[Arrakeen]

Our 5th Sunday in the YSA ward was about finances. It’s a useful topic, but there was so much focus on the whole “always pay tithing first, even if you don’t have enough for rent. act in faith and it will work out”. After my experiences with faith, I’m not going to make that bet. Other than that it’s the good advice of avoid debt, live within your means, etc.

[Arrakeen]

QuestionAbound wrote:

I would love to see our missionaries do that very thing…help build and run a school…a clinic…something that could help others who find themselves limited by economic position.

I also really wish our missions were more humanitarian focused. We talk so much about giving up two years to serve the people of such and such country, but in reality we mostly just end up serving the church. I was quite disappointed by how little real service I did as a missionary, even though I was always telling people about how our purpose was to help others.

I think more humanitarian work would also be more effective for missionary purposes, since I really don’t see the traditional proselyting working anymore. People want to see churches out doing good for the community, not sending people to knock on their door.

[Arrakeen]

SilentDawning wrote:

This is a great perspective from a Millenial — I have one question — can you give examples of WWII English, and what the equivalent would be if the language was updated?

Some small things that come to mind are pronouncing “wh” as “hw” as in the word “white” and using the word “whom”. My grandparents talk like that, but none of my peers do. There are also some words they use that are not common anymore, though I can’t think of specific examples off the top of my head. Sometimes during conference I need to consult the dictionary… Also, a lot of grammar has changed. Many of the classic rules from The Elements of Style are more or less obsolete with my generation, much to the dismay of English teachers.

These differences don’t have a huge effect on intelligibility, but they are a clear signal that we come from very different eras.

[Arrakeen]

I am on the very tail end of what are normally considered the Millennials. For me, the recent changes have made it easier for me to be “active”. Before the change to the 2-hour block, I was only attending sacrament meeting. After the change, I figured I could make it through just one more hour, so now I guess I’m technically fully active again. None of the changes have helped with my faith crisis, but they have temporarily delayed my slide into inactivity by making it easier to stay. It also gives me some hope that other things can change in the near future.

The generational differences with church leadership are very real. Watching conference I sometimes joke that the general authorities don’t even speak the same language as me, since they use a WW2-era dialect of English. As much as they try to be relatable, it’s very clear that they really don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them.

I think major change is inevitable. Even in the last few years I’ve been at BYU, I’ve noticed some significant changes in the culture. Students are becoming much more open about expressing pro-LGBT and feminist views. I want to be optimistic about the timeline. I think there will be many big changes within the next ten years or so. I think the church is already at a critical point where it needs to decide just how much it is willing to change to keep young people in the church.

[Arrakeen]

I think he had a very real faith crisis, but his experience was very different from mine. My only problem with the video was how some people who knew I was going through a faith crisis tried to apply it to me, assuming that what worked for him should work for me too.

I appreciate the church trying to talk about issues like faith crises, but I wish they would include more stories where things didn’t just work out in the end. I understand that they want faith-promoting, inspirational stories, but sometimes I just want validation of what I’ve been going through, without an assumption of where I should end up. I wish we could be comfortable with stories that have no clear resolution, where the answers never come and we end up trying to figure things out on our own.

I’m happy that Bro. McLean found answers that worked for him, but that was his personal journey. I’m just afraid using the video might reinforce an idea that as long as someone with a faith crisis keeps praying and continues in faith, they’ll eventually return to full belief in the church. And that just isn’t the case for everyone.

[Arrakeen]

Daughter1 wrote:

“God wouldn’t choose someone with a pride issue to lead His people. He would choose someone good!”

Sometimes I wonder where we get this idea that prophets need to be super-righteous spiritual giants. I guess it fits with our ideas about worthiness requirements for blessings, but it seems like many of the prophets in the scriptures (especially the Old Testament) are not what we would really call “righteous.”

I’ve come to believe something that could be described as the “flawed, but useful” hypothesis for prophets. Instead of thinking that God strengthens prophets to overcome their weaknesses, I prefer to think that God uses prophets for what they’re good at in spite of their weaknesses. For example, David clearly sinned, but he was a good political and military leader to build up the kingdom of Israel. I disagree with most of the doctrine Brigham Young taught, but he was a very strong leader for leading the saints across the plains and building a city from scratch. Nephi may have been an annoying self-righteous younger brother, but he was pretty good at building things like a bow and a boat to get his family to the promised land. Moses got himself into a lot of trouble, but he did have the guts to challenge Pharaoh and get the people out of Egypt.

I think maybe God doesn’t even need prophets to be righteous. Maybe he just needs them to have certain skills at the right time for his purposes. I guess it’s a pretty unorthodox opinion, but it helps me make sense of the behavior of prophets in the scriptures as well as in church history.

