Not Because I Lost Faith, but Because I Chose Truth
I didn’t set out to change what I believed.
I set out to understand it better.
For a long time, I thought faith meant certainty—having answers neatly arranged, questions resolved, and doubts kept at bay. I believed loyalty was a virtue in itself, and that obedience was the same thing as trust.
But over time, I learned something difficult and freeing:
Certainty can be manufactured.
Truth cannot.
What Fell Away—and Why It Had To
What eventually collapsed wasn’t belief in God.
It was belief in:
- Institutional infallibility
- Curated history
- Authority that could not be questioned
- Stories that mattered more than Scripture
- Loyalty that required silence
Those things didn’t fall because I attacked them.
They fell because they could not withstand honest examination.
And when they fell, I discovered something surprising underneath.
God Was Still There
I had been told—directly and indirectly—that God lived inside the institution. That outside of it was confusion, deception, and loss.
That turned out not to be true.
When the structure was gone:
- Prayer became honest
- Scripture became clear
- Repentance became real
- Faith became quieter—but deeper
I didn’t lose God.
I lost intermediaries who claimed to speak for Him.
What Scripture Became Again
Without manuals telling me what to see, Scripture began to speak for itself.
I noticed:
- How often Scripture confronts power
- How rarely God defends institutions
- How central repentance is—and how personal
- How little patience God has for performative righteousness
Most of all, I saw how consistently Scripture points away from systems and back to relationship.
That’s when the words of Yeshua stopped sounding symbolic—and started sounding present.
What I Believe Now
I believe:
- God is not owned by any church
- Truth does not fear scrutiny
- Scripture does not need rewriting—only reading
- Repentance is relational, not institutional
- Faith is trust in God, not certainty about systems
- Authority must always be accountable to truth
- And obedience without truth is not faith—it’s control
I believe God kept His Word, just as He promised.
And I believe that when something claims to restore what was never lost, it reveals more about itself than about God.
What I No Longer Believe
I no longer believe:
- That questioning is weakness
- That loyalty equals righteousness
- That God requires fear to keep people faithful
- That truth needs constant reframing
- That history must be softened to protect belief
If something is true, it will endure the light.
Where This Leaves Me
This journey didn’t leave me with fewer convictions.
It left me with simpler ones.
I don’t need to have everything figured out.
I don’t need to defend God.
I don’t need to explain away evidence.
I don’t need to belong to feel accepted by Him.
I need honesty.
I need Scripture.
I need humility.
I need grace.
And those things have proven remarkably durable.
If You’re Still in the Middle
If you’re reading this and thinking:
- “I’m not there yet”
- “I don’t know what I believe now”
- “I’m scared of what this might cost me”
That’s okay.
You don’t have to arrive anywhere to be faithful.
You don’t have to replace one system with another.
You don’t have to rush clarity.
Truth unfolds at the pace integrity allows.
A Final Thought
If your faith only survived by avoiding questions, it was fragile.
If it survives honesty, loss, grief, and truth—
then it was never built on illusion.
God is not afraid of where this road leads.
And neither do you have to be.
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Where You Can Go From Here
This series doesn’t tell anyone what to believe.
It simply makes room to believe truthfully.
If MormonLandings becomes a place where people can breathe, ask, grieve, and rediscover God without fear—then this work has done exactly what it was meant to do.
