More About Testimony

I'm going to talk about testimony for a minute. I've addressed this recently before but I thought of something that I felt was important to add. A Mormon testimony is the most powerful evidence one has for the truthfulness of the church. Therefore, even if strong evidence is given against it, your testimony has told you it's true and therefore no evidence in the world is enough to convince you it's not true.

People who leave or "fall into sin" are looked upon as weak. They must have never had a real testimony since they so easily fell away. People often say of them, "He was such a strong spirit," or "He had such a powerful testimony."

If you look around on ex-Mormon blogs and web sites, you will see TBMs left and right accusing us of never having had a real testimony. On the contrary, we did believe. We did have a testimony. But the problem is when that testimony is based on a lie, it easily crumbles. For example:

Someone you know and trust with all your heart tells you that they have a great treasure of gold and diamonds. It's safely locked up inside a trunk where no one can steal it. This person you trust has told you that in order to keep the treasure safe, no one can open the trunk and see it. Therefore, you have never actually seen the treasure, even though you have seen the trunk that holds it. Since you have seen the trunk and have absolutely no reason not to trust this person, you spend many years believing that there literally is a treasure.

Eventually this person dies and leaves the trunk to you. You open it in great anticipation of this wonderful treasure, but to your disappointment, it is empty. There never was a treasure. You are forced to admit that this person lied to you and that even though you believed in the treasure, it was never actually there.

You have just lost your testimony of the treasure based upon new evidence. Does that mean that you never believed in the treasure? No! You absolutely did believe and had no reason to doubt. But you saw the evidence and were forced to change your testimony.

This is how it is for ex-Mormons. We did believe and had no reason to doubt. When we finally found out that the organization that we trusted has been lying to us, we were forced to update our testimonies to fit the current evidence.

So get off your soap boxes, you judgemental TBM's. You're still living in a dream world.