Quora

Recently, I’ve been spending down times during work on a social media platform called Quora. People on this post questions, and other people reply. I don’t really relate to most of the questions, so I’ve been doing more reading than posting. A few days ago, I found questions about the LDS church, some real, some derogatory and argumentative, but I’ve answered a few as honestly and objectively as I could. I know before I investigated the church, I hated it when people got offended and upset with me about an honest question and when people used my question to try and force the church on me. I know the church can be confusing to members, never mind nonmembers, so I try to just answer questions as well as I can. Today I saw a question along the lines of, “if you even bothered to look for truth, you would know the Mormon church is false. So why did you join the LDS church?” This answer was just too good to not share, because it made me think from a perspective I’ve never before thought about. Here it is:

“You’d think the purpose of a religion was to win over converts as quickly as possible, and I’m sure that’s the goal of many LDS folks. But I think back to the story of Jesus teaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, when he miraculously provided food to the masses. Once they saw that this healer was giving out free food, they flocked to him en masse. You’d think Jesus would be thrilled to have such a boost in followers, but what he did was interesting – he taught the “eat my flesh; drink my blood” sermon and scared most of them away. Even Peter was freaked out, but he concluded [paraphrasing] “where else would I go? There’s something here that I can’t deny.”

What if God throws himself under the bus – what if he conceals his tracks so people are less likely to find him for the wrong reasons?

If the LDS church were easy to join and to follow, I think it would dilute the message. Imagine billions of Mormons, only attending on Christmas and Easter. Imagine our holiest rites reduced to passing jokes. That’s the price of ubiquity and universality. I’ve about concluded that the role of the LDS church in this life is to convert and retain just enough members to complete all the proxy ordinance work for the world’s inhabitants, so those ordinances will be available to the 99.9% of the world’s inhabitants who were never converted in this life, but will find the gospel in the next. That’s my opinion – it could be wrong – but something tells me that it’s either okay that we’re a small church, or God really screwed up.

I’ve probably read all of the negative stuff you have, but I stick around, because of the intensely powerful spiritual experiences I have had there, and the personal transformation I’ve seen in my life as I followed the teachings of the church. That is my own personal proof. I’ll be the first to admit that doesn’t hold much weight with anyone other than myself. I think it’s something each individual has to come to their own conviction about, before they can choose to follow it – but I believe that was by design.

There are admittedly some things I can’t explain away – I don’t understand how the official story about how the Book of Abraham came about could be true – but there is a lot of negative stuff out there that just isn’t true. I don’t believe it is possible to conclude that the Book of Mormon was fabricated, for example. So no, I disagree with any claim that the LDS church *must* be false, because XYZ. There are faults out there to be found, but if God himself tells you to sidestep those and join anyway, then I recommend following that advice.”