Good people, leaving the church

[Libs]

For the record, Libs, I just wanted to say that I think it is wonderful that you have managed to retain your belief in Christ. Because my faith in Christ and in the LDS Church are so intertwined, I don't think I would be able to do this. I may disagree with your choice to leave the Church, but I wish you the best in all that you do anyway. I just wanted you to know that.

Thank you, Sky. I appreciate that.

I can totally understand what you're saying about Christ being intertwined with the LDS Church. Like I said, many who leave, do lose their faith, entirely. I think I had a slight advantage, in not being born in the Church and having experiences in other Christian Churches. I was raised in a Baptist Church, and attended a lot of other Christian Churches, throughout my life. And, although, I did believe (when I was active) that the LDS Church was special and the only true church, I still, did not associate Christ with the LDS Church, alone.

Thank you, again, for the kind words. God bless.

[Sky]

Then your hearts are in the wrong place. Your focus should be on Jesus Christ, not a church, no matter if it is "the true and living church" or not.

My focus is on Jesus Christ - and the people that I believe He has called to be his latter-day prophets and apostles - even Thomas S. Monson and his counselors and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. I don

[BookofMormonLuvr]

My focus is on Jesus Christ - and the people that I believe He has called to be his latter-day prophets and apostles - even Thomas S. Monson and his counselors and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. I don

[Deborah]

I think we should just assume that I'm deceived by Satan as a result of all my recent sinning. Wouldn't you agree?

Of course! You bad boy.

Of course the issue is why one is so sure of something at one time in his life and is so sure of something so opposite at another; how can he know what is real. In other words how do you trust your decision-making ability?

[Deborah]

Just as someone who feels they have been "flimflamed" wants to warn others about the "flimflam" man, so members of the church who leave because of historical and doctrinal issues and discrepencies want to have a voice regarding those things.

Now that is what I'm talking about. To use such words as flimflammed when you are speaking of someone's religious beliefs is very offensive and disrespectful. You may not agree with how others interpret the same history but you don't need to put down another's faith in order to justify your own choices, especially when the evidence is open to so much interpretation and when you may not even have the whole story.

[Mortal Man]

I guess this is where we agree to disagree. I don't have a "Jesus Christ and..." faith. It is solely and exclusively in Him, He doesn't share that position with any mortal man.

I'm insulted.

[Palerider]

Now that is what I'm talking about. To use such words as flimflammed when you are speaking of someone's religious beliefs is very offensive and disrespectful. You may not agree with how others interpret the same history but you don't need to put down another's faith in order to justify your own choices, especially when the evidence is open to so much interpretation and when you may not even have the whole story.

Deborah,

It's difficult for me to understand why you don't see your own words as being just as hurtful and offensive as mine.

"I don't think we probably would if we didn't have some people bragging about how enlightened they've become since learning all the false teachings of the church. That is very irritating to me and rings of self-rationalization. Truthfully if people just kept silent about why they left I don't think anyone would care."

I think it stems from the fact that in truth you cannot see how anyone could leave the church without being screwed up somehow. And you think that gives you leeway to make judgement calls about their character, but heaven forbid if you should get the like in return. It truly shows a lack of understanding of what the member who leaves the church on principle, goes through.

And then your solution is: "Just shut up and go away.....we don't want to hear it."

Can you really be surprised when someone responds to you with little respect when you have attacked them on such a personal level?

Mormons seldom realize that they bring many of their own problems on themselves.

[Mortal Man]

Of course the issue is why one is so sure of something at one time in his life and is so sure of something so opposite at another; how can he know what is real.

Did you believe in Santa as a young girl? I believed in him with all my heart and Christmas was a magical experience. Then I became aware of certain difficulties related to travel times and the lack of a firm rocky base at the North Pole on which to build a toy factory. This caused me to doubt what I'd been taught growing up and I began to question Santa's historicity. I suppose it was my fault really, for sinfully clinging to the outdated North Pole Geography Theory and Global Toy Distribution Model. Perhaps if I'd adopted the more scholarly South Pole Limited Geography Theory, where there is a firm rocky base and numerous pre-existing penguins to assist with toy manufacturing and distribution, then perhaps I could have salvaged my belief.

