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Beefster wrote:
I have decided for now, for the sake of balance, to continue to go to church and hold a TR until this is resolved completely one way or the other.
The beginning of my faith reconstruction in earnest began the moment I realized matters of faith will never be resolved completely. It is uncertainty and ambiguity that make faith possible. Certainty is an enemy of faith, the desire for certainty destroys faith. In our mortal state learning and progression comes through “letting go.” We must be willing to lose our “life” to find it.
Hi Trailblazer, It is difficult, challenges abound. I just try to focus on positive things and allow people to believe whatever they do. In time you may be able to re-frame the troubling topics, and just let them sit as they are. Paradigms change with new information. Let me take a stab at the items you mention:
Polygamy – yes it is in our history, no I would never practice or defend it. We know leaders make mistakes, could this be one? It wouldn’t bother me to say it was.
Seer stones – a relic of the culture that our church rose out of. They were used as a tool or catalyst of spiritual things, it is not the same today that is okay. The same can be said for speaking in tongues at meetings etc.
Book of Abraham/Mormon – not a translation of the papyri (gold plates not used in translation), does that remove all spiritual value from the text? Joseph may have misunderstood the connection to the source, does that change the value I personally receive from any wisdom I read in the text?
You are on the right track looking for the good, hang in there! It does get better with practice and time.
I have a few more thoughts so please excuse me while I continue. 🙂 If we are to remain a true and “living” faith we need to not become fossilized. Some have critiqued that the correlation program could have an unintended consequence of making a fossil out of our church. Living things grow and change. There is a danger in “looking back”, getting stuck in the past and becoming a pillar of salt.
One of my favorite Brian Johnston quotes: not saying Joseph thought he was a fraud but considering the worst case scenario “even if Joseph saw himself as a fraud, he still got some things right.”
ConfusedMolly wrote:So, how can I stay LDS when I’m questioning if Joseph Smith even had the first vision… if he was even a prophet… Because if he didn’t have the first vision and if he wasn’t a prophet, I’m left in a very scary spot.
I’m upset, I’m scared, I’m confused, I’m heartbroken…
It is extremely troubling when everything gets turned upside down, I’ve been there. Over time I have fortunately been able to reconstruct a faith and a life that includes the church. Today it can be too easy for me to dismiss the ideas that I used to have, and I sometimes forget how I used to think and feel.
Today I say “why reconcile Joseph? This isn’t the church of Joseph Smith.” As Terryl Givens says “we shouldn’t be singing praises to any man, we should be praising Christ.” The power of God is manifest through the very weak tools (men) he uses to accomplish his work.
With time I have learned to lean heavily on a few key points:
– Men are and always will be weak fallible beings, all mankind. “Don’t trust in the arm of flesh” We have to rely on direct communications of the spirit. We can use promptings from men to get us rolling, but we need to turn to the spirit for our personal answers.
– Don’t expect everyone to receive the same answers. People are unique, the way they think and understand will be too, the Lord gives answers according to our ability to understand.
– Religious culture is always as fallible as man. It is very easy to be caught up and led astray by culture.
– Power corrupts, the higher the level of power the higher the chance of corruption. This is human nature and applies to all humans.
– The church is more of a tool or a process than a destination or trophy. Daniel could have misunderstood his purpose in waxing Mr Miyagi’s cars or sanding his deck, we may initially misunderstand the full purpose of our church membership.
Most of these questions have been answered in books and interviews of people who were close to him. He was supposed to tell all after he was sentenced and in prison, but those interviews fell apart after a while. OON has the right idea and my understanding is he wouldn’t take visitors or talk to anyone anyway. dande48 wrote:
… But uncovering the exact location would “take away our need for faith” and “frustrate God’s purposes”, right?
