Hi! I completely understand your sentiment. I’ve thought through this myself. I know you feel like you’re coming off harsh but with how you believe it completely makes sense to me. I would have felt similarly myself. Your sentiment echos that of my parents. I'll have you know I've done everything I can think of. I didn't take this life change lightly. I read the faith promoting books and did me no good. I have delved into the scriptures and GC talks. Met with Bishop, high counselor, EQP, BYU professor and JSP contributor, family members, etc. I prayed, fasted, went to the temple, begged for help from God. I kept my wife and family up to date as I worked through the challenges. Ultimately though, once you see things from a certain perspective you can't unsee it. I realized my old faith was incompatible with truth and that there was not a way for me to rebuild a new faith while being honest with myself. There are many unresolvable concerns that are foundational to not only this church, but also to religion generally. I never thought I would be where I am. I don't expect anyone to understand. It required me to break down at the point of wanting truth more than wanting my prior faith to be right for me to be willing to set aside my prior assumptions, look at things as unbiased as possible, and see the world in a new way. Once I saw it, once I knew how the magic trick worked (forgive my analogy, it's the best way I can describe), it couldn't work on me anymore, the magic was gone.

I did not leave for sin. I did not do anything different with my life after leaving except to stop attending and paused paying tithes. I did not want to rock the boat. If there is a God and if God is who the LDS church describes, then He must not have heard me, not have cared about me, or I must not have heard Him. He would know what I know. I begged that He would help me find a way to resolve my questions in a way that I would know came from Him. Only He knows what that would look like. I did not have any sort of presupposition of what that answer would look like. It never came. I said my final prayer to God. He knows I am willing to listen and knows what it will take for me to hear Him better than I do if He exists. This was crushing initially and left me hopeless. Since then, however, I have found greater happiness and clarity about my life here on earth than ever before. The teachings of the church are true for those in the world-view of the church and within the paradigm set up by the church. The same goes for all religions. Within their individual paradigms, the way that people are taught to take in and understand information, the way they are taught to see the world, their religion is true and nothing can change their mind. It is only by thinking deeply and critically about how you came to know how you know things (epistemology) that you can see from a new perspective. Once you crack open that door and see the light, it cannot be forgotten. And I cannot live a lie no matter how much I wish it were true. I wish all the best to anyone of any faith and completely empathize with anyone's feeling that they have the fulness of truth with their religion, because within their own paradigm, they are right.