I've finally done it

Now before anyone gets their hopes up in regards to my personal life... Sorry I have to continue to disappoint you there. I'm still waiting for the next dating experience to rekindle my hopes that its even worth getting out of bed in the morning.

Now what have I done you may ask? Well I finally had the gall to send in my resignation to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I didn't take the usual route instead finding an e-mail of an individual working in the membership records department and created a short little form letter following the model of others who had done the same thing.

I did that on Jan.1 2011 and chronicled it here at The Mormon Watchdog as part of a new venture I will be undertaking from time to time. The opportunity of conveying thoughts in spoken rather than typed form seems even more cathartic.

It seemed a worth while new year's resolution to finally go through with it all. The corporate institution that has become synonymous with Mormonism is becoming an ever increasingly hostile place and since I will never be going back to it officially getting out of it only seemed to make sense.

Many people who leave the church out of either extreme duress or just personal choice often report a sense of relief and peace. When I had no such release it naturally warranted further investigation. Perhaps because I was using it as a bit of a media device, or, GASP, did I still have favorable feelings for the church? And then it occurred to me that I had genuinely left the church long ago and hence the lack of noticeable fulfillment.

It has been over a month and no response or acknowledgment from any church official. My small experiment of trying to avoid the church's intentionally difficult hoops has not yet succeeded. Should nothing result in the near future I may end up taking the more conventional route and being far more aggressive in demanding an appropriate response.

While I will save some of my fodder of "anti-mormon" propaganda for another day or my show I continue to be affirmed that Mormonism is neither the church of God nor Jesus Christ. It is and continues to be the very thing its founder created - one of ambitious falsehoods intentionally perpetuated to deceive those not willing to fight for that which really is truth.

What makes Mormonism so successful is not that it bears a message of any sort of truth but those who are sympathetic to its message are apathetic to God's genuine truth as revealed in Christ Jesus. Mormonism is neither just nor supports justice. It is not passionate neither does it exude compassion. It embraces love as little as it loves those in its embrace. It is a trap in life's fog of the unsuspecting, the non vigilant, the apathetic, those who seek an easy formulaic way out of mortality so as to be endowed with the same powers God is purported to have.

My dear friends this is not the good news of Jesus Christ. He came not to add to the law and make you waste your lives doing unending "ordinances for the living and the dead." He came to fulfill the law. It is grace through faith that saves us and not "obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel (aka just saying yes to corporate Mormonism)."

While indeed being a former LDS person has poisoned my hope that God even exists it seems to reason the least that I can do for my gay breathren is say... Get out of "the church." It needs you less than it wants you. Don't squander your light under the bushel basket of Joseph Smith's fervent imagination. Place your light on the light stand that it may give light to the house. Some may indeed be called to course correct the errancy of Mormonism by letting their light shine with in it that the LDS people may become part of the true body of Christ. Only you will know if that is indeed what God has placed before you as your path. For you my fellow homos my prayers of God's richest peace, abundance, and ample portions of his divine revealing spirit. They will be tough times for you. My call was elsewhere in the masters vineyard preparing a way for those seeking a better way.

For those who do not have this charter upon their heart and spirit... get out! Leave it be. Let those who are called work the fields and burn the chaff of inequity. The rest of the world needs your gifts and talents and most certainly your love. Don't squander it by burying it in the infertile soil of the LDS institution. Let the living waters of the true Christ given on the cross grow your gifts. We need you where you can fulfill your measure of who you were created to be.

Have courage in that which is just and right and not that which is deceptive and false. Yes the elect have indeed been deceived... have the strength to realize you may have been one of them. I certainly was. Yet there is a wideness in God's mercy that even Thomas S. Monson will never be able to comprehend. There is a love that even Dallin H. Oaks or Boyd K. Packer will never come to fathom.

Bring your pioneer spirit to where it really needs to be and find true joy!