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Old-Timer wrote:
I want understanding to change.
We all complain about understanding not changing.
We ought not complain when understanding changes in ways that we see as better than the past.
This change in understanding is a good thing.
I agree with this. I guess what irks me is that when understanding changes, we don’t (as a Church) own it, and move past it. We create a bunch of weird mental hoops that people have to jump through to try to resolve old with new. Of course that’s not always the case, but seems par for the course.
In regards to polygamy, we have to remember that it’s still possible for a man to be sealed to two living women. You simply get a ‘clearance’. The church defines sexual purity as ‘sexual relations with those to whom you are legally and lawfully wedded’ – so they’re using the legal system to regulate conjugal polygamy. So, when the laws eventually change to legalize polygamy, the Church will be in a very strange stance indeed, because all I have to do is get a temple marriage, legally divorce wife 1, legally marry wife 2, get a clearance to be sealed to wife 2, then legally remarry wife 1. Full earthly polygamy that spiritually sanctioned by the Church!
The church’s own policies don’t enforce their own definition of traditional marriage!
I vote we get rid of polygamy altogether. Grandfather people in, and then prevent clearances for divorced or widowed men.
Sorry, this topic gets me a little heated [emoji56] In my opinion, the church leaders skirted around the issue by implementing the Husband Upgrade Policy, which stated that:
– a woman could leave her husband and marry someone higher in the priesthood without any consequence or question
– a woman could leave an apostate or disbelieving husband without any consequence
To a more suspicious mind, this seems a lot like a ploy by those in power to allow them to have their pick of women in the community without consequence.
And I don’t blame women for going along. If you’re living a miserable frontier existence and suddenly you have the opportunity to move into the Lion House and be a wife of Brigham Young… That’s like winning the Mormon lottery.
The more I learned about polygamy the more I realized that there was little chance it actually came from God. And I found that rejecting it as a principle actually brought a ton of peace and power to my church membership.
But then again, I’m just a lowly Elder, so of course I would hate the Wife Upgrade Policy.
To each his own…
Sorry, one more thought about Zina. When she was resealed to Joseph and then sealed to Brigham for time, her husband stood in the room the whole time and watched it. Was he ever sealed to her? Nope. And he was submissive the whole time, even though he was devastatingly heartbroken.
Brian Hales wrote:
I have insisted and continue insist that there is no polyandrous sexuality (one woman having sexual relations with two husbands). D&C 132:41-42 and 61-63 describe three polyandrous relationships and label them all adultery, in two cases saying the woman would be destroyed. I believe it is a blanket condemnation of sexual polyandry. There is evidence that this has always been the case in the Church. References to polyandry are few, but when asked in 1852, “What do you think of a woman having more husbands than one?” Brigham Young answered, “This is not known to the law.”A quote he made while married to another man’s wife, having fathered a child with her only 2 years earlier, whose children (the original husbands) were living in his house as his own.
Zina Huntington (Jacobs) Young
1841: Married Henry Jacobs
1841: Sealed to Joseph Smith
1845: (After Joseph’s death) Becomes pregnant with Henry Jacob’s son
1846: (Still married to Henry & still pregnant) Resealed to Joseph Smith
1846: (Still married to Henry & still pregnant) Sealed ‘for time’ to Brigham Young (sealed for time = sex)
1846: Brigham Young calls Henry on a mission to England
1846-1847: Zina moves in with Brigham Young (still married to Henry)
1850: Zina has a child with Brigham Young (still married to Henry)
:thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown: nibbler wrote:I wasn’t very clear. In that second question I was essentially asking “What if the concept of god is nothing more than a placebo?”
Ah, I see. And I could improve my reading skills.
DarkJedi wrote:
Do you have evidence that Joseph thought Catholicism was the great and abominable? That’s a new idea to me, from what I have read of him he didn’t seem to mention Catholicism.No evidence, but I subscribe to the theory that for most things in the Book of Mormon, the simplest answer for its existence is simply to look at what life was like being a Smith in the northeastern United States.
That said, anti-Catholicism is hardly something new, or unique to the early 1800s, so it could definitely be something else.
IMO, The Great and Abominable Church was always intendedto be the Catholic Church by Joseph. Everything since has been backpedaling and repositioning in response to changing social norms. Anti-Catholic (and anti-immigrant) sentiment was starting to heat up in the early 1800s due to a large influx of Irish Catholic immigrants. An entire political movement sprung up in response (nativism). It’s inclusion in the Book of Mormon in 1829 would have meshed perfectly with the politics and social climate of the day in the northeastern United States.
