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This is a tough one. I think it will have to be a one by one thing just like men starting to have beards again. Thank you for starting this thread, Heber13. I too am grateful for many things. Our family has gone through a terrible tragedy this past year and we are all still standing and moving forward. A lot of that has to do with the unique theology of our church of progression beyond mortality and eternal families. We have felt the love of Heavenly Parents and the love of Christ, our Savior. We have been supported by our friendships at church. We truly had Zion moments occur. There are no perfect people at our church, nor should we ever have thought there were. But we have experienced very human people trying and doing the best they could. In honor of this post, I am actually sending out some Thanksgiving cards!
Mom3:” For all of it’s agony – I am thankful for the last decade of a faith transition/crisis. It’s not done by any means and it may have more pain ahead, yet I had I remained in the bliss and ease of stage 3 I would have not have comprehended others pain, nor seen the efforts that had cost people so much.” Yes, Mom3, I totally get this!
Happy Thanksgiving, StayLDS friends!
Thanks everyone for your thoughts on this article. I associate with friends of many faiths and I have noticed an increasing trend of expectation for my friends to be involved in what we term “callings” in our faith practice. Many of the churches call these jobs ministries and strongly encourage their attendees to pick their ministry. That is one option that Silent Dawning brought up….picking our areas of interest and gifting. Men outside the church often have greater passion for Boy Scouts than many LDS men. I feel our church leaders do try to do some listening, but may be guilty of staying in their bubble of “the trusted ones” too much. How many of you have ever been asked to participate in a church survey? The people I know personally who have were clearly handpicked. What kind of survey is that when the participants are handpicked?
There is a FB survey going around now that is being carried out through a university regarding gender in the church. Some church members posted it around feeling believing members should definitely be participating to influence the results. Other members were cautioning not to get involved in it. I liked that it at least had areas where you could actually write out what you thought about different issues, so that you were not just stuck with questions that did not quite nail down your opinions.
Eternity4me, I totally agree with you. More worship of the Father and the Savior. You have been given some great thoughts on this thread. Thanks for starting it! nibbler wrote:I just ran across this, it seemed like it approaches the same idea from a different angle.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peculiarpeople/2014/11/toxic-religion-the-parable-of-the-pan/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peculiarpeople/2014/11/toxic-religion-the-parable-of-the-pan/ Thanks Nibbler for posting this link. This quote jumped out at me. “For myself, wrestling with uncomfortable aspects of my faith’s history and administration is a liability I’m willing to accept, though it is sometimes bitter work. Through my faith, I’ve stood in holy places with people I love—people who have taught my children to want to be kind, people in whose service I have set up chairs and preached sermons, people who have known my faults and forgiven me. Despite the loftiness of the divine aspirations that have inspired religious movements throughout history, it is the humanness of the project that is both most problematic and most inspiring.”
Journal keeper!
mom3, this is great! I read it out loud to my husband. We were both impressed. Thank you for posting. I can only pop in every few days here and just saw this thread. Ray, you are one of the most balanced moderators I have observed on the sites I read. I have had no trouble distinguishing between you and when you have to put the moderator hat on. I am sorry that we, collectively, have not been better about expressing our gratitude for your many hours of service reading all these threads and maintaining the mission statement. You fulfill a major role here and have probably helped many more people than you will ever know. Since I was a lurker for years, I know there have to be many more lurkers just like me! A big thank you to you and all the other moderators, Heber13 and all others! I feel this is very important work here! How about coaching basketball, softball, volleyball, etc. when a stake tournament is coming up? Also volunteering to referee or umpire? Ray, I really like your post on grace. Especially these two paragraphs: Quote:“A very insightful friend recently described the process of “taking my yoke upon you” as feeling the purity and power of His sinlessness. I love that construct, but I would add the following: Understanding and truly accepting God’s grace occurs when you realize that all of your inherited weaknesses (your temper, your judgmental nature, your fatigue, your lack of self-worth, your never-ending battles with whatever drives you crazy) – everything that keeps you from becoming who you desperately want to become – has been bought and paid for already. He fought that fight for you, and He won. Yes, you were born with things that keep you from being perfect, but He paid for those things – meaning that you truly can take His yoke upon you and walk confidently at His side as a brother or sister with the same eternal potential. It occurs when you realize that, because of the grace that so fully He proffers you, you aren’t required to pay for those things; rather, you are freed to pursue those qualities and characteristics you want to acquire to become perfect (whole and complete) – regardless of the tangible outcome of that effort. Repentance becomes an exciting, forward looking progression toward wholeness, rather than a depressing, backward-looking, guilt-inducing attempt to beat the bad out of you and never again make any mistakes. Bad habits and painful characteristics will disappear as they are replaced by good ones, not as they are “subdued and repressed by sheer force of will.”
I believe an understanding of grace is fully realized when one stops fighting God’s grace – when he realizes that all God wants is his willing mind and heart – when he quits worrying about his individual worthiness and starts focusing on his contribution to communal unity – when he simply lays it all at His feet and says, in essence, “I know you understand my weakness; I know you know my struggles and pains; I know you know how I feel about myself; I know you love me and have bought me, anyway. From now on, I will trust your promise and, despite my continuing frustration and my continuing weakness and my continuing failures, I will bounce back each time and continue to grow. I will not despair; I will accept my weakness and imperfection and failure, knowing you don’t care, because you love me, anyway. I will get back up each time I am knocked down and continue to walk toward you, until you embrace me and say, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’ – knowing I don’t deserve it and being eternally grateful for the grace that so fully you proffered me.”
