In view of Tal Bachman’s recollection of the events that took place during a meeting 5 years ago with his then stake president is being questioned by this same stake president 5 years later, I thought it would be valuable to post some of Tal’s original RFM posts regarding his meeting with this stake president from 5 years ago. Tal has been gracious enough to grant me permission to repost his thoughts.
Note that Tal's posts were orignally made on RFM within 24 hour of his meeting with his former SP. As a lifelong member of the church who was struggling to maintain belief, Tal’s story resonated with me so I saved most of his posts. I think it’s important to point out that #1. Tal's story remains consistent through the years #2. He took copious notes following his encounter and #3. His recolection of his meeting is collaborated by his wife's enounter with this same stake president a week later. I have left his posts exactly as he posted them 5 years ago...but may not be posted in the order of their original posting order.
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Unreal. You'd think a guy slandering me (wonder if I could sue...?) could come up with something better than "everything"...lol
But on the other hand, I said and thought a lot of the same kinds of things when I was in church. It's probably karmic justice. I was just as stupid.
Oh well. Truth is, my "sin" was to volunteer, despite the fact I was also to a significant degree running our branch here, to teach the Old Testament in Gospel Doctrine class, and to really, really study it hard. I was as shocked as I can imagine being turning up problem after problem, the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, the totally bizarre and disconfirmed Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible (yeah, I know it's not "canonical" - but Joseph Smith said it was finished, didn't he, despite what the apologists tell me?), and it just went on from there. Each time I tried to find an explanation for what seemed like a devastating problem, I just found more problems. The witnesses, the DNA, the different First Visions, the revival issues, the changing Moroni/plate stories, the confidence schemes, the out of control sexcapades, everywhere I looked, every way I approached, all I found was more and more to be concerned about, more and more that seemed only to be able to equal "fraud".
And the only time literally that I went on to the internet for anything was to go the
www.LDS.org or FARMS site - I've got a zillion books and articles and wanted to stay away from the "anti-Mormon" stuff on the internet. Little did I know that virtually everything I would much later see on so-called "anti-Mormon" sites I had already found in OFFICIAL church resource books, or histories written by Mormon historians working out of the historical archives.
And of course, what can I say about FARMS that hasn't already been said? To encounter yet ANOTHER devastating problem, and then to go running so hopefully to those ridiculous FARMS articles and reviews, each time hoping to see the problem solved, but each time seeing, after close reading, that the fundamental problems weren't solved at all (leaving me to conclude that there really WAS no faith-promoting response), I have to say, was truly agonizing. Even now, they seem to have no clue how bad their stuff is. So be it, I guess.
The first time I ever did look up some non-church or FARMS stuff on the internet was also the last time I would ever sit down at my computer as a still believing Mormon - I went looking for Stanley Kimball's Ensign article on the Kinderhook test results, and then ran a google search to try to find a copy of the original Walmart. Clayton diary entry about the mysterious plates that Joseph Smith had gotten from Kinderhook, Illinois. I read Clayton's diary entry - and all of a sudden, everything seemed to melt, and I just knew. I knew like BH Roberts "knew" that Clayton wasn't inventing the story (see OHC Vol. 5). That was like the 18th smoking gun or something, and all of a sudden, in the most surreal, shocking experience of my life, I knew. The good news - I solved every single problem I had been trying to answer. The bad news was, my entire life seemed to implode...
And you can tell your advisor, if he cares, that very far from being an unwillingness to repent of a sin, or that I had "stopped praying", I had never prayed more in my life than the two years I was serving as GD teacher and wading through this stuff and helping run the branch. I might be ill-informed about some things, but if I am, it could only be because the men who started the church misinformed me, because it is their words above all that I focused on and took seriously. The sad truth is that taken in totality, they tell a story unlike the official story now, and there's just no way to make that go away.
Before that moment, I had been very emotionally reserved always. Once it all clicked, I spent the next several weeks crying very easily, to the point where I was genuinely embarrassed, totally mortified. Our entire lives - lives that I had never had a complaint about at all - would change, and the truth is, for the first little bit I wanted to try to get back into the bubble. But you just can't unsee what you've seen, or unknow what you already know.
