Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Cadence wrote Quote:think you just do whatever works for you. I think on a journey like this you never know for sure where the path will take you.
Brian Johnston
Quote:Based on your post, it sounds to me like you aren’t quite done blasting away the dead wood and cracked foundations. It sounds like you are doing a lot to step back and evaluate things.
Cadence/Brian,
I think this is the most practical approach in my journey right now. I’ve had some time off from work and I was reading some old journals from my mission and years later when I was called to a bishopric. I was reading about all my doubts even back then.
It kind of dawned on me that I have always had these doubts about many things regarding the church. I was trying very hard though the years to put the square peg into the round hole as it were, blaming myself, wondering what was wrong with me because I was not getting the answer to prayers and so forth.
What I’m interested in now is just trying to be a good person, husband and father. I am not interested in replacing my mormonism with some other “-ism”. After 30 plus years I just want to step back and gain some perspective.
Maybe with time I will be interested in exploring something else or coming back. Right now it feels just fine staying away.
First of all thanks everyone for their input to my post. I honestly did not know about the term “middle way” before I made it the name of the topic. I’m just honestly too new to all this to even have known about it. I’m also not far along on my own personal journey either. I am still in the stage of shock/fear about coming to grips with something that I have been practicing most of my life and now seriously doubting just about everything in my life. Brian, I appreciate your words. You are right. I am stepping back and re-evaluating everything. The first step was to just stop attending meetings and accepting callings. The disaffection was just too great. For example, our HP group gets emails regarding the Sunday lessons. This Sunday’s lesson? – Chapter 12: An Enthusiastic Desire to Share the Gospel. I just can’t, won’t sit through this anymore. At best I would just sit there politely and at worst it would just build up anger inside of me, so why even bother to go? Anyway, that is where I am at.
I’m not ready to shut the door yet. There are just too many feelings about how much time I have put into the church. Of course there is also my wife and my family. I don’t want to cause them the sorrow and pain and I just don’t know right now how to even approach it. I have spoken with my wife about this and thankfully she is very supportive. I think she believes that I will come back after “my break”, but I know that things have changed for me. I really cannot ever go back to what I was before. I guess that is why I asked the question about “middle way” and if there was a way to be an unbeliever in a church that demands rigid compliance.
On own now – can I ask you what was the aftermath of you not attending the temple wedding? How has your relationship with your kids after that event? My wife brought up the subject to my son on a visit with him at BYU just to “float” it out there and he was very hurt by the idea of his father not being in attendance. The thought of him being hurt like this just about killed me.
Right now I just feel like I will do anything to not hurt my kids. I will answer “yes” to any of the questions, attend the temple and put on a happy face. My wife has suggested for me to hang on until after he is married and then decide (btw, he has no steady girlfriend yet).
Thanks again for all of your comments. I can just tell you right now that I am not in a happy place. If it wasn’t for my family I believe I could just walk away. I don’t want to remove my membership. I don’t feel hate or anger for the church. Maybe someday I can reach a place where some on this forum are – at peace with their mormonism. Right now I am far from it.
I just posted a new comment on this subject ( http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3291&p=41466#p41466 I appreciate everyone’s thoughts on this subject. Is there truly a middle way in the church? By that I mean all the posts about a middle way or individual way are just that – finding meaning on your own terms. I can accept that you can find a way to re-align yourself with mormonism but it seems that a re-alignment with the church is another story. There is no middle way in the church. You can’t talk about middle way approaches in SS or EQ meetings. Reactions to this kind approach is not going to get you very far in most LDS congregations. The demands that the church places on conformity are just too great.
I don’t see the church changing its approach in my lifetime. Brian, you mentioned that the tides in the church are changing on binary thinking… but are they really?
I don’t know really if there is a middle of the way within the church. Individually, yes.
Thanks. I didn’t realize there was another thread with the exact same topic. I just finished reading all of the posts and I will post there. Thanks for your comments here.
