Replies

I can appreciate a devine mystery, but I can't understand how a thinking person can live with such obvious contradiction in reason. I could not vote for someone who bets his eternal soul on something so obviously wrong.

Thank you for your honest, reasoned question. It's refreshing to hear such a thing on FR.

I believe the best way I can explain my approach to this mystery is to describe an event from my own life.

When I was in elementary school, I rode the bus with other kids of all ages. Some of them were in high school, and I looked upon them with great interest. They talked about classes that sounded much more advanced than what I had learned so far.

One day, after boarding the bus to return home, I happened to sit across the aisle from a high school aged girl who was taking algebra. She opened her book as the bus drove away and worked on her homework assignment.

I watched her work with great curiosity, because I had no idea what "algebra" even meant, though I deduced that it must be some sort of math. The cover of the book, as well as the open pages, did have numbers on them that appeared to be math problems.

But, as I looked more closely at the pages of her open book, I was increasingly and more thoroughly confused. This girl was doing math with letters! I couldn't fathom how this could be. Math had everything to do with numbers. I knew that much!

I remember wondering for a long time afterward just how letters could ever be used in math. I didn't understand, because that subject was beyond my learning.

I have since had many similar experiences, hearing things or seeing things that simply baffle me. But those experiences have also taught me to be less concerned about the phenomenon. In every case, when I have waited patiently and progressively gained the necessary knowledge and understanding, those mysteries have eventually become clear.

Today, algebra is no mystery, and the odd symbols of calculus aren't either. It was just a matter of learning.

Another analogy: flight. The law of gravity had for all time declared that man could not fly, prior to the Wright brothers. At least, that was the best understanding of mankind.

Wilbur and Orville demonstrated an important principle. There are laws of physics that are more powerful than other laws of physics. The laws of aerodynamics are able to overcome the law of gravity, at least for a time. It is a higher law.

Spiritual learning and principles are exactly the same in those ways. There are matters that are profoundly mysterious and confusing for precisely the same reason as algebra was to my young mind. Also, there are some spiritual principles that are higher, more powerful than others.

If the high school girl's algebra homework had been a religious doctrine instead, and if I were of the nature to do so, I might have mocked her. I might have laughed out loud and ridiculed the preposterous idea that you could use letters to do math. All manner of persecutions could be leveled against the girl, all because of my ignorance.

Many treated the Wright brothers with contempt as well.

Now, I fully realize that contempt and ridicule do not prove that the subjects of it are actually true. It's only to illustrate the usual consequences of close-minded ignorance.

Providing a satisfactory explanation for the apparent contradiction between these two LDS doctrines, which you have described more or less accurately, would be a difficult thing to do. Until you have a foundation of understanding of many underlying doctrines and principles involved, it would remain just as unpersuasive as ever.

I have "bumped up against" troubling doctrines and other stuff in my life in the LDS Church. I have learned that never is the problem permanent. As I grow and learn and study the Holy Scriptures, every one of those walls has melted away.

My faith in the Lord and His prophets, both living and dead, has grown sufficiently that I simply don't worry about things I don't yet understand. I note my lack of understanding, then I let it go for the time being. I hold to those things I do know for certain, and let the rest wait. In time, I invariably reach a level of knowledge that explains that particular mystery.

Among the things that I do know for certain is that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. He did actually see the Father and the Son and speak with them. I know for certain that the Book of Mormon is holy scripture, written by ancient prophets and translated by the power and gift of God. I have read it many times, as well as much of the Bible (I haven't gotten through the Old Testament from start to finish yet...) I am very, very comfortable with both volumes of scripture. They support, harmonize with and reinforce each other, as they both contain eternal truth.

I have had far too many deeply sacred experiences personally to ever deny what I know. The apparent contradictions and mysteries that crop up here and there no longer cause me any difficulty, because I know they will be clear in time.

If you're truly interested in learning and growing in LDS doctrine, you'll need to start in a lower gear. Milk before meat, and all that. God reveals and explains more truth as we accept and live up to the truths we have been given. That's how we progress.