As I've mentioned before, I felt relieved (and nearly as shocked as that Kinderhook moment) when in a meeting with my SP, he said that he felt sure that many of the founding "events" of the church didn't happen the way they are reputed to have happened, but that that didn't matter really, since the church made us better people. I even asked him if I should resign my callings now that I knew the founding events hadn't happened, and do you know, he said, "I don't see why you should, if you're willing to stay in the church and try to have spiritual experiences". That blew my mind. I was the second counselor at the time. Literally, I could be the Branch President right now (the other guy was about to be released when I went) of the Salt Spring Island, BC Branch of the church, called by an SP that knows I know the stuff didn't happen. But it wouldn't matter as long as I didn't make a big deal out of that fact. Or whatever.
But after thinking about it for a week or so, I finally thought, "I can't live a lie". So, I left. I guess not wanting to live a lie was another one of my big sins.
I wonder if I'll really go to hell for actually doing what I thought I was supposed to do - devote probably 20 hours a week to my callings, actually read things like the Official History of the Church, Joseph Smith's diary entries, the scriptures, etc., pray more intently than I ever had while holding all my FHE's, family scriptures, the whole bit, and then, after my Stake President conceded to me that Joseph's stories very well could all be fabrications, decide I won't lie to my children, and told them what I had found, and what my SP had admitted.
All I can say is, I'm very much at peace with my decision. I feel as though God could walk in to the room right now and I would be happier to see him than ever; and harbour no doubt that he would feel about the same way most of the six billion people on this planet would on the topic of the truth or falsity of Joseph's claims.
T.
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My story would take an entire book to recount, but in a nutshell...
My entire adult life, since leaving on my mission, I was on the Packer/Benson ultra right wing of the church, and never had a complaint at all. I based my whole life on the church, getting married right after my mission, having seven children, etc.
I became the Gospel Doctrine teacher in January of 2002 (Old Testament), and continued on throughout 2003. As a result of the intense study I undertook in that calling (in order to do the job I thought I was supposed to do), I, to my surprise, kept uncovering more and more disturbing indications that Joseph was not a prophet in the way he was reputed to be. Absolutely certain I would find the answers to the questions that kept popping up, I began in earnest to try to find those answers, consulting all the resources I had (I think I have every notable church book ever published, without exaggeration), all the FARMS stuff I had, all the Nibley stuff, everything; but the more I tried to get the answers, the more I just kept finding more and more problems.
To clarify, when I say problems, I don't mean "Joseph married a fourteen year old". I mean, evidences that are devastating to Joseph's supernatural claims, like, that the eleven witnesses didn't actually see any plates, ever; that Joseph's religious stories, as Isaac Hale noted, bore an unnerving resemblance, structurally and stylistically, to the con man stories he told while trying to dupe gullible farmers into paying him for necromancy; that his claims for the Book of Moses are literally impossible; that the Book of Abraham "translation" of the Book of Breathings scrolls, is no such thing; that the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible is shown to be a fantasy by every available ancient Biblical text ; et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
Anyway, this went on for two years, until I wound up reading over the Kinderhook Plates incident in the History of the Church. I then tracked down the original diary entry of William Clayton, and read it - and in that instant, everything clicked. In that instant, I knew that William Clayton hadn't made his account up out of whole cloth, as essentially alleged by Stanley P. Kimball in his bizarre 1981 Ensign article about the forged Kinderhook Plates; but moreover, Joseph's whole (actual) story clicked, every question mark vanished, and I realized, to my total shock, that the answer to all those otherwise totally unanswerable questions, was that Joseph Smith had not had the kinds of experiences he (eventually) claimed to have had. The church was a fraud. Because of this, my life, based as it was on the church, was something of a fraud. In that instant, I almost wanted to climb back into the bubble, so fearful was I about life on the outside. I never wanted out - all I had wanted was to stay in, and I naïvely thought that since the gospel was everything I thought it was, that studying would answer questions, not prove that Joseph Smith was just another one of the thousands of charismatic religious geniuses this planet has known.
Distraught, I visited with my stake president, who to my amazement, said that he too knew that many of those stories had not occurred as they were reputed to have, and who implored me to stay in church since it was "a good way to live"!
