cdowis Posted March 18, 2013 Posted March 18, 2013 Lorenzo Snow was in Nauvoo, Illinois, preparing to leave for a mission in England. He visited the home of his friend Henry G. Sherwood, and he asked Brother Sherwood to explain a passage of scripture. "While attentively listening to his explanation," President Snow later recalled, "the Spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon me—the eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw as clear as the sun at noonday, with wonder and astonishment, the pathway of God and man. I formed the following couplet which expresses the revelation, as it was shown me.
bu11fr0g Posted March 18, 2013 Posted March 18, 2013 I think there are similarities to "a flash of understanding": the way we study a concept intently for a long period of time without success then suddently we just get it. In a second everything that was so complicated becomes simple and the solution to hundreds of different questions disappear in a second.There is also some similarity to being "in the zone" for an athletic event. Things that were very hard become much more simple, but also much more effective and easy. Add the sense of goodness&compassionate-love and it comes very close for me. Like a person that gets "a flash of understanding" that their dad loves them and that all these things that his dad had done in teaching and disciplining and protecting were part of a great love.Then add a sense of eternity into it, and I think it is there: "a flash of understanding" that God loves us now and always has loved us and always will.
Questing Beast Posted March 18, 2013 Posted March 18, 2013 (edited) I think there are similarities to "a flash of understanding": the way we study a concept intently for a long period of time without success then suddently we just get it. In a second everything that was so complicated becomes simple and the solution to hundreds of different questions disappear in a second....Then add a sense of eternity into it, and I think it is there: "a flash of understanding" that God loves us now and always has loved us and always will.That's how disengaging from the Church can feel too. The test then becomes years long, to see if the new paradigm or religious world view holds up, and even if it leads to "further light and knowledge". Or if not further light and knowledge, at least inner peace, which for me at least means the determination to be patient with the temporary darkness that is this mortal world.The single aspect that is the most pronounced for me is the wider, yet simpler view, of "God", and eternity, and just how much we are loved.... Edited March 18, 2013 by Questing Beast
Freedom Posted March 18, 2013 Author Posted March 18, 2013 Atheism is a challenge to be sure, but I have sensed a current in Mormonism that is not drawing people away from the light of the Church, but towards other lights that seem to them brighter. It's not in human nature to turn away from light, at least not for long.The research does not support this. Our society is becoming more agnostic. People are not leaving one church to attend another one, they are leaving church altogether.
pmccombs1 Posted March 18, 2013 Posted March 18, 2013 The research does not support this. Our society is becoming more agnostic. People are not leaving one church to attend another one, they are leaving church altogether.More agnostic, yes. I believe organized religion in general is seeing a decline in membership. I do think there is an increasing interest in atheism, but I don't think agnosticism is the same thing at all. There's a greater chance that agnostics will end up somewhere, maybe back in the Church, in some other church, or in this growing group of "spiritual but not religious" who find some personal or small-scale replacement for organized religion.Atheists have found something, agnostics are often looking for something, and I think the greatest challenge to the Church are those who just don't care. The "gentle cynics" that Eric Hoffer talked about; those are the opposite of the Religious. These are people whom we still count as members, who don't attend meetings, and who don't seem to feel the need for religion or want to be bothered with it. They aren't necessarily doubters or antagonistic toward the church; maybe they've taken some offense or find devotion too taxing. Those are probably the leavers we ought to be concerned about. We aren't because we don't see them as having left.I interpreted from your other post that the only way people leave the Mormon church is to become atheist, and that was really part of a story I believed once. But we have plenty of leavers who end up in other circumstances as well.
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