After reading the posts, I’d like to put my two cents if I can. In my TBM days I paid tithing with the belief that it was “building up the kingdom of God” on earth. The church would spend it in any way they saw fit to meet that broad goal.
I think the modern church today dances a difficult dance with tithing in a number of ways.
1. All tithing is centrally received in SLC and then doled out. I can understand the need to do this. Giving money out to local leadership to do as they see fit on some kind of percentage basis could easily get out of control. Can you imagine money coming in to a developing country branch? There could be all kind of corruption and mismanagement. I think the church has enough mismanagement with the current model.
2. On the other hand, the church has no checks & balances. The leadership decides where money goes for certain projects (new temples here, a new ward house there, renovation project in downtown SLC or even a game reserve with couple missionaries). The general membership has no say whatsoever as to how the money is spent. Maybe local leaders funnel requests up through area leaders and eventually get petitions to SLC, I don’t know. It seems to me that if I were a leader in a South American city in Bolivia, I would be saying to SLC is that the local member needs are, capital to start businesses, schools and medical clinics.
What comes first? The spiritual side of tithing or the temporal side? Didn’t Christ first feed the 5,000 before he preached to them? It seems odd that we have a beautiful temple somewhere in some poor city that has beautiful interiors and parking and the local people are working three jobs just to stay alive.
The church has gotten out of the non profitable ventures (schools & medical) to instead, invest in revenue producing ventures (expensive malls & condos).
I don’t mind the church staying out of debt and making smart financial decisions like a good business. As a church though, is the goal to have huge cash reserves or to help spiritual & temporal needs? It seems like the message from the church is…members tend to the spiritual side, in other words pay your tithing and don’t question, the church will tend to all the temporal decisions in a centrally planned way.
3. There is not much upside for the church going public with its finances (for the church anyway). If the church goes public, they leave themselves open to a lot of criticism from its enemies. Members see how much money is actually coming in & where it is going and maybe stop paying tithing. I have thought about this for a long time. For example, how much money actually goes to humanitarian aid? How much do GA get for a spending allowance?
If you are a believing member maybe it doesn’t matter. You might even give 20% if asked, who knows. To me, a person that is questioning all, the church going public would probably give me a reason to stop paying not keep on paying.
I think a Bishop should be a “spiritual advisor” on our individual journeys. However, I agree with your SD, most of the time they are too busy filling callings and being in meetings. SilentDawning Quote:SilentDawning=I agree with much of what you say, but I think we should expand our investment in making our programs and meetings truly good, rather than reducing the time invested in the auxiliaries.
What is the difference between a community cub pack and an LDS auxiliary program? They are both volunteers offering their time? Why can’t we (the local members) build programs that serve the needs we see our youth need? If the congregation felt the need to have a strong cub program, then concerned parents could get together, organize and have a program that they felt met their kids needs. It doesn’t happen because everyone has so many other obligations, callings, home teaching, temple trips, blah, blah to do.
I think we have so many obligations in the current church that people are just too tired. Look at what is expected of our youth. Early morning seminary, attend 3 hours of meetings, a once a month fireside and every Wednesday night activity. Why does it have to be every week? Can’t it be once a quarter?
All I’m saying is kind of like Christ said about the Sabbath, the church ought to be for the members not the members for the church. It is tough to have creative thinking in the church because who in their right mind would suggest another program. When my boys were young, they along with several other LDS boys joined a basketball league at another local church. It met their needs a lot better than a one day Stake basketball day with no refs. Their church leaders were the refs and coaches. The pastor at that church grew the program from a few teams to about 50 teams. It was run so well that it attracted a lot of youth every year. Before the games, the Pastor would share a short message. It was really cool and he did a lot of good.
