Explaining the Hiatus --
I have been on kind of a hiatus for awhile, because I wanted to spend the summer re-reading the Book of Mormon and trying to collect my thoughts about the LDS church. A Protestant church I've been attending quite often is having a membership class in October (was supposed to be in September, hence the summer "Book of Mormon Challenge") and I wanted to re-read the Book of Mormon and get my thoughts and emotions together in case this class turned into a decision point for me. Not so much on leaving the LDS church, because I don't intend to do that for various reasons I could elaborate on if anybody cared. The decision point would be formally affiliating with another church and actually joining it so I could be of more value and accept more responsibility.
Anyway, the summer is over, the BoM challenge is over, and as time goes on I'll begin to post my thoughts and conclusions on some things. Rather than just posting a lot of sarcastic comments about current events in the church I feel it's more useful to post my reactions to official material from the church itself that are not open to challenge. i.e. you can challenge the history behind the first vision accounts, but you can't challenge what Russell M Nelson said about marriage, what M. Russell Ballard said about defensiveness, or the text of the Book of Mormon itself. There are lots of people out there ranting about LDS church history, but few people directly critique the official sources themselves, either out of faith or apathy. Alas I have neither, and most of my issues are with the church leaders themselves and not with the major doctrines that have been taught in the past.
3 comments:
Christfollower - I just wanted to thank you for your insightful comments. I always enjoy reading what you have to say over on the NOM board. I guess you could say that I am a serial lurker over there. I read all the time, but have never posted. Your perspective is refreshing. I have been a faithful Mormon all of my life, but many things have entrenched me firmly in the NOM camp. Even NOM may be to strong of label for me. Be I do have hope in the merits of Jesus Christ for my salvation. I could throw all of the historical issues out of the window if I felt like the church truly taught that we are saved through the grace of Jesus Christ. What I hear at church is a constant appeal to their authority, the prophet, the temple, etc. What I would love to hear that we should not trust in our works, or our goodness, or our righteousness. We need to look to the cross of Jesus Christ for these things. Anyhow, I do not mean to preach, I just wanted to let you now that your perspective is unique and inspiring to me. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the nice comment. I feel like I have kind of a lonely perspective at times, because I don't think a lot of people drift away from orthodox Mormonism with a firm testimony of the things that are actually taught in the Book of Mormon. By which I mean salvation by faith through grace, repentance, baptism for the remission of sins, and enduring to the end. I'm with you. If we actually used the BoM as another witness of Christ and not as a witness for the institutional church and practiced what it teaches, I could live with the history.
unfortunately in the great wisdom of the church. joining another church is grounds for excommunication. Acording to them you cannot do both. They are not about to make it easy to leave.
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