Posted by:
Silence is Golden
(
)
Date: July 06, 2022 03:30PM
For me a testimony is nothing more than a hope that something better is coming your way. In the past religion did nothing more than provide a fictional story that a person could insert themselves into and find some kind of answer to the unknown, which provided some comfort.
But in today’s world, we have shown that the story is fictional, and many will hold to that fiction more so out of fear and emotion, rather than applied logic and reasoning. Could there be some truth to an afterlife or a creator, perhaps, but at this time nothing has been empirically proven.
What LDS Inc. has failed to keep up with is the issue of using testimony as the basis of keeping its members active, paying, and in line. As technology continues to march forward, it will continue to show that religious sects in general are simply fictional.
So if religion wishes to grow and give itself meaning, it needs to become a community first and the dogma needs to be more rational to what science and logic have proven. I would be more willing to join a group that had community and a desire to help all people.
In my youth I was immersed in both the dogma and community, but it was when I went on my mission that I could clearly see the difference between the dogma and the community. In my teen years I had weekly activities that were just plain fun, we had road shows, water skiing, winter tubing, camping, fishing, river rafting, basketball, softball, etc. Our leaders were our secondary parents, I could walk to any door in my neighborhood, knock on it, and know that help would be instantly there
My mission switched this and in the following years, community vanished, and testimony replaced it. It was then my critical thinking and logical ways caused me to abandon religion in general, because the one thing that kept me attending was gone……….community.
So no, testimony is not enough to keep LDS Inc. going, if you do not maintain and develop community, then it will experience a slow death. If you look at many of the comments on this board and others, a healthy portion of people stay in the church due to fear of family disruption and loss. However, there will always be followers, who will never move out of the fog, but there will not be enough to maintain the empire, so like all past empires, it will eventually collapse under its own weight.