For those who felt deceived

[Tabitha]

It seems to me that learning the unsavory facts of church history- which leads to a loss of belief in the foundational tenets of the church, has an interesting way of revealing what a person really believes, deep down. I mean, core values. For some people, all of a sudden it becomes a problem that the prophet said to not have tattoos. Things like gay marriage or other social issues are looked at entirely differently. It may be a question of the chicken or egg thing- which one came first could be different for each person.

For me, I had convictions regarding these things that were separate from my church membership. It didn't matter to me whether GBH said, "No tattoos." I'm in total agreement with him on that. Likewise with gay marriage, chastity, the Equal Rights Ammendment, or just about any issue you can talk about.

That's why, for me, staying in the church is not a problem (with a few exceptions). I find that I'm in agreement with the modern church on almost everything. But now I know it's because I believe in those things, not because someone told me I should believe in them. I think that is a significant difference.

[a5m5a5d]

name='a5m5a5d' date='Mar 15 2009, 09:22 PM' post='1208615826']

It's things like this that give the impression of 18 year olds... not being learned.

Yes I am going to high-school, into college, and questioning life. But I am not sure if I fit into your stereotypical situation of following the "IN-crowd", I mean unless you're talking about Sigmund Freud, George Smith, Ayn Rand, Charles Darwin, Voltaire, Carl Sagan, Nietzche, J.S. Mill, Mark Twain, Edison, and I am sure I have missed a couple throughout human history. Labeling people's search for truth and meaning and understaning of the universe as nothing more than following the in crowd reveals how much thought you've put into this.

Is it too much to assume you've studied all the other religions?

What contradictions have you come across in other religions?

Yes, many times. www.mormonmesoamerica.com

First, I appreciate your sympathy. Why do I have to believe in something to find peace? Instead of finding peace, why can't I already have it?

Is it possible that some leave the church because it is not true?

How do you know this?

reading anti-BOM material is not the same as reading the Book of Mormon.

It's not possible for someone to leave the church because it's not true, because it IS true.

And I know that wickedness isn't happiness and that the only way to have joy and true happiness is through the Savior Jesus Christ, because i've experienced it in my life and have felt the blessings and changes in my life.

[Tarski]

There's a differenc between understanding doctrine, and believing in it and applying it to your life.

....and I didn't do that. Right?

(Oh am I still a Scientologist? You need to start paying closer attention and stop assuming things.)

[a5m5a5d]

....and I didn't do that. Right?

(Oh am I still a Scientologist? You need to start paying closer attention and stop assuming things.)

I don't know what you did, and I don't know who you are or what you believe. And I don't remember calling you a scientologist. But i'm sorry you feel like God chose to pick on you.

[Tarski]

I don't know what you did, and I don't know who you are or what you believe. And I don't remember calling you a scientologist. But i'm sorry you feel like God chose to pick on you.

I think just the opposite. No god ever picked on me.

[a5m5a5d]

I think just the opposite. No god ever picked on me.

Okay. Believe what you will, but why do you insist on being so against what I believe?

[Kyle]

name='a5m5a5d' date='Mar 15 2009, 11:26 PM' post='1208615903']

reading anti-BOM material is not the same as reading the Book of Mormon.

Is it fun to pick and choose what you want to answer?But again, I have read the BofM many times. I would say 4 times all the way through. You are right reading anti is not the same as reading the book, but in any situation in life you want to look at all sides. If you only look at one side, how do you know if it is true? If you look at many sides then you are able to critically think and come to your own conclusion; and this is with anything and everything that one comes across in life. When writing a paper, do you only cite one source? When talking politics do you only listen to one channel? The point I am trying to make is that there have been BILLIONS of people who have gone throught exactly what we are going through. Why not listen to those who have had that experience? Dont the scriptures say time and time again to listen to your elders?

It's not possible for someone to leave the church because it's not true, because it IS true.

How do you know this?

And I know that wickedness isn't happiness and that the only way to have joy and true happiness is through the Savior Jesus Christ, because i've experienced it in my life and have felt the blessings and changes in my life.

Personal, subjective experiences don't carry alot of weight in the real world. You've had your expereince, and Billions of people have had theirs. They feel just as strongly as you do about their convictions.

Okay. Believe what you will, but why do you insist on being so against what I believe?

I am curious if you have ever heard of the persecution complex.

