Issues with Moroni’s Promise

[Anonymous]

So I know alot of people struggle with the “Mormon Way” of discerning truth. You know what I mean, Moroni’s promise, revelation, reading the scriptures, praying asking God whats true, and receiving answers through the Holy Ghost.

A few years ago when I went through my faith crisis my main issues with it were was discerning whether it was just me or the spirit? Is it just a whole bunch of people feeling good about something and confusing emotion with revelation?

And was I unbiased enough to really ask God what his will was? When it says real intent, did I have enough real intent to leave the Church if that is what God wanted? At the time I felt i could never leave the Church, so I doubted God would answer my prayers because I know I wouldn’t leave the Church if that’s what he wanted.

I will say that I worked through my crisis of faith, and now actually have a testimony of the “Mormon Way” of discerning truth. But I’m curious to know what issues you have or have had with the “Mormon Way” of discerning truth? What about it bothers you?

Have any of you who used to struggle with it finally get it to work? What helped? I guess I am asking how did God answer your prayer? Was it different than the traditional or what you were expecting?

[Anonymous]

1 – It is impossible to extricate confirmation bias from the approach

2 – It is inconsistent. I have prayed… earnestly… and received radio silence in response.

3 – Although it is meant to be deeply personal, there is a strong communal component to it. If you are perceived as not getting the answer that everyone else gets, there must be something wrong with you (e.g., not real intent)

[Anonymous]

dpschofield wrote:

So I know alot of people struggle with the “Mormon Way” of discerning truth. You know what I mean, Moroni’s promise, revelation, reading the scriptures, praying asking God whats true, and receiving answers through the Holy Ghost.

A few years ago when I went through my faith crisis my main issues with it were was discerning whether it was just me or the spirit? Is it just a whole bunch of people feeling good about something and confusing emotion with revelation?

And was I unbiased enough to really ask God what his will was? When it says real intent, did I have enough real intent to leave the Church if that is what God wanted? At the time I felt i could never leave the Church, so I doubted God would answer my prayers because I know I wouldn’t leave the Church if that’s what he wanted.

I will say that I worked through my crisis of faith, and now actually have a testimony of the “Mormon Way” of discerning truth. But I’m curious to know what issues you have or have had with the “Mormon Way” of discerning truth? What about it bothers you?

I think OON spelled that out pretty clearly in the post, dpschofield. I could have written it myself.

[Anonymous]

I know, I know … my posting here has been erratic (this is the first post since July of last year.) But then, I repent.

By way of clarification, I left the Church via the “remove-my-name” method which I first requested in 1991 but did not achieve successful escape until 1999.

Since that time, under the influence of DW who instinctively knew that although in no way could I ever be a TBM-type, I had in fact taken a serious self-inflicted hit to my cultural identity by requesting name removal. T’was all about psychological health for me (and nothing to do with the true-churchiness of it all) when she took the lessons, got baptized the same day that I was re-baptized. Henceforth, on any given Sunday my go-to-meeting uniform has lots of grains of salt in the pockets. I wanted to give you my “context” before offering the following:

Applying the Moroni promises according to my own method and madness, I suppose, is what started me on my eventual journey out of the Church. IMO, the Moroni promises are in fact a powerful tool – a tool that in reality the correlated church cannot manage or control regardless of all that procedural and scriptural formulaic process. As a spiritual process the Moroni promises are a method ANYONE – members, non-members, investigators, etc.- can employ. It can be employed totally outside the control of the church itself for answers to any kind of question from which one desires a spiritually-sourced response.

In many ways what I’m about to say conforms with official Church dogma. Ask God what is true and God will tell you.

If one trusts God and accepts/believes that God will reveal truths to humans, then the Moroni promises are one method of getting divine opinion on your personal revelation. The process has nothing to do with Church conformity or worthiness. Only a contrite spirit and willingness to be prompted and to trust the prompting is really necessary.

When I began doing this and getting results that had nothing to do with my standing as a Church member, I learned that the Father and the Mother are not connected to, limited by nor bound by Mormon doctrine and theology claims.

If the Higher Power is real, the Moroni Promises are but one method of eliminating any Church middle men or any kind of authority and going directly to the source.

Applying the Moroni formula and trusting the Moroni promises started me on the path to spiritual knowledge that continues flowing before me to this day.

It works for me.

And … as is promised in Sec 121, my confidence waxes stronger and stronger and my dependence on someone else’s religious opinion has declined to almost nil.

