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al Masijh says something I really liked in the show, and I looked it up. It’s a C.S. Lewis quote: Quote:“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth.”
Christians have been predicting the second coming is imminent for two thousand years. Barely had Jesus left the room when they started seeing signs of his return. In my teen years it was the Cold War. We expected the USSR would hit the button and there would be a nuclear winter, and that would usher in the second coming (the earth being cleansed by fire was the nuclear bombing). Thing is, when you start looking for signs, they can go either way. When Moroni’s trumpet fell, people took that as a sign:
1) that the church was no longer the mouthpiece of God (e.g. has lost its way, become apostate)
2) that people need to listen more to the prophets (e.g. Moroni “dropped the mic”)
People said that an earthquake in Utah was just out of the blue and unexpected, but when I was a BYU student in the early 90s, my geology class did a field trip to SLC, and our professor pointed out the fault line along the Wasatch front that was teeming with million dollar homes and said, “You see all those mansions? They are built right on a fault line, and it’s only a matter of time before an earthquake hits.”
Humans find signs in anything, but as any corner advertiser will tell you, a sign can be flipped every which way. Here are some things I wondered about Covid 19 being a sign:
– God is cleansing the earth of those who voted for Trump (disproportionately old people)
– God is breaking down generational and partisan divisions (turning the hearts of the children to their elders to save them)
– God is breaking people’s attachments to their human churches by preventing group gatherings
– God is showing us problems we need to fix as a society or perish: global warming due to carbon footprints and pollution, health care system gaps, homelessness, inequalities of wealth, anti-science views, holding on to outdated views, unwillingness to change and adopt new technologies, materialism.
But I know plenty of people who see this as a sign that we are the chosen people because we have food storage and in-home priesthood for families and a home study church program.
I really liked it! Glad some of you have also seen it. I was surprised at Dermott Mulroney being a Mormon POTUS, but he seemed to hit some of the right tones. I love the thought experiment of trying to figure out if he’s divine. When he does a miracle, it still feels like a trick. Is he for real or just manipulating everyone? Is he really wise or just enigmatic?
SPOILER ALERT!!!!
The Texas preacher storyline was really intriguing to me and said conflicting, problematic things about religion. He was an unlikely choice for the Messiah to work with since he was on the verge of committing insurance fraud due to his own financial failures. He was quick to follow, but quick to doubt when it stopped being all about him. He just assumed he was chosen to be special to the messiah (and he attempted to use his connection to the Messiah to turn a profit for his televangelist FIL). When he found out that his wayward daughter had an abortion he saw her as standing in his way to be special and singled out by the messiah, and his ego was deflated by the suggestion that his daughter was actually the chosen one. He couldn’t believe that she was any good now that she violated his views on abortion. I think he’s going to end up a Judas figure later in the series. He’s definitely captured the hypocrisy, self-aggrandizement, patriarchy, conservatism, moral ambiguity, self-righteousness, and aimless leadership of modern Christianity.
SamBee wrote:
hawkgrrrl wrote:
To put it in a simpler way, I don’t need a man to explain to me what it’s like to be a woman, and every time they try, they demonstrate their utter failure to comprehend what they are talking about.
It cuts both ways. I keep on being told what it’s like to be a man by women. Not a clue either.
Fair enough, but in the LDS church 99% of the speakers in GC are men, and men run the women’s organization. I’m not aware of any speaking or leadership platform in the church that puts men under women or gives women a microphone and tells them they should opine about the role of men.
To put it in a simpler way, I don’t need a man to explain to me what it’s like to be a woman, and every time they try, they demonstrate their utter failure to comprehend what they are talking about. I confess two things: 1) I didn’t read all the comments that came before, and 2) today it occurred to me that I’ve been off the grid mostly (due to some health issues), but I didn’t mean to totally disappear. I’m back! On this topic, I have a lot of things to say, so here goes:
1) I remember the Church’s insolvent days in the 70s, although I was a kid then, but the Church was definitely not in the same position it is now, and some of that change is certainly laudable. Let’s start with that in mind. These aren’t the Kirtland Bankers at the helm. This is some savvy management.