I considered this for a week or two, but then, once my wife started to crash (she did a bit of research after I dropped the bomb on her, and realized I was on to something), and once I began seeing the church for what it really was, I resigned my callings and never went back. This, though up to that time, I had been the most devout member I knew!
That was last October, I think (one strange thing is that over the course of those first weeks, I totally lost track of all time. I felt so overcome and emotional and upset, that I literally could not tell whether I had met with the stake president a week earlier or four weeks earlier. It was the most surreal time of my whole life...). I have not even been able to remember the conversation I had with my wife, in which I told her it was a fraud. I was in a total stupor of shock for weeks.
I can remember my meeting with the SP with great clarity, probably because I reiterated the entire conversation to my wife over the phone immediately after walking out of his office, and also because I typed up a description of it when I got home, and also, because he said essentially the same thing to my wife about a week later. But beyond that, the weeks between October and December are a total blur. I rarely show emotion, but whenever the church thing would come up with my wife during that period (which it did constantly), I would start tearing up again. It was really embarrassing!
I began posting on here as Rosebud, and then finally, a few weeks ago, I started talking about it publicly. I was flattered that the Globe and Mail, which is Canada's version of the NY Times, did an article on me leaving the church.
Now, people who were lauding me as a Mormon hero mere months ago, are now accusing me of "going anti", as if I've been posessed or something. But I'm not "anti" at all - the truth is, I couldn't care less what happens to the church. It's not what it claims, but so what? I am about as upset about that right now, as I am that the Raelians aren't what they claim. Bottom line is that I gave my whole heart and life and soul to the church, and my whole adult life is testimony to that; and it stands as all the rebuttal I need to make to those who now are spinning every kind of yarn about my "apostacy", or who are accusing me of every kind of secret desire to sin, etc. The sobering truth is, the only reason I'm out, is that the church isn't what it claims. But that's not really my fault, is it? It's not really my fault that I found out that Joseph Smith fabricated his tales, anymore that it's my fault I found out that Paul H. Dunn made up his, you know? How was I supposed to know that (as one might expect if it were fraudulent), the most damning evidences of the church's fraudulent nature are to be found in its very own literature?
Besides, the church doesn't need any help from me in destroying "the gospel"; it is doing spectacularly well at that job itself, posting links to totally apostate FARMS articles (which the church funded), on its official website, which contradict the explicit identifications by Joseph Smith - and (supposedly) Jesus Christ himself in the D&C - of Natives as "Lamanites", etc., revising downward the concept of eternal progression, erasing plural marriage from Mormon theology and history, etc. Who needs an "anti-Mormon", when Gordon B. Hinckley's running the church? All the Tanners need to do is stand back and enjoy the show. No, they don't need me. If anyone's "anti", it's the guy demolishing a century and a half of Mormon theology right before our very eyes, funding the demolition with the tithes of the very people basing their lives on the thing - not me.
What I do care about, though, is that people have access to information relevant to ascertaining whether Joseph Smith had the kinds of experiences he claimed; if they have acces to it, but either choose not to look at it, or look at it and decide to stay in anyway, is really up to them; I have to respect their freedom to decide. Who knows, they may have different needs than I.
But speaking of "anti", I guess I'm "anti" being lied to, whether those lies are of omission or of commission. I don't know what kind of institution tells lies to its members, and then when they finally get sick of being treated with such disrespect and disdain and dishonesty and resign, tells THEM that THEY are the ones doing something wrong for leaving, and then tries to scare them into staying in what can only be described as a profoundly abusive relationship. It sounds just like what you hear down at the woman's shelter every night. I mean, whatever you call that kind of institution, I no longer want membership in it, and I no longer grant it any influence over my life. That I didn't see it for what it was, was a result not only of my own willful blindness, but of my ignorance of the extent of the deception required to keep things going.
If Joseph Smith, as can be easily demonstrated, NEVER used "the plates" ever while producing the Book of Mormon, but rather, dictated the entire (original rough, grammatically retarded, trinitarian) book while staring at a rock in his hat, why shouldn't that fact be made known to members?
If, as can be easily demonstrated, the eleven witnesses didn't actually "heft" any plates at all, but rather, all saw them "in their mind's eye" or in vision, why shouldn't that fact be made known to members?
