Happy to be here

Welcome — looking forward to hearing what you say…

Thank you for welcoming me.

I’ve been looking into a number of forums, and stayLDS seems to be an overall positive and varied group of people. I also can see that it’s open to different viewpoints, which is important when we are trying to work through difficult issues.

My experience with church history and doctrinal issues: over the years I’ve gone through various stages of learning about the controversial issues in church history. I was often surprised, but I took one thing at a time. There was a point where things reached a boiling point for me and I had some serious doubts. After taking the issues to God I was able to make peace with them and come through it all with a stronger testimony. That being said, there are certainly still outstanding issues that need answers. I actually kind of appreciate the imperfections in our history because they’ve provided an obstacle through which I became closer to God. As far as doctrine goes, I’ve been very interested in doctrine since I was a teenager. It’s something I’ve actively pursued throughout my life. While I have no special academic qualifications for discussing church history and doctrine, I do feel that I have at least some spiritual qualifications and experience.

Welcome. I do find this site to be helpful and positive and hope you find the same.

I would like to hear the original doubts you had, how you dealt with them , and how they made you stronger…..sounds like a success story.

To briefly answer the question on my original doubts, they were centered around Brigham Young’s Adam-God doctrine, blacks and the priesthood and the lack of public declarations of revelation by our contemporary apostles and prophets though Joseph Smith’s polyandry would also bug me.

My overall concerns was, assuming Joseph Smith was a prophet, it seemed like Brigham Young had messed up a lot of things after him, and I wondered if priesthood authority had really continued in the church. I wondered if we really had true prophets all the way down to today. Considering our modern prophets don’t often speak out about their spiritual experiences I felt like I didn’t have a lot of modern “testimony” from the contemporary apostles and prophet to go on either. At my most negative I would also doubt Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ, and the existence of God.

I read a lot on the issues and thought seriously about them. Some of the things that helped me included the general phenomenon of near death experiences, personal testimonies of direct experiences with Jesus Christ or God from apostles and prophets after Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and various arguments that I gleaned from apologetic sources like FAIR and FARMS. However, none of this fully satisfied me, and I still would bounce back and forth between believing and doubting.

Throughout this experience I continued faithful in my covenants as I knew that was important to receiving instruction from God according to the gospel, and I also prayed specifically to know if Jesus Christ was really the Son of God and Savior of the world, if Joseph Smith had truly been called of God, and, if so, if the priesthood had come all the way down to our current apostles of prophets. This period of my life lasted several months, maybe over half a year. Eventually, after it seemed like I wasn’t going to have the clear and definite answer I wanted, a clear and definite answer came. It was extremely powerful and clear, and, at least for me, it was undeniable. It indicated that the current apostles and prophet indeed did hold the priesthood authority they claimed, which was the only way to fully come to God as the gospel claims. This experience made me more able to trust in God and trust in the less potent experiences I’d had in the past. It isn’t the source of my testimony, but it does quiet my doubts and allows space for me to develop my relationship with God. This increase in faith I experienced has also led to many other spiritual experiences.

All that being said, I still grapple with the salient issues, like the Book of Abraham, but now when I do so it affects my overall faith much less and I’m able to keep a vibrant testimony through it.

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome.

Thanks, Roy. I think spiritual anchors (experiences and answers to prayers) are really important. I feel like they can hold open the space we need to nurture our faith where even great logical arguments and evidences don’t always consistently fight off our doubt.

I just need to point out that we need to be sensitive to people who don’t have spiritual anchors (for various reasons, including, “God maketh no such thing known unto us.”) and recognize the additional difficulty they face in a church that emphasizes spiritual anchors.

Good point. Sorry, if that came off as insensitive. I guess I should take a moment and recognize that I’ve experienced a number of different ways to deal with challenges to my faith, spiritual anchors being a solid one, but only one of them. My trust in Richard G. Scott’s testimony of his own powerful experiences (which I heard in person on my mission) has often helped me through difficult times. Sometimes just hoping and wanting the teachings of the church to be true has been an important part of holding on. I felt like when I acknowledged to God and myself that sometimes I could only hope it to be true and I didn’t feel I had much more to go on than that, I began to feel less dependent on my self and others, which seems to serve as another coping mechanism. In finding a little peace, I shouldn’t forget all the helps along the way.

Acknowledged and agreed.

I was also really happy to hear Pres. Uchtdorf addressing those whose “search for truth” cause their doubts. His address will hopefully create a feeling of belonging for some who have felt rejection in the past.