Flip Side of the Coin

[_Drifting]

The LDS Church is in a very real sense a plan for the general welfare of as many of the human race as are willing to follow its program.

Kevin, how do you believe the $5 billion spent on the City Creek project helps to deliver this?

Do you also believe that handshakes will be a requirement of entry into the Celestial Kingdom?

[_Nightlion]

LOL ignored! REALLY? Come on.

[_Yoda]

I've heard a lot of stories on this forum about how the LDS Church has really messed up people's lives, told them lies, and wasted their time, and how happy those people are to be out of the LDS Church. So I thought I would talk about someone (me) who is the flip side of the coin, who is happy to have grown up within the LDS tradition, for whom life is going pretty pretty well, and who is content to live the whole rest of his life as a devout Latter-day Saint.

I've sometimes thought I have the best of both worlds; my mother was a sixth generation Latter-day Saint (her great-great-great grandfather was the Isaac Morley who's reprimanded for disobedience in the Doctrine & Covenants); while my father joined the LDS Church about age twenty while he was in the Air Force.

I was the third of six children, the first to be born in Seattle after my parents moved there to get a better job than my father could find in Utah where they were living. My father worked for Boeing as a research mechanic.

People talk a lot about how the LDS Church effectively brainwashes the children of active LDS parents into thinking that the Church must be true, but I think that simplifies the natural development of children and teens enormously. LDS teenagers rebell just like teenagers raised by any type of parents rebell. I attended Seminary for four years, where it was drilled into us, not that the LDS Church was true, but rather that the way to find out whether or not the LDS Church was true was to ask God if it was and have faith that God would answer.

Of course, that presupposes that there actually is a good God willing to give us an answer to the most basic question we could ever ask Her/Him, but over the years I have come to realize that belief in the existence of a good God isn't all that unreasonable. To be honest I have had some times when I've doubted God's existence (and still do to some degree), but I've never let a day end without letting God know that I've committed to believe in Him no matter what happens in the world, and there's nothing that can shake me from that commitment.

I left on a mission to southern Chile when I was just a few months short of twenty years old. I have a combination of Asperger Syndrome and Tourette Syndrome; the first messed up the first part of my mission, and when I tried to compensate for it the second kicked in and I got sent home. I finished the last two months of my mission in the University of Utah Medical Center; when the two months were over the Missionary Department officially released me and sent me off to a program for people with Tourette Syndrome at the National Institute of Health. I spent two months there and then came back home to Seattle.

I started out my life pretty conservative, even Libertarian to a degree, but my time at the University of Washington (in northeastern Seattle) transformed me into somewhat of a moderate. The first counselor in the Seattle North Stake presidency gave a fireside on evolution where he surprised me by actually supporting the Theory of Evolution, and that fireside effectively launched me away from my conservative base.

My wife Sandy and I were relatively old for Mormons when we got married; we were both 32. We were biologically unable to conceive, so we went to LDS Family Services in Seattle to try to adopt. I had followed my father to Boeing, as an Ada programmer, but I got laid off in 1995 when the 777 went into production. Texas Instruments in Dallas hired me shortly after I was laid off, and Sandy and I moved south to take it. 18 December 1996 (note that that's precisely one week before Christmas) we adopted three siblings, a four-year-old girl, her two-year-old brother, and their one-year-old sister. It was a chaotic start, but I've got to say adopting those three children was the second best decision I've ever made. (The best decision I ever made was, on a walk in a park with Sandy, after she hopped up on a log and took my hand, and after she came to the end of the log, I didn't give her her hand back.)

We raised our three kids in the LDS Church. Whether my two daughters will embrace it is still unclear. My son appears to be embracing it pretty well. He recently left our ward for the YSA ward in Provo, and has a calling that he is really taking seriously.

We lived in Texas for nine years, and then moved to Utah to be closer to family; Sandy has a brother and sister there and I have a brother. I've been a Java tester now here for a little over a year and a half. We finally settled down in Springville, which is the next city south of Provo.

Sandy is currently the assistant ward librarian, and I'm a ward missionary. I have a friend who left the LDS Church back in the 1980s. This friend at one point tried to get Sandy to pay attention to Joseph Smith's sexual acitivities with women married to other men, but Sandy didn't want to talk about it. She's just plain not interested in that kind of stuff. I used to be very interested in that kind of stuff, but Sandy has influenced me a lot, and I've got to say that what Joseph Smith did 170 years ago was a lot more important to me in my 20s than it is now that I'm 52.

I'm still firmly committed to my belief in a good God who controls the universe, and who has the power to answer prayer. I asked God a question about the LDS Church back when I was 17, and because of the answer I got I have concluded that God chose Spencer Kimball as His spokesman back then, and has chosen Thomas Monson as His spokesman in today's world.

Thank you so much for sharing this, Kevin. I really enjoyed reading your story about how the Church has influenced your life. It sounds like you have a beautiful family. I can tell that you are a very good man. My husband also has Aspbergers, and my son is high functioning autistic. These can be very challenging conditions, but with loving family, and the right kind of care, these conditions do not have to stop someone from living a very fulfilling life.

I have not yet read any of the other comments on this thread. If others here choose to tear down or criticize your testimony or your experiences, pay them no mind.

It is a true pleasure to get to know you. I am glad you post here.

[_Themis]

Oops! Somehow that line "they do make choices more on feelings then on rational thought" went completely over my head. I do think rational thought is important, even imperative. If one doesn't understand why that one believes what that one believes, then that one has nothing.

