125 — I like where you’re at with this, because it’s real. Desiring a desire to believe isn’t a bad place to be, particularly if you pursue that desire. I think there is a place for letting people know things that might be harmful to their false-faith, and that that is a good thing, but over the pulpit in testimony meeting isn’t it. It’s not Mormon Open Mike — it’s a place for sharing what you have learned through the Spirit by means of the Spirit. Taking a sympathetic friend to lunch might be a better place.

I have thought about getting up in fast and testimony and “telling it how it is.” I just don’t think that people would understand me unless I went into considerable detail. Those details would likely hurt many peoples’ faith rather than build it and that is not the purpose of testimony meetings.

THIS. Thank you so much for this.

An event in my life this year, during a missionary discussion with an investigator of the church had affected me so much that I have lately been questioning doctrinal matters of the LDS theology. For the first time ever last week, I bore my testimony that doesn’t consist of the saying, “I know” because truth of the matter is, I don’t know. Saying “I know” did not feel right; it would be lying; I would feel like such a fraud. However, last week, I truly had the urge to say something, to share what I truly know what I am grateful for (the church, the Book of Mormon, living prophet). Interestingly, I thought it was more satisfying to say “I am grateful for…” than “I know…” It was a remedy to the tried times and struggles I have been facing in questions of the doctrine. TMI, I know; but I just want to thank you for this post, especially for the part that I pointed out. It makes me feel better about about not knowing, and I think it is okay to doubt because lately I have found myself being more diligently at searching the scriptures, church publications, and especially at praying. It has definitely strengthened me and increased my knowledge and faith in the restored gospel.

For what it is worth, I certainly was not attempting to “poke fun” at your testimony, or to be light about it any regard. I agree with Thomas however, that testimonies are not beyond critique. I agree that it needs to be respectful, and in retrospect I may have charged a bit more aggressively than I should have. At any rate, I think we are at a point of better understanding.

If you don’t feel honest saying you know, then by all means say you believe – or even that you desire to believe (and maybe that you want to hang on to the type of faith Alma describes until someday, perhaps, you can say you know).

To those of you who say you never hear it, maybe that’s because you never say it – and nobody else who feels like you do follows you and says it also. “Be the change you desire” sounds trite to many people, but it’s wonderful advice. If you only believe or desire to believe, say so. I’ve done it from the pulpit one more than one occasion, and most people in the Bloggernacle (and in my wards) see me as a TBM – albeit a generally nice one.

My husband went to Japan on his mission back in the day; in Japanese there is no way to say “I know”. I told me he was always grateful for that since saying he “knew” made him uncomfortable. So the only way to say “I know this Church is true” was to substitute “know” with “believe”.

Once upon a time I thought I knew. Once upon a time I told myself that knowing was being faithful. In fact, knowing was a great way to stay single of mind and not allow anything new or divergent to sully my conviction.

Now I “know” one thing for sure; it came time to move on. And I upgraded my belief system.

119 — Why do we bother what? Try to explain spiritual knowledge? We most often don’t try. I think because it’s a pain in the butt to try. Words don’t successfully carry spiritual details. It’s the reason we (or, at least, I) pray for the Spirit to be present in our meetings where we are speaking of spiritual things, to convey the correct understandings of those things. The words can get you into the general neighborhood, but it takes the Spirit to get it right.

The real question to me seems to be why do we bother? Seems like a good place to end.

Cf. #25: “I know the Church is true, and the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I can’t tell you what “know” and “true” mean, and I don’t know what the Book of Mormon is, or what it means that it’s the word of God. But I know those things nonetheless….”

I didn’t read #25 as simply declaring that you’d had a certain experience, but rather that (in addition) you drew from that experience that the conclusion the Church is true. I’d like to understand the logic between A and B, but if it wasn’t your intention to make that connection, then I misunderstood the original item. Pax.

I’m not someone who beats people up for disagreeing with me about spiritual things, or challenges their sincerity for coming to different conclusions. This shouldn’t be taken as any lack of devotion on my part. I would just rather people be good Catholics or Muslims or Buddhists than bad Mormons. I don’t see how I show my discipleship for the Master by treating people like crap for any reason.

And, like everything else, I’m imperfect at this too.

112 — Jacking your own thread? What will the lurkers say?

(Trick question: Lurkers don’t say anything — if they do, they stop being lurkers.)

I like testimony meetings, but not always. My favorites aren’t fast and testimony meetings, though. I like testimony meetings in other contexts. I like people sharing what’s important to them, especially when moved by the Spirit. I don’t like it as much when it’s Mormon Open Mike, home of the gratimony, travel log, medical report and that-talk-I-haven’t-yet-been-asked-to-give.

