A New Kind of Entry

My blog is entering a new era. I have worked on a lot of the anger I have held in for years. I have mourned many aspects of my life not being perfect. I have acknowledged head on what I need to acknowledge now that I am no longer an active member of the LDS Church.

I would like to keep blogging about the LDS Church. I would like to keep blogging about the brainwashing and confusion produced by the Church.

I would also like to speak about my new beliefs, my new questions, my Bible study. I would like to write about how I perceive what I read in the Bible. I will not always give learned or wordy analyses of what I read. But I will comment on the impression it left me with to deal with the text known as the Holy Bible to so many religions.

I am starting to want to move forward. I will start by learning to gaze at belief and meaning in life from different angles.

So, I just realized that a part of the brainwashing I am undoing since being in the Mormon Church has to do with physical pain. In high school, one day, I was in the bathroom. I had horrible cramps due to the time of month, and no idea what to take for them. They were really bad. An hour later, when I got out of the bathroom, the cramps had subsided. I left the regular high school building to go to what is known as release time seminary. Many LDS high school students in Utah spend at least one class period of the day being taught LDS doctrines and being encouraged to study the Standard Works--the Book of Mormon, King James Bible, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. When I went to seminary, we were told how we were to deal with adversity in life. It sounded like the topic was describing my day. We were told not to pray to have the adversity taken away. We were instead supposed to pray to be able to endure it. LDS people are taught, and often believe, that any pain or discomfort in life is allowed by God so that we can be humble and turn to Him. We are told not to ask why, but ask why not.

It sounds sort of cruel. A high school girl is learning to deal with her life and her body and she is told in seminary that she should endure it and pray to endure it? She can't try to take it away? While I was not convinced it meant that I should not take pain medication next time my little problem happened, I thought that if I had been righteous, I wouldn't have prayed for God to take away my pain. By the way, I had, and I think that that is why I left the bathroom ready to go to another class. God did help me on that day. You shouldn't pray to have it taken away?

I think that to do this day, I get tense whenever I have any sort of physical discomfort, as if I am trying to will myself to endure the pain. I have noticed that when I relax, the pain subsides and I am able to think about how to properly deal with my discomfort on a medical and emotional level. Yes, God takes away pain when there is no way out of it, and the soul in distress needs it.

It is amazing how the brainwashing of any kind of organization can take away the empowerment and natural faith of one individual. And I am amazed that any religious people would take the pain and confusion of a high school student and turn it into some sort of trial that can never be relieved. Shame, shame on Mormonism.

Now for the Bible portion of my blog!

I have been reading 1 Corinthians. Chapter 7 verses 25-40 talks about how to deal with the unmarried and the widows. Instead of saying the everyone must be married, Paul talks about how those who may not be in a grand position to marry, no matter what their age, should not assume that they must get married and rush into a marriage contract. He talks about how married life is different than single life. He calls single life a time to be holy. He calls married life a time to please one's spouse. Paul emphasizes the value of each time of life. He tackles the social mores of his day regarding marriage and virginity. He gives his followers some guildelines. This passage says to me that Paul was teaching people so they would be able to deal with the practical affairs of their lives and emphasize common sense in their traditions and behaviors. To me this means that true religion emphasizes practical matters when necessary so that right living can be lived everyday, not just in a church or synagogue.

Chapter 8 is about food offered to idols. This chapter makes less sense to me because it is so much a practical matter of the saints in Corinth. There doesn't seem to be a modern equivalent to the problem presented in this chapter. I think that personally, I am not going to read it over and over again and worry about it. I am just glad that Paul is telling the people to beware of practices that would be offensive to the Lord.

I think that as I read the Bible, I wonder what kind of Christian I am. I do not seem to be vibrating with Christianity. I think that as a member of the Mormon Church, I did not seem to feel the vibrance of the truest form of Christianity. The Mormon Church took the bite out of the atonement for me. And there are logical things that Mormonism never addressed that I am trying to figure out. Basically, I do not know all the questions I must ask for things to make sense. As an active Mormon, things did not make much sense when it came to Jesus and what he has done for me and mankind.

Reading the Bible makes me explore my feelings: Do I believe what is presented to me in the Bible on a literal level? Do I believe some literal things and some symbolic things? Are there mysteries that no one knows, including the authors of the Bible? Are non-Christian religions valid? I have started with questions. And I know that I am completely out of touch with questions that seem to be there on an instinctual, but not logical level. I wonder what will come out of me in a few years? I think that I am more comfortable living with questions than answers at this point and time. After all, when I believed I had all the answers, I was living a cruel and rigid religion that did not honor the idea of being the question. Eastern religions honor this. I think Christians could do this too.