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You can also use Santa Clause as an analogy. I think you could make it fit. I’m not saying it facetiously at all.
There is actually a lot of “truth” to be found in the symbolism of Santa Clause and you progress through the stages of believing blindly, to getting suspicious, to finding out he isn’t real, to realizing the symbol is real, to understanding the value of the symbol, to doing an altruistic act for your children in the name of the symbol. Ultimately the ideal would essentially be to “become” Santa – where you are a truly unconditionally loving person who gives without expectation of receiving.
Something like that…
You could use the title but change the emphasis completely. You could talk about what the work of Christ was while on the earth and how we can advance it in that way (service). James 1: 27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Matthew 5:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
That is the work of the Lord, IMO…
Well the good news is you don’t need to take make any decision too quickly. You can take your time and try on some different hats so to speak and figure out how you want to approach things over time. I found attending church to be more and more intellectually painful over time, and found I had a harder and harder time engaging. It was a long, slow process including going back and forth in my thinking several times.
I actually find the concept of living for eternity to be even scarier than consciousness ending at death. Living for 1,000 years sounds great. Even a million might be cool. However, eternity gives me the heebee jeebies – you’ve got to get board eventually. I’ve found that the assumption that this life is what there is and you have to make and take meaning from it works well for me.
Figuring out what your morality is, is definitely a challenge and it is certainly uncomfortable at times. I’ve found mine has shifted in some ways, but I actually believe I am more moral & ethical than I was before.
A lot of folks on this board have taken what I kind of think as an Eastern religious philosophy mingled with Mormonism. It’s not what works for me, but it seems to work well for many. My beliefs and thinking tend to be a little more concrete.
Someone else mentioned being agnostic. I don’t think you choose to be an atheist or to be agnostic. You just eventually work through your beliefs and land somewhere. In my case ultimately I’m pretty confident that God is an invention of man.
It seems your primary motivator from what you are describing is fear. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that as long as you are aware of it.
I don’t see anything in your statement that is incompatible with “sunk costs”. The idea of sunk costs is that you make decisions based on what is going to happen in the future and what is happening in the present. (You also consider the past inasmuch as it is a predictor of the present & future.) So in your example of walking away from a spouse the idea would be that you look at the current negative costs to leaving your marriage to both you and your wife (and kids) as well as the positive. The reasons you got married initially are irrelevant – not an excuse to leave. You wouldn’t stay married just because you’ve worked so hard at it though. In any case InquiringMind did a good job of explaining his real reasons for not wanting to leave.
Thanks for the summary and for the exercise. As cwald stated, although perhaps in different words, my biggest reaction to this exercise was the “wrongness” of the Mormon church using worthiness as a gatekeeper to entering in and having a religious/spiritual experience. At the core it seems exactly opposite of the core of what Christ taught in the New Testament. It seems exclusionary, judgmental, Pharasitic, etc.
I do however, think it would be very productive to review the specific covenants that are entered into when receiving an endowment for the first time before attending the temple for the endowment. A person probably should not attend an endowment session unless they feel that they are prepared to make and keep these covenants. Once you are in the temple the peer pressure is too extreme to decline – besides too much is happening too fast to really understand what you are committing to. Unfortunately, I fear, there is never really a point that an LDS member is really cognizant of making a commitment. 8 is too young to really understand the ramifications & the temple covenants are made on the spot without really having the opportunity to think it through (it’s too much like checking the terms & conditions user agreements online.)
However, as a secondary item I was definitely able to understand the whole concept that was being discussed of the “spirit of the law” in these questions. I found it interesting that those of us who seemed to be the most frustrated were the two ends of the spectrum – those closest to TBM had a hard time with this approach and those of us the furthest from TBMs seemed to have a hard time with this approach. There are definitely times that “spirit of the law” applies, but to me the line between rationalization and searching for the deeper spiritual meaning is very fuzzy – there were also times that IMO it went way past deeper meaning and well into rationalization.
I also found it interesting that a number of the questions seemed to be worded in such a way that it was confusing even ambiguous to understand the intent of the question. If find this problematic because very often this means that the local priesthood leader will provide the interpretation – the not affiliating with apostates questions is probably the best example of this.
