I remember as a missionary in Canada talking with so many people from different religions, faiths, and beliefs. I often felt that each religion had pieces of the truth, but also aspects that contradicted other faiths, while still partially aligning with our beliefs. There were also other aspects that just did not seem logical or make sense.
Devin Barnes has made understanding faith and logical reasoning his mission. And he has concluded that the doctrine of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the most logical.
Most Religions Have Pieces of the Truth
One of the most important doctrines of the Restoration is that God has given truth to many people, many cultures, and many religious traditions.
As Latter-day Saints, we don’t believe that every other religion is completely false. We believe they preserve real truth. Some traditions understand reverence. Some understand meditation. Some understand sacrifice. Some understand family duty. Some understand moral discipline. Some preserve fragments of ancient temple patterns, divine councils, sacred ascent, angels, priesthood, covenant, and the human desire to return to God.
If God has been working with His children since the beginning, then truth would not be limited to one modern culture or one narrow religious tradition. It would have big chunks and traces across the world.
But restored truth brings it all back together.
The Restoration claims that the fullness of the gospel, priesthood authority, saving ordinances, continuing revelation, and the correct understanding of God’s plan have been restored through Joseph Smith.
Latter-day Saint Doctrine Connects the Pieces
Latter-day Saint Doctrine can logically answer the questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
Why does evil exist?
Why does agency matter?
What happens to people who never hear the gospel?
Why are ordinances necessary?
Why does Jesus Christ matter, does everyone need to accept him to be saved?
What is the final purpose of salvation?
Many religions answer some of these questions. Latter-day Saint doctrine answers them as part of one connected plan in a way that is fair. In a way where God’s plan makes sense and where God is merciful, kind, and just.
We believe that we lived with God before this life. We are His spirit children. Mortality is a testing and learning period where we can learn to become like God. Agency is essential because forced righteousness cannot produce exaltation. The Fall was not a mistake that ruined God’s plan. It was part of the plan. Jesus Christ is not a backup solution. He is central to the plan that was prepared from the beginning.
That framework is so much logical than any other Christian interpretation.
The LDS View of God Is More Understandable
Traditional Christianity teaches the Trinity: one God in three persons, but one being or essence. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father, but all three are one God. This doctrine date backs to a convergence of Greek metaphysical with Christianity after the apostles were killed off.
That doctrine requires complicated philosophical language that is not easy to reconcile with many biblical passages.
Jesus prays to the Father. The Father speaks from heaven at Christ’s baptism. Stephen sees Jesus standing on the right hand of God. Jesus says He came to do the will of the Father. Jesus says the Father is greater than He is. Jesus submits to the Father.
Latter-day Saint doctrine reads these passages in a more direct way.
The Father is a real divine being.
Jesus Christ is a real divine being.
The Holy Ghost is a real personage of spirit.
They are perfectly one in purpose, will, glory, love, truth, and work.
They are not one same being but one Godhead.
This is more logical and understandable. It also fits the biblical language more naturally.
Creation from Eternal Matter Makes More Sense Than Creation from Nothing
Another major difference is creation.
Traditional Christianity often teaches that God created everything out of nothing. That creates serious logical problems.
If God created every soul from nothing, knowing beforehand that many would suffer, sin, reject Him, and be eternally damned, then God becomes directly responsible for creating beings He already knew would be lost forever.
Latter-day Saint doctrine gives a better answer.
God did not create intelligence out of nothing. Matter is eternal. Intelligence is eternal. God organizes, orders, teaches, redeems, and exalts. He is the Father of our spirits, but He is not the author of evil or the manufacturer of doomed souls.
That changes the problem of evil.
God is not creating disposable beings out of nothing. He is working with eternal beings and offering them a path to become like Him through Jesus Christ.
The Problem of Evil Is Easier to Understand in LDS Doctrine
The problem of evil is one of the hardest questions in religion.