Obviously we won’t make many friends by talking about the Catholic Church that way… I tell people it’s Scientology.
My personal experience is that being secretive causes massive trust problems. You’re already going to have trust problems because your spouse doesn’t know where you’ll “end up”. Don’t make it worse by being sneaky. I think “go slow” is more about keeping your mouth shut if you don’t have anything nice to say, and finding other things to talk about. Appreciate that your spouse needs time to adjust to the new you… which in most cases is simply that they realize, by watching your actions, that you are exactly the same person.
azguy wrote:I would talk to my wife about it, but she was the source of the pain to begin with, so that’s a non-starter. Today just really sucks. It sucks a lot actually.
I don’t know your backstory, but it sounds like your wife left the church first and then started you on your reluctant faith journey… As someone in the opposite position, I have a couple thoughts/questions.
At first, I really wanted my wife to see things the way I did, so we could face it together. But over time, I realized that she very well might en up a very miserable soul without the gospel. I could picture her in a similar place as you and as much as I’d like her to agree with me, it wouldn’t be worth the cost.
Questions:
Is there a way your spouse could’ve handled things where it wouldn’t have affected your faith… so you could continue in the Church, but she left? How so?
Why can’t you talk to her about it? She probably understands the pain of leaving as much as anyone. Sometimes I’m frustrated because my wife thinks that leaving the Church has been hunky-dory for me; she can’t see how big of a struggle it’s been to put my life back together. I’m just wondering if you’re projecting the same onto your spouse.
Either way, I’m really sorry. I’ve been on the emotional roller coaster for a while, and it’s freaking HARD.
There’s a big difference between skepticism and cynicism, IMO. This is a very painful point for my wife and I — for her, belief and faith are ultra-important. If my faith crisis had ended with the Church, I think she could’ve dealt with it pretty easily. But the idea that I might not believe in Jesus really broke her heart. And I completely get it, because I lived the first 35 years of my life in her exact shoes.
I have another friend who talked to me about faith and belief. One day, he asked me, “What do you believe??” The underlying implication was that if I didn’t believe
something, then “I’d fall for anything”, or however the adage goes. And I thought about it. And if you define faith as “believing in something for which there is no evidence”, then I realized that I simply don’t have faith. It’s just not a part of my makeup. And I don’t see any inherent virtue in it, either. I don’t see how believing in something for which there is no evidence somehow makes me a better person. I don’t think that makes me cynical. Now that I’m allowing my brain to enter these new thought patterns, I’m realizing how insane it is to presume that God would put us here, allow us to be bombarded with 100,000 different “one-true” belief systems, none of which has any verifiable evidence, and that he’s expect us to find the exact right one and then force our minds to believe in it. And all the while, certain of our brains (mine, certainly) have a STRONG disposition against believing in random things. If I could really and genuinely force myself to believe things on demand, I would. My life would be SOOOO much easier. But it’s not. I didn’t realize how much faking faith was a drain on my soul. Now, I’m agnostic about most things, and I realize that it’s totally 100% okay. I can live in the moment, and in a way, I feel like I cherish my time and relationships even more. I’m filled with wonder at the magnitude of the universe, at the near 0% chance of my own existence; I’m in awe of the powerful feelings we feel as human beings, and our ability to connect with each other in a way that brings joy and happiness; I love music even more now for it’s ability to express depth and emotion; and in general, I’m filled with more wonder and amazement at how this all works than I was before.
I hope there’s a God. I hope when I die, I find myself floating through space as a Spirit. I hope that if that’s the case, that I can somehow claw my way through the eternities to being with my amazing family. I hope that God will understand that my pea-brain did the best with what it was given. If God is there, he knows how paltry the evidence of his existence is. He knows how bad the Church looks on paper; and he knows how unreliable feelings are for determining ultimate truth (at least for me). So, I’m hoping that if he’s there, he’ll extend me some mercy.
Anyhow, sorry… that was all about me. Just be you… eternity is a long time. Learn to live and love life as if there’s no afterlife. If there is no afterlife, you won’t spend a millisecond being sad about it. If there is an afterlife, then HALLE-FREAKING-LUJAH! Don’t be cynical… be a kind, loving, happy, and patient soul.
