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Here’s a little status update on this. We had to put everything off. My family got infected by this nasty cold virus that’s really contagious, and it’s taking us a few weeks to work through it. The missionaries have dropped by twice to see how we’re doing, and we just have to keep telling them that we’re still sick. We’ve rescheduled the baptism for Jan 18th, but I’m not sure if we’ll end up having the missionaries over before then or not. I know that when I was a missionary, I probably would have shrugged off the idea of getting sick, but having just lived through this one, I really don’t want to pass it on to anyone. I have been compulsively checking this site ever since I found it a few weeks ago. I work from home and all my work is done on the computer and most of it online. The temptation to skip over to the boards is so tempting, and I admit I’ve even put off work to do it. For me, I’ve felt so alone with my faith struggles for a lot of years, and suddenly finding like-minded people that I can open up to has been so liberating and exciting. Maybe in a while it will wear off a bit and I’ll be able to moderate myself better. Early in our marriage, I told my wife I did not feel comfortable paying tithing. We talked about it, and her opinion was that it was up to me to decide whether and how much to pay tithing on what I was earning. She had her own job and paid tithing on that. When she quit her job to raise the kids, she had no income to pay tithing on and I continued not to pay on the money I earned. The bishop didn’t revoke her recommend. It’s been that way for us in five different wards, and so far we haven’t had a bishop that felt it was problematic. Whatever you decide, you definitely need to be on the same page with your wife, as much as possible. I like the idea of splitting the funds. I wish I’d had that suggestion when my wife and I got married. We do all our finances together. We don’t spend anything without talking to each other first. I have always considered the money to be ours together, not mine alone. I may be the one whose name is on the paycheck, but I couldn’t do it if she weren’t at home taking care of the house and kids. I wish I had applied that idea to tithing, too. Maybe it’s time for another talk about it with my wife.
This isn’t a talk or an official church resource, but I liked it a lot. Someone posted it on another topic here recently. A lot of it talks about missionary work, but the basic idea boils down to the fact that people can tell when you’re being fake. Love and service are the real key. http://puremormonism.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/why-dont-they-like-us.html ilovecoldplay wrote:I even have a notebook full of ideas and thoughts to help me make church work for me and how to handle things and I bring it to church and read it sometimes in church. ( I hope that’s ok ) I just can’t remember everything so I have a few things written down.
I totally have a notebook full of stuff from this forum, too!Interestingly, when I brought up this topic with my wife, she did quickly agree that most of the things people say they “know” from the pulpit are actually beliefs to her, not knowledge. I hadn’t really thought about how often we use the word “know” in other contexts where we don’t really expect a rigorous version of the truth. However, I would call that just a matter of context and formality. The person who asks if you know what time Jimmy gets home isn’t in a formal, life-and-death, or eternal-salvation type of situation, so it doesn’t matter if they fudge things a bit. But I would definitely call it fudging, in an understood context of informality. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that knowledge is just a state of mind. That’s too relativistic for me. As skeptical as I get sometimes, I still like to believe that there is an objective truth. And when you’re in a setting where statements are specifically being claimed as objective truth, I don’t feel right fudging. I think it’s important to be able to justify beliefs in order to consider them knowledge, and claiming knowledge when there is none is a good way to set up others for painful disillusionment and/or mistrust. So it does bother me to some degree. But I don’t expect everyone to feel the same way I do. It’s not like I’m not sitting there seething during every fast and testimony meeting.
The talk by Richard Rorty that mackay11 linked to (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjhVk-0Vhmk ) gave me some interesting perspective on this, however. There’s the idea that the idea of intellectual rigor doesn’t have to matter as much in religious contexts, as long as it’s not doing anyone harm. What matters more in those contexts is personal happiness.Mom3, I think the secular response to your questions is that everything has to be held as somewhat conditional. Nothing physical changed about Pluto. The only thing that changed is how we understand it and how we talk about it. Science is flexible that way—as soon as new evidence comes up to challenge what we previously believed, we have to change our beliefs. But we also can’t commit too strongly to any given belief, because it might turn out to be inaccurate. We have to reserve the right to change our minds based on new evidence. In that way, our beliefs slowly come closer to the truth. The process of gaining knowledge is probably never ending. Mackay11, thanks so much for linking to that video. I remember studying some pragmatism in college and thinking that it was such a radically different way of looking at things that I couldn’t ever get fully behind it. That was back when I was TBM. Shortly after that I became agnostic and started to favor existentialism, in particular Kierkegaard’s idea of the leap of faith. It was the only way I felt I could justify believing in God. But Rorty’s talk was really appealing to me. There’s a lot in common between pragmatism and existentialism that I hadn’t realized before.
I like the idea that evidence really only matters within the context of a specific group of people with whom you’re working on a common enterprise. Outside of that group, what matters more is individual happiness, and that’s where religious faith has a legitimate purpose.
Ray, you’ve made a big difference for me even in the few short weeks I’ve been on the forum. Good luck with your hands-on service, and I look forward to seeing you around here when you can, as well. Thanks again. Hi, Lostbutfound. I’m also fairly new to this forum, and I don’t have a lot of advice to give. Mostly I’m receiving advice. And there’s a lot of it to be found here. You are definitely not alone—there are thousands of us who have lost our faith and had to find new ways to move forward. Sometimes that means gaining new faith, or reinterpreting our old faith. There are many others here who probably have better advice than me (like Journeygirl), so I will just say know that you are not alone. If you have specific issues that are really troubling you right now, please feel free to post about them. This is a place where you can feel free to talk about your issues without fear of judgment. new6 wrote:I am new here but have been in an ongoing faith transition for several months. I started on NOM, but am really trying to focus on the positive and stay in the church. That is hard because, even several months in, the negative stuff is still “new and novel” so that is what my brain wants to focus on.
Welcome to the boards here. That’s why I’m here, too—I don’t want to dwell on the negative. I’m trying to stay committed to the church, and I need positive vibes and support, not negativity. I look forward to seeing you around here.I’ve always found it a little odd how much emphasis is placed on missionary work when church doctrine also teaches that people will have opportunities to embrace the gospel after death. Even the saving ordinances can be performed for them. Why is it so urgent to bring the word to everyone RIGHT NOW? Every now and then I hear people say that it’s harder to “convert” in the afterlife, but all the explanations for why that might be just sound like wild theorizing to me.
Excellent, thanks for the additional comments. I like the idea of “becoming the best him” and trying to do better when he makes mistakes. I also admit that I only read up to page 7. 
For a while I was feeling totally convinced that paying on net made the most logical sense. Then when talking to my wife about it after dinner, I realized that maybe I need to change my mind. The money you pay in taxes may not ever see your bank account, but you still get something out of it. It pays for you child’s education, roads so you can get to work easily, law enforcement, etc. If the government weren’t taking care of those things, you’d be obligated to spend your own time and money on such needs as they came up. Would you then exempt all that money from tithing? Church doctrine requires us to obey the law; so is paying taxes really that different from other required spending like rent or electricity? I get needs and wants met by taxes as much as by other things I pay for. The line starts to feel even more blurry when I start to look at it that way.
I’m just glad that when the rubber meets the road, the official stance leaves it up to individual interpretation.
