Let me tell you a story, about the greatest reason why I am still a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Before I begin this short little tale you need to understand some things. Before this event in my life that happened around the ages of 8-10 years of my life, I absolutely loathed my dad. I loathed being in his presence, especially because he would tell me to go out and work with him on his cars or whatever else he needed to work on (even if he really didn’t need any help). The thing that made me loathe him so much though, was that he would get infuriated in a second over the smallest (and I mean the smallest) little thing that didn’t go exactly to his plans. It didn’t help that I never remembered where anything was in his shop, because I would block any and all memories of going out and working with him from my mind (I got very good at not thinking about it or about him). He would growl and shout at the top of his lungs in the most condescending way he could.
My mom would also send me out every time she saw me while he was working (this is where my distrust of people, hate of people, my lengthy tendency to analyze people before I respond to or talk to them, and my actual desires to be anti social, my tendency to hide my emotions and pain, anxieties, and my tendency to deceive others about what I am actually feeling comes from).
I loathed his existence to such a degree that I wished he would just follow through with his anger to beat me, just for the emotional release.
We went to church every Sunday unless we were sick. I was homeschooled and lived nowhere near anyone my age so it was the only place that I got to see anyone that was my age and the only place I got to spend time with people I called friends. I honestly didn’t think we were very good friends though.
With all that in mind now let me tell this tale.
One week, on a Sunday, all but one of our four cars at the time wasn’t working. The only car that was working was a small truck with three seats. It wasn’t nearly enough for a family the size of mine (I think we were at either seven or eight kids at that time). My mom was also sick and would be staying home.
My dad offered to take two of us kids to church with him in that truck.
We weren’t allowed to watch any movies or any TV that wasn’t about stories of the scriptures or about the church (getting on the internet wasn’t even something that would register to me). I had seen all the “Sunday” movies we had and figured that there would simply be more fun to be had at church (there probably was).
So I ended up being the only person that went with my dad.
You might be wondering why I would go with someone I loathed so much, but to that I just say that I didn’t think about it. That is until we sat in the car.
Once seated and buckled in I realized what I had done. I thought myself to be one great idiot. What was I doing riding alone with this man? His very presence is torture (for me in those days, it truly was).
I began thinking about everything about him that I hated and loathed (have I said that word enough?). I was absolutely consumed by my loathing of him. And then I thought about why I had decided to go with him.
All that loathing was then redirected at church and at my decision to go because I had figured it would be more fun there.
As much as I’ve mentioned it I just can’t express how much loathing I had then, but I do believe that I was starting to enjoy it.
I don’t actually remember any of the words that went through my head up to this point, but my next thoughts and the words I used in them have been stamped in my head so hard that I don’t think I could forget them if I tried.
I thought about the act of going to church and I asked myself in my head “is it even important?” I recall saying it in my thoughts with all the gravity I could muster even though I also remember keeping my facial features as calm as I could while looking out the widow away from my dad just in case I showed something.
Immediately after that question ran through my mind all my loathing, all of it, was removed and replaced by an equal amount of the feeling of peace.
I was totally perplexed and I remember thinking the words “What? I want to be angry.”
I didn’t know what was going on even though I had been told several times at church about the spirit of God speaking to people and how it would feel. What I was feeling however was far stronger than anyone had ever described.
Then my dad, who either almost never pays any attention to our attitudes or just never responds to them, asked me, seemingly out of the blue, “how do you feel?”
I didn’t want to respond to him, but I knew I probably wasn’t a good idea to ignore him and his question. Mind you I was still feeling this insanely large amount of peace while thinking this. I was still in a mental state of being stunned from how I felt and how my thoughts didn’t even come close to matching such a feeling.
I ended up just saying “Good.”
His response to which was “That’s the spirit.”
I have no memory of my dad ever sounding so calm and thoughtful previous to that time. I also can’t recall any time in which since he has sounded so calm unless he had been part of some sort of spiritual experience in the church, the temple or in service.
The feeling I had diminished somewhat throughout the day, but it lasted the entire day. That day I promised that I would go to church every Sunday I could, even if I stopped believing in the church. Why? Because I knew that it was true that day and I knew that even if I stopped believing in it then I would be able to learn something good from it until I knew it again.
I since have analyzed my church in many ways trying to prove it false and not of God. I went so far as to say that since God is perfect his doctrine has to be too. So I went around looking at all the doctrine in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (ignoring the people of the church, because they could be corrupt) and saying that if there was anything in the doctrine that contradicted another part of the doctrine then it could not be true. I found nothing and when I thought I had, I soon found that whatever it was did not in fact contradict anything with the rest of the doctrine.
I have heard about other doctrines in other churches and I am sickened by how easily and frequently I find contradictions without trying to find them at all.
After I had exhausted my search for fault in the doctrine in and of itself I decided to try to prove it true to myself. It took less than a day and maybe even less than an hour of thinking about all the stories, miracles and testimonies of others in the church, in the history of the church, in the scriptures (both in the Book of Mormon and throughout the Bible) and finally as well as in my own testimony of what happened with my dad driving to church that one day; plus one little miracle concerning a blessing over me healing from a staph infection (but I don’t really care that much about that one).
That’s pretty much all I have to say about that story.
Hate me if you will, but know this if Satin is real and God too then wouldn’t God’s church be the one with the most ridicule surrounding it? Also wouldn’t he have you hate me if what I say is true?
One more thing, read Moroni: Chapter 10, verses 3 through 5
Here’s a link.
www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mo…