I guess I bore my testimony at church

So, I attended Gospel Essentials this week to experience what it’s like in all the classes. The teacher asked about our testimony of the scriptures.

I had previously written here about how you can give testimony on aspects of the LDS experience on which you have common ground, without being a renegade about it. I decided to “bear testimony” about the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon says “Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy”. I then indicated how a few years ago, I felt the need to really focus on finding happiness in this life. And how that scripture, along with JS’s statement that “happiness is the object and design of our whole existence”, was pivotal in helping me make happiness my objective in this life. I gave an example from a book on decluttering, where the criteria for keeping something you own is whether it sparks joy. Totally consistent with the Book of Mormon…And how, as a result of using the joy principle to filter out the many initiatives that cross my desk, I’ve been happier in the last 3 years than I’ve been in any other period of my life. Truly. I was completely authentic.

Now, here are the undertones. The things I didn’t say.

1. I didn’t say that I found happiness in the church — I actually found it OUTSIDE the church, but didn’t say that.

2. I didn’t say that the church experience was making me miserable five years ago, and that’s what made me search for a different model of happiness. Previously, my mantra was to obey the commandments to be happy. I still do, mostly, but I have found that utter church alliegiance is a recipe for misery for me in some cases. I had to prune a lot of churchy stuff from the tree to be happy.

3 I didn’t say that I had to elevate my conscience above the SHOULDS we hear in the church all the time, before I could transcend the SHOULDS and focus on happiness. That’s what I had to do — but that would’ve gone over like passing wind in the chapel.

4. I didn’t say that in the pursuit of happiness, I altered my life in ways that deviate from the textbook we hear at church.

But what I said was in fact authentic, seemed to enrich the class, and netted some positive spin off comments from the class…

I hope to do more of this in the future. Particularly as I focus on the parts of the church with which I have common ground.