- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
I’ve been thinking about a family that used to belong to the ward my good friend Kevin Kloosterman is in. I mean used to…because the whole family resigned from the church. I was pretty close with the husband and wife. It first began with the oldest daughter and husband I think over the church not being originally open about its history, next was the younger daughter (she eventually joined her husband’s church), the mother left next, and the husband eventually did. The husband and wife I knew for a fact were strong converts. They really took the church seriously! When I attended the family home evenings they would have for members of my young singles branch the wife would sometimes say things like, “I can’t imagine people living without the gospel.” The husband would sometime say things like, “I’ve heard people they don’t where they’d be without the gospel. But I know where’d I be without the gospel.” I heard once of the wife’s conversion story when she was my Sunday school teacher in my home ward. The husband told me about his conversion, of some of the bad things he used to do, and how he wasn’t happy without the gospel. In fact, according to their conversion story, the wife converted to the church first. The husband didn’t to have anything to do with it. Eventually the wife found it too hard to keep going to the church when the husband was against it, so she gave him a choice. Either you show interest in the church or I divorce you. Yikes! A bit harsh there! Well, he first started going to church just to make her happy, but eventually he started feeling the Spirit. He began feeling what was being taught to him at church was meant for him to hear, so he was eventually baptized and they married in the temple.
What drove me nuts, though, when they were in the church the husband and wife didn’t believe in luck. There was no such thing. It wasn’t luck. It was blessings. Whenever the branch held after church dinners for us members of the branch, it was never pot luck dinners. It was pot blessing dinners! Geesh!
Well anyway, I emailed the wife a few months ago, telling her I was grateful for her teaching the gospel to me and being a good example to me, even if she isn’t a member of the church anymore. I also told her about my faith transition of the church and gospel. She wrote back, thanking me for reaching out to her, congratulating me for my faith transition, and telling me her testimony didn’t survive. She said she was glad of her time to serve in the church and the nice people there are in the church. She told me she was relieved she resigned from the church. I wonder if the husband is happy after he left it. I don’t know at the moment. I can only hope he is.
Anyway, so here is my topic for discussion: Is the gospel really needed for happiness? I know the church and the gospel are different but related. In my days before my faith transition occurred, I used to believe if a person was happy when after they resigned from the church it wasn’t real happiness. It was an illusion created by Satan. Know I realize after my faith transition, in some cases, some people might be spiritually happier after they leave, when some people may not be. When I was thinking about resigning from the church after being exposed to the real history of the church, my dad told me I would lose the light. In my case, he might have been right, but in every person’s case, I don’t think so. Maybe happiness just comes from living principles which cause happiness wherever they’re found. I don’t know. What are your thoughts?
The members of the LDS church represent 0.03 percent of the world population. It seems rather extreme that members could consider themselves the only people to have truly happy lives. That is leaving out 99.07 percent of the world population. Personally, I think believing in a Higher Power makes people happier. That has nothing to do with Mormonism or Christianity and everything to do with acknowledging God.
amateurparent said: Quote:I think believing in a Higher Power makes people happier. That has nothing to do with Mormonism or Christianity and everything to do with acknowledging God.
I don’t think it necessarily makes people happier. I do think they understand their place in the universe by believing in a Higher Power.
There are other people that are happy & feel fulfilled, who are not in the LDS church. I’m sure each of us can come up with examples in our lives.
I have a good friend who considers himself an atheist & is very happy.
The gospel isn’t easy to live or even accept sometimes.
The Gospel, as I define it? Yes. The LDS Church? Of course not.
Definitely not. Being full and thick in the church made me miserable for a lot of my life. It kept me in a marriage that I wasn’t happy with (have learned to be happy now, but it was sheer hell for many, many years), I still reel from the effects of the schism it caused with my natural family due to the one year waiting rule, and some of my experiences in a dysfunctional Ward were the trigger for my first trip to the doctor for anti-depressants. Fortunately I no longer have the depression and do not need meds, but it was terrible for the couple months I was depressed and then had to use meds to get out of it.
Church experiences led to my paying for counseling for my daughter when youth at a church activity duct taped her moth, picked her up, and forced her down on a bed, with an attempt to bind her legs and lock her in a room. This was the worst of the bullying, but there were other situations similar to it. And I have the counseling bills to prove it. My career needed a boost, and 30 years of church leadership mattered nothing in job interviews for management positions. I realized that discretionary time isn’t always well spent in church service when you have other more pressing needs, as I did (career-related). Yet the church tells us not to seek after position, and stories about people like Stephen R, Covey serving as a primary teacher are lore in the church. It is almost evil to want to have leadership experiences for your own personal growth in the church — it’s so one sided for the church. You can have those experiences, but only if the church leaders decide they need you or want you in a leadership position.
Since placing major boundaries on my relationship with the church things are much better for me. Serving hard in the community, I truly AM happier than I was in the church. Truly. And since starting my own non-profit, I am doubly happier. If things go wrong, it’s my fault. I feel this responsibility to treat dedicated volunteers really well with appreciation. It is therapeutic for me, and also helps me check attitudes that I used to see in church leaders. I understand them a bit better now, although I don’t condone the atrocious way they treat their most dedicated people sometimes.
