Mormons, doesn't it make you so mad?

Question

when non-Mormons tell you "You don't know what your church believes, *I* know more of what you believe than you do!"?

I mean, don't you just want to say "Hey, I am the world's foremost authority on what I believe!"?

Jules, and all the others who say we are "afraid" of learning "the other side". Why don't YOU look at it from OUR side...or are YOU afraid? Stay away from the anti-Mormon sites for a minute. Look at OUR history from OUR side. Read the Book of Mormon, NOT to find what's WRONG with it, but try to find out why we believe it to be the word of God.

I'm not afraid to read anti-Mormon stuff. what doesn't make me laugh makes me sick. Or sad. But, the Mormons here who said that it was fear that motivates antis, was absolutely right. But one fear they forgot is, the fear that we LDS just MIGHT be right!

I am a convert, and I can never go back. Not when I know it's not God's COMPLETE truth.

This wouldn't be that bad for Mormonism's sake if Joe hadn't received the "word of the Lord" audibly to establish a banking institution. ("Wilford Woodruff's Journal," January 6, 1837, Conflict at Kirtland, page 296)

Jules, I sent you an email on this, but here it is for everyone.

Check the date on that "prophecy" recorded by Wilford Woodruff. It was AFTER the bank was already started! Plus, the actual journal entry said that Joseph received a revelation, but NOT what the revelation was ABOUT!

So, it couldn't POSSIBLY have been to START the bank.

There was NO official revelation from God to start the bank. Therefore, you can't say that Joseph was a false prophet, since he didn't even PROPHECY about this.

Jamie, why is it that, with me, it was/is the exact opposite? The more I read my Bible, the more convinced I am that I am right where God wants me.

Answer 1

No, not really. I know what I believe, I know I have a testimony, I know that the Spirit has testified of the truths of the Book of Mormon and the prophets to me. So no matter what they claim I believe or practice, I know what is true and what isn't.

But it makes me sad that people can be so judgemental, hateful, etc. All we can do is love them and not hold a grudge. They will accept the truth or not, we have no control over that and should not let their misguided views anger us and push the Spirit our of our life while we are angry.

Free agency is a wonderful gift to everyone of us, to be taken away by none, even if we sometimes disagree with how others use it.

Answer 2

Unfortunately people are given beliefs and ideas in their life and they just accept these falsehoods blindly. I am saddened to hear that a good freind of yours has taken the advice of an unwise person. I do not house my faith in any denomination, because those churches are based on rules and life is not that. Jesus stated that. Heck, even when I studied what the Mormons are, there was an all powerful line that stated that when God answered Smith's question 'Which church should I follow' he said 'None of them' I have come to understand something very powerful, there is no church that speaks the truth. The truth can not be spoken. Every so often a very enlightened person comes along, like Jesus or even Buddha. Their presence is so powerful that the confused masses try to mimic these people, create rules to emulate who they were....but here lies the folly. None of these enlightened people followed a church or a rule book, they simply lived in the now. May I suggest a book? The Power of Now by Echart Tolle It changed my life and I really feel, if you are ready for it, you will gain much peace after reading it.

Answer 3

Just to give an alternate mormon perspective-

I do agree that each Mormon/LDS is the authority on what HE/SHE believes, but I would definitely say that the vast majority of the members of our Church don't know half of what the Church teaches/believes. The Sunday School manuals today are a very watered-down version of the doctrine of the Church. The General Authorities have seen the problems caused when people cling to deep doctrines (remember McConkie's book?) like plurality of gods, blood atonement, Heavenly Mother(s), racial inequity, second anointing, etc.

What the Church has done is removed the focus from some of these controversial doctrines in an effort to focus more attention on what is eternally important. In the course of doing so, however, it has made many, if not most, of its members unaware of some core tenets of the Gospel that make everything else fit together. For instance, if a member doesn't realize that polygamy is the system in the Celestial Kingdom, how will he/she understand that his/her dad can remarry in the temple but his/her mom can't?

Most anti-mormons and LDS critics are fairly accurate when they say "I know more about what YOUR CHURCH believes than you do", but it is a gross misrepresentation if they say "I know more about what YOU believe than you do"

Just my two cents.

Answer 4

I agree with you. There have been many times in my life, not just on here, that I have been made to feel like I *should* feel wrong for what I believed. I was raised in the church, but wasn't always active. I looked into different churches, learned their doctrine, tried to feel comfortable there. It didn't happen! And oh boy, I tried!! But something just wasn't there that I needed. So I started looking more into the church, reading more, praying more. My testimony wasn't something I took from my parents. It's something that I have gained one stubborn inch at a time.

