Recommend renewal question

In most cases, the bishop will want to see you are willing to commit to living it going forward as more important than the past. They do not want to keep you out of the temple, and usually try to find ways to work with you to achieve their objective of assessing worthiness in their eyes while helping to encourage people to meet the requirements so they can be allowed to go (from their perspective). Perhaps there are circumstances and reasons you have not for the last month or so, but to pass the recommend interview, he will want assurance you are willing to try going forward.

Interviews only occur every two years. Lots happen in those periods of time, things go up and down. Give yourself credit for how long you have paid in the past and all your sacrifices that God has accepted.

If going to the temple to be there with your brother is important for you, sacrifice for that and be honest and sincere in answering the interview questions, even if some are answered as vaguely as they are asked. To me, the most important question, and most difficult to pass is the last one: “do you feel you are worthy to enter the temple?”

If the interviewer is reading the questions word for word, you will not hear the name “Joseph Smith” asked in the interview.

The question most closely related to your post above that you may wrestle with is:

Do you have a testimony of the restoration of the gospel in these the latter days?

Have you thought about that and studied that? It does not say the church, it says the gospel. It also does not say Joseph Smith anywhere in the question. It also does not ask if you have 100% certainty without a shadow of a doubt (some people read into these questions too much). It asks if you have a testimony, and I think testimonies are always in progress, working towards strengthening them…not 100% knowledge or 0% belief. It is a Yes/No answer, which to me does not mean 100% or 0%. It means 0% or anything else. 2% belief in the restoration of the gospel, is still a small testimony.

As Ray has mentioned several times on this site, sometimes we put our own words and meanings to the temple recommend questions, but if you really look at them and parse them, you may be surprised what they are actually asking at a basic level…and that we may be wrongly assuming what the intent of the questions really are or how they relate to the complexity of our thoughts and experiences.

That is not to get sneaky and slippery around your answers. It is to be as honest with the actual questions as we are with our answers to them. You have to be the one comfortable with the answers you give. They will take you for your word, however you answer.

If you really are at 0% belief in the restoration of the gospel, it is better to just say that, and be OK with where you are, and support your brother by waiting outside the temple to love and support him with enthusiasm from where you are.

(ray probably has the links)

😆 :clap: 😆 :clap: 😆 :clap: 😆 :clap:

That’s all for now.

“Full reboot” is a great way of describing it. I think you are brave to face that and plow right on through. Gosh, it sounds to me like you are straining at very small technicalities. That’s my opinion. There a whole section on the temple recommend questions in our “How to Stay in the LDS Church …” article http://staylds.com/docs/HowToStay.html

I echo what others said. Read the questions, and look to see how minimal they really are. Members read FAR FAR FAR too much into them. The Brethren know what the questions are, and they worded them that way very carefully. They also counsel BPs and SPs to NOT deviate from the wording of the questions. I don’t think it takes any effort to read an implied permission for a liberal interpretation into that. They want people to attend the temple.