Could our church do that? In theory we could. Missionaries/members could be coaches and games could run 2 or 3 times a week and it could even be a missionary program. A local ward could not do this in the modern church. There are just too many other obligations that get in the way. Even if it is what the youth need. It can’t happen because it would take up too much time and conflict with other programs. Plus who would really staff it? It would take a lot of focus on quality and it would be viewed as such a burden to do anyway. Instead we have church basketball. I won’t even comment on that.
I would say the modern LDS church is half voluntary worship and the other half obligatory worship. Over the last two years I have been attending about once a month. When I go, I have an attitude of worship. I no longer have a calling so I try to go with the right frame of mind of worshiping. What would our services be like if it was truly a voluntary organization with people giving of their time & talents to help because they wanted to help, not because they have a lesson to teach, a correlation meeting to attend and then a long list of other church expectations. Most likely, there would be huge attendance drops at church. Maybe the three packed wards meeting in one building would have to consolidate. The people showing up would be the people that really wanted to be there. The Bishop would say here is what we need…there are families that have children that want a primary program, these families are putting this together, if you want to help contact so and so. Who would like to speak next Sunday? Nobody, that’s cool, how about we all just sing hymns, take the sacrament and if there is no other business we can all go home.
We ask people that never speak in public, don’t like to do it, have nothing to say and ask them to speak. We give individuals a manual and a class of 15 year olds and say good luck, we know you will do greatA few things on my mind:
1. In other churches the chapel is the “holy place”. It is where you enter with reverence and meditate, pray and worship. I have seen well intentioned Bishops try to increase reverence by having a choir sing or someone play music. It usually only has a short term effect. The chapel is loud and noisy. It is kind of funny when you think about it that half the congregation is texting, sleeping or bored out of their minds. The chapels have no stained glass, no pictures or murals. No indication of the history. How can you feel like worshiping in a totally whitewashed room? I have been in some great cathedrals in Europe and the sense of reverence always blows me away.
2. Forget giving every ward member a job. Do we really need to give people more to do? What’s wrong with a simple organization of people that want to come and worship and then go home? Organizations are needed to serve the members not the other way around. Why do things have to be so correlated? The modern church does not really serve its members.
If you got rid of all the many callings and organizations, at first, I think half of the congregation would bolt realizing that “hey, I don’t really have to be here anymore!” Some of those would come back realizing that they have a spiritual need and want to get involved, ask how they can help, actually want to be there and help tailor programs that meet the need of the congregation.
3. Some have mentioned music. Maybe this is different in some other wards but in my last three wards, worship through music is a dead and buried concept. No wonder everyone looks forward to the Christmas Sacrament meetings, we sing hymns everyone wants to sing, people are there because they feel like worshiping and you can’t help but participate.
Of course, this kind of stuff is never going to happen. If there was ever a Bishop that tried to get rid of callings and organizations and do what he and the other local members felt they needed, he would be gone and replaced with someone that follows the program. As long as the LDS church runs things like a corporation and meetings are run like a business some people will go find spiritual nourishment elsewhere.
hawkgrrrl wrote:There is a fascinating post about an obscure BOM theory that is on Wheat & Tares:
http://www.wheatandtares.org/2011/10/04 … rt-1-of-4/
Thanks hawkgrrrl for the link. I have a latin/arabic heritage. My father spoke arabic and was a convert to the church. He was fascinated by the BOM so I’ve always enjoyed reading some of the parallels of the BOM to eastern cultures. Lehi’s travel through the arabian peninsula is particularly interesting. I am no expert but just a few of the interesting cultural points:
1. Lehi dwelt in a tent. Basically, Lehi was a bedouin. He was a man of wealth and probably familiar (or knew of) the ancient frankincense trail which made his travel through the desert possible. The descriptions of being directed to the more fertile parts of the land, where to hunt for food, not to use fire (perhaps due to the nomadic robbers in the area) and not cooking their meat. In the middle east you can eat meat that has been spiced and the blood removed. I think it is called “basterma”. Quite a think for JS to include in a narrative.
