LDS Articles of Faith: 13

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Over all, I like this Article of Faith, and I have no real issues with it. I do think there's a lot crammed into this one, so I'm going to break it into parts.

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men;

This part fits with my definition of being a "Good Christian." Basically, its being Christlike and following the Golden Rule. I think it is a wonderful standard to live by.

I don't think the LDS Church follows it very well though. There is a lack of honesty concerning the early history of the Church. I also don't think the LDS Church does a very good job at "doing good to all men" either. There is a history of racism, and there are comments in the LDS Scripture that can easily be considered racist. There is also the strong stance against homosexuals. Its one thing to "love the sinner and hate the sin," but from my point of view, this isn't the case. The strong push towards marriage within the LDS Church puts even a chaste homosexual on the outside. The doctrine of Celestial Marriage makes it even worse. It says that if you are gay, and you want to be exalted, you have to pretend to be straight. And that goes against the first two parts of this Article of Faith - honest and true.

We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things.

I'm not really sure what "We believe all things, we hope all things" refers to, so I'll skip that. The endurance part seems to feed into the martyr mentality. It signifies that there were challenges in the past, and that we are willing to put up with anything. It goes along with the "turn the other cheek" mindset.

To be honest, its something I have a hard time doing. I have limits concerning what I'm willing to put up with. One of my supervisors walks that line with me constantly. Since I'm typically non-confrontational, I put up with it. But I don't like it at all, and as I sit here typing, I'm still trying to come up with ways to "put her in her place." Not Christlike on my part, but I hate being taken advantage of, and that is how I feel right now. Wonderful timing.

I also think "enduring to the end" can be damaging. Lets say there is someone in an abusive marriage. Enduring to the end is the worse thing to do in that situation (in my opinion). Get out, run! Make life better. And I think enduring means that you will put up with things you shouldn't have to put up with. It prevents you from making changes and growing.

If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

I love this part. I use it to justify watching rated-R movies. (Well, now I don't care, but that is how I used to justify it, and if I do decide to go back, I don't plan to stop watching R-movies.) So many R-movies fall into the "good report or praiseworthy" category. The majority of the good, drama, Oscar winning movies are R. The movies that tackle difficult topics are usually R, and the more artistic movies are typically R as well.

Take Jerry Mcguire for example. That movie was incredibly popular while I was at BYU. I remember seeing students lined up at the Varsity Theatre hours before the box office opened, so they could get tickets to see the edited version. (This was also before Titanic and no more edited movies at the Varsity Theatre.) A lot of my fellow students enjoyed this movie. It had a positive message concerning greed as well as the importance of family.

This part of the 13th Article of Faith encourages open mindedness, learning and growing. And I'm one of those people with a (albeit lazy) thirst for knowledge.