This is nothing more than a short rant, so don't expect anything too amazing. :)
I have recently begun to demand excellence from my religion. If we are going to be making claims as members of the LDS Church, we need to have two different possible answers: a well thought out declaration of official doctrine, or an "I don't know, but here's how I understand it." All too often, people (including general authorities) don't preface their opinions with the fact that it's their opinion, and their comments quickly spiral into the realm of pseudo-doctrine as they are quoted in sacrament meetings around the world. All too often, these opinions are not very well thought out, and even fly in the face of the way things really are. It's not the speaker's fault they are uninformed, they just don't know the research of the day.
I've seen too many blogs lately that try to hold up archaic arguments with nothing but quotes and scripture verses without paying any attention to how the world actually is. I am open to other points of view, but please oh please make sense in your arguments. Just because you shoe-horned a scripture verse into your argument doesn't mean you're right. It just means you quoted scripture that was written thousands of years ago by a guy in a culture you don't understand, and in a language that contains figures of speech and idiosyncrasies
you don't understand. Even the best case scenario is that we are still reading the words of somebody who is bringing their own biases and culture to the word of the Lord. The philosophies of men mingled with scripture. That is really all we have in the scriptures, no matter what the ratio is. Due to this, we still need to rely on our own reason, as well as the spirit of the Lord, to understand things for ourselves. Please stop relying only on quotes and verses to back up your claims.
Don't be scared to look at an aspect of the gospel and say "This may actually be completely bogus, but I still like it, so I choose to believe it." All I'm asking is that we demand excellence from the things that can be excellent, and give our faith to things that can't be proven/disproven logically. I have absolutely no proof that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, but I believe he was. He did a lot of good in his life, as well as a lot of bad things. In spite of all the confusion surrounding his character and his history, I choose to believe that God restored his true church on the earth through Joseph Smith. I'm not asking for excellence by demanding perfection. I'm just asking that we be real with people. Let your Mormonism shine, and when we are able to look someone of the face and say "I have faith in God, even though I can't prove it," people will pay attention. Just don't lie to them, or make up some flimsy argument to protect your own insecurities. I can't stand that nonsense.
