What is Joshua's Beliefs
Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 12:58 am
In response to guy sajer, I will answer this honestly and percisely:
When I was growing up, I was purely logic driven. Science was my religion and God was a possibility, but was not a big role in my life. My parents were agnostic and my extended family was Trinity Baptist on my Dad's side with Methodist on my mom's.
At 14, then 15, and finally at 16, I had three seperate crushes with three seperate girls.. All of them turned out to be Mormon. Understand that I was a computer geek, not well liked in school, labeled a "nerd". So I never asked any of these girls out, but watched from afar. WHen I turned 17, I thought a lot about Mormonism and religion, so I tried the "praying to God" thing. I prayed and prayed for a week straight. Then came the Mormon Missionaries. My crushes attached to an attracton to any idea that was "rebellious" or "out of the norm", I joined the Church in 2 weeks. My mom and dad actually came to the baptism. It was the first time in years my father walked into any Church. It was funny, my grandfather (someone I deeply respect - a overthinker like myself who graduated from Berkely, CA and became a civil engineer) also came to some of the services and ended up shruging his shoulders and said "looks like a Christian church to me". So I guess I got his approval.
Unfortunatly my nerddum did haunt me. I was an outsider. I went to Seminary for the last year, asking all sorts of questions. They were annoyed. They just wanted to get through seminary. The teacher was excited, but I got the usual glares. Found out that the girls thought I was a nerd too, so they had no interests in me.
What was hard is while I was being baptised and converting in, I got a lot of the handshakes and a lot of attention. Since I was the only one in my whole family, it was nice.. But when I was coverted, that went away. If it wasn't for my home teacher, who was an awsome guy and someone who became my friend, I would have left right then and there.
I graduated and moved to San Diego. I was heavily involved for a few more years, and met a girl I fell head-over-heels for. Things went awsome, but I had to deal with one annoying quirk. She and her family were uber-Amway freaks... We got "secretly" engaged, but when I decided I did not want to do Amway anymore, her parents pressured her to dumb me, which I did.
After that, I declined rapidly. I fell out of Church and it was shuffled to the back of my head.
Right after the Y2k events, I moved to San Francisco to do work at a Dot.com. Needing some connections (I knew NO ONE), I ended up re-connecting with the Church. It was EXTREMELY tight up there. Everyone was very clingy. So I had a small family again. Things went well, until I did the thing I promised myself I would never do... I looked up Mormonism on the Internet.
Understand my brain processes things VERY logically. Feed it something, and it crunches all aspects and sides of a problem from every angle. Everything can be reviewed through my head 4000x.... When I realized I was getting older and time was moving faster, my brain got me to search everything on the internet to find some answers or anything to help squish my fear..... There had to be SOME way to slow my brain down.... It is scary to have my brain and would give it to ANYONE that would take it.
Anyways, so now my brain was fed anti-Mormonism, and that was eating away at my brain. The Dot.com boom crashed, and I was sent back to Southern-California, depressed that my Mormon family was flawed. It frightened me.
Without going on and on, I had ups and downs, struggling with logic and trying to decide if Mormonism was a good or bad thing until I met my wife. I got back into Church, got Endowed, had some massive spiritual experiences, and we were sealed in the temple.
Two years into my marriage, and that fear of death thing hit. I had a meltdown. For a year, I was depressed and in a funk until I found out we were to be blessed with our first child. Then something in me snapped back and demanded I just flow with it and stop trying to figure EVERYTHING out.
What did I learn?
1. There is no such thing as absolute truth. For every point against Mormonism, someone has an alternative view. It depends on what view you want for that hour.
2. People don't aways leave Mormonism due to Sin. It is a hard doctrine to make work in some folks heads, and that is just that. Even when I was out of the Church, I didn't drink, have sex with everythng that moved, etc. etc....
3. Mormons need to relax. There are good questions that are hard to have answered about Mormon History.... If Mormonism is true, then scary questions should be confortable for you.
4. Anti-Mormons need to relax too. Mormonism isn't a big bad evil organization. It is what you make of it. Blaiming it for everything that has gone wrong in your life is irresponsible.
5. Traditional Christians don't have a better grasp on reality than Mormons and vice versa. Mormons present their message, and if no one listens, that is their choice. Traditional Christianity should do the same. Mormon "Ministries" and dumb, and if the message of a Church is good, that should stand on its own without tearing others down.
6. There are free thinkers on BOTH sides. Mormons can be intellectual as can Non-Mormons.... In the end.. Well... Can't we all get along?
I believe Mormonism is true. I don't KNOW that it is true, I have faith that it is. Since Disproving Mormonism is akin to disproving Christianity, if you disprove Mormonism, it is all gone for me. I like the message it preaches. I think it promotes good values like charity, family, and modisty. So I am no longer interested in proving or disproving it in my mind. So my activity on LDS boards has almost vanished to non-existance. I do still like debate though, and don't mind good debate. I just wish people didn't get ugly all the time.... Yes, I throw my ugliness too, but I am usually provoked by direct attack.
Anyways, that is that... I can expand if legit questions are asked, but I won't be responding to spears.