2) Some of that turnaround was dependent on strong-arm tactics that didn’t exist back in the day: making tithing a requirement (through the TR recommend) to be in good standing and to be eligible for callings, BYU attendance, working for the Church, and so forth; focusing on paying on gross vs. net (or better yet “surplus” like it says in the D&C); requiring those receiving welfare assistance to also pay full tithing despite the fact that it’s not what the D&C says and it’s a regressive tax; placing greater limits (e.g. time limits, bureaucracy) on welfare assistance; reducing ward budgets to extreme levels (although in the 70s, these were through direct member donations, not from Church HQ) by relying on un-reimbursed member labor and goods & services that are unreported (this includes things like youth trips members just pay for, food for parties that aren’t reimbursed, and janitorial work performed by members).
3) It isn’t that easy to spend $100B well on charitable endeavors. It takes planning and about $10B just to make it happen. I get that.
4) Given the mentality, I don’t trust the Church to make great decisions about how to spend that money, if at all. The statement that they are hoarding it for the second coming sounds utterly ludicrous to me (here, Jesus, we all chipped in and got you this gift card for $100B). Will the financial systems not collapse in this theoretical future? Will we actually need $100B then? What exactly is supposed to be the point of having a huge wad of cash vs. doing charitable works in anticipation? It sounds fine if you want to get the govt off your back to say that (because it’s a religious defense and therefore unassailable, but those of us in this religion have never heard that stockpiling money is a requirement to prepare for the second coming!)
Maybe we are stuck in a corporate mindset. Corporations are people, my friend, as Mitt Romney said, but what he didn’t say is that if corporations are people, those people are psychopaths because their only motive is to increase how much money they make. That’s the measure of success, not the good they do in the world.
But I think it’s more likely that we are in the mindset of people who survived the depression. Now that we have money, we can’t help but wash and reuse our tin foil “just in case.” It’s nearly impossible to get people in this frame of mind to realize that they probably went too far to get where they are. We should create a way to really pay your tithing on surplus (after living expenses) using a form people can fill out to assess their extra. That would eliminate it being a regressive tax on the poor. We should also find a way to quit blackmailing Church members who don’t have a TR, to find a way to actually let people be in the Church without one, even while encouraging them to have one. Can’t we make the temple a carrot rather than a stick? By doing it the way we do it, we aren’t creating moral reasons to comply. We are just forcing people’s hand.
First reaction is that I’ve never heard of this idea that the parents go the temple the first time with their kids. Really, I haven’t heard of it. I’ve raised 3 kids in the church, and this was never an expectation. I’ve literally never been to the temple with my kids when they’ve done youth temple trips, and they all did them. Second reaction is mostly what the others are saying. I wouldn’t worry about what to say in these situations. She’s just making small talk, and assuming your like-mindedness. I just gloss over things people say that are like this. I’m not looking for confidantes, and if I were, this isn’t the person I’d start with.
Before our ward split, we had a GD teacher ask the class whether the Church believed marriage was egalitarian or complementarian. The class mostly agreed that the Church was egalitarian. Honestly, I think my current ward (mostly older folks) wouldn’t bat an eye about claiming it’s complementarian. Which is (to me) gross. Separate but equal is not equal. But I do actually think my former ward is correct about this. It absolutely used to be complementarian, not even that long ago, but I believe we’ve passed a tipping point.
I’m with Tica. I still don’t feel women are seen and taken seriously. Thanks for the crumbs and afterthoughts. It’s hard to be patient with the old attitudes about women. They are very very slow to change, and I’m in middle age already. I’ve been putting up with it for a long time. I was also reminded after this announcement that I did in fact witness baptisms on my mission, something I would never have considered I wasn’t allowed to do (and neither did the district leader who reminded me of it). So, he was “ahead of his time” in doing something that seemed common sense and logical. The idea that women couldn’t witness was a foreign concept to us in our 20s. I only became aware women couldn’t do that after I returned and as an adult saw women routinely barred from it, like we aren’t credible adults just like men are.
And children witnessing? I’m iffy on the maturity of most 8 year olds to even understand their baptismal covenants, so yeah, I’m not 100% convinced by this one.
This is very unfortunate. We are losing young people in record numbers, and teens (at least outside of Utah) all know kids who are non-binary. I feel like Oaks (and probably some others) are, like Trump, getting their information from Fox & Friends, catered to their own specific brand of prejudices, and they will do whatever they have to do to simplify the complicated world in which we live. All women are feminine, nurturing and fertile, all men are masculine, provide & preside, and there’s no further discussion. If this doesn’t match your lived experience, please go away so we can continue to pretend this is all there is, just as God ordained. That’s not compassionate, realistic, wise, or helpful. And it really has very little to do with the actual gospel. It’s very off message from what Christ actually talked about. Are we so perfect that we have to take this on next? We’ve eradicated interpersonal conflict, pride, selfishness, and dishonesty, and now we have to erase trans and intersex people and force all men and women into a mold? We’ve got a real issue with hobby-horse leadership, and I suppose we always have, but it undermines rather than bolsters their authority.
