This April's general conference is bringing up all sorts of bad feelings for me. It's going to be a celebration of the founding story of Mormonism, the First Vision, where Joseph Smith received inspiration not to join any of the existing churches and instead create his own. The way the church handles their telling of the First Vision is a good example of why I feel the Mormon church is dishonest. They only tell one version of the story. I learned about the different versions as a senior in high school. I felt betrayed and lied to because I had never been taught about the different versions or even heard about them in church.
Are they going to discuss the different versions of the first vision that Joseph Smith wrote in this general conference? The conference is going to be over 8 hours long. SURELY there is time to discuss the different accounts? My guess at what they will actually do is that they will mention that the other versions exist, but they will gloss over the details. They won't present anything that would challenge the version they have been presenting for years and will make it sound like there is nothing significant about the differences between versions.
