The First Vision isn’t just a piece of history for us. It is a pattern for how we learn truth. Yes, we believe that The Bible is the word of God. We also believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. We have other scriptures too, but we do not use them as the sole guides for the decisions of our daily lives. For the more personal things, our spiritual practice is to pray about them and ask God what we should do.

Self-honesty requires that I examine myself carefully enough to know all the reasons I’m doing something. If there isn’t at least some admission of selfishness in my pondering, I’m rationalizing.