In other words how do you trust your decision-making ability?

If I can't trust my own decision-making ability then how can I trust my decision to trust somebody else's?

[Hamba Tuhan]

Perhaps if I'd adopted the more scholarly South Pole Limited Geography Theory, where there is a firm rocky base and numerous pre-existing penguins to assist with toy manufacturing and distribution, then perhaps I could have salvaged my belief.

Your problem with Santa, though, isn't really about clinging to one theory or another. You may have 'salvaged your belief' a bit longer by switching theories, but, in the end, the real problem was that at some point the gifts from Santa stopped coming, your parents fessed up, and and then you had to start playing the game with your own offspring. Where would your 'belief' be, however, if the presents had kept coming? Long after you moved away from home? When you lived totally alone? Despite all the doors and windows in your home being securely bolted?

What if the milk and biscuits you left out on Christmas Eve still kept being consumed? What if there really were reindeer hoofprints in the snow on top of your house each Christmas morning? What if the annual presents really were handmade? What if, the year you were really bad but no one else knew it, you actually got a bucket of coal? Inside your secured home, where no one else lived? What if, after having a family of your own, the gifts you and your wife bought for your children were each year supplemented by handmade toys left under the tree whilst you all slept? What if the toys were always exactly what your kids had wished for in their secret letters to Santa? What if several times on Christmas Eve you'd awakened to the sounds of animal snorting and sleigh bells on your roof?

This is why I wrote the following in post #120 above:

Why are people not getting all the promised blessings??!! To me, the great miracle of 'Mormonism' is that it absolutely delivers on its promises.

I didn't mean this question to be rhetorical, either. Increasingly, I'm of the opinion that experience is the asbolute key. I'm a historian by profession, so I'm intimately familiar with the messiness of history and its inevitable contestability. Nevertheless, the reason I dismiss certain contestable interpretations of our past is specifically because my own life in so many ways resembles the 'faithful' version of early Latter-day Saint history.

I suspect that, if my life and experiences more closely resembled the faithless version, I might be inclined to reach different conclusions.

[ERayR]

Did you believe in Santa as a young girl? I believed in him with all my heart and Christmas was a magical experience. Then I became aware of certain difficulties related to travel times and the lack of a firm rocky base at the North Pole on which to build a toy factory. This caused me to doubt what I'd been taught growing up and I began to question Santa's historicity. I suppose it was my fault really, for sinfully clinging to the outdated North Pole Geography Theory and Global Toy Distribution Model. Perhaps if I'd adopted the more scholarly South Pole Limited Geography Theory, where there is a firm rocky base and numerous pre-existing penguins to assist with toy manufacturing and distribution, then perhaps I could have salvaged my belief.

If I can't trust my own decision-making ability then how can I trust my decision to trust somebody else's?

I am sorry the Santa story rueind your whole life and damaged you forever. On the other hand to millions of children it is a source of joy and helps them to understand selfless service.

[blueadept]

I am sorry the Santa story rueind your whole life and damaged you forever. On the other hand to millions of children it is a source of joy and helps them to understand selfless service.

I've always found the verfiable true St Nicolas story much more moving than the Santa story that developed ever was. It's story of true selfless giving and it's rather moving. Perhaps, someday, the BoM story will reach that level of verifiable truth for the world to see and not just the few millions that it reaches.

We shall see.

[consiglieri]

This caused me to doubt what I'd been taught growing up and I began to question Santa's historicity.

I felt a similar way when it finally dawned on me that modern apostles have never seen Jesus Christ . . .

[zerinus]

I felt a similar way when it finally dawned on me that modern apostles have never seen Jesus Christ . . .

What makes you so sure they haven't?

[consiglieri]

What makes you so sure they haven't?

Don't forget to leave the chimney flue open . . .

[Jeff K.]

Don't you know. Consig is sure of everything he says. He has absolute faith in his own omnipotent knowledge of all things LDS. Of course don't research what he states too closely. You'll find the presumed emperor is rather lackluster in the garment department.

