Contacting the FLDS Church about Praying to Find out

[_KevinSim]

Kevin, do you think you are wrong?

No.

Do you think the people receiving similar answers about their particular religion are wrong?

I have no idea whether they're wrong or not. And, to be perfectly blunt, it's none of my business whether they're wrong or not. That's completely between them and God.

50%. When I consider the cosmos, and what it would have taken to bring it about, I think the odds are 50-50 that a deity created it, as opposed to it having come about due to natural processes.

That's not what I mean. I meant what is your percentage of doubt that the answer you've received is not what you think it is?

50%, just like I said. If there is a good God that created the universe, then I'm fully confident that the answer I've received is precisely what I think it is.

[_KevinSim]

God is completely willing to give someone an answer if s/he is willing to base the rest of her/his life on the answer. If the someone isn't willing to spend the rest of her/his life on the answer, why should God give it to her/him?

Says who? And is this the healthiest way to approach things generally? Say a woman received a spiritual prompting to stay for the rest of her life in an abusive relationship. Would you tell this woman that there is no going back from this? She's now locked in until death because God already gave her an answer that she should base the rest of her life on? This just seems like a formula for people opening themselves up to all kinds of abuse.

Why in the world would a woman want to use whether she should stay for the rest of her life in an abusive relationship, as the kernel of truth to use as the foundation for her theology?

[_Sanctorian]

Sanctorian, that's the problem. Size of the church has nothing to do with whether God endorses it or not. If a member of the FLDS Church has prayed and asked God if the FLDS Church is true, in precisely the same way I prayed and asked God if the LDS Church is true, and if both of us got the same yes answer, then I have to live with the likelihood that this person is a member of the FLDS Church for the precise same reason I'm a member of the LDS Church, and that's not a comfortable thought.

This is precisely what is happening. The problem being you likely can't accept another persons claim to how God answered their prayer because that causes you discomfort in your answer from God.

There is a video on YouTube from a group that is telling their testimonies. It sounds exactly like a Mormon testimony except they aren't Mormons. They prayed to know it was true and their answers would make any good Mormon feel the spirit. I can't find it, but maybe Bazooka can. He's good at that stuff.

[_beastie]

Why in the world would a woman want to use whether she should stay for the rest of her life in an abusive relationship, as the kernel of truth to use as the foundation for her theology?

I'm jumping in mid-way here, so hopefully am not repeating what others have said.

I believe you are misunderstanding the point bazooka is making, which has to do with the fundamentally flawed nature of "revelation". in my opinion, that is the fatal flaw of Mormonism. Even the teachings of past prophets testify that human beings have a great deal of difficulty differentiating between their own thoughts and God's "revelations".

Mormonism teaches that God will answer believers' prayers about important issues such as who to marry. In the past, Mormonism also encouraged young people to marry quickly. (I hope it's no longer like that, but I don't know.)

I married a temple-worthy RM that I had only known three months by the time we faced each other across from the altar. No one in our families or wards found this alarming or unusual. After all, we had prayed and God had told us that we should get married. A three month courtship was not enough time to discover that he had a mental illness and was emotionally abusive, and potentially physically abusive, as well. Nor was it enough time to realize that I was marrying a deeply closeted gay man.

I stayed married to this man for fifteen years - long enough to bring three children into this world, who have all experienced serious challenges due to their father's issues. I stayed married because I believed God had told me to marry this man, and this was my special challenge in this life. I believed that either my faith and prayers would "fix" my husband, or I would be "given" to a worthy man in the next life. But I did not believe I could divorce this man. I could not discard the most sacred promises I had made in the temple.

I divorced him shortly after leaving the church. It was the best decision I've ever made in my entire life. I believe I saved my life and my children's lives.

God, if one exists, totally failed me. I believed in a fairy tale called "personal revelation", and proceeded to make truly horrible, life-changing decisions based on that fairy tale.

[_Tim the Enchanter]

Says who? And is this the healthiest way to approach things generally? Say a woman received a spiritual prompting to stay for the rest of her life in an abusive relationship. Would you tell this woman that there is no going back from this? She's now locked in until death because God already gave her an answer that she should base the rest of her life on? This just seems like a formula for people opening themselves up to all kinds of abuse.

Why in the world would a woman want to use whether she should stay for the rest of her life in an abusive relationship, as the kernel of truth to use as the foundation for her theology?

I think you misunderstand my question or I misunderstand your response.

Your original statement, if I understood it correctly, was that God required a person be willing to live the rest of their life based upon the answer to a question before He would provide the answer. This presumption is what I was questioning. Who says that God works this way?

And, a related question, why should people base the rest of their lives on a spiritual prompting if basing their lives on it is damaging to their long term future?

