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Old-Timer wrote:
Frankly, I would suggest – strongly – that you take a deep breath
This is a piece of advice that is given regularly at StayLDS. Don’t make any sudden movements.
It’s entirely possible that after much pondering and soulsearching that you come to the conclusion that your path is best followed outside of the church. On the other hand, you might have a significant light bulb moment that restores your belief in the literalness of the LDS worldview. Or you might end up in stage five and find value in the metaphor while continuing to serve and be served by your bretheren.
But your options to continue to participate in the church in a way that makes sense to your future self and brings value to your life may be hampered by any sudden flailing actions during these moments of anguish.
Go slow!
my two cents on the subject…. We need recognizeable faithful members to speak up and begin setting a tone of change in our rhetoric.
Rather then Mormonstories or NOM you need a faithful member with a stalwart testimony on a large public forum to speak up in a way that captures the faithful audience the way Mormonstories captures the middlewayer.
People need to see that their treatment of SSA individuals as second class citizens is comparable to treatment of african americans in the 50’s and earlier. I see that now. It hit me tonight hard in my face. I still think the church has a right to declare doctrine excluding certain behaviors but that has not a thing to do with how we treat each individual as a human being and recognize their worth before God.
TBM need to hear some human truths and while I won’t push the envelope would come best from church leaders (Bishops on up) speaking directly and putting destructive lore to rest by speaking plainly.
Pres. Uchtdorf has been pushing that envelope for a while now. mrtoad4u wrote:and heber13, ouch. my motivations for asking? excellent question. good, good point.
I fear, while rereading my post, I may have come across harsh…and I wish the tone was able to be conveyed easier when I post…but I did not mean to attack or question your sincerity, Mrtoad.You are asking good questions, and I think you are sincerely searching and I respect you for that.
:thumbup: I simply wanted to prompt thought, because many times we want the Church or the leaders to see things from our point of view. It is nice when it happens, but all relationships have tension because we don’t always get that from others. And so some times I stop and ask myself what I want from them and if it is realistic.
Anyway, keep asking questions. Thank you for sharing them with us!
absolutely no worries heber13. none. i was not offended. i was startled at seeing my own bias. i am not completely unaware of myself. but you shed light on one i did not see. you shed some light, and i passed judgment upon myself for it (i am very good at being hard on myself)…
so no worries at all. none. as i took ray’s advice, and have spent several hours today reading older posts? … damn, i feel so behind many of you on this path. it is humbling… and i need to stop spending so much time reinventing the wheel that’s been invented, and balance my own postings with some appreciative reading of some of this group.
sincerely.
in the last few weeks as i have begun this journey with open, honest, earnestness, i have found several fb chat sites and web sites that offer very hateful and bitter sentiment on the church. i am sooo not interested in that. bitterness, in any form is unhealthy. this site? is largely full of open, honest, intelligent discourse, from opinions in and out of the church.. and near universally respectful so far as i have seen.
it is water to a man in the desert. its a beautiful thing.
and i am grateful to john, brian and all the participants here. it has been a a most wonderful and needed blessing to me.
thanks to all.
Yes, water in the middle of the desert. And how does the phrase “by their fruits ye shall know them” apply in this context? You might feel behind everyone else, but you are where you are and facing in the right direction. When you consider the term “eternal progression”, that isn’t really “behind” anyone. It’s much more side-by-side with us as we walk our paths together. Those paths might not be the exact same path in every detail (they might appear to be in separate places), but, really, we’re all walking the same path in life. It’s just a lot broader and more three-dimensional than we usually think. Seriously, something that is “narrow” to someone looking at it from God’s height doesn’t have to look “narrow” from ours.
mrtoad4u wrote:its the fact that we are forbidden to discuss it.i cannot have this discussion with my bishop. he won’t have it with me. and many a church leader has given me that same answer he did. so if i feel need to discuss, even vent, or anything… i must do it outside of my ecclesiastical leaders. and if any of you tell me some leaders do have those discussions, i’d argue they are the vast minority, and not common.
so if i want to have it, i need to find my own place. mormon stories, stay lds, etc… many of which sites are riddled with anti-mormon sentiment… which i do NOT want.
THANK YOU!!!! This was brilliant, and very helpful.
Some family members asked me about this at a recent gathering. It took my by surprise, and I totally stumbled on my words trying to explain what the Mormon Stories podcast was about (it’s not a secret in my extended family by any means, just not generally a topic openly discussed at the dinner table).
