Faith in the......

Discussions about holding onto your faith and beliefs, whether by staying LDS or by exploring and participating in other churches or faiths. The belief in any higher power (including God, Christ, Buddha, or Jedi) is true in this forum. Be kind to others.
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No Tof
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Faith in the......

Post by No Tof » Sun Dec 18, 2016 12:28 pm

I am aware that the church's position is that our faith must be centred in Christ in order to be of any value. Also it must be the concept of christ declared by the correlation department. In addition, your faith is dead unless you perform the required works sent down from the BRETHERN.

Thankfully, now I feel that faith to seek a relationship with the devine is valid in whatever fashion you genuinely try to achieve has merit. I also respect those who come to the decision to seek such connection is a waste of time. Perhaps they have faith that science will find the answers. I have some hope for that path as well.

Faith is a motivating force that encourages us to go forward into the unknown. I think this has become my faith. This faith has brought me more joy and peace then ever before as If 've tried to make sense of all the "interesting speculative concepts" I learned in the church.


Happy holidays
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Rumi

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MoPag
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Re: Faith in the......

Post by MoPag » Tue Dec 20, 2016 12:44 pm

What a beautiful post.

I am also relearning what faith mean to me, and it is such a wonderful journey. At first losing my faith in the church was scary. But now I realize it has set me free.
...walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men’s lies...--Ezra Pound

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Re: Faith in the......

Post by Servant » Wed Dec 28, 2016 12:26 am

Nice

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Corsair
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Re: Faith in the......

Post by Corsair » Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:36 am

No Tof wrote:Faith is a motivating force that encourages us to go forward into the unknown. I think this has become my faith. This faith has brought me more joy and peace then ever before as If 've tried to make sense of all the "interesting speculative concepts" I learned in the church.
This is a great message. But there is no way that your views will be taken seriously by the believers in your life nor by the institutional LDS church.

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No Tof
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Re: Faith in the......

Post by No Tof » Wed Dec 28, 2016 5:12 pm

Corsair wrote:
No Tof wrote:Faith is a motivating force that encourages us to go forward into the unknown. I think this has become my faith. This faith has brought me more joy and peace then ever before as If 've tried to make sense of all the "interesting speculative concepts" I learned in the church.
This is a great message. But there is no way that your views will be taken seriously by the believers in your life nor by the institutional LDS church.
I agree.... the road ahead is a divergent path from those TBM's and the corp. That was scary for a while but has become a source of great happiness. Faith as a concept IMHO has to be a large tent idea instead of such a narrow one proposed by the church.

Where is your faith?
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Rumi

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Corsair
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Re: Faith in the......

Post by Corsair » Thu Dec 29, 2016 9:35 am

No Tof wrote:I agree.... the road ahead is a divergent path from those TBM's and the corp. That was scary for a while but has become a source of great happiness. Faith as a concept IMHO has to be a large tent idea instead of such a narrow one proposed by the church.

Where is your faith?
This is a critical question for the long term happiness of someone in a faith transition, especially out of Mormonism. Finding a new basis for existence is a challenging task and it's a much harder task than we expect it will be. There is a deep, existential void along the road of a faith transition and it often looks like a destination of nihilism. I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't end up as an atheist. The central problem is that atheism is pedantically just stating what you don't believe in much like ex-Mormonism is only a set of beliefs you no longer rely upon. You have to find a positive, long term reason for your existence.

Tithing is a microcosm of this problem. Initially, giving up tithing is nice because you suddenly have a little extra money. But your budget and spending habits will adjust to this new normal. You won't suddenly have all your money problems disappear unless you actually develop objectively good habits of saving, spending, and financial prudence. The irony is that this was the correct answer to money problems even while you were paying tithing.

Leaving the LDS church does not solve your problems or even make you happier. Coming up with deliberate ways to live a principled, authentic life is what will actually work. Finding what you actually want to do with passion and diligence should be the goal. Once again, this would have been a reasonable strategy even while you were a temple recommend holding believer. Our new challenge is coming up with a basis for morality, philosophy, and a long term reason to live.

These are more difficult tasks than we comprehend. To that end, I am constantly refining a new set of beliefs that seem to work for me personally. Part of it is a faith in humanity at large and wanting to improve the lives of my family and friends. I have some short and long term career goals, but those exist in support of being with friends and loved ones. I have some deeply heretical beliefs about God that might annoy both both theists and atheists. But I don't live in any fear of judgment from some petty god either. In many ways, the struggle alone has been a good basis for moving forward in existence.

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No Tof
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Re: Faith in the......

Post by No Tof » Thu Dec 29, 2016 7:55 pm

Corsair wrote:
No Tof wrote:I agree.... the road ahead is a divergent path from those TBM's and the corp. That was scary for a while but has become a source of great happiness. Faith as a concept IMHO has to be a large tent idea instead of such a narrow one proposed by the church.

Where is your faith?
This is a critical question for the long term happiness of someone in a faith transition, especially out of Mormonism. Finding a new basis for existence is a challenging task and it's a much harder task than we expect it will be.

Part of it is a faith in humanity at large and wanting to improve the lives of my family and friends. I have some short and long term career goals, but those exist in support of being with friends and loved ones. I have some deeply heretical beliefs about God that might annoy both both theists and atheists. But I don't live in any fear of judgment from some petty god either. In many ways, the struggle alone has been a good basis for moving forward in existence.

Thanks for sharing Mr. Pirate,
I share your faith in humanity and relish the idea of getting better acquainted with what the bigger family has been up to for the last fifty years. To discover that it isn't us against the world but us as part of a bigger us has been a big sigh of relief as well as a source of child like curiosity. To be able to just listen to what others believe has been a gift.

I also am at an interesting place in my thoughts about god. Certainly don't have much trust in the ideas put forward from the correlated paradigm but still in an embryonic stage in my mind. I would love to share this sometime on a separate thread.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Rumi

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Newme
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Re: Faith in the......

Post by Newme » Sun Mar 12, 2017 12:36 pm

No Tof wrote:
Sun Dec 18, 2016 12:28 pm
I am aware that the church's position is that our faith must be centred in Christ in order to be of any value. Also it must be the concept of christ declared by the correlation department. In addition, your faith is dead unless you perform the required works sent down from the BRETHERN.

Thankfully, now I feel that faith to seek a relationship with the devine is valid in whatever fashion you genuinely try to achieve has merit. I also respect those who come to the decision to seek such connection is a waste of time. Perhaps they have faith that science will find the answers. I have some hope for that path as well.

Faith is a motivating force that encourages us to go forward into the unknown. I think this has become my faith. This faith has brought me more joy and peace then ever before as If 've tried to make sense of all the "interesting speculative concepts" I learned in the church.
I like that and agree.
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."
Incidentally, I have a testimony of not only Aristotle and Greek ideas influencing scripture, but also Shakespeare was so revered by King James that because Shakespeare was 46 in 1611 when translation was completed, Psalms 46 was rewritten so "the 46th word from the beginning of Psalm 46 is 'shake' and the 46th word from the end (omitting the liturgical mark "Selah") is 'spear'."

Scriptures are written by imperfect people - who many put unconditional faith in, and then condemn others if they actually receive personal revelation that differs from cognitive distortions. The need to think is as important as feeling, in figuring out truth how to invest faith and loving, IMO.

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