2. The burial place of Ismael at a place called Nahom. Arabic is an interpretive language and the vowels are interpreted and in arabic it could be called “nehhm, neahm, nehm” or other names. There is a place in arabia with a similar name and it is not too long of a stretch for a name like that.
3. Nephi talking about going in an south-southeastern route and then coming to a place called bountiful. The fact that there is a place similar in Oman with trees, dates, grapes, etc., is pretty amazing. The monsoon rains clip this particular part of arabia and make it quite fertile. If you live in the west, you know how when it rains, stuff seems to sprout everywhere. Just the fact that there is a place that fits bountiful in arabia is quite a coincidence.
5. An alternate theory on the “dark skin”. Nephi & Sam were faithful and Laman & Lemuel were not. They may have take “alien heathen” wives from that area. The arab wives would have been of a darker skin. Nephi accusation to his brothers of sexual immorality by marrying wives “outside of the covenant” would have made them upset enough to want to kill him. Nephi preaching to them about an atonement, on the other hand, probabably would have been ignored. This also could have accounted for why lamanites outnumbered nephites in the new land and why lamanites fell into disbelief so quickly (mother’s teaching their children arab believes vs Lehi’s teachings).
I have also read (some in Spanish/English) the writings of Cortez’s captains regarding the conquest of Mexico. What is interesting in this regard is that the Spanish priests that came with the conquistadores tried in vain to convert Montezuma. They were surprised that Montezuma had a knowledge of a garden with first parents and a flood. The tribes on the coast also believed that the land was settled by a people from the sea. Also, the priests destroyed thousands of records (they considered pagan). Who knows what they contained.
For me, JS making it all up would have to be one of the all time amazing coincidences. It seems unlikley JS spent time researching books from whatever limited sources he had availiable to construct a plausible narrative. I just think that life in the 1800’s for a family that was always trying to put food on the table would not give him that kind of time.
I think the BOM is amazing. Again, I’m left wondering/struggling about it’s origins. Where there actually some plates? Why don’t we have them now? Did JS translate or was it just amazing inspiration with a historical setting that he dictated. Maybe JS couldn’t what he was dictating himself at times … I mean ancient cities with roads, an economy and cities. That just wasn’t the going knowledge about indians at the time. Cortez descriped Tenochtitlan as rivaling any city he had seen in europe.
Hey… I figured out how to do quotes…. Brian Johnston wrote:In the end, I agree with many of the others so far: the message and meaning is greater than the science and history. It isn’t the same as The Lord of the Rings or other inspiring fiction because “scripture” to me is a special class of literature
My struggle is if we elevate the BOM to “scripture” (maybe define what scripture invidually means) then it is more than just inspirational lit or poetry. For me there seems to be a paradox here that I have been struggling with. I agree that JS had flaws and the whole story of the introduction of the BOM makes my head spin. But I understand that Muslims will accept Jesus as “one” of many prophets? How can you accept Jesus as a prophet and yet dismiss his message? I really struggle with ignoring its history but accepting it as scripture.
If you want to take the BOM as inspirational that leads you to Christ because you read it once and maybe twice just as one of many books in the library then that works for me. Calling it scripture and refering to it again and again as a guide for coming to Christ elevates it in my mind to another category.
cwald wrote:Oh, and btw —- I pick #2 and I just believe that Callister is WRONG.
Not much wiggle room from that talk was there? As he quoted…”that is the genius of the BOM, there is no middle ground. It is either the word of God as professed or it is a fraud”.hawkgrrrl wrote:I’m with Silent Dawning on this one. Although whether historical or not, it’s not very well written, IMO. Complex, yes. Good prose, no.
What did Mark Twain call it – chloroform in print? I have read the stuff from apolgists about Chiasmus in the BOM but I’ll admit I never researched it much. Is there still an honor’s class at BYU “BOM as literature”? Hawkgrrrl, you could probably take that home study
Brian, Very enjoyable podcast, gave me a lot to think about. I enjoyed all the different points of view.
