I was raised Latter-Day Saint since age 3, and my family, minus my biological father, was very active in our church until I was in my mid-teens. The lapse in church activity was mostly caused by her second husband, who converted simply to marry her after she divorced my father due to his drug addiction. My two sisters were fairly quick to fall away and start doing things that wee against LDS beliefs, such as smoking, drinking, and being sexually active outside of marriage. I, meanwhile, abstained from those things. That mostly gave my mother, who still believed in the church's teaching despite inactivity, the impression that I was more faithful than my sisters. There was only one problem with that. I rarely prayed.
Around the same time that my family generally stopped going to church, the internet, and computers in general, were becoming a staple of society. We got our first computer in the spring of 1999, but, even before that, computers were becoming more widespread and openly available in school. I found myself getting hooked on surfing the web and messing around in image editing programs like Paint and Photoshop. The only thing that tempered my addiction for the next 6 years was the fact that the home computer was mostly my mother's.
In the summer of 2005, my mother left her second husband, who was becoming increasingly abusive toward both her and I. She moved in with another man who had multiple computers, one of which was passed on to me. I would spend the majority of my time on that computer, and, because my faith was fading a bit at the time, I never thought much about it.
In the spring of 2007, the man she had moved in with, and eventually married, abruptly ran off with another woman, pulling the rug out from under both of us. This was shortly after she attempted to renew her activity in the church.
Fortunately for us, my aunt and uncle took us in while my mother put her life back together. Part of that process involved another attempt at returning to church. At that time, I didn't have much access to the internet because my computer was too dated to make use of Wi-Fi. Looking back, I think it was a good thing for my faith because I eventually prayed before going to bed one night. One thing I prayed for was that we'd find a place of our own. About three months after moving in with my aunt and uncle, a subsidized apartment opened up for us, and we wasted no time moving in. While we lived there, I gained steady internet access again. Once again, I was spending most of my time on the computer doing the same sorts of things I did before. My mother again became inactive in church, but this time, I was becoming fascinated by End-Time Prophecy, which helped me remain interested in Christianity in general.
Four years later, my mother and I found our way to Jenks, Oklahoma. Needing help with unpacking after our move due to my mother's health problems, we enlisted the help of the local LDS missionaries, who not only helped with the heavy lifting that my mother couldn't do on her own, but also set us on a path to becoming active in church once again. Seven years later, I was attending church every Sunday, just like I did when I was young, but I STILL rarely pray on my own. I rarely even read scriptures without prompting. It's so much easier to ask Google for pretty much any answer I seek, which, along with the announcement of a "church of AI," leads me to wonder...Am I really a Latter-Day Saint, or should I just join this new tech church? The only things that keep me from deciding to take the latter route are my fears over the fate of my soul and the reaction of my mother. She's pretty devastated by the fact that her other two daughters have no interest in returning to church. I'm considering doing a tech fast tomorrow, but I don't know if I can pull it off. I shut down my computer before taking a shower, only to turn it back on after getting out.
31 Aug 2019, 10:38 am