[Arrakeen]

I started noticing this when I read the Bible on my mission. The scripture mastery verses I learned in seminary often meant something completely different when read in context.

I don’t think we are alone in doing this. All churches have reinterpreted scripture to some extent. Religion changes over time, and when the texts remain the same, they are reinterpreted to match a modern context. Jesus and his followers repurposed much of the Old Testament to testify of Christ (for example, much of Isaiah). We repurposed Ezekiel to have the Bible prophesy of the Book of Mormon, thought it probably originally referred to the gathering and reunification of Israel.

We are so far removed from the original linguistic, historical, and cultural context of the scriptures that it is nearly impossible to understand their original intended meaning. We still use scripture as authoritative evidence, even though we change the meaning of the scriptures over time. This creates problems, but I think it is also a major reason why religions remain relevant through so many major changes in history. I think this is simply the way our religion adapts to new doctrines and beliefs, constructing a continuity with the past that may not have been there originally.

[Arrakeen]

felixfabulous wrote:

We get so caught up on reverence that we lose all of that and it ends up being a really solemn occasion in our church sometimes.

I think we also sometimes focus so much on remembering Christ’s suffering that we miss out on some of the rejoicing. We had a special Easter program here, but it seemed mostly focused on solemn remembrance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with remembering Christ’s suffering, but I think Easter is supposed to be more joyful and celebratory, commemorating the end of Christ’s suffering and the triumph over death and sin. Maybe we should start observing the rest of Holy Week so we can have our time for solemn remembrance, but then also have Easter as a time of rejoicing.

[Arrakeen]

I’ve always felt that the 2 Nephi scripture was misrepresented. In context, it seems to me to say that they want to persuade others to believe in Christ, since it is through Christ’s grace that salvation comes, not through works. I always viewed this as a grace-over-works scripture, but of course found out that others have the exact opposite interpretation. I was even mildly “corrected” in the MTC when I brought up grace into a lesson.

I think for some people, works are simply a natural result of conversion, but play no role in actual salvation. It seems like we more often focus on a model of doing good works as a means to conversion to Christ. The difference between doing good from a heartfelt desire, and developing that heartfelt desire through doing good.

Do we serve others because we love them, or do we develop a love for others by serving them? I think there’s an element of both. Perhaps “qualifying” simply means gaining a greater love of God as we do good works. In this case, “salvation” could simply be our relationship with God. Grace could be described as God’s love for us. It is freely given, and there is nothing we could ever do to earn it. But our love for God and our appreciation for his love can be cultivated to some extent as we sincerely do good. God is waiting with open arms ready to accept everyone, the only thing missing is our desire to be with him.

But it is all only possible because of grace, since we would never have a chance if God did not already love us unconditionally.

Quote:

We love him, because he first loved us.

[Arrakeen]

Old Timer wrote:

Preaching to other Christians has been the baseline norm for most of our existence as a church, so there is relatively more in the earliest missionary discussions about the Restoration than the life and mission of Jesus. An understanding of the most basic belief in Christ is assumed in most missions.

I suppose this makes more sense looking at it that way. I mostly taught people from China with no religious background whatsoever, so it always seemed weird to me to emphasize the restoration. We always had to start with prayer and the existence of God. We would pretty much exclusively use the Book of Mormon to teach about Christ, but mainly because the Bible translation was very difficult for most people to understand.

I just wonder, if someone whose first belief in Christ came from the Book of Mormon later stops believing in the origins of the Book of Mormon, are they more likely to also lose their faith in Christ than someone who learned first from the Bible? Though I suppose the same could happen if they lost faith in the Bible. Is there a way to make our faith in Christ not dependent on the validity of the scriptures where we learn about him? So that even if Nephi never existed, or even if the gospel accounts were not reliable, we could still maintain faith inn Christ?

[Arrakeen]

DarkJedi wrote:

I should also note that I freely admit that part of my own faith crisis rested on having a testimony of something else. Jesus Christ absolutely needs to be the stone foundation (envision a house with a stone foundation when thinking of building on rock) of our testimonies. If such is the case, it doesn’t matter if Nephi is real or not. (And yes, I do believe that missionaries often teach things backwards and that needs to be changed.)

I think part of the problem is that we take the idea that the Book of Mormon’s purpose is to testify of Jesus Christ, and then say that the best way to gain a testimony of Christ is through the Book of Mormon.

Quote:

One of the most effective ways to teach and testify of the Savior is to read together from the Book of Mormon.

