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It’s hard to recommend specific episodes, because there are so many. They all blend together after a while. Plus I haven’t been able to listen to podcasts much for about a year now, because my commute is so short these days. In my heyday of listening to podcasts, I really enjoyed Mormon Matters the most. Because my faith crisis centered around ideas of faith, knowledge, uncertainty, and the existence of God, I tended to skip a lot of the episodes that focused on current events or cultural issues. I did listen to quite a few on historical and LGBT issues, because of a general interest and desire to know more. Just so you know what filter these recommendations are coming through.
My favorite guests on Mormon Matters are Patrick Mason, Boyd Peterson, Samuel M. Brown, and Adam Miller. This list reflects that.
227: “Living” Stories <-- possibly one of my favorite podcast episodes ever These episodes were recorded after Patrick Mason’s recent book Planted came out. I found them full of great information: 319: Is There Good News for Faith in Today’s Mormon Crises?—Part 2 317: Is There Good News for Faith in Today’s Mormon Crises?—Part 1 These four episodes each cover a chapter from Samuel M. Brown’s book First Principles and Ordinances. Adam Miller is a guest in each episode. Really amazing stuff here: 289: The Gift of the Holy Ghost 282: Baptism 263–264: Ordinances 261: Faith and Repentance Other great episodes: 277: Does Powerful Faith Require Scriptural Literalism? 274–275: Beyond Belief and Unbelief 257: Negotiating Adult Faith Within a Developing Institution 225: Wrestling with Prophets and Scripture 199: Untangling Faith, Belief, and the Expectation to “Know” 142–143: Process Theology and Mormonism 137–138: Science and Religion 102–103: Pragmatism, William James, and Mormon Sensibilities I would also recommend On Being by Krista Tippett. It’s full of really amazing stuff. Pretty much any episode is going to be great. Browse the list and see what sounds interesting.
I haven’t been on the site for a long time, so I may be missing some context here. But what about the manual for the class? I’ve been using it in my ward, and have found that there is plenty to say every Sunday. I’m not sure how effective it is—I don’t have any training or special insight, myself—but treating it as a council where everyone can share their ideas, with the questions from the manual as discussion prompts, seems to be working pretty well. I really like this analogy. To make it through boring or frustrating lessons at church, I often take a step back and play the role of an anthropologist, observing as a respectful outsider. It can really help. I agree, this is a great, safe place to mourn and explore unorthodox ideas and methods to stay connected to the church. It was a lifeline for me when I was in a dark place. I’m coming up on three years as part of the forum. Thank you for this. Like others, I always look forward to your posts. The way you identify God with Love is an inspiration to me. I have tried to make that idea work for myself without success, but seeing how you have reconstructed your faith has been inspirational to me nonetheless. I really identify with this statement: Quote:The reality is when we travel further down the road of life we can see the error of jumping from one paradigm of certainty to another. If we are open to the full range of truth that life can reveal we must acknowledge that everything comes from multiple ingredients. There is good and bad in everyone, pros and cons to everything. Any system of belief will have strengths and weaknesses.
And this:
Quote:I can look for and try to magnify the bad (and yes I do think we need to speak frankly in church about both the good and bad) in anything or anyone, but that action will mostly hurt me.
I hear and recognize the bad things in the church, but mostly my response is “Huh. That’s bad. I’ll try to watch out for and minimize that in the future, if I can.”
I’ve put this book on my Amazon wish list. It looks great. A quote from the blog post LookingHard linked to:
Quote:If we’re not careful, what we call truth is merely that which has been repeated often enough to make us feel comfortable.
This is why nearly everyone’s default worldview is the one we were born into.
The French writer Michel Montaigne noted this phenomenon as he visited different countries throughout Europe. People in each country seemed to believe without question that they had the truth and that their customs were the best in the world. Montaigne wrote, “There is always the perfect religion, there the perfect government, there the most exact and accomplished usage of all things.”
In other words, tradition blinds us with its comforts and familiarity. As the behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman once said, “Familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”
This idea is what instigated my own faith crisis. When I looked carefully at my beliefs, I couldn’t say whether I believed them due to cultural tradition or on their own merits. Prayers went unanswered, and everything broke down. I feel a great deal of compassion for those who still live in their cultural bubble. I can’t blame them one bit, and I can’t wish on them the popping of the bubble.
I tend to agree that God probably likes faith crises. I’ve come to believe that if God is both just and loving, then he must be less interested in what facts we discover or propositions we believe in—in fact, he probably doesn’t even care if we believe in him at all—but rather cares a lot about what ethical choices we make when confronted with hard or ambiguous problems. A crisis of faith is an amazing opportunity for us to show what we are really made of and hopefully grow stronger and more complete as a result. nibbler wrote:When it comes to speaking up I’ve often struggled with feelings of “why bother?” I’m just some idiot sitting in the corner of a meaningless class in a town no one has ever heard of (dust in the wind).
Minyan Man wrote:I will usually not speak up in class. I have to think about the subject or topic more than the time allows.
These two comments represent my situation pretty well most of the time. When I overcome the former, I confront the latter and end up not saying anything. I know I need to study and prepare more so that I can contribute in a positive way when I feel the need or desire to say something.