I’m thinking it’s more of a Quaker thing, especially after the Keithite schism, when things settled down considerably. Their meetings, by my understanding, did not have sermons, but everyone would sit in silence until the Spirit moved someone to speak, and then they would speak.

113 — Where I saw contempt was in the condescension of describing my knowledge as something other than certain knowledge. I think Cowboy and I are getting closer to some understanding, and that this was more a matter of misunderstanding and a bit of semantics than it was open contempt. The rest, from what I can see, was a basic misunderstanding that I was trying to claim that my testimony was objective truth. I’m not sure how willful this misunderstanding was — I think some were just having some fun, and, as much as I enjoy having fun, this is not an experience I have fun with. I wasn’t sharing it to be persuasive, but neither was I sharing it to have fun poked at it, and I didn’t appreciate that.

I did not see your comments as contemptuous, nor did I see them as poking fun. I do not accept your proffered apologies because I don’t see that they are needed, but I appreciate their offer.

Wandering into the field of quasi-legal evidentiary language wasn’t my idea.

What you are being asked to do is show your work. Get from “I had a mystical experience,” to “…and therefore the Church is true.”

If I am less deferential than you would like concerning your beliefs, it comes from seeing people make similar arguments as yours in unfriendly contexts — to suggest, for instance, that those who do not have similar beliefs are not among the “honest in heart,” to use just one phrase. I have come to suspect — based on my appraisals of the character of people who act this way, who I know more familiarly than you — that a lot of these guys are bluffing. There is no “and therefore.” There is only faith — a decision to choose to believe that the mystical experience confirms the truth of the Church. Fair enough.

But the unexplained “I know” gets thrown around too often as a sectarian missile to be treated as if it’s beyond critique.

I haven’t commented here for a bit, but I do appreciate you sharing your feelings, along with everyone else’s. I am always interested in the wide variety of people’s results from sincere seeking for truth. They range from absolute certainty that the LDS Church is true, to absolute certainty that the LDS Church is false and a cult, with many, many grades in between. In fact, on a continuum, we’re all probably at different spots.

My two comments relating this back to the original post:

- A basic problem is that it seems like much of the continuum has been “chopped off” when it comes to testimonies. Unless someone is willing to go to the end where they state that they “KNOW” the Church is true, it seems there isn’t much room for that in a public meeting. It may just be an impression, but I have the feeling that if I were to stand up and say that I don’t really know that the Church is true, but I’m willing to continue going forward with faith, it wouldn’t go over well and some people would consider it near the opposite end of the continuum.

- Saying that you “KNOW” the LDS Church is true implies many, many things, including that presumption that essentially every other church is NOT true. Sure, they may have some truth, but in reality, it’s an exclusionary viewpoint. How does anyone reconcile this with the hundreds of millions who KNOW equally well, according to their experience, that Catholicism, Islam, or Hinduism are the one true path? Or does the fact that hundreds of millions of people who have equally valid subjective experiences of KNOWING that their path is correct imply that all of the paths ultimately lead back to God?

Made me laugh.

I’m not sure there’s a point to further clarifying what you seem to not be understanding. I have no doubt that others can also acquire this same knowledge — I know quite a few who have done so. I have said that I am not the guarantor that all who might seek to have the same experience will. That isn’t my job — that’s the job of the Holy Ghost. I think you’re seeing my acknowledgment of my own personal limitations as something they are not — I think this has been the entire problem you and I have had in this thread quite possibly. I’m not going to hand someone an opportunity to say “I tried Moroni 10:3-5, and I got no witness” or “and I was told it wasn’t true,” and “therefor, you’re wrong.” In the realm of faith, the subjective experience is the king, and I can’t challenge someone in their own subjective experience. Neither am I going to accept challenges to my own subjective experience.

Let me explicate just a little of what my original comment meant. The Book of Mormon teaches me how to get closer to God. I do not know specifically which historical groups of people it refers to, although I’m rather certain it isn’t talking about common ancestors of all pre-Columbian people in the Americas. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its priesthood, ordinances teachings are the path to God, but I don’t know what it means to say that it is “true” with regard to every word of every manual or every statement of every leader or member it has ever had, or to what anyone else might have in their mind when they use the word “true” in this context.

My belief is not some gauzy bundle of nothing but vagueness and ambiguity. It just goes beyond my capacity to fully comprehend.

When I say that I don’t care what you believe, I mean that about your belief in general. I do think it rather rude to treat a powerful personal experience with the contempt being shown to mine, and thought that others, when given notice they were appearing rude thusly, might reconsider the tack they were taking. It remains to be seen if my thought was correct. I’m not aware of having met a person in this thread, and have no reason to particularly value the opinion anyone here has of me, or much of anything else. I will take the outcome of this thread into account before sharing any personal experience I value here again.

