Getting Personal With Christianity: Overcoming Doubt

I never thought of prophets as perfect. The Book of Mormon even claims prophets are not perfect. I did not believe in Jesus as a God until I read the Book of Mormon since I had lost my faith as a young Christian--if I had faith at all back then. I suppose I had tradition and I accepted the things that were familiar to me.

Over and over, the prophets in the Book of Mormon claim that if there are mistakes in the record, they are errors of men. To me, that is an admission that there would be mistakes--that we should expect some! Joseph Smith, Mormon, Moroni and Nephi were all important men associated with the coming forth of the book to us. If they made mistakes how do they diminish God's role in revealing to them the truth? It does not change the fact, in my case, that I spoke to God about their work/writings and He told me that they are true, a true testament to the divinity of Jesus Christ.

God told me in answer to my prayers certain things. I care, but less what Joseph did before he became a prophet or how many wives he had. And? 

It kills my spiritual high sometimes when people find out that I am a LDS Christian and they say, “Well, you know that they don't like Black people." 

I want to say, "Really? I am so glad you told me that! I've been in this faith for more than twenty years, and I just could not tell! I just assumed they were nice to me because they were Christian, but know YOU let me know that they were pretending! Yeah, and all the Black Mormons had to be pretending a nice also since there are so many of them in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now!"

Umm, yeah! The members of the church come in all the variety of humanity. I wish that I could say it and it be overwhelmingly accurate that because LDS claim to have the restored truth that it makes us better people. 
Who doesn't want to think their faith makes them the best? Humble people don't want to think that I suppose.  If anything, our faith makes us more accountable before God since we claim to have a direct line to God through a prophet, but people are people.  Israel had a direct line to God through prophets and look at what happened to then. They still worshiped false gods! 
People will be good or bad regardless of the religion. I hope that as Christians, we are more inclined to do good deeds rather. It has been my experience at the beginning of my walk with Christ that LDS earnestly endeavor to live the teachings of Christ. 
I have been a LDS Christian too long to assume someone will be nice to me just because we go to the same church. It is not the case. I have met people with racist ideas and notions. I have met rude people. I met these people in church!

So, do I believe that Mormons have been racist in the past and that some are still racist? Yes, I do believe that. Since when did being a disciple of Christ, mean that we are instantly perfect as a person, community or faith? It is not the church I am converted to per se, but the faith, the teachings of God through the imperfect people in the church.

People cannot accept that I asked God on many occasions about the church and His prophets and He tells me they are authorized to act and speak for Him. I trust God, so I accept the prophets as His official reps on the earth.

I still have my doubts and my issues about this or that doctrine or policy, which I speak about appropriately, but my purpose is to promote faith in others and challenge the things that make me doubt. I still have bouts with God about if He is there! I could see myself slip away from Him if I were to stop praying because then He becomes a distant memory and His revelations just the fanciful whimsy of my simple mind.

I choose not to indulge my doubts. I am sure President Thomas S Monson has issues that his family would confirm if they were inclined to do so. That would not change the fact that for me, God has told me Monson is a prophet. He, Monson, will have to repent of his sins just like I do, but he still represents the Lord officially as His spokesman.

Prophets can fall and lose their way just like any person, but they can also repent and be forgiven without losing their calling. They can also be wrong about something all the days of their lives and teach it as if it is right! That is the reason God gave us the Holy Ghost so that we can discern.  That is why we have 15 prophets instead of just one. We as a people have to learn to trust our personal revelation. We must also learn to keep the commandments so that we are not being led astray because the devil can give revelations too!

We are never to trust the prophet in a way that we exclude prayer and due devotion to God ourselves. If we did, it would be Satan’s plan: to follow blindly in obedience.

Apologists have the wrong idea. I used to be one before I came to my senses. I received such a convincing jolt to my misunderstanding of my faith that I rebooted. I found out that I knew only these two things: that God is real and the Book of Mormon is true. This happened post-mission 12 or so years ago.  Apologists rattled me to the core. I alarmed my wife and friends. They had warned me to stay away from it.

See, foolishly, I had stopped reading my scriptures much and praying with faith while I engaged in apologetics. I only wanted to debate with people about the LDS religion and its preeminence over all others. What rattled me was something that ended up being false anyway! I was just so far from my relationship with God my mind was weak. Doubt worked its way into my mind. Apologetics is great if it is tempered by sincere faith.

We do not NEED to prove the faith or make exceptions for it. I find it comforting that there are people willing to give intellectual explanations for things that are not clear. Those exercises on intellect should never replace sincere and abiding faith in Jesus Christ on a foundation of keeping the commandments He has provided.

