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AmyJ wrote:
That is deconstruction at it’s best. Seriously – I think it’s worth your research and introspection to look into “Fowler’s Stage 4”.
I confess I’ve had no previous reason to check out Fowler. Perhaps it’s time. I’ve heard the name — although only from Americans.I do find it fascinating to read what you and others write. It makes me realize how culturally different non-Americans are from Church membership in Utah and the strip, if that’s what it’s called.
You speak of news feeds and stuff that do not even register with me as a thing. Outside the U.S., Church life is so relatively straightforward. There are no such news feeds; no public figures who speak out in favor of or against the organization. Our experience is swaddled in cotton wool. Our experience of Church must be like that of a child visiting a supermarket. We notice that there are sections — like where the fruit and veg sit, and there’s a place to buy cereal. Beyond that, however, we see nothing unless there’s a disturbance.
Perhaps that’s why I give the impression of being a trouble-maker when I’m simply bewildered. It may be why I feel to some extent like Dorothy who has an inkling that the great wizard isn’t all he’s making himself out to be — whereas you lot have actually seized his megaphone, and some folks have even indicted him.
“September 6 excommunications”? No idea. “Sam Young”? Never heard of him/her.
I feel so poorly informed. We live the Disney version over here.
AmyJ wrote:
…the church organization no longer allows women to sit on the stand as authorized leaders in meetings
Thanks, Amy. I came here with a “walletful” of questions, but now I feel like I have a “suitcaseful.”
Out of interest, how did you come to learn about women not sitting on the stand in an official capacity? I don’t remember reading that anywhere, and our stake president recently (within the past three or four months) commissioned women stake leaders to sit on the stand while visiting a unit in an official capacity. That was in place for less than a month when he subsequently retracted it, saying it should stop with immediate effect on account of instruction he received at an area-level meeting.
Old-Timer wrote:
Carburettor, my questions still stand
Perhaps I’m coming at this from an entirely different angle from others. Are you an active member, Old-Timer? And, if so, do you attend all your meetings week-in-week-out? A simple yes or no will suffice.For my part, I am a fully active member (currently serving in stake leadership), and I have been active for my entire life. However, I have no church pedigree or heritage to keep me invested for social or cultural reasons; my deceased parents were converts just six years before I was born.
What brought me to this place was my discomfort over discovering (relatively recently) that there is a significant number of skeletons in the Church’s gender-and-identity closet. Now that I’m here, however, I guess I’m taking the opportunity to dredge up some things I increasingly perceive as nonsensical to get a second opinion. Maybe someone here will allay my concerns, or maybe they’ll just figuratively shrug and tell me I shouldn’t be so literal.
To answer your questions:
1) What kind of official policy statements do I want? How about ones that reflect constancy? You mention “ongoing revelation.” To me, true ongoing revelation adds more detail; it doesn’t involve scrubbing the past and changing the narrative in a way that contradicts what was previously said. And if it does, for whatever reason, it should at least be honest about it. Having senior Church leadership who bear the mantle of prophets, seers, and revelators yet who espouse different beliefs is something of a red flag.
2) How does this impact me? I have previously stated that I will not tolerate DHO as President of the Church (if he outlives President Nelson). Should DHO become President, I will withdraw from activity without renouncing my membership. Perhaps that will put me on an even footing with some other subscribers here. I believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and, if I squint to make everything fuzzy, I’m comfortable with how the Church operates. However, having now contemplated the reality of my stepping away for a season, I find myself examining some of the many issues that, for me, reveal inconsistency or general mumbo-jumbo.
Perhaps I have outstayed my welcome here.
AmyJ wrote:
I always figured that it was pre-mortal Peter, James, and John showing up to fulfill a pre-earth life assignment.
Quod erat demonstrandum (as written when I used to evidence proof in Calculus).The endowment explains that each patron can consider himself or herself as Adam and Eve respectively — who represent the entire human family. Thus, when Peter, James, and John appear, it is as themselves in their timeline — where Adam and Eve represent the members of the human family whom they figuratively visited while on Earth.
We may dismiss such trifling details a nothingness, but the devil is in the detail — such that we may find we actually have entirely different faith systems. That’s confusion in my book.
AmyJ wrote:
I think the main question is “what should be taken literal” vs “what is more symbolic”.
