Content Warning - I criticize the church, break some covenants, and even swear once. So fun. But this is an important post, so read it with an open mind. These are my personal feelings and not representative of anyone else. And please, I beg you, respect my wishes at the end.

There’s a huge difference between what the church is supposed to teach and the lessons people may receive. It’s this gap that has caused me the most harm because I was not given the support and nuance necessary to protect myself against social expectations which are more radical than the palatable official dogma.

Here are some of the problematic statements in my experience:

“Not my will, but Thine be done.”

– Luke 22:42

This is the big one for me personally. I’m using it here to represent the concept of self-sacrifice in the service of God. But it is taken altogether way too far and becomes “do nothing except the will of God. Your own desires are selfish.” Our absolute highest priority in all things should be Christ. Nothing else is more important. Sure, you have to take care of a family and not starve, but after that comes the church. And even that family and job shouldn’t lead you away from Christ. Don’t work on Sunday unless it’s an essential job like public safety or health care. Any sacrifice is worth it if it’s in the name of God. This is translated into a mandate to discard my own desires and be subsumed by the greater whole.

And there’s pitifully meager advice on where the boundary should be between you and God. Should you prioritize your mental health above serving someone else? “If you’re feeling sad, find someone else to serve.” (I’ve heard that exact sentiment.) I often listened to people telling the class “make sure you look around you and find those who need your help” and thought “I’m one of those people, I need help, won’t someone notice me?” But no one ever did. I was in the room, after all, which meant I was obviously doing just fine and didn’t need special attention.

“Bridle thy passions.”

– Alma 38:12

On the surface this just means to be aware of your feelings and make sure they don’t lead you to extreme actions. This 1994 Ensign article by general authority Bruce C. Hafen even explicitly says the verse “… did not say we should suppress or eliminate our passions but rather bridle them – harness, channel, and focus them.” What’s so wrong with that? We teach little children to deal with anger and to share. We teach teenagers to be responsible in their attractions so they don’t rape and abuse others. Obviously controlling our emotions is nothing but good, right?

Maybe, except when the real message becomes a blunt “negative emotions are bad.” We shouldn’t be angry? Cool, let me just suppress it. Hum your favorite hymn, sing out with vigor and vim.

Because your thoughts can lead you to sin if you don’t control them. Make sure to never harbor anything negative on the stage of your mind.

It’s unhealthy to stifle unpleasant emotions, because if you don’t let yourself process and feel them, they can manifest in other, likely worse, ways. Increased stress, a negative feedback loop that makes you blame yourself for not feeling the right emotions. I’m working with a therapist now about social anxiety, and guess what her main technique is for helping me out: identifying unpleasant emotions and working through them. Because I need to form mental pathways through those feelings to avoid mental shutdown that keeps me frozen and unable to connect with other people. That inability to connect is so strong I can’t honestly say I know what love feels like, even for my own family.

“Wickedness never was happiness.”

– Alma 41:10

This one is all about fear tactics and disregarding unorthodox ideas and actions. It’s fairly simple to understand: there is no possible way to be truly happy without being actively connected to the True Gospel. Anyone who says otherwise is deceived. (i.e. “No True Scotsman fallacy”)

I’m not sure if my mom used this verse at one point to explain her discomfort with the legality of same-sex marriage, but the sentiment was there. She felt that whatever “love” is shared between two men can’t truly be Love with a capital “L” because it doesn’t lead to the celestial kingdom. And since it doesn’t lead to heaven, it’s actually harmful, and we shouldn’t support harmful things. I don’t know if this is still her opinion, but the conversation I’m drawing from would’ve happened around 2016. At that point I had publicly come out as gay, and my next-older brother was also gay and living with his boyfriend. So the concept of our immediate family having a same-sex marriage in the future was not unheard of. And yet this is how mom felt.

When I was starting to question my faith, this sentiment was my most potent fear – what if Satan was causing these doubts? I had felt “the Spirit” so many times in the past, shouldn’t that be all the proof I need? If I leave the church, pursue relationships with men, how could I possibly be happy?

Some version of this was also why it took me so long to accept any desire to pursue romance with other men. I told myself that any such relationship would be “purely physical” and that it wouldn’t satisfy me on a spiritual level.

And yet, ever since I let go of my faith I’ve felt more consistently happier and at peace than I did in the months or even years leading up to it. At BYU I cycled through periods of apathetic “funk” (largely out of shame due to my use of pornography) which caused my grades to persistently fall. I felt a nearly constant pressure on my shoulders and heart. On a scale from 1-10 I considered my average mood to be a 3, meaning “oppressed.” You could say that I felt unhappy because I was sinning, and that the only reason I don’t feel bad now (despite sinning even more often and egregiously) is because I’m denying the truth.