If the Book of Abraham "translation" was a blow-out, ditto?
If the Book of Mormon's central claim - that American aboriginals are Israelites - is now known beyond any sane refutation to be false, why should that not be made known to members?
After all, if the Holy Ghost is as strong a testator of the truth as is claimed by church leaders, I can't see why they should have anything to fear from information. If it is in error, shouldn't the HG make that clear? And if it is accurate, wasn't the whole thing supposed to be about truth anyway? There is no justification for a church claiming to be "the only true church" behaving in this way. There certainly, however, is an explanation...
Anyway, the point is, why should the survival and growth of "the church" be more important than "the truth"?
That's a question only church leaders can answer for themselves; but for me, it can not be more important than the truth.
That's why I resigned.
Best,
Tal
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Hi Loving Member
Thank you for posting. I appreciate your kind words.
I hope you won't be upset if I point out that your note, though I know it is well-intentioned, contains among other things the same tone of presumptuousness I have experienced in virtually every communication directed toward me by those who still believe the church is what it claims.
In your response to your assertion of mindreading powers in saying that you "know" I "don't believe the rumors about Pres. Hinckley", I would like to ask, "What rumors?" I'm not believing any rumors - I'm believing my eyes. I mean, this is a serious and fair question: If the doctrine of eternal progression does not mean enough to Pres. Hinckley to stand up for (and it has been three times now he has clearly downplayed it, in three different reputable news organs), how can a rank and file member be expected to base his entire life on it?
As for your comments about re-reading the scriptures, it was an intense, and I might add though you'll disbelieve it, totally sincere immersion in the scriptures over the last two years as gospel doctrine teacher that really made clear to me some of the profound problems with many of Joseph's claims. Don't get me wrong - I think Joseph Smith has as much claim to being a bona fide prophet as any man who's ever lived; it is only that he is not a prophet in the way he or LDS claim.
The Joseph Smith Translation is, to quote another commentator on Mormon scripture, a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end, and that is clearly demonstrable by comparison with the far more ancient Biblical texts we have now. The Book of Moses is a total smoking gun (I posted a piece on the Book of Moses if you'd like to search it out on here), in that Joseph unwittingly restored to its pristine condition the first few chapters of an original "book of Moses" (Genesis), which in fact never existed, and could not have been written by Moses; Genesis, as is the case with the other narrative books in the Old Testament, is a meta-history of the Israelites compiled by a later Israelite historian (probably Ezra) utilizing a number of original histories, which he spliced up and tried to arrange in chronological order.
So if, as I think will become clear to anyone who takes the time to dive in to study, the Joseph Smith Translation can not be what he claimed it to be, what does that mean about his claim to prophethood, at least in the way we understand prophethood? (and by the way, if the JST is what Joseph claimed it was, why hasn't the church canonized it? Why instead has the church pointed out explicitly in the LDS version of the scriptures that it is merely an aid? No, it is NOT true that Joseph "never finished it", unless of course Joseph himself was lying when he claimed to have finished it. I suggest to you the possibility that it has not been canonized because it clearly is problematic in a totally unsolvable way, ie, it is not, and can not possibly be for a number of reasons, an "inspired translation" or restoration of deleted text, and church leaders know it).
I next undertook the Book of Abraham, and no, the Book of Abraham's original source papyrus scroll isn't "lost" (as if one day, a papyrus scroll might show up that will be translated by Egyptologists into basically the current Book of Abraham!) - there is just no way to explain Joseph's "translation" of the papyrus scrolls that even the church quietly admits he used for at least the first two chapters, without admitting the possibility that Joseph's "translation" was the same as his "translation" of the Bible - an imaginative story from a prodigiously gifted religious genius (who in this case took his cues from Josephus's tellings of Abrahamic legends - and yes, Joseph had the Josephus book, and even quoted from it).
I should acknowledge the other attempt at explaining how Joseph Smith could have claimed that a very common funerary texts containing instructions on how to make it in the underworld with no mention of Abraham at all, could be the Book of Abraham: that he used it merely as a device or trigger for receiving revelation. The only problem with this theory is that it is contradicted by Joseph Smith himself, who clearly thought and stated publicly and privately that he had translated the hieroglyphics (even going so far as to compile a dictionary and grammar, which by the way, is beneath the dignity of criticism, and a copy of which is available for purchase if you're interested).