That’s a fair point, Amy. My wife was in her late forties when she said after a temple session, “I’ve never understood how Adam and Eve could meet up with Peter, James, and John. They lived in totally different times.” She had always believed that the endowment session was supposed to be a history lesson because no one had ever made it clear that it wasn’t.IMO, there is nothing at all that is literal in the temple experience. Rightly or wrongly, I believe it is 100% symbolic. Consequently, my faith system looks entirely different from that of many other members.
Does it make a difference? Absolutely it does. I expect the majority of Church members believe that Joseph Smith’s first vision was a visitation because we promote it in that way. At best, it was a type of dream. Little wonder JS recorded multiple versions. But there’s a significant percentage of Church membership whose testimonies are based on it having been a literal visitation.
We are taught that God is not the author of confusion, but we — in his name — are causing a whole bunch of it.
Old-Timer wrote:
Just curious: How does this issue fit into you staying LDS? Do you want official statements that agree with your views but don’t want official statements that don’t? How flexible are you on this sort of “no stance” example?
I guess I fumbled the ball by leaving you uncertain as to how this issue is relevant.The problem for me is that all faiths have a track record of adopting Mosaic Law-style positions of prescriptive belief when proof or disproof is impossible in mortality. Such statements and tenets tend to be delivered as facts. God did X to achieve Y as a result. We describe in lengthy detail the attributes of God and the organization of his household before and after existence, which cannot of course be challenged because no one has evidence to the contrary — whereas contested topics for which we do actually have irrefutable evidence (and which also impact our relationship with God) are left for us to make up our own minds, arguably to avoid subsequent embarrassment if our relation with God turns out to be something different from what was previously professed.
If, for example, you believe that Adam and Eve were created in their finished form by God just a few generations ago in the grand scheme of things, that is likely to make you feel differently about the form and function of your body than how you might feel if you were taught (and you believed) that your human body is the outcome of evolutionary processes that God simply stood by and watched happen in a slow-mo version of the Plan of Salvation. When we as a Church speak of the sacred nature of our reproductive organs, for example, we imbue them with a certain amount of mystique that is entirely unwarranted if they are simply fleshy adaptations formed over millions of years across all living species.
Perhaps I’m still mangling the point. We claim to have an intimate knowledge of our physical connection to God, being made in his image, yet the compelling origin story offered by scientific evidence is left to be an issue of personal opinion.
I believe our biological history is relevant and does matter. There are individuals in my own ward who still believe the Earth is flat based on their misinterpretation of scripture and denial of science as mere propaganda from an evil cabal. Such views are incompatible with our pursuit of knowledge. The authority of the Church is diminished when it tries to be all things to all people. The result will be chaos and contradiction.
We see something similar happening on the LGBTQIA+ front. The Church wants people to be content while sitting on the fence with statements like “everyone is welcome” and “we don’t know why people turn out a certain way.” Such positions are unsustainable longterm, and there’s a whole bunch of ugliness has been sown and continues to be cultivated that Church leadership is going to have to reap someday.
On a side note, I’m also trying to offer something for people to engage with while this board slowly stagnates. No need to thank me.
Minyan Man wrote:
For me, the church is the collection of individual members. Each has their own power to think & understand (to accept or reject) forthemselves. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get it wrong. This life is meant to be a classroom.
OK. Interesting. That isn’t how I view it, which may explain why it bothers me when the Church gives the impression of sitting on the fence.In my experience, our beliefs
aren’tindividualistic inasmuch as we don’tget to curate our own religion piecemeal from things that resonate with us. In my worldview, our doctrine is prescribed, and we either accept everything — pretty much at face value — or we wilfully put ourselves out of alignment with God’s anointed prophets. So, I listen to what they say. But when they say nothing, I’m left wondering why. Perhaps I should question less. Old-Timer wrote:
I am very glad the wording was removed from the endowment, since it was over-generalized and Pharisaical in its application.
Too right, buddy. It was like a foolish tradition that just wouldn’t die (like men removing their baseball caps before prayer). Well, now it’s dead at last. Praise be (even if people can’t let go of the archaic nonsense hat thing, but that’s a separate issue)!Roy wrote:
I am particularly tickled by the idea that the veil and therefore the garments represent the flesh of Christ.