I also suspect that TBM are much harder on themselves for these questions that those who answered on this board.
Quote:I’d like to see if I can make the Church work somehow because I’ve invested so much in it.
The first law/rule of economics is “sunk costs don’t matter.” Another way of saying this is don’t chase bad money with good.
I’m not in anyway trying to say that making Mormonism work for you is the wrong choice for you personally, but that the reason you state above isn’t a good enough reason – so if you decide to make it work, I think you need to have a better reason.
I am an atheist so I can relate to a lot of what your are saying. I have also left the church so I can talk about pros and cons – and there are cons.
First as far as being an atheist. I didn’t decide to be an atheist. I just thought about a lot of things for a lot of years and went back and forth on issues in my mind many times. Eventually I stopped going back and forth. It’s not like I was constantly asking myself “am I an atheist” – it was just that eventually that was the label that best described my beliefs. So if you are worrying “am I an atheist” I’d recommend to not worry about it too much. Eventually you will land somewhere and you will know.
Also, there are several on this site who are essentially agnostic/atheist however they have redefined God to be something ethereal enough that they can still believe it – even if God is just the good/humane part of yourself – that is God. Even if God is the natural / non supernatural laws of the universe that is God. You can get a lot of mileage that way. If you read back through the recent temple recommend questions you can see examples of this that could be very helpful to you if you want to go that route.
For me, the decision to leave the church was the right one. I don’t feel it is appropriate to evangelize that on this board. So I will list some of the cons. There is definitely an increased sense of isolation. There is a sense of missing what was me for so many years. There is a sense of being on the outside looking in. I live in the heart of Utah country – my family is Mormon, my friends are Mormon, etc – so there is a definitely disparity. Also, as my children continue to grow and do things like get baptized, marry in the temple, etc. I will be excluded. Obviously I can watch a baptism – but I baptized my oldest 3, but when my youngest is baptized next year it won’t be by me.
Good luck!
I think perhaps a huge key is to study/pray/think/mediate on the source of that undeniable, deep feeling. Where is it coming from? Why do you feel that way? In my mind there are 2 possible answers.
1) It is coming from God.
2) It is coming from you.
Which is it? I have my personal opinions, but those wouldn’t mean much to you. I would suggest that you include looking at people who have very different beliefs than you who feel the same way about what they believe as part of your study though…
Excellent replies: Follow up question. What would you do if you attempted to speak with them privately and hit a dead end or were even punished by them for it?
Quote:Yes. My garments at this point can only be seen with the spiritual eyes. They are made of a material that is more refined and ethereal.
Well I suppose this ups the credibility of my hypothesis that rationalize anything is possible with “the spirit of the law”
@Ray I should go into a little more detail /clarify a little more.
I definitely agree in confession & restitution.as part of the repentance process. So I see it as being between myself, the offended & God.
There are actually two cases where I believe confession to a bishop would be very appropriate:
1) Where you as yourself cannot seem to forgive yourself. A good bishop can be very useful and helpful in this process. As a corollary there may also be times where it is appropriate when the bishop can help support the offended.
2) Where as referenced above the church is on the list of those offended. For example if you embezzled fast offerings, etc. However I think the church puts itself on the offended list way more than it should – for example sexual sin.
I suspect that with these clarifications that we are less far apart in our thinking.
Quote:i guess the question to ask is are we getting a false prompting ? or is it a case of us misinterpreting or mishandling the prompting ? it could be just a case of God letting us know that a certain individual might be good for us and to give the person a second look. and in such an instance the other person might not get a prompting.
These are all excellent questions and points that I’ve thought a lot about. This is a lot of why this is only one point of many – this incident alone is not sufficient. However when woven into the whole tapestry it becomes important.
I also consider all the fallback excuses/explanations for promptings to be evidence that they aren’t real.
A lot of my whole thought process is exactly that there is no reliable way to know if a prompting is real. I have just seen too many “false positives” from myself and from others. I have also seen to many “false negatives”. As I mentioned before even Elder Rasband admitted in general conference that he couldn’t discern missionary call promptings accurately. Too many people use a “prompting” as evidence for too many things for me to give it much credence.
