Mar 08 2009
The True Reason I Left the LDS Church
When I first decided to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the only true church upon the face of the earth, and obviously a decision made because I couldn’t live without coffee for a minute longer) I had the unenviable task of telling my family, my friends, and my coworkers of my decision. Because I live in an area dense with Mormons, I was not the only LDS member working at the library; I had three coworkers who were also Mormon.
Tangent: Why is it that leaving the Church has to be such a big deal? You can’t just stop attending. Nnnooooo. There is so much that goes into “being Mormon.” Your underwear, for one thing. There are garment lines, and then there are “normal people” underwear lines. If I had stopped wearing my garments without telling my coworkers first, they would have noticed anyway. Every time I bent over and had a normal panty line under my slacks, it would broadcast to the world that I was no longer wearing the ol’ garmies.
But anyway, back to my story. So I tell the two Mormon ladies who work at my library that I am leaving the Church. I told them both that I am leaving because of doctrinal issues, not because someone offended me or something ridiculous like that, and that it was a hard decision to make. They both were kind and understanding and never once did I feel weird around them because of it. They loved me before I told them (both of these gals are my friends) and they loved me afterwards.
Then comes the male coworker. He had always struck me as being strange, and unfortunately, the more I got to know him, the more I realized that there was more than one screw loose in his head. But he had only been working at the library for a couple of months at that point, and although I had talked to him some, I really didn’t know him that well (he worked in a different department than me, so our paths only crossed occasionally).
Let’s call him Bob, shall we?
So when I told Bob what was happening with me, and that I did not leave the Church because someone offended me, blah blah, he was visibly upset about the whole thing. He started pressing me with questions, but I was busy and didn’t have time to answer any of them. (His main question was which websites I had gone to get information because he wanted to read those websites too, to see what would cause me to lose my testimony.)
The next time I see him, the first words out of his mouth were, “So who offended you?”
“Excuse me, what?” I said, completely confused.
“I just wanted to know who offended you and caused you to leave the Church.”
I stared at him, a little slack jawed. Please know that out of all of the many people that I have told that I have left the Church, he is the ONLY one who has asked me this question. What makes him a completely idiot is the fact that I had already flat out told him that no one had offended me. It was as if in his little bubble, no one could possibly leave the Church because of doctrinal reasons. That simply couldn’t be it. It had to be because someone was mean to me one day in Sacrament Meeting. 
“No one offended me,” I said slowly, as if talking to a slightly mentally retarded human being (which on second thought, is exactly what was happening.) “If the LDS Church was really true, then I would never throw away my eternal salvation because someone was rude to me. That’s just idiotic. I left because of doctrine and the history of the Church. There are things that you will never learn about in Sunday School, but are a real part of what happened in the Church. When I found out the truth, I left.”
After that, I became a target to Bob’s obsessive questions. He bore his testimony to me. He told me that I ought to be scared of him telling his wife what happened, because she doesn’t put up with things like this (what, is she going to come beat me up? I had met his wife, and she was a nice lady. I kinda doubt the woman was going to take out my kneecaps.) He asked a great deal of questions about what I had found, and pushed me several times to bring in the website address for the site that made me lose my testimony. (FYI: I’ve posted it before, but here it is again, for those who want to know).
After a month of being hounded by the guy, I finally told him that I wasn’t going to discuss it anymore. I told him I had already had a lot of pain inflicted upon me by my true-believing mother and grandmother, and I wasn’t going to get into a discussion of the truthfulness of the LDS Church any longer.
To his credit, he finally stopped pestering me.
Unfortunately, that just meant that all of it festered inside of him, making him crazy with questions. Those questions eventually came out, but they were directed at someone else: My good friend, Tiffy, a coworker of mine at the library.
Tiffy is a born-again Christian, but she is one of those good ones who doesn’t feel the need to push her beliefs onto other people. She’s also the unlucky soul that I drug to the open house of the local temple before it was dedicated. I had told Bob that she was coming with me, and at that point, he had no idea that I was questioning the Church. He thought I was being a good member missionary like all Mormons should be.
