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Don’t forget this one also. I found it pretty eye-opening, although some would say it just allows for plausible deniability. Inside the church it’s the word of God because a leader said it. Outside the church it’s just some leader expressing his opinion. Much like President Hinckley and the infamous “I don’t know that we teach that anymore” comment about doctrine we do teach pretty darn consistently. In general I tried to take this for what it said and not in a subversive way.
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/approaching-mormon-doctrine BTW I figured it out. When the text box comes up for the reply, there’s a button next to “Preview” “Submit” etc labelled “load draft”. That’s how you retrieve them. DBMormon wrote:
I disagree very much with your post Bob, and hope you will see the love in my comment as I am not taking up arms against you. In the past year I have shared my faith crisis experience with a member of the seventy, a member of the 12, a whole ward of members in Canada, and 3-5 members in my own ward, my stake presidency, and a high councilman in my stake, and in a smaller way the listeners of MormonStories.org. Not a single individual has cast me out, ridiculed me, or mocked me for my lack of faith ( My only negative response was from the MDB discussion board but that is another story it is NOT a case study example of this problem for various reasons).
No worries. Even though there’s a lot we disagree on, I see you as one of the good guys. You’re trying to hang on to a theological understanding of the LDS gospel and have it make sense, and there are precious few out there trying to do that. In general most people who have “issues” and are trying to hang onto participation in the church are not rooted in a literal belief in Christ as divine or a literal belief in the atonement. Many are trying to hang on as more cultural Mormons or with more universalist beliefs like the type of thing Ray expresses elsewhere, and I enthusiastically support what you’re trying to do. I wish more leaders had the guts you have. Really I would like to see the apostles venture outside the safe force field of believing members and engage these topics, because that what the ancient apostles did, and why they were martyred.
Having said that, often the LDS gospel is like the three blind men and the elephant. It is to you what you have in front of you. When I talk about support for doubt I don’t really mean having a one on one with a senior leader and getting private support, or at least some form of tolerance. I’m talking about not being a salmon swimming against the continual cultural stream. I don’t want to get into a quote war, but see Elder Cook’s talk and Elder Nash’s talk from the last conference. In the latter search for “doubt”. Doubt is something to be replaced with faith, and the answer is simple. Doubt is a tool of Satan and is destructive. Doubt is the enemy of faith, so if you have doubt you obviously lack faith and haven’t taken the very simple steps he advocates.
I was sent a talk some months ago about “keeping covenants” by my home teachers, with the idea that if only I kept my covenants and kept the commandments all my problems would be solved. I thought “OK, this will be fun” and I tried to get a discussion started with them on a very basic question: “What does it mean to ‘keep the commandments'”? I couldn’t get them to play. They will attempt to guilt-bomb me with talks, but they will absolutely not discuss my concerns, and these are both former bishops. That’s along the lines I mean. One of my home teachers is a former member of the temple presidency and is very sanctimonious. He will hold himself up as an example of righteousness for his family, 2/3 of which have left the church, but he will not talk through my concerns and help me figure this stuff out, and I work hard to try to make it fit together.
Old-Timer wrote:I would change “gospel” to “LDS Church as an organization”. The “gospel” has nothing whatsoever to do with authority, since the universalist foundation of vicarious ordinances makes the authority issue disappears at the most basic level. If the belief is that those ordinances are going to be performed for everyone at some point, the authority to perform them literally becomes moot – and there are very few things in the realm of religious theology that allow me to construct them “literally” with any degree of comfort. Given our temple theology, authority becomes a purely mortal concept – something relevant only to mortality when it comes to “sacred ordinances”.
You make a good point here, and I was sermonizing and not being completely specific.
“Gospel” is a somewhat elastic term. From the LDS perspective “gospel” means “restored gospel” which means the church hierarchy together with everything we might believe about God as an indivisible entity. Thinking back to the infamous Poelman revised talk, where there is no difference between the gospel and the church. I was using the term in that sense and could have been more specific.
I think that the idea that these ordinances being universal makes the authority irrelevant is too abstract. From a practical standpoint if you don’t qualify for a TR you are a second class citizen in the church, and that affects most aspects of your participation, even if you’re going to get the equivalent of a GED at some point in the future. i.e. the second chance. I think you also have to go back to McConkie’s point that some people don’t get a second chance. Someone who has rejected these ordinances in life (or the conditions thereof, i.e. maybe I want to go to the temple but not enough to give up smoking) doesn’t get a second chance, so they’re not universal in that sense.
