Church for post-Mormons?

Looking for a place where you can explore a new and rational faith after leaving the LDS church?   Live in the Boise, Idaho area?  Be sure to check out a new non-denominational church plant at…

http://www.BoiseChristianFellowship.org

Is Faith in Jesus Essential or Sufficient?

Every once in awhile I check out lds.org just to see what the LDS church is up to. It’s usually pretty telling to see where the focus is at a given time. It is currently running a lot of promotion for a new website they’ve developed dedicated to Jesus. I won’t venture to speak on why they waited until now to launch such a site, but will let that fact speak for itself. What I do want to comment on is one of the featured articles on the site talking about faith in Jesus Christ being essential to our salvation. To the untrained ear, this likely sounds very mainstream Christian. And Latter-day Saints certainly do believe that faith in Jesus Christ is essential to salvation, as do mainstream Christians. But that’s only half the story.

After all you can do…

2 Nephi 25:23 …for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.

This may be one of the most well-known passages of LDS scripture, and one that speaks volumes about LDS doctrine and the LDS plan of salvation.  Unfortunately, it is also one of the doctrines that serves to bring overwhelming feelings of condemnation upon Mormons.

Consider this.  When have you ever felt like you have done all that you can do?  As I look at every aspect of my life, I realize that I never reach that place of feeling like I’ve done all that I can do.

Mormonism from a Biblical Perspective

I’ve just added a new feature to the site here at www.LifeAfterJoseph.org. It’s something that’s been on my mind for a long time now, and I finally felt like the time was right to launch it.

Basically, it’s a through-the-Bible study focusing on what the Bible has to say about LDS doctrine and Mormonism. I’ve gotten the first 19 chapters of Genesis up now, with more to come soon. Genesis will likely be one of the books I’ll go into in the most depth, just because it really does set up the foundation of the entire Bible, New Testament included. Leaving it out would be kind of like missing the first 1/2 hour of a movie. It would just leave too many holes in the plot.

Nearing the End of School

No, I haven’t fallen of the edge of the earth! I know I’ve been very quiet on this blog for some time now. As I get nearer and nearer the end of my schooling, life seems to just get busier and busier. This last term is shaping up to be the most intensive, as far as reading and writing projects go. All of our classes this term are Bible classes, which I am REALLY excited about. The Bible has absolutely come alive to me this year. It’s been awesome. There is so much more depth there than I ever expected there to be. As skeptical as I was of the Bible when I initially left Mormonism, I have come to find that it is truly the word of God and has been faithfully preserved by Him through the ages to speak to our lives today.

Taste and See…

Psalm 34:8 O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

During this time of going to the school of ministry, my family and I have been blessed with the opportunity to really “taste and see” of the Lord’s goodness. He continues to amaze us in unexpected ways. He continues to confirm for us that we are where He wants us to be… nearly on a daily basis.

What does it mean to “taste” of the Lord?

What Is It About The Bible?

Imagine if you will that you are in a bookstore. All around you are shelf upon shelf of books… the vast majority of which you have never heard of, let alone actually read. There are also people all around you, milling around in this same bookstore, pulling random books of the shelves and thumbing through them.You decide to take a poll. And it goes something like this…

What They Don’t Tell You About Jesus

Granted, I’m still a fairly new Christian, all things considered. And I feel really blessed that the pastor that basically led my family and I to Christ was very balanced. He taught the word of God… the whole word of God. The hard teachings were being taught right alongside the easy-to-accept teachings. But as I watch more and more pastors, preachers, and missionaries, I begin to see something troubling. And a phone call I heard the other day to a local Christian call-in show really brought the concern home to me.

My Story

I realized today that, following the new web design, I didn’t get my story of leaving Mormonism back up on the site. Here it is in a nutshell… (as opposed to the really, really long version available in the Books section of this site).

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To understand my life now, you would have to get a glimpse of what my life was like not so very long ago. You see, I was raised a Mormon. I come from a very active Mormon family and, with a few temporary exceptions, I lived it quite consistently throughout my life. In mid-2006, my life would have looked something like this:

The Bible is a Comedy

This was a small writing project for the School of Ministry program that I am currently enrolled in. This concept has turned out to be very helpful to me understanding scripture, so I figured I’d share it here…