By this time completely freaked out, I sought to prove to myself that the Book of Mormon was indeed an ancient text; but my reading of that provided not answers but an ever increasing amount of questions that did not appear to admit of any answer other than that Joseph had composed it. This is not to say that is it not "scripture" in some sense, or that it is not "inspiring" or whatever - only to say, that it cannot be what it claims to be, an ancient text translated by Joseph from golden plates.
As I read, and re-read, the textual and structural giveaways seemed to pile up higher and higher. And I should add that at the very, very least, Joseph Smith by his own account has to be credited as a co-author of the Book of Mormon, since he revised enough passages, a number of which had important doctrinal implications which he changed, for the second and third editions. And I'm not even getting into the many other issues that all point to 19th century authorship under the hand of a young man brimming with ideas, and completely immersed in frontier America evangelical Christianity (with not the faintest idea of what Israelite religion looked like in 600 BC). Not bad - and to tell you the truth, anyone who can pull what Joseph pulled off, probably deserves to be worshipped (this is what he felt apparently, since the "second anointing" he instituted as part of the endowment ceremony included a woman kneeling before her husband, anointing him, and worshipping and deifying him).
Even the testimonies of the eleven witnesses imploded under the merest scrutiny, as I read several of them recount how that yes, they had seen the plates, although not in any physical way, and at least according to Martin Harris (claimed to be reliable by Mormons), the eight were pressured into signing a document written by Joseph that at least some felt uncomfortable about, since it represented that they had actually physically handled the plates, when in fact nothing of the kind had happened - which is to say, the individual testimonies of all eleven witnesses make pretty clear that none of them ever saw any plates, within the realm of physical reality. And I won't even explore the fact that the FARMS guys are filling their diapers right now trying to explain away the fact that out of thousands and thousands of samples of Native Americans from North, South, and Central America, NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON tested bears ANY genetic affinity with ANY semitic people, let alone Israelites, and ALL show overwhelming Asiatic ancestry. As proof that this is known by the church, I prophesy right now in the name of myself that the claim contained at this moment in your edition of the Book of Mormon stating that the book contains the history of the "principal ancestors" of the Native Americans will be REVISED OUT OF EXISTENCE in the next edition. I further prophesy that the church will continue to revise out of existence the bothersome little doctrine (unfortunately contained in the Doctrine and Covenenats and attributed to Jesus Christ himself, and preached for the last 175 years) that the Native Americans are Lamanites, or Lamanite descendants.
And then, for heaven's sake, we get into the Kinderhook fiasco, and I'm sorry, I defy anyone on the planet to read the diary entry of William Clayton, a man whose diary is otherwise faithful and reliable enough for the church to base much of its official history on, regarding Joseph's comments on his preliminary translation of plates the church now admits were part of a hoax, and DISBELIEVE IT. It is not possible. The Stanley Kimball spin job in the 1981 Ensign piece is completely sad - it is not possible to read the comments of Brigham Young, Parley Pratt, William Clayton, look at the broadside Joseph published, READ THE FIVE PAGES DEDICATED TO THIS INCIDENT IN THE BH ROBERTS' HISTORY OF THE CHURCH, etc., and then deny that Joseph thought they were genuine. He thought they were, just as he thought the Egyptian papyrus scrolls were written in Abraham's "own hand" (even the church admits now that can't be true), and just as he thought he was restoring lost scriptures to the Old and New Testament, and just as he thought he had located the actual rocks used by Adam to build an altar in Missouri, just as he thought excavations in the Yucatan peninsula had corroborated his ripping yarn about Jews making it to the Americas, etc.
But, you know, I really don't mind if you believe it all. I wouldn't say you were making a mistake. That it is pretty easy to prove that the church is not what it claims doesn't mean it isn't a good thing for some people; for you, it might be great, and the question of whether foundational events like the First Vision, Restoration of the Priesthood, the visit from Moroni, and what Joseph's own words suggest about the nature of these experiences, took place within the realm of physical reality or not, might not be as important as whether right now you are being spiritually fulfilled by church membership. And who can argue with this? I'd even probably agree with you. If this is the best thing out there for you, I say go for it.