Faith is to believe in the absence of proof, which comes with revelation after the trial of our faith. I can promise any of you who are struggling with your faith that read this blog that if you keep the commandments prayerfully, God will reveal the truth to you as many times as you need it.

He set it up this way so that we would seek Him. I know I would not pray as often if I had all the answers right now. What need would I have to talk to Him or develop an open communication with Him at all? It is hard! I have to put my remote down and stop entertaining myself to do that!

There is no proof of any religious belief other than personal revelation. God designed life that way so that we can have the freedom to pursue the gospel or reject it without condemnation if we lose sight of the truth.

For example, we know the law gravity exists, so if we jump off a building expecting it to go away, we will suffer the immediate consequences. It is not so with the gospel. If we choose to leave the gospel level of consciousness we espouse, Mormon, Baptist, Muslim, spiritualism, etc., we lose a little bit of our testimony at a time until it is all gone. We are not doomed to outer darkness but only to a lower kingdom which is still a part of heaven if we fail to repent. Atheists, in my estimation, still go to heaven! Devil worshipers still go to heaven!

I find comfort knowing I can still mess up and get a great reward. I have not seen God, so I do not qualify for outer darkness. But, oh boy for those who have seen Him and decided to reject Him afterward. There are few people with that reward. Nephi lets us know that the hell they will endure exists only for them, and the devil.

So, it is okay for you all to have your doubts. Just, doubt your doubts more than you doubt the things you know. Since many of us still have not seen God face to face, we can get away with more. However, since some of us have heard His voice, we need to think hard how we dismiss past spiritual experiences.

Mormonism is a culture, but the gospel is more than a culture, it is the truth, and I would give up all my heritage and cultures for that.

Getting Personal With Christianity: Spiritual Apostasy # 8

One of the most depressing things that I recently learned is that one of the youths that I watched grow up and get married in the temple no longer believes in God.

Many people I know over the years that have left the church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for one reason or another. Most of them have left due to transgression--the ones that I know, which includes family members.

Leaving the church is one thing; but denying God...

It is different with this couple that I mention--it is different knowing that one if not both deny God. I did not grow up with these people. It is worse than that; I watched them mature and become beautiful young adults. I participated in ordinances with them and received edification from their testimonies.

It feels like I just discovered that my own child rejected God!

How does that affect me?

The Explanation

At one time, a brief time, I did not believe there was a god. I could not fathom there being one because of the lack of understanding I had of the Plan of Salvation at the time, but I did not know that I lacked knowledge then.

I thought of how cruel it would be for some supreme being, who could be some malevolent beast that watched in amusement while humanity suffered. I was afraid most of the time because I could not come to grips on what to think! I thought or believed many things depending on the mood or book I was reading.

I believed that there were intelligent beings who planted humanity here as a colony and forgot about us through some great cataclysm or maybe they monitored our progress for some unknown purpose for the future.  I later saw an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation where that was the origin of all the humanoid species. I really am a Star Trek Geek! I loved that episode.

I then thought that there was nothing. Evolution happened on this planet and through natural selection, the Homo sapiens beat out all of the other humanoids believed to have inhabited this sphere. I read books and snippets on the web about how the different races evolved, first the Negro, then the Caucasoid and then the Mongoloid.

I trusted the sources of my information and believed that the Asian races were the best of humanity being the youngest form of human evolution. I thought of my own race as the legacy group that evolved from the apes. I am not going to go into the therapy that I had to have after that.

I was confused and believed almost anything, except in a god. That made no sense that some magical being existed. I would prefer a Superman or a Batman to that!

I know how I felt without God in my life. I felt free! I felt free to do anything and be anything! I was the master of my own life and I answered to no person, until...

...until I realized that there were other people out there who controlled my life and that I was the master of nothing

...until I started truly being affected by the racist human origins teachings I had read.

...until I started feeling alone and lost in a sea of philosophies!

Without God in my life, I was my own source of strength or lack thereof.

The Weird Jealousy

I capitulated and began to believe in a supreme manifestation. I sought out spiritualism. I finally settled on Islam, because, I NEEDED to worship something!  I could not live without a god.

After a string of events and manifestations, I was converted back to Christianity and received an undeniable witness that God is alive and well and very much in control of this tiny planet.

One of my issues, my nagging problem was I could not make it without God. It became an issue with me needing God! I would feel like I am cheating life when I prayed to God and received answers to my prayers and divine help in a hard situation. I would dismiss many blessings as coincidence when I was without God in my life, but now, I could not.

I felt ashamed when I prayed over a test or to overcome a hard problem. I was ashamed because when I found God, He answered all, and I mean ALL of my prayers immediately!

Anything I prayed about, I received! I am not talking about getting answers that I can see the Hand of God in if I worked backwards. I would ask for money and I would get money. I asked for my car to start working once, and it started working.

