Basics of the church. What do you believe.

I think my honest answer is that I am not sure, but leanings toward much of it being made up. The more I study, the more I seem to feel that way. I have had a spiritual experience that even my very engineering/scientific oriented brain can’t write off as just feelings. Trying to reconcile the two.

But I am past being angry and more now trying to figure out what do I do being in this situation and living with a TBM and in about 6 months having a go-hung RM in the house for a while. I am kinda wondering how that is going to go once he returns home. I am not planning on pushing him, but I may drop a few things that I am struggling with and make sure he knows about the essays (actually I want to find out if they have told them on his mission – probably not since he is non-US and I think I heard the essays are only in English). I will let you all know how that goes.

I believe the same way as Heber13.

I try to focus on the principles taught & not the exact words in the scriptures that teach the principles.

(Does that make any sense?)

I stay away from the administrative parts of the church program. For example:

-General Conference (I read the Ensign)

-Stake Conference (We will have a special meeting next week presumably to change SP’s)

-Ward business or administrative meetings (We had a boundary change this week.)

-I don’t participate in rumors, or many social type programs, etc.

I do have a select group of friends that I trust & share thoughts & ideas with.

I do participate in service programs & Home Teaching.

I set limits about what I can & can’t do.

I believe that JC was the only member of the Church that was perfect. All the rest of us have flaws.

I try to be diplomatic & vocal about my beliefs when necessary.

I haven’t been on this forum for quite a while, but I will share what my beliefs are. I believe Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, Heavenly Mother, the Holy Ghost, and the entire heavenly family are perfect. Nobody mortal on this earth is, no matter how divine or spiritually special they may be. I believe the Book of Mormon and all other scriptures are God’s words, even though they are imperfect. I believe that there are teachings in the scriptures that aren’t of God and ones that are, but it’s up to us to decipher that through spiritual inspiration. No prophet, leader, or member of any church or religion will ever be perfect with writing scriptures, interpreting, or translating them. That being said, I believe the church, its members and leaders are divine, but far from perfect. I haven’t been to church in weeks because of my parents being sick and me being too lazy to ask for a ride from someone else to church. It’s difficult at times to isten to lessons and talks at church and General Conference when most of what is said is catered people with just a simple faith instead of a more complex, nuanced faith most of the members of this forum have. Most of the members of the church have the simple faith and would rather keep it that way. I can understand that, being that I was once where they used to be. But after having had a faith crisis, I needed to reconstruct my faith. Since I live in small college town in Illinois, I don’t have very members of the church I can talk to, especially ones that have a complex, nuanced. I have once a while shared my complex beliefs with my parents and other members of the church. They haven’t freaked out about them, but there doesn’t tend to be much understanding. This forum and others like it on Facebook has been so helpful to me.

BoM: The keystone of my religion. I’ll explain.

I’ve been all over the map with the BoM.

1) As many know, I’m a convert so I spent many years completely unaware that there was a BoM.

2) Later I’d come to believe that it was a literal history of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, a work of pure scripture, “the most correct book,” etc.

3) Many years after that I’d come to believe that it was a product of the 19th century. Pretty much the opposite of everything I’d exhaustively list out in #2. If #2 was my white then #3 would be my black.

4) Today I’ve settled on it being a relatively good source for inspiring material.

So, why my keystone? I went whole hog believing in the BoM and in its origin story. I found flaws and the flaws challenged my beliefs. Initially I decided that the book was a complete fabrication but that was before my transition started to take place. The BoM still had a teaching or two that inspired me. The flaws only challenged belief in the truth claims of the book but the good that I continued to find in the book would challenge belief in my own outlook on life.

The BoM started me on the path to escaping a black and white mindset. I don’t think I could have gotten there with, say the Bible alone. I needed something that I could wholeheartedly believe in but it had to be something with glaring flaws. Glaring flaws but still good all the same.

Going through this process with the BoM has helped me when my beliefs in the Bible, Christ, life, the universe, and everything would later come under fire. I wouldn’t have arrived where I’m currently at without the ridiculousness of it all. I feel like I’m in a much better place than I was when I viewed the BoM as a 19th century yarn, I feel like I’m in a much better place than I was when I viewed the BoM as a literal boon from god to man, and I feel like I’m in a much better place than I was when I didn’t even know the BoM existed. I don’t even feel like I’ve “arrived” yet and that gives me hope that some time in the future I’ll be in a better place than I am today.

That said…

I don’t have a love affair with the BoM. If I boiled the book down to its essence (including enough back story for the sake of establishing mnemonics) I’d probably be left with about 50 pages or so. There are a few true diamonds but there’s a lot of rough to slog through to get them. I’m just glad I’m in a position where I can see the diamonds and see the rough.

