Confused Pros and Cons

Tonight I am feeling so incredibly confused. I start to feel like I have the whole religion thing figured out and then I'll hear something or a thought will come to me and suddenly my whole paradigm shifts again.  As I earnestly prayed tonight, I felt inspired to make a list outlining how I truly feel about Mormonism. I need to sort out my muddled thoughts. How can I listen to the Spirit of God and recognize truth when my mind is swimming with 1000 different ideas? So, because I don't have a pensive like Prof. Dumbledore, I'm turning to Blogger to clear my head.

Pros:
- It is how I was raised. My brain thinks in Mormon-ese.
- My entire family is Mormon. Leaving Mormonism would be a huge disappointment to all of them and could lead to strained relationships. Is a religion worth losing relationships? Is it better to fake it til you make it?
- I like the community that Mormonism provides.
- I have had spiritual experiences. I always put a lot of stock in these experiences, but now I don't know if they're reliable or not.
- Book of Mormon is complicated and interesting.
- Church teaches good morals.
- It is a religion where you don't have to think. They have an answer to everything. Comforting to believe that there are real answers.
- If it is true, I would be a fool to leave it. (But how do you figure out if it's true?!)


Cons:
- Joseph Smith's treasure digging bugs me
- I don't like that a seer stone was the method for the translation of the BOM
- I don't like that I'm required to wear Masonic symbols that are like magic talismans of protection.
- I don't like wearing garments. I think they're unattractive and uncomfortable.
- I feel like the temple is extremely Masonic and I struggle believing that it holds the power it professes to have.
- I don't like the way the bureaucracy of the church is run. It feels more like a corporation and it seems like a limited amount of money goes to humanitarian work.
- I feel confused about the LGBT issues.
- I abhor polygamy. Brigham Young said that polygamy was required to be in the highest level of the Celestial kingdom and that makes me not want to go to there.
- I hadn't realized how largely polygamy defined the foundational organization of the church. I always thought it was a weird, temporary episode but it was an enormous part of our history.
- I feel like Joseph Smith's treatment of Emma (marrying other women without her consent and then remarrying them after she finally gave her approval) was deceitful and disgusting.
- Tithing
- I don't feel the same respect and awe for the current prophet that I have felt in the past. I look at him as someone trying to run a religion, not as a person who talks with God.
- I don't like the sexual shaming that the church puts on people, especially youth. I worry about my children and the way they might be affected by overemphasis on sexual morality.
- I don't want my children to be taught things that I don't know are true.
- I don't want my children being interviewed by men in private.
- I don't like the authority given to bishops and stake presidents. I feel like there is insufficient training for the significance of the the position of trust they obtain.
- I'm afraid to rely on feelings alone. (I watched a video on the Heaven's Gate Cult mass suicide and it terrified me. Those people claimed to have received spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness of their beliefs and were so convinced that it was true that 39 of them committed suicide. The scary thing is, I know many Mormons who would not hesitate to take their own lives if the prophet came to them and told them it was God's will. I am terrified to let one person have that kind of psychological power over me and my family. Maybe that makes me spiritually weak, but it is a major fear nonetheless.)
- The similarities between the BOM and several other 19th century works is significant.
- The BOM expresses a very similar theory about the origin of the mound builders to what was common at the time it was written.
- When Christ was on the Earth, He freely displayed His power by healing and blessing any who sought him. Why would the same God who was so transparent on Earth go to such great lengths to hide His identity with the gold plates?
- I don't like how the doctrines of the church (and even the temple ceremonies) have changed so much since the church began. If Joseph restored all things, shouldn't it have been right the first time?

When my shelf began to crack

Faith is often compared to a shelf. When things come along that don't fit with our view
of the universe, we put those items in a box and put it up on the shelf of faith in our brains
to become dusty and forgotten. Eventually, however, too many boxes can accumulate on
the shelf and the weight will send the faith crashing to the ground. This is a faith crisis.

My faith shelf began to crack because of a complete coincidence. I had been listening to a
lecture series from a Yale Professor about the American Revolution at the same time as I
was trying to complete the Book of Mormon challenge issued by President Nelson. One day,
Prof. Freeman was discussing the first great awakening and described one of the camp meetings.
 I was struck by the many similarities between the camp meetings and what we read about
King Benjamin’s great speech. In both instances, people gathered from the neighboring areas
to listen to a religious leader speak. Both brought tents which they pitched towards a structure
from which the speaker preached. Prof. Freeman quoted the famous preacher Jonathan Edwards.
He said, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some
loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. And now you have
an extraordinary opportunity," a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open."
I thought, “Wow, that is completely something King Benjamin might have said.” She also
spoke about the strong emotional responses of people who were “born again” in Christ,
how they fainted and wept, not unlike those in the Book of Mormon.

These similarities were so powerful that I decided to turn to trusty Google to see if others had seen
them as well. Of course, many people had noticed this blaring connection and presented countless
others. This led me on a journey to discover all of the potential environmental factors that could
have potentially influenced the Book of Mormon. It was positively alarming how many there were.
We are taught in the church that the Book of Mormon was created in a vacuum of sorts. It was
written by an uneducated hick in the lonely frontier in 90 short days, right? Mormons never
consider the cultural movements and events that were occuring right in Joseph’s vicinity during
the exact time that he lived. What I eventually concluded was that either the Book of Mormon is
coincidentally connected with an absolutely ridiculous amount similarities to local ideas and events,
or Joseph Smith was a fraud. It was when I began researching masonry, a massive influence on
Mormonism, that I realized I couldn’t rationalize Joseph’s actions any more. I felt like Dorothy in
the Wizard of Oz when she pulls back the curtain and realizes that the magical illusion is nothing
more than an average man running a machine. Once you see behind that curtain, the magic is gone,
no matter how much you want it to be true.