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Hey (: I’m new here & thought Id introduce myself. I have been an active, practicing Mormon for my entire life. I am currently a 16 year old Laurel in the Young Womens program and having already developed my own testimony, I am seeking out answers to questions and issues I have with the Church that are threatening my testimony, quite dramatically at this point.
I have never had problems with the church and/or doctrine in the past, but recently I have stumbled across some new information mainly regarding Joseph Smith, the Eight Witnesses, and the Gold Plates’ translation. I also have issues with the whole Mormon culture; you know, that stuff that isn’t “doctrine” but is nothing short of mandatory.
I consider myself to have a very strong testimony (up to this point), and now I feel like I have all of a sudden fallen into a deep hole where I can no longer feel the Spirit or find answers to my questions. I also feel that God is very angry with me, and I feel like I cannot communicate with Him the way I used to. Frankly I am very scared, and I dont know where to turn. I figured this would be a good place to start.
I am hoping to find others who share my opinions and hopefully talk through some of these issues I am having. I am not seeking to leave the Church, but at this point I am very wary and suspicious of many doctrinal points (unfortunately).
blue_birdHi Bkuebird, I have been lurking on these boards with my own questions and concerns for a month or so now and haven’t gotten around to writing my own introduction, but I had to respond to your post and welcome you here and let you know that you are not alone. My most cherished calling was when I was a Laurel advisor. Laurels are at an age that they are trying to figure out who they are and what they believe. Despite some Mormon culture to the contrary, we, as Mormons are not expected to never question. Here is a link to a CES fireside by President Uchtdorf that was comforting to me.
https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/watch/ces-devotionals/2013/01?lang=eng&vid=2093631404001 It alludes to there being information on the Internet that may be confusing and disconcerting. He lets us know that it is okay to question, ponder, study and seek out truth. I don’t know what my truth is yet, but I do feel that God is not angry at me or you or anyone for seeking out truth and understanding, indeed, it is our responsibility to do so.
First: welcome. You are at a tough age under any circumstance, adding a faith crush doesn’t help. I hesitate to guide you very much as I do believe you should talk to your parents about your feelings. It would not be appropriate for me to power too much guidance out opinion here. That being said, God is never angry wtih you. Shame and guilt are the adversaries tools, not Gods. You are born with the spirit of God as a part of you so he can never feel anything but live for you. To question is not evil. Just keep an open mind and seek Gods will in your life and trust what he tells you.
Hang in there and talk to your parents openly honestly and respectfully, pay and mediate and listen for peace and answers.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
Martha wrote:Laurels are at an age that they are trying to figure out who they are and what they believe.
Yup, this sounds totally developmentally normal. You are not strange.
johnh wrote:I hesitate to guide you very much as I do believe you should talk to your parents about your feelings.
I second this notion but with the qualifier that you might seek out someone who is close to you, is a good listener, and is supportive of you. For me this was my Mom (even though I am in my 30’s). I didn’t talk to her about church history etc. but rather about how I felt that God loves me in spite of myself. Getting acceptance/validation from someone (especially someone close to you) is huge. I hope that you have someone like that in your life. StayLDS is an amazingly supportive group of people, but we can’t compare with a real friend. Good luck…it really does get better. Hang in there.
Thank you all so much for your kind replies; I look forward to joining this community and get my testimony back on track. blue_birdI think talking to your parents or first YW leader would be good. You could Try a PH leader but have another trust person like your mom or sister in the room
Welcome. Go slowly at your age, and don’t accept what ANYBODY says “just because”. We all have our individual biases that color our views – at the extremes, both traditionally focused, “fundamentalist” (but not polygamous) members and staunch anti-Mormons.
I don’t want my children to adopt my views; I want them to develop and own their own views, even if those views are different in some ways than mine.
Hello blue_bird, Welcome. I hope you find useful comments and input here. This site has been very beneficial for me personally.
First – it’s great that you are so self-aware at age 16. You may feel that it’s a double-edged sword because you’re ahead of many your age but are also facing difficult questions. I hope you find the peace you’re looking for.
My only advice is to enjoy your teenage years. When I was your age I was too busy feeling guilty about practically everything and it wasn’t healthy. I don’t know how much of it was me, how much was my parents, and how much was the church, but it took me a long time to figure out that perfection is unknowable and that constant guilt is counter productive.
Best wishes blue_bird.
Also, I’ve known I think differently than others since at least age 7. In many ways, recognizing this early was a great blessing for me. It can be for you, if you can see it that way. Roadrunner wrote:I don’t know how much of it was me, how much was my parents, and how much was the church, but it took me a long time to figure out that perfection is unknowable and that constant guilt is counter productive.
Very interesting that you mentioned feeling guilty, for this is something I have struggled with for a while now. I feel like sometimes the Church’s push for perfection is over-kill for some people who already put high demands and expectations on themselves. I think it can be, in my case at least, very self-destructive and undermines the good we do, and prevents us from seeing it.
Old-Timer wrote:Also, I’ve known I think differently than others since at least age 7. In many ways, recognizing this early was a great blessing for me. It can be for you, if you can see it that way.
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I’ve always known I have more “liberal” views towards church doctrine / culture than most, and unfortunately I feel that this is “middle of the road” type thinking is not accepted. You’re either “all in” or “the ward project”, as I currently am.
blue_bird –
Quote:I feel that this is “middle of the road” type thinking is not accepted
Only by those people who are extremists and haven’t examined their own faith. Chin up, you are becoming an adult of God, not just a child of God. It’s a lifelong journey, but it is the road less traveled. Get used to many people not identifying with you. That’s inevitable.
