Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Well, if you do try that experiment, and are struck by lightning, you have my permission to view that as an ‘answer’ to your prayer. Which reminds me of my favorite passage from Douglas Adams (who described himself as a ‘Raging Atheist’ so as not to be confused with an agnostic): on the Babel Fish:
“… if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything in any form of language. …. Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this:
‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
–D. Adams
… Now, trying to set my insidious, sarcastic streak aside a moment, as I said above, I do believe in prayer, just NOT in the questions/answers thing as being the purpose of it. If it happens, it happens, but often I think I am coming to my own conclusions and feelings, assigning its source as from God, and going confidently on about my life of blindness …
Which becomes a severe problem when/if we then find out anachronistic things in other prayers or other means or sources of truth, and then say, ‘how can God have told me this??!’
But, if viewed as NOT a questions/answers schtick, but as a way to feel as God feels, think about things and life and eternity in a more spiritual way, and attune and allign ourselves with God in that way–a way to be closer to God–then I still get it. It has meaning for me again, and I can roll with that.
Where it becomes a problem for me, is when a GA says, don’t see a rated R movie. This should just be good advice. Good advice that an intelligent, experienced, good-hearted and spiritual man of God says, and we accept it as such (also accepting the possibility of exceptions), and use the good advice to enhance our lives.
Instead, we get SS class after SS class and youth FS and RS classes and EQ meetings that endlessly and endlessly debate it, because, well, it was said by a GA, and so must be revelation from God, and yadda yadda. Prayer and Reveleation and PH Leadership are NOT to be used in this way. Yet it is, often, and it permeates our faith and seems to me to be allowed, permitted, and even encouraged by the Brethren because it is easier to lead (or rule?) dumb sheep than enlightened, thinking beings. Gears then commence to grind for me….
I once caused my father-in-law to black out (now ex-father-in-law) because I was able to look him straight in the eye, as a TR holding, practicing, believing LDS saved for the latter-days for my exceptionalism…. That I would be 100% comfortable watching Saving Private Ryan or Schindler’s List with Jesus sitting next to me. They moved me that much, personally, on a spiritual level. And on a decision made by me, as a thinking, feeling, well-intentioned person, I am completely, 100% comfortable with answering to God someday for that choice.
The rest of that rated R, caffeine, adam’s bellybutton discussion is moot for me.
I know I am a year late on this thread, but it’s been on my mind a lot. Purpose and meaning in prayer. I find it interesting now, as I look back on my life and realize, I am no longer sure I ever received answers to prayers. Let me clarify. I do not not know if I received an answer in the way I assumed I had. Again, it’s all about the meaning for me now.
How many times have we sat in church, and listened to someone bear testimony that they got an answer to a question they hadn’t asked? And frequently the answer comes at unexpected times. i know when I have felt I received an answer it was more likely to come while I was walking down the street, with a prayer in my heart, much more so than while on my knees.
But my answers, whatever they were, were a spiritual feeling for me. Sometimes subtle, sometimes powerful, but for me, with only 2 or 3 exceptions, always just that feeling. I then take that feeling, and interpret it based on a thousand factors, including my assumptions. Including, all the things I was told since I was a small, wee-lad.
So, why pray? If I ask a question, and the Lord answers a different question, I did not ask, and didn’t even know I needed to ask, then I didn’t learn anything to get there to my answer, right? It was just a gift from God. Yet I may pray for answers for a long time, and not receive. Or may not ask a question and get an answer to something else.
Always being interpreted by me, through my flawed, dark, DARK, glass.
Of course, I do not know what the original greek of James 5 is. Nor do I care much. Because even that may well be inspiration interpreted by flawed men and on and on. But in the KJV, it doesn’t say, “if you have a question…” It says, “If any of you lack wisdom…”
Seems to me now that if there is a purpose to prayer, at least for me, it is not in questions or answers. Those happen too, but the purpose is not in that. The purpose is in allignment to God. That’s it for me. Nothing more. My need and desire and willingness to get on my knees in humility and turn to God, to think and feel and try to be one with God. To commune. And if it takes calamaties or my human ‘needs’ to do that, so be it. And if giving me an answewr here or there, or me thinking I got an answer or interpreting it as such comes too, so be it.
But all God is wanting is for me to attune and allign to Him (or Her or Whatever). Of course, my view may not be anyone elses’. But it’s mine, from my own experience.
But for 36 years I was taught and believed that very specific and very direct answers to prayers were needed, common, and normal. While I allow that all those things may happen (direct visitations and such), I think it is extremely uncommon at best.