One day a couple of weeks ago, Tiffy was downstairs doing a check in of the books, when Bob appeared. His desk is fairly close to the downstairs check-in desk, but he wasn’t actually supposed to be anywhere near that area at the time. He was on duty in the children’s department, but as usual, this did not bother Bob. Small things like “doing your job” are not real big on his priority list. (You think I’m being sarcastic because the guy is not real high on my favorites list, and even though that’s true, every word of this post is the un-exaggerated truth. Bob wouldn’t know what hard work was if it came up and sat on his lap. Sadly enough for those of us working with him).
So there was Bob, down by his desk, pretending to work. Then he’d drift over and watch Tiffy check-in items on the computer. Then he’d drift back to his desk. Then back to Tiffy. Tiffy told me that this entire experience was a little surreal, because he never said anything to her, and she couldn’t figure out why he was watching her do her job, since he is in no way her supervisor. He finally blurted out, “Does the Lyoness smoke?”
“What?!” Tiffy said, completely surprised by the question.
“Well, I heard her say that she was trying coffee and beer and other things that are against the Word of Wisdom, and one day, I walked past her and she smelled like smoke. So I thought maybe she had started smoking too.”
Now you guys all know my thoughts on smoking. I’ve made them perfectly clear. I’ve had this discussion with Tiffy too because we have to deal with smokers as patrons who come into the library all the time, and who stink so bad of cigarette smoke that we’re forced to hold our breath while helping them at the front counter. Just the smell alone is enough to give me a headache.
So Tiffy knew my thoughts on smoking, and she promptly told Bob what they were, and added that if you stand next to smoker long enough, you’re going to briefly smell like smoke until the smell dissipates, and so that was no doubt what he had smelled. She also said that the same thing could happen with any of the people who work at the front desk.
The conversation went on for a while after that. I cannot remember exactly what else he asked about (since this is all being relayed to me second hand, I want to be sure I’m only reporting everything I’m positive of happening) but I do remember that Tiffy said that Bob had a spirit of meanness about it. She said that he wasn’t asking questions because he was truly worried about me, but instead because he was mad and basically wanted the dirt on me. I’m shocked he didn’t start asking questions about my sex life.
Strangely enough, he also seemed upset with Tiffy, and (according to her) seemed to be placing a lot of the blame of me leaving on her shoulders. (Of course! The only thing he hasn’t blamed my leaving on is global warming, but I’m sure that’s next). Apparently, because Tiffy is a born-again Christian, she was a bad influence on me and caused me to leave The Only True Church Upon the Face of the Earth. When she relayed that bit of information to me, I burst out laughing.
“If you’re such a big influence on me, then why, pray tell, am I not at a Christian church every Sunday morning?”
This guy is a whack job, no doubt about it.
With every new outrageous piece of the story, I laughed harder. We made fun of Bob’s sheer stupidity, and had a great time of it, I’ll admit. But then I started to think about it, and I started to get angry. I mean, really pissed off. How dare he interrogate my friend at work about my religious beliefs?!! It was bad enough that he pestered me with questions for a month straight, when that sort of behavior is not at all appropriate for the work setting. But my friends too?!
That’s where I draw the line.
I went directly into the director’s office and told her what was happening. Although I left the Church last fall, she had no idea that I had, nor that there had been any fall out because of it. I don’t tell her about my personal life, and she doesn’t ask. That’s the way a working relationship is supposed to work, right?
Somebody needs to tell that to good ol’ Bob.
Well, actually, somebody did. The director, to be precise. She pulled him into her office and said, “I’ve had some employees and supervisors report that they are having some problems,” and just from that sentence, he immediately jumped to my situation, although neither Tiffy nor I are a supervisor. I can’t decide if that’s because his conscience had started to bother him and he realized he shouldn’t have said what he did, or if it’s because he went home and told his wife what happened and she told him he was a nimwit, and pointed out the problems with what he did (she comes across as being the smarter of the two).
Either way, the end result has been that Bob has refused to speak to or even look at either Tiffy or I since this incident. Which is good, because at first I was worried that he was going to come up to me and start pushing things with me again. I had already resolved to scream harassment from the rafters if he did this, and possibly bring a lawsuit down on his worthless butt (I am not a fan of frivolous lawsuits, but there is a limit and I had reached it) but luckily for me, he’s apparently decided that he would instead never speak to me again.
