I Just Couldn't Check My Brain at the Door
When people ask me how I finally got out of the COC, the short answer is that I reached a point where I simply couldn't check my brain at the door. When I was very small, I believed whatever they told me without question because I had no external knowledge or frame of reference. But as I got older, I started to experience a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. Like Neo in the first "Matrix" movie, I sensed that something was wrong but had no words to name or explain it. One of the things I sensed was the inherent hypocrisy of the COC: they talk about love, but tear each other down, they talk about mercy and forgiveness but judge each other harshly, they talk about charity but don't reach out to the community, and so forth. Another thing I sensed, more and more as I went to school and learned about the world, was the intellectual dishonesty of COC doctrines. If you want to be a COC member in good standing, then you are forced to accept things you know can't possibly be true.
So I developed a set of "church beliefs" and a set of "real-world beliefs." Church beliefs included believing in 6 literal days of creation, whereas at school, I learned about evolution and dinosaurs and the geological evidence for the earth being much older than 6000 years. At church, we believed in an alternate history of Christianity, one in which the true church was in hiding while the rest of the world followed the Roman Catholic apostasy for 1500 years. The harshest clash of the two worlds was regarding gender roles; the COC teaches that gender roles are determined by God and that women are subordinate to men, but all around me I saw evidence of women and men living side by side as equals and of women working instead of staying home. Eventually, I felt that I had to make a choice between the two sets of beliefs, because there was no way to reconcile them and I was tired of trying juggle the two mindsets. I was also tired of being asked to accept things simply on the basis of faith or faulty evidence. I wanted a faith that was more intellectually honest.
Of course, because I had been indoctrinated to believe that the COC is the one true and right church with all the answers, I had feelings of guilt over my inability to "let go of self" and blindly believe as everyone around me did. So instead of leaving, I went through the motions, doing as I was told, but internally I held back, so I never truly felt that I was part of the group. I never really had friends in the church, for that reason, and I suppose that it made it easier for me to leave in the end.
It took me a long time, with several missteps, but I finally made my way to the back pew and slipped out the door. I did a lot of studying, praying, and soul-searching, because I was afraid that I was doing wrong by leaving, but I finally had to admit that my faith in the COC was not authentic. It was something imposed on me by my parents (who were doing what they believed was right, so I have absolutely no resentment or anger against them), not something I freely chose. If I had been free to choose, I never would have picked such a dead, restrictive religion, one that stifles individual freedom and makes it so hard for people to love themselves, others, and God.
So I developed a set of "church beliefs" and a set of "real-world beliefs." Church beliefs included believing in 6 literal days of creation, whereas at school, I learned about evolution and dinosaurs and the geological evidence for the earth being much older than 6000 years. At church, we believed in an alternate history of Christianity, one in which the true church was in hiding while the rest of the world followed the Roman Catholic apostasy for 1500 years. The harshest clash of the two worlds was regarding gender roles; the COC teaches that gender roles are determined by God and that women are subordinate to men, but all around me I saw evidence of women and men living side by side as equals and of women working instead of staying home. Eventually, I felt that I had to make a choice between the two sets of beliefs, because there was no way to reconcile them and I was tired of trying juggle the two mindsets. I was also tired of being asked to accept things simply on the basis of faith or faulty evidence. I wanted a faith that was more intellectually honest.
Of course, because I had been indoctrinated to believe that the COC is the one true and right church with all the answers, I had feelings of guilt over my inability to "let go of self" and blindly believe as everyone around me did. So instead of leaving, I went through the motions, doing as I was told, but internally I held back, so I never truly felt that I was part of the group. I never really had friends in the church, for that reason, and I suppose that it made it easier for me to leave in the end.
It took me a long time, with several missteps, but I finally made my way to the back pew and slipped out the door. I did a lot of studying, praying, and soul-searching, because I was afraid that I was doing wrong by leaving, but I finally had to admit that my faith in the COC was not authentic. It was something imposed on me by my parents (who were doing what they believed was right, so I have absolutely no resentment or anger against them), not something I freely chose. If I had been free to choose, I never would have picked such a dead, restrictive religion, one that stifles individual freedom and makes it so hard for people to love themselves, others, and God.
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