This is an interesting topic. And a study, for me, in how we evolve. As a new convert, my very first calling offered to me was not one I would be there on two Sundays a month to fulfill due to my job scheduling. I knew nothing as a young new convert about how all this works in the church. I innocently asked if I could fulfill the calling on the two Sundays I was there (RS teacher). In my practical mind, I could see a simple swap with the other teacher since I knew there would be nothing simple about asking for the change around at my job! The Bishop shook his head and said no. I had no other calling, other than visiting teaching, offered to me in that ward. After a move to another state, callings were offered and accepted, as they worked well with my job schedule. Now, looking back at that first calling offer, I have to wonder if it wasn’t a strategy to get me to think about becoming a stay at home mother (which was not an option). I say this because there were two men sitting in the area with me before I went into the bishop’s office that I now realize were a counselor in the bishopric and ward clerk. They struck up a conversation in front of me regarding their wives working versus staying home and the first counselor very pointedly made statements about how his wife would never work, that was his job. I didn’t like it, but I filed it away as men who needed to grow up. Fast forward to many callings later. I was taught along the way that you do not say no to callings and even taught that in my leadership calling to other women. After close to a decade on the leadership treadmill, I was released. I was totally ready to say yes to the next calling as I walked into a room with a bishopric counselor. He extended a certain calling. As I opened my mouth to accept, a spiritual moment happened and I knew I was to say no. I was as shocked as the counselor when I said no. I realize many here have different thoughts about manifestations from the Spirit, but I cannot deny or explain away the ones I have had. The bishop was very angry with me over this situation. I had to sit and wait it out. I had another spiritual moment a few weeks later and “felt” inspiration of what the next calling was to be. I won’t go into all the details about how that particular calling did come to pass. But that calling was one of the biggest blessings of all callings to our entire family.
Fast forward again. New ward, different bishops. Rolling along with the callings. Released from a leadership calling again due to not being able to fulfill the schedule the way the current president was demanding it be set up. Life has changed and applying for jobs that will seriously tie up the schedule on some days. A calling is offered that I know I probably will not be able to be present for due to the jobs I am applying for. I am honest with the Bishopric Counselor that I don’t see the sense in accepting a calling that I most likely will not be able to be present for and if they could wait a few weeks, I will know exactly what my job schedule will be. I did not see it as fair to those I would be serving. He agrees with me. He was actually released within the next couple of weeks.
I felt a difference from that time forward from some people. Do i regret not just accepting either calling? No, I do not. As Ray has said several times, “they get me”. My employment schedule has to work with my callings.
Going back to that calling where I felt an extreme prompting to say no. The bishop was angry as I shared why I said no. When we finally discussed it, he wanted me to just say “I” was saying no. He gave me an example of another person that had a very high profile calling that had said no one time. I had no objection to that calling. We came to see there was something else that was in the wings for our family with the other calling. I also believe to this day, there was no inspiration at all for that particular calling that I was prompted to say no to, especially since the bishop had given me a talk a few weeks earlier about the high council being a “back bench” for released bishops and what would be equivalent for a female in a higher profile calling.
I feel life requires more balancing than ever. I also feel life is short. Our kids grow up so fast. Serve where we can and how we can, but I think we need to be prayerful and thoughtful about the balance.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Second, I think it’s because they so often defend things that shouldn’t be defended. That’s harmful. It causes actual harm. It also substitutes something else for the gospel, and the gospel is supposed to be the common ground. They throw out the baby to keep the bathwater. And if that takes root, what is there to the church?
Yes, this nails it for me! Add to that, the uncaring attitude often displayed towards others who deviate from their opinions. I do not dislike/hate, but I do struggle inwardly with some and wonder if we can all just be thrown away that easy in order for everything to feel comfortable for them. As a convert to the church, I came in with a different set of attitudes and I did not realize just how different for many many years.
I know some who are “acting” to stay in good standing (only because we were very close once upon a time). I have watched others transition over years. In my subset of close friends, we had a friend disengage more and more until one day another friend called to tell me our mutual friend was not sure she believed in Christ anymore and was exploring Eastern religions in a very jeering tone of voice. I tried gently to redirect her by expressing my love for our friend. Fast forward a few years. Now the friend who made the phone call to me that day has totally left the church in much anger and bitterness. In a conversation about how “people at church act”, I gently reminded her of the phone call about our mutual friend a few years previous. She was flabbergasted at herself and her own behavior. It was an eye opening experience.
I sat in a gospel doctrine class recently and heard others expound on people of other faiths being “saved”, etc while comparing to LDS people. I felt the point of the scriptures we were looking at might be more to ask, “Is it I?” I bit my tongue since that would not have been received well if I had spoken it.
DarkJedi wrote:
I completely agree with you Mac, and feel the same way. However, the vast majority of church members don’t view it this way at all, leaving us to deal with them. That generally means biting our tongues in meetings and conversations while essentially being forced to listen to that which goes against our own beliefs.I sit in church some days and wonder just how many of us are biting our tongues?