That is my position, and why I have no interest in discussions that rely on an assumption that the BoM is literal history. The only way to hear God’s voice in the book is through reading the pages. Finding proof of a landscape or people that matches the text does nothing toward helping someone personally know Christ. I consider it a waste of time, and possibly related to pride. To me everything about the book says “take me on the merit of my message alone.”
I DO believe in Santa!! This is the key:
DoubtingTom wrote:I might get hung up on whether or not there is a literal Father in Heaven that we are trying to become more like, but that doesn’t change that I believe it’s important to learn and grow and improve from our experiences.
I was in much the same situation Tom. Forgive me for not reading everything in this thread, but I agree with the theme of working to love and rise above. For me and my marriage I realized I needed to reflect on what I DO believe. I may compare the Santa story to the church a little more than I should, but I like to focus on how much I do believe about both. No I don’t think there is a single man dressed in a red suit that flys around the world in one night and gives a gift to every child, but I deeply believe in the spirit of Santa. I don’t believe God would want me to believe in the nonsense, but I do believe good grows out of seeing good. If you get hung up on the term “God” maybe you start there. We all see what we are able, we all create our own meaning for the intangibles. We get into deeep deep do do when we try to make our own personal conception of intangible or eternal concepts look exactly like what we think others views are.
Let it come to you, then trust in your own relationship with the eternal.
Among the good ideas already shared, and because I don’t have time to write a book length reply… One thing I consider often is the idea that our purpose on earth may be boiled down to personal growth. If we take that seriously we are constantly putting events of life into perspective, asking “how does this contribute to my growth?” “How can I use this to become a better person?”
Opposition can aid growth. I can find different types of opposition during my 3 hours in church.
Eugene England’s essay: Why the Church Is As True as the Gospel
http://www.eugeneengland.org/why-the-church-is-as-true-as-the-gospel Edit:
I really appreciate the question and have a couple thoughts to add. Mormon Matters podcast has been a big help to me, listening to different ideas and framings of church topics. If you have time in your day during a commute or whatever, pick a couple episodes that look interesting to you.
They often speak from a foundation of personal spiritual experience, don’t get hung up on this. I have learned the idea is to give huge leeway to the term. In my own experience I may say I didn’t know how to have a spiritual experience until I lost belief in God. Ironically that loss opened me up to new possibilities, and in that openness I had the most profound spiritual experience of my life. As I allowed the shackles to fall off my own image of God the most incredible concept of love and human connection began to sprout in my heart. I like to use the common language: “God began to reveal himself to me.” Be open to what will come to you, live with a curiosity and a sense of wonder.
Ashley wrote:
I’m trying to remember this as I heal ” You either get bitter or get better. It’s that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.”
I love this. I am an odd type that sees value in the struggle, enough that at times I feel myself resisting a change in the church that would make it more accommodating to those of us who see things differently than the average member. I am the parent that hopes my children can experience the life changing struggles and rise out of them to new heights. It is common for parents to want to pave a smooth path for their children in life, to give them “everything”. I have seen what “success” in that effort can do, and I’m probably judging but I see those children grow into underdeveloped adults.
Welcome!
The idea of the overloaded shelf works so well because there is not just one thing. Some “heavy” items for me included the messy practice of polygamy, and believe it or not the idea of a 6000 year old earth. I was fascinated by the Ice Man that was found and other evidence of much older civilization. Too many things in our history combined with science that didn’t fit into the paradigm that I had acquired/built. Heber13 wrote:
Orson, I think as #2 become more solid and established and accepted, the talks in #1 get retrofitted to make it work with well established theories. Don’t you think?
Not necessarily, maybe this is associated with my willingness to throw literalness out the window.
“Are we in Hell?” Yes of course. We are also in Heaven. One cannot exist without the other: there is no darkness without light…
The way I see it the church has two “minds” on the subject: 1) In Sunday school class when referencing the mission to the Lamanites we understand what they meant by Lamanites, and go with the flow – effectively stepping back in time to adopt their understanding.
2) The modern research and direction you refer to.
