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Hello everyone, a little about myself , I was born in the church and a have lived in remote areas of the church most of my life , I am a return missionary and am married with 3 kids . The story of my coming to terms with my faith is not very original i’m afraid . I had unresolved issues with church steming from my youth . Actually I was less active for a good stretch in my youth because something didn’t seem right to me . I guess I would call that feeling cognitive dissonance now . Eventually I returned to church for 2 reasons, 1st subconsciously at least to try and heal my relationship with my parents , and 2nd I was maturing and began to see the value in the teachings of the church . I would go on to marry , my wife is TBM but has her own struggles with the church, this is a blessing in some ways but in others it is not , as I believe she would be a happy TBM if I had not introduced her to certain ideas. Anyway the fact that I would grow up to see the LDS system as taught in my parents home to be a failure , combined with the unresolved cog -dis I felt as a youth, would lead me to a spiritual reevaluation in my 30’s about the time I began to raise my kids. I began to become acquainted with new mormon history and slowly/painfully drifted over the next couple of years to more liberal LDS views. I am threw the hard part of this transition. At first I struggled with agnosticism but have returned to theism . Maybe i’m closer to a humanist than anything else now , I also hold to naturalistic ideas in regards to the supernatural I do believe in God but don’t think that God works in grand ways I think God uses ordinary people doing ordinary things to interact with us. Further I believe that life is a process of working out your relationship with God not simply learning and following Gods will . I should add that while I am at peace with this world view I struggle to find meaning in it from time to time, knowing Gods will and plan is a tough act to follow . I have long given up trying to figure out exactly why I stay it is probably a combo of maintaining family unity, cultural, social and spiritual reasons ? I am still committed to the church and am looking for a community to share the ups and downs of living with one foot in and one foot out , so to speak . I have tried a few different groups but have not yet found a good match . I am happy to be here in the early stages of this groups development . Thank you . Salo
PS: in case you are wondering I picked my name kind of randomly , Salo is a character in the late great Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan” this book gave me a laugh and a new perspective at a time when I really needed both, so it is a bit of a nod .
Salo – welcome. I enjoyed your intro. Personally, I think “humanism” is a very good place to be since it’s pragmatic. Welcome Salo, I do not even know if I am a humanist. I dont know enough information to say what I am. I am glad you are here and hopefully we can learn together to progress spiritually and on the continuum<(spelling?) of happiness and joy. Hope you had a great thanksgiving.
Welcome Salo. I relate to many of your views and look forward to future discussions. Hi Salo, Welcome to the StayLDS forums.
Salo wrote:I believe that life is a process of working out your relationship with God not simply learning and following Gods will . I should add that while I am at peace with this world view I struggle to find meaning in it from time to time, knowing Gods will and plan is a tough act to follow .
This was nicely said. Thanks for sharing that idea. I agree. I want to try and think that the two are still related, but I also find myself focusing more recently on my relationship with God. It is exciting and new. I think the only way I could see this is going through what I have, and being pushed into situations where I thought I had to chose the classic obedience (my old view of that) OR relationship — as if they were mutually exclusive. I had to be broken down. I don’t think my path will circle back to the same point. I frankly just don’t care about or prioritize things like I used to. I can’t seem to totally dismiss my actions from my relationship with God though.
I’d love to explore this more sometime. There are always so many great and new things to dive into.
Salo wrote:I have long given up trying to figure out exactly why I stay it is probably a combo of maintaining family unity, cultural, social and spiritual reasons ? I am still committed to the church and am looking for a community to share the ups and downs of living with one foot in and one foot out , so to speak .
Once broken of the notion that “the Church is True(tm),” I found I could actually enjoy the trees more while looking at the forest. I meant that in the sense that you listed good reasons to be in a church community. I’m hoping all those smaller reasons prove more secure and valuable in the future. I think they will be.
Again, Welcome! Thanks for sharing your story with us.
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