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kotm wrote:

I guess you were lucky enough to not have gone through the trauma I have gone through in the church. So why would I seek help from within when that very institution is soely responsible for my truama?

I suspect I garbled my response. I was trying to say that it is ridiculous that someone should need to pay for therapy to resolve trauma experienced in a religious setting. The fact that religious settings can be associated with trauma reflects badly on the religion. Having to pay for treatment to address it makes it all the more abhorrent.

Let me try again; it is terrible that you should have experienced trauma in a religious setting — and even worse that you should subsequently have to hand over money to address it.

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AmyJ wrote:

That’s one of the reasons “Star Trek” is interesting to me. A feature of the show is learning about divinity in the different forms it is encountered throughout the universe.

Wait, what? Really? I think I stopped watching Star Trek in the 1970s. Perhaps it’s time I gave it another go. :thumbup:

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Roy wrote:

Life can be hard.

Thanks for the reminder. Let’s not forget my thread in which I asserted that it is impossible for certain individuals even to find peace as members of the Church let alone all the other garbage that spills onto our various individual paths.

Roy wrote:

Does that mean that it is meaningless? An emphatic no! Meaning making is what make believe and storytelling is all about and arguably a big part of what makes us human.

I believe you are human, Roy. You are decidedly un-botlike.

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PazamaManX wrote:

I’m not interested in a back and forth debate, and that would depart from the purpose of this forum anyway. But I am curious, why do you think it’s hilarious and absurd? I find it perfectly reasonable. Perhaps a better question for me to pose to you would be: what do you think awaits us in the next life?

Please accept my apology. I didn’t mean to trample on your hopes and dreams of what the afterlife might entail.

I believe that God and, hopefully, progression await us, and I suspect neither will look remotely like anything we can conceive with our childlike, mortal perspective. Some are convinced they will spend eternity lounging on clouds, playing harps. Others imagine they will be rewarded with eternal misogyny in which they gratify their insatiable sexual appetites with an unlimited supply of comely virgins.

As for me, I see little point in projecting my foolish shortsightedness onto a realm of which none can speak with authority until they get there. We may as well share our opinions on whether we will wear clothes in the afterlife; and, if so, who will make them — and out of what? 🙂

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PazamaManX wrote:

To reference a less than authoritative source, the book Life Everlasting by Duane S. Crowther mentions an NDE or two where people claimed to have seen food and dinner parties on the other side.

That’s hilarious.

When we project the best imaginable versions of ourselves onto God, we reveal more about our insecurities than we do the true nature of God.

The notion of post-Earth dinner parties is beyond absurd. I recently listened to a podcast in which it was suggested that the human brain releases dopamine among other things when death is imminent. Triggering this process prematurely could explain a bunch of NDEs.

It was Moses who said that we are created in God’s image, and we conclude that he meant it in the context of physical appearance. But did he? He also said that Adam was the first man, but that is patently implausible in a literal sense because there is abundant evidence that shows Adam’s “ancestors” were living tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands before any Adam figure might have been born. We apply literalism to everything that offers us warm, fuzzy feelings — and chuck out the rest. However, I suspect the truth is likely to be in the stuff we chucked out.

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Roy wrote:

I like to picture God embracing me and we cry together.

This will come across as harsh and cynical, but please rest assured that I’m smiling while writing it.

In my opinion, a crying god is the epitome of anthropomorphism. It is the attribution of Earth-based, human biological functions to a “supernatural” being and is simply a fantasy. Does God really have functioning lacrimal glands to produce tears? Loss of any such substance requires replenishment from somewhere. Does he have nails and hair that grow — and bowels that must be emptied every few hours? It is so far into absurd territory as to be utterly pointless to consider — let alone have strong opinions about.

Everything about humans and all life on Earth is a product of our physical environment and ultimately an expression of our planet’s geology and primary energy source (i.e., the sunlight that powers the food chain, the gravity that determines the size and structure of all life, and the minerals and chemistry that compose our flesh and bone) — yet we make God look and behave just like us. Why? It’s because doing so makes God relatable, which we find comforting.

I suspect God is nothing like we imagine. And if God should present himself to us in a vision, he’ll doubtless appear in a familiar format to avoid terrifying us. A god who cries is probably not dissimilar to a bedtime story in which a princess kisses the frog, which then turns into prince. And they all lived happily ever after.