Roy wrote:And so I believe that a belief in God can result in three main benefits:
1) Placebo
2) Gives us the confidence to do everything within our power. If I am given a 10% chance to live, My belief that God can deliver a miracle may actually spur me to leave no stone unturned in doing all that I can to optimize my 10% chance. Conversely, my belief in God might also help me make peace with moving on to “the next life.”
3) Belief in God’s blessings can help in developing an attitude of gratitude. I believe that this attitude can then positively affect many aspects of an individual’s life.
There can be additional ancillary benefits such as belief in God helping us find a home in a stable and supportive church community or developing other aspects of “clean living” (Mormons and SDA’s tend to live longer) but I see these as secondary.
Like you are painfully learning (me too), these only really work if you believe in the first place. When I finally admitted to myself that I was struggling with a belief in God, I lost access to even the benefits of
tryingto believe in God. I’m in the process of trying to piece something back together, but I’m finding that my requirements for faith are too high, or that the evidence just isn’t there. Orson wrote:Physicians know a positive attitude increases healing. Prayer may clear our minds enough to allow the memory (or sub conscious?) to remember where the keys are.
Both of these are true statements, but they are probably only true when you start from a believing place. In other words, a person who has lost faith in God won’t likely see any positive benefit from praying to God, at least not any more than Buddhist meditation.
Orson wrote:When people share their “faith promoting” stories of God intervening in miraculous ways, I don’t get emotionally involved. I don’t need to challenge their personal experience. If they try to “force” it on me as proof of something I smile and let it fall as water on a duck’s back.
Yeah, I’ve struggled to avoid feeling smug or holier-than-thou in my non-believing stance. But I do get emotionally involved sometimes. My mom was over the other day and shared a “miraculous” missionary story that culminated in a missionary discussion in her home. When she left, my wife commented to the effect that her story must have really bugged me, but I was genuinely excited for my mom as she was telling me. I know her soul well enough to know that there are very few experiences in life that would bring her the pure ecstatic joy like this type of missionary experience. And why would I want any less for my Mom if I really love her?
I struggle when people use coincidence as a way to challenge my beliefs, but even then I know where it comes from.
DarkJedi wrote:Lately I have begun to question how truly omniscient/omnipotent God is. I do not believe prayers are answered, at least not my prayers.
My experience also… I don’t currently pray with the family (I participate, but don’t say the prayers), and when I do – like when my mother-in-law makes me
1) What if god’s effect wasn’t reaching down to occasionally bless a very select few? What if god’s effect was a belief that helped someone cope with tragedy, giving people some ray of hope to make it through a trial? That’s a tangible effect.
This is somewhat strange to me because God usually doesn’t give hope to people that don’t already believe deeply in him. It feels cart before the horse.
nibbler wrote:2) Maybe god is someone or something that is on a whole other plane of existence but we misinterpreted that as god being “perfect.” Maybe god is just like you or me in that it progresses line upon line. The theistic evolution theory comes to mind. Poofing humans into existence was a challenge so god decided to stack the deck and let nature unfurl the plan. Maybe we also screwed up in assuming that the plan has already completely unfurled. What if there’s more unfurling to come?
This one is interesting – most would find it very blasphemous, even though it aligns with our theology.
nibbler wrote:Is this process god working behind the scene inspiring minds to find cures or is this people giving undue credit to god? It depends on how you define god.
I like to joke with people that God seems to inspire scientists and those in the medical field much more than he does to people who proclaim to be religious leaders. That comment usually goes over like a lead balloon, but it’s very true.
nibbler wrote:Is god the force that keeps the universe from devolving into chaos or are we witness to a grand cosmic battle of survival of the fittest pitted against entropy. If it’s the latter I’m glad god invented popcorn.
I could get behind this theory, but I think you’d have a hard time justifying that God is a force that’s holding us on the brink of survival, and that he also reaches down and moves atoms on a regular basis for individual people. When we look around us, it appears much more that God is letting things play out in their natural way. But that’s the physical world. I heard someone say once that God doesn’t care about the what (what happens). He only deals in the “how” (how we’ll respond, how we’ll deal with our circumstances) It’s a nice thought, but not very comforting to the young children sold into sex slavery. That’s the kind of thinking that works for the upper-middle class white male who’s trying to land the big promotion.