When I was young, my parents told me a story of how when a man was called to be an Apostle, they spent all night in the Holy of Holies in SLC Temple. The clear, implied subtext is that they were there to have a “personal experience” with Christ. If that happens, I suspect it too, is a feeling, more often than a visitation, and it is interpreted…. yadda.
None of this, if true, is bothersome to me in and of itself. But I feel that the vast majority of us need more. We need the constant implications of visitations, miracles on a grand scale. We are sign-seekers at heart. Why not? It’s easier.
My problem comes from the fact I feel that this is then … allowed by the church leadership. Even if they know better. It is an effective way to keep the masses together. And so these stories are told from toddler age on up. In fact, from infancy, in songs and such. When I was in grade school, I have had Bishops encourage me to pray for success on my tests, for instance.
I see these kinds of tactics by leadership to be misleading, and coercive and designed to control and amaze the masses. Of course, if prayer is about attuning to and being alligned with God, and not about an answer to a mortal question, then it is a rather hard concept to teach a child. But it still bothers me.
A true religion, if there is One … exists to help us get to a point where we don’t need it. It exists to get us to have a personal relationship with our creator, and everything else is just trappings. I mean, RS Homemaking Meeting? That is a spiritual imperative? Really?
Hercules wrote:Yup, also Moroni said it was a record of the former inhabitants of THIS continent. Malay theory is a big waste of time IMO.
Moroni says….
This to me, now symbolizes the entire problem with the BofM (at least, my problem this week). If the BofM is an historical account, OR a spiritually inspired … whatever… eitherway, I think most of us agree it is flawed. Either flaws of a “real” Moroni et al, or flawed JS or whoever. Flawed.
And so, “Moroni says” suddenly carries much less weight. Because in essence, whichever view I take (historical or not), there are flaws. NOT a perfect record. So then, who’s to say JS says, or Mornoni say or anyone else says is true or false?? For every anachronism in the BofM, it could come down to, Moroni misrecorded (flaw of mortal man), JS mis understood his inspired translation, and misinterpreted to us (flaw of mortal man) …. and on and on. AND ON.
So, prophets can and do lead astray. Maybe not as a whole, over time or something, but still, they cann be and are sometimes wrong. Even if I choose to believe in it, I must accept that.
Which still leaves me ultimately in the same place–to wit: I have to figure it out for myself, just me and the spirit.
Because 14 tenets of prophet? like never being wrong or leading us astray? I can arbitrarily throw that out as flaws of man. And accept the anachronism that most suits me.
Which leaves me wondering if our absolute claim to absolute Truth and ONE CHURCH … actually make us worse than others.
Restored PH? It ultimately relies on my belif in that truth or whether I think this was an inspired misconstruel of JS’s message. If I choose to believe all of it, wholesale, I have to do it by choosing to remain ignorant. If I choose to bleieve none of this church, I do it at the expense of spiritual feelings I have felt, and have some meaning, even if I no longer no for sure what all that meaning is. Reality is somewhere in the middle. But where? How much is true? Which anachornisms?
These are rhetorical questions. I can no more answer them for you than any of you can for me. But when I hear someone quote ANY prophet now, I laugh internally. Then, after laughter leaves me, I think, well, it may be a flaw of man in the record or the revelation. Or it may be true which makes some other quotes flaw of man…
Too many loose threads.
Forgotten_Charity wrote:See here is the thing(for me). If we are to believe that we’re reading an ancient book about historical Indians then why are we reading it as modern western civilization thinks. the idiana thought/think very differently to this style. I became familer to this first hand among my native American friends and the oldest of thier tribal leaders speaking to them in sweat lodges which I attended with them(the I loved the chanting, I actually got into It). If indeed we are reading in breaking it down line and paragraph, word by word and word and parsering it. We are reading it very very differently in a way that was never thought of by them and never intended. It makes no sense at all to me to read ancient writings of tribes who thought so differently then any modern western civilization. More over, it makes absolutly zero sense (to me) that a god of ambiguity require exact translation and only one exact meaning to each word or sentence as the only correct way to read it…
i agree. it makes little sense. yet, i think its kinda also the point. everyone reads it and see something different yet still of value, and leading them, eventually to the same direction. i think your issue assumes there even is a single intended, exact, meaning. i thought the same for all my life.
it seems though that perhaps it is ambiguous, always has been, always will, and i am trying to come to terms with that new paradigm. which is hard and i am have good days and bad days doing that myself. a big change for me.