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PazamaManX wrote:

But, I can also understand people who don’t want to believe that God allowed bad things to happen to them simply for character development. The thought that you’re a better person now in exchange for the tragedy you just suffered is hardly comfort.

Quite so. Stubbing a toe or burning a pie is one thing, but my maternal grandfather killed himself a week after my maternal grandmother died from illness — leaving my five-year-old mother and her seven-year-old brother orphaned. To me, the idea of character development is preposterous; it was simply misfortune. Were it not so, perhaps I should consider topping myself for the benefit of my children’s character development.

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AmyJ wrote:

I have come to the conclusion that what we say about God is a whole more more about what we want to hear being said/done than a fact-based observation.

I spent decades believing in a personal, loving God, who was entrenched in the minutiae of my life. Positive outcomes were the result of my being blessed for faithfulness — while bad results and suffering were God’s loving desire to test my spiritual resolve before opening the windows of heaven in his own good time.

In the past couple of decades, I have changed my mind. I believe God’s handiwork is found in the minutiae of all our lives in the form of this world and its function within a great plan. Beyond that, I suspect we are deliberately and necessarily abandoned to find our own way. If we can even begin to wrap our heads around the concept of eternity, there should be no need to nudge people in the right direction when they can learn so much more by discovering everything for themselves. Time is ultimately meaningless because there is neither beginning nor end. So, why the rush?

Many unfortunate experiences have introduced doubts in my mind — or maybe they have simply helped me to question gullibility, superstition-style belief, and priestcraft. Years ago, I was asked to give a priesthood blessing to the husband/father of one of my home teaching families before he underwent a routine operation. I blessed him with good health and reassured him that he’d be up and about in no time. Two days later, he unexpectedly died of sepsis.

My own father’s health reached the end of the line when he experienced organ failure, also due to sepsis. I lived over two hours away, and, while I was driving to where he was in hospital, his home teacher, the stake president, blessed him in his unconscious state that his passing would be quick and comfortable. And then the emergency-treatment team injected noradrenaline into his neck (my dad’s neck, not the stake president’s), and he recovered. Awkward.

I suspect we attribute far more to God’s engagement in our lives than we really ought.

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eni12 wrote:

welcome mate , I am also new here.. thanks for introduction. Navigating the intersection of faith, identity, and societal changes can be incredibly challenging, especially when it feels like you’re in a unique position or a camp of your own. I hope you find the peace and clarity you seek as you navigate this complex terrain:)

Welcome to you, too. It was beginning to feel like there were just six of us participating in the assorted threads on offer. I have pretty much thrashed the living daylights out of this particular topic in another thread — about whether those who identify as LGBTQ+ can truly feel at peace as active members of the Church. I concluded they cannot. More’s the pity.

In general terms, both clarity and peace have proven to be elusive. Under scrutiny, the official position of the Church in respect of gender and identity turns out to be disingenuous while the position of secular society is devoid of morality and faith. Both positions, in my view, are therefore wrong. However, making such a claim outside of the confines of my own mind means I am technically apostate as well as making me sound like one of those embarrassing people who publicly oppose sustainings in conferences. That’s not my style; I will quietly take my leave when Nelson pops his clogs.

Anyway, you must have arrived here for a reason; do please share.

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AmyJ wrote:

I have given this a lot of thought, and determined that not all “faith values” are created equal. Some of my values are ones like “academic honesty” that matter to me as well as my religious community. And not all “faith values” are actually values – they can be re-classified as “faith traditions” or “faith ways of doing things” such as temple attendance, etc.

Thank you, yes, “faith traditions” is a far better description in many cases.

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AmyJ wrote:

The “end goal” of parenting was to be able to “let go of the reins” – because they had enough information to make decisions. A sub goal is “what is the legacy I gave to my children” – and it sounds like you were expecting to see your values in a specific way being illustrated in their lives and the choices they make. I can’t help you determine any of that.

Sorry, yes, I wrote something stupid. Rather than letting go of the reins — which should eventually happen in every healthy parent-child relationship — I guess I meant letting go of our values; the parts of ourselves to which we attribute the greatest worth. For the most part, they concluded that our faith values were worthless to them. That’s got to be disappointing for any parent.

