My brother knows...

Recently, I finally was able to speak with my brother about the fact that I won't be attending his sealing. We were sitting in the computer room, and he like a good uncle, was playing and laughing with my 16 month old daughter when I finally summoned up the courage. As I told him I wouldn't be at the sealing, tears came to my eyes (I wasn't sobbing or anything, but I was obviously emotional). I told him that I wasn't crying because I didn't believe in the church, I was crying because I felt like he might be disappointed in me for not being able to attend his sealing.
He sat their, quietly listening with a stoic look on his face. I honestly don't know what he was thinking for a while... He just listened to me.

I told him how I had been struggling with belief, or with a "testimony" for years, but how I finally was able to come out of my depression and internal anxiety when I realized the truth about myself: the fact that I didn't truly believe in the church, and that I never really did. I told him that I had always tried hard to be a good Mormon... that I tried to pray and read the scriptures, but that I always felt like I was trying to convince myself of something I felt deep down wasn't true. I told him of the problems I had with church history, of the fact that the church hides or isn't forthright about a lot of it and how to me that felt dishonest. I told him of how the Temple freaked me out, and how it felt "cultish" to me. At this point in the conversation, I realized I hit a buzz word because immediately he said, "we're not a cult!" I replied that I was merely telling him my point of view, and how I just didn't get the whole temple thing. He then asked me if I had gone to the temple recently, to which I replied, "no." Then he said, "Yeah, at first I was weirded out by it but then I got used to it." That's the thing I don't understand, if you're weirded out by something, why would you keep doing it? I spoke with my husband about this, and he made a really good point about how someone might feel ridiculous putting on a clown suit and dancing in public just on a whim (or for eternal salvation), but if they do it more and more, they get used to it, and it even becomes "normal" to them. But that still doesn't keep them from looking ridiculous....

Anyways, after I told him how I felt, and how I didn't want to go to church anymore, I asked him what he was thinking. He told me he wasn't mad at me but that he felt I needed to "be doing something." I asked him to clarify. I even said, if you want me to do something I'll do it. He just shrugged and said, "I don't know."

After a few silent moments I left the room to get a tissue, but when I came back, he was pretty much back to normal, as was I. We went to his room, and started playing video games as if the conversation we just had, never happened. My brother seemed to be totally cool. He was laughing and cracking jokes like he's always done with me, and I'm happy that he knows, so that when his wedding rolls around, it won't be a surprise...

He did say something interesting however, when he was in the process of trying to explain why I should believe the BoM to be true. He said something, and I'm paraphrasing, to the effect of, "I don't know if the BoM is true, I have faith that it teaches good things, but I don't know if it's literally true." The thing I found most intriguing about him saying this, is that I felt EXACTLY the same way a couple of years ago. Which leads me to wonder, if my brother (who is like me in many ways), is on a similar (but different part of) path. I'm not saying I think he's going to leave the church or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if down the road he did. (Not that I'm going to try to convince him to leave, but if he asks me questions, then the pieces will fall where they may.)

Something slightly amusing happened about a week (a few days ago) after I talked to my brother about my true beliefs on the church. He's taking a college class on philosophy, and asked me for help. We then proceeded to talk about logical fallacies... some of note were the fallacy of the appeal to authority, appeal to ignorance, Post hoc, ergo propter hoc and a few more which can be found here. For some reason, the whole time we were talking about these fallacies, it felt like the conversation in between the lines seemed to be: this can be applied towards lots of things, and we see people use these fallacies all the time...*cough* church. I don't know, maybe it was just me... I wonder if he was thinking what I was thinking?