If God is all-powerful and all-good, why does He allow suffering?
Latter-day Saint doctrine does not make suffering easy. But it does makes the explanation for why it happens logical.
We existed before this life.
We came to earth for a purpose.
Agency is real.
Mortal life is temporary. It is part of a greater plan.
Through trials and suffering we grow and experience things that help us develop and progress.
Death is not the end.
Resurrection is universal.
Judgment is perfectly fair.
Nearly all of God’s children will inherit a kingdom of glory.
All will have an opportunity to inherit exhaltation.
That is a much more merciful and logical view than the idea that billions of people are born into unequal circumstances, many never hear the true gospel, and then most are condemned forever.
That your chances for salvation depend on the luck of where you were born.
In Latter-day Saint doctrine, God’s work is not to condemn His children. His work is to bring to pass their immortality and eternal life to test them and give them the experience where they can develop and progress to become like Him.
The LDS Afterlife Is More Just than Heaven or Hell
The traditional heaven-or-hell model creates major problems, especially as a black and white contrast where you are either in eternal bliss or eternal suffering.
What happens to people who never heard of Jesus Christ?
What happens to children who die?
What happens to sincere people born into other faiths? What about the Billions of people in China and India where Christianity is ultra rare?
What happens to the billions who lived and died before missionaries ever reached their nation?
Latter-day Saint doctrine gives a logical answer.
The gospel is preached in the spirit world. The dead can accept Christ. Ordinances can be performed by proxy in temples. God judges according to light, knowledge, desire, and opportunity.
That means no one is eternally punished because they were born in the wrong century, country, or family.
This doctrine better reflects a just and loving God.
Degrees of Glory Make More Sense Than a Simple Heaven-or-Hell Binary
Human beings are not all the same. Some are faithful and covenant-keeping. Some are honorable but do not fully receive Christ. Some reject greater light but still are not the same as the most wicked people in history.
So why would the afterlife have only two final outcomes?
Doctrine and Covenants 76 gives a more complete answer. There is celestial glory, terrestrial glory, and telestial glory. Paul also speaks of different glories in the resurrection, comparing them to the sun, moon, and stars.
This makes sense.
A perfectly just God would not judge every person with a crude almost arbitrary pass-or-fail system, where if they happened to confess Christ they would be saved, but if they didn’t catch that secret solution eternal punishment. He would judge with perfect knowledge of each person’s heart, actions, opportunities, desires, and response to truth.
LDS Doctrine Preserves Both Grace and Works
Many Christians debate grace versus works as if they are enemies.
Latter-day Saint doctrine avoids that false choice.
No one earns salvation without Christ. No one is saved by personal merit alone. Every blessing of salvation depends on Jesus Christ, His atonement, His mercy, and His power.
But obedience is important. It is necessary that we keep the commandmants and perform “works” of repentance.
Jesus told people to repent. He commanded baptism. He taught people to keep His commandments. He warned against hypocrisy. He praised faithfulness. He taught that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom, but those who do the will of the Father.
So the logical answer is not grace or works.
The logical answer is grace that changes us, covenants that bind us to Christ, and obedience that shows real faith.
Faith Is Not Blind Belief
Critics define faith as belief without evidence.
The Latter-day Saint view is that Faith includes trust, action, loyalty, experiment, and experience. Alma compares faith to planting a seed. You test it. You nourish it. You observe the fruit. Your faith is increased by additional evidences that are revealed to you.
That is logical.
Some truths cannot be understood from the outside. A person cannot fully understand marriage by reading a definition. A person cannot fully understand parenthood by reading statistics. A person cannot fully understand repentance, revelation, or the Holy Ghost without acting in faith.
That does not make faith irrational. It means spiritual knowledge comes through spiritual methods.
Continuing Revelation Is Logical
If God spoke anciently, why would He stop speaking now?
If ancient people needed prophets, why would modern people not need them?
If God gave scripture before, why could He not give more scripture?
