1- Disclaimer and Introduction

Over the next few posts, I am going to be purging my mind of some things that have been bugging me lately. A good friend of mine called it 'Emptying My Church Bag.'- Gotta dump this thing out and get rid of all the old cheerios and fruit roll-ups stuck to the bottom.

Disclaimer: ATTENTION: all active members of the LDS Church. This blog post has the potential to be very disturbing to you and I am advising that you proceed with caution. My posting of this was likely to be disturbing to the other residents of my previous bloghome, so I relocated to respect the feelings and sensibilities of my co-residents. It is not my intention to tear down or to de-convert anyone. I will assume that any potential readers of this are intelligent enough to read and digest this information of their own free will and choice. I assume no responsibility for any cognitive dissonance that occurs following the ingestion of this material.

I have an excellent podcast from a guy named John Dehlin- an active member of the LDS church- explaining some of the things I am going to discuss. Unfortunately, John has closed his podcast and removed all his links. I'll share this file with you if you're willing to listen to it, just email me and it will be on its way.

Despite the extensive nature of these disclaimers: before proceeding, any members of the COJCOLDS should ask themselves the following question: If The Church isn’t true, would I want to know? If the answer is ‘No’- click here to go to a happy place. If ‘Yes’, read on.

Also, if you an active member, please consider that consuming the stuff contained in this blog could force a positive answer to question #7 in the temple recommend interview: "Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?" That describes me fairly well. Just a warning.

If you are unprepared in any way for what follows- please consider yourself warned. I can't have the blood of your eternal salvation on my hands. (It's a joke, people!) But seriously: I feel very strongly about the stuff of which I write. Most of it will be factual and referenced to primary sources, the rest of it will be my opinions and impressions- always identified as such.

Wow, this disclaimer stuff is a pain in the butt.

There's not one single thing that made me decide that I didn't believe in the LDS church any longer, there's a whole shelf full of them.

I tried for many many years to make sense of the varied versions of the Book of Mormon, all the old history books being revised, all the contradictory doctrine, blacks and the priesthood, polygamy and more. As I would inquire about these things, I was told 'You just don't understand yet, keep working on it and it will become clear.' So I would obediently file my concerns away on a shelf.

Eventually the shelf started to bow, after a while it broke. I will document the reasons my personal path has changed, the reasons why, and other issues that came up as I worked to resolve things.

Enough of this- tiptoeing and tapdancing around here like I'm never going to actually get to it. I'll be back later with the actual posts.