On the contrary, we've done an excellent job of explaining it. Where you appear to be getting hung up is when you ask a question and we say "We don't know the answer to that." It seems to me that, at those times, you take the liberty of filling in the blanks with whatever idea pops into your head, apparently not willing to allow God to fill in the blanks on His own timetable. So the judgment you make afterward is really a conviction of your own imagination, with only tangential connection to LDS doctrine.
There are a lot of things I don't know, of course, and I don't expect you to know everything, either.
I had sincerely hoped that you would show me that the people saying that you guys believe that god was once a man were full of fertilizer, I truly did.
I'm seriously having trouble getting past that.
You seem to be a really nice guy, very patient, and very sweet natured. You seem fairly intelligent, and I can tell that you are getting very tired of fielding questions like mine.
I keep thinking "he can't have thought this through" and "well, he can't help it, it was fed to him with his pablum"...you know?
You are here, who knows for how long, staunchly defending your faith, but you don't seem to be bitter at all. It has to be frustrating for you.
Try to understand...some of the stuff I've been hearing for the first time, like the stone in Joe's hat, or the Egyptian hieroglyphics...well, there really is no nice way to say it...it just boggles my mind that anyone could believe such stuff. A stone in his hat? Really?
Not to mention the disappearing gold tablets, but I'd already heard that one.
When I was very young, my grandmother had this gorgeous garden, filled with all sorts of beautiful flowers. She told me that each blossom was the home of a little fairy, and that if I picked the flowers, the fairies would die. I believed her. I was a little girl, and completely fascinated with fairies. I would sit, as still as I could, hidden among the flowers, trying to catch a glimpse of the little fairies...and there were times I thought I'd seen one, from the corner of my eye...they were just too quick for me.
Do you understand? I was a little child, naïve and gullible, and I grew up believing in fairies.
And I never really got over it. To this day, I catch myself, watching the flowers in my own yard, hoping to catch a tiny glimpse of a fairy...and then I smile, when I realize what I'm doing.
As long as I live, I suppose, a part of me is always going to believe in my grandmother's fairies.
I think that is kind of what I'm seeing here. Except...well, the grown woman I am today knows that there probably aren't any fairies in those flowers...my goodness, even at 64 years old, I can't bring myself to say that there definitely are no such thing as fairies...I can't. I mean, how do we know that?
You were told this about god also at an impressionable age. The rational adult knows that the stone in the hat thing, for instance, couldn't be for real...but how do we know? There are some strange things in this ol' world.
Its like me with the fairies, I think.
Anyway, it's obvious that you are telling me what you believe to be the truth, as far as you think you know it.
And that's the best anyone can expect...