If Christ organized His Church with apostles and prophets, why would His restored Church not have apostles and prophets?
Continuing revelation is one of the most logical doctrines of the Restoration.
The alternative is much harder to defend. It requires believing that God once worked through prophets, angels, visions, scripture, priesthood authority, and revelation, but then permanently ended that pattern while Christianity divided into thousands of conflicting denominations.
Latter-day Saint doctrine explains that division.
Without living prophets and priesthood keys, people are left to debate the Bible endlessly and build churches around competing interpretations.
The Restoration solves that problem by restoring living authority.
The Book of Mormon Is a Logical Evidence for the Restoration
The Book of Mormon is a real book with a real origin claim.
Joseph Smith said it came from ancient plates delivered by an angel. Multiple witnesses testified of the plates. Some saw them. Some handled them. Some heard the voice of God. Some later left the Church but never denied their witness that they had indeed seen an ancient record on plates in the appearance of Gold.
Critics have to explain that.
They also have to explain the book itself.
How did Joseph Smith, a young man with limited education, produce a long, complex religious record with internal consistency, sermons, wars, migrations, prophecies, Hebrew-style literary patterns, covenant theology, temple themes, and a powerful witness of Jesus Christ?
Plagiarism theories usually explain only tiny fragments while ignoring the complexity of the whole book.
The Book of Mormon is one of the strongest evidences that Joseph Smith was called by God.
The Gold Plates Evidence
Some critics ask why Joseph needed plates if he translated by revelation.
The answer is simple.
The plates anchored the claim in physical reality.
Without plates, critics could dismiss the Book of Mormon as only a private spiritual experience. But the plates created witnesses. They created public pressure. They created attempts to steal them. They gave the Restoration a material foundation.
Joseph either had ancient plates or he did not. The earliest antagonists believed he had the plates because they saw the stone Box where the plates were buried.
If he did not, critics must explain why so many people testified that he did. If he fabricated them, critics must explain how he obtained the metal, created the plates, engraved them, hid the process, fooled witnesses, and maintained the claim without any real evidence of fabrication.
The naturalistic explanations often require more assumptions than the faithful explanation.
Latter-day Saint Doctrine Makes Sense of Religious Truth Across the World
One thing I noticed as a missionary was that many religions contained real truth.
That is exactly what Latter-day Saint doctrine would lead us to expect.
We believe God has always spoken to His children. We believe light and truth can be found among many nations. We believe apostasy does not mean every truth disappeared from the earth. It means priesthood authority, saving ordinances, and the fullness of revealed doctrine needed to be restored.
That explains why other religions can be both inspired in parts and incomplete as systems.
It also explains why so many ancient traditions contain fragments that sound familiar to Latter-day Saints: divine councils, sacred mountains, temple ascent, heavenly messengers, premortal themes, ritual clothing, covenant patterns, sacrifice, purification, and the hope of becoming divine.
Those scattered pieces point back to an older source.
The Restoration brings the pieces back together.
Why the Restoration Is the Most Logical
Latter-day Saint doctrine does not answer every question. But it answers the biggest questions with a connected system.
It explains God without relying on confusing philosophical formulas.
It explains creation without making God the creator of doomed souls out of nothing.
It explains evil without making mortality the whole story.
It explains salvation without condemning billions who never had a fair chance.
It explains ordinances without making them arbitrary.
It explains grace and works without putting them against each other.
It explains scripture without closing the heavens.
It explains religious truth across the world without claiming every other faith is worthless.
It explains the purpose of life, the role of Jesus Christ, the necessity of agency, the justice of judgment, and the eternal destiny of God’s children.
That is why Latter-day Saint doctrine is so logical.
Not because it is simple in every detail.
But because the pieces fit.
And when the pieces fit, the Restoration becomes much harder to dismiss.
For more logical information, check out the Latter Day Logic website at LatterDayLogic.org
Continue reading at the original source →