Mormonism Quotes

They say in Zen, waking up to life requires three things: great faith, great doubt, and great effort. Faith isn’t a way of going to sleep. It’s the work of waking up. And, in order to wake up, you’ll need both great faith and great doubt. In itself, doubt is neither good nor bad. Its value depends on what you do with it. You can doubt what’s real in order to stay asleep or you can doubt your daydreams in order to wake up. You can use doubt to protect you from the truth or you can use doubt to leave you vulnerable to it. You’ll have doubts regardless. Repurpose them for the sake of faith. Saving doubt is a strong solvent that can burn holes in your [worldview] and lead you back to the work of being faithful to life and, thus, to God. Practicing doubt for the sake of faith is hard work and it demands great effort. Great faith, great doubt, great effort.

To understand why I jumped from the Mormon wagon train requires an understanding of what Mormons are and how they think. While Mormons have some quaint, quirky and fanatical ideas, they really aren't much different from millions of poor, guilt-ridden souls who, throughout the march of human history, have hitched their hopes to mass movements of one sort or another. Eric Hoffer, in his brilliant treatise, "The True Believer," explains the attraction of joining a cause: "A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following 'by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated by freeing them from their ineffectual selves--and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole'. "Of all the cults and philosophies that competed in the Graeco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization."Once I realized this, it wasn't much of a leap out of religion altogether once I flew the Mormon coop. I simply wanted to be free from organizational groupthink. I escaped from the stuffy attic of religion's "pray, pay and obey" mentality into journalism's open laboratory of "who, what, where, when and why.

Modern scientific findings harmonize with revelation through the ages. No conflict exists between the gospel and any truth .... All true principles are a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no principle that we need to fear.

Spencer W. Kimball

I'll make a book on learning how to be a complete moron someday, and I'm sure no one will buy it, because everyone will have mastered that already by the time I gather enough moronism to process it into digestible upgrade instructions for your average village cyborg-idiot.

...they needed someone to explain, to spin, the parts of the tale that couldn't be suppressed. Someone reputable and educated. Someone brilliant yet absolutely committed to the faith. Someone like my father.