[Joni]

Old-Timer wrote:

Not off the top of my head, but I will do some checking. However, the best source, in my opinion, is the pre-1990 temple endowment, in which it said explicitly that the portrayal of the creation of Adam and Eve was figurative.

I wish I was around for that. (I was endowed in 2000.) I’ve mentioned before, I have serious concerns with the way Eve is portrayed, although I haven’t seen the most recent video.

[Joni]

Roy wrote:

Joni wrote:

my personal favorite, the doozy about the old man who stood up in Sunday School and castigated a teacher who had dared to question the leadership of the Martin/Willie handcart companies.

Although unsubstantiated the old man story might have really happened (or at least be “based on a true story”). Many people respond to incredible adversity by doubling down on faith thinking that there was a grand design and purpose behind it all. Even if this incident did happen, he was wrong to claim that none of the party questioned the wisdom of the journey – some even later left the church. I don’t mind that these stories are told, I just wish that the alternate versions of these stories were also told.

When we tell these stories as proof that our church is divinely led then, I believe, we do a disservice to the listener.

Incidentally I recently saw a news program that was discussing movies that make the claim of being “based on a true story.”

One of the directors interviewed said that there is a diference between being factual and being true. “True” to him is to stick to the heart or meaning of the narrative even if many of the peripheral “facts” are altered.

My question about that story has always been: If someone (who?) had the foresight to write down every word of a fairly lengthy, yet apparently off-the-cuff Sunday School comment… why didn’t they jot down the name of the speaker?

The inclusion of the Old Man Handcart story and the Brigham Looks Like Joseph story in the Primary manual both seem to support the same point: that our leaders are infallible and must not be questioned. And I, well, question that. I don’t remember how I handled the JS/BY succession story but when I taught my Primary girls the handcart lesson, I skipped over all the glurge and the unattributed quotes. I did emphasize to them that handcarts were largely a desperation measure and I also mentioned that several times that dying of typhoid/cholera/childbirth was fairly par for the course in the 1840s/1850s and not necessarily a sign of the pioneers’ ‘specialness.’

[Joni]

nibbler wrote:

Interesting. E cigarettes came up in one of our coordination meetings a few weeks ago. Thanks for creating the thread.

It was just me and the missionaries in our meeting and our thoughts were – sure, why not? But we don’t have any authority to make policy so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.

I’m positive that part of it falls under the appearance of evil umbrella. …but then you have things like postum and o’douls and I don’t see any official prohibitions on those.

I remember a story about a GA of the church (I can’t remember who it was) going to a bar because of work obligations. He ordered milk to avoid the appearance of evil… Water, juice, OJ, soda? Someone might think it was alcohol and he was trying to maintain a standard. He didn’t want someone to see him and get the wrong impression so he ordered milk. No one would confuse milk.

Maybe e cigarettes fall into the same category with his MP.

They could be the perfect tool to help people quit smoking. I see them as a positive thing.

I feel like the ‘avoid the appearance of evil’ dictum tends to lead to Pharisaical thinking – you aren’t avoiding looking bad so much as you are avoiding other people’s judgement. The only judgement we should be worried about is the Lord’s. Also, I would never order milk in a bar because a) milk is gross and b) bars don’t really go through a lot of milk (do they?) so I’d worry that it’s well past its expiration date. Then again, I nearly had a heart attack when I went to buy O’Douls to try out an amazing soft pretzel recipe, because what if someone from my ward saw me?

[Joni]

Just wanted to add that this story is presented as truth in the Church History manual for senior primary. (I was recently released from teaching the 11-12 year old girls.) As is the Thomas Marsh cow story and, my personal favorite, the doozy about the old man who stood up in Sunday School and castigated a teacher who had dared to question the leadership of the Martin/Willie handcart companies.

[Joni]

zeppelinate wrote:

God is the GPS not the hand on the wheel.

I love this. Sometimes we forget that we are the ones behind the wheel.

Brian Johnston wrote:

God always answers prayers.

I also observe that God seems to “help” people the most who actively solve their own problems.

Praying is a great way to either connect with the divine for revelation and assistance, and a great way to calm your conscious mind so that it gets out of the way for you to figure out how to solve your problem. My view is that both at the same time are how God answers prayers.

I believe that God answers prayers but sometimes the answer to the prayer ‘Please get me home safely’ is a NO.