Hey, I can live with that.
I’m just wondering how much longer he can last before he approaches someone else in the library and starts asking them about my religious beliefs and habits. I warned all of my friends at the library (anyone who I could even possibly conceive of him wanting to approach) about what happened, and also told them to tell him to shut up because I was lawsuit happy, and he better not risk it.
So far, he hasn’t breathed a word about me to any of my coworkers/friends (and really, I consider almost everyone I work with a friend - it is a great group of people!!!! - other than him, of course) and I’m really hoping it’ll stay that way.
But it does make me realize how indoctrinated some Mormons can get, that they don’t even realize that their behavior is beyond the pale. It is so natural to them that it doesn’t cross their minds that they could be heavily offending the person they are talking to.
I grateful that this type of Mormon is far and few between. I may not be a fan of the LDS Church (understatement of the century) but as a whole, I don’t have any problems with its members. After all, most of my family and my friends are Mormons.
I love the people, hate the religion.
So, dear readers, when you left, did you have problems with coworkers leaving you alone? Tell me about it below, or submit your story via the submission page.
It’s funny how all of the things which used to cause me sadness are now suddenly huge blessings as I’ve left the Church.
I’m the only member in my family, which used to make me sad when I saw whole families at church. Now they’re glad that I’m out of there, so I have their complete support.
My family would never let me talk about the Church with them. They made it clear that they weren’t interested, which of course also used to make me sad, as it was a big part of my life. But now they’re admitting that the few doctrines I did share with them really bothered them. Like trying to tell them that my Cree ancestors were once Israelites. Now I’m embarrassed that I told them that.
I didn’t go to school with other Mormons. I’ve never worked with another Mormon. In my area, it’s rare to run into a fellow member at all. What used to make me sad, now makes me grateful.
I still have one really TBM friend, but gratefully, she just doesn’t bring up the subject of the Church. She knows how I feel about it, and I’m sure that makes her sad, but she wouldn’t so say.
Quote: “If the LDS Church was really true, then I would never throw away my eternal salvation because someone was rude to me. That’s just idiotic.”
Exactly. That really bugs me. I suppose they think that our testimonies weren’t strong enough to withstand a nasty person. But if you think you’re on the path to eternal glory, are you really going to let some idiot make you leave that path? Of course not. Geez.
You know what? I changed my mind. Sort of. I am offended. Only it wasn’t any member of the Church who offended me, but it was the Church itself. They presented me with this glorious vision of eternity, but it was all based on a lie. It’s the Church itself which offended me.
Warning: ‘Colorful’ Language to follow:
The more I hear about Bob, the more he fucking pissing me off. I had no clue about this, and let me tell you, if he even ever TRIED to ask me a SINGLE question on any of my co-workers beliefs, I’d tell him to take his fucking questions and shove them straight up his self-righteous ass, that as long as he’s digging around up there he might as well see if he can FINALLY manage to unwedge his empty head out of there as well.
It is absolutely none of his God-damned business why you left the church, it’s none of his business if you’re smoking now, hell, it’s none of his business if you’ve got a cigarette in one had, a beer in the other, while performing back-alley abortions blindfolded with only your FEET!! (Ok, that might be extreme, but STILL!)
This person doesn’t care about you, he is just pissed that someone obviously smarter than himself DARED to question the meaningless set of rules that he organizes his pathetic little life by.
Rainfeather, I loved your comments and your perspective. Yes, that is exactly how I feel too: I am offended by the Church. By it persistently clinging to a mindset that causes nothing but hurt and pain to its members (ie, its stance on homosexuality) and by its continuing claims that the Book of Abraham was truly translated correctly (bwahahahaha!!!!) and finally, by the pain it is causing me each and every day because of its refusal to admit to the many lies its perpetuated over the last 150+ years.
Hell yes, I’m offended.
Sandra, thank you for the comment. I recently met up with an old friend who is a born-again Christian, and when I told him that we had left the LDS Church, he immediately said, “Oh good, now you won’t burn in hell!!! Which Christian church are you attending now?” I am not exaggerating AT ALL. I was taken back by his easy admittance of the fact that he always thought I was going to burn in hell for being Mormon. Doesn’t that seem more than a tad judgmental?
