I confess that I don’t know everything about Mormons so take what I write with a grain of salt. However I did grow up Mormon, served a 2 year mission, taught at the Missionary Training Center, married in the Mormon temple, graduated from BYU, spent over 4 years in a Bishopric or Branch Presidency, and my family is full of Mormons as all 10 of my 9 siblings are BYU grads as well as all 7 of my sisters’ husbands & like both of my brothers they all served missions. Both of my parents have PhD’s from BYU, they both served missions, and they have 45 granchildren and most of them are being raised devout Mormons. When I was in middle school, high school, and college I used to devour Mormon history (at least the faith-promoting stuff) constantly. I had read biographies on all of the LDS church presidents (there had been 13 so far then), most of the nearly 100 Apostles, and numerous other important Mormon historical persons. I have read the Book of Mormon well over 20 times in my life so far along with several readings of the Bible, Doctrine & Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and many many many church history book. I’ve probably read most of the Improvement Eras and Ensigns from the 20th century, most of the Journal of Discourses, I’ve read most of the Church News articles multiple times from the 50’s to the 90’s, and read articles from the Salt Lake & Provo papers almost every week.
I think Mormons pay a lot of tithing/offerings to the church so the ones who really believe make up a lot for the rest. For example, during my last 3 years (1997-1999) as a True Believing Mormon I paid over 40K in tithing as 10% of my gross income to the LDS church. I also paid more for the Missionary Fund, Fast Offerings, and other ways.
To this day I’d probably still be a true believer and paying 10% of my gross income (plus more) if it wasn’t for what my mom calls “that DNA crap”. In early April 2000 I was concerned that some anti-Mormons were spreading lies about the “true church” so I did a little bit of investigating online to try to expose the deceit of these anti-Mormons. I came across http://www.exmormon.org/whylft125.htm and then contacted its author requesting his references so I could dig deeper and expose him as being wrong. Well I was quickly surprised to discover that I could no longer in good faith believe that the Book of Mormon was “non-fiction”.
Well that was over 16.5 years ago. Since then I have believed that the Book of Mormon is fiction. Sure it would be nice to think its non-fiction as that would make my parents and so many others in the family peachily happy. But it is what it is.
Interesting, thanks for the reply deg.
I live in this state (not mormon) and find it an interesting mix of everything.
Appreciate the faith based folks, and ignore the over the tops.
Stay well.
Don't feel bad.
Even MORMONs don't know much about their chosen religion!
I am impressed by your candor in your post, and empathize with you. I know it is difficult to follow your conscience in a case like that, and brave. I hope you haven’t given up on faith entirely, merely because an organization twisted it. Jesus loves you!
Just parts of it.
An awful lot was lifted directly from the KJV of the bible; albeit scrabbled when placed into the hands of JS to be discovered near the sweatband of his hat.