:clap: Once I had an older member tell me “you know the opening song sets the tone for the meeting, a slow, funeral paced song will almost ensure a dead meeting.” First of all in most of the wards I have been in the hymns are sung like everyone is singing at a funeral. It is one of the things investigators note about our music – dull and not sung as if worshiping. I’m speaking collectively because I truly think there are many that come just to worship through music. I remember growing up we had a chorister that was a converted southern baptist. She would have the congregation singing & feeling the music. There was a time or two when she would actually stop the hymn and would go to the podium and remind everyone that we can do much better and tell everyone we are going to “take it from the top.” I remember really getting into it as a teenager feeling like I was really worshiping through the music.
Secondly, in the wards I have been in the meeting usually starts with two youth speakers. Since the youth are just learning how to speak the rule is that they are probably not going to be very good. It used to be that youth speakers would speak in primary and learn how to give talks there. I always thought this was a great thing the church did in teaching youth how to speak in front of people, a task that usually ranks up there as one of the greatest fears people have. Also, I remember growing up that it was a rare thing when a youth was asked to speak. It wasn’t a requirement to give two talks a year, etc.
Just as a side note, I don’t know if good speakers can get better through practice. HC speaker do it once a month and I don’t know about you but sometimes I prefer the youth speaker…
So, you basically start the meeting with a slow hymn and two youth speakers. The congregation if not already sedated is snoozing or checking out stuff on their cell phones. Just for entertainment sometimes I’ll just look around and see what people are doing during boring parts of the meeting and this is what I see. Of course there are some people that are listening. I have to admit I kind of have to wonder if everyone on the stand is feeling this while appearing to be listening intensely to the speaker.
From the other perspective the church is a lay group of people that are not trained to be speakers, teachers or administrators. I mean people that teach for a living are boring. When was the last time you attended a class (not church) where the teacher was amazing? All you have to do is think about high school or college and you can probably come up with a pretty good list of some really boring teachers.
I think sacrament should be about 35 minutes long. A strong opening song, conduct the ward business, a 10 minute talk or two 5 minute messages, then maybe switch the sacrament to the end as the culmination of the meeting. Of course I don’t think in this day and age we should be attending church for 3 hours so for me, you can basically cut out SS and PH and RS can be 1 hour. Sunday meetings now are 1 1/2 hour long.
Of course never will happen… I won’t rant about SS and GD at the risk of being redundant in another post. If no one has seen it in my other post there is a pretty good three part series on SS and GD.
Part One –
http://bycommonconsent.com/2010/01/05/e … ay-school/Part Two –
http://bycommonconsent.com/2010/01/06/e … er-weaker/Part Three –
http://bycommonconsent.com/2010/01/07/e … r-for-you/Roy, Thanks for the link of your talk. To me this is what a talk should be. You approached the subject from a personal standpoint, brought in a few scriptures & quote to support your talk and it was your talk not a verbal sedative. As Doug posted earlier so many talks are talks about talks or what a Prophet has said sometime. As I mentioned before, I think like testimonies, talks in church are a learned behavior. Is there somewhere where the membership of the church needs to follow certain guidelines in talks? If so can someone enlighten me? Has this just become a practice over time? Where are the LeGrand Richards and Mathew Cowleys? I am dating myself, I never really personally listened to Mathew Cowley except on a recording but I did hear LeGrand Richards just before he died. These GA’s gave great talks and were unique. Another example is Neal A. Maxwell.
It seems that now they almost all the GA’s are the same, same approach and almost same style. Maybe this is where it comes from? I have been reading a three part series on the commonconsent web site called “everything that is wrong with LDS gospel teaching. Very informative. I will post the links to all three parts for those interested. In the articles many talk about how bland it almost has become.