Old-Timer wrote:
Thus, the Gospel isn’t about authority at all.What Bill Reel said. The gospel is totally about Christ’s authority. The followup point is to whom he delegates authority for ordinances and the administration of the church, which is something as LDS that we deal with about as often as breathing.
OK, I just read Givens’ letter in its entirety and can now comment. 
There’s a lurking unspoken context in what he writes, and that context is that we have the ability to define what the “restored gospel” is for ourselves as well as how it works, because much of what he says is at complete variance with the official line in lessons and talks. Not as much the facts he presents about limited geography theory, etc., but the basic idea that apostles and prophets might not be just a little wrong and have some imperfections, but on occasion might have it about 95% wrong.
He talks a lot about community and memory, etc., but officially what the gospel is really about is authority, with the “saving ordinances” being the expression of that authority, because the hierarchy controls the ordinances.
I don’t disagree with what he says at all, but in order to follow this path you have to be willing to accept that you have not only the right, but the ability, to define what Mormonism is to you. You also have to prepare yourself to be completely self-sustaining in this approach, because you will get no support for it in church. It’s like being a scuba diver or an astronaut. To follow his approach you have to take all your own oxygen and food with you, because you’re not going to find it where you’re going.
There is no support for “doubt” out there, nor is there support for anything less than “follow the prophet”.
I was really surprised that these remarks were given in a fireside, so maybe change is coming, however slightly. I’m lucky enough to have a bishop who comes from a Sunstone-reading family, but our situation is like being trapped under the ice and finding small pockets of air in random places. You have to be mighty good at conserving your strength and holding your breath.
Sadly I think most just drown.
Ann wrote:I agree that anonymity is good for everyone here who needs and wants it! Sorry if I came across differently….
Anonymity has its pluses and minuses. I’m a member of a DAMU forum that requires pictures and real names. It changes the nature of the discussion, I think. People are more civil in general, even though most may not have contact IRL. Also the atmosphere of fear was interesting in the beginning. Many were still active in the church and every time the possibility of a security “breach” was suggested some went running for the hills in case they were discovered, as though this were East Germany or something.
Another dynamic is that we tend to respond to attractive people, and my feeling is that the bright attractive people tend to get a lot of “you go girl/guy” type support and get reacted to more.
In general I think I prefer the accountability of the real names and pictures. Once on the other forum I actually posted my membership record number and dared the black helicopters to come, but they didn’t.
FWIW I need to put up a picture here but I’ve just been lazy. I sort of waver on whether I really have what it takes for another online “relationship”.
There’s an interesting perspective in this letter that, from a believer’s perspective, *gasp*, Bruce R McConkie might not have known what he was talking about in this area and Brigham Young might have been off on another planet entirely. I had to revisit my entire concept of what the church actually believes about itself in light of D Todd Christofferson’s talk at the spring conference and an LDS newsroom post solemnly affirming that doctrine is contained in the scriptures and not statements by well-meaning individuals (glossing over that some of those individuals were apostles and church presidents). Also that there is no official stated doctrine on much of anything, regardless of how much we are told to basically canonize general conference twice a year. I’m having to revisit a lot of my base assumptions on some things, and it’s an interesting process. I’ve always been jealous of people who can be happy in the church because they can just dismiss certain statements by leaders and focus on the more meaningful stuff, and it makes me wonder if I can ever get there myself.
I remember your podcast with John Dehlin and was impressed with your willingness to come into the lions den, even if I may not agree with you on every point. This is useful for me because I’ve been disaffected for about seven years and am basically getting tired of being disaffected. I find a lot of meaning in the BoM whether it’s history or not. I’m a literal believer in God and Christ and salvation by faith, but the rest is pretty much up for grabs. Trinity? Celestial Kingdom? Who knows, since Jesus didn’t really talk much about those things. I’ll probably check out the podcast, but the written word has great value for me because I need to be able to skim through the stuff that’s familiar to me or nit-picky arguments I may not care about. It just gets tiring going through the same stuff over and over again. NOM was very cathartic for me, but it just got to be same stuff, different person after awhile. Same with many other places. I hung around more disaffected sites for awhile, but to be honest I’m not a cultural Mormon. I’m all about the theology, and few people become disaffected with the cultural church while still hanging onto much theology.
