stringsofchange

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  • Posts

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About stringsofchange

  • Birthday September 6

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Utah
  • Interests
    Philosophy, specifically determinism and free will.

    Gender dynamics, multi-generational effects of government policies.

    Fitness, healthy supplements, healthy diet, and a healthy body. Exercise for 2-4% of your week.

    Mental exercise, how mediation, presence in the moment, and prayer can strengthen our minds.
  • Religion
    LDS

stringsofchange's Achievements

  1. Thanks everyone for your advice! I am still learning so much about the church and everything that goes along with it. Yes I do live at home but I am well over 18. I had a long talk with my father yesterday and was very frank about my decision. He tried to shame me so I wished him a good night and went to bed. I've decided that the best thing for me is to not bring up religion and to just come and go to church and to other religious activities and let my actions do my speaking for me. Next time someone in my family says something negative about my choices I will simply ignore it and engage them in other conversations. My father is normally very logical as he is also a retired engineer. I realize that he has extremely strong biases against the Mormon faith. Though after our talk last night I do not think that he will be making any openly negative statements anymore. He has not made any today. But he has made several comments about the changes I have made in my life over the last few months. I think that he is recognizing that it is my faith that has given me the strength to make these changes. Thank you everyone for your advice!
  2. When I consider hearing over the past year how I cannot change, that I should find happiness in sin, commit sins and create pain in the world and in my community for temporary highs and temporary false happiness, that becoming someone else is just too much work and not possible, to just give up, how can I not see that this is the talk of Satan? These are lies and falsehoods. And when I hear that voice telling me to better myself, to create joy and happiness in all around me and the reflection of that will bring me true everlasting happiness, permanent satisfaction, but it is hard work and a long journey, with many trials, but to never give up, and that I will have much support in this, how can I not see that this is a message from our Heavenly Father? These are truths and genuine. Why should life be easy if life is going to be rewarding?
  3. Hello everyone, I investigated the church for almost a full year and now I am ready to be baptised. I can't wait and I can't believe that it took me so long to find heavenly father and the church. It has been a very long and strange journey and I have and still do encounter so many road blocks. I sought out a forum because there is a new block in my path. My family. I was raised as an atheist, a liberal, progessive, and all of that. My church was the church of identifying oppression and privilege and shaming people into compliance with the progressive agenda. Though had you asked me two years ago I would have told you that I had no religion and did not believe in any God. This is how my family operates, though I have been able to slowly get them to see things from my perspective, just a tiny bit. I met with missionaries for a long time. I read the Book of Mormon and I started to pray. Then I stopped seeing the missionaries. I stopped reading the scriptures. But I still prayed as I found it brought me some mental stability and a calming of my emotions. Then something happened that I am not prepared to speak about, that I wrote off as some kind of mental break down, possibly a psychotic break, clearly to be treated with medication from a psychiatrist. Only I now believe that Heavenly Father just straight up told me that the church was true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and that I was headed down a path of internal destruction. And I was. And what happened brought me where I am today. Baptism in 13 days. My family is totally against this though. They keep telling me that I believe in lies That I am committed to a group of crazy people and that Joseph Smith is a fraud. That I am going to go to hell if I continue upon this path. What I hear in my heart and in my soul, though, is that the church is true, that God sends us prophets to teach us the path of salvation, and knowing this I can not not follow the path that God offers me. I wish my family would follow it with me. But at this point we disagree about almost everything. I still respect my father and love him very much. But I do not feel like he respects me and my choices back. I am a man, fully grown, and fully capable of making my own decisions. I just wish for my family to either support my choices or to, at the very least, not make a constant stream of negative comments about them. Lately every time anything happens that can be remotely considered "bad" I hear about how it is all the Mormon's fault. Leaves blew in the wind onto some cars driving on the street near my house and my father launched into a fifteen minute tirade about how he saw one of our neighbors raking leaves and some of those leaves went into the street and then the wind blew those leaves into some oncoming cars and possibly distracted them. This proves that the Mormon faith and that believers in this faith are objectively bad people because those leaves could have caused a car crash and in that crash a baby that may have been in one of those cars could have died. I am hearing this stuff constantly. I don't know how to respond. I love my father and I respect him. He is the closest thing I have to a personal hero. But how can he blame the faith I believe in for leaves blowing in the wind and an imaginary potential car crash? If anyone has any advice on how to handle a family who does not believe in Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father, and much less the prophets of the Church, I would very much appreciate any advice. Until then I will make sure to pray for my family that God will grant them strength to better their lives and the wisdom to find the path of salvation. It is good to meet all of you,