I have probably asked this question before actually I pretty sure I have but anyhow I was still curious as to how many still have a belief in Christ after loosing you belief in the LDS church. I myself have lost all belief in the LDS church after being a TBM for 45years and just want to know how many still have a true belief in Jesus even though your shelves have totally broken in the church. I am in no way judging one way or the other just curious as to who or why your beliefs are as they are. Thank you for your time.

The trouble is, believe in Christ as...what?

If you grew up Mormon, your understanding about what Christ means, who Jesus was (not the human part, the mission part), what Atonement is, what repentance is, what the Plan is, were all taught by Mormonism. It's wrapped up in Mormonism. You say the LDS church is not true, and you're left with, well, what, about Jesus?

You could join another Christian church or begin studying what others believe about Jesus and so construct a new belief about Jesus. Others find it simpler, and more straight forward to ditch the whole thing.

Ironically, though atheist, I probably believe more in Jesus now than I ever did before. Only I don't believe in his unique and singular divinity. In that sense, my personal belief in Jesus would be someone else's (many people's) outright denial of Jesus. It's just that I believe that certain teachings are attributed to certain masters and whether those people were really, truly living people--especially when they supposedly lived thousands of years ago--is rather beside the point to me.

"Christ" is a title from Greek meaning "messiah". No Jew believes Jesus is the messiah because he doesn't fit the requirements of the messiah as indicated in the Hebrew bible (the Old Testament). Christians mistranslated the Hebrew bible to fit their chosen messiah. D
So, who is the real Jesus? There is no proof he existed. The more we apply similar criticism to all of religion the same way we treated Mormonism, it's amazing all of the contradictions and serious problems all religions have.

Do you have examples of these mistranslations? I have yet to find anything in the few vague OT prophecies of the messiah that fit very well with the story of Jesus.

The Jews have little interest in the "Old Testament". The Talmud is what the Jews revere and are guided by. Not the OT.

The atheists will jump into this thread, several of them more aggressively than MCR, above. Their position is that you're just exploring one myth ("fairy tale") after rejecting another.

I'm a born-again Christian. I see Orthodox Christianity as"connecting the dots" between the physical and the supernal. My recommendation is to read the New Testament in a modern translation, one book at a time, so you don't fall into the cultic rut of hopscotching around the KJV. I use the ESV Study Bible. It has excellent charts, graphs, illustrations, maps, and footnotes.

You're characterizing me as saying "you're just exploring one myth ('fairy tale') after rejecting another.

Yet, "Orthodox" Christianity "connects the dots" between the physical and the supernatural worlds. You don't see the so-called supernatural world as an exercise in story-telling. How can you know the supernatural world except through speculating about it? It's not natural, so it can't be understood through natural processes. I don't deny an experiential world that feels supernatural, but telling stories is how humans understand anything. The question is, how effectively does the story promote human happiness?

First, MCR, I didn't intend my remarks to be aggressive. But the atheist position, usually, is that belief in the orthodox (or "traditional") Jesus Christ has no foundation, is a baseless myth, and, by implication, such belief is irrational or anti-rational. I read such sentiments, phrased in various ways, and feel that I am being put down for such.

Christianity is tolerated when it is couched in tentative terms, such as, "I feel..." or "I find it fulfilling," or "it helps/comforts me..." Thus, Christianity is forced to start from an admission of rhetorical weakness. I thought by saying that "I find it connects the dots" was sufficiently subjective, but apparently not. I had to be told that the supernal is just "an experiential world that feels supernatural," in other words, "Caffiend, take note: what you think is 'spiritual' is nothing except your own subjective experience," and thus "inappropriate in acceptable discussion." Best if you keep such proclivities out of sight, perhaps in your closet.

Theists may be debated, but Biblical Christians are summarily dismissed.

I'm not dismissing you! You're dismissing yourself!

You're first sentence puts you in your "lowered" position. You say an implication that your beliefs are irrational or anti-rational hurts your feelings. Why get emotional and attack yourself? If you aren't confident in your own belief system, and you abandon it when you infer a challenge, why should anybody else defend it?

In the first place, is there no other value besides rationality? If you think your religion "connects the dots" between the physical and supernatural worlds, that is, rationality and irrationality, do it. Connect the dots. You seem to say there is no supernatural world, there is only the physical, rational world, and if you, atheists, don't include the supernatural world within your definition of the rational world, you'll hurt my feelings. And I'll have to go underground with my beliefs.

My post talked about story-telling. Rationality is a story too--but it has real touchpoints. Therefore, it's value seems unquestionable. Yet, the very existence of nuclear weaponry tells you that there is something profound missing from the story. If Jesus can provide that element, let's hear it.

