of the Church and the more you genuinely believed it to be true, the more severe the trauma coming out. ...

If you look around this room and see who’s here, then imagine some of us may not be here in a week, or a month, a year or two. I want you to know that whatever happens I will love you. I will have compassion for you. - Steve Bloor

And later this Bishop shared his own resignation letter: here.

this video also summarizes the situation really well - why people leave and how you can help them: screencast below, podcast here

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? Luke 15:4