20 Truths about Mormons

[why_me]

What often happens is that those who leave the LDS Church and join another religion, tend to distance themselves from their own families, and from their former friends and associates in the LDS Church, and make them feel unwelcome; and then they interpret that as being shunned by them. Look at the hatred, venom, and rancor being spewed out by Mormon apostates on this board. It is obvious that they don’t want to have any associations with their former Mormon associates (or family members for that matter), and would make them feel unwelcome if they did. It is not a case of being shunned by their families; they are shunning their families.

zerinus

Yes, I have seen this also on antimormon boards. I can read complaints by exmormons about their family members and read just how the exmormon hates the lds church. And then in the same breath mention the fact that family members may not want anything to do with them not realizing that their new found attitude toward the lds faith and the family members just might create alienation from the other family members.

And likewise, I can read about the pity that the exmormon has for his or her mormon relatives with a tinge of mocking of their beliefs.

But mormons are not perfect. The lds person can also do shunning as a way to his or own imperfection.

 

[isaac.madsen]

It is not a case of being shunned by their families; they are shunning their families.

zerinus

This is true in many cases, but I’ve known quite a few instances where parents have disowned their children because of their decision to leave the church or do a few things that were unapproved. My own father has been very difficult at times, often out of simple misunderstandings. Bad communication often leads to a lot of heartbreak in families when simply talking about issues would make it a lot easier. The problem is that loads of people aren’t comfortable talking about their issues, and that’s not exclusive to Mormonism either.

 

[zerinus]

I question Jesus as the Christ in a literal sense because I don’t see the point of sacrificing an innocent person because somebody else screwed up. If someone can explain that whole concept, I’d really appreciate it.

The scriptures state that the Atonement was necessitated because of the Fall. Eternal law requires that the demands of justice should be met in full. That means that sin requires eternal punishment. The scriptures tell us that the only way that the demands of eternal justice could be met would be through the Atonement. I don’t think it is possible for us to know exactly how that works. We accept the word of God for it that that is the case.

The doctrine of the Atonement, and its reasons and its necessities, are more comprehensively discussed and taught in the Book of Mormon than in any other book of scripture. If you have the LDS computerized scriptures on CD, do a search for “atonement” (and tick the box for “all word forms”), and you will get around 46 references to the Atonement in LDS scripture. (You can do that in the LDS website as well, but you won’t get the same result.) If you study all of those, you will have a pretty good insight in the doctrine of the atonement. Alma 42:11-24 is a brief example.

zerinus

 

[isaac.madsen]

And who determines what the word of God is? Prophets? But who determines who prophets are? God?

I raise these questions mostly for conversational reasons and to make you think. All of religion is a matter of faith and what you choose to believe. Faith and belief are matters of choice. A person could present any argument for their case, but the judge must make the ultimate decision. The judge must chose which argument makes the most sense.

In the case of religion, generally speaking, the judge is equivalant to each and every individual. The problem here is that it’s not like in a court of law where you mostly have only two sides of an issue. When it comes to religion, you have every religious denomination presenting their own case, trying to get their voice in the court room. I suppose that’s the argument Joseph Smith, Jr. brought to the court, but in my opinion, he’s just another voice adding to the chaos. I doubt if there’ll be any real order in this court of life until that ultimate judge makes his final judgement. It’s sort of like when a case gets out of hand and is eventually brought to the U.S. Supreme Court. The word of that court is final. All other judgements are cancelled by what it says.

 

[zerinus]

And who determines what the word of God is? Prophets? But who determines who prophets are? God?

I raise these questions mostly for conversational reasons and to make you think. All of religion is a matter of faith and what you choose to believe. Faith and belief are matters of choice. A person could present any argument for their case, but the judge must make the ultimate decision. The judge must chose which argument makes the most sense.

In the case of religion, generally speaking, the judge is equivalant to each and every individual. The problem here is that it’s not like in a court of law where you mostly have only two sides of an issue. When it comes to religion, you have every religious denomination presenting their own case, trying to get their voice in the court room. I suppose that’s the argument Joseph Smith, Jr. brought to the court, but in my opinion, he’s just another voice adding to the chaos. I doubt if there’ll be any real order in this court of life until that ultimate judge makes his final judgement. It’s sort of like when a case gets out of hand and is eventually brought to the U.S. Supreme Court. The word of that court is final. All other judgements are cancelled by what it says.

Your post presents to me a very confused picture, full of contradictions and inconsistencies.

What you seem to be saying is that religious truth is essentially unknowable, or indeterminable. That in itself is a logically flawed assertion. Just because you don’t know it, that does not mean that nobody else does either. It does not make it unknowable. Perhaps there are some who do know. How can you be so sure that they don’t?