[_Tim the Enchanter]

There is a video on YouTube from a group that is telling their testimonies. It sounds exactly like a Mormon testimony except they aren't Mormons. They prayed to know it was true and their answers would make any good Mormon feel the spirit. I can't find it, but maybe Bazooka can. He's good at that stuff.

I don't know if this is the video you are thinking of, but this video has several examples. Start at 5:11 to jump right to the examples.

[_Sanctorian]

There is a video on YouTube from a group that is telling their testimonies. It sounds exactly like a Mormon testimony except they aren't Mormons. They prayed to know it was true and their answers would make any good Mormon feel the spirit. I can't find it, but maybe Bazooka can. He's good at that stuff.

I don't know if this is the video you are thinking of, but this video has several examples. Start at 5:11 to jump right to the examples.

That's the video. Thank you. But I'm sure TBM's can figure out that everyone else that prays about some other religion and received a "yes" answer are being misled. Only the "One True Church" can have the "One True Answer" when prayed about. These other religious people must be doing it wrong.

[_KevinSim]

I divorced him shortly after leaving the church. It was the best decision I've ever made in my entire life. I believe I saved my life and my children's lives.

I'm sorry you had to go through so much pain. I have significant mental issues of my own. I'm on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum and I also have a mild form of Tourette Syndrome. The former wasn't diagnosed when I got married, and due to my resulting behavior my wife was seriously thinking of divorcing me in the year after we got married. Although I'm pretty sure that since a crisis in conscience in her late teens, she has never seriously considered leaving the LDS Church. So it's possible to be firmly committed to the LDS Church and yet still be stable enough to see divorce as a solution when a relationship goes really bad.

Luckily for me, we got past the biggest of our problems, and neither of us has thought seriously of leaving the other for over twenty years now.

God, if one exists, totally failed me. I believed in a fairy tale called "personal revelation", and proceeded to make truly horrible, life-changing decisions based on that fairy tale.

God failed you? Perhaps you think that if you had been God, you could have done a better job? Then what's stopping you? Why don't you take over from God and show God how a deity ought to behave?

You're going to protest; you're not omnipotent or omniscient, so you simply can't just waltz in there and take over control of the universe. But maybe God isn't as omnipotent or omniscient as people think God is, either. I've found that if you relax belief in God's absolute omnipotence and God's absolute omniscience, several of the arguments against God's existence simply dissolve. Of course traditional Christians believe in God's absolute omnipotence and God's absolute omniscience because the Bible seems to indicate God has both of those (together with creating the universe out of nothing), but so what? Since when has God told anyone that the Bible tells the truth when describing Her/Him?

I personally have no use for an absolutely omnipotent God or an absolutely omniscient one. I also don't have a firm belief that God created the world out of nothing. I'm toying with the idea that God created the universe, but I'm not firmly convinced of that either. I've thought a lot about what the universe really needs out of a deity, and I don't think that any of those items are must-haves. For me, God is simply that being (or completely united group of beings) that knows how to preserve forever some good things, and who is in fact acting to preserve forever good things. God has great power, and God has great knowledge, but God cannot do just anything, and God does not in fact know everything that is ever going to happen. God does the best that S/He can; that does not mean God has the power to do everything some people think God should do.

[_KevinSim]

Sanctorian, that's the problem. Size of the church has nothing to do with whether God endorses it or not. If a member of the FLDS Church has prayed and asked God if the FLDS Church is true, in precisely the same way I prayed and asked God if the LDS Church is true, and if both of us got the same yes answer, then I have to live with the likelihood that this person is a member of the FLDS Church for the precise same reason I'm a member of the LDS Church, and that's not a comfortable thought.

This is precisely what is happening. The problem being you likely can't accept another persons claim to how God answered their prayer because that causes you discomfort in your answer from God.

No, I can accept another person's claim to how God answered her/his prayer, and that acceptance is what causes me discomfort. I think it's perfectly natural for me to want God to tell everyone the same thing God told me; it's enormously more difficult to deal with a deity who will tell different people different things.

[_Bazooka]

Sanctorian, that's the problem. Size of the church has nothing to do with whether God endorses it or not. If a member of the FLDS Church has prayed and asked God if the FLDS Church is true, in precisely the same way I prayed and asked God if the LDS Church is true, and if both of us got the same yes answer, then I have to live with the likelihood that this person is a member of the FLDS Church for the precise same reason I'm a member of the LDS Church, and that's not a comfortable thought.

This is precisely what is happening. The problem being you likely can't accept another persons claim to how God answered their prayer because that causes you discomfort in your answer from God.

There is a video on YouTube from a group that is telling their testimonies. It sounds exactly like a Mormon testimony except they aren't Mormons. They prayed to know it was true and their answers would make any good Mormon feel the spirit. I can't find it, but maybe Bazooka can. He's good at that stuff.

This may suffice till I get my research 'puters fired up.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,686997,686997