I’ve shared this attitude with my bishop, my home-teacher (who is on the high council) and my high priests group (to which I am connected as a non-priesthood-holding member cause I’m an old guy who has yet to complete the steps for a restoration of blessings.) In other words, my participation is not driven by priesthood obligations or responsibilities which in theory could be used as leverage. I keep telling those who ask why that letting that particular monkey climb on my back again is a very serious issue of commitment.

[Anonymous]

I believe that God speaks to us in our own language and according to our own understanding – and I also believe that some people simply don’t have a spiritual language, so to speak. I know too many people who have followed “the formula” faithfully and earnestly and not gotten the assurance they wanted badly to believe in a formula that takes “input X” and produces “output Y”.

I also can’t stand telling others exactly how the Holy Ghost will answer their prayers. Just because Oliver was told he would experience a burning or a stupor doesn’t mean that’s how it will work for everyone.

Finally, I think we have short-circuited Moroni’s promise by ignoring verse 3 and misunderstanding what he actually said. If you are interested, I wrote the following on my personal blog back in December 2007:

“Remember As a Missionary Principle” (http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2007/12/remember-as-missionary-principle.html)

[Anonymous]

dpschofield wrote:

I’m curious to know what issues you have or have had with the “Mormon Way” of discerning truth? What about it bothers you?

I don’t have a problem with it in proper context, but if we give the impression that it is the best method to obtain “all” truth I think that is setting people up for disaster. I think it was Elder Oaks in maybe a 2008 conference, that said something like there are different kinds of truth – the temperature outside is an example of scientific truth (he also spoke of personal and spiritual truths). From his talk I felt safe to assume it would be wrong to try to use the “Mormon way” to discern common physical things like the temperature when there are other easy methods to obtain those truths. I would also venture to say a thermometer would prove to be far more reliable for that particular task.

So yes, Moroni’s promise works to help give us personal and spiritual direction in ways that nothing else can. But if we try to use it to determine physical or scientific reality (such as the age of the earth, or historicity of anything) or pit our Mormon Way found truth up against science, I’m afraid we will be setting ourselves up for disappointment.

[Anonymous]

I wish I could say that I had gotten it to work. It didn’t work for me when I tried it, and to this day I’m haunted by the questions. Did I not have pure enough intent? Did I need to demonstrate greater commitment by continuing to try longer? Did I give up too soon? Was I not righteous enough at the time? Did I say the words wrong? What went wrong?

Arthur Ruger wrote:

Applying the Moroni formula and trusting the Moroni promises started me on the path to spiritual knowledge that continues flowing before me to this day.

It works for me.

Arthur, can I re-prompt you with the OP’s questions? What form did your answer or spiritual knowledge take? Was it different than the traditional or what you were expecting?

[Anonymous]

Quote:

Daeruin wrote:

Arthur, can I re-prompt you with the OP’s questions? What form did your answer or spiritual knowledge take? Was it different than the traditional or what you were expecting?

For me the method suggested by the Moroni promises was not a connection to Mormonism, Moroni or true-churchiness concepts per se, but more the result of my movement towards a personal mystic sense of communion with the Divine, Higher Power or whatever serves to express connection with something more spiritual than tangible in my experience of life.

The original form of process for me only began with a prayerful asking those “golden questions”, so to speak, that the Church seemed to want me to ask. The answer to that asking was in essence a stupor of thought; a non-answer in some ways and yet in another way the only answer to the true-churchiness questions I could get.

However, having been somewhat inspired by an idea presented to me in another venue that if I have something to ask God, I could not restrict the answer only to things I expected to perceive, or things someone else taught me to expect. In essence, in asking for divine wisdom and inspiration, I could not set limits on the answer and would be obligated to accept, live by, apply, or understand the answer in whatever form it came and whatever meaning it prompted me to understand.

That began for me then a lifelong habit – borne of LDS teachings to me that just as did Joseph Smith, I too could receive personal revelation for myself.

The lifelong habit came out of my “twisting” the Moroni promises as interpreted and insisted upon by the Church into a means of extending my spiritual antenna for promptings in whatever form they came and were perceived. Since then, I have tried to value promptings as I’ve sensed them and tested them for validity.

I stopped asking silly questions of God about true-churchiness, true books, true prophets and began asking the higher power for advice and prompting on things that mattered much more in my life.

I’m a mystic at heart.

As Watts wrote,

Quote:

“A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political ideology or a mindless fundamentalism.”

