Why do you believe in Christ?

That is such a good question. Most of us just end up accepting whatever we were taught as children growing up. My husband did not grow up believing in Christ and even though he likes the teachings of Christ and has hope in Christ, he does not know whether Jesus Christ was the son of God and did an atonment or resurrection. He never got the witness that the lds church or Book of Mormon or Bible is true so he still does not know, but no longer worries about it. He believes if there is a God, He would be a just and good God and would explain to him why He never got that witness.

For me, I grew up in the church and loved the stories of Jesus. Jesus was the kind of man I wanted to marry. Ever since I saw the movie the ‘Passion’, I have pondered the sacrifice Jesus made for us.

When I was about 8 and saw movies of the crucifixion I would cry and wonder why the most innocent man in the world would have to have the crap beaten out of them for something I or others did. It made no sense to me. I thought, “Why can’t I just repent and then it’s over with.”

When I went through childbirth the first time, it felt like a crucifixion on the cross. I had a difficult pregnancy as it was and I had gone to Lamaze classes and tried to prepare myself for childbirth. I had what doctors call ‘a dry birth” and it was hours of excruciating pain. I was so traumatized and in so much pain that I was passing out often after the birth. I was angry and mad at God for a while that my childbirth had been such a horrible experience for me after all I had done to prepare myself and hoping for a good experience. Then my baby had colic so bad the first year and I was up every 2 hours all night long with him. I have learned from having children the meaning of sacrifice and giving your life for someone. Even, though I know my sacrifice was minuscule compared to anything Jesus suffered, it gave me a snapshot of the atonement.

Then I had children and God blessed me with one of his most rebellious daughters. We went through hell with her. She was bi-polar and had a baby at 16 out of wedlock. She got evicted from one of the apartments she lived in for wild parties at 17. Eventually, she did learn and grew up but no one wanted to rent to her because of her bad credit and evictions without a co-signer. She begged us to co-sign and we told her we would give her one more chance. We made an agreement that we would co-sign for her but she had to obey our rules. That meant no drinking, smoking, drugs, sex, or wild parties in the apartment. That we would have a key and could come by anytime to check on her. Since we would be responsible for any damage to the apartment which she could not pay, we had the right to set the rules. That’s when it suddenly hit me about the atonement. As a parent we often atone or pay the price for our kids mistakes that they can in no way pay for. My daughter, now has two boys of her own and one is just like her and she sends me the most wonderful cards that shows she understands what hell she put us through. She knows we were willing to suffer and pay the price for her serious mistakes so that she could get through these difficult trials of life without totally messing up her life. We did this because of our great love for her. God knows that many children will be born in to homes where they are beaten and treated horribly. Why would any parent allow their child to be put in a home where they knew their child would be sexually abused, beaten, etc? It is because He knew the damage could be reversed. Through the atonement we have the resurrection and will not lay in the grave forever. But, for paying the uttermost price for our mistakes God expects us to follow His rules.

Because of my love for my children I am willing to give my life for them and go through the valley of the shadow of death. If I, as a mere mortal, am willing to suffer for my children and do almost anything to save them from getting into sin, how much greater must our Heavenly Father’s love be for us. Just like I will never give up on my gay son and pray he comes back to God someday. How much more does a perfect Heavenly parent want to save His children that He created.

I don’t fully understand how and why the atonement works, but I guess I just accept Jesus is the Christ and follow that until I know differently.

This is a great topic, especially for this time of year. When I ask myself this question, I think about when I was a child & went to Sunday school in the Methodist church. One of the songs we sang was: “Jesus Loves me”. I remember the feeling I had singing it. It was different than any other feeling. Maybe it was my first spiritual experience. I also remember when I investigated the LDS church. We would go to sacrament meeting & there were about 30 – 40 people attending. They sang like there were 100 or more. With real feeling. I remember having the opportunity to sing in a church choir at the dedication of the Washington DC temple. It felt like I was floating. I am currently reading “Jesus the Christ” again & I get more understanding about who he is & the role he plays in the gospel plan. I look in the faces of my children & now my grand-children with a sense of complete wonder at the story of creation & now I’m apart of it.

Maybe I’m a bit naive. My life isn’t perfect & never will be. But for some reason, the life of Jesus makes complete sense. When I look at it logically, it shouldn’t.

Why would any Father allow his son to be a sacrifice for me? Much less the world.

For me it’s a series of feeling that tells me that Jesus Christ is true. I don’t always understand it but, I feel it & accept it.

Maybe if I had been born a Muslim or Jewish, it would of been different.

For what it’s worth.

Mike from Milton.

