Maybe it’s the links that are being bounced — a hazy mystery.

I read your “how to” and responded to it on that thread (even though it has been inactive since Jan 06). I found it to be genuinely touching and inspiring. Unfortunately (for me), as you will see when you read it, it still raised many questions for the skeptic in me — the skeptic who does not allow the believer to rest on any unchallenged assumptions (he really is quite a burden to my believer — but I think/hope that their many battles make me somehow more well rounded).

Again, our texts and teaching have a solution to that. Since the standing against the wall experience wasn’t God, you file that voice away as”not revelation” and adjust your spiritual ears for next time. I have said that it is not unlike ear training in music. Some people know a C when they hear it and others don’t. It takes a lot of time and training to know a C when you hear it but it can be done. With regards to revelation you go with trial and error with the “promptings” you get. It is all part of our spiritual ear training. After some time and some trial and error I think we can all get good at discerning the real promptings from the false ones.

I am thankful for faith, that I can hold on to things that I am unsure of solely because of my hope and desire for those things to be true.

Being confident in one’s personal revelatory relationship with God doesn’t do away with faith in the least — it just changes the nature of the thing we have faith in.

It makes me uneasy to think of my own religious experience as having some sort of trump power over anyone else’s

Who ever said you were ever going to have trump power over someone else? Not me. My post was saying that when it comes to our own decisions our own personal revelations should win out for us. Meaning, if God tells me that I should be a Mormon then that’s what trumps all the other competing churches for me. They might be well and good for someone else but God told me to be here and that’s what wins.

I remember praying very diligently about this one night, and in the prayer I promised that I would faithfully follow any thought that came in to my head, no matter how strange or random it might seem. I would be like Nephi, being lead by the spirit without knowing where it was guiding me — just trusting that it was.

So, after the prayer as I lay there trying to fall asleep, the thought came into my mind: “get up.” As usual, I started to ignore it. But then I remembered my promise, so I got up.

Then the thought came to me: “walk to the wall.” So, I walked to the wall. And I stood there, in the dark, my nose an inch or so away from the wall, holding completely still for probably five minutes, just faithfully waiting for the next thought to come into my mind. Nothing. So I finally gave up and went back to bed.

I think someone was having a little fun at my expense that night. And I think that someone was me.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that personal revelation is bogus — I’m just saying that there have been enough experiences in my life to make me really question how much of this is being manufactured from inside of me, and how much is being wraught upon me from an outside source.

I’m at a point in my life where absolute conviction frightens me for many many reasons. I am thankful for faith — that I can hold on to things that I am unsure of solely because of my hope and desire for those things to be true.

Mormonism, more than most religions, has texts and techniques designed to answer this question.

Maybe — I’m not sure. But one thing I am sure of — I have seen pieces of a very big world out there — a world that is full of good people with firm convictions (and texts and techniques to arrive at those convictions) in their own belief-systems, whatever they may be.

It makes me uneasy to think of my own religious experience as having some sort of trump power over anyone else’s, and I don’t like it when others try to excercise their trump power on me. There are many questions, and I have admitedly become far too suspicious of many of the answers (and yet, I want to make it clear that I continue in my choice to believe — and it is a conscious choice based on faith — but not without its doubts).

It ain’t easy. But Mormonism, more than most religions, has texts and techniques designed to answer this question. I think that the Enos story is the archetypal story though. It seems to me that most people give up too soon. I posted on the “how to’s” of personal revelation in Mormonism once. See here.

Doc – Amen

I don’t understand why any of that matters beyond clinical curiosity to you… You are responsible for your own personal relationship with God. When you meet him at the judgment bar (assuming you believe that will happen) you will have to answer for your own personal revelation or lack thereof. Medieval nuns and Puritans are in the same boat so why worry about their relationships with God or lack thereof? Personal relationships are just that — personal. So in the end why should I be concerned about the claimed revelations from those people. God has told me that Mormonism is where he wants me and if I got that message wrong then it is my problem that I’ll have to answer for when I meet him. (If you are wondering, I am not at all worried that I am wrong on that point.) So I don’t worry about my cultural filters too much — God understands them so he can speak to me in my language and according to my filters just fine.

What about those experiences that are explicitly evangelical in nature, like Ignatius of Loyola’s or Muhammad’s? Or for that matter, twentieth century evangelicals who feel prompted to preach to Mormons?

Again, those experiences ain’t my problem. God and those people can work that out at judgment day just like God and I will deal with our relationship. My goal is simple — I want to avoid him saying “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity”.