I keep starting this without being sure what to focus on. I know what the individual points are, but am not sure of the best order to treat them in, so I think I need to write about my motivation.
Part of my desire to do this comes from my membership in a group on Facebook that I thought would be for more liberal-leaning members of the Church. That was an exciting thought. There are many members who make being politically conservative an essential part of their faith, and they are so certain in their rightness, that it gets pretty irritating.
The members I know who are Democrats have been great, and talking to them has been great, so I was expecting that finding a trove of them on the internet would also be great. Sadly, they are mostly awful.
This should not really be surprising. No matter how you are grouping people, within that grouping there is a part that is awful, and part of that tends to include being vocal. (More on that at http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/02/atheism-study-authors-congratulations-non-believers-youre-just-like-everybody-else/.)
Anyway, a lot of the people show by their comments a lack of faith. Maybe they are not still going to church, or maybe they go due to a sense of tradition, but think of it as just a church, and not as the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. If that is the case, they have lost something precious.
I do get frustrated with various members at times, which is normal. It is totally normal. These things happen in churches and political parties and volunteer groups, because that is the nature of dealing with people. Cutting off things that are important to you because of other people is spiting yourself, but it can often affect others too, like less dogs getting rescued, or other people being influenced and losing something they valued but were still getting used to, or just an organization that is good becoming unbearable due to who is left.
The reason I focus on prophets for that is to remember that this isn't just a church. It's not just some good ideas at one time that haven't been updated. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true and living church. It was restored by a prophet. It uses the words of old prophets, which anyone can do, but it is also still led by prophets. Those prophets are human, and the people they lead are human, but there is no getting around that part, so you have to deal with it.
What I will be trying to cover in the next two or three posts is how to deal with it, and why it's worth dealing with, and how it is actually a system that works after all.
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