In any case, I suppose my daughter’s prayers, offered with the humility and sincerity of a very scared child (also I wanted her to focus on praying and NOT the torrent of swear words coming from my mouth.) WERE answered – we did get home safely. But her prayers weren’t answered in a way that makes for a good Friend magazine article or General Conference talk. I think that’s what frustrated me about the whole situation – my experiences growing up in the Church led me to the mindset that the Lord would enable me to drive my car safely home if I just prayed and had enough faith. I’m trying to get away from the “prayers = magic” model of thinking and I’m trying to shoo my children away from that model as well, even though that’s the party line aimed at Primary age children.

[Joni]

I don’t want to start an argument about the BYU subsidy (there was an interesting post about it last summer on BCC) but the one thing I have to say is, I don’t like the fact that if I choose not to subsidize BYU by not paying tithing, I’m giving up the opportunity to attend the temple. It’s different from taxes; quit paying taxes and you can go to jail, but it’s about what you do, not who you are. Quit paying tithing and the Lord literally looks at you and says, “You are not worthy to enter into My house.” At least, that is what we are taught.

I think we’ve really made a mess of things, the way we conflate tithing with worthiness. I think we should teach it as a temporal principle, period.

[Joni]

nibbler wrote:

I’ve got a signed David B. Haight rookie card. :angel:

**snort**

Quote:

Telling members to not ask for autographs or take pictures? I’ve never heard that before. I’ve got to admit that if I heard that counsel my first reaction would be: 😆 , who do these people think they are? But I’m reminded that the counsel isn’t coming from a place where leaders think a lot of themselves, rather they’ve probably experienced problems with membership elevating them to too high a position. They wouldn’t say it if they haven’t had problems with it.

I’ve heard this before. I’m trying to remember where I read it – maybe the CHI?

[Joni]

Roy wrote:

Just last week the lesson manual in SS talked about how the entire Relief Society Presidency in the time of Heber J. Grant decided to withdraw from a national women’s organization. They wrote out their reasons for their decision and submitted it to President Grant. President Grant chided them for not getting anything out of it saying, “What are you putting into it?” He then overruled their decision and that was that. I saw it as the women leadership acting in unison about a relatively small administrative decision affecting only their limited stewardship and STILL, they were denied.

I know the story you are talking about. It came up in a RS lesson a few years ago, and it made me want to throw things. And you really have to wonder what the committee in charge of that book was thinking by including that story. I don’t know a single woman who felt uplifted or edified by its inclusion. Rather, there were some displeased murmurs going around the back of the RS room where the rebels like me sit. 👿

Roy wrote:

I don’t think that President Hinckley or Grant were misogynistic. I just think that the system is set up so that men make all the big decisions…even for the women.

I agree – I don’t think President Monson is a jerk either. I don’t think my bishop is a jerk. And yet we have a system where, if I want to enter the house of the Lord and symbolically stand in His presence, I have to answer to a man I’m not married to about my underwear habits.

I suppose at the end of the day, the biggest reason I am frustrated is that I don’t feel like a full participant in the Plan of Salvation. I feel like the Lord didn’t create me to pilot my own vessel, but to be a passenger in my husband’s. The very few stories we get about women in the scriptures don’t do a lot to dispel that feeling.

[Joni]

Old-Timer wrote:

Quote:

“The woman you gave me, Lord, she made me do it.”

Joni, it’s really important to make sure we don’t quote things (anything) differently than they actually are worded and, in the process, change the meaning radically. The quote above is a great example of why.

The actual quote is:

Quote:

“The woman thou gavest me, and commanded that she should remain with me, she gave me of the fruit, and I did eat.”

Only in as far as it’s translated correctly. Those probably aren’t the words Adam actually spoke – we will never know what he actually said. However, Adam did make the decision to eat the fruit after his wife had done it, yet he had no problem shucking the blame off onto her when they were both called before the Lord.

Quote:

God made a woman as a “helpmeet” – which means someone who is suitable for someone else. Thus, Adam said to God, “You made the right woman for me.” Then he said, “You commanded us to stay together.” That was the first commandment God gave to Adam and Eve – to stay together. He then said, “I ate the fruit she gave me.”

In that order, the only meaning that makes sense is that Adam told God he was following the first, primary commandment in eating the fruit. He wasn’t saying, “She did it. It’s her fault.” He was saying:

Quote:

“Your primary commandment wasn’t to stay here with you, God, it was to stay with my wife. I’m choosing to stay with my wife, because she’s the most important thing in my life.”

Now, I see the whole story mythologically, so I take that message and believe it is a statement that staying with a spouse you love is part of “the Plan” and is more important than being by yourself with God. That puts a wife (and husband) in the position of being THE most important thing in a married person’s life – as “equal partners”, as the Proclamation to the World says.