–Preach My Gospel

^This can make it really easy for a testimony of Jesus Christ to be dependent on a testimony of the Book of Mormon instead of the other way around. I think we’re sometimes afraid of investigators seeing us as “just another Christian church, ” so we put a little too much emphasis on getting them to believe in the church before even believing in Christ.

[Arrakeen]

Rumin8 wrote:

An interesting aside, well interesting to me. I’ve always identified as dark side. But not the “evil” dark side, if that makes sense. When I had the choice when playing Star Wars video games I always chose dark side, but tried to do good things.

I sometimes identify as dark side, but for a slightly different reason. I also often identify with the “bad guys” in a lot of other series. I just often find the villains to be more relatable. Anakin/Darth Vader is deeply conflicted, neither all good or all bad. I think this is quite common, and is a big reason people seem to like Kylo Ren in the new movies, or Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise. Flawed people, but with some good inside of them. It’s easy to identify with the inner struggle between good and evil.

I don’t really relate to the Palpatines who are always bad or the Yodas who are always good, but with Anakin, who is torn between the light and dark. This is also why I don’t really identify with any of the “scripture heroes” like Nephi or Captain Moroni.

For the most part, the real world isn’t filled with “good guys” and “bad guys”. It is filled with complex individuals who can be both good and evil at the same time. People who have good desires but sometimes do bad things, who also have bad desires but still do good things. The whole galaxy thought Vader was all evil (including himself), but Luke redeemed him by seeing the good in him and helping him see it too.

[Arrakeen]

nibbler wrote:

I’ve brought up this point before. One verse says that to some it is given to know and another verse says that it is given to believe those that know. I think our brains sometimes automatically translate that into an either-or statement, either you can know or you can believe others that know, but I think there’s room in those verses to say that some people have the gift to know and to believe others that know; and there’s some people that have neither of those gifts – their spiritual gift is something else entirely.

I like this idea. It definitely does seem like some people are just naturally more prone to spiritual feelings than others. I’m definitely not, I’ve only really had one spiritual experience my entire life. It’s easy to miss the spiritual diversity in the church since it seems like mostly those with regular spiritual experiences or stories of blessings are the ones who get up to speak in fast and testimony meeting. This leads to a sort of selection bias, where it’s easy to think we’re the only one not having these great experiences. While it’s nice to be optimistic, I think we sometimes focus too much on the “17 miracles” while ignoring the thousands of not-miracles when things just didn’t work out, which just leads to discouragement when we find ourselves in the latter group.

I struggle at times when I hear all these wonderful testimonies from people (especially about missions since like 80 percent of my ward is recent RMs) and wonder, why does God seem to bless everyone else but me? I have to remind myself that the people who bear their testimonies are often those who feel like they have great experiences to share. Among the rest are probably people like me, wondering why they don’t have these kinds of experiences.

[Arrakeen]

Minyan Man wrote:

Do you ever ask yourself:

– Jonah and the whale. Was it a true story?

– Abraham and Isaac. Was it a true story?

– Does it matter?

Personally, one of my biggest concerns about the Book of Mormon is how it deals with parts of the Old Testament that I do not consider to be history, like the Tower of Babel or the Garden of Eden. It seems to me to insist on a literal acceptance of the Old Testament, which I do not like.

[Arrakeen]

I took the “obedience brings blessings” narrative WAY too seriously as a missionary. It contributed to many of my mental health problems. I had an acute fear that bad things would happen if I broke even the most minor rule (partly because of the stories we would be told in the MTC about missionaries who were almost killed because they went to the beach on p-day or something). This is a very dangerous idea for an OCD-prone individual like myself.

By the second half of my mission I was struggling with crippling depression and simply couldn’t do it anymore. If I needed a break, I took one. If I felt like I needed to give myself more sleep, I did. If I was assigned to a horrible companion, I spoke up to get it changed (this was very important to me after what I went through with one of my earlier companions). One of the main lessons I learned was that I had to help myself, since nobody else would (including God, it seemed). I learned that at times I needed to trust my own judgement more than that of my zone leaders or even my mission president, since I was the only person who could really know what was best for me.

This really destroyed my faith in obedience for obedience’s sake. I find it interesting how many RMs I hear testify about how they learned the value of obedience, since feel like I learned the opposite. I learned that I can’t blindly trust leaders, rules, or systems and that I need to stick up for myself and my beliefs.

My faith crisis started because no matter how bad things got on my mission, it seemed like there were never any answers to prayers, and no matter how obedient I was, there were never any promised blessings. I have a lot of difficulty now believing in promised blessings, because I never received any of the great blessings that were supposed to come from serving a mission, and instead came home very, very broken. The only way I can reconcile this is to tell myself that God never actually personally promised me those blessings–people did, and they were wrong.

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