I wasn't religious until... well lets say I was invented to start attending church when I was in the fourth grade. And so my sister and I started to attend church with a teacher, whom we respected and admired, and who later became our sixth grade teacher. And to a religion my mom grew up in, but was not an active member. Does the jargon sound a little familiar?
Now I don't know if other religions classify their members and their routine attendance by active or inactive, but to clarify things up for people who are unfamiliar I'm talking specifically to about the LDS religion.
I had my feeling of epiphany that the church was true, just like the missionaries said I would, shortly after their lessons, which would be the beginning to my journey of my faith. I wasn't completely new to the church. I had been blessed as a baby and even remember earlier years in primary. After the lessons from the missionaries my sister and I were baptized by my grandpa, then we followed suit. Church on Sundays to keep the Sabbath holy and because it made your day "just so much better", attending all the meetings and extra curricular activities during the week because "you were putting God first in your life", and when you couldn't find answers to your questions you would "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith."
I think back on my times of anxiety and guilt reflecting on myself and whether or not I would make it into the celestial kingdom, whether I was worthy enough to; whether my nonmember dad, and other beloved nonmember relatives, would choose the church in the afterlife or miraculously be converted in this life; whether my inactive mother, grandma, grandpa would ever become active again so we could be a "family together forever." I would try to suppress my anxiety with my faith by doubting my doubts and bleach my guilt when I gathered enough courage to confess my sin. Then motivating myself to remain worthy by reminding myself I didn't want to have those same feelings of guilt ever again and to remain happy and clean. But I still always feared I was never truly clean again and therefor not clean enough and wouldn't make it into the celestial kingdom? But would i even be happy there if I wasn't with my family? I just had to remember to bring in the full circle to doubt my doubts before I doubted my faith.
But don't worry because the people who didn't learn of the truth in this life, will get the opportunity to in the next. And we are blessed to get to know the truth in this life, but will be damned if we ever deny it. I remember being jealous of the people who didn't know of the true church and got to be worldly with the promise of a clean slate in the afterlife. Where I was damned when I sinned because I denied the truth leading me to think I would never make it to the celestial kingdom while the non-truth knowers got a one way free ticket. Jealousy, another sin.
I left for college with a clean confessed slate, to a place where no one knew of my hypocritical sins and for a new start to maybe being truly clean. Until I made friends, who gave me my first home away from home, and led me to question the definition of family and rethink again "family together forever." I wanted them and their sinful selves with me in heaven. And then I put myself in "temptation" and opened my mind to the sinful side of opposition. I felt guilty of course and hypocritical again which led to a lot of confusion, because I sinned, but didn't feel sinful. I still felt like the same me people had befriended and loved.
I asked tough questions searching for answer because "ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" Mathew 7:7-8. But I got tired of not being heard with the reiterated answers people told me because that is what they had been taught their whole lives.
I even thought I would be a better Mormon when I transferred down to Utah, but it was the same stuff different day. I finally got tried of being told there was only one way to believe and that is all what religion is trying to convince you of. To me it was like saying there is only one true and right way to live and we all know that isn't true.
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