He has been interviewed on Mormon Matters several times in relation to his book “First Principles and Ordinances.” Definitely worth a listen if you want to get a feel for what he’s all about, or if you have more time for listening than reading. Daeruin wrote:The biggest obstacle to me is the temple recommend interview, specifically question #1. When I say I’m agnostic, I really do mean that I just don’t know whether God exists. I have no clue. Yeah, there are some things that seem to make a higher power more likely, but in the end we don’t actually understand all those things. People, including my wife, say that belief is a choice, but I don’t agree. I can’t just choose to believe something that does not actually seem probable. Such a “chosen” belief wouldn’t be genuine. Because there are just as many things that, to me, indicate there is no higher power. I really don’t believe it’s possible to know, and choosing one side or the other just seems like guessing.
nibbler wrote:I think when someone says “belief is a choice” we subconsciously provide a lot of context. When coming from an orthodox believer we might extend the phrase to mean, “belief is a choice, I made the right one, you’re making the wrong one, all you have to do is decide to believe what I believe and you’re good.” It becomes a binary set of choices. What if we stripped out the notion that there is a correct belief and an incorrect belief, does the phrase “belief is a choice” make more sense? Logic, plausibility, weighing something against lived experiences, feelings, etc. might all contribute towards making a choice as to whether
or notto believe something.
I agree for the most part, except I think that all those contributing factors (especially the “feelings” part) are the convincing force. After thinking about them all, it becomes obvious to you that one way of looking at it makes more sense than the other—in other words, you become convinced. I guess there can sometimes be a gray area where, after considering everything, you’re not sure one way or the other. That’s what Terryl Givens proposed in his Letter to a Doubter, pointing out that it’s those gray areas where our moral character really shines through, and that’s what God must surely be looking for (more so than knowledge of some fact, at least). But say you choose some particular belief when you’re not truly certain. I still don’t see it as actual belief. To me, to believe something means that you are convinced it’s true—belief implies certitude. Lacking certitude, a so-called “choice” to believe one way over another has more to do with what you WANT to be true, or what you think is ethically better, however you define that.hawkgrrrl wrote:Thanks for the update. I had one question – is your wife endowed? I often wonder why a woman would want to be sealed if she really understood the role of women in the temple. I know we are taught to want it without anyone really pointing out what it means, but I am curious. Maybe she hasn’t seen or listened to the sealing. It’s a very lopsided affair. I was pretty appalled by it when I got married, and I was very fully invested in the church.
I meant to reply to this earlier, but I ran out of time. My wife went through the temple a couple years after we got married. She still goes a few times a year. For whatever reason, she has never been bothered by the patriarchy in the church.Heber13 wrote:Do you think taking all your kids with you to the temple, and being sealed as a family, would be a more love-building and bonding family experience for everyone, that it may outweigh some of the doubts or concerns you have?
Just curious what you’ve thought about that. It sounds like baptism for your kids ended up being a positive thing. Would temple then logically follow that same path of what is good long term for the kids, even while not certain in your mind what you believe about temples?
I expect being sealed as family would be a good experience. I know it would make a lot of people happy—my wife, my kids, my parents, many extended family members, and so forth. I would love to make everyone happy that way.The biggest obstacle to me is the temple recommend interview, specifically question #1. When I say I’m agnostic, I really do mean that I just don’t know whether God exists. I have no clue. Yeah, there are some things that seem to make a higher power more likely, but in the end we don’t actually understand all those things. People, including my wife, say that belief is a choice, but I don’t agree. I can’t just choose to believe something that does not actually seem probable. Such a “chosen” belief wouldn’t be genuine. Because there are just as many things that, to me, indicate there is no higher power. I really don’t believe it’s possible to know, and choosing one side or the other just seems like guessing.
I think a big part of my problem is that I don’t feel the need for a god. Maybe if I lived in extreme poverty or pain, I would feel that need, but the fact is I live in immense privilege. Not that I’m rich or anything. I’m pretty solid middle class American. But compared to most of the world, my life is comfortable and pain-free. I don’t have a lot of angst about the afterlife. I don’t want to die, in fact I’m scared of it, but that’s a pretty normal fear of the unknown. It’s just that I don’t feel a great need to worry about stuff that I can’t know for certain.
Having said that, I think it would be pretty great if there were caring, powerful heavenly parents who would make everything right and shepherd us on to greater heights. I hope we have an older spiritual brother who will take away all the massive amounts of pain in the world. It’s just that I don’t personally have a specific longing for that. I guess I’m too much of a pragmatist that way. In the absence of knowledge, I don’t see the point in putting so much emotional energy in that basket. So I sometimes even have a hard time saying that I hope God exists. I mean, it would be great. It really would. I do hope God exists. But it’s a kind of abstract, distant hope. And feeling that way gives me this weird sense of shame, like I must be some kind of selfish, stupid jerk in order to be so apathetic about God.
At any rate, I’ve rambled enough about that. The point is, I would have a really hard time looking a Bishop straight in the eye and saying “Yes” when asked if I have faith in and a testimony of God. I don’t really want to do that without having a good personal reason for saying yes. I want going to the temple to really mean something to me personally, besides making a bunch of other people super happy. Maybe a few minutes of uncomfortable cognitive dissonance and ethical angst in a Bishop’s office would be worth all the joy it would bring to others. But I haven’t felt like I could do it.
I haven’t read the book, but I have listened to a series of podcasts from Mormon Matters about it. It sounded really great. Sam Brown, the author, is a little dry as a speaker, but he has amazing ideas and a poetic soul. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Quick update. I decided to turn the calling down. I had a hard time picking up the phone to make the call. It’s tough to let go of the guilt and the desire to not disappoint anyone. I finally made the call on my way to work. It was to the 2nd councillor in the bishopric who extended the calling. I told him that after talking to my wife and pondering everything, I had finally decided to say no because I felt like the timing wasn’t right. My fear was that he would then try to talk me into it or give me a guilt trip. He’s a very nice, fun guy but is known to be very orthodox. His actual response was that I wasn’t the first one to ever turn down a calling and not to worry about it. I told him I appreciated that, and asked him to keep my in mind for future openings. I felt a little awkward about the whole thing, but it turned out pretty positive and I feel good about the outcome. Thanks for all the good advice, everyone!