All this stuff needs to be discussed. We need to process it as a religion and a community. We are stunted in our ability to move forward until we build narratives that include the history.
One more thing to add after reading through the rest of the posts in this thread: Patience.
… and more patience.
The bad news:
There isn’t a simple answer. There’s no one book to read. There’s no single idea to ponder that will magically untangle all the knots overnight. Getting to the sunlit green pastures out past the light at the end of the dark tunnel takes time, and it can ONLY be
livedinto. It has to be experienced directly. It can not be taught in a class or in a textbook. It is not a decision to be made one day to believe or stop believing. The good news:
You will get there. I promise.
It’s a whole different way of experiencing the world, like when Dorothy steps out of the sepia tint, crumbled, tornado-blown ruins of her house into the full color land of Oz.
Quote:Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. -Morpheus
mrtoad4u wrote:i cannot have this discussion with my bishop. he won’t have it with me. and many a church leader has given me that same answer he did. so if i feel need to discuss, even vent, or anything… i must do it outside of my ecclesiastical leaders. and if any of you tell me some leaders do have those discussions, i’d argue they are the vast minority, and not common.
That has been my experience too. There must be reasons that is the case. Thinking about that and accepting that reality also helps the journey.
We are all “in the middle” of our eternal journeys, as Pres Uchtdorf puts it. I find interesting that so many others have the same thoughts and questions, which is why I like reading people’s experiences.
Those who read and lurk have stories to offer and benefit the rest of us if they care to register and share.
What I am implying is that all the issues you say are clear cut are not….. There is no smoking Gun. Sometimes in our frustration (remember, though it doesn’t make me right… I have been there) I see no issue as a dead ringer for showing the church’s doctrine or theology as false. You could argue that when added up together that it makes a mass amount of difficult issues that the volume alone means the same thing but I think I could give a similar list of things that would be hard to explain in favor of the church’s claims. I don’t see DNA or anachronisms as a smoking gun though they do pose difficult problems and the answers seem to be a bit of a stretch but even some DNA people outside the church say this in the end won’t prove the BOM as non historical.
Also I agree with Brian – you won’t be in the painful state forever, there is as he says, regardless of what your final conclusions are, a land of OZ waiting for you.
and there is this Island of Misfit Toys for you here at StayLDS. 
queue cheesy musical number DBMormon wrote:What I am implying is that all the issues you say are clear cut are not….. There is no smoking Gun. Sometimes in our frustration (remember, though it doesn’t make me right… I have been there) I see no issue as a dead ringer for showing the church’s doctrine or theology as false. You could argue that when added up together that it makes a mass amount of difficult issues that the volume alone means the same thing but I think I could give a similar list of things that would be hard to explain in favor of the church’s claims.
I don’t see DNA or anachronisms as a smoking gun though they do pose difficult problems and the answers seem to be a bit of a stretch but even some DNA people outside the church say this in the end won’t prove the BOM as non historical.
Also I agree with Brian – you won’t be in the painful state forever, there is as he says, regardless of what your final conclusions are, a land of OZ waiting for you.
I have found that same thought, bishop…there may not be a smoking gun for me, and so I have become more permissive of not knowing all things and i allow myself to doubt claims for and against the church. There is no smoking gun that the church is true, although many people are so sure for themselves (“I know these things are true”), and yet before throwing out the baby with the bath water, I tried to find evidence to absolutely prove it is false so I could leave it behind me.I could not. And so, I am left with my faith and hope in things that are not proven to be true. And also a realization that some things just are what they are and I don’t find the apologetic stretch answers fulfilling. There are anachronisms, that says something about the revelatory process and Joseph Smith. I don’t find apologetic explanations helpful…just call it what it is…anachronisms and then take from the BoM what is intended to get out of it…a non-literal teaching of faithful gospel principles. Take the good with the bad with the ugly. It is what it is.
Do you agree that there is no smoking gun on either side of the argument? You can’t prove it true, and you can’t prove it false. You can just choose to believe or not. Agree?
Heber13 wrote:
Do you agree that there is no smoking gun on either side of the argument? You can’t prove it true, and you can’t prove it false. You can just choose to believe or not. Agree?Agreed. I also think while critics use occam’s razor to prove the church false, I also think you do the same with the coincidences and evidences that seem to imply something other then a fraud is going on.
At the end of the day….. faith… a desire to believe
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