The confusion is compounded by the fact that you seem to allow for the existence of a God. Well, if God exists, then He is also capable of making Himself known. Just because He hasn’t made Himself known to you, it does not mean that He hasn’t done that for anyone else either.

Then you say, “Who determines what is the word of God?”—apparently as a critique of my explanation of the Atonement. That is another logical inconsistency. The Atonement is a Christian concept. When you ask that question, you are demanding an explanation within the framework of the Christian theology, because that is the only way that that question could be answered. So when your question is answered, you accept that answer as valid within that framework, regardless of whether you accept the framework or not. The framework of Christian Theology is derived from Christian scripture; which in the case of LDS includes the Book of Mormon.

So on the whole it is a very confused picture that I am getting, coming from you.

zerinus

 

[isaac.madsen]

You missed the entire point.

 

[isaac.madsen]

You missed the entire point, zerinus. I never said God could not make himself known, but he seems to do it in different ways with different people: thus, the different religions. So technically you might say he’s the source of the confusion, but I think that would be somewhat inaccurate. I believe it would be more accurate to say that the confusion originates within people themselves. The category of people includes prophets, for we tend to make them flawless and God-like in our minds when really they’re as capable of failure as anyone else.

So what I’m saying is that each group seems to select the God(s) and prophet(s) that resonate most closely with their beliefs, which are possibly based on an incomplete picture. The reason it becomes difficult to find which one has the “whole” picture is that our selection of sacred texts is done in the same fashion.

So when I raise questions about Christ, I do so not out of doubt as much as out of curiosity of how many different answers I’ll get. The answer that you choose to believe is the one that resonates best with the picture that you’ve currently developed, and is therefore an answer which you’ve likely determined comes from God.

If that’s too confusing to handle, perhaps it is because you misinterpret what I’m trying to say, the same as anyone, and perhaps everyone, misinterprets God and heaven.

Think of it this way. If you’ve ever played the game Telephone or The Grapevine, you know that often the first person whispered to often messes up the message before it even gets anywhere. By the time it gets to the end of the line, it becomes totally skewed. Other times, using the same group of people, the system can work almost perfectly. I see no reason why it would not be the same with God whispering to our hearts. For any one person to say he or she has the entire message down right is naive and probably a little arrogant. The only person who could ever possibly truly say that is Jesus Christ, because the message down the grapevine tells me he’s more than just a member of mankind anyhow.

So if there are inconsistencies in my messages or messages from God to either Mormonism or Catholicism or any other religion, perhaps my comparisons may help someone understand why those imperfections are there. After all, I heard somewhere that we live in an imperfect world, and it seems true enough of a statement that I think perhaps God revealed it to somebody, somewhere, sometime.

I have one last point to make. Knowledge comes in a sure witness of something - a physical revelation, and not just a spiritual one. Don’t think that just because somebody really feels something to be true that they know it because such a belief can be turned into doubt in an instant. That is why there are so many people in the world who will tell you, “Well, I thought I knew, but now I’m not so sure that … [fill in the blank].”

 

[zerinus]

You missed the entire point, zerinus. I never said God could not make himself known, but he seems to do it in different ways with different people: thus, the different religions. So technically you might say he’s the source of the confusion, but I think that would be somewhat inaccurate. I believe it would be more accurate to say that the confusion originates within people themselves. The category of people includes prophets, for we tend to make them flawless and God-like in our minds when really they’re as capable of failure as anyone else.

So what I’m saying is that each group seems to select the God(s) and prophet(s) that resonate most closely with their beliefs, which are possibly based on an incomplete picture. The reason it becomes difficult to find which one has the “whole” picture is that our selection of sacred texts is done in the same fashion.

So when I raise questions about Christ, I do so not out of doubt as much as out of curiosity of how many different answers I’ll get. The answer that you choose to believe is the one that resonates best with the picture that you’ve currently developed, and is therefore an answer which you’ve likely determined comes from God.

If that’s too confusing to handle, perhaps it is because you misinterpret what I’m trying to say, the same as anyone, and perhaps everyone, misinterprets God and heaven.

Think of it this way. If you’ve ever played the game Telephone or The Grapevine, you know that often the first person whispered to often messes up the message before it even gets anywhere. By the time it gets to the end of the line, it becomes totally skewed. Other times, using the same group of people, the system can work almost perfectly. I see no reason why it would not be the same with God whispering to our hearts. For any one person to say he or she has the entire message down right is naive and probably a little arrogant. The only person who could ever possibly truly say that is Jesus Christ, because the message down the grapevine tells me he’s more than just a member of mankind anyhow.