I was ashamed! Other people did not need God like I did, I thought. They could excel with no prayers, which fortified in me that I was the weak legacy chain in human evolution. My ancestors were slaves because of a divine curse I was taught in my Protestant church. I thought little of that until I joined my current church and the priesthood ban was added to that teaching--along with the false teachings that we hedge around it to justify it having happened.

Presently...

The weird jealousy I had when I first converted to God came back! I actually started think again about how I could not live without a god. 

I did not think that I was less of a person for that truth, but I did have familiar feelings of mourning. I felt betrayed by the missionaries who taught me for telling me to speak to God for the first time. I could not go back. 

I know there is God and I could not un-know it! I could deny it. I could ignore it; but I know it. 

I recall once wanting to go back to my without-God-in-my-life days and feeling angry that God was there answering my prayers! I tried, but I could not ignore the fact that He revealed Himself to me and an unmistakable way!

I was jealous of people who did not believe in God. They were in ignorant bliss. I longed for that! Life is some much simpler when there is no purpose to it.

I accept that this life is not all that there is, but sometimes it is so easy to wish that it was. I think of that couple that I saw married in the temple making those promises... I wonder if they ever believed in God.

I wonder that because I tried not to believe in Him. Now that I know He is there I need Him. He is the only One who can help me to continue living my life in a productive way following this life.

I still think sometimes, "What if it is all a great big lie!"

I then remember that no one forced me to talk to God. I went to Him seeking and He revealed Himself to me. I know that I can do things where I can make it so that I cannot feel His Holy Spirit. I can make it so that I cannot hear the answers to my prayers. Heck, if I stop praying I can make it so that I doubt ever having an intimate experience with Him.

I like myself with God in my life though. I hurt that my young friends are no longer believers. They seem happy though. They seem settled. They seem good. I can only pray that they may find Him some way. 

I am confident that I will not let go of my faith in Jesus Christ and ever deny my Heavenly Father. I am confident!

I know that it is possible. Cain did it. Judas Iscariot did it. Millions do it. I pray that I will endure to the end. I expect to.

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Getting Personal With Christianity: Listen to Wisdom. Seek Understanding and be Wise # 7

I recently spoke to a friend about living my life in a way that would bring me closer to the Lord by using the scriptures as often as possible. Reading for 15 minutes or so a day just so I can say that I have read my scriptures does not fortify me from the spiritual storms of life. In fact, it is like eating a snack instead of a full meal each day and then only one time in the day.

No. It is not enough for me to feed my spirit rations above physical starvation! What is more important than feeding my soul? I mean, I can think of the good I can do for others, but that good can only come if I am doing it with a pure heart.

My intentions were not pure going into this. At first, I thought to humor my friend as we spoke and let him think that he was teaching me something; that is, until I started to actually learn something from him. I reflected on my life and how I draw closer to God by how much I think about Him and His commandments.

If I am not thinking about Him or His commandments, I notice that I am more likely to commit sin. In an effort to follow the sacred counsel I received from the Lord many years ago, and the new counsel from my friend I decided to read one of the books that I despise because it is unlike other scripture, The Book of Proverbs. All it is is the wisdom of one man on temporal and spiritual things.

It is inspired wisdom though. At least that is what I tell myself to encourage myself to read. I don't want to read it. I will admit to that. But I owe it to myself to try and do better than I have in the past with the book. I plan to do the same with the Psalms.

What I hope to gain from reading these books
is a way to put aside my selfish desires to be entertained by everything I do and seek understanding and wisdom from the journey through the scriptures.

So, I don't have a neat bow to wrap around this post. I have faith to go forward and hope that God will direct my path for Good.
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I drank the Kool-aid

Jesus Christ Himself was Baptized

In The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Nephi states that Jesus Christ will be baptized to fulfill all righteousness. This he foresaw nearly 600 years before the event occurred in Jordan. So important and supernal was that act of humility the Lord showed it to a Prophet to put in a book that would speak to the souls of the pure in heart that God has always revealed His son to the world.

Nephi says that if Christ being as holy as He is has a need for baptism, then we being unholy have even a greater need for baptism.

Nephi describes the scene--the voice from heaven and the Holy Spirit's descent upon Christ in the form of a dove. Even the name of John was revealed to this prophet! In response to this revelation, Nephi states

"...I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism—yea, by following your Lord and your Savior down into the water, according to his word, behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost; yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue of angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel.2 Nephi 31:13

Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Redeemer of mankind through the Atonement. He paid for our sins because he had none of his own for which to suffer. He had no reason to die, so he did not stay dead. He suffered for our sins so that we have no reason to stay dead either; so, we will live again.

God be thanked for Jesus Christ.

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