i think it was brian in another post that commented how the church is not the moon (perfect christ) but it still points to the moon. i find that analogy most helpful. it may or may not be historical. it is not translated to exactness … but it still will lead anyone who reads and prays and follows toward god, and christ. the paths may start quite differently by culture, but it still heads in the same direction. and the farther on that path we get, those paths of those in different cultures would essentially move toward each other, harmonize?
maybe that. i say that 50% devil’s advocate though. its hard for me to accept as well. basically, although it seems now that it may also be that the lines will never be exactly the same. because if the record is NOT historical or perfect, then in mortality, it will always just be pointing the way to christ, but differently for each of us.
which of course, gets back to the absoluteness thing i am trying so hard to shed. and even though it makes sense on many levels, i still have issues with it. because even that has anachronisms..
its like studying english–every stinking rule has an exception, sometimes several, and the exceptions are riddled with contradictions; and we can’t even settle on the rules to know what there are exceptions to…
and so it goes. ask me every odd numbered day if i can buy it, and the answer is maybe.. the even numbered days its no way. what’s today?
several comments have reflected on the idea that whatever god, or the gospel or the BofM really is, it could only ever be an approximation of the whole, because our finite language and mortal weaknesses and limited ability simply cannot grasp it clearly and wholly. hence all the anachronisms or possible JS creations and on and on. someone in another thread had asked the question of why christ (if he is the only begotten) had no writings. at least none we know of. everything is second or third or fourth hand.
maybe this is why. perhaps even christ, as the only begotten, even though without blemish, was limited by mortal body and mortal languages and knew his own hand could not write perfectly enough the perfection that is the “real”, whole truth. so he didn’t.
can you imagine? if we did have actual hard copies of documents of writings in the hand of christ?? i mean, we think the standard works are over-judged–those were through the hands of men. christ’s own writings would get meticulously and relentlessly shredded. even his hand writing would be judged for quality. it’d be insane.
on the other hand, we may not have anything in his own hand because he wasn’t real, or not who we think… tomato / tomahto.
wayfarer wrote:Jefferson and others, being not of the inclination that there was a supernatural god-being as defined in the bible, but were ‘deist’ in terms of recognizing a first cause, were considered ‘atheists’, because they didn’t accept the biblical definition of god.
i have been reading a lot about the founding fathers the last few months. fantastically-flawed men. very… mortal. and not to say they were not intelligent or talented by any means, they did amazing and unique and unprecedented things, and i believe they were inspired, but… still. very mortal. perhaps i need to be more forgiving of the brethren and JS and fit them in this mold? because i have no issue with the founding fathers as inspired men who were not near perfect, yet dynamic and great men all the same.
but the deist thing. i have read about that too. the idea of accepting god or a higher power, but NOT the daily intervening. instead, the clock that god built is wound and set and started and god lets it unfold.
were it not for angels and revelations in our faith, i tell you, this notion is by far the simplest, easiest and most attractive to me. it retains the “i will continue after this existence” aspects that bring hope and yet does not blind, or bind us to spiritualism and sign-seeking etc….
rather, each of us, doing the best we can in the moment. in the present. and being aware of something more, but not spending so much effort and time and resource on pre-mortal, after-life, et al….
yes. i find deism very appealing on many levels. but then we still have that whole, “angels, visitations, revelations and divine intervention” thing that makes that problematic.
indeed. poetic and unspeakably horrifying. this subject reminds me of the story of the atheist who chooses to follow the tenets of faith: if there is a god, he gains of course, but even if no god, he’s lost nothing anyway, as acting upon good principles still brings good things and rewards in daily life. maybe that is a mormon atheist.
but i also notice lately, how many of us active, ever-so-busy mormons are in such a rush to speed off to HT/VT, or various callings and yadda yadda, that we walk right by our very own neighbors, NOT bad hearted, but simply too busy to see the one who most needs our help right before us.
i am not suggesting the church condones, preaches or encourages that. in fact, it encourages we keep our eyes and hearts open and watchful for where our minds and the spirit may lead us to serve…
i simply point out that as a practical matter, in the day-to-day, many of us (myself included) are so busy and stressed or worried about so many mormon by-laws and pressures… we forget to be christ-like and to “see” the need that surrounds us all.
in that light, i actually see something like mormon atheism as having the potential to help us be MORE christ like. because we detach from the spiritualism and mystery, and from dogma… and simply follow basic principles and tenets.
i make no judgment on whether that is a better way or not. only that given our human natures… i can see where and how something like a mormon atheism could actually help many people act more like christ in the day-to-day than spending so much energy and resources on the spiritualism and dogma and mysteries and… check-lists to heaven.
i love how “present” that makes it. and whether you’re partly right, or more or less, it was beautifully said. certainly we focus too much on what is to come… or at least, i have. and forget the present moment, which thoughts of some future may help form, but shouldn’t overwhelm at the expense of the now. wayfarer wrote:I would say that I reject the standard definition of god, which, being derived from the platonic ideal, and in current LDS theology tries to be both ideal (omni-*) and material (section 131). This fused concept of an omni-whatever with a god who was once man and is now unchangeably god, who is the same from everlasting to everlasting is distinctly illogical and impossibly inconsistent.