I appreciate your concern for my salvation, but I am totally at peace, I feel more spiritual than I ever have, I feel a more intense love for my wife and children than I ever have, I feel a love for God and my fellow men that I never ever have before, and the many inconsistencies within the LDS gospel (I'm talking about the many changes in theology over the years, etc.) that appeared to have no possible explanation, now have one. It's not the one I ever thought it would be, and it was very difficult for me to come to accept that explanation, since I have been on the "suicide bomber" Packer/Benson wing of the church my entire adult life and have made literally every decision of my life in accordance with what I could gather was the gospel way; but now that I know, I feel really grateful (if still a bit surprised), but mostly really at peace.
I have no animosity toward the church, although I feel that some of what the church does is morally wrong (ie, collecting tithes from people I taught on my mission in South America that were literally sucking on beef bones for dinner, in order to run a historical archive in which documents are kept secret which are, judging from the few that have been smuggled out over the years, completely damning to the church's claims about itself. If the church is really what it claims, why hide anything? Do the GA's not believe enough in the power of the Holy Ghost to let people know the church is true despite these documents? It is not right to demand so much sacrifice from so many struggling humans on the planet, and then have men like Elder Packer announce that "facts don't matter" when Mormons are writing history, etc. And yet, I don't feel a hatred or anything - it is just that this behavior is not right).
Perhaps to assuage your concern, I should say the following: Did you know, my concerned friend, that I have communicated about smoking gun issues with the First Presidency (at the behest of a member of the twelve), with an apostle, with a seventy, with institute directors, with BYU religion professors, with stake presidents, seminary and institute teachers, with bishops and gospel doctrine teachers, and have blown literally thousands of bucks on every pro-church resource, including all the FARMS and Nibley stuff I could lay my hands on, even making trips to Utah to collect resources, to try to reconcile what ended up as TOTALLY IRRECONCILABLE PROBLEMS? Did you know I'm the only guy you'll ever have any contact with that took full-time institute classes for an entire semester? You don't need to worry - this isn't like I wanted to start smoking or something and looked for a way out.
It is just that.........the church is not, and can not possibly be, what it claims. I know you have felt the spirit; I know you feel that that experience has confirmed to you that the church's claims must be true. It is also true that virtually every human being on this planet has had those exact same kinds of experiences, even the not particularly religious. People have spiritual experiences. All kinds of people, in all kinds of places, within all kinds of religious traditions, and though the words they might use to explain them are different, there is one constant - all of those experiences are absolutely real to the person having them. The Muslims blowing themselves up in supermarkets in Israel feel every bit and more of that burning in the bosom that you feel; and the Christian that responds to the altar call and confesses Jesus feels it every bit or more than you do, and the Jew, looking over the Passover table at his children and grandchildren, participating in a ritual thousands of years old, connecting through that act with his ancestors and his posterity, feels it, too. It is part of being human, and part of searching for the divine within us and above us.
The author of the Book of Mormon essentially claims that feeling moved spiritually is an objective proof that the Book of Mormon is everything it claims to be; if you have surveyed the human family and your own soul and come to the conclusion that this is tenable, I sincerely wish you the best. I do not deny that you had this experience.
I also do not deny that I too have felt incredibly spiritually moved in many different ways, and I feel that a spirit of peace and joy has moved upon me as I have tried throughout my life to really understand what the gospel means, and never more so than now.
My questions about the behavior and motivations of Pres. Hinckley aren't provoked by "rumors"; they have been provoked by Pres. Hinckley himself, as I have listened to him on television and radio interviews, read transcripts of others, read print interviews, etc. I wasn't the only TBM puzzled by much of what he's done; and I feel positive that he's raised numerous eyebrows among the GA's themselves. How could he not have? The only way not to be puzzled or concerned is to not actually have listened to him all that much in these interviews. It is hard for me not to wonder if perhaps you might fall into this category.
In any case, the church will become what it will become, and whatever will happen will happen, and as I said, even though it is not and can not be what it claims, it obviously works for you and others, and that's fine. I wish you all the best.
Rosebud