If things go wrong, I have no one else but myself to blame for not selecting or orienting people properly, or for setting the wrong direction. And my former tithing dollars go directly to causes I believe in. I truly feel like a philanthropist now. Whereas before I felt like I was paying membership dues to the church for temple privileges. And had very little say about my experiences as a member of that church — I was subject to their rules, a bit like the way taxed citizens are subject to the rules of the taxation authority. I am forever leery of situations where I have to pay a lot of money, only to give up a substantial amount of my personal power. This often means there is an unhealthy imbalance of power.
Yep, you can be happy outside the church. Now, happy being dishonest, selfish, addicted to harmful substances, or other vices, no — I don’t think community service compensates for that, but trying to follow the example of Jesus in any context, whether in the church, or out of it, can help you find happiness. As I say in my tag-line — it doesn’t have to be about the church all the time. Do what makes you happy while applying general principles of good living.
Is the gospel really needed for happiness? I don’t know. I can’t even be sure what happiness is. It would seem that everyone has their own personal definition of happiness so trying to establish a universal happiness that works for everyone would be far too difficult. Same thing for the gospel.
What makes some people happy makes other people miserable. That’s really at the root of the problem for me. Does the gospel become a subset of things that everyone can agree makes people happy?
I’m chickening and egging the question here but can we keep it personal? Like whatever it is that makes me happy is my gospel, no one gets to tell me whether I’m happy or not? Sometimes we’re blind to our own behaviors, like a person that truly needs an intervention.
Ilovechrist77 wrote:What drove me nuts, though, when they were in the church the husband and wife didn’t believe in luck. There was no such thing. It wasn’t luck. It was blessings. Whenever the branch held after church dinners for us members of the branch, it was never pot luck dinners. It was pot blessing dinners! Geesh!
I’ve been on similar trips in my life but never to the point where the word luck became
thattaboo. Pot blessing dinners? 😆 That’s the kind of thing that my friends would bring up to embarrass me with for years after the fact.Quote:Is Andrew Blessings your favorite QB?
:angel: Some in the church would have you believe so and would not believe any assertion that people can be happy without the gospel. Those same individuals likely don’t distinguish between the gospel and the church. IMO it is entirely possible to be very happy, joyous, and even blessed (or lucky) without either the gospel or the church. Are there not happy Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists? Are there not happy atheists for that matter? “The thought makes reason stare.” Nibbler said that it makes some happy, and others not. I find people who like to have everything laid out for them, find safety in rules, and don’t mind losing their ability to be creative or think outside the box have an easier time of it in the church. Those of us who like to think outside the box, question why things have to be the way they are (when it comes to man made rules) find it harder to thrive in our church.
Personality has a lot to do with it.
I believe that this touches upon my signature line: Quote:“It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness.” C. A. Elwood
“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223
I believe that it is the creation of hope and meaning that increases most people’s happiness level. The church has a very well defined purpose and meaning for our lives.
I remember learning in a college course that people tend to be happiest when all of their goals contribute to some overarching and never ending life goal. At the time I related that to the plan of salvation. I grow up in a family learning by observation. I eventually become a husband and father and learn by trial and error. At some point my children grow up and move away and I perform more of a consultant role – perhaps learning to respect the autonomy and independence of my children’s homes. All of this I saw as practice for my heavenly role of becoming a perfected and exalted parent.
In my faith transition I have not given up on meaning. I consider myself free to derive meaning from multiple angles. I can keep all that I find good and meaningful from Mormonism and yet be in a state of awe at all the previously untapped good and meaningful that I now see outside of LDS church sources.
I believe true gospel principles lead a person to happiness, that is what the gospel message is…a message of goodness for people to follow. Mormons will include certain things into individual understandings of what that includes or doesn’t. But others’ interpretations don’t change truth, it is just how they frame it for their understanding from their point of view.
As others have said throughout this thread, others will say lots of things, and mostly I hear people not imagining how someone else could be happy without the church and ordinances, or they will qualify how much happier a happy person could be with the church and ordinances. Those are all opinions of individuals.
But church and ordinances point a person towards the gospel, and gospel is truth for happiness. But sometimes others don’t know what they don’t know…and I believe there are many other things that point to gospel principles besides just mormon stuff. And there are lots of very very happy people living very good lives that have nothing to do with church.
I separate out church and gospel, and don’t lose the value of either. The gospel is about love, and that is what is needed for happiness.
Heber13 wrote:The gospel is about love, and that is what is needed for happiness.
:thumbup: Well, thanks, everyone, for the comments. I’ve definitely learned a lot from this group. As someone mentioned the comment that finding meaning out of life definitely helps make others happy. For me, being in the church has done that. So has spending time with family, friends, studies topics that interest, and creative writing. If God lives, only He can judge what in a person’s heart. Quote:Minyan Man wrote:
I have a good friend who considers himself an atheist & is very happy.
The gospel isn’t easy to live or even accept sometimes.
My atheist friends often view science and/or nature as their “higher power.” It has become their version of God. They view the broad reach of scientific knowledge as amazing and beyond their reach. They are humbled when they compare themselves to nature. They have a sense of something on the universe that is bigger than they are.
Quote:My atheist friends often view science and/or nature as their “higher power.” It has become their version of God. They view the broad reach of scientific knowledge as amazing and beyond their reach. They are humbled when they compare themselves to nature. They have a sense of something on the universe that is bigger than they are
I like that. Thanks.
😆 I certainly feel more enriched and in awe when I watch Cosmos vs. General Conference.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.