AmyJ wrote:

I had kept my wedding dress around for years hoping that it would bless my younger sisters and maybe my children but it was an item that was getting hauled places and taking up space in people’s lives. Eventually, I had to face either storing it forever, or recognizing that as a dress it was worthless to my siblings because of sizing and personal taste, and that it was worthless to my children because it wasn’t something they would cherish either. After a few months of analysis, I realized that I could be ok with that not being a part of the legacy I left for my siblings and children. I heard about and donated the dress to a hospital nonprofit to be cut up and used to sew baby clothes instead. To me, that became a better legacy.

My wife stored her wedding dress for over twenty years before burning it when she discovered it had turned an alarming shade of daffodil yellow. I hung on to my suit for 26 years before putting it in a charity collection — perfect for a nineties-themed fancy-dress event.

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AmyJ wrote:

If there is a purpose here to my rambling, it’s that you go about as the father of the blind man – doing your thing and caring for your family instead of being one of the judges on the side of the road. Maybe things are what they are in part to “make manifest the glory of God” – and maybe your load will be lighter if that is something that you look for and make as part of the family narrative.

I suspect no one has any answers that will ring true for all people in all situations. It seems that the constant shifting of social values (which remains beyond the control of any parent) turns child-rearing into a lottery.

I sacrificed myself at core-identity level to become a covenant-keeping husband and father. I believed my choices would count for something. Ultimately, they didn’t — or at least not for my children. I love them regardless, but loving and respecting them has meant letting go of the reins after nurturing them according to our set of values throughout their formative years.

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AmyJ wrote:

As for what your adult daughter is going through, I am curious whether it was “processing out loud” feelings about her relationship with you, or just processing/revising her experiences in the past that the church experience presented to her by you doesn’t work and she is figuring out “why” and “how” and “what she needs”.

My daughter isn’t yet a self-reliant adult; she’s in her mid-twenties and still relies heavily on us for practical guidance from her home in another part of the country. She went through the Church system without positive non-family role models because there were (and still are) relatively few members where we live, and there were no church contemporaries with whom she could relate. Instead, she was seduced by social media influencers and the liberties accessible to her educational peers. She kinda went through the motions until a year of trying to make it work in a YSA ward at university, when she weighed up the merits of what she concluded were “normality and freedom of self-expression” compared with the “frumpy, culty obedience” she associated with her church experience.

For a couple of decades, we had ring-fenced our family within the tenets of our faith, but my wife and I had to progressively dismantle that fence to avoid entirely losing the relationship with our daughter. Could we have done things differently to achieve a different outcome? Who can say? Everyone processes life in their own unique way. We provided a gospel-centric home, yet all but one of our children eventually said, “Yeah, no thanks.”

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Thank you for joining in, Roy. I have enjoyed peering into the minds of those who have responded. The comments are an illustration of the metaphorical group of blind individuals reaching out to touch an elephant and each concluding it is an entirely different beast.

Roy wrote:

Family I believe in families. I love the idea that family relationships continue forever.

Do you have kids, Roy? If so, how old? I have experienced fundamental shifts in immediate and extended family relationships over the years — altering my perceptions on “the family” and the significance of it. When my children were young, the dynamics were critically different from when one of my adult children recently confessed she had undergone therapy to try to undo the “religious programming” to which we subjected her in her childhood. I still love her, but it’s different now.

Roy wrote:

tithing Here is where my trouble with the blessings formula hits my overall frugality and becomes a perfect storm.

I pay tithing like taxes; I try to avoid giving it too much thought. Funny how PazamaManX experiences it in an entirely different way.

Roy wrote:

Exclusion I feel that many of the good things that maintain my faith have been weaponized.

Too true, buddy. The “gospel” is often wielded like a stick. Not quite like Islam, but I struggle to find God in some of what we do — and the way we do it. All too often, I see an American corporation driven run by a bunch of KPIs.

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Thank you, AmyJ and PazamaManX!

I loved what you wrote! You offered me a tiny, honest glimpse into how you view things without feeling obliged to focus on positives at the expense of negatives and vice versa. I found it a refreshing read. I hope there will be more.

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