Michael Carota

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Back in 1979, between finals and graduation, while taking a walk around campus, I was handed one of those little New Testament & Psalms by some stranger passing them out.  I was always searching for more information on God and religion, so I took to reading it.  This was the first time I’d ever read the New Testament, chapter by chapter.  I was brought up Catholic, and reading the Bible was not really considered that important.

The social side of life in college hadn’t been that easy for me.  I was bullied, I was shunned, I was middle class, but I was still able to graduate with honors.  I had always been a good student, even before college.  I studied science, biology and chemistry, and French and German to raise my grade point average, because I was good at it. Even though my father wanted me to go to medical school afterward, I went to work instead. I was partying too much to be serious about going to medical school.  A paper manufacturing company was the big employer in my small town, and it happened that my father was president of the company.  I took a job in the paper mill and ended up staying there for the next 30 years.  

My parents brought me up to be a good person, a good Christian, and I thought reading that little New Testament, too, was a good thing.  In reading it, I encountered some verses that seemed to apply to me and my situation like a glove, and this surprised me quite a lot.  It then became my great quest to find the answers and try to figure out what this all meant for me.

A few years passed, and I was still living at home with my parents and my two younger brothers.  One day, out of the blue, some young woman called me on the phone saying she was a missionary from the Mormon Church, and that she and her companion wanted to meet with me.  I don’t know to this day why they singled me out of everyone in the house to call, but I think I remember her saying someone told them to give me a call.  Anyway, I agreed to meet with them.

For our first meeting, we decided to meet up at the public library in order to avoid possibly offending anyone in my family. They gave me one of their lessons, something they called the plan of salvation.  I had no idea what that was, despite having finished reading the little New Testament by that point.  At the end of the lesson, one of them asked me if I believed Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  I had to say I had no idea what a prophet of God was, but I said I would think about it.

By our second meeting, for some unknown reason, I felt that I actually knew Joseph Smith was a prophet, and I told them this. Despite knowing now it was just me talking to myself all along, and despite the hardships and the long journey that followed, I’m still glad now to have had that feeling at that time.

I began attending the church meetings.  But having to work on Sundays a lot, and not being in the habit of doing so to begin with, I wasn’t very religious about going to church.  When I did attend, I always found the people there to be very friendly, but at the same time, not really very warm somehow. Looking back, I can see now just how not warm they really were. Almost as cold as ice, some of them.  From the lessons I was being taught there, I learned that my goal was going to be to work on my problems with smoking and to be baptized.

Being single, I was able to spend a lot of time with the missionaries … for the next 30 years … in restaurants.  I thought it was the least I could do to help the cause – feed the missionaries.  We had a lot of fun going out and doing other things, too.  It took me until 2013 to get my problems with the Word of Wisdom under control, and in 2014, my dream to be baptized into the church finally came true.  I think I must have broken the record for length of time being an investigator.  Now, I thought, I had to get down to the “real” work.

I made it to my temple endowment in 2015, but I sure had questions as to what did it all mean?  I got zero help getting answers to those questions from anyone in the church.  In passing, I discovered Sacred, not Secret, and, by golly, it did provide me with those answers. Shortly thereafter, I read The True History of Religion, which actually made it possible for me to free myself from the chains of religion all together. Turns out “they [really] are ALL wrong” after all; not, they are all wrong except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  What a shock!  What a surprise!  What a relief!  Good job!  Worked perfectly the very first time! 😊

After I stopped attending church meetings, the members stopped contacting me in any way, which also surprised me.  Apparently, I was still naïve.  Not like it was that great every time meeting up with them anyway.  Many times, it was just more bullying or shunning, or rudeness, or mental illness, or some other issue.  Sometimes it was even hard getting a response to a simple “hello.” And for something considered so important and so mandatory, it was also surprising to me to realize my home teacher showed up at my door only once during those two years I was an active member of that church.

I am so glad to be away from all that.  I’m so grateful for the knowledge of the true history of religion.  Now, I wonder: what more good can there be, really, in knowing the Real Truth? I can see that, because of it, I am much more understanding by a long shot of the real plight of human beings and the obligation I have to treat people with much love and compassion. Maybe that alone is so important that it is enough.

 

Michael Carota

mrcworkshard@aol.com

(518) 796-8017

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