OP: This is what you get when you ask that question on this board.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> First, MCR, I didn't intend my remarks to be
> aggressive. But the atheist position, usually, is
> that belief in the orthodox (or "traditional")
> Jesus Christ has no foundation, is a baseless
> myth, and, by implication, such belief is
> irrational or anti-rational.

It's not a baseless myth, its a myth that has a lot of background as a "basis", it is a myth that has been recycled, refashioned, retooled over and over again (something that Christianity is very remiss to admit) to be more palatable so it ended up in it's current form, that recycling is entirely indicative of the fact that the messiah in its many forms and variations never did actually have a real identity that allowed it to take meta physical charge on this planet and then maintain that charge.

The claims of the myth are absolutely impossible in physical reality. That is what makes the myth fantastic.

Do I believe in Jesus as my Lord and savior? Yes. I was a TBM convert for thirty years and upon resignation I had doubts that I God existed. After thirteen years and several life events, my questions concerning the existence God as the Trinity were answered and I go now to an Anglo-Catholic church and love it. It helps me to live a peaceful and contented life.

The very first item to go on my shelf Was the atonement, at 12 years old in deacons quorum I told my adviser/teacher that it didn't make sense to me. My statement must have been troubling for him or others in the class, because he brought in a member of the BP to explain it to me. When I still didn't get it, he built a shelf for me. I don't remember his exact words, but the idea was to put my thoughts on the shelf and I would understand later.

I would have liked to have became a christian on my way out, I identify with christianity. I find value in many of the teachings attributed to Jesus. I believe in a creator God and I don't think He needs or uses prophets or scriptures to enlighten us.

Doesn't enter into my thinking. Just not a part of my life. Don't know if it ever was.

Ron Burr

given my experience with Mormon disillusionment and the lack of evidence, it is very possible that Jesus never existed ... even as a teacher

Do I believe in Christ as taught by Mormonism? Absolutely not!

I do believe that Jesus is Lord and He is my Savior. I converted to orthodox Christianity after a lot of study and prayer. I am now Catholic and attend a Byzantine Catholic church (love the incense). I find Eastern Christian spirituality to be very fulfilling.

I'm interested in Christianity/Christ from an historical/archaeological/cultural anthropological perspective. As I am with other religions. From a spiritual standpoint it doesn't really matter to me.

I was a Christian before joining TSCC. I believe what I believed before. Unlike those who were raised in TSCC and thus had no other beliefs, I remain intact and told the "Love Council" that I believed in the trinity as taught in Christian churches. Actually, I never believed the Mormon doctrines, even the doctrine of "the great apostasy". I also never believed in the mormon scriptures. My story is told in the bios.

My short, simple response to this question is:
At first I thought I could still believe in Jesus, but my quest for religious knowledge after leaving mormonism led me to no religious belief, at all.

I started studying the New Testament and realized that I didn't believe any of it any more. All that Oh, you wicked and perverse generation stuff started to actually make me laugh with how ridiculous it sounded. Then the Old Testament, which is pretty much glossed over and cherry picked in church, and all the horrible things "God" had his people do, and Jesus is God, right? And it wasn't long before my "faith" went up in a puff of smoke.

I believe in Universal Truths; some come from the Bible, some from other sources and they are all predominately the same general teaching, such as:
Love One Another, The Golden Rule (treat others the way you want to be treated) and anything to do with forgiveness such as: forgive everyone every thing every time, etc.
Personally, I don't find any need for much more than that.

Who?

No, not after I started studying religions after I left the

mormon church. I have no belief in him at all. I don't believe

he was a real person.... but many here still hang on to it.

No. There is as much direct evidence supporting the life of Jesus as there is for the Book of Mormon-- which is ZERO. After falling for one hoax, I'm sure as hell not falling for another one.

I totally have a belief in Christ!

Maybe that's because I have believed in Him since I was fairly young...as a Baptist.

The Mormon "Jesus" is not the Jesus of the Bible...so when I left the LDS Church and their fake "Jesus," I still had the real one to trust in.

I corrected a typo: I had said "can" instead of can't in the first line.

This is one reason I CAN'T believe in Christ.

If there was death in the world before 6,000 years ago, which there certainly was, then there was no fall of Adam. If this is case, there is no need of a Redeemer to redeem us from the fall. In other words, if you believe dinosaur bones are more than 6,000 years old you must have a substantial amount of cognitive dissonance to be believe in Christ.