I grew up learning about Christ from my Mother, and also at church and primary…especially the songs. When a teen, I remember praying when I was very very afraid one night, and I felt Christ in my room just sitting by me, giving me comfort and peace. As an adult and struggling: that’s when He became even more real for me. Even with His help, I was so lost emotionally and mentally from being emotionally and sexually abused in childhood, it took many years to develop a truly workable and lasting faith in Christ. On the surface I seem normal, all of this abuse had been done in secret and hidden and I was in huge denial. But that said, I can tell you He never left me……I left Him quite often with my disobedience and problems and pain. When pregnant with my second child, I felt this awful real evil trying to sit on my chest and suffocate me, every time it happened, only calling out to Heavenly Father in prayer would make it leave…..then that peaceful feeling of Christ being with me would prevail and calm me. Recently, I was given even more faith in Christ: after teaching gospel doctrine for a year (a calling I did not want because I felt several of the people in the ward didn’t care for me + the former bishop had been awful to me and my son and I was struggling to forgive, so how could I stand up there and teach them when I felt so unwanted? by the way, the former bishop has never come into my class, he goes to the other g.doc. class). The Spirit recently revealed to me that Heavenly Father put me in that calling because I was unknowingly on the road of apostasy and He was saving me from that road. I have spent the last few years seeking to humble myself at the promptings of the Spirit, having discovered that I used pride to cover the pain/denial of the abuse I’ve lived through. As I have pondered His sufferings, and allowed myself feel that some of His blood was spilt for me a huge sinner, I can hardly comprehend His love and charity. I am deeply grateful that His sufferings will take away huge ugly areas of my life. I hope with time to become “a true follower of Christ”.

I believe in Jesus Christ because it worked for me. Results = reality.

Now the paradox in that for me is that I doubt we have much of the actual teachings of the historical wandering Jewish preacher named Yeshua ben Yusef (aka “Jesus”). I’m pretty sure almost all of the New Testament was made up by people who never even met the guy, nor even any of his original disciples. I’m not even that sure we really need a demigod to die as payment for our sins.

But I have been saved through the grace of Jesus Christ… whatever that is. I know what I experience.

I don’t really like to proselytize my particular viewpoints and faith in Jesus. I don’t claim to be right.

Here are my answers though from my perspective:

The idea of a Just world (Law of Justice and Mercy) actually makes sense to me, and justifies the sacrifice of God’s son. It means that in spite of all the carp in this life, eventually things work out and the good people are blessed, the people who are evil get some consequences to help them see the error of their ways, etcetera.

I don’t blame “carp” for the world being dysfunctional. They are no worse than any other fish. 😆

The serious answer to your question: No. It does not seem like evil people are punished or that good people are rewarded, not with enough consistency to be correlated strongly with an orchestrated system of Godly justice. Evil people seem to enjoy quite a lot of blessings while they avoid being caught and/or oppress others. And good people seem to have an awful lot of bad things happen to them, including being afflicted by unrestrained evil people. Good people put up with a lot of carp, and then when enough is enough, they take care of business and get rid of evil people their selves. If God wants to help, he can get his butt down here and get something done. But until that happens, i’m digging in and putting my shoulder to the wheel. Nobody else is gonna push my handcart.

I do think that things generally trend towards the better over long periods of time though. I’m OK with calling that “divine” and seeing some form of higher power in it.

Without that, do we really have a God that we are capable of believing in — one who is committed to goodness and truth?

God seems to like (be committed to) a wild, chaotic interplay of dynamic forces bouncing between polar opposites: good and evil, pleasure and pain, light and darkness, happiness and misery, creation and destruction, form and release. That’s what I see when I look out the window.

When we bring love, peace and comfort to the least of the living, when we create beauty and structure, when we struggle against the chaos to shape forms in the image of our dreams, we are in the service of God. God manifests into world. The Kingdom of God is now, among us.

Are you suggesting we suffer for our own sins? Or that there are no eternal consequences for sinning?

Yes. We suffer from our sins and from the sins of others. Eternity is NOW. Sin, to me, is the label we give to the source of suffering. There are natural consequences and results of causing harm, and the delay of enlightenment caused by pride and disobedience hinder our advancement now.

IMO there are no eternal consequences of sin, no punishment waiting for us. No reward is waiting us either. The reward is now. The suffering is now. That changes when we change it. We remove our self from the chaos when we choose to step out of it.

How can it be symbolic? Symbolic only as a motivator for people to grow and change, without Christ actually suffering? I find the atonement difficult to understand or even accept, except through literal eyes. Again, this is just a question and not a challenge. New ground…

A word of warning here…

This is exactly one of the issues the church authorities called me out for when I got called in for “apostasy” and the BP spent nearly two hours grilling me about the first four TR questions. This kind of statement will not go over well at church or with church leaders or in a TR interview – so be careful how you talk about this subject with other members.