Questions for Former LDS Members

[nevadairenaeus]

Hi everyone!

So I have a lot of Mormon friends and have done a lot of research on the religion. I am fully aware that we may use the same words and phrases at times but not mean the same concept behind them.

That being said, can any LDS on here explain the Great Atonement to me? My LDS friends say that Jesus had to die for us in order for us to get to heaven, but many outside the faith contradict this belief. I have heard it said that the Atonement was completed in the Garden when Jesus went to pray, if so then why was the Crucifixion necessary??

I get the feeling from my LDS friends that they don’t like to talk about the “unpleasant” things like the Crucifixion and sufferings of Christ.

Thanks!

LDS views are pretty similar to the penal substitution theory of the atonement, in fact the Book of Mormon teaches penal substitution quite explicitly. In a nutshell it would be something like this: God’s justice requires that there be punishment for sin. If God somehow violated justice he would cease to be God. Without Jesus’ sacrifice justice would require that we would all have to face the full consequences of our sins and would necessarily be excluded from God’s presence. Jesus, by living a perfect life of obedience to his Father, took upon himself all of our sin and the associated punishment. In Mormon tradition this is thought to have occurred primarily (but perhaps not exclusively) in the Garden when Jesus bled from every pore. The crucifixion was still necessary so that Christ could die and be bodily resurrected, and to fulfill prophecy. Since Jesus paid the penalty for sin we can, if we repent and are baptized, be cleansed from our sins and avoid the punishment due them. If we do not repent then we will have to suffer as Christ did.

From their own scriptures (D&C 19):

“Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not. For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink”

 

[Marie5890]

The Easter Vigil, baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist were all wonderful. The grace of baptism indeed! I’m finally home, thanks be to God.

btw – I changed my username to include my confirmation name Irenaeus

St. Irenaeus, great defender of the catholic faith against all heresies, pray for us

Welcome home!.

 

[NewSeeker]

I am very glad to be out of the Church. I cant ever see myself going back. The odd thing is, though, I never had had a bad moment in the LDS Church, till I went inactive due to my research that eventually led me to leave the Church completely. I loved being a missionary, I loved the closeness and camaraderie of the membership (something I do not get much of in the Catholic Church).

So, here are my questions.

1. Did you serve a mission
2. If so, did you enjoy it?
3. Do you ever miss the LDS Church?

I just am curious if I am the only person with these feelings. I left the LDS in 1990, so I have been gone a long time, but, every now and then, I miss it.

1. Yes. North Carolina Raleigh Mission, '85-'87. I went to the temple for the first time in January '85, yes, back before the Masonic blood oaths were removed from the endowment rite. I still have a vivid image in my mind of my mom simulating her own throat slitting and disembowlment. That’s all gone now, ever since 1990.
2. Yes, I suppose I did. I was a TBM then, district leader, zone leader, etc., living by the little white bible in my front shirt pocket (right behind the little black name tag), baptizing mostly kids in part member families. I did get to baptize one couple we tracted into. Later, I learned that before we knocked on the door they had just arrived home from a Klan meeting with a trunk full of moonshine. I kid you not. I did mostly enjoy my mission. I was indeed a TBM, but never once did I ever feel the spirit in any recognizable way. I kept hanging on for a long time before despair began to set in, just a couple of years after I married my wife in the temple. Then I started asking questions, followed by family and friends engaging in the standard passive aggressive questioning you hear in every wardhouse: “were you really sincere in your search? Is there a secret sin you’re harboring? You must not have been listening when the spirit whispered.” That’s when the extreme anger set in. I still suffer from that anger. Lord have mercy. I entered a spiritual wasteland for the next fifteen years. In 2006, I woke up one morning and gave in to a growing and eventually overwhelming curiosity about Catholicism. The rest is history, as my signature line attests.
3. I wish I was at the point where I could say that I do or don’t miss the mormon church. I am not yet 100% out. My wife is LDS, my older son is a deacon (I watched my nephew baptize him the day after I was baptized at the '08 Easter Vigil; I watched my brother in law ordain him as a deacon) and my younger son is 10 and baptized (the same brother in law baptized him). They go to church every Sunday with mom. I have to go with them. They give my wife hell every Sunday morning and won’t go otherwise; they’d rather play video games. Church just bores them to tears. My wife desperately needs me to make them go to Sunday School with her. She is literally fearful that if they don’t go to Sunday School/primary that they will turn out to be bad kids. Thank you for that, Mormon brainwashing! So I hang my head every Sunday morning and support my wife. Sundays are a private hell I go through, my own cross that I choose to carry and have carried since I realized Mormonism was a fraud way back in the early '90s, but especially since the kids were born. I suffer from periodic bouts of depression due to all of this that often keep me from mass. It’s oh so easy to just give in to the demons and say “what’s the point? It’s all a joke.” Lord have mercy. I take it day by day.