I also ruled out at least some of my promptings being of the devil in 2 ways. One he can’t read thoughts – therefore he could not provide promptings/thoughts about things not expressed out loud. Second we are promised that if we are fully worthy that the devil cannot enter with us into the temple and can have no influence there – which I have done. In both cases I received promptings that directly contradict other promptings. For example many times I felt a strong prompting in the temple that the Book of Mormon is not true.
Honestly I still feel “promptings” and I still use them heavily in my decision making. I find that until I get to the point that I feel good about a decision – at peace in my mind and a burning in the bosom that I have not yet thought something trough enough. The experience is still a very important one to me – the pattern of D&C 9 still holds for me (well not the praying part) – but I watch for a merging where both my heart and mind agree. In other words, I find it a powerful empowering concept – I just no longer consider it communication from God. I also give myself much more leeway to reconsider something when I receive new information or the situation changes.
Quote:Fine. He can call anything he wants inspiration, that is none of my business at all. But when he has such a broad definition, it makes it harder for me to trust in his inspiration, which I am regularly asked to do.
And I have to ask myself if trusting in his inspiration is part of sustaining him, which of course is relevant to the TR question. (I would have posted this on the TR thread, but I didn’t want to hijack.)
I think you are being too hard on yourself and narrow in your definition of sustaining. Even to the most converted sustaining never meant believing the person in authority is perfect. In fact sustaining is all about respecting their authority despite their flaws. You can greatly disagree with his definition of inspiration and still respect his authority and even support him as a bishop. Honestly, I don’t see a conflict. Also, he may have not worded what he meant perfectly – you probably caught him off guard by calling him on it.
Perhaps, ironically, another yes from me. The logic is simple. The teachings of Christ are: “The whole have no need of a physician” & “neither do I condemn thee”. The concept of worthiness to enter the temple is completely flawed.
However, I also very feel very at peace with myself that I am living according to my personal code of morals, ethics, and spirituality.
My opinion is that sins should be resolved with yourself and directly with Christ. Therefore since no sins should ever be resolved with priesthood authority my answer would be no. It is also interesting that, as far as I know, the LDS church never directly defines what a serious sin is that requires meeting with a bishop. However I believe it is strongly implied that any sexual “sin” including porn, masturbation, petting, etc. requires meeting with the bishop. In addition it is strongly implied that any crime that may be a felony would fit in this category.
I understand that the LDS church recently either read a letter and/or added verbiage to the temple recommend interview to give a specific example that you should wear garments while gardening? Is this the case? Which was it? I guess this comes down to the same issue we continue to circle around. Either you answer the question based on the intent you believe the LDS church has in writing the question or you interpret the question however you feel fits your personal spirit of the law. I would submit that if you go the second route, you can think long and hard enough to justify answering yes under just about any circumstance.
Which is fine really. In the end my interpretation of that is simply that the LDS church has no business being a gatekeeper of personal worthiness – which I 100% agree with.
I jumped the gun in this discussion on #8.
Many of the covenants are attitudinal I think. The church doesn’t really come to call to ask you to sacrifice your life. It doesn’t really come to ask for your all of your possessions. Even though in the covenant you have covenanted that they can. So it’s really more a question of attitude if you would be willing to do these things. Perhaps it’s also a question if you are doing these things insomuch as the church is requesting it. One could argue that if you are not accepting & fulfilling callings, a faithful home teacher, etc. that this is a breach of these covenants.
Personally I find the sacrifice covenant especially to be the most concerning. It is quite clear that you are to make the sacrifice for the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”, not to God. Also the idea that there are no boundaries in what you will give if asked is concerning. In a sense this does come to play in a practical sense. For example, I think bishops feel compelled to say yes when called as bishop – even at times when it causes a real hardship on their family. Happily the days of leaving your family alone and destitute while serving a 3 year mission are long past.
It also find it interesting that this question includes intent. You don’t necessarily need to be doing these things perfectly – just make an effort with real intent.
