Re: Questions we don't want to answer
- From: joseph_daniel_zukiger@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 13:34:04 -0000
Greg wrote:
>[...]
> Peggy Im not trying to ask "blindingly obvious"questions.
> I really am trying to understand who has the truth in two sides of an
> argument.
Which two sides of which argument? This is a serious question, partly
because I'm not sure, and partly because I am sure you are not sure
either. And partly because no question has just two sides.
When you ask mortal human beings for answers, you will always get less
than the truth. Mortality limits the time we can take to explore all
the contexts of the questions and get down to what is really being
asked, etc. And then there are those who will try deliberate to
obfuscate things because they think to get some gain that way, but they
will suffer in God's own due time.
The question of whether it is okay to ask God for truth is a pretty
good example. Do you mean to simply ask God and wait for an answer?
That route has its difficulties. Do you mean to do some groundwork of
your own and then take your results to God and say, "Here's what I
think, help me see what is right?" That way also has its difficulties.
And so forth.
Some will even go to God and say, "Here's what you told me, but I tried
to apply it in this other place where you didn't tell me it would work,
and it didn't work. FIX IT OR I'LL QUIT BELIEVING IN YOU!!!!!"
So there really is not a yes/no answer to your question. Lots of
reasons why, even though God is the best place to go when you want
truth, it may not be appropriate to ask God for a particular answer to
a particular question at a particular time.
> It may seem obvious to many Mormons and some Christians too, that it is Ok
> to pray for truth (and please note as I have previously stated I personally
> could not see why not ).
> But the fact remains that many Christians other than Mormons argue
> (especially those that argue against the LDS Churchs asking perpective
> members to pray for the truth of the book of Mormon), that is is not
> acceptable as the Bible only teaches to pray for wisdom not truth. And they
> seem the only
> ones prepared to show biblical references and argue their point.
You can argue anything with the Bible, especially when you take the
time to prepare your arguments in advance so you can overwhelm the
other guy with all your preparation. Can you see that this sort of
argumentation is not in keeping with the Spirit of Truth?
Hmm. Come to think of it, asking God for a truth so you can win an
argument would definitely not be appropriate.
> I have really tries to ask Mormons the same question and have had a range of
> replies from totally ignoring my question, to saying its *blindingly
> obvious*. Then some wonder why some people leave the church !
People who leave the church do so for their own reasons. They usually
make excuses about being offended by someone, but it is almost
invariably that they have taken offense by God. When they finally get
themselves reconciled with God, quite often they forget who offended
them, as well.
Why do people take offense at God? That's both a hard question and an
easy question to answer. I don't really have time to be writing this,
so I'm going to ask you to forgive me for not getting into that.
> It seems the general opinion is if you cant get the same spirit as us,
> telling you the same thing, you aint one of us and dont warrent
> consideration.
Us vs. them is a bad attitude to take if you're going to use it for
wars, but there actually is a valid principle to it, as well. For
example, somewhere (four places I could find in ten minutes if I had
ten minutes) in the D&C it says that God gives us better answers when
we can get together and agree on the question and maybe a tentative
answer or two. (Really rough paraphrase. Maybe you can look those up if
you are interested. There are other scriptures in the same sections
that may be relevant as well.)
> But I will persist, as I ahve not yet given up on Mormonaism and may
> eventually find truth.
Persisting is a good thing in this case.
And, yes, ask God. Just be patient about the answer. If you need
scriptural authorization to ask God, look up "prayer" in the LDS
scripture helps (or even at scriptures.lds.org) and you should be able
to find quite a bit that shows it is authorized.
If you get overwhelmed by all the scriptures that come up first on
scriptures.lds.org, go to the bottom of the page and there will often
be a button for more. Eventually, you come to the pages that have any
LDS Bible Dictionary and similar entries. For instance, I had to click
sixteen times to get this one:
http://scriptures.lds.org/query?words=prayer&start=800
But then I noticed there is also a button at the top of the page --
"Show Related Study Helps" -- that would have been much faster.
Getting answers from God can be like that. Jump through all sorts of
hoops trying to get to the answer, then you just sort of notice that
you were overlooking the obvious all that time. Happens to me a lot.
JDZ
.
- References:
- LDS converts and understand prayer
- From: Greg
- Re: LDS converts and understand prayer
- From: David Bowie
- Re: LDS converts and understand prayer
- From: Greg
- Re: LDS converts and understand prayer
- From: David Bowie
- Questions we don't want to answer
- From: Peggy Tatyana
- Re: Questions we don't want to answer
- From: Greg
- LDS converts and understand prayer
- Prev by Date: Re: Questions we don't want to answer
- Next by Date: Re: LDS converts and understand prayer
- Previous by thread: Re: Questions we don't want to answer
- Next by thread: Re: Questions we don't want to answer
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
