pre-exit 7: maturing viewpoints

I went through seminary in high school as a star student, loving the chance to talk about things we didn’t talk about in Sunday School. I thought we were bringing up the “real issues.” Getting deep into the Gospel.

When it was time to apply for college, I only applied to BYU. Why go anywhere but the Lord’s University? I wanted to go, because I was supposed to go. I really believed that’s where God wanted me to be. Get a degree, find a nice Mormon husband. What could be better?

In college, I was away from home, learned some critical thinking, and expanded my life experience. Yes, even at BYU. I ran with a crowd that had no problems criticizing things about the church that they didn’t like. Like how we were supposed to “go forth to serve” but BYU put such an emphasis (read: money) on sports and business school, and not on service majors like social work. Gaining exposure to different people and ideas modified my testimony, chipping away at things that I would have labeled “culture” but I didn’t realize were culture before. But I never let anything touch the fundamentals. I could apply critical thinking to the Oneida experiment, or to functionalism, but not to the fundamentals of the church.

Any criticism began with “I know the church is true, but…”

“I know the church is true, but I just don’t understand this policy….I know the church is true, but sometimes I just can’t stand singles wards.”

Any criticism was okay, because I never let it call into the question the Truth of the Church. Criticisms were “really” only about culture, practice, policy, maybe the church, but not doctrine. I thought.

By the end of college, I was more liberal both in my thinking about Mormonism and politically. I don’t think that’s what BYU had in mind, but that’s what happened.

In college, I met and married my husband in a temple. Everything was going as planned.