102 — My claim is a fact. It can be proved or disproved. It objectively happened. You can look right up and see it for yourself. What it is claiming can not be proved or disproved. Facts are not all true. They are just provably true or false. Thomas, who seems to think he’s in court, should be able to attest to that usage. I am not intending in any way to persuade anyone to accept my belief, to say nothing of trying to bludgeon people into admitting the obvious superiority of my point. Accepting my experience requires (and means) nothing more than admitting that you can’t prove otherwise without prejudice.

And I don’t have a clue how anybody could conceivably prove the Church isn’t true — I don’t know how you’re going to even get a consensus on what “true” means in that context.

103 — With this, I think we’re starting to understand each other.

104 — Good luck with that “testimony isn’t evidence” thing. Testimony has always been evidence. It’s rarely conclusive evidence, and is not the best possible form of evidence in a perfect world. Sometimes, it’s all you have. This is such a case. There is no other possible evidence that can be provided.

I think you’re confused about what I’m labeling fact and what I’m not. Hopefully, by this point, you are less confused.

105 — You seem to think I’m trying to compel you or persuade you. You’re far from alone in that, from what I can see. I don’t know how to say more clearly that I do not care to do either, nor have I, even once, tried to do so in this thread. With that understanding, is there anything in this comment that I need to address?

107 — Move that you get over yourself. This is not a court. If it were, I’d sentence you to a course on reading for comprehension and listening to understand, since you show no apparent understanding of my participation in this thread or the nature of any of my claims. Look for alternative possible meanings to ambiguous words and pronouns whose referent might not be what you initially though, just for starters. People don’t say things that don’t make sense to them, so see if you can find the way in which what they said might have made sense, instead of trying to make them look stupid.

All — I’m going to take a break from responding to people who aren’t understanding what I’m saying. I’ve told Cowboy what I’m looking for from him. I’m not asking anybody to endorse my beliefs. If somebody needs to feel like they’ve won a fight, they’re welcome to do so. Except for HC, who lost.

“That comes (as I said before, and you never addressed) from both the imperfection of language and from the difficulty in grasping all the meaning from an experience with such profound impact on my life and how I see the world (and, well, everything).”

See my comment, #26. I have more or less addressed this. Blaine, you should first know that my comments have not been personal. However, you have attempted to clearly state that you know that the Church is true, including The Book of Mormon. Your follow up comments included caveats that would call the supposed independant truths that you know, into question. Your most recent comments have even conceded the subjectivity of your experiences. I am simply challenging how it is possible for you to have sure knowledge about obscure unprovable independant truths, while at the same time expressing reticence over the certainty that others also can acquire this same knowledge, or as in at first, what exactly this knowledge means. If you are not suggesting that you actually possess certain knowledge, but based on personal experiences you strongly believe The Church is true along with The Book of Mormon, then I have misunderstood and I am sorry.

Yes. You can testify that you had a certain experience. You can describe what it was like.

But of course not all evidence is admissible. Only relevant evidence is admissible. In order to admit your testimony as evidence for the proposition “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true and living church on the face of the whole earth, having been restored by miraculous means including the ministry of angels in the manner described by its founders and the literal translation of actual ancient records,” you have to lay a foundation that demonstrates some connection between your mystical experience, and the proposition asserted.

So what is that foundation, Counsel? Why is it more likely than not, that when a person has a mystical experience in connection with a religious notion, that the notion is literally, factually true? Haven’t we just demonstrated that a substantial portion of mystical experiences are experienced in connection with religious notions that are not factually true?

If you can make a persuasive case that mystical experiences are relevant to establishing the factual truth or falsity of religious claims, then yes, your testimony could be evidence. I’m interested in hearing that case made.

This is not particularly compelling. Yes, (first-hand) testimony is evidence, but it is notoriously unreliable evidence, and it is not remotely the best kind of evidence. Additionally, your statement that Holden Caulfield cannot provide contrasting testimony is simply false. Obviously he can’t provide eye-witness testimony, but so what? If only those who were present at an event were allowed to provide testimony regarding that event, trials would be considerably shorter. To the extent that Holden, or anyone else, has some degree of expertise or information respecting to the kind of experience that you had, then that testimony is certainly relevant. By your rationale, if only one person is present at an event, then that person’s testimony is necessarily true and unassailable. Obviously this is not the case.

We are imperfect. We are fallible. And because of that, we cannot accept as fact any experience that cannot be independently verified. Welcome to being human. It doesn’t mean everything we think or believe is wrong. Just that everything we think or believe should be held to honest scrutiny. Even our religious beliefs.

If I claim direct knowledge from a supernatural being, I had better be prepared to provide objective evidence to that effect or be seen as delusional, not in just the world’s eyes, but my own as well.

This is more fun than I usually have at the office on a Thursday afternoon.