Mormons can leave the Church, but they just can't leave it alone: What is necessary for our salvation?

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

What is necessary for our salvation?

- I borrowed this because I like it -

Mormons get to have it both ways.

They malign others for cherry-picking the doctrines they're willing to believe/follow, while doing it themselves. They ignore big swaths of their own scriptures/doctrine by using excuses like "it's not necessary for our salvation", but it's utterly arbitrary what they "pick and choose" as necessary or not.

What standard do they sort by? What determines what's "necessary" and what's not?

The scriptures are supposed to BE the standard, yet they apply some other standard to the scriptures that allows them to deselect parts of them. What is the standard then? The prophets? OK, so you have a prophet who can, and does, supercede scripture...why have scripture then? If there are parts of scriptures that aren't necessary for salvation, but EVERYTHING the prophet says IS necessary...then heck, ditch the scriptures in favor of the prophet.

Oh but the prophet is bound by the scriptures? Oh, only the ones that are necessary for our salvation? But he himself decides that? And what about the words of prophets that are now embarrassing or controversial? The church wants to have the option of distancing itself from those teachings so a living prophet trumps a dead prophet.

....Uhhhm, I'm sensing a circular feedback loop here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About This Blog

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints frequently leave the organization. And often these former, or disbelieving, members provide commentary on the church. More often than not, the commentary is less than complimentary.

A common response to this situation, from believing members is, "Well, you can leave the Church, but you can't leave it alone." In truth, I myself have made this exact statement many times in response to comments from former members.

In reality, the vast majority of former members would be more than willing, and very happy, to leave the Church completely behind. Nothing would give them greater happiness than to see the Church fading in the dust in their rear view mirror. But this is not to be the case for so many members who have discovered the Church to not be what they always thought it was.

The reasons for this are varied and complicated. Many former members still have family members such as parents or siblings who still believe and don't understand how someone they care about could "give up their eternal salvation" and leave the church. The family pressure is still there, no matter how much the former member wishes it would disappear.

Many former members still have a spouse or children who not only believe but want to attend. It makes for a very awkward and delicate situation when one spouse is packing up the kids and heading off to church while the other spouse stays home. The disbelieving spouse would be ecstatic if their spouse and children would join them and they could all leave the church behind. But this is not to be.

For far too many former members, very real and material damage was done to them by the Church and its members. The forms of this damage are many. Homosexuals are especially damaged by the Church. For impressionable youth who may "slip up" and not toe the line perfectly, an insensitive or uncaring church leader may not handle the situation well and give the youth the impression they are guilty of heinous sins. The guilt and shame associated with this can be carried into adulthood. When the member discovers the Church is not true, they may feel resentment for having been subjected to such guilt and shame when the basis for those feelings was imaginary and were unnecessarily heaped on them by a church leader. It can take a long time for these wounds to heal.

Many believing members feel that when former members make comments about the church and are intent on pointing out the flaws in the organization, they are doing so because secretly they believe the Church to be true and are only being negative about the Church to ease their guilty conscience. This is simply not the case. Former members are still affected by the church, even though most of them want nothing more than to be free of it, and so in response they feel compelled to stand up for themselves and not just lay over and continue to be victimized by the Church. They've been the victim long enough and are ready to be done.

Helpful websites for learning more about Mormonism

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

What is necessary for our salvation?

No comments:

Post a Comment