So if there are inconsistencies in my messages or messages from God to either Mormonism or Catholicism or any other religion, perhaps my comparisons may help someone understand why those imperfections are there. After all, I heard somewhere that we live in an imperfect world, and it seems true enough of a statement that I think perhaps God revealed it to somebody, somewhere, sometime.

I have one last point to make. Knowledge comes in a sure witness of something - a physical revelation, and not just a spiritual one. Don’t think that just because somebody really feels something to be true that they know it because such a belief can be turned into doubt in an instant. That is why there are so many people in the world who will tell you, “Well, I thought I knew, but now I’m not so sure that … [fill in the blank].”

Okay. Take the case of someone like Joseph Smith, who claimed he saw the Father and the Son. Do you think that is possible, or impossible?

zerinus

 

[why_me]

Any mormon who shuns a family member on account of leaving the lds church is not lds but an imperfect human being who is making a mistake. The lds church does not encourage or support shunning anyone.

 

[isaac.madsen]

Okay. Take the case of someone like Joseph Smith, who claimed he saw the Father and the Son. Do you think that is possible, or impossible?

zerinus

I believe it is quite possible, but I also believe it’s possible that people can witness faeries, dragons, unicorns, angels, golems, saints, animated teddy bears, messages from leaky faucets in the night, voices in the wind, voices in their heads, devils, possessed car salespersons, miracles, disasters, normal salespersons, missionaries, tsunami, earthquakes, root beer floats, computer screens, the holy grail, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Book of Mormon, The Urantia Book, the Bible, Buddha, or even a Playstation 3.

 

[zerinus]

I believe it is quite possible, but I also believe it’s possible that people can witness faeries, dragons, unicorns, angels, golems, saints, animated teddy bears, messages from leaky faucets in the night, voices in the wind, voices in their heads, devils, possessed car salespersons, miracles, disasters, normal salespersons, missionaries, tsunami, earthquakes, root beer floats, computer screens, the holy grail, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Book of Mormon, The Urantia Book, the Bible, Buddha, or even a Playstation 3.

I don’t think that you had understood my question. I will rephrase it for you. Do you think it is possible for someone to really see God (the real God, choosing to really appear to him in person) as Joseph Smith claimed he had done? That is not the same thing as seeing a salesperson or the missionaries. I hope I have made my meaning clear this time.

zerinus

 

[isaac.madsen]

I’m not sure why seeing God would be different from seeing missionaries of salespeople, supposing that all three of those types of beings exist.

 

[zerinus]

I’m not sure why seeing God would be different from seeing missionaries of salespeople, supposing that all three of those types of beings exist.

The difference is that seeing God is not an everyday ocurance. I can see the missionaries any time I want to. I cannot see God any time I want to. I can have no doubt that the missinaries exist, because I know I can go and see them when I want to. But many doubt the existence of God, precisely because they cannot see Him. Seeing God depends primarily on His willingness to reveal Himself to me. If He chooses not, I cannot see Him. That is not quite applicable to the missionaries. As a general rule, there is no reason why they should not want to see me. I need to exercise great faith to see God, and not all are so favored; I don’t need to have the same faith to see the missionaries. When was the last time that you saw God, if the two experiences are not different?

zerinus

 

[isaac.madsen]

I need to exercise great faith to see God, and not all are so favored; I don’t need to have the same faith to see the missionaries. When was the last time that you saw God, if the two experiences are not different?

zerinus

Perhaps you have seen God and not realized it? I doubt if you would expect that is probable, but surely you can admit the possibility. I have seen a lot of remarkable things, including a few events that people have classified under the categories of visions or out-of-body experiences, and during one of those experiences I was witness to a person that claimed he was Jesus.

I was very young at the time of this experience, and I don’t talk about it often because I am sometimes ridiculed for it. He didn’t reveal to me that any particular religion was true or false. He merely stated that I would be undertaking some difficult hardships and at times it would be difficult for me to detect Satan’s temptations. I’ve thought a lot about that experience over the years, but the amount of related experiences in my life is few and far between. Don’t ask me to explain what I saw because my memory is more auditory than it is visual. If you have questions about whether my experience was legitimate, you can look back at all the recorded experiences of young children and infants witnessing extraordinary things in both Mormonism and Catholicism. It’s not as rare an occurance as some people might think, but what is more rare is for someone who is currently 20 years old to remember such an experience that happened as an infant or toddler.