One caution I will give you is that everything you read or are told, in the church or outside the church, absolutely everything is written from a biased perspective. Whoever wrote it or said it had a point of view and a point to make. There’s no such thing as objective history or objectivity about human emotions. That’s why it says in Corinthians that we see through a glass darkly.
Welcome to the site!
There . Is no objectivity. Some people try to be objective but they still fail…but the ones who try you can work with. We all see through our own lenses Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
blue_bird wrote:I consider myself to have a very strong testimony (up to this point), and now I feel like I have all of a sudden fallen into a deep hole where I can no longer feel the Spirit or find answers to my questions. I also feel that God is very angry with me, and I feel like I cannot communicate with Him the way I used to. Frankly I am very scared, and I dont know where to turn. I figured this would be a good place to start.
blue_birdHi, blue_bird – I wrote something earlier, but I guess it didn’t go. I hope you find help here. I certainly have! I also felt that God was angry with me – how else to explain the spiritual numbness that came over me so suddenly? But then I realized that there is no sin in thinking. I had been sort of calculating my “worthiness” to feel the Spirit based on how mainstream or accepted my thoughts and opinions are in the church. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. . . .unless we let it.
blue_bird wrote:I feel like sometimes the Church’s push for perfection is over-kill for some people who already put high demands and expectations on themselves. I think it can be, in my case at least, very self-destructive and undermines the good we do, and prevents us from seeing it.
Yes I think you’re right. When I read Jesus’ words he asked us to strive to be perfectly loving, perfectly accepting, perfectly forgiving (Matthew 5). The way to truly learn about forgiveness is to start by forgiving yourself. Then you will understand it and be able to forgive others.
Our job as true Mormons is to seek out and hold to all the truth we can find. We are told it won’t look like what we expect, but we’re still surprised by that fact. It is such a mistake when people assume God is upset at them for honestly seeking truth and finding little things (or maybe not always so little) that don’t align with what they expected that God wanted them to find.
Remember this much:
God is in the
truth, NOT the expectations. If we want to grow toward God we must have the courage to seek out and hold to the love and the truth– whatever that may be, even though we won’t fully understand all of it. The key is to stay on the path were you find the breadcrumbs. Nobody’s words are as important as your own listening to the Spirit of truth and love. Welcome!
blue_bird, Welcome. I hope you find this site to be helpful, but as others have said, I encourage you to talk to your folks. It’s never a good idea to have family secrets. It took me four decades to figure it out, and it was a watershed moment for me.
I want to be completely honest here, but please don’t take this the wrong way; I am merely expressing my own angst about this situation… I’ve started a couple of replies to you and not finished them, because of the uniqueness of your situation. So here it is… I must admit that I feel sheepish about even addressing you on these forums because you are someone else’s child and no matter how nice and wise and caring we might all seem, nobody cares about you like your own family. It’s not really our place to give you advice or counsel outside of earshot of your parents. I have a son that is about your same age, and I would be very unhappy and discouraged if I learned that he was receiving life-affecting advice from adults online that conflicted with our family’s lifestyle. Everyone here has been very careful in that regard, but it won’t always be so.
That said, let me offer some encouragement that I would give to any young person struggling with guilt in any religion brought on by a feeling of inadequacy against expectations… I’d say this same thing to all of the people in your Laurel class, or any Laurel class… I believe that a lot of times, our feeling of not measuring up, and therefore experiencing guilt, has a lot to do with our categorizing expectations as external factors. When we internalize expectations, we seem both able to achieve beyond what we think, and to be able to accept better that we don’t always live up to them. Let me give you an example… You probably know a lot of people in school that think that their parents are totally unreasonable in the amount of time they expect their kids to spend doing homework. For them it is an external expectation, and so they dislike it, complain, fight against it, and feel like failures when they don’t get the grades their parents expected. Yet, those same kids will someday go to college where they will work even harder on school, even though their parents are 500 miles away. That’s the beginning of internalization. That’s exactly what happened to me. When I was responsible for myself, I stepped up, worked hard, when it wasn’t enough, and I knew I could improve, then I worked even harder, because it was what I wanted. When it wasn’t enough and I knew that was the best I could do, I was at peace with it.
Now, turn that to the church… As I’ve said on these forums before, I used to say, “I can’t drink”. I was simply parroting somebody else’s concept of morality. Eventually, I realized that that was a very shallow way to view it. I learned to say “I don’t drink”. Later, I came to believe that drinking in itself is not a “sin”… that perfectly good and wonderful people have an occasional beer. But even after coming to that realization, I continue not to drink. It’s internalized. I don’t care if anyone else drinks, but I myself don’t. I have no problem being at a table with someone that drinks. Internalizing it made it mine, not the church’s, not a judgment of others… mine alone. I’m one of the most disconnected from the church among all the contributors there, but I still maintain this as part of who I am. So, I would encourage you to seek out the best aspects of the church and try to make them a part of who you are… not a checkbox item from someone else’s list, but something about you. Easy experiment: think of going to church not as a requirement to enter the Celestial Kingdom, or as a Pharisaical devotion, but think of it as an opportunity to worship Jesus, the Messiah, the Great Teacher, who gave his life to offer a “new life” to all of us. Concentrate on worship through the music. Make your taking of the Sacrament the crowning moment of the day. Think of being there as a way to share with others, to lift them up, and to be lifted up by them. When you see others that you don’t agree with, or that you think are falling short, let your heart be filled with compassion, understanding, and at least a little respect that they are trying their best… even if they don’t quite measure up. Try that a few Sundays and you might find that your guilt will begin to abate, because you will be in the process of internalizing the important elements of the church.
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