Roy, Thanks for the Sunstone link. Very helpful. The statement in the article
“…our bearing of testimonies is as much a structured ritual as the high Catholic mass with
all its pomp and circumstance. It is also a ritual like that of Andeans who ceremonily combine pieces of sugar, stone, and llama wool in interesting ways and then burn them as an
offering…”
I know about the Andeans and the practice of offerings to nature and I have attended several Catholic masses. In this context the ritual comes before the substance (if any permitted).
LDS meetings themselves tend to be ritualistic, I mean how do you fill a 3 hour block, youth firesides, seminary, activity night, and on and on and not get so redundant that you feel brain dead. Especially when it is socially unacceptable to talk about anything but conference talks, scriptures and JS.
The phraseology used by church members to me is a learned behavior. Say you are a convert and you attend your first few F/T meetings. You have a strong desire to express your faith and so you naturally watch others give their testimonies and you start picking up the phrases. The youth do it also. Even though you occasionally hear Bishops or an occasional conference talk about what is a testimony, the pattern continues.
I have heard adults give several “I know the church is true and JS was a prophet…” and to me it is just noise since you hear it over and over. Soon after they might actually begin to share their actual testimony of some aspect of the gospel. I have also heard kids give very inspiring testimonies that they love their parents, appreciate learning how to pray, love their primary teacher and so on. Those are really great too. Of course I have cringed when parents whisper into their kids’ ears the words.
I’ll throw out another practice that has become pretty ritualistic (at least in my ward) and that is giving talks. Usually the template is “I have been asked to give a talk on…” And then in random order, quotes from JS, BOM and General Conference talks. Many times the speaker will rarely mention the bible. I mean how many times have you hear about Paul’s missionary experiences. If the topic is missionary work, then much of the time you will hear examples from the BOM (Ammon being a favorite example). If a speaker deviates from the template and talks about a recent book they read or quotes a famous non-LDS poet it usually is not the norm. Can you imagine if someone quoted from Bushman or from In Sacred Lonliness? I think this is also a learned behavior also. Someone is asked to give a talk in a few weeks. They are worried about what to say. They listen to others give talks and model the behavior. I’ll start with quoting something out of the Ensign, then see what I can pull from conference, maybe then see what one of the prophets have said. There is my talk! To play it even safer I will read it.
I’m probably sounding a bit cynical but these things are bugging me so much more than before. Recently a member gave a talk about his experience in Vietnam and being a POW and how hope and faith kept him alive, how other fellow POW’s showed simple Christ-like acts to each other, they prayed their hearts out, were not miraculously saved but developed faith and strength in so many ways. It was so non-standard that I almost stood up and applauded!
Thanks all for the helpful words. I know there is no cookie cutter approach to this. I read somewhere that after you go through a crisis of faith you can never look at the church the same was as before. This seems to be a theme throughout the many posts I’ve read. Over the weekend I was talking to a TBM friend. We were talking about tithing and how the church uses the money on different things. I made the comment to her that the church does not publicly disclose its finances. As members we hope/have faith that the monies are used wisely but like any large organizations I was sure that there are individual cases where the funds are not.
She became quite defensive asking me how I could think that way and did I know of examples where the money was not used appropriately. I told her it didn’t matter if I had examples or not. We as a membership take it on faith that the money is used in correct ways. How can you know if there is no public disclosure? The church has a right to keep it finances private but how does an individual member know for sure on things like, how much do GA get paid, what are the expenses of an individual mission, interest on different accounts and so on?
We went round and round for a bit and finally, I just smiled and thought this was me 10 years ago. I would have defended doubting questions with absolute answers. It is so much easier isn’t it? How inconvenient to have a crisis of faith! It is so much easier to just believe and go on with life letting thorny issues roll off like water off a duck. I wish I could do that but unfortunately for me the elephant is in the room.
So, wherever I end up on this journey I know that I will never look at it the same way. Re-thinking my beliefs will probably have to be done slowly and maybe even one at time. As I mentioned before, many of you seem to have nice list already established and checked off.
Wish me luck!