[Deborah]

I think it stems from the fact that in truth you cannot see how anyone could leave the church without being screwed up somehow.

That is not what I think. And I don't think everyone leaves because of sin. I know lots of people who left or just dropped off because of things going on in their lives, which had nothing to do with being "screwed up." What I do think is that people for whatever reason give up on a lifetime of belief too soon after hearing stuff that doesn't jive with their perception of what the church should be. And btw I never believed in Santa. I always found the presents in the closet.

When I hear something that causes me to ask questions I have to look at it in context of what I do know. Do you really think that those of us who hold on to the church never had doubts or didn't ask questions? The difference is some things hold more weight than others, and as Hamba Tuhan pointed out a lifetime of experiences which have borne testimony of gospel truths outweighs some snippet of history or some action of a human being who isn't here to defend or explain himself.

I have also come to learn the more I do find out that "facts" change when new facts are found and that some "facts" are actually the writer's interpretation of events and not the actual event. The more that is being revealed, the more the claims of Joseph Smith and the church hold firm. However, it seems to me the critics still are sticking to those bits and pieces they've always depended on to attack the church.

Observing that some "brag" or appear to be protesting too much about their new found knowledge is not the same as calling a beloved prophet a flim-flam man. If you don't think there is bragging on the part of those who leave you haven't paid much attention here and elsewhere.

[Deborah]

If I can't trust my own decision-making ability then how can I trust my decision to trust somebody else's?

I agree to a point. However, sometimes we do have to depend on another's knowledge and ability until we are able to make our own choices.

[Skylla]

Choose Not to Be Offended

When we believe or say we have been offended, we usually mean we feel insulted, mistreated, snubbed, or disrespected. And certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean-spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else.

David A. Bednar, 2006

Just thought you should know

You need to review the board guidelines. This doesn't add to the discussion.

Skylla

[zerinus]

Don't forget to leave the chimney flue open . . .

Perhaps they don't want to cast their pearls before swine.

[consiglieri]

Perhaps they don't want to cast their pearls before swine.

So you believe the modern apostles have seen Jesus because they haven't said they have seen Jesus?

[zerinus]

So you believe the modern apostles have seen Jesus because they haven't said they have seen Jesus?

I believe that your confident assertion that they haven't is misplaced.

[consiglieri]

I believe that your confident assertion that they haven't is misplaced.

I believe modern apostles have not experienced that which they have not said they experienced.

On what basis do you believe modern apostles have experienced that which they have not said they experienced?

[zerinus]

I believe modern apostles have not experienced that which they have not said they experienced.

On what basis do you believe modern apostles have experienced that which they have not said they experienced?

Perhaps you were not around when they said it.

[consiglieri]

Perhaps you were not around when they said it.

And you were?

[Jeff K.]

Remember, Consig does not deal in faith. Someone should have taught Consig that the lack of evidence is not evidence.

Have prophets and apostles seen and met with the God, we know scripturally in ancient and modern times they have. Is there something that states the windows of heaven are closed to the prophets of our generation? Not that I am aware of. Perhaps that is the hope of Consig or rather without evidence he thinks it to be true. Is that not hope? Should we all hope for such things? For those who are not LDS it would necessarily be a hope, since it would undermine their determination that we are wrong. I cannot divine the reason for those who claim membership in the church though, it appears to me to be counterintuitive.

I will not presume that every visitation is marked by a requirement that the world know of it. One wonders, did the Brothers of Jared know immediately that he saw Christ? Are not sometimes the scriptures and the visitations of angels and Christ opened to those who come in later times while perhaps closed to those who lived at that time, perhaps knowing it would do greater good to those who have faith in the future than those who have the pearls before them and yet continue to doubt now?

I know of nothing that explicitly tells me who was visited when. I don't care either. Nor will I disdain and laugh at those who believe it may have happened because they have faith that it may have happened. I will not tell them to keep the flue open, and snicker at their faith.

Christ taught us better.