Bill McKeever talks about inconsistency and diversity within Mormonism and the value of asking questions to the individual Mormon you are speaking with.
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I guess this goes both ways – we LDS should not lump all of you Traditional Christians into the one basket (case) as there are plenty of different teachings and beliefs between you lot.
Yes, we do allow ‘free thinking’ within our church, an fact we tolerate a lot of it. The reason being is that we try and keep peoples’ membership to allow them to learn and possibly overcome their incorrect thoughts. It is easier to leave their name on the records than have them excommunicated or name removed off the records then rebaptised in the future if they decide to come back. They are warned if their thoughts are very aberrant to not teach them as doctrine in any formal church setting. But when it comes down to it, with anything that is absolute church doctrine, most (not all) members believe the same thing.
There are some things which the church has no official stance where it does not matter what one thinks or says as long as they realise and state that the church has no official stance. For example, still-born children are not recorded on church records like children who die just after birth – but the church has no official stance on whether they are going to be resurrected or not. Some members believe that they were alive and they will be resurrected. Others believe that to be alive they must have drawn breath and since they died in utero they did not draw breath and thus were not alive and will not be resurrected. Since this has nothing to do with our own individual salvation, and God has not given any direct revelation about it, it is unnecessary to have a homogeneous ideology about this point. In the back of the blue Church Handbook of Instructions is a section that deals with issues like this stating what the church’s stance is or if there is no stance. It was quite an interesting read with some of the issues.
Anyway, hate to be a PRUNE and ruin your fun so I’ll say one word – SHIRT !
I’m glad I hadn’t eaten when I read this post because I would have barfed hence forth.
“Yes, we do allow ‘free thinking’ within our church, an fact we tolerate a lot of it.”
Could you poster-ize a better example of the militaristic oxymoron that flows through mormonisms’ veins!!! In a place of freedom, “free thinking” is not tolerated but celebrated.
And lets not forget to goose step to the rest of the paragraph.