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Hello everyone, I am a confused Christian (am 35 years of age and in the United States) who has been a part of many different sects. I have some Mormon friends and they seem happy, so I am interested in possibly becoming one. I am here to learn as much as I can about the faith and see if it will be a good fit for me.
Cathy
Hi Cathy, Allow me to be a little blunt in expressing that I am not sure that this site would be the best for you to learn about Mormonism. There is much that is good and wonderful and praiseworthy within the LDS church. I believe that there is also a special ingredient that tends to make our people happier on average. This site is for people who have had challenges to their Mormon faith but still wish to hold on (in some fashion) for all the good things that Mormonism has brought to their lives. Because we tend to focus on how to cope with our challenges, there may not be equal time given to all that is great about the LDS church.
your friend,
Roy
Welcome, although I have to agree with Roy. This site will give you the perspectives of people who are in the middle of some kind of faith crisis and others who have gone through such a crisis and still are engaged to various levels in the LDS Church – some fully, like me, others actively but not fully immersed (so to speak), other who remain strictly for cultural and family reasons, others who associate but don’t really believe much if anything, etc.
I absolutely LOVE the theology taught in the LDS Church, and I LOVE many other things about the Church. I love the vast majority of Mormons I know. I have what I consider to be a strong “testimony” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the unique aspects of Mormonism’s view of it.
However, we don’t talk a lot about those things here at this site. They come up, and we are solution-oriented, but we spend a lot of time working through issues with people in the throes of struggles – so we are much more a support group than a traditional believers’ group. If you are serious about studying (“investigating”) the LDS Church, I HIGHLY recommend attending meetings and talking with more traditional members, as well. You’ll get a much better feel for what the Church can offer lots of people who just aren’t like us in fundamental ways.
cathyt112 wrote:Hello everyone,…I am a confused Christian (am 35 years of age and in the United States) who has been a part of many different sects.
I have some Mormon friends and they seem happy, so I am interested in possibly becoming one.I am here to learn as much as I can about the faith and see if it will be a good fit for me. Welcome to StayLDS. If you read some of the discussions here it will probably sound like there is so much to Mormonism that it is hard to digest it all but that’s because some of us feel compelled to analyze many of the obscure details of the doctrines and history of the LDS Church. However, if you just want a general overview of what the LDS Church is all about in a nutshell it is actually fairly simple in principle. Basically the LDS Church claims it has had a continuous succession of prophets starting with Joseph Smith that have had special authority and occasionally received specific instructions from God.
According to these LDS prophets and other Church leaders, some of the most important things we are supposed to do in this life are to get married in the temple, serve the Church (Kingdom of God) through callings (basically temporary part-time, unpaid jobs or assignments) and missionary work, and remain “temple worthy” by conforming to a specific list of rules and beliefs such as paying tithing (10% of gross or net income), not drinking alcohol, coffee, and tea, not using tobacco, not having any sexual experiences outside of marriage, agreeing with the Church’s story about its claimed supernatural origins, etc. So being a practicing Mormon in good standing with the other LDS Church members basically involves going along with these general ideas and if that sounds like something you are interested in then the Church would definitely be a good fit for you. The full-time missionaries and most members of the Church will tell you the same basic thing in more detail. Please feel free to ask any questions you have about specific points and hopefully someone will try to answer them as well as possible.
Welcome! I think it is important for a person to explore everything about a religion to make a full informed decision about whether to join or not. I hope you are exploring this from all ends.
http://Www.lds.org has good resources there and they are officially from the church. This forum is mainly us confused lds members who are trying to figure things out. I’m an active member who is having a faith crisis right now, hence me joining this forum for support.Please do feel free to ask us anything. I only hope that you are getting information about lds religion from all fronts, not just this forum.
I agree with Janes Now and would further recommend mormon.org. Best of luck to you! Out of the two websites lds.org and mormon.org, the latter is designed more to acquaint those investigating the church with who we are and what we believe. I’d also recommend Sunday meetings – they’re open to all, there’s no collection plate, and it gives a good glimpse as to how people take part in various aspects of the church – it’s not all run by one person! FWIW, maybe it is also useful for you to spend some time here too. No religion is perfect. Every religion has some skeletons in the cupboard. If you do look into Mormonism but have any concerns or questions, I would far rather you get balanced answers here than the imbalance (either pro or contra) from other forums. Cathy, If happiness of your friends is a significant factor in your thinking of becoming LDS, then I think it is worth looking into. To me, the LDS faith and doctrine is full of optimism and purpose. Like any religion, there are leaps of faith. People on this site have issues with the leaps. People fully in and on-board with the church do not, or at least, less so. Speaking for myself, alone, I was happy as a fully-believing member of the church, and can recommend it as a medium for fulfillment. There is a sense of purpose that pervades the atmosphere. It’s in a sense, a blue-collar church, where lay members do all the work, where actions and words intermingle and where you will hear both praises for the Lord and expressions of gratitude for the help received from others.
Look at LDS hymns and you’ll find a mixture. There are worship-based hymns, such as “How Great Thou Art”, “O My Father”, “I Know that My Redeemer Lives”, and “I Stand All Amazed”. But there are also call-to-action hymns: “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel”, “Love One Another”, “Called to Serve”, and “Come, Come, Ye Saints”.
Worship in the church tends to be more dogmatic and information-based than other churches, which is something I lament. We tend to have “talks” in church, more than praise and we tend to study about God more than flat-out worship him. But this also provides a sense of de-mystifying, and personifying both God and mankind, as well as the relationship between them. In fact, this matches the LDS view of God… all-powerful, but more importantly, all-loving; God created all this for OUR benefit, not His. LDS doctrine seeks to make God approachable… and presents God’s plan as sort of a partnership that we are in together with God.
I am an atheist now, but I still identify with the LDS Church for a variety of reasons, and I am happy that my children are still in it.
Now, can I ask you a question? You referred to yourself as a “confused Christian”. What do you mean by that?
+1 On Own Now! On Own Now wrote:Like any religion, there are leaps of faith. People on this site have issues with the leaps. People fully in and on-board with the church do not, or at least, less so.
Well said.
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