The whys have little to do with what is true for the feeler. The whys have everything to do with what makes them happy. For many those are things involving family, friends, community around them. If their family friends and community are all the same religion, then the truth of that religion means little to them even though they may not recognize that. This is why people like your wife have no interest in the details that may show their beliefs incorrect. Feelings and emotions are the main factors of making decisions in life.

Themis, when you said, "To them these details don't matter," I thought you were referring to several criticisms of Joseph Smith over things that don't really have any bearing on whether God chose him as God's spokesman to the world.

I am referring to things that have a bearing on that question, although we may have a different take on what does have a bearing here.

[_Themis]

It's completely relevant. If there is no good God who can answer individual prayer, then of course the possibility of one deceiving oneself is a real danger. On the other hand, if there is the type of God I just described, then why in the world wouldn't such a God step in, provide the one with God's answer, and save that one from self-deception?

In fact, if one can't be sure that God would step in and save that one from self-deception, what exactly can we know of for sure about God? And if we can't therefore know anything for sure about God, then why even bother with the concept of God in the first place?

I will comment later but I am wondering if you can see what is wrong with your post here?

[_Yoda]

Kevin, curious how you got a message or answer from God telling you Spencer Kimball was his spokesman and yet managed to live a life filled with doubt about God's actual existence? Makes me think the testimony was very subjective. It did nothing to advance you to the stage where you 'know the Lord'.

This is the sort of damages done by LDS leaders of a gospel-lite or McGospel that does not get down to the power of the gospel way down in the depths of humility like where King Benjamin was able to take his people and where every prophet who ever taught the gospel successfully in scripture got his contacts to go. Why is it Mormons refuse to go where the scriptures tell them the gifts and powers are? I really would like to know why it is they refuse. Any clues?

I know it is because LDS leaders fail to promote it and so they are basically telling people to believe it not and weaken faith and abuse the innocent who trust them. A crime of eternal consequence. Why are Mormons unconcerned? If they were molesting children could they get away with that too. Why allow them to spiritually abuse the members with lite gospel that never has the power to know God for certain and enter into where God himself will teach you. hmm?

Do you think by going out among the members with this question you will find one who will stand up to it and seek justice for so many? I doubt it seriously.

Nightlion, I know you have probably mentioned this before, but I have forgotten, or perhaps missed it.

Where, exactly, do you believe the "split" with the true Church occurred? I know that you believe that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. Do you feel the same way about Brigham Young? Which, of the modern prophets led the Church astray, in your estimation?

[_KevinSim]

With the high rate of suicides in gay Mormons, it appears to be killing many of them before they get the chance to learn their lessons from the discrimination and segregation that the LDS Church encourages not to mention the better dead than morally unclean meme that they spread for years.

Ah, so there is a "high rate of suicides in gay Mormons." I had heard about so many suicides that I mentioned my observations to my wife; she expressed her opinion that you just hear more about gay suicides, and she doubted that there really was a statistically higher rate.

Suicides among gay Mormons puzzle me. If I was sexually oriented toward men in such a way that no matter how hard I fought it I was still homosexually attracted, I honestly doubt I would kill myself. Why do gay Mormons in large numbers kill themselves?

[_KevinSim]

I disagree very much with the suggestion that I need organized religion--particularly one as potentially destructive as Mormonism--to better the human race. My kids and I volunteer regularly at a free health clinic and no one asks us about our religion.

Then when I asked you what you had replaced the LDS Church with, you could have said you had replaced it with a free health clinic.

Nonetheless, I have to ask, is a free health clinic enough? Do you know with certainty that that health clinic is going to still be around in, say, a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand? I am of the opinion that our consciences really require us to do some amount of thinking about what it would take to do permanent good. It doesn't have to be organized religion, but it has to be something. It doesn't have to be an obsession either; all I'm talking about is taking a small amount of time on a regular basis to think about what we can do to bring lasting good to the universe.

[_KevinSim]

Your understanding of God and how he operates comes from Mormonism. It all comes back to how you were taught to experience the divine. If you had grown up Methodist you wouldn't believe God gives good feelings as a testimony.

As a young child I wouldn't have believed "God gives good feelings as a testimony," but I think it's a stretch to conclude I would have embraced the Methodist beliefs I was raised with when I became an adult and began thinking for myself. My current beliefs are way different than the beliefs my mother taught me when I was young. They happen to still allow me to embrace the LDS Church, but I think it's an error to conclude that my beliefs are currently compatible with LDS theology just because I was raised LDS.

[_KevinSim]

Kevin, I am glad that you have found happiness through Mormonism.

Thanks!

Many, many others have too. In fact, I was one of those people for most of my life. I was happy living the Mormon plan. I didn't find it damaging at all. However, after studying Mormonism in depth, I realized that I just cannot believe something that is so obviously not true, no matter how much I liked it before. The principal reason I can't is because I no longer believe spiritual experiences are a reliable method for determining truth (and that a true prophet would secretly have sex with his followers wives and daughters).

Dblagent007, what do you think then is "a reliable method for determining truth" about God?

Your comments about doubting that "a true prophet would secretly have sex with his followers wives and daughters" got me thinking about the matter quite a bit last night. What can we conclude with certainty about the behavior of a "true prophet"? What can we say with certainty that a "true prophet" will do and won't do?