[Anonymous]

I’m fairly certain I shared this one before, anyway…

Many missionaries view Moroni’s promise as a done deal. “I know that if they would just pray about the BoM they’d know that the church is true. Why won’t they pray about it? ” I will say that it shows a great deal of faith on the part of the missionary.

The missionaries were teaching an investigator and of course Moroni’s promise was taught as a means of finding an answer about the truthfulness of the church. As it turned out the person they were teaching felt inspired to join a different church. It was a huge blow to the missionaries.

I saw things a bit different. Before the missionaries came along the person wasn’t even praying. Now, thanks to the guidance of the missionaries, not only was the person praying but they also felt like they were receiving an answer to their prayers. That’s a huge service the missionaries provided and to me that’s what missionary work is all about; helping people live good principles.

Another problem with Moroni’s promise is that it is presented with ulterior motives. Will you pray to find the truth, and once you know it’s true will you be baptized? It’s often presented as if the outcome is a forgone conclusion, which is very manipulative. Also, do we want people to make a personal connection with deity and arrive at their truth or do we simply want to win more converts?

And I’ll echo On Own Now’s sentiments, especially #3. If someone doesn’t come away with the same answer the promise can tear down rather than build up and sometimes that tearing down is all internal.

[Anonymous]

Ray, thanks, I’d never noticed the remember first. How do you think that changes the “formula”?

Quote:

3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.

4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

[Anonymous]

mackay11, I had forgotten about another post I wrote back in April 2010 about this exact topic. It lays out what I’m talking about, so I will provide a link to that post – as well as one excerpt:

“We Need to Teach the Actual Promise in Moroni 10:4” (http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2010/04/we-need-to-teach-actual-promise-in.html)

The excerpt:

Quote:

Next, when you look at Moroni 10:3 the key is to “remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.” The key word is “remember” – and that remembrance can be of the mercies of God in ANY people’s history. Once the reader remembers God’s mercy to others (including their own ancestors/people), they are told to ponder and pray about what they have read.

The promise is that God will be merciful and make things known to those who remember his mercy throughout history and open their hearts to receiving that same mercy.

I still don’t see it as a formula, since I still think there are people who simply don’t get personally recognizable answers to prayers – but the promise isn’t about anything other than being open to God’s mercy and opening one’s heart to feel it personally.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Ray. Interesting concept. Would that suggest then that actually Moroni’s invitation was not about a “truthiness” test of the Book of Mormon (the 19th C translation that the test is usually applied to) but actually a way of understanding and believing that God’s mercies are real? In some ways that’s a far more expansive and universal thing to pray about. I like it

[Anonymous]

Confirmation bias can be a powerful tool to get the answers you want or perceive you should get. Making decisions without divine guidance will most likely net you a more positive result. Trust yourself before you trust in a metaphysical power to alter your brain neurons to make you do the right thing.

Personally I think it irresponsible of the church to teach people to make life altering decisions based on this process. We only hear at church the confirming anecdotal stories. I am sure there are just as many where the spirit led people to do stupid things.

If someone here has really developed a way to get positive results all of the time I would like to know the process. Spiritual promptings in my life have done more harm than good. Because of erroneous spiritual instruction I no longer believe.

[Anonymous]

So many people in different faiths get the same confirming experiences that their church, or path, is right. I just can’t see it being a reliable source. But then, it didn’t work for me, so maybe if I had experienced it myself I would see it differently. I have two nephews out on missions, and while I am glad they think they are doing the right thing, I sort of cringe at the stories they tell, where it is that attitude that of course the investigator will feel the spirit when they read the book of Mormon kind of thing. There is that expectation that you will get the answer and it will be yes.

[Anonymous]

Cadence wrote:

Confirmation bias can be a powerful tool to get the answers you want or perceive you should get. Making decisions without divine guidance will most likely net you a more positive result. Trust yourself before you trust in a metaphysical power to alter your brain neurons to make you do the right thing.

Personally I think it irresponsible of the church to teach people to make life altering decisions based on this process. We only hear at church the confirming anecdotal stories. I am sure there are just as many where the spirit led people to do stupid things.

If someone here has really developed a way to get positive results all of the time I would like to know the process. Spiritual promptings in my life have done more harm than good. Because of erroneous spiritual instruction I no longer believe.

This.

Although I’m still open to the idea that some people really do receive revelation, I can’t see how it would be possible to know (either for or against), given the reality of confirmation bias. I think if I were to get a spiritual/emotional answer to a prayer I would have a hard time believing it. I would consider it, but with a hefty dose of logic and common sense to balance it out.

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