I pretty much had to learn every concept of the church over so I would understand it on my own terms, or should I say *in* my own terms. I read a lot of anti stuff out there, and even when I wasn't active in the church, it always struck me as funny, sad or just wrong.

Now that my faith is strong, and I feel I can stand up for what I really believe in, sometimes it really bothers me when someone comes out and says something that is totally wrong, or something that has been twisted to sound wrong. Everyone always asks me, because of what I used to do for a living, how I can believe in science and still believe in the church. There is nothing that contradicts what I believe- well except evolution. Everything I have learned helps me more and more to know that God really is the foremost authority in creation. Just knowing HOW the human body is constructed, the way a baby is formed, what happens in the whole process of life makes my testimony and my faith that much stronger.

All the people who have either had their records pulled, or that are so anti against the church aren't looking at things from a perspective of learning. They are looking at it from the point that no matter what, we are wrong. There will never be right in their minds.

I have said for a while now that there has to be something to this church. The more opposition to it I see, the more it proves it is true. Satan wouldn't be working this hard to put the church in a bad light if there wasn't something to it, he would just leave it alone. The fact that this church is one that has the most negative stuff said about it says to me that someone doesn't want people to know what we believe.

Also, just because your pastor or other church leader told you something about us, doesn't mean it's true!! Unless it has come straight from the horses mouth- one of the members of the church who are in good standing with the church and who are really active- then there may be something that isn't true about it.

We are a peculiar people. That I will agree with. We won't be anything but peculiar to most people. Does that mean that I shouldn't believe it because it fits my belief system? No. It means that I'll just be different. I'm ok with that. Doesn't bother me at all. I'll still believe what I believe no matter what others try to tell me what I really believe. They can say it, but unless they can look inside my heart and my mind, they can't really know.

Answer 5

We are not telling you what you believe, we are telling you what your church practices and preaches. If you are to naive to accept that YOUR PROPHETS, in the past have preached some really weird and stupid things and also the fact that none of their prophecies have come true. I dont count the prophecy about Joseph Smith being killed as one, because if you p*ss that many people off you are bound to be killed. Moromns just need to face up that they are part of a fairytale religion that was made up by Joseph Smith, a man with an amazing sense of imagination. Not only could he not write the book of mormon without copying and plagiarising the book of mormon, but he could not even make up his own story about how he came upon the golden plates, he needed to steal that story from the freemasons. You are the foremost authority on what you believe, but you need to believe what your church teaches if you want to call yourself a moromn, and if you dont want to believe that then you are not a mormon. Simple as that !

Answer 6

To Jules, I am aware of all the Kirtland troubles and the element that you are missing is that the people of Kirtland did not follow Joseph's advice on how to manage the Kirtland Safety Society Bank. They overspeculated, they overextended and got caught up in the financial crises of the nation. If they had followed Joseph's counsel, they would have been okay.
As for Mr. Peepers, he exemplifies the very thing that the questioner is talking about.
I am sixth generation LDS and have studied the faith and doctrines all my life as well as the arts and sciences of our time. I am not ignorant of what the world teaches or of what God teaches. There is a difference for those that don't know this. In my undergraduate work I wrote a paper for sociology and for english that reviewed the basic premise of a sociologist about The Mormons. He tried to humanize or explain in rational terms the phenomenon of the Mormon people and their church. In my opinion, he failed miserably because you cannot define religion or faith without including the essential element of faith and religion which is the spirituality factor. Spiritual influence cannot be explained by rational means and any attempt to explain it cuts out the heart or very essence of the belief. Therefore, I concluded that if anyone wants to learn about the Mormons, let them ask a member of the Church that knows what they are talking about, not a catholic sociologist that only thinks he knows.
The same can be said of any other discipline. You don't ask a mathematician about history or an english major about zoology. Do your research from primary sources, not third party speculation.

Answer 7

I have found that one of my pet peeves is when someone tells me what is going on in my head/heart, especially when they're wrong and won't admit it.

I like to think that I am an authority on what I believe, and unless someone is a true psychic (sorry, I don't believe they exist), or a telepath (again, I doubt the existance), no one else in the world can possibly know exactly what I think, feel, or believe. Understanding my religion is a good first step in knowing generalities, but to know exactly,.... I think the only one who is capable of that is God, since he is all-knowing...

Regarding what Transgenetic said---
I've been through the temple, and the only "extras" I learned there was additional in-depth stuff about things I already knew.