The other thing is that this makes us “matter over minds” people. I don’t think he’s thought this through on that level, but rather than teaching people to rely on their inner spiritual guide (including who they perceive they are), what other people think of their genitals is the only deciding factor. The Lord looketh on the heart, but when a doctor sees an infant’s androgynous genitalia and makes a decision, apparently that overrides one’s internal guide. That’s consistent(ly off-track) with the message to override your own feelings if they contradict what Church leaders say, but it’s not healthy mentally or spiritually. This is very unwise.
Felixfabulous: I was thinking about this problem we progressives have with these changes, and I think it’s really the manner in which the announcements are made and received. Nobody’s giving a grown man a treat for pooping in the potty, but I feel like that’s what’s expected here. Here’s a better alternative. How about having a sense of context and proportion and some sense of humor. “We really couldn’t imagine any reason other than tradition that women were not included as witnesses. Unfortunately, in times past, these types of gender role distinctions often went unchallenged. There’s no doctrinal reason for it, and we are correcting it as a result.”
But instead, we are throwing children in with grown women as witnesses to baptisms (implying that women & children are one category yet again), and leaders make it out like this is the most wonderful momentous progress ever, which it really isn’t, and the membership is going to be all smuggity smug, “Those feminists will never be satisfied, even when Church leaders are doing what they ask for! Those pants-wearing man-haters should all be burned at the stake!”
I’m not even remotely ecstatic about this as it points out just how ridiculous it was that it took us to 2019 to get there. Ardis did a great post in 2017 on the history of women as witnesses: http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2017/12/16/women-as-temple-witnesses-in-living-memory-what-i-know-and-what-i-dont-know/ Also, how am I supposed to be jazzed about being lumped in yet again with children? That’s where this gender essentialist garbage leads to: women are in the same category as children. Only men are full people.
First, there are nearly 30K students at BYU. Don’t mistake a vocal minority for a majority. The older I get, the more I find that nobody is really like the thing I thought Mormons were like. There’s a thing called Asymmetrical Insight at play in which we think we are complex and nuanced, but others are simple and straightforward. You believe that what you see and perceive about them is even more insightful than they are about themselves! But they think the same thing about you. Another factor is something called Pluralistic Ignorance: the erroneous belief that the majority is acting in a way that matches its internal philosophies, and that you are one of a small minority who feel differently. In reality, the majority probably agree with you, but they don’t violate group norms by saying so. They don’t want to reveal their “otherness.” It’s like the story of the emperor’s new clothes. Nobody wants to go out on a limb to reveal that they don’t really agree with the group’s norms internally, that their values might differ. One place you can go to find more vocal dissent from norms at BYU is to join BYU democrats. I would recommend this, even if you aren’t a democrat. It’s just a quick way to find some others who don’t agree 100% with the voice you often hear at the school. You’ll find people in that group who express *some* views that are less popular or less frequently heard anyway. There are other groups like that. There used to be feminist groups, an LGBT and ally group, and some others. When I attended there (eons ago), the writers of the Student Review were one such group (many of whom ended up in the bloggernacle eventually). Another place to find people who reveal more unique opinions is to hang out one of the humanities or arts buildings.
I was reading about these effects in a book called You Are Now Less Dumb. You might enjoy it (same author who wrote You Are Not So Smart). From the book:
Quote:you have no idea whether the norms in your culture, subculture, era, or group of friends are real or imagined.
Quote:Pluralistic ignorance keeps people on the fringe, the sort of people who will be phased out by progress, clinging to their outdated beliefs for longer than they should. It keeps their opponents feeling less supported than they truly are while keeping people in the middle favoring the status quo.
When my son was at BYU-I, he was very upset by some students who made anti-LGBT comments. He said everyone agreed with them. I asked how he knew everyone agreed. He said they hadn’t said anything against the comments. I pointed out that he hadn’t either, so others probably also thought he agreed with the comments. That’s how pluralistic ignorance works.
