I read about molecules and dinosaurs and our natural world as a kid, I taught myself computer programming at 12 because I wanted to write my own video games. I love STEM, did well in school, was curious, asked questions, was a self-motivated learner, good test-taker, etc. Thanks to ADHD, I didn’t get much out of class lectures, but I still got good grades by teaching myself the material on my own time instead. I have a pretty good career now in an engineering field.

I look back sometimes and wonder – how the hell did I ever believe all that ridiculous Mormon bullshit for so long?

But here’s the thing. They got me from birth, before my rational brain even formed. I never realized for decades how compartmentalized my brain was. I never realized I applied principles of logic and reason to so many areas of my life – but *never* to my religion. My rational brain grew around religion and thus had a huge blind spot I was completely unaware of.

Until the CES letter took a sledgehammer to the wall between my brain compartments, and let the light of reason shine on my religious/spiritual side – until it grabbed me by the face and fucking forced me to LOOK at my religion with rational eyes, for the first time ever – I had no idea I was being so irrational about such a big part of me.

I thought I was decently smart/rational and that I had explained most of the discrepancies between my religion and the science that my brain loved so much. For example, as a kid, I knew the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, so the earth could not be only 6,000 years old, and anything referencing that must be figurative. I thought each “day” or “period” of creation could have been millions of years, and that God probably used evolution to create our human bodies. But I still didn’t realize how much mental energy I was expending to achieve and maintain that precarious balance.

Before the CES Letter, a my TBM armor had developed a couple of chinks. The first was I had chronic fatigue from a sleep disorder, and found that coffee helped me function during the day after my (TBM!) sleep doctor recommended it to me instead of prescription drugs. I was PISSED when I realized how much productivity I’d missed out on over the years by avoiding coffee!

The second was the November 2015 policy declaring Mormons in committed homosexual relationships apostates and denying baptism to their kids til age 18. That’s the first time I had ever had the thought “I strongly disagree with this thing church leadership is doing and I think they are wrong to do this.” I had friends and family by that point that had come out and they were good people and it was personally offending to me that my church would deny them love and family and intimacy but let me have it just because we were attracted to different genders.

I wonder how long I would have remained compartmentalized without the CES letter.

I also wonder if the CES letter would have worked on me if I hadn’t had that defining, first “I disagree” moment. Was that the key that prepared me to hear the message? What if I had read the CES letter in my most TBM days, when I was sooooo zealous I didn’t kiss anyone til after my mission at age 21, I listened to classical music over rock because it was “more holy”, when I walked out of the historical rated-R movie my high school was trying to show me clips of as part of my education? Would I really have listened?

I guess I’ll really never know.

But the next time someone says “how do they believe that, they’re intelligent, they’re a doctor/lawyer/scientist/smart person/whatever”, I will remember – I’ve been there.

I was one of them.

And I will do my best to not judge someone for being as wrong as I once was.

Besides, and this is out of the scope of this post, truth is subjective, filtered through our individual perception networks and synapses before it gets to our processing centers which are ALSO unique. From the believer’s perspective, the church is true, they are right, and I am wrong. Who am I to say my truth is more true in my head than theirs is in theirs? No one thinks their worldview is wrong.

**Note:** I allllllllllmost prefaced this post with the standard “not to toot my own horn” disclaimer, because of mormon humility training, but I consciously chose to leave it off because I’m exploring what it’s like to actually believe in oneself and be proud of one’s accomplishments without having to deflect or defer to a deity.