 

[TexanKnight]

1. Yes. North Carolina Raleigh Mission, '85-'87. I went to the temple for the first time in January '85, yes, back before the Masonic blood oaths were removed from the endowment rite. I still have a vivid image in my mind of my mom simulating her own throat slitting and disembowlment. That’s all gone now, ever since 1990.
2. Yes, I suppose I did. I was a TBM then, district leader, zone leader, etc., living by the little white bible in my front shirt pocket (right behind the little black name tag), baptizing mostly kids in part member families. I did get to baptize one couple we tracted into. Later, I learned that before we knocked on the door they had just arrived home from a Klan meeting with a trunk full of moonshine. I kid you not. I did mostly enjoy my mission. I was indeed a TBM, but never once did I ever feel the spirit in any recognizable way. I kept hanging on for a long time before despair began to set in, just a couple of years after I married my wife in the temple. Then I started asking questions, followed by family and friends engaging in the standard passive aggressive questioning you hear in every wardhouse: “were you really sincere in your search? Is there a secret sin you’re harboring? You must not have been listening when the spirit whispered.” That’s when the extreme anger set in. I still suffer from that anger. Lord have mercy. I entered a spiritual wasteland for the next fifteen years. In 2006, I woke up one morning and gave in to a growing and eventually overwhelming curiosity about Catholicism. The rest is history, as my signature line attests.
3. I wish I was at the point where I could say that I do or don’t miss the mormon church. I am not yet 100% out. My wife is LDS, my older son is a deacon (I watched my nephew baptize him the day after I was baptized at the '08 Easter Vigil; I watched my brother in law ordain him as a deacon) and my younger son is 10 and baptized (the same brother in law baptized him). They go to church every Sunday with mom. I have to go with them. They give my wife hell every Sunday morning and won’t go otherwise; they’d rather play video games. Church just bores them to tears. My wife desperately needs me to make them go to Sunday School with her. She is literally fearful that if they don’t go to Sunday School/primary that they will turn out to be bad kids. Thank you for that, Mormon brainwashing! So I hang my head every Sunday morning and support my wife. Sundays are a private hell I go through, my own cross that I choose to carry and have carried since I realized Mormonism was a fraud way back in the early '90s, but especially since the kids were born. I suffer from periodic bouts of depression due to all of this that often keep me from mass. It’s oh so easy to just give in to the demons and say “what’s the point? It’s all a joke.” Lord have mercy. I take it day by day.

wow…we served at about the same time. I served 84-86 in Honduras. I sent in my “take me off the roles” letter in November 1989. They excommunicated me in 1990.

The ONLY thing I miss is the togetherness. The unity of purpose. The feeling like I belonged. The camaraderie. I simply do not feel it in the Catholic Church. We go to Mass, we go home. We hardly talk to each other. Say what you want about how boring Priesthood and Sunday School was, it DID forge relationships and a feeling of togetherness.

We, as Catholics, should learn THAT from the Mormons…the togetherness, the unity of purpose.

One of the things that I think attracts people to the LDS Church, besides the togetherness, is the locality of it all. Jerusalem is far away. Rome is far away. Many of us will never see those places. But the Book of Mormon (as false as it is) happened HERE…and SLC is HERE…

I am a totally converted Catholic. In my law office is a large NAB Bible on a stand, artwork of the Virgin Mary holding the Baby Jesus, and a shelf of various Rosaries. Anyone who walks in my office knows I am Catholic. I wear Religious ties to Court. I am proud to be Catholic.

