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I wish we could be more open about our own cracks and scars. I believe the concept of repentance (simply "change") is not meant to hide or cover our "brokenness" but rather to highlight it in such a way that everyone can "value" the repair work. I believe if we can be open about being healed, other...

Many of the church programs don't have much to offer the non-believer. If you don't believe people need every temple ordinance to be saved there's less desire to participate in temple activities. If the ministering program centers around checking up on how people are coming along with the stake pre...

I feel that our business model is different. I believe that we rely on the strength of people's passionate agreement with our doctrinal positions (testimony) to get them to endure a less than comfortable environment. We are big on duty and sacrifice. Given that a good number of members would themse...

I think a good start might be recognizing that non-believers do exist in the church, and make an effort to explicitly say "you are welcome here too" in a conference talk or something (Uchtdorf, maybe?). I think we need to get rid of the rhetoric about "apostates" and "denying the Holy Ghost". A lot ...

I came across this article from a few years ago called "Is there Room in the Church for Non-believers?": https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-there-room-in-the-chur_b_5951728 It's not about the LDS church, but I found it pretty interesting and it relates to one of the main questions I currently have ab...

My temple prep class (at BYU, around 2015, taught by member of the bishopric) was really weird. Like they didn't think they could tell us anything, so instead they made up their own parable about the prodigal son trying to relate it to the Big Bang and the expanding universe.... And it had absolutel...

It probably doesn't help that we talk about people being in a spirit "prison" until they accept the gospel and someone does their baptism for them. Then we're making them stay in prison by not doing their ordinances fast enough, even if we're in a pandemic. This reminds me of indexing. Even when I w...

I think the important message that comes out of the BoM other than Jesus himself is rise and fall. It talks about two societies (and a few others) which flourish, become too comfortable and, end up becoming rotten, and then return to God after this fall has taken place. We experience that a lot in ...

A few thoughts as I read this. It was just the word that came to me rather than “true.” When I read the book, I believed those things were happening. I could picture them happening. They seemed very real to me. So I’ve just always said it was right I’m not sure I get this. There are lots of novels a...

As much as I hated my overall mission experience, I did form some good relationships with some of the people there, especially since I was in the same small branch for two years. Recently I have gotten back on social media to a limited extent and thought about trying to get back in touch with some p...