Having such an experience, however, doesn’t make a person a saint or a prophet. It doesn’t mean I’m superior to anyone. All it does is raise more questions, but one thing I recently realized from it is the fact that I can never blame Joseph Smith, Jr. from having multiple accounts of his experience that sometimes seem contradictory to one another. A person can hardly describe everything they experience in normal life, let alone all they experience in a vision or out-of-body experience. When I talk about visions or out-of-body experiences, I’m talking about something I believe is one and the same.

There. I’ve come out and said it. Argue about it all you want. Call me a liar even, but I’ll not be denying that what I witnessed actually occured. What I am willing to do is engage in intelligent discussion about what my experience means and how it relates to gospel topics of either Mormonism or Catholicism or any other religion for that matter.

 

[isaac.madsen]

I think it is necessary for me to here discuss content rule #6.

If what I have just posted is seen as a violation, I am perfectly willing to remove it. However, I do think I have a right to state my case on what I have just written.

I have long been wary of posting any discussion of such an event in the past, not just because there is a rule on it, but because it is a private experience. However, since what I witnessed seems to have no revelation of new theology from God, I deemed it appropriate in this case because I was first asked about it. Otherwise, I doubt if I should have ever brought up the topic.

 

[zerinus]

Perhaps you have seen God and not realized it? I doubt if you would expect that is probable, but surely you can admit the possibility. I have seen a lot of remarkable things, including a few events that people have classified under the categories of visions or out-of-body experiences, and during one of those experiences I was witness to a person that claimed he was Jesus.

I was very young at the time of this experience, and I don’t talk about it often because I am sometimes ridiculed for it. He didn’t reveal to me that any particular religion was true or false. He merely stated that I would be undertaking some difficult hardships and at times it would be difficult for me to detect Satan’s temptations. I’ve thought a lot about that experience over the years, but the amount of related experiences in my life is few and far between. Don’t ask me to explain what I saw because my memory is more auditory than it is visual. If you have questions about whether my experience was legitimate, you can look back at all the recorded experiences of young children and infants witnessing extraordinary things in both Mormonism and Catholicism. It’s not as rare an occurance as some people might think, but what is more rare is for someone who is currently 20 years old to remember such an experience that happened as an infant or toddler.

Having such an experience, however, doesn’t make a person a saint or a prophet. It doesn’t mean I’m superior to anyone. All it does is raise more questions, but one thing I recently realized from it is the fact that I can never blame Joseph Smith, Jr. from having multiple accounts of his experience that sometimes seem contradictory to one another. A person can hardly describe everything they experience in normal life, let alone all they experience in a vision or out-of-body experience. When I talk about visions or out-of-body experiences, I’m talking about something I believe is one and the same.

There. I’ve come out and said it. Argue about it all you want. Call me a liar even, but I’ll not be denying that what I witnessed actually occured. What I am willing to do is engage in intelligent discussion about what my experience means and how it relates to gospel topics of either Mormonism or Catholicism or any other religion for that matter.

No comment.

zerinus

 

[isaac.madsen]

No comment.

zerinus

That’s what I figured.

 

[Maria1212]

Any mormon who shuns a family member on account of leaving the lds church is not lds but an imperfect human being who is making a mistake. The lds church does not encourage or support shunning anyone.

Why Me,

I had a very good friend in college who was shunned by his family and friends when he chose to leave the LDS Church. Your statement that the LDS Church does not encourage or support this is inaccurate. The people who chose to cruelly shun him were definitely LDS! They were imperfect at showing charity toward their neighbor, but they were still LDS nonetheless. LDS members are not perfect. (Nor are Christians.)

Sincerely,

Maria1212

 

[isaac.madsen]

Why Me,

I had a very good friend in college who was shunned by his family and friends when he chose to leave the LDS Church. Your statement that the LDS Church does not encourage or support this is inaccurate. The people who chose to cruelly shun him were definitely LDS! They were imperfect at showing charity toward their neighbor, but they were still LDS nonetheless. LDS members are not perfect. (Nor are Christians.)

Sincerely,

Maria1212

That doesn’t really mean anything. Those are members. They aren’t the church itself.

 

[why_me]

Why Me,

I had a very good friend in college who was shunned by his family and friends when he chose to leave the LDS Church. Your statement that the LDS Church does not encourage or support this is inaccurate. The people who chose to cruelly shun him were definitely LDS! They were imperfect at showing charity toward their neighbor, but they were still LDS nonetheless. LDS members are not perfect. (Nor are Christians.)

Sincerely,

Maria1212

Isaac is correct in what he says. The LDS church never encourages shunning. Rather, it encourages love and fellowship. The family in question were not living their religion but rather showing human imperfection in making the decisions that they made. However, catholics have also shunned family members who have joined the mormons. People are not perfect and full of human weakness.