The Book of Jared

Telling lies for Jesus...

Telling lies for Jesus...

There are times where God has commanded even His prophets to not tell the full truth, such as when God commanded Abraham to tell Pharaoh that Sarah was his sister and not his wife. There are other times, however, when telling a small lie to start a conversation can come back to bite you in the end...

I get that some people leave the LDS church...

I have often had conversations that start out with some version of, "I used to be a Mormon, but <insert reason or thing I didn't know and found out about here>, and so I left." More often than not, these people are sincere, and were once practicing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but for whatever reason have now left that faith and moved elsewhere, either to another religion, or to no religion at all. These conversations can be uplifting, and can, if approached correctly by both parties, end up in an agreement to disagree. I have rarely had one of these conversations end in an argument. 

Then there are the other conversations...

These conversations start the same way, but there is something about the way the person phrases their concern or faith crisis that doesn't quite pass the smell test. Frequently it is the use of non-Mormon slang, or using terms when discussing the restored gospel that would not be common from someone that had spent a good deal of time as a member of the LDS church. 

For example, "I used to be a Mormon, but then I found out that Joseph made changes to the Book of Mormon text to change the way we understand the Trinity." 

Can you see the subtle tell in that sentence? What Mormon uses the word "Trinity"? We refer to God the Father, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit as "The Godhead" and only would use the term "Trinity" when discussing other religions that believe in the Nicene Creed. 

The thing that bothers me about these people is they think that they gain some sort of bonus credibility by pretending to have been members of the LDS Church, even though it isn't true. But the thing is, any time you begin a conversation with a falsehood, no matter how small, it will eventually come out, and destroy any credibility you might have had. 

So, in the future, let's all just agree that we can have faith building conversations only if those conversations are based in actual truths, and give up playing games with each other. I call it respect.

Written by Jared on Friday December 16, 2022.

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