num_pages: 576
description: For the first edition of The Korihor Argument, author Joe Rawlins will be donating a portion of the sale of each copy of the book to help the children of Peru to a better education. Details can be found at joerawlins.com/press  FROM THE KORIHOR ARGUMENT:  “Do you know what I think?” Bishop Lambson asked me. “I think that you never had a testimony.”  Remarkable. A whole life of a man written off in a breath. And by a man with whom I had conversed less than half a dozen times. My whole life as a Mormon dismissed with an actual wave of the hand.  Now that we have discussed Sons of Perdition in the previous chapter, the logic should seem obvious that Bishop Lambson wanted to spare me of his endorsement of my testimony for fear that I had denied the Holy Ghost and committed the unpardonable sin. Like most Mormons, he probably wants to believe that I was never one of the people who could have been so enlightened as to be eligible for Outer Darkness. But he does not know that to be the case.  A better reason for Lambson’s excusing me of ever having fidelity is that it calms his own nerves. He wants the confirmation bias that claims that the only reason that anyone would experience doubts about the Church was because they never attained his knowledge of it or experience with it. That gives him license not to honestly stop and consider the possibility that he is wrong.  “Well,” I answered, “you don’t know me and you don’t know my story.”  Does anyone? I wondered. Does anyone even care? I not only served a mission for this Church, I had suffered for the cause. I had put my name and my family’s name to protect an organization that told me that it was normal to doubt its authenticity but that faith must drive me to disregard that doubt. It is difficult to describe the pain of my sacrifice being so summarily dismissed by an ecclesiastical leader.
language: English
title: The Korihor Argument: A Missionary's Journey Out of Mormonism