Ah, yes. I remember thinking at the time that it was a stretch too far. I thought it sounded grim, like transubstantiation in Catholicism.DarkJedi wrote:
Just using the name of Jesus does not make it centered on him and his message.
Too right. I am reminded of a guy in my ward who inserts “Heavenly Father” into practically every sentence when he prays.It goes something like this, “Dear Heavenly Father, we are grateful to meet here today, Heavenly Father. And we ask thee, Heavenly Father, if thou wilt pour out thy spirit, Heavenly Father, on the proceedings of this day.”
I want to shout, “Enough with the Heavenly Fathers already!”
In my opinion, when we repeat something simply to make it sound like we’re focused on it, we devalue it.
I remember laughing out loud in a young guy’s sacrament talk many years ago — and my wife and I still repeat (to each other) his verbal tic to this day when something triggers it.
The guy kept adding “and stuff” to everything in the way that some people add “OK” at every pause in a sentence.
He was saying things like, “And we went to the temple
and stuffand did a few sessions and stuffand it was a great experience that we hope to repeat again sometime and stuff.” I was beginning to find it grating (as it can be when someone has a verbal tick), until he said something like, “And then we went back to our car to collect our stuff
and stuff.” At which point I fell about laughing. I know it’s juvenile, but when my wife or I include the word “stuff” in a sentence, the other still adds, “…and stuff.” And how we laugh.
nibbler wrote:
The “these things” that the verse refers to are fasting and praying. So don’t laugh too much during a prayer or when you’re fasting. Laughter is an odd call-out in that context.
Do you have no children, nibbler? I have plenty, and as such there have been many occasions during which laughter has needed to be suppressed during prayers. It would have been disrespectful not to.I recall an incident during my youth. Mid 1970s. I was on a ward youth camp a few hours from our stake. We attended the local unit for Sunday services. I’m gonna cut this super-short. I was so taken aback by the high-pitched voice of the huge, bear-like guy who knelt at the sacrament table and began the prayer on the bread that I began to shake with silent, suppressed laughter. Sadly, I had previously eaten my entire emergency ration of dried apricots without knowing they would give me chronic gas. So, I involuntarily passed wind quite loudly while still trying to suppress my laughter — at which point I almost lost control of all my bodily functions. I repeatedly passed wind with such force that the entire congregation joined in laughing in that shocked and appalled way one might do if a cadaver fell out of a coffin at a funeral.
The sacrament prayer was no time for loud laughter. I learnt that lesson.
At other times, however, I can’t get enough of it. I just steer clear of the dried apricots.
DarkJedi wrote:
Just curious what was amusing? One of the reasons I don’t care to go to the temple is I find it very boring and fairly irrelevant (once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it).
You’ve confused me, DarkJedi. In a previous post, you wrote “correct me if I’m wrong because I haven’t actually been to the temple,” but you subsequently wrote that you were endowed in 1983. A typo? Or perhaps you meant since everything changed almost beyond recognition.I took out my endowment in 1982 before heading to the mission field. If you went through the following year, you’ll remember the death threats. Oh, my! How uncomfortable those made me feel. I was already dealing with imposter syndrome over my suppressed same-sex attraction. The warnings about how my life would be taken served only to up the ante.
To answer your question, the endowment is now overflowing with myriad references to the Savior — reinforced by static images of various artistry (one of which made me actually chuckle because I thought the painting was hideous). It’s amusing because some of the references felt gratuitous to me. Like, seriously, how many can you get in there? We can make everything remind us of the Savior if we’re sufficiently creative. For example, “the lights in the endowment room remind us of the Savior because they help us to see more clearly. The chairs on which the patrons sit remind us of the Savior because they offer comfort and support.” It wasn’t quite that bad, but it wasn’t far off.
😈 DarkJedi wrote:
I do get the joke, and I think it’s funny. But correct me if I’m wrong because I haven’t actually been to the temple, but I recall reading that the loud laughter requirement was removed in the most recent set of changes.:thumbup:
I last went to the temple in February 2023 after Jesus was inserted everywhere. I think I was too amused to notice whether “loud laughter” had been taken out. I certainly don’t go in search of all the various subtle changes aimed at making everything more palatable. Either way, it has never stopped me from laughing explosively whenever an appopriate occasion arises. The louder, the better.😈
