mentalgymnast wrote:
Hey jfro18, out of curiosity...and with no ill intent whatsoever...may I ask whether or not you believe in the God of the Bible? A creator God in whose image we are patterned after?
jfro18 wrote:Honestly I'm still working on that... having gone through all of this with the Mormon church it certainly reframes everything else too. I want to believe in a higher power, but I also can see how that was manipulated by Joseph Smith to create something that is used to exploit people's emotions and feelings to dedicate their lives to something that is simply not true.
At a point of time a number of years ago I went through a similar period. If the church isn't true, then where does that put God? How could he let a church with such 'wow!' truth claims...and yet demonstrably false...exist in the world? And the answer, in my mind, was that there wasn't a guy in the sky who gave a flying fig what was going on here on planet earth. Everything, including religions, was created through the imagination of humans.
That lasted for a while.
Then as time went on I gradually came to the realization that belief in God was the number one thing to consider. Everything else was an appendage to that. As I read, thought, and read some more I saw belief in a creator/God as being a reasonable way to go. When I made that choice I found that I looked at Mormonism with new eyes and found that I was able to view things differently...through the eyes of what I consider to be reasonable faith based on some evidence. All the evidence? No. Is it completely rational? No. But there is enough there to move forward in faith...as far as I'm concerned. Others don't agree. I'm OK with that. I can see where they/you might be coming from.
We all respond to different stimuli and/or evidence in different ways. For me, accepting the possibility/probability of there being a creator/God who loves His children and provides a way for everyone to reach their potential happiness, made all the difference as I moved on from a time of questioning the existence of God.
So that's where I'm coming from.
Happy Easter.
Regards,
MG