Cowboy asked some specific questions. Red liked the questions Cowboy asked. Margaret referred to “template testimony”.

Cowboy asked some excellent questions. I think he wants to know details so he can determine if I am sharing a “template testimony” like Margaret referred too.

In my mind a template testimony is one that is heard in our testimony meetings on occasion, and the impression left is “zeal without knowledge”; to borrow a phrase from Bro Hugh Nibley. A testimony given that exceeds our actual experience with the things of the Spirit is disingenuous, as is a testimony that is less than we have experienced.

My experience with the things of the Spirit includes impressions and comfort as Cowboy mentions, in addition to these experiences, the Lord as answered my prayers by visions, dreams, and ministering angels (unseen, but heard, this includes angels from God and satan). Spiritual experiences as I have been given remove doubt and uncertainty—utterly and completely! The claims of the restoration of the gospel through the prophet Joseph Smith are true.

I have not been promised eternal life, yet, but I have experienced all that is taught in 2 Nephi 31:13-21.

With that background I will answer yes, to questions 1, 2, and 4.

I hope with all my heart I can endure to the end and be found a joint-heir with Christ.

I want to keep this short. If anyone wants to read a more complete testimony click my name and read Jared’s testimony.

Doctrinally speaking I don’t know if I agree with comments on what determines how strong the manifestations of revelation will be. On the one hand, we could site examples such as Laman and Lemuel, when smiting Nephi with a rod. Parenthetically speaking though I can’t help but wonder if the Angel wasn’t more for Nephi’s sake than his brothers. We could also mention Alma the younger and the sons of Mosiah. Each of these examples might illustrate your point that only a powerful manifestation could redirect these mens course. On the other hand, we have Nephi the son of Lehi who is said to have believed based on what appears to be a lesser manifestation within the second chapter of First Nephi. By the 15th chapter he has been so enwrapped in the spirit to have had litteral discourse, and witnessed the birth of the Savior, and his ministry 600 years prior to its actual happening. There is also Nephi the son of Helam who was one of the best scriptural epitomies to lifelong righteousness extant, who was granted the sealing power and thereafter carried to and fro by the Spirit. As a last example, we have the Brother of Jared who had at least for the time, the most unprecendented faith of any to come before the Lord. such that he was literaly brought into the presence of the Lord while in mortality, and as the record goes, the Lord kept nothing from him. He was shown the history of the world/plan of salvation just as Moses, Nephi, Enoch, and countless others who would have and did believe based on lesser manifestations.

I am intrigued though that you say the Spirit has manifested itself to you audibly. Forgive my ignorance, was it physically audible, or was it a mental/spiritual experience?

Margaret:

Amen.

And Red (#23) is right that we need to do more to address the difficult issues forthrightly. But just as every person who joins the Church does so for their own reasons, everyone who leaves also has personal reasons for doing so. Cognitive dissonance is an easy umbrella, but every returned missionary who decides that he was deceiving people while on his mission has had a fundamental change that can’t be fully explained by the “tidy narrative” of cognitive dissonance.

I really believe that in sharing our real experiences, not just a template testimony, we help those who struggle remember things, and we can help them negotiate the distance between the various realities they are trying to bridge.

Most of my friends (brilliant, talented, empathetic RM’s) have left the Church, and I don’t believe it’s because they failed to find their own light. To use scriptural imagery: perhaps the youth who leave don’t simply run out of borrowed light; maybe those charged with carrying Zion’s sons and daughters in their arms and on their shoulders are too busy wringing their hands of responsibility.

Jared — Thanks for your response in 17. I wanted to ask a question similar to cowboy’s in 22, so I’ll leave it with him.

So often when I hear members refer to insights recieved by the Holy Ghost, they do so in the abstract. Your statement is an example of this:

“I learned by the power of the Holy Ghost what I needed to know”.

That statement is where it starts and ends for you, and this is fairly typical of many LDS comments of truth. I don’t mean so much to challenge you here, as to understand, how did you learn by the power of the Holy Ghost what you needed to know:

1) Did you have specific revelations about some of these details which increased your historical knowledge?

2) Did have have a revelation, such as Nephi as you mention, that taught you in a cognitive way correct doctrine?

3) Did you recieve comfort, that may have not been cognitively specific, but gave you the assurance that the Church is still true, and these things will work themselves out?

4) Anything I may have missed?

Thanks,

And yet I worry that a missionary’s life can be so insulated that the sense of service is too narrow, never escaping the spiral binding of Preach My Gospel, not seeing the people they serve in their own right, seeing only the exotic and different without coming close to them in their own right.