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Hey Silent Dawning – I was coming back to answer your post on testimonies. When your example I felt like I needed to a take some time to examine my own. I haven’t offered a testimony in years. I hope you will repost and let us start over. I won’t post until you jump on. Thanks. It was really good to examine my heart. Sorry about that. I thought it was perhaps too aggressive to expect people to bear testimony when they are facing different issues with faith, commitment, etcetera. So, I took it down. I guess part of me feels a bit sheepish when I post a thread and 20 people look at it but don’t respond — means I “missed” or asked something way off base. Thank for being interested Mom3. You are good for my online self-esteem :thumbup: I basically invited everyone to share a testimony they are comfortable with. I gave a possible framework for thinking about what a person might say — something non-doctrinal and that avoids Standard Mormon Answers, which are not always well received by people in our situation….I quoted a book called When Mormons Doubt — about finding common ground with people we may not agree with on religious matters. He suggests focusing on goodness, beauty (positive, spiritual expeirence) and truth.
Here is my stab at it:
Quote:I love the way Mormonism attracts good people. I have been involved in a wide variety of service organizations and I have found LDS people really stand out as caring about their relationships with each other [goodness]. I also have many good memories of spiritual experiences I have enjoyed in the church — teaching appointments as a missionary, teaching GD and GE in home home ward, and many other experiences where I feel close to God [beauty[. And then, there are some truths that have changed the way I view the world — such as JS’s comment that happiness is the object and design of our whole existence. The BoM teaching that men are that they might have joy [truth]. Making joy the overarching principle that guides my decisions about where to put my time etcetera has really influenced decisions about where to put my discretionary time. And thanks to that principle, I can say that I have never been happier
Notice how I didn’t have to say “the church is true, the BOM is true” or that all leaders are inspired. Just shared some specifics that I can “testify” about with full sincerity….and I think it an help you fit in while still being unorthodx. Fitting in “without surrender” as one peson put it.
So, in case you are ever called on to give testimony, I think having thought about it in this way could help you be able to respond to the question positively.
Fire away if you feel you would like to share your own “testimony”, whether you use the goodness/beauty/truth trilogy as a framework or not…have at it
Thanks. I know we have some hot button threads running. Some of those are easier to answer since we are more practiced. Today though I drove around and really tried to nail down what I would express. Quote:One of my first spiritual experiences happened when I was 4 or 5 years old. We lived in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountain Range. As I sat on the grassy hill beneath the towering mountains I had my first connection with God. I wondered about him, his family, his home. I couldn’t imagine any place being more beautiful than where I sat. I thought about my family. I had a mom, a dad, and a brother. In heaven I knew I had a brother, a father, but not a mother. Just as I thought that I realized. No, I have a mother up there, too. I don’t know her well, but I think she is with me during my most extreme moments. My happiest and my saddest. I am grateful to be a member of a church that makes room for my Heavenly Mother.
Right now in my life that is one of the biggest anchors to my soul. I imagine in another time I would say something else. I like a fluid testimony.
I had come back to answer that post and also found it gone (and the moderator control panel indicated SD had deleted it). I found it interesting because I sometimes have been asked to spontaneously bear testimony and after a couple times of stumbling through I decided I needed to come up with some base ideas I could use each time. I’ll get to that in a moment, I want to share something related first. In our stake council it is tradition that the presidency asks new members of the council to bear testimony their first time in attendance. A couple months back we had three new members. The first guy, raised in the church, 30s, married with children, etc. gave the very basic (and what I expected from him) “I know the church is true, I know the Book of Mormon is true, I know Thomas S. Monson is a prophet, etc., etc. etc.” just as if he had returned from his mission last month. Guy number two also born in the church, mid 20s and not married, was almost as far from that as one could get. He talked about seeking truth and having faith even though there isn’t proof and he talked about things he believed – but he never used the word “know” or any phrase like “I know the church is true.” I was moved by his testimony. The third guy just told his conversion story, although he isn’t a recent convert. I recognize that some people stick to that story because it’s all they have.
So, my standard testimony is much more like guy #2’s. I talk about believing in and believing the Savior, and how we’re all at different places on the path, and how Christ didn’t ask us to do much. And love, I always talk about love.
When I bear my testimony, I usually focus on one specific aspect or principle that has meant a lot to me the previous month. I have a deep testimony of wanting to believe a lot of that stuff, and I only say I know about things I simply can’t imagine not believing – things that life has taught me to believe. Given our different lives, I am sure some of those things I feel comfortable saying I know are things others here would not be comfortable saying they know. To me, that is part of the glory of the orchestra analogy: the power of hearing as many instruments as possible and not just piccolos.
I like what Ray said — focus on a specific principle, for example. Even though Mormonism has a lot of warts, it has a nice complexion in certain spots, and some of the principles are basic life principles (charity, love, goodness, kindness, service), so a person can testify about many of those things even if they have an anti-testimony about the church as an institution. So, if called upon to give testimony, you can focus on a specific principle that still moves you (if any) and share that….
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