I might just be stuck with being a jack Mormon and let it go at that, just live with what I can and don’t sweat so many details. There’s just too much truth in this, despite the whitewashing of the history and the sometime eccliastical abuse. Not to mention blatant marginalization.
Just wondering if you all have re-hashed Elder Cooks talk here? It was lovely being told I should repent of my lack of commitment, just like porn addicts and other failures.
SamBee wrote:BobDixon wrote:For example in Omni this morning I noted two completely trinitarian verses and the fact that in the BoM individuals are always leaving corrupt organizations that have lost their way.
There are a few more, but the more trinitarian verses have in the main been altered.
A good idea otherwise Bob!
Are you saying that elsewhere the more trinitarian verses have been altered to be less trinitarian?
I was reading Mosiah Ch 1 this morning, and it’s interesting how many people in authority in the BoM are servant leaders who voluntarily step away from power in the interests of the larger community. Probably evidence right there that it’s fiction, because you rarely see that in the real world.
For example, why don’t feeble LDS prophets step aside like King Benjamin did? Give your farewell address and then move off into the sunset instead of surrounding yourself with handlers running the signature machine.
Quote:i appreciate and respect your point of view.
i have a simple question: to whom are you accountable for your relationship with the god of your understanding?
We’re ultimately accountable to God, but we’re also taught the principle of orderly submission to earthly authority, i.e. “render unto Caesar”, etc., as well as the basic principle of honesty. So I’m accountable to God alone for whether or not I follow the Wow, but also for whether I might give an intentionally evasive answer to the TR question.
Old-Timer wrote:
Jesus would live off the money and charity of his followers. He wouldn’t work (unlike King Benjamin, for example), but would be a typical traveling preacher from the times of Joseph Smith. We probably would accuse him of priestcraft, if we didn’t accept him as a prophet and/or Christ.I believe this is true and not true. Jesus’ ministry was conducted in a specific cultural context, so whether he would be practically homeless in this day and age is probably speculation. In general he wouldn’t own much of anything of value, and thus wouldn’t be guilty of priestcraft because he wasn’t profiting from his ministry. Much like in New Testament times he would be this crazy guy wandering around the parks and in the camps under railroad bridges, and he would make people highly uncomfortable, but I don’t think he would accumulate enough to be guilty of priestcraft.
Old-Timer wrote:
Jesus would give nothing of monetary value to the poor – other than the healing of a few small number of them. He wouldn’t make their financial lives better in any measurable way, and only once (or twice) would he even feed them. He’d be the Joel Osteen of his time in our minds, if we didn’t accept him as a prophet and/or Christ.
This reflects my own limited exposure to Joel Osteen, but I see him as a snake oil salesman. Much of his preaching doesn’t even talk about God or Christ. It’s the soothing words people want to hear. I doubt Jesus ever uttered anything comparable to “your best life now”. In general I believe Osteen is a health and wealth preacher who tells people they can have it all, whereas Jesus told people to put God first, by which they would suffer trials and tribulations, but by so doing would live out their roles as God’s people.
For the most part Joel Osteen is a popular blow dried smiling pied piper, which is not at all who Jesus was.
Overall, though, I think your point is well taken that people project their own agendas onto Jesus. In general I think he would ignore the mall in specific while continuing to rail against the materialism that it’s a monument to, both among the people and among the LDS church leaders who built it.
This will seem inconsistent with the answer I just posted about the WoW, but the question is whether I consider myself worthy, not whether the interviewer considers me worthy. I used to lock up on this question every time I had a TR interview. I couldn’t meet the church’s standard for perfection, wasn’t a perfect home teacher, etc., and I felt terrible.
Only after my initial disaffection when I was able to qualify for one last TR was I able to confidently answer this, because I finally understood that the source of my worthiness is not my own efforts, but the atonement. As long as I’m making a good faith effort at sanctification, the atonement makes me worthy and not my own best efforts.
It’s ironic to me that I am faithful to my wife, try to read the scriptures and pray daily, pay 15% of a rather generous income to various charities, and have a pretty literal belief in the divinity of Christ and the atonement, yet I am a bad mormon because I drink alcohol and coffee and think Thomas S Monson is merely a decent person and not the Lord’s sole mouthpiece.