[a5m5a5d]

name='a5m5a5d' date='Mar 15 2009, 11:26 PM' post='1208615903']Is it fun to pick and choose what you want to answer?But again, I have read the BofM many times. I would say 4 times all the way through. You are right reading anti is not the same as reading the book, but in any situation in life you want to look at all sides. If you only look at one side, how do you know if it is true? If you look at many sides then you are able to critically think and come to your own conclusion; and this is with anything and everything that one comes across in life. When writing a paper, do you only cite one source? When talking politics do you only listen to one channel? The point I am trying to make is that there have been BILLIONS of people who have gone throught exactly what we are going through. Why not listen to those who have had that experience? Dont the scriptures say time and time again to listen to your elders? How do you know this?Personal, subjective experiences don't carry alot of weight in the real world. You've had your expereince, and Billions of people have had theirs. They feel just as strongly as you do about their convictions.I am curious if you have ever heard of the persecution complex.

I've read the Book of Mormon and have received a witness that it is true, I need no further witness, especially your pessimistic views. You can continue to believe whatever it is you will, if you even believe anything at all.

[m29173]

No, it isnâ??t, because it isnâ??t wrong! They may think that it is wrong, or come to the false conclusion that it is wrong; but it is not possible for them to know that it is wrong; because I happen to know that it is right, as surely as I know that I am here and you are there.

zerinus

my friend, just because you happen to KNOW the church is right, doesnt make it so in an objective manner. it might be right for you personally, but every jw, scientologist, 7dayadventist etc will tell you the same of their faith with the same convcition you defend your with.

objectively, it is in fact possible to KNOW that religion of any brand is wrong. but since believers make the claim of being right above and beyond everyone else, the burden of proof lies with you...

i'm a listening....but spare me with your "testimony"

[Kyle]

I've read the Book of Mormon and have received a witness that it is true, I need no further witness, especially your pessimistic views. You can continue to believe whatever it is you will, if you even believe anything at all.

Well can you at least accept that not everyone is satisfied with one witness?

Also, if you want, we can stop trading cheap shots and discuss.

[a5m5a5d]

my friend, just because you happen to KNOW the church is right, doesnt make it so in an objective manner. it might be right for you personally, but every jw, scientologist, 7dayadventist etc will tell you the same of their faith with the same convcition you defend your with.

objectively, it is in fact possible to KNOW that religion of any brand is wrong. but since believers make the claim of being right above and beyond everyone else, the burden of proof lies with you...

i'm a listening....but spare me with your "testimony"

What is your testimony

[a5m5a5d]

Well can you at least accept that not everyone is satisfied with one witness?

Also, if you want, we can stop trading cheap shots and discuss.

D&C 6:21-23 "Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I am the same that came unto mine own, and mine own received me not. I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. (22) Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things. (23) Did i not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?"

[spookly]

No, it isnâ??t, because it isnâ??t wrong! They may think that it is wrong, or come to the false conclusion that it is wrong; but it is not possible for them to know that it is wrong; because I happen to know that it is right, as surely as I know that I am here and you are there.

zerinus

No. It really is wrong. Very wrong.

[Moon Quaker]

I didn't feel deceived; I just wanted to live a sinful lifestyle. And I never really had a testimony. Oh, and someone offended me at church.

JUST KIDDING. I couldn't resist (sorry)

For me, I didn't leave the church, per se; I just threw out religion (in general) altogether. So I can't say that I ever felt deceived by the church.

[talisyn]

I'm not sure that it would have made much difference if I had begun to discover the "true history" of the Church and other such things earlier than I actually did -- say, at 16 rather than at 17 or 18.After all, I still believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true.

No kidding. I learned all sorts of stuff in my early teens, so I don't get where people are so and when it comes to church history. People need to learn how to think and read when they are in school. I hear the benefits are life-long

Am I to understand that you knew about Fanny Alger, early Mormon "polyandry", the Egyptological issues about the BoA and the full history and initial uses of the JS seer stone at age 17? Was your first exposure from apologetic sources? Did you get the info slowly bit by bit, line upon line (inoculation)?Well, not everyone reacts to information in the same way. There are many who after reaching OT8 and getting the inside scoop on Xenu and the million year galactic war, stay with Scientology. To each his own.

After reading the Old Testament early church history just didn't seem that odd.....