If this illogical definition is god, then I am an atheist. Absolutely. I reject the existence of such a being.
this notion may be too linear to be accepted, but could you see the idea of “god” being some kind of office or status or position? would that satisfy the idea of a gods that has both progressed AND being unchangeable? no doubt this idea, like all my others, are ones discussed in earlier posts i have yet to read. but a reference to god may be a reference to a state of being, not the individual hims or herself or itself?
and as for the atheism thing, were i to look at my co-members in sacrament meeting and wonder (which i am doing a lot of late), i wonder… what portion are actually exactly that–mormon atheists or just doing the cultural thing–and just don’t know or couldn’t accept or are not self-aware enough to realize they are? i know there were many things i simply accepted and never gave thought or prayer to, until more recently.
i am no longer tied to the book’s absoluteness (or lack thereof) in my thinking. but in my feelings? i admit there is still part of me right there, exactly with Cadence. i mean, i get it. i do. or i think i do. in my head. but the book was never just in my head. my whole life it was in my feelings too. and again, not going with my intellect, but my gut, my heart, my feelings… it almost feels like the argument of the lie of commission versus a lie of omission… so no the church never said it was a historical document. they also never told me it wasn’t. and i testified it was. in front of god and bishops and stake presidents and parents for years and years… and no one said it wasn’t that.
so then, when it shows signs of not being all we were led to believe (by omission), then yes… i understand where Cadence is coming from.
I am still trying to separate those feelings out a bit too. And i think for me it just needs a bit of time and patience and i am feeling a light somewhere off in the distance, but i am okay with that… i think. for now.
but i get it. i do. my gut still says, “whether overt lie or not, deception occurred.”
i get that feeling. it was very close only weeks ago now.
Heber13 wrote:For what its worth, I think you’re still swimming in the BOM as the Word of God. That’s not a criticism.
i don’t take it as criticism at all. i know that i am. how could i not? even when i consciously decide NOT to do something based on how i was raised, i am then still acting in relation to mormonism. its all i know. and it meant a great deal, and still means a great deal… its the nature of what it means to me i am trying to sort out….
but i have no desire to leave mormonism. i think of how the people i know and love would react if they knew, and um… ya.. leaving the church is NOT the easy path. but i am struggling to find the meaning again. and let me clarify, mere days ago i was angry and frustrated and urgent. i have had some answers since then. not to all, but some. and further, many of you here, even those now gone from the site, have really and truly halped me understand some of those answers.
it has helped me see a purpose and course on my path. but i am not eager, nor set on that path leaving church at all. indeed, the church has given me a great deal, and i would love to be able to keep finding answers to my questions in a manner allowing me to do that. i have 3 young daughters who do not need another parent changing their entire life-paradigms again… they are strong enough to handle it, but i don’t think i could do it again–not in the traumatic way when their mother left.
so, ya… forcing myself to be patient, caution and faith and careful steps are my mantras.
and mike and forgotten charity, thank you as well. i hear you. simple and not. and again, it is not my answers in youth i question, not that i received them, not that i felt them and they were from a spiritual place…. only questioning some of the meanings of it all… enough that i can sleep at night as an active, participating mormon, or sleep at night as something else. either way, i just want my sleep people!!!
awesome. thanks. i definitely think my own comfort level with this is a factor. maybe because i am refinding answers, sometimes finding different answers, and before, there was always “surety” … a false surety as it turns out, but a surety nonetheless. and now? now i have some new answers, or at least different reasons for the same answers as others, and i am not always sure why. and i know i may never know in this life why… and finding a new comfort level with that, in terms of my interaction with others at church, is tentative right now. caution it is then. mixed with a sparing of details generally. fine. i certainly like the idea of taking ownership of what is mine, and no longer letting others define it for me… even when the cost of that ownership is a loss of some illusions of surety.
thanks.
you rock, brian. thanks. you’re always enlightening to read. if it wasn’t sacrilege, i’d say you’re a magnificent, pagan god. the best kind. then again, maybe its not sacrilege. i mean, depending on the time of day, relative humidity, and sun-spots, i may or may not be polytheistic ….
thanks, brother.