I've been on a mission, and the "extras" I learned there-- *guffaw*-- well, I heard more myths about us... beyond the horns thing... *hahahaha*

I was married in the temple, and I learned specifics about things I already knew. I already knew that if my husband and I faithfully kept our covenants (sacred promises) to each other and to God, we would be able to continue to be married beyond death. I already knew that God has great things in store for us... it's just now I was finally eligible, and I knew more precisely what those things were.





As I've said in the past, "Talking out your backside only makes you look dumber than you already are."... (which, in some cases, is quite a trick!)

Answer 8

No, it only irritates me a bit, like a burr under the saddle. But I take those comments as they are intended--to deride my religion and my beliefs in whatever form pleases them and move on.

MrPeepers seems to think that should we LDS read all the anti-Mormon literature and what is published that reveals truths we faithful will change our minds just as he did. He and all the other antagonists misses a key element of the faith that we hold. Testimony, through the divine inspiration of the Holy Ghost, is real and should not be dismissed.

There was no bigotry expressed against the blacks by the members of the Church. God held back on giving His priesthood to the blacks until it was time to do so. What happened in the days of Cain and his brother, Abel, occurred and was recorded for God to judge--not us.

To say that Mormons, in general, are prejudiced against blacks is another attempt to grasp something that might make the Church look bad. It doesn't! We stand on the scriptures, not on what the antagonists believe.

Certainly, many of us Latter-day Saints grow tired by the minute at the endless banter we receive from those that disbelieve in our Church. But that will not end until Christ comes again so we have to accept it.

I say again, why do you think the Mormon Church has all this opposition from the world--even moreso than the Jehovah Witnesses and other denominations receive? The answer is obvious--influence by the Adversary.

Note: I give a big "ooraw!" for BigDrum's comments. Well defined, amigo!

Answer 9

Don't think any of us can claim to be a world authority on anything. It is, however, a witness to how the human mind does not depart from strongly held beliefs, opinions, and/or programming, based on whatever information is at hand. Sometimes you have to go through a stressful event to even consider other possibilities. So until then we probably just have to keep answering with a positive frame of mind. In my opinion, this is all just a practice for bigger things, anyway. Have a happy day, and I send you a gummy bear with a Ph.D. (ha ha).

Answer 10

I know I'm not the foremost authority, but I have done a large amount of research before and after joining the church. Sometimes, yes, it does irritate me that people (a good example is MrPeepers response) read some stuff that came off a website that is meant to convince others of innaccuracies of the church (even if they have to fabricate it, or misconstrue it to make their point). I do not think that this qualifies them to know more than I do about the religion. It irritates me that anti-mormons harp on the same thing over and over and spew it as if it were fact, when it is nothing more than speculation.
The touchier subjects are some aspects of the gospel that are not easily understood. Some things seem outrageous before you learn certain other things and understand them. Most are not satisfied with learning milk before meat, but our Savior instructed us that His gospel must be taught this way. It's just like when He instituted the Sacrament. Some were immediately offended. They were appalled that He mentioned eating His flesh and drinking His blood. But notice He did not go into "apologetics". He said "Doth this offend you?" He didn't explain further about the symbolism behind it, or how it replaces animal sacrifice, and why it is no longer necessary, etc. He taught it and went on, if people didn't believe it, He was ready to leave them behind as unbelievers.
Milk before meat is necessary. If they didn't know about animal sacrifice, and its similitude, they would have all left, and said man this guy went too far.
I will not teach my child quantitative derivatives before she learns algebra. Nor will I teach her algebra before simple addition and subtraction. There are reasons for learning this way. You have to build a foundation of knowledge to build on, then you move on to more complex things.
I teach guitar and drums. I would never teach difficult guitar solos before note names, scale structure, etc.
Some of the LDS doctrine is, and has been, hard to swallow at times. You have to take the responsibility to dig and find out why it must be so. Christ did not explain all of His parables, and He was disappointed in His apostles when He had to explain it to them sometimes. It is up to us to research and find out why. Without a firm foundation in the gospel, without a testimony that the principles are true, you will be easily tossed about by every wind of doctrine of men. Men's explanations, and erroneous objections, and vomitous reasoning will affect you.
This is why non-members do not understand certain aspects of what we call deep doctrine. It is because they tried to learn the deeper doctrine first. As you notice, Christ made no apologies for what He taught. He couldn't even get everyone to believe the simple things. So it should come as no surprise to us that it's worse now. The problem is, we love this gospel and are grateful that we have it. We take it seriously the charge to spread the good word. So we take it personally when anti's continue to rub what we hold dear in the mud. We will never change the way they think or act. They have to change it themselves. It reminds me so much of those in the New Testament that "knew" the laws so well, that they rejected the Christ that they awaited. It is definitely casting pearls before swine.