By the way, here is an Adam and Eve question: If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil until they partook of the fruit of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”, how did they stand a chance of success? In order to understand what it means to make a right choice you must understand the concept of a wrong choice, which they didn’t. God set them up for certain failure and then placed astronomical consequences on that one innocent act. This never occurred to me a believer sitting in temple listening to the Adam and Eve story over and over.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2015 06:52PM by pathdocmd.

Plenty of Christians believe Adam and Eve are a metaphor for the fall of man. In other words, human beings are flawed and in need of some sort of redemption.Theynalso differ on qhat the atonement means They believe neither in a real Adam, Eve of Garden of Eden or a 6000 year old earth. They also have no problem with evolution.

God is perfect.

God created human beings.

Human beings are flawed.

Ergo, god is not perfect.



Wait, what?

Nope

Totally. Just like I believe in Santa. Yes, I know they are both mythical figures, but who cares? Christ is beyond real.

Nope.

There's no standard of evidence that falsifies Mormonism but permits literal Christianity (God, Jesus, etc.) to stand. There are people that find emotional validation in the Christian tradition, but they're throwing stones from glass houses when they attempt to criticize Mormonism.

I find life to be much more livable without having to check with God/Jesus/pastor/etc. before making choices.

Here’s an unusual take on the Adam and Eve parable.

It is the old occult interpretation. It has to do with the idea of non-judgement, and non-attachment. It asserts that the fall of man came when we started to subjectively judge things as being either good or bad (or, ‘knowledge’ of good and evil). The philosophy condemned this form of thinking as wrong, and maintained that all things just ‘are’. Thus it saw adopting this style of thinking as ‘the fall of man’. It asserted that judgement and differentiation between things leads to condemnation, which leads to bickering and killing.

I have no skin invested in this concept; I just thought I’d throw it out here as another interpretation. I have no reference either; apparently it was burned in that library at Alexandria. It had something to do with recognizing all the experiences you have as being necessary, in order to push you along your individual life path. It advised to not judge your experiences … and instead to just accept and live them. Those occultists were so silly! It was sort of a condemnation of the developing reasoning faculties of mankind. Like I said, silly …but it is an alternative view on the ‘partaking in the knowledge of good and evil’. It was an admonition to not differentiate between the different circumstances that befell you as being either good or bad. And that when people did, trouble soon followed. Obvious nonsense.

I did for a few years after Mormonism. I figured Mormonism was just a crock and the Bible and Jesus by default were still real.

I didn't want the skewed Mormon beliefs to influence me, so I started studying the Bible in earnest with a clean slate mind about it.

It took a period of time but I could not hold back my BS detector and detective skills. I wanted to believe. When I read the the Bible without the rose colored glasses of wanting it to be true, the same problems arose for standards of evidence.

I suspected I was spending a lot of time talking to myself pretending I was right with God.

Then I picked up Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. It wasn't just me who saw the problems.

I continued to read. The more I read, the more obvious it became. Then came the day when I said to myself, "I really don't believe any of this stuff."

I didn't need to anymore. Then the real journey began. What was my purpose? It has been empowering. It feels great not to be lying to myself pretending every coincidence is proof of a god.

Reading "Jesus for the Non-Religious", by John Shelby Spong is very interesting. I enjoyed it. In the context of your question, you may enjoy it as well.

I second the recommendation. BTW,I was sad to read that Spong died yesterday.

I want to and did after leaving Mormonism for a few years, but now I'm not sure anymore.

I am leaving it all up to God now to demonstrate why I should. All he needs to do is show himself real, and not in a way where I am using my imagination to conjure him up either.

I maybe believe there is God who overseas the universal love thing and an afterlife. Not sure, as I said. But I really, really hope.

My actual transformation was TBM, Born Again Christian (because I did believe God/Gods power was in me), then Spiritist (Still believe in God/Power, afterlife, past lives, etc.).

Unfortunately, no Adam, no Fall, no need for Atonement, no need for God/Christ to come down and sacrifice his mortal life!

Born again Christian here. I don't know where you are but another poster referenced Earl Erkine. You may want to check out his website "Exmormon Files" for more information. Good luck

Once you learn how to test the Book of Mormon for authenticity, it's easy to apply those tests to the Bible. While the Bible has far more historical accuracy than the Book of Mormon, it still falls well short of believability.

Nope, not anymore. I finally started thinking things through, on my terms, and realized Jesus didn't rate anymore belief than any other god man. It feels so good to arrive at my own beliefs, or nonbeliefs, without someone hovering telling me what I should or should not believe. Freedom of thought is so very sweet indeed.