Brother Josh

Longtime convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Autodidactic polymath. Fahrenheit supremacist. Homeschooler, mental health professional.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

"You need not know everything before the power of the atonement will work for you. Have faith in Christ, it begins to work the day you ask."
Boyd K. Packer

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@jaredadairbell Brilliant 😂

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@JackMoCoalition I remember one pastor calling me a "muttering wizard" when I asked the wrong questions 😂 glad I softened my heart and talked to the missionaries!

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

Life is much easier if you let the scriptures guide your life. You can't serve two masters, if you're "just hanging on" to the gospel, whatever else you're focused on will only pull harder at you. That cognitive dissonance leads to a lot of unnecessary suffering.

[Jesse Fox @jesse_k_fox]

“Some of us are just hanging on to the gospel, while others have learned to use it to navigate the river of life.”

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@jesse_k_fox @Lovemyproxy I go to learn how to be more Christlike. After church, a sister in the ward asked for a blessing - so I grabbed the nearest brother and we gave her blessing. I’m grateful for those simple opportunities to serve as the Lord would.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@JS_StrngstSldr I remember being taught to “study it out in your mind then ask if it’s right” not “work it out in your heart and see if it feels right”.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@Grownded Utah getting baptized by fire right now

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@chaserracer3302 FWIW, I don’t think I’ve ever clicked “follow” so quickly after seeing a tweet 😎

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@plasmarob Pain takes a serious toll on your working memory, the downstream effects can really pile up. Good posture -> less pain -> better mental health.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@FiredUpCoug I love it!

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@nicoraytruth You seem like a sincere truth-seeker to me, so I’m just over here cheering you on along your journey.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

What? I've never had that happen to me. The more questions I ask, the more of "the canon" I get exposed to. I've been doing this for over 20 years now and I am still learning new canon.
“I believe all that God ever revealed, and I never hear of a man being damned for believing too much; but they are damned for unbelief.” - Joseph Smith

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@BereanHouse Yeah, I’ll take a look at it!

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

That sounds like a well-grounded approach. What parts are you struggling with? I may not be able to explain it better, but maybe I can help you find a resource that does.
For me, mild autism (they called it Asperger’s when I was a teenager) had me hyper fixated on the Bible as a kid. I had read it by age 7 and was studying Hebrew around age 12. I really struggled to understand the plurality of gods and God, the explanations of the trinity that I was often given were all based on creeds developed hundreds of years later, and the nature of Christs sacrifice. My parents weren’t religious, so I went to different churches with extended family, asking different pastors and preachers lots of questions. I wasn’t finding satisfactory answers. At 16, I started going to all sorts of different churches looking for good answers to tough questions. As I said earlier though, I had already rejected the Book of Mormon and hadn’t even read it, I just assumed the negativity I was told about “Mormons” was correct.
After a friend gave me a BoM, I met with missionaries and brought notebooks full of questions. Members kept giving me books to read. It all just.. clicked for me. Finding folks like Hugh Nibley and Neil A. Maxwell later on just became dessert!

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

What was your goal in reading all that? What are you struggling with? There are volumes of material available and it sounds like you sought out much. For me, I had been looking for a church for years but rejected any church that used Book of Mormon. When I couldn’t find sound theology anywhere else, I was given a copy of the BoM and it made the Bible make sense. The rest of Joseph Smiths teachings are yummy, doctrine-packed steaks after that. It is important to cut that steak up into bite-sized pieces, though.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@grok @BleuWolf248 @Manhattva

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@Manhattva That was my first concern when I saw this.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

@RoughStoneTroll Something something, correct principles

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

Yeah.. Satan is raging in the hearts of men. Lots of calamities, as foretold. Specific, generational sins like this are a fascinating phenomenon to me though. Millennials definitely have theirs, as do the others. We can help individuals change, but I don’t know how we can help change an entire past generation. I focus on helping the rising generation avoid past errors, but nobody knows what they’re going to face in 10-20 years.

[Brother Josh @LDSPioneer]

I don’t think it was the boomer’s intention - I think most fell for a communist ploy. I see that period of time as the rise of communism in the West. We may have knocked down the Berlin Wall, but Chinese communists infiltrated our academia and from there, every professional institution. Then it was only a matter of time before the ruling class was sympathetic toward communism.
If there’s major fault in the boomers, it’s their blind trust of institutions.