Luckily, just like most Mormons are good people, so it goes with Christians. Tiffy is a good case in point. She’s the closest friend I have here in my town, and she’s definitely born-again Christian.
Chris, your comment made me laugh. I absolutely loved it. In fact, I’d have to say it made my whole afternoon and then some. Thank you for that. I cannot believe that I forgot to tell you. I guess we work together so rarely, I never thought about it while I was working with you. That makes me wonder if I forgot anyone else who was important…
The reason that I started telling people to watch out for this is because Martha correctly stated that someone like Bob likes to spread gossip (as is obvious by his complete inability to think straight, and thus deciding to interrogate one of my closest friends at work about my religious beliefs.) She said that he would probably continue to gossip as long as he had an outlet to do it with.
So my goal is to not give him that outlet with anyone at the library. I cannot keep him from standing up in Fast and Testimony meeting on Sunday morning and bearing his testimony about what happens to apostates when they leave the Church (get a life?) but I can have some control over what he says about me at work.
And believe me when I say that I won’t put up with anymore of his shit. The next time he pulls a stunt like this, I will fight to have his ass kicked out of the library. I won’t play that game again.
~Lyoness
Bob is a moron, the more I listen to him talk the more I want to jab a very sharp pencil into my eye and one of these days it might happen. I am not religious but I am always willing to listen with an open mind to anyone who wants to share their beliefs but if they are unwilling to do the same, well, that isn’t very Christ like eh? Sick of people wanting to spew their one way thoughts down peoples throats while at the same time thinking they are better than someone because of their beliefs.
I back you all the way with this situation and if Bob says anything to me about this or anything pertaining to it he will get a little something from me in return. People like him are ruining this country, hell even the world. Probably thinks Obama is the anti-christ as well….so damn stupid.
Great! Just what I need yet another reason to hate Bob. Like its not bad enough that with a MASTERS! degree in Librrary Science he doesn’t know the difference between fiction and non-fiction now he has to go and try to shove his religion down other peoples throats and interogate co-workers about stuff that is none of his business. I’m with Chris and Darrell if he says anything to me he is really not going to like the reply he gets.
Hey Darrell! This is a first - an actual comment from you!
I feel special. 
Thanks for the comment, and you’re right, his attitude is not Christ-like.
Becky, are you serious? I had not heard the nonfiction vs fiction story. I did almost kill him the time that I tried to call him and ask him to search for a book in the children’s department. I told him I was going to give him the barcode for the book, and then proceeded to read the barcode off to him. He interrupts me partway through and says, “What are you giving to me?”
“Umm…The barcode.”
“It’s just a string of numbers!” he replied.
“That’s because that’s what a barcode is…” I said, trying to keep from either laughing hysterically or reaching through the phone and strangling him within an inch of his life.
Couldn’t make it up if I tried.
~Lyoness
Lol, I never heard the barcode story…what the hell did he think you were going to read to him?
On two separate occasions I have personally watched him mix up ficton and nonfiction. The fisrt time was not to long after he first started working at the library. He was working at the reference desk and a woman came up looking for a book that was in the new nonfiction in like the 200’s or some other low number. Bob goes over to the new fiction and starts looking for it there. One of the other pages had to direct him to the new nonfiction. When he got there he started looking in the 900’s. I believe the other page eventually had to find the book for him. The second time he had been here for a while. It was my late night and I was busy trying to close when a little girl asked me if I could help her find infromation on red foxes. I told her she would have to go to the reference desk. I then had to track Bob down because he was not where he was suposed to be. He went over and found out what the girl wanted and then went to the fiction large print section where there is a book with the title Red Fox but it is about Russia not the animal. I had to finsh closing so I didn’t get to see the girl or her dad’s reaction. I had a better understanding of how libraries work when I was in elementary school than Bob does now with his masters degree.
What does that mean Heresy? What is the ‘narrow path?’
Chris, that is a question that will forever go unanswered, because I was too flabbergasted to ask him at that point, and I couldn’t be paid to ask him now.