But I will always have very fond memories of my mission and my time as LDS because of the feeling of family.

In His Grip

 

[RebeccaJ]

Lord have mercy. I take it day by day.

Hello NewSeeker, it is good to “see” you.

I think it is the struggle everyone faces, that of, the Christian existence.

Pope Benedict XVI, when he was a Cardinal wrote this:

“Where the Church is regarded only as an accidental human association, the “advance gift” of faith will be questionable. But one who is convinced that it is a question, not of some human association, but rather of the gift of the love that already awaits us even before we draw our first breath, will see his most precious task as the preparation of another person to receive the advance gift of love – for it is only this gift that justifies passing on the gift of life to him. This means that we must learn anew to take God as our starting point when we seek to understand the Christian existence. This existence is belief in his love and faith that he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit – for it is only thus that the affirmation that he is “love” becomes meaningful. If he is not love in himself, he is not love at all. But if he is love in himself, he must be “I” and “Thou”, and this means that he must be triune. Let us ask him to open our eyes so that he becomes once again the basis of our understanding of the Christian existence, for in this way we shall understand ourselves anew and renew mankind.”

I like how our reception of the Catholic faith is a reception of God’s love, the “advance gift” that was waiting for us all along. Pope Benedict gives us an invitation, to root ourselves in the love of God. I don’t know of any other way to get through the day.

 

[garyo49]

When I attend my daughter’s Mormon baptism service next month (makes me sad just writing that), I’m going to have to control myself not to make the sign of the cross when the person baptizing her says “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost”.

My wife is a mormon. I went to her sacrament service with her one Sunday and I said to her as we were walking in, “try and help me not to cross myself when I walk in as I do at Mass”.

 

[TheExorcist]

My wife is a mormon. I went to her sacrament service with her one Sunday and I said to her as we were walking in, “try and help me not to cross myself when I walk in as I do at Mass”.

That’ll be an easy one…no holy water font!

 

[SpeSalvi]

I tend to not even get the urge to cross myself when I walk into the LDS chapel because the place doesn’t really feel sacred to me. They insist on it not looking like a traditional church; it’s not my fault I feel like I’m walking into a town hall meeting instead of a place that I can worship God

 

[NewSeeker]

The Easter Vigil, baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist were all wonderful. The grace of baptism indeed! I’m finally home, thanks be to God.

btw – I changed my username to include my confirmation name Irenaeus

St. Irenaeus, great defender of the catholic faith against all heresies, pray for us

Welcome Home!!! I’m very happy to learn that you crossed the Tiber!

 

[NewSeeker]

Hello NewSeeker, it is good to “see” you.

I think it is the struggle everyone faces, that of, the Christian existence.

Pope Benedict XVI, when he was a Cardinal wrote this:

“Where the Church is regarded only as an accidental human association, the “advance gift” of faith will be questionable. But one who is convinced that it is a question, not of some human association, but rather of the gift of the love that already awaits us even before we draw our first breath, will see his most precious task as the preparation of another person to receive the advance gift of love – for it is only this gift that justifies passing on the gift of life to him. This means that we must learn anew to take God as our starting point when we seek to understand the Christian existence. This existence is belief in his love and faith that he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit – for it is only thus that the affirmation that he is “love” becomes meaningful. If he is not love in himself, he is not love at all. But if he is love in himself, he must be “I” and “Thou”, and this means that he must be triune. Let us ask him to open our eyes so that he becomes once again the basis of our understanding of the Christian existence, for in this way we shall understand ourselves anew and renew mankind.”

I like how our reception of the Catholic faith is a reception of God’s love, the “advance gift” that was waiting for us all along. Pope Benedict gives us an invitation, to root ourselves in the love of God. I don’t know of any other way to get through the day.

Hi Rebecca, it’s good to be here. Thanks for the quote; I’ve never read that one. I think that’s why morning prayers are so important - to remind us at the start of the day of our root, of the ground we must stand on as Christians. Thanks for sharing.