Posted by:
Smokey
(
)
Date: August 01, 2011 06:49PM
I sent this response to my FIL (he did not even read it...I think). He did not answer the questions (surprise, surprise) but he did agree never to bring up the issue again.
Dear FIL and MIL, I fully understand that you are very confident about Heavenly Father’s will for you and even what His will is for us. I appreciate and respect that; but we are not as certain as you. Your letter indicated your sincere belief that God's wrath will come upon us in some way if we do not repent and admit that the Mormon Church is the only source of God's truth. I know where you are coming from and why you would say that (because you love us); but relying on anyone’s spirituality but our own seems impossible to us. Frankly, we are simply unconvinced of the LDS church's exclusive claims to God's truth or desires.
I think the following set of questions show the difficulty we have come to in simply returning to the faith that we are comfortable with. I ask you to carefully read through them and to deliver a thoughtful response if you have one. They really do represent the problem we face in trusting in anyone else’s experience.
Q: If someone is born Jehovah’s Witness or Muslim and is told all their lives that they have all the truth by everyone they admire (including their parents), does God still expect them to search for more or different truth (ie: find and accept Mormonism)?
Q: If someone is born Jehovah’s Witness or Muslim and experiences deeply meaningful spiritual manifestations (feelings) that their church is true, does God still expect them to search for more or different truth (ie: find and accept Mormonism)?
Q: If a Muslim or Jehovah’s Witness is expected to search for truth outside of the faith that a) they were born into, b) they have been told is true by people they trust and c) they have received spiritual manifestations regarding the truthfulness thereof; does this also apply to those born into Mormonism?
Q: If the combination of a) being born into it, b) having strong confirming feelings, and c) being told your church is true by those you trust are not reliable/sufficient indicators of holistic truth for non-Mormons; how and why can they possibly be sufficient for Mormons? In other words, how can Mormons be the only religion in the world that is immune to the effects of confirmation bias?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_biasQ: If the combination of a) being born into it, b) having strong confirming feelings, and c) being told your church is true by those you trust are not reliable/sufficient indicators of holistic truth for non-Mormons; what other tools should they use to find truth?
Q: If Mormons are exempt from having to search outside of their faith for Truth, are any other religions also exempt (why or why not)?
Q: How does someone know whether or not they already belong to a religion exempt from having to search for remaining truth (ie: already has all the truth)?
As you can see from the questions above, we quite simply no longer believe that it is realistic to assume that the Mormon church is true simply because we were born into it or because you bear testimony of it or because we have had good feelings about it. Clearly, these things are something that members of every single religion in the world experience. We are simply at a loss as to why Mormons think that there testimonies and experiences are somehow more "real" or "true" than those of other religions.
As you may understand from the questions above; we are currently in a position where being told that someone we love and trust knows something is true is not nearly as helpful as being told how they determined that it is true or why they believe it so strongly, or even why it is so valuable to them. Empathy is a critical characteristic that we need in our spiritual leaders. We certainly don’t want you to ever go through what we went through in losing our ability to believe but we do ask that you try to empathize with what that must feel like for us and how great of a loss it has been.