As previously posted I think the temple should really be a ladder for those seeking a closer understanding of the mysteries of godliness and not a merit badge of institutional conformity. It’s a tool and not an award. Or should be, anyway.
I’m sorry, I didn’t have the stamina to read all the replies, but I think the intent of the question is obvious and what they mean it to mean is obvious. Originally the WoW was a law of health that taught moderation, but now it means abstinence and that’s what your bishop and stake president mean when they ask the question. I don’t consider it really honest to use one definition for the term for yourself, knowing full well your leader means something completely different. This is distinct from vaguer areas like what “sustain” means or what “tithing” means where the question is intentionally open to personal interpretation.
Personally I feel I keep the WoW because I try to moderate consumption of alcohol, coffee, soda, meat, I avoid energy drinks, I exercise, and I go to the doctor regularly and try to get adequate sleep.
I know this is not the definition the person holding the recommend book is using, though, so I have to answer “no”.
Old-Timer wrote:The Church doesn’t own the stores in the mall.The Church isn’t selling those things.The mall isn’t for Mormons only.I have no problems at all with the things described in the post. If the mall exists for the citizens of SLC and visitors to the city (if it’s a normal mall), it should be providing those things.
This one is easy for me.
I’m not going to be argumentative about it, but I think there’s a high degree of rationalization in these statements. I think the distinction between actually operating the stores and renting the space to the people that do is a pretty subtle one. Maybe if City Creek was organized into retail condos where the stores actually owned the walls and the floors this would be a more relevant distinction, because then the church would have no control over what happened in the space because they didn’t own it. When they knowingly choose to rent to businesses that sell alcohol, coffee, and tea, the church is directly profiting from those things.
I say this with a cup of coffee in front of me. I think the current interpretation of the Word of Wisdom is not in keeping with the original, but there’s an issue of consistency. If they are going to keep me out of the temple over wine and coffee they shouldn’t be in the alcohol and coffee business themselves.
To me the obvious answer is to go back to the original intent of the WoW, which was intended as a law of health and not a metric of institutional conformity.
InquiringMind wrote:The reason I find the Church’s hypocrisy so outrageous in this situation is that that the Church is so firm with its people (especially youth and college-age people) about what kind of behavior is unacceptable. In seminary, it was better to lose all your friends and live a life of social isolation than to have a single sip of alcohol. I remember watching a video in seminary about a kid who was a recent convert and refused to take an excellent job that required him to work on Sunday, and his faithfulness in refusing to take a job that required Sunday work was portrayed as the epitome of valiance.
I think there’s a different set of standards for what I would refer to as “little people” and where real money is involved. I remember David Burton’s talk from many years ago about Joseph Fielding Smith walking past a grocery store that was open on Sundays in order to shop at one that wasn’t. And of course the primary lessons we used to teach about bathing and shining your shoes on Saturday, etc., so as to not work on the Sabbath. There’s the BYU rule about Sunday sporting events, etc.
Of course at the same time the Deseret News is delivered on Sunday, the church-owned TV and radio stations don’t go dark on Sundays, and you can order stuff from Deseret Book on the internet on Sundays. We laud professional football players who play on Sunday, professional golfers who play on Sunday, Larry Miller who owned the Jazz which played on Sunday, the Marriotts who owned hotels open on Sunday, and the list goes on and on.
I had a major WTF moment when the Olympics were held in Salt Lake City and the church encouraged people to volunteer. At the time I wouldn’t even consider allowing the TV to be on on Sunday or to allow the kids to play outside on Sunday. So, I’m not supposed to watch these sporting events, yet I’m encouraged to basically work on a Sunday to volunteer for them? I just couldn’t figure that out.
In general these principles like the Word of Wisdom and observing the Sabbath are fine until there’s real money involved, at which point the church becomes very pragmatic. Where millions are involved or a high degree of prestige for the church, principle is set aside for practicality and accommodation. They are black and white rules for the rank and file members, but subject to interpretation where the leaders and prominent members are involved.
For the record this subject has been hashed and rehashed and will never be settled, but my own personal opinion is that the church should live by its own principles and not be involved in businesses that are open on Sunday, sell alcohol, or broadcast entertainment that is not considered “appropriate”. Financial gain and being a player in the Utah economy should be less a consideration than being consistent with the values expected from the general membership.
Having said that, the church has never operated that way. Polygamy was revealed to the powerful and connected and the leaders have always operated by a different set of standards than the rank and file.
