To preface, the following is not an attack on Mormonism, and it is not a doctrinal debate about what is or is not taught in the Church. I hope I do not come across as overly antagonistic; my only goal is to be understood. I do not claim to speak for all individuals that leave Mormonism (though I would be surprised if I stood alone in my experiences). This is nothing more or less than a few mental and philosophical dilemmas for someone who left Mormonism.

Codependency

Growing up in Mormonism, I was always taught what you are supposed to do in times of trouble: read the scriptures and pray. It was drilled into me from a young age. Stressed about a test? Pray and read the scriptures. Anxious about the future? Pray and read the scriptures. Unsure of an upcoming critical decision? Pray and read the scriptures. I do not use the term co dependence lightly, but I do believe it applies. For someone like me, who was “true-blue, through and through,” you build a codependent relationship with the Church. It is your coping mechanism, and it is how you make decisions. It is a psychological addiction. I would be lying if I said it was not comforting to be able to pray and believe there was an omnipotent deity listening to and helping me. When you lose that, you lose your coping mechanism. All the same stressors were there, but I suddenly had no way to deal with them. I had to build an entirely new system of dealing with hard things, and hard things weren’t going to wait for me to catch up. I had to approach it from a different paradigm, with no one there to guide me through it. In short: I had to break my co dependence from the Church, and it was (and is) a painful journey.

Achievement-Based Self-Worth

When I was younger, I considered being a perfectionist as something to be admired, even emulated. One of the earliest children’s songs I remember learning in church was a song titled I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus. What was Jesus like? In a word: perfect. If perfection was the ultimate goal for everyone in Mormonism, how could such a philosophy not be adopted? One of the fundamental workings of the Church is something called the Temple Worthiness Interview, and it is exactly what it sounds like. You are asked a series of questions, and the Church leader conducting the interview decides whether you are worthy to enter the Temple, and a lot of implications are associated with passing the interview. The questions asked in this worthiness interview are based largely on achievement. Do you follow the commandments? Do you pay your tithes? In short: do you achieve? The way I saw it, my worth was based on what I did. This way of thinking does not simply evaporate when your belief-system changes. Perfection was my goal then and it remained so after I left. Only now, it was a goal that was no longer ever attainable, and therefore according to this system self-worth was no longer ever attainable. Some may argue that achievement-based self-worth is not taught in the Church, and perhaps they are right. But it was nevertheless something propagated to at least one person who grew up in it.

An Eternal Perspective

A common theme that is taught in the Church is to prioritize things of an eternal significance. A dominating theme in Mormonism is the idea of eternal families. A common mantra is to have an eternal perspective. Well, this mantra creates quite a problem for someone who believes that in less than a billion years the Earth will be inhospitable to life due to the natural process of main-sequence stars such as our Sun. It is also problematic for someone who believes in the eventuality of the heat death of the universe, where all protons have decayed, life in any form is impossible, and time is meaningless since nothing ever happens again. For better or for worse, I fall in both rather unpleasant camps. This is a predicament for someone who grew up being taught that the only things that matter are those of an eternal significance, because if you accept the scientific conclusion that nothing is eternal, then it must also follow that nothing matters. If this sounds like an existential crisis, it’s because it is. Often, a faith crisis is followed by an existential one. A new criterion must be found for what constitutes meaning, and in my experience is it not as easy as it may sound, and it is a criterion that is constantly evolving. I think this is important most of all, because a life devoid of meaning, is, well, meaningless.