Hi, to counteract all the memes here, I want to start a discussion. Maybe answer the question I asked and tell why you “lost faith”.
Lets start with myself. I went to a catholic church as a child, my mothers parents are devout christians, my father is atheist as long as I know. After the elder in the community bullied a very nice priest away when i was around 10, I stopped going to church. I never joined the church as full member as you have to do a confirmation as a late teen and left the church when I was around 20. And now even my mother left the church, so she does not have to pay taxes to them. My Grandparents don’t know this, I think my Grandpa would die of an hearth attack, if he ever found out.
So I would say I never had “faith”, it was just routine that you went to church.
I sure was. I was Mormon. And I wasn’t just Mormon because I was born Mormon. I was a true blue believing Mormon. I wasn’t able to go on a mission so I volunteered my time to go out with the missionaries when I wasn’t working Mormon. I was so deep in the faith it made me lose my faith.
There were two people who were influential in my leaving the Mormon church and the funny thing is neither of them was anti Mormon. The first guy was an online blogged that had read the scriptures and realized the Mormon church was not being ran in accordance to how Joseph Smith said it should be ran. He was using early church writings and the scriptures and was calling the church to repentance.
The second person was a woman who was leading a movement called Ordain Women which argued that women should hold the priesthood just like men. I believed that this was most likely true, the bible talks about priestesses so there’s precedence but the church leadership shot this down. They said the priesthood has always been for men only and that it will only be for men. Which gave me flashbacks to the 70’s when it was that the priesthood was for white men only and never be for POC until suddenly God changed his mind around the time that the church was going to be sued for segregation. I believed at the time that the leadership should at least pray and seek Answers from God but they stated they wouldn’t even do that.
So my “shelf” was beginning to crack when one day it was announced that both of these individuals were excommunicated on the same day. Which is strange because excommunication cannot come from church leadership. It has to originate at the local congregation level. So how did these two people causing problems for the church at the same time both end up excommunicated on the same day on both sides of the country. It reminded me of the 90’s when a group of church historians were excommunicated for putting out research that disproved the church’s claims. It was widely suspected that it was one of the church leaders who just recently came to power when it happened who orchestrated the excommunications (which again is illegal under the church law). That same leader just recently was promoted even higher in the church right before the excommunications I mentioned above about 9 years ago.
I went to bed confused but still an active believer. I woke up the next morning and the first thought that came to my mind was “It’s all a fucking lie isn’t it” and I just accepted that I had spent the last 23 years of my life living in a cult based on a lie. I briefly considered becoming eastern Orthodox because I felt like they had the best claim to being the “true church” but a few days later I just admitted to myself that God wasn’t real either and accepted I was an atheist.