And that’s what’s so insidious about this idea. There’s no way to convince someone who believes it that it’s wrong. It’s unfalsifiable. But it’s also deplorable because it asserts to know more about the workings of someone else’s mind than they do about themselves. It even gaslights yourself into thinking that your feelings are lying to you.

If you can’t trust your own feelings of good and bad, you’re at the mercy of others outside yourself to dictate your internal reality.

“Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.”

– President Uchtdorf

This one feeds a little off of “wickedness never was happiness.” It relies on self-policing and the fear of Satan to have people discard their own feelings. It prioritizes the Truth as dictated by authorized personnel over your own individual and personal experience and judgement. If you are doubting the gospel, first begin from the assertion that the gospel is true, and search for ways to support and defend it. Don’t use correct psychological and philosophical practices like logic and critical thinking to evaluate the issues.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts… As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.”

– Isaiah 55:8-9

How dare you question the Lord? Who are you to think that He could possibly be wrong about anything? He is above reproach, especially on things like morality, because he is the author of not just morality itself, but of our very souls. He sacrificed himself to save us wretched creatures from sin and death. We should be eternally grateful for the debt which can never be repaid.

This demoralizes the individual and stops critical analysis of the actions of God (and often by extension his prophets). Any actions deemed immoral, unjustifiable, or simply “I don’t get it” are given the simple response of “the Lord works in mysterious ways.” There’s no accountability because any attempt to judge is swatted away without merit.

“Dallin, you are blessed with health and strength. Your body shall function properly and you shall receive all things that are necessary, physically and mentally, to accomplish your work. As you are true and faithful in these things, you shall be protected and kept from major harm or accident so that you can accomplish your work.”

– My Patriarchal blessing

While this quote is pulled from my patriarchal blessing (?), similar wording is common in other blessings and scripture. I use my blessing here because it shows a more personal, and therefore more emotional, sentiment.

This puts responsibility for physical health in the hands of spiritual righteousness. Essentially, if I’m not healthy, it’s because I’m unrighteous. Any chronic medical condition, or even accidental harm, can be blamed on myself. How horrible is that? To think that the reason I got cancer, or diabetes, or came home early from my mission, is because I’m somehow sinning.

I did come home early from my mission for medical reasons, and I know others who did as well. There’s a social stigma to returning early for any reason, and it causes a lot of people pain. Thinking that “if only I was a better missionary or more righteous” that the bad thing never would have happened. Perfectionism is a bitch.

“One great responsibility that you have is to prepare yourself to receive in marriage a lovely daughter of Zion, to be a help and companion to you in all things. This great decision will be yours to make and with her you shall have the opportunity of making that decision and going with her to the temple to be sealed for time and all eternity, and thus receive the greatest of blessings that Father has for you, that of an eternal companion.”

– My Patriarchal blessing

It’s fun to look back at this blessing, given when I was 12, knowing now that I’m gay. It’s circumstantial evidence that the revelation implied in this blessing is faulty, since there’s no admonition to “avoid the gay” in order to marry said daughter of Zion.

But the sentiment of “the greatest blessing you can receive in this world is a hetero marriage in the temple” is also a very common one in blessings and culture in general. The church puts intense priority on eternal marriage, so much so that every single adult is relegated to a “singles ward” (if locally available) with the sole expectation to get married as soon as possible. As soon as you’re off your mission, your main priority is to start a family and have kids.

And there’s no real advice on how to do anything else. If you’re single, date and get married. If you’re married, have kids as soon as possible. Oh, you’re married but can’t have kids? Uh… hmm… well… *shrug*.

Oh, you’re gay? Get straight-married. Pray the gay away. Stay celibate. Maybe serve in the temple or something. Just don’t “act on it” and you’ll be fine (except when we decide it’s a problem to even use the label “gay.”)

Oh, you’re trans? Don’t transition, even socially. God doesn’t make mistakes, and gender is eternal, so you’re meant to be what’s on your birth certificate. Pay no attention to the intersex behind the curtain.

Oh, you’re asexual? Uh… what’s that?

The Plan of Salvation is supposed to have space for everyone, but there’s huge swaths of members who don’t fit the mold and get lost without guidance. And the pressure to fit the mold despite the “problem” being immutable can cause its own set of problems.

Leaders will give lip service to the idea that “there is a place for you” and “we love you,” but all too often they leave those people with nothing more than that. No doctrine (or shifting doctrine which is sometimes worse) to guide people.

Of course, individuals don’t always believe or vocalize these ideas exactly, and the official policies obviously don’t say any such thing. But that doesn’t mean that the unwritten cultural pressure doesn’t lead many to the same conclusions that I’ve felt. These are my feelings and experiences, not anyone else’s. But I’m comfortable saying that I’m not alone in facing these problems.