[beastie]

I haven't had time to read all the replies this morning, but wanted to say this quickly before going to work:

I have less patience than perhaps I ought to have with complaints about how the Church failed to tell Apostate X about variant accounts of the First Vision, or the Mountain Meadows Massacre, or the existence of nineteenth-century plural marriage. I knew about all of these things by my mid-teens, living in a marginally-Mormon family in California.

First, I want to comment that the very statement "milk before meat" correlates with the idea of infantilization. Milk is given to infants because they are not able to yet digest meat. Milk is what is offered in Sunday School.

Second, if an individual has no idea that "other stories" even exist, how do they know to look for information about those things? This is particularly true for individuals who live in areas with very few LDS, and where it's not likely to hear about these things without deliberately seeking out information about these things. For example, if someone has no idea that more than one version of the First Vision exists, how would they know to look for information about it?

Kerry:

The BofM inaccuracies....... now, I just happen to have read just a little bit in the BofM, and read just a little bit about it from a few angles. You are in your very early youth, and so...... realistically and truthfully (not to insult whatsoever here), you can hardly have become acquainted with anything about the BofM. I would be interested in learning what inaccuaracies you found that were so compelling to you. Thanks.

Look, even if you have managed to find a way to come to terms with these issues, it is fair to call things like the existence of horses, chariots, advanced metallurgy, bows and arrows, etc, as "inaccuracies".

[talisyn]

Kerry:

Look, even if you have managed to find a way to come to terms with these issues, it is fair to call things like the existence of horses, chariots, advanced metallurgy, bows and arrows, etc, as "inaccuracies".

I'm not Kerry, but I have to ask...how do you know these are inaccuracies? Were you there? Are you fully comfortable with the idea that you know everything that went on in early Western Hemisphere warfare?

[Deborah]

After reading the Old Testament early church history just didn't seem that odd.....

Actually that's part of why I believe so strongly in the restored church. Reading about prophets of old and how God worked with them and seeing that it is still the same in the restored church has convinced me that Joseph Smith is who he said he was because otherwised he would have glamorized it.

[talisyn]

Actually that's part of why I believe so strongly in the restored church. Reading about prophets of old and how God worked with them and seeing that it is still the same in the restored church has convinced me that Joseph Smith is who he said he was because otherwised he would have glamorized it.

Good point, the similarities between some of the old prophets and the new prophets are striking when you think about it. My own 'crisis of faith' happened at a pretty young age when I read and tried to understand the actions of some of the chosen people and prophets of the Old Testament. I seemed to have more sympathy for those closer to my time period

I stand by my earlier statement though....People need to take responsibility for their own education outside of what is taught in Sunday School. Latter-day Saints are encouraged and in some cases required to do their own studying, pondering, and praying. If you have a firm foundation you will not get swept away by the debris of the internet superhighway *^.^*~

[blueadept]

After reading the Old Testament early church history just didn't seem that odd.....

Having women married (sorry sealed) to two different men while they were both alive doesn't seem odd?????

Okay........I guess.

This aspect of using the OT to justify what was practiced during JS and BYs time never really clicked for me.

[Deborah]

Some of you have talked about your attempts to get a testimony. I don't know what the answer is. I was very young and not a member of the church when I was studying various religions and reading the Bible. I was attending a church I liked but had no plans of joining, mainly because of the Godhead issue which I couldn't accept. When I first walked into an LDS church I knew this is where I belonged. I never questioned anything in the missionary lessons because it all made sense and fit with my Biblical reading.

After joining the church I never did read through the Book of Mormon until I was at BYU and had to read it for a class. But I never questioned it because it made perfect sense that God would speak to other peoples. Of course years later after numerous readings I've not found anything to change that conviction. Joseph Smith was harder to accept. A boy called as a prophet? But then I realized how many boys were called by God in the OT either as prophets or kings and how well that fit in with those stories. Also when I was young I had the privilege of taking classes from Hugh Nibley, Chauncey Riddle, Truman Madsen and Lynn McKinley. These men were of such intelligence and had such strong beliefs that their testimonies filled in the holes in mine until I could get my own.

Of course there have been things which caused doubts, particulary early in my joining the church. But I came to realize that the information was incomplete or I hadn't received it all and because the other things couldn't be anything but true, then I just had to accept those things on faith.