JMS
6.
When I was growing up, I was purely logic driven. Science was my religion and God was a possibility, but was not a big role in my life. My parents were agnostic and my extended family was Trinity Baptist on my Dad's side with Methodist on my mom's.
At 14, then 15, and finally at 16, I had three seperate crushes with three seperate girls.. All of them turned out to be Mormon. Understand that I was a computer geek, not well liked in school, labeled a "nerd". So I never asked any of these girls out, but watched from afar. WHen I turned 17, I thought a lot about Mormonism and religion, so I tried the "praying to God" thing. I prayed and prayed for a week straight. Then came the Mormon Missionaries. My crushes attached to an attracton to any idea that was "rebellious" or "out of the norm", I joined the Church in 2 weeks. My mom and dad actually came to the baptism. It was the first time in years my father walked into any Church. It was funny, my grandfather (someone I deeply respect - a overthinker like myself who graduated from Berkely, CA and became a civil engineer) also came to some of the services and ended up shruging his shoulders and said "looks like a Christian church to me". So I guess I got his approval.
Unfortunatly my nerddum did haunt me. I was an outsider. I went to Seminary for the last year, asking all sorts of questions. They were annoyed. They just wanted to get through seminary. The teacher was excited, but I got the usual glares. Found out that the girls thought I was a nerd too, so they had no interests in me.
What was hard is while I was being baptised and converting in, I got a lot of the handshakes and a lot of attention. Since I was the only one in my whole family, it was nice.. But when I was coverted, that went away. If it wasn't for my home teacher, who was an awsome guy and someone who became my friend, I would have left right then and there.
I graduated and moved to San Diego. I was heavily involved for a few more years, and met a girl I fell head-over-heels for. Things went awsome, but I had to deal with one annoying quirk. She and her family were uber-Amway freaks... We got "secretly" engaged, but when I decided I did not want to do Amway anymore, her parents pressured her to dumb me, which I did.
After that, I declined rapidly. I fell out of Church and it was shuffled to the back of my head.
Right after the Y2k events, I moved to San Francisco to do work at a Dot.com. Needing some connections (I knew NO ONE), I ended up re-connecting with the Church. It was EXTREMELY tight up there. Everyone was very clingy. So I had a small family again. Things went well, until I did the thing I promised myself I would never do... I looked up Mormonism on the Internet.
Understand my brain processes things VERY logically. Feed it something, and it crunches all aspects and sides of a problem from every angle. Everything can be reviewed through my head 4000x.... When I realized I was getting older and time was moving faster, my brain got me to search everything on the internet to find some answers or anything to help squish my fear..... There had to be SOME way to slow my brain down.... It is scary to have my brain and would give it to ANYONE that would take it.
Anyways, so now my brain was fed anti-Mormonism, and that was eating away at my brain. The Dot.com boom crashed, and I was sent back to Southern-California, depressed that my Mormon family was flawed. It frightened me.
Without going on and on, I had ups and downs, struggling with logic and trying to decide if Mormonism was a good or bad thing until I met my wife. I got back into Church, got Endowed, had some massive spiritual experiences, and we were sealed in the temple.
Two years into my marriage, and that fear of death thing hit. I had a meltdown. For a year, I was depressed and in a funk until I found out we were to be blessed with our first child. Then something in me snapped back and demanded I just flow with it and stop trying to figure EVERYTHING out.
What did I learn?
1. There is no such thing as absolute truth. For every point against Mormonism, someone has an alternative view. It depends on what view you want for that hour.
2. People don't aways leave Mormonism due to Sin. It is a hard doctrine to make work in some folks heads, and that is just that. Even when I was out of the Church, I didn't drink, have sex with everythng that moved, etc. etc....
3. Mormons need to relax. There are good questions that are hard to have answered about Mormon History.... If Mormonism is true, then scary questions should be confortable for you.
4. Anti-Mormons need to relax too. Mormonism isn't a big bad evil organization. It is what you make of it. Blaiming it for everything that has gone wrong in your life is irresponsible.
5. Traditional Christians don't have a better grasp on reality than Mormons and vice versa. Mormons present their message, and if no one listens, that is their choice. Traditional Christianity should do the same. Mormon "Ministries" and dumb, and if the message of a Church is good, that should stand on its own without tearing others down.
6. There are free thinkers on BOTH sides. Mormons can be intellectual as can Non-Mormons.... In the end.. Well... Can't we all get along?
I believe Mormonism is true. I don't KNOW that it is true, I have faith that it is. Since Disproving Mormonism is akin to disproving Christianity, if you disprove Mormonism, it is all gone for me. I like the message it preaches. I think it promotes good values like charity, family, and modisty. So I am no longer interested in proving or disproving it in my mind. So my activity on LDS boards has almost vanished to non-existance. I do still like debate though, and don't mind good debate. I just wish people didn't get ugly all the time.... Yes, I throw my ugliness too, but I am usually provoked by direct attack.
Anyways, that is that... I can expand if legit questions are asked, but I won't be responding to spears.
JMS
6.