Getting Started

Lately I have been thinking about religion a lot. Here is a little history about me and what has led to my thoughts and rethinking regarding religion.

When I was seven years old, my parents joined the LDS/Mormon church. When a child is eight years old they can be baptized in the LDS religion as this is considered the age of accountability.

My bishop told me that I could not be baptized unless I read the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price (scripture specific to the LDS church) and memorized the Ten Commandments and Thirteen-Articles-of-Faith. I now realize these things are not requirements for baptism but was a combination of wanting me to get up to speed since I had missed seven years of church, and knowing I couldn't do it on my own and therefore my father would have to be the one to facilitate the process (therefore forcing him to read and learn it all himself).

Even as a seven year-old I was privy to (and very interested in) the religions discussions of adults and always felt like I needed to learn and understand more about religion and to reconcile all of these doctrines so that I could live the Gospel correctly.

As I grew up, I went to church every week, I tried to do as I was told by the church, I saved for and served an LDS mission (two-years of service to try to convert others to the LDS Church), I paid my tithing (10% of my income), I avoided having sex, drinking and other things frowned up (or commanded against) in the LDS religion.

After I returned from my two-year mission I went college. It took me longer that most to graduate because I worked a lot (didn't have any scholarships or anything like that) and would sometimes take time off to make more money to continue without incurring debt.

Over a long period of time I had times when I was very active in Church and others when I was less active. I got married (but not in the temple like the LDS church encourages). Been married a little over five-years now, and haven't really been active, I imagine much to the dismay of both mine and my wife's parents. However, I should note that even though I wasn't particularly active I still believed the LDS church to be the one true church (although in retrospect I am not sure what exactly I thought that meant).

A couple month ago I visited my parents house (with my two children) for a couple days.

I don't get to talk to my father very often and he and I engaged in a casual conversation about politics. I made the statement that I was interested in knowing what his key issues were because, honestly I am so confused by politics that I don't even know how I would define what issues are most important to me. During this conversation he said it was important that a political candidate be pro-life. I noted that while in terms of my personal belief I am, in general, opposed to abortion, it isn't a key political issue to me and I am not sure turning that decision over to the government would be better than leaving it in the hands of individual people.

I don't remember how, but next my mother became involved in the conversation with her most forceful comment being a matter of fact pronouncement that abortion was "murder". I was going to respond that I didn't think that was the LDS churches official position, but my father "ever the peace maker" steered the conversation to something else, and it was dropped.

Later I started thinking, and decided, for my own understanding and to be clear on official LDS Church positions; I wanted to do some research on this and other specific issues. My thought was, I would research a specific category (like abortion, same-sex-marriage, word of wisdom) and have a format something like this:

• Current Church Policies (Determine source of Authority and/or Related Revelation, etc. )
• Previous Policies (is there evidence that there has been a shift in these policies, what revelations or factors governed this shift )
• Other References and Information (Scriptural, Biblical, notable considerations )

I quickly realized it was a pretty naive assumption that all LDS church polices came from divine revelation. This may sound like a strange thing for someone to say, but being raised in the LDS church I always grew up with the impression and that men in the Church who were Prophets and Apostles constantly had revelation from god and then passed those revelations down the Church members.

This is a common LDS belief, so much so, that people don't even think about whether the presented information even claims to be revelation. For example, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is a document frequently referenced by the LDS church in their opposition to issues like same-sex-marriage, but the document itself makes no reference what-so-ever to any source of authority other than “The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”.

To a non-LDS reader I realize this all sound pretty weird, but to an LDS reader they are most likely saying to themselves something like “so what, there isn't a difference between the words of the First Presidency and Apostles of the Church, and a revelation from God, they carry the same weight whether they specify being from god directly or not.”

Growing up I think this was sometimes my view as well, but upon careful consideration and even in accordance with what I feel the LDS religion itself claims in a purer doctrinal sense, there is, and should be a large separation in a members adherence to words written by a Profit which say they are directly from God, and words or doctrines which make no such claim.

As for the topics of abortion and same-sex-marriage, once again there is no "revelation". I kept looking and looking, and while their is information presented as agreed upon by the first presidency, which may or may not be sound advice, there is absolutely nowhere that anyone says it is from any divine source.

The Word of Wisdom is similar in nature, except that its original state in D&C section 89, it says it is a revelation, though it specifies "not by commandment or constraint" and while it has undergone a lot of perceived changes in the history of the LDC church, none of those changes claim any divine revelation.

I often wonder if the Word of Wisdom is a litmus test of unrighteous dominion where we can see that something specifically states “not by commandment or constraint” is a requirement for both LDS Church membership and entrance into the temple.

I could go on, but this is sufficient to introduce my dilemma and new mind set regarding my religion. Therefore I will not focus too much on any specific area here, but will say that I am quite interested in learning the truth of things, and have been interested to see how much institutional resistance there is to any insights not laid out by the hierarchy of the LDS Church.