As the years have gone by and I have studied more and listened to more my testimony has only increased. Now I have been listening to the documentary on the Joseph Smith papers and am so excited about this. Everything I have heard so far has strengthened my conviction. On top of that when you take all the scriptures as a whole the gospel as taught by the LDS is the only one that encompasses all the scriptures and fits in with Old as well as New Testament.

Who knows why some find it so easy to believe and others don't. I've always believed in God; never any doubt about that. But I am also a rational person and the Gospel of the restored church just makes sense to me. But on top of that are some pretty marvelous spiritual experiences. I know that others not of our faith have had such experiences as well. But everything taken as a whole it would be pretty hard to dismiss the church, and I was inactive for awhile because of things happening in my life. But never once during that time did I question the truthfulness of the church.

[Deborah]

Having women married (sorry sealed) to two different men while they were both alive doesn't seem odd?????

Okay........I guess.

Perhaps when we have the full story it won't seem so odd. Non-LDS still do not understand the difference between sealings and marriages. There really was not a complete understanding of this in the beginning and all these things will be worked out.

[blueadept]

Non-LDS still do not understand the difference between sealings and marriages.

You would think that a proper understanding could be achieved by open minded people. Zina Young's story muddied the water for me in properly understanding the issue though.

There really was not a complete understanding of this in the beginning and all these things will be worked out.

I trust that it will.

[MichaelW]

Even if humans had existed that long and there were 100 billion people (which is untrue), all who have not heard will have a chance through missionary work in the spirit world.

No wonder you didn't have a testimony, you don't understand a single piece of doctrine. And instead of working to gain a testimony, you tried the easy way and just asked for one. Do any of your students ever come up to you and ask for an A, even though they haven't completed a single assignment?

You'll discover that there are many people who faithfully live the Gospel and faithfully serve missions and desperately want to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but despite those efforts, they don't. I don't know anything about Tarski other that what I've read on this thread, but my story (though shorter, I'm a decade younger than him) is somewhat similar. I was a very obedient LDS kid, obeyed all the "big" commandments, repented when I didn't obey the little ones, went to seminary, never missed a day of church except when I was sick, went on a mission, worked my tail off, followed all the mission rules, and from the age of 15 and for the next five years repeatedly begged God to make good on Moroni's promise, and it never happened despite my hope that it would. I decided to leave the church knowing that my family would be terribly disappointed, knowing that numerous friendships would suffer, being pretty sure that one of my siblings would pretty much disown me (which did happen), but for me to continue being a member would have been hypocritical because I never received the spiritual witness on which I was taught to rely, and I could stomach the disruption and loss of relationships easier than I could hypocrisy.

I'm sure you'll meet people like me in the very near future (if you're going on a mission soon). You can choose to take the attitude you have with Tarski, which is to doubt his sincerity and assume he has some spiritual defect and insult him. And those people like me and Tarski and countless others might think you're arrogant or insensitive or immature, and probably won't want to have any sort of relationship with you. Or, you can accept that we've done our best and been sincere, but for whatever reason it just didn't click. It doesn't make us any better or worse than you, just people with different spiritual or psychological needs. You (and the people you meet) will be better off, and assuming that you continue being a faithful Mormon for the rest of your life, you'll learn to better understand some of those to whom you minister.

Just my unsolicited 2 cents. Take it for what you will.

[busybee]

Man, that does make me sad, and not just because I can relate to the anguish and the futility of the struggle (I spent many days in the Utah mountains on a similar quest the year before). It's also a shame that we couldn't fully enjoy what was such a beautiful place. It sounds like a story of a P-Day gone horribly askew for your companion, though.

a5..., the wise 18-year-old, wrote:

In my experience, it also is not given after years of faithful adherence and diligent study, followed by many days of fasting and prayer. Or by two years of faithful missionary service and constant pleading.

Perhaps it may take a life time of honest pleading and endurance. I'm still asking. I will never give up. I believe the Lord will answer me in His time. He has given us this promise and I have faith that He will fulfill his promise. At the same time, I will try my best fo fulfill my promise to endure to the end. The Lord knows the end from the beginning and I have enough faith to know there is a reason that He needs me to remain faithful until I have that sure knowledge we have all been promised. In my experience, a testimony doesn't come all at once. I have a testimony of some principles, like tithing, and for others, I have yet to gain a testimony. As we continue to try and live the principles we are taught, our testimony of those principles will grow. Line upon line, precept upon precept, until we have the perfect knowledge that we have been promised.