“Going with the flow” was, in fact, a consideration, until we tried it. I found that you can’t be a non-believing Mormon without losing your integrity and self-respect.

In order to continue taking part of the entirety of LDS church life, you have to return every year for an interview with the bishop in order to renew your temple recommend. At this interview, the bishop asks you if you believe Jesus is the Son of God, and if Joseph Smith was God’s prophet, seer, and revelator. He also asks if you believe the Church is the true and only church of Jesus Christ.

While it may be no problem for some non-believers to say “yes” to those questions, I could not do it.

By not having a temple recommend, you expose your children to all kinds of inner turmoil. Lessons to the children regularly refer to the temple as being necessary for their family to be together again after they die. I remember my cousins agonizing over their belief that they would not be with their parents, because they had not been “sealed” in marriage.

This comment is getting LONG, so I won’t go into more detail to explain why I make the next statement: Continuing activity in the Mormon Church, when you really don’t believe it, inevitably leads to undermining your position as a parent. The Church does a phenomonal job of teaching the children. Based on what they learn, the children, then, question your every move. If you disagree with a certain doctrine, or choose not to follow a certain rule, you essentially project yourself as a parent lacking wisdom.

I have to live an honest up-front life. I have to have a passion in my beliefs. I would be miserable faking anything, especially religion.