I’m really uncomfortable with Eve being given to Adam. You give someone a loaf of bread or a book or maybe a goat, but not an actual, living, breathing human being with God-given agency. Eve being created as a helpmeet still puts her in the position of being created as a tool to help Adam achieve his eternal potential – not her own. In this case she was the tool for introducing sin into the world – so that Adam, the all-important male, wouldn’t have to get his hands dirty.

The Family Proclamation does state that spouses are equal partners, but the endowment ceremony suggests that we are not, and I tend to believe the temple as we are actually placed under covenant there. I do think it’s harder to understand if you are coming from the position of, well, being male.

[Joni]

Dax wrote:

I have wondered the same things. The temple in particular has been a source of pain for me. On darker days I agree with your outlook in total. On more hope filled days I remember that lds women actually have a better representation of Eve than most religions.

It bothers me that at no point in the temple video does anyone point out that it was right and good and necessary what Eve did. That if it wasn’t for her, mankind would never have progressed past infancy. Granted, the last time I went to the temple was just before they switched the video, so that may have changed. But I’m also thoroughly unimpressed with Adam’s response when God calls him out on the carpet for eating the fruit: “The woman you gave me, Lord, she made me do it.” Wow dude, way to hang your wife out to dry. I guess all that unity stuff we talk about between married couples doesn’t apply here.

And really? I know that we don’t believe in the original sin of Adam, but I feel like there is an original sin of Eve and it appliles to all women. That’s one possible explanation for why we women seem to be lesser in the Lord’s eyes. (On the other hand, I keep asking myself, why did He even bother to create us in the first place? He could have created an all-male world where the soecies reproduces asexually.)

Quote:

I hope with all my heart that God does not view women as simply support staff and that things will change within the church.I worry though about my daughter trying to live in two worlds. One in which she can be the CEO, the other in which she can’t even control the type or design of her underwear.

Good point about that. It certainly is a chilling future we present to our daughters. And I’m saying this as a woman who has no desire to hold the priesthood. But we’ve done a really bad job seprating the actual duties and responsibilities of the priesthood from what my father calls the “administrivia.” Controlling women’s underwear design isn’t mentioned anywhere in the D&C that I am aware of.

[Joni]

Old-Timer wrote:

Quote:

I’ve never been called up and informed that my temple recommend is expiring and would I like to meet with the bishop at X time next Sunday.

Just for a reference point, I have. It’s common practice in some wards and not in others. Personally, I don’t mind the reminder, since I want to have a current recommend. Others feel differently, and I’m totally cool with that.

Huh, I wonder if it’s a regional thing? I live in the midwestern US and haven’t gotten one of those calls in 13 years as an endowed member.

[Joni]

You know, I’ve thought about it some more and I’m not convinced that the early Saints were paying a 10% tithe on their gross. There wasn’t a federally mandated income tax in, say, 1878 but farming has an overhead cost just like everything else. Were they paying 10% on everything they earned or were they paying 10% after their land and their farming tools and their seed corn for next year was accounted for?

[Joni]

VikingCompass wrote:

Although it’s basically a drive-by interviewit is an interview and many Bishops and SPs believe it is an opportunity to have a one one one. .

True, but interviews with the bishop should be voluntary. I’ve never been called up and informed that my temple recommend is expiring and would I like to meet with the bishop at X time next Sunday. Tithing settlement ‘interviews’ seem to be more about administration than fulfilling a deep spiritual need for either the members or the bishop.

My TBM husband actually told the bishopric member (who was at our house on Saturday to give me a new calling) that we weren’t going to go out of our way to schedule a TS appointment. We’re in the process of renewing our temple recommends, plus the aforementioned visit on Saturday, so we have had plenty of one on one time with various PH leaders.

It’s not that I am even opposed to the idea of TS, per se. I wish it could be spread throughout the year like temple recommend interviews. I’m sure the bishop would prefer it too. We are no longer paying our tithes in chickens and wheat; is there a doctrinal basis for holding a bunch of one-on-one interviews during the already-busy Christmas season?

[Joni]

I wonder who the woman speaker will be.

[Joni]

Bds4206 wrote:

Just one mans perspective here. I’ve thought about the “increase” issue and I think it was morphed to 10% of your gross because frankly that’s the maximum that the church could turn that request into monetarily. Not to be the anti church guy but it’s pretty apparent that turning 10% increase into 10% of all of your income was done to maximize profit. No?

That’s always been my assumption.

Has there ever been an official statement saying that ten percent of gross is now official doctrine? Or is it one of those things that has taken on a life of its own? In all the talks I’ve heard on tithing, I’ve never heard a prophet or apostle lay out the method in which our contribution is to be calculated.

[Author]

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