Becky, thank you for the eye-opening comment. I thought I had seen it all, but I think that about tops the cake.
Of course, there was the time that we were busy at the front desk, and I had a patron ask me if we had any books about interpreting dreams. (This was about a month or two ago.) I knew we did, but I also didn’t want to tie up the line while searching the computer, so I told her to head on over to the reference desk and they would be able to give her the exact Dewey Decimel number to find the book. (I knew it was going to be in the 100 - 200 range, but I didn’t want to send the lady all over the place when reference could give her an exact number easily.)
Lo and behold, who is working at reference but good ol’ Bob. He kept the lady standing there for 20 minutes as he searched the computer (I looked at the clock and timed him) and then she finally left. As she walked past the front desk, she said to me, “Looks like you guys don’t have any but thanks anyway!” and was out the front door before I could say, “Stop! Wait! Come back!”
Anne came in at noon, and I casually stopped by the reference desk, “Hey, would you mind telling me the Dewey Decimal number for book on interpreting dreams?”
“Sure!” and she rattled the number right off. Didn’t look it up or even bat an eyelash. I then told her the story of how we apparently don’t have any books on that subject, and she got pretty hot under the collar.
“That man is an idiot! He wouldn’t know how to find his ass with two hands!”
You want to know what’s really pathetic? My husband is always having to wait to pick me up from the library, and so he often wanders around in the stacks looking at books while he’s waiting for me. Before I could say anything more than I had a patron looking for books about dream interpretations, he interrupted me and said off-handedly exactly where you would find those books on the shelves. He knew just from wandering around.
My husband has never worked in a library a day in his life, and yet his knowledge of our library beats Bob’s hands down, and this is after Bob has worked MONTHS in our library, AND has a Masters in Library Science.
It really is amazing, and not in a particularly good way…
~Lyoness
Heresy, thanks for stopping by. I checked out your blog, and saw that you are a pretty active and believing Christian. I cannot say the same about me. I think that there is scant evidence that there was a Christ, and zero evidence of there being a God. I am technically agnostic, although I lean atheist more and more each day.
So I guess to answer your question: The wide path.
After having been duped all of my life when it comes to the LDS Church, I absolutely cannot envision me ever joining another church for any reason. Just like there is no way to prove the LDS Church is true, there is also no way to prove the Christian faith is true. If there was absolute proof, then you would not need faith, correct?
And so I have the choice: Should I continue to believe in something without proof, and simply switch the focus of that blind belief, or should I choose to not believe anything that cannot be proven?
It was a simple choice for me when it got right down to it: I have chosen not to believe anything that cannot be proven. I cannot and will not have blind faith anymore. Although I welcome the stories of ex-Mormons who have left the LDS Church and have joined another religion, I personally cannot do that.
I respect others’ choices, and I hope that they will respect mine.
Thanks again for stopping by,
~Lyoness
I agree with everything you’ve just said, Lyoness. It does seem that more and more each day, we begin to realize that it’s all man-made. All scriptures, everywhere, are just man’s interpretation of the things around them and God’s dealings with mankind.
At least in the New Testament, they had Jesus say that he was about to give a parable. But upon studying the Bible now, and lack of evidence for the events and people found in it, I’m realizing that it’s basically all parables. They just forgot to mention that fact in the Old Testament.
Yes, there are some real events from history noted in it, but that just tells you the time that it must have been written in, as that’s what the writer saw happening in his own time.
I’ve recently discovered that the Jewish people actually didn’t exist until about 1200 BC. So that immediately cancels out any stories in the Bible which were supposed to have happened before that time. It can also be seen that many of the stories were taken from olders Babylonian or Egyptian myths.
Not only that, but DNA has now confirmed what archaeology was beginning to show. The Jewish people were not just similar to Caananites. They are identical. They were Canaanites. They must have been a splinter group who believed in only one god, and thus they became a separate people. At the time of King David, if he existed, it would have been a small village.
It’s all quite fascinating, but you wonder how you ever fell for all of those faery tales.
(I did a temp job in a library, many years ago, just typing up the cards for the filing cabinets of a new reference library. I could probably find a book fast than that as well. LOL)
I knew what heresy meant, but thank you anyway, I was just asking about narrow path.