Hello

Welcome, Earl. I hope we can help you and you can help us.

Welcome Earl! I agree with Mikes sentiments. We all have our own struggles. I like the spirit of those that try to understand not only theirs but others. My life has been dedicated to service and fellow shipping inside and outside the church. You could say ,ost of my self worth is wrapped up in it. I like your attitude that you realized you got defensive and are working on it to try to find a more peaceful ground. I grow up with hard lining and realized as I incorporated it in a defensive manner I did not feel peace. Since Christ being called the “Prince of peace” I knew it was not the way even it it seemed right to proudly defend. I’m very happy to have grown up in culturally diverse Los angeles county. It taught me a lot surrounded my many friends of many customs and beliefs to it only be at peace with different beliefs but attain friendship through love and understanding. My most important discovery was learning understand and compassion to people who have different experiences or beliefs doesn’t mean sinning. I’m a strange LDS because I have no taboos with conversations topics as long as the conversation is kept respectful. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on things. I find it helpful to get different perspectives. I hope your experience here is wonderful, respectful and Christlike.

Hi Earl,

Welcome to our community. Glad to have you with us in the conversations.

I still have a long way to go with this. The other night my wife and I were discussing the church’s stance on homosexuality. She asked at what point was the church’s stance made clear. That’s a valid question, but since I didn’t know that answer I got defensive and apologetic and put up my dukes feeling that I had to defend the church. Afterwards I felt awful and realized that I need more practice exploring tough questions in a respectful way. I hope that I can learn that from all of you.

This is such a good example of something important that took me many years to realize — we NEED to make these normal conversations in our church. One of the worst things eating away at the membership, especially younger people, is the forbidden nature of challenging conversations. There’s way too much of a sense that it’s sinful and wicked, or that it’s an attack, when we question things.

We will never come up with good answers and find solutions by pretending issues don’t exist. We’re a church founded on asking questions and searching for answers.

Thanks to everyone for the warm welcome.

Wayfarer,

I live in New Jersey, so not that close to D.C. but thanks for the invite.

Silent Dawning,

I’m not sure what stage I’m at. I can relate to stages 3 through 6 right now. I think my faith transition has been a gradual one over the last 15 years or so. I still feel that the Church is Christ’s church and that the Book of Mormon is what it says it is, but I recognize that church leaders make mistakes. Leaders can make mistakes individually and systematically. I like what someone has said here about how a flawless church would be more like Lucifer’s plan.

Here are some things that I think have helped me have a smooth faith transition.

1) I grew up in Texas, not in the Mountain West. I gained a lot of church experience without a lot of exposure to church culture. Later, at the MTC and BYU, I was able to dismiss a lot of what I didn’t like as church culture.

2) My parents are converts and focused on the basics of the gospel. If you ask my Dad a tricky or speculative gospel question he’ll say, “I’m still working on understanding faith, repentance, baptism, and the Holy Ghost.” While that didn’t teach me how to handle tough questions, I had a solid foundation to weather the storms of tough questions.

3) I heard the strange stories about our past from friends, not strangers. I read a book about possible Book of Mormon archaeology by a Mormon scholar and learned about the limited geography model before all that DNA research was done. I first heard about Joseph’s seer stone from Susan Black’s church history class at BYU. I was presented with controversial topics in a friendly, easy to digest setting. As I learn more about these things, I’m still ok with it.

I realize that not everone has the same experience and that faith transition can be a challenge for a lot of people. I look forward to getting to know and discussing with all of you.

Thanks again.