First off, pertaining to my promised one post every day – according to MST which most (read: all three of you) readers are using, I actually have 2 minutes till the deadline. Besides, it doesn’t count as a new day until I go to sleep. I got busy playing some Diablo II… such a classic.
Now, on to the topic of interest. It’s been drawn to my attention that my last post on religion was rather short and blunt. I think it’s time to expound. The squeamish may want to look away, this could get dirty.
So, I started off with a good line last time; let’s reiterate and expound: “Surprise! I’m not Mormon… at least not at the moment.” These words were, as I’ve said before, waiting to fall upon my parents given the right moment… but it turned out I was too chicken and my friend had to let them in on it.
I want to go more over where I am and why, and maybe a little more thoughts about what my parents thought of the news. Where are my religious thoughts right now? They’ve sort of taken a back seat to the rest of life, but I’ve give a fair amount of thought into deciding that I don’t have any idea what I believe. I just know that I believed that I “believed” in the Church because I was raised to. I much prefer to have my own beliefs now that I’m on my own, but I’m not sure what those are yet. I’m keeping an open mind, and hopefully I’ll come up with something, even if it is what I started with.
My basic hope is to arrive at something that I can logically and reasonably believe in. I don’t think that’s too much trouble for whatever deity is out there to work with. When I say logically, I’m even willing to accept religious logic such as “because god says so” as long as it’s reasonable to believe that god exists. I’m not limiting this to undeniable evidence or something, just to something believable.
One of the reasons I found my previous religion to be unsuitable was simply that I was unfairly biased to it, and could see that in my life. When I prayed, I’d convince myself that the absence of promised answers was just some form of answer. The last few years I went to church simply because it would have been hell to not go in my house, not because I particularly wanted to or because I believed. I knew all the right answers to keep up appearances, but that was the best of my “faith” at the time.
Other issues also bring to light the fact that I personally have lost the faith in “God says so” for the LDS religion. Things like why blacks were not allowed the priesthood after Brigham Young (from what I understand, Joseph Smith ordained a black man in the priesthood, perhaps my history is off?) down through the 1970′s. Or how Joseph managed to translate another set of plates that was complete jibberish (Kinderhook plates). Or the fact that learning any of this stuff is said to be detrimental to your spiritual side and you must avoid the “one-sidedness” of the Anti-Mormons wherever possible (which begs the question, if Anti-Mormons are one-sided, what do you call Mormons that will not listen to that other side…?)
It’s possible that these issues could be resolved with time and study. We’ll have to see. My mom would like to convince me that I must come back right now, but I don’t think that is possible or even healthy. I have to know for sure before I come back to something like the LDS church. It’s a lot of commitment, and not to be taken lightly. Until then, if anybody wants to know what religion I am, we’ll go with Satanist… just kidding… Deist. That’s a safe bet for the very minimum I could believe. It still seems logical enough that some higher power helped put this universe together.
Well, I’ll get back to fielding my mom’s constant nagging to drop everything and becoming Mormon. I know she just loves me and thinks she’s doing what’s best.
