Source: eldertomoser.wordpress.com
 

I read with interest the results of a religious poll from GEM’s front page 3 weeks ago, half of all people that vote in the poll said that religion gave meaning to their life. Religion is a difficult topic to discuss at the best of times but I’d like to tell you very briefly what makes religion real to me. The academic world is one that may encourage religious debate but does not seem to adequately encourage religious growth. I’m (or at least would like to think of myself as) a good Christian boy with a great religious upbringing so it is with mild interest that when discussing religion I am sometimes accused of not being Christian. You see I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons) a religious group founded in 1820 by a young Joseph Smith, in uptown New York, who claims that, after praying to know of which religion was correct, both the Father and the son (Jesus Christ) appeared to him as separate beings of flesh and bone who addressed him by name and told him of the coming forth of Christ’s true church through him. In the years that followed the young Joseph was visited by many heavenly messengers and given many responsibilities and teaching that was up till that time lost. Chief among these teachings was the teaching of a plan of happiness, a plan that explains that all of us once lived with our father in heaven and that he sent us down to earth to gain a physical body and to gain the experiences of mortality including learning to trust in a being that we could not see but only communicate with through prayer. Our father in heaven put us in families in order for us to learn these valuable lessons and to teach them to others. Another important part of this plan is the certainly that at death all individuals continue to live in a spirit form until such time that their bodies and their spirit will reunite to live forever with their families, and our father in heaven, in an immortal body.   

The certainty of this plans in answering the important questions of where did I come from? Why am I here? And where do I go when I die? Provide me with meaning to my life and an understanding of god as a real and loving father in heaven who knows and cares for me and wants me to return to him and gives me the responsibility to live my life so as to fulfil that purpose.

 That is what is real to me.

To learn more visit mormon.org