It’s terribly common for society to dispense a more extreme and unrelenting narrative than any one individual or organization espouses. But without active efforts to counteract the unspoken cultural extremes, no wonder I fell victim to them.

I wanted people to like me, to see the good and not the bad. I wanted to do the right things. I wanted to make my parents happy. I wanted the validation of my community. I did things because it was my duty or expectation.

But in my case, it was sometimes more important that I not disappoint or anger others, that I put on a positive facade even when I’m tired or angry. I received the message loud and clear that I am to do things “just because” and I was scared to disagree. And if I was ever told to take care of myself even if it disappoints others, it got drowned out by the louder zeitgeist.

So I did the good thing and sacrificed myself.

I put on a happy face. I went to church, to seminary, on a mission. And if I got mad about it, I pushed that down or felt shame about it and tried harder. If I needed help, I usually didn’t ask. Because that would inconvenience people. I’m not worth speaking up for.

I’m not going to reach out to other people; what if they don’t like me? Better to do what I know already. Stick with what I’m good at.

And the borders blur. You feel like you aren’t in control of your own life, like you’re stuck in the rapids trying desperately just to keep your head above water. You know you’re unhappy, but you don’t know why. And no one is noticing you, so no one comes to rescue you, and of course you don’t ask for help.

You question almost every decision and thought, criticizing it by default from the perspective of those around you. What will mom think of this? The church? My friends? It doesn’t matter what I think. They’re more important than me.

So when you finally meet someone who tells you “you are worth defending.” That you can stand up to the voices of others in your head. That it’s important to set boundaries between yourself and others, and to protect your own desires. That your feelings are valid…

It was the first time I was able to face the caged, ravenous lion within me. I was so scared to acknowledge my own desires, because what do they say about me? What kind of person am I to want these things? To feel this way? Who will I hurt by letting it out? Will I like what I see in the mirror?

Do I really believe in God, or am I only going to church because not going would make people sad?

Can I be a good, moral, decent person if I let this go? Is it more important to be honest with myself and others?

I answered the gospel questions with “I don’t know” at first, because that was as far as I could handle. I thought it was an acceptable stopping point. I admitted that I did not know whether God was real, but claimed that I could extrapolate from faith in a soul that there was something. And if there was something beyond us, God might exist even though I had no proof.

Losing faith meant losing religious restrictions. I started slowly, testing out this new frontier. Tea and coffee, eventually some alcohol. Even some cannabis edibles because it was an option. Some things I like more than others. Some I’m okay with just the once. No interest in even trying things like smoking.

And nothing fell apart. No godly lightning to smite me, not even a sense of guilt. And no addiction to ruin my life and job. Even the porn and masturbation that used to haunt me with constant obsession is easy to forget about for days on end. I come and go, taking what I want in the moment, and no one is harmed in the process.

Without the self-policing dogma of faith and fear of punishment, I’m able to explore myself. What do I want, what do I like, what makes me feel good or bad?

I eventually found atheist and ex-mormon material online. I had already stepped back and admitted my lack of belief, so any taboo or danger from these sources had lost its edge. The atheist content showed me responses to the common reasons people believe in God (Christian or otherwise) and I saw the logic in them. It also led me to secular information on other religions and histories, which I find very interesting. And the ex-mormon content dealt specifically with my own lingering questions. You might say that I allowed Satan to tempt me, but it can also be said that I no longer preemptively disregarded evidence.

And in time I settled into a confidence that, barring an external and verifiable experience, there is very little chance that I will ever be convinced by a religious claim again. I am sad to know that my parents and many friends and family will be concerned for my happiness and salvation, but I hope they take whatever comfort they can from my assurances that I am not following some grudge or whim. I am holding true to my beliefs, even though they differ from yours.

All this has led me, within the last few weeks, to decide that I no longer feel comfortable participating in church services like attending meetings or playing the organ. Because, to me, being seen on the stand helping out with the music means that I agree with what is being taught over the pulpit. Which, as I have tried to explain in this post, I do not. I have asked to be released from my calling so that I no longer have a duty to attend. And as soon as that happens, or, if my release is delayed for whatever reason, after my upcoming birthday, I will stop all participation.

I am happier now. You may not believe that’s possible, but I hope you can hold space and allow me to follow this path. Pray for me if you want, but please don’t tell me about it. Hope for my return if you must, but do not take action to facilitate it. I have been harmed by the church, more deeply than even I understand. And despite your concern and well wishes, trying to bring me back will cause me pain. It’s better to remain silent.

I wanted to list my grievances, not only to explain to others why I’m leaving, but to explore my own feelings. It’s taken me a long time to get this far, and I still have a long path ahead of me. There’s much of myself that has been hidden, and I won’t be whole until I have had the chance to find them.