Parting shot: Well, the Book of Mormon’s just this book, you know?

Book of Mormon and other scripture – Written by men who believed they were called of God to do so (aka prophets). Pieces of scripture are more useful and encourage positive living better than others, particularly New Testament and Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith – He believed he was inspired and tried to establish a new Zion. A prophet in the sense of being a leader and producing new teachings.

Modern Prophets – same as Joseph Smith but not as productive with new teachings.

Jesus Christ – I don’t think he lived but I hope he did and try to live like he would want me to.

Heavenly Father – same as Jesus Christ

One of my biggest “doubt the doubt” issues is science. For the same reason I think science tends to disprove religion I also think it’s remarkable that our universe supports life. We all won the lottery in the sense that we live on a beautiful life supporting earth against seemingly incredible odds. For me that is a reason to think there may yet be a god out there somewhere.

We all won the lottery in the sense that we live on a beautiful life supporting earth against seemingly incredible odds. For me that is a reason to think there may yet be a god out there somewhere.

That rings true for me also. It almost seems like the odds are that we not only won the lottery, we won the mega lottery. It almost seems to me the odds are too small not to feel that there is SOME kind of intervention. I LOVE astronomy and astrophysics. I mainly watch discover and science channels. My TBM wife does not care too much that I watch them on Sunday, but I keep telling her these are faith promoting – and I am not fibbing. For me they are. The feeling you get sitting on the top of a mountain or on top of a houseboat on lake Powel on a moonless night is a priceless feeling of awe and wonder.

These thoughts are similar to my own and are what really started to bring me out of the crisis phase. I really can’t fathom that all of this just happened. I’m a believer in evolution and Big Bang is plausible – but I can’t see that it didn’t have a catalyst. That idea is what moved me from being agnostic/atheist back to believing in some higher power – even if He is hands off. (I take a Deist view.) In truth, I feel closer to God in nature than I do in any church meeting or in the temple.

So how exactly do you define “scripture”, “prophet” and “true”?

Good questions.

1) Scripture: Holy writings of any religion, these are the texts which various religious traditions consider to be sacred, or central to their religious tradition. Many religions and spiritual movements believe that their sacred texts are divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. [Wiki has an acceptable definition to me]

Therefore, these fit into the definition of scripture: Bible, Torah, Qur’an, Bhagavad Gita, Diamond Sutra/Heart Sutra/Lotus Sutra, and LDS scriptures.

As I read these scriptural texts, they raise my mind to a spiritual level. They are good books.

D&C 109:7 And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;

Most scripture was orally passed on before it was ever written down. That means others are also involved in the process of the end result of what we have as scripture today. It doesn’t make it invalid…it’s just the historic reality of how we have our scriptures today, so I keep that in mind…but still believe in scripture as holy writings.

2) Prophet: one sent by God to lead people and teach them their religious beliefs

Think of Samuel the Lamanite…get’s called by God…delivers a message people need to hear. After that…not sure what happened to him, don’t know a lot about his personal life or if he ever made mistakes or ever changed his faith as he learned more…but he was a prophet to deliver what God told him to deliver.

We scrutinize Joseph Smith, as it seems all people reject their own prophets and believe the legendary and ancient prophets…because their stories have been polished to make it easy to believe in the past prophets. When we are too close to them and see their humanity, it can challenge our hope for this hero of a prophet that has no flaws, the prophet we want to believe in. But I just try to accept prophets for what they are.

As others have said above, all the words of all prophets come through the mind of that prophet…how they understand what they should do. They are not blank pages that God writes in their minds the exact words to say. The prophets are trying to teach, just like as parents we teach our kids. Imperfectly, but with good intentions.

3) True: There are all kinds of threads on this topic. I won’t go into a lot of it, but basically…true is like “true north”. Since the church points me in a good direction, it is true. Since the scriptures teach me gospel principles, they are true (even the BoA). Since Thomas S Monson teaches me gospel principles, he is a true prophet. I don’t believe the church is correct with taking some stands against gay marriage, so that teaching is not true. But it doesn’t make the church untrue for me, because not all teachings have to be true for the church to be true. Just the ones I pick from the buffet that impact my life.

I have tried for years to find proof the church is false. I cannot prove it to my mind. Because most of the things that bother me are just the interpretations and the programs and the things people say…they aren’t the church in and of itself. I continue to find things that bother me are mostly about how I didn’t understand the gospel meaning behind it (because I was taught the milk). My dissonance doesn’t require accepting something troublesome to be false. I just need further light and knowledge to understand it on other levels.

That’s what I believe.