Be completely transparent about church history
Be completely transparent about church history. (we’re making huge progress on this!)
Reasoning:
I believe Mormonism has done itself an enormous disservice by pushing a “faith promoting” (sanitized and correlated) view of its history. By hiding the entirely fallible nature of Joseph Smith and other church leaders, we have perpetuated the false dichotomy of “either it’s all true or it’s all false”. It’s important for member to understand that prophets (those with the gift of revelation) are prone to big mistakes in learning to use their spiritual gifts. They can get mixed signals, and they can inject their own bias or even negative sourced material into their doctrines and revelations. If there are aspects of church history which seem like they may “destroy the faith” of some members, then that faith needs to be destroyed and replaced with truer reasoning. Everyone worships a God and follows a “personal religion” which is at least partly a projection of their own biases, cultural distortions and limited perspective. The unseemly aspects of church history help to break down those idols and misconceptions. The recent church gospel topic essays are a good start, but more needs to be done here. Really the only reason these essays and issues are causing so many to lose faith, is because there are so many who have been led to base their faith on false assumptions and untruths. These false assumptions and untruths need to be effectively addressed (which I attempt to do in these reform actions).
See the new church sponsored essays…
- First Vision Accounts November 20, 2013
- Race and the Priesthood December 6, 2013
- Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah December 16, 2013
- Book of Mormon Translation December 30, 2013
