Thinking more about why I left, because back then I had my reasons but they were so… unworded. I knew them, but I couldn’t have verbalized them as well as I do now. I don’t even know how I knew some of them, I’m not sure where the information came from, where I read this or saw that that put the pieces together in my head. I’m not even totally sure I’m not just justifying reasons that I understand now when I maybe didn’t have all these reasons back then.
But one of the other main things that I felt at the time was that… well, that I just wasn’t that smart. I couldn’t keep discounting every other person’s experiences.
The earliest example of this I can think of was my childhood friend. He texted me, (we were twelve at the time) and told me that he just couldn’t believe, because when he prayed he didn’t get any answers. I think I even said something like “Did you study your scriptures too?” And when he said ‘yeah dude’ I just… ignored it, and we talked about other stuff. Even then, I had that vague feeling of “He must have been doing it wrong.”
And that loop of logic, where all answers must say “The Church is True” and if the answer you come up with is different, you’re doing it wrong… that loop is so frustrating.
When it finally started to dawn on me that stuff wasn’t adding up, I even took the time to pray about it, to think about it. But when the answer came back “No, the Church isn’t true.” I didn’t discount it. I accepted it.
And now I can recognize that the feeling I got from that came from my own understanding, of my brain pulling up so many things from my subconscious that pointed to that answer, but back then I didn’t know that. I just knew I’d become one of the many people that didn’t believe anymore. One of the people who prayed and didn’t get an answer from God, or at least not the Mormon God.
And I knew that I just couldn’t keep thinking that the members of every other religion were doing it wrong and only we were doing it right.
Then two weeks later, I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting, and I was excited.
And I did a talk on Personal Revelation. None of the current topics that month were about Personal Revelation, but we were allowed to pick something different if we felt inspired. I’d become okay at talks in the past, but this was the first one where I didn’t write the whole thing out. I just put down some bullet points and ran with it.
I still have the notes on it, in fact. I split it into three parts.
Step 1: Prepare Yourself.
Say a prayer, think about it, verbally speak what you want to figure out. I even compared prayer to meditation, because that’s basically what it is in many ways.
You can stick it on your shelf and wait passively for the answer to show up in your life, or you can seek it out. Research, music, study.
Step 3: Most Important, Act.
It might not be an answer you like. It might not be the answer you expect. But if the answer is true, you must act on it.
Throughout, I kept references to the Holy Ghost and God minimal, maybe I didn’t even mention them at all. But I was enthusiastic, to the point where they had to ask me to wrap it up because I was taking too long.
It was the best talk I’ve ever given. One sweet old lady even came up and said I should ask the Bishop to let me finish my talk next week.
And, following the steps to my own talk, I stopped going to church soon after.
