Sudden Departure Part 2

In my last post I talked about the fact that I’ve been a member of the Mormon church for almost 19 years. It will be 19 years this coming December, 2012. I still remember the missionaries coming to my apartment and teaching me the discussions. They told me the Joseph Smith story about seeing God and Jesus Christ in the Sacred Grove when he was a 14 year old boy. They taught me a lot of things, but I was fascinated by Joseph Smith and his story. What an incredible tale! However, they didn’t tell me that Joseph Smith didn’t even get the story straight about what he saw in the grove until many years after the supposed event. As I mentioned, I was fascinated with the Joseph Smith story. What a wonderful story it was! Imagine seeing God and Jesus Christ in person. I always wondered though why Joseph didn’t record the date that this happened. Wouldn’t you want to record the date of so fantastical of an event in your young life? I think I’d be recording this in my journal! They (God and Jesus Christ) told him not to join any of the churches. THAT was the message that God gave Joseph Smith? there were apparently other instructions given but they've never been revealed, at least not that I'm aware. I hope there would have been more. Recently I discovered some additional information surrounding Joseph Smith’s “martyrdom” in 1844. It’s well documented in church books that he had the press of the Nauvoo Expositor destroyed. I always wondered why this was. I guess Joseph was having an inappopriate relationship with the wife of the owner of the press. When the press was going to expose this “affair”, Joseph had the press destroyed. And this whole polygamy thing. I actually bothered me back when I was investigating the church with the missionaries. I'm sure it bothers a lot of people. I posed this question to them as to why the church suddenly gave up on polygamy when the Statehood of Utah was being held up. The missionaries reponse was that the president of the church at the time received revleation that polygamy was to end. The church has tried for many years to explain the reason for polygamy in the 19th century. In the Work and the Glory series of fiction books, it actually dealt with the issue of polygamy in a good manner and I was satisfied with the reason. The brethren were “commanded” by the Lord to do it—they did it grudgingly but finally gave in to the Lord and practiced it. Why would the Lord give such a commandment? Seems ludicrous—and it is. The “real” reason was that Joseph smith was a womanizer who apparently couldn’t keep his hands off other women—especially married women. This “revelation” of polygamy was just the answer. Make it a commandment and voila, you can have marital relations with as many women as you want. And it’s not even a sin! I’m pretty sure the bible frowns on being married to more than one woman. But if it’s a new commandment from God! Let’s go for it brethren. The night before I was to have my baptism interview I couldn’t sleep. I was upset by the Elders and their behaviour earlier that evening during an appointment. They were looking at my collection of video movies and were making fun of them. I thought this odd behaviour and that it was quite rude at the time and addressed it during the baptism interview, but the district leader apologized and the elders apologized. I was placated. But this should have been a warning. Run for the hills!!! My baptism went well and I went along in the church until about a month after my baptism. It was the day of the Northridge California earthquake—January 17, 1994. I had stayed home sick from work and watched the TV news coverage of the earthquake. The longer the day went on the more unsettled I felt. The Elders had been lying to me—the church was a fraud—what did I get myself into?. I called the Elders and they came over the next evening and put my feelings at ease. I was again placated. Everything went along smoothly. I've always had trouble with paying tithing—a requirement for worthiness to gain a temple recommend and to enter the temple. I finally started to pay it consistently about a year after I joined the church. Nineteen months after joining the church, in July 1995 I went to the Toronto Temple for my own endowments. I was on top of the world. I felt great. I started to wear the temple garments and life was good. A few months later I moved into the same house the Elders lived in. It was a wonderful time. I spent time with the Elders and got to know quite a few of them over the next 2 years I lived there. I met my future wife in December 1996 and we were sealed in the Toronto Temple in August 1997. She had been a member for about as long as I had been. A few years later we moved from the city I had been living in to another city(where I am living now with my wife and 10 year old son). This is when the cracks started to appear in my church membership. I’ll get into that in my next post. Take care, J.T.