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Agnostic Testimony 8
Faith Won't Make The Earth Flat… Again.

by Brandon Hobbs

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Excited to find this site, and anxious for feedback.

I was born into a Mormon home in 1972, and raised in a Mormon community. I left for a 2 year mission in 1991 with a less than convicted attitude, but I didn’t know what else I could do. Three weeks into this experience I “found God, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon.” My dad made the comment in a letter to a family member that “Brandon now sounds like a car salesman at the world expo.”

I graduated from Ricks College (BYU-I), married in a temple, and up until 7 or 8 months ago actively taught our youth that masturbating could kill ya! I feel silly now when I look back at my reasoning for why “truth” and “faith” was so obvious. Non-believers just didn’t get “it.” Maybe intelligent design was behind my exodus… or maybe I just took some time to look, but when I accidentally browsed some information, I may as well have been Nicholas Cage at the end of “Matchstick Men” when he found out the girl wasn’t really his daughter, and he had been duped a cool million.

I was laughing and I was crying. I spent 2 years of MY LIFE convincing people that their world was empty without the “truth.” I paid A LOT of money to a church whose holdings are approaching some of the wealthiest in the world, and which, at the same time, will ask a member college student to donate money to a building in honor of its leaders. I have relived break-ups with young women I loved next to “God” because they weren’t members.

The leap from Mormonism to agnostic hardly does justice to the word “leap.” It has been a shuffle at best, a focusing of a camera lens. I’m amused, and sometimes irritated by the comments from Christianity. “When you want to read the real word of God…” Funny I’ve read the King James several times and thought I had some handle on it, rather than just one author, how about a group effort, or “When you want to have a personal relationship with Jesus come talk to me” Wow so he is a jealous exclusive God”, or “Now you haven’t turned your back on God have you?” I’m so sick of religious cannibalism I can’t stand it. The same logic that takes me from Mormonism is the same nail in the coffin on faith and God.

The good news is I’ve found a strange bit of peace in it. I have found a shift in myself that creates urgency for living RIGHT now. I have no control over the past, and my future is no longer spelled out or guided by a higher power that I am absolutely sure of, so…life is now. That’s beautiful in a tragic way.

I guess I could go into all the literature and get analytical, but there are far more intelligent people on this site, and for me its just kinda cool to reach out and share with some that have some views that may now align closer to mine than ever before. I love to talk and am open to challenging more of my belief systems if people are interested as well.

Thanks

Brandon