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Welcome Monkey, I really enjoyed what you had to say and related to much of it. Also I certainly hope you are in the right place as if your not them I doubt I am either. The whole Bishop thing that really sucks, all I can say is what a silly thing to keep a person out of the Temple for. These guys are in symbolic roles and have no right to deviate from that . I like my Bishops philosopy “if your going to error , error on the side of temple” . BTW I found this great quote for you ” If triangles could think , their God would be eminently triangular” Baruch Spinoza , it’s sort of related , thought you would get a laugh 
Hi Ray and welcome, I know of you a little from other boards and have enjoyed your thoughts . I have to admit you confuse me a little, your a difficult guy to put into a box Orson, a couple of things jump out as helping me. 1st journal writing : I found that keeping a separate journal soley for my religious doubts was a huge help to me. In a related note I found writing papers extremely helpful and liberating.
2nd reading : reading helped me feel justified in my thoughts and expanded my mind to new ideas. An example this Bushman quote I found ” I am a practicing Mormon who considers himself believing but who rejects absolutist elements of the fundamentalist world view, eg, the view of Joseph Smith as omnisent or morally perfect or recieving revelation unmixed with human and cultural limitations. However I do except non-absolutist incursions of the supernatural into the human experience ” When I first read this quote it blew me away and I thought “WOW Mormons are allowed to believe that “. It really helped me shape my own views and allowed me to give myself permission to come to my own understanding of what being LDS means to me. Other helpful books include Richard Bushman ” Rough Stone Rolling ” Hugh B Browns “An Abundant Life”( this man was brilliant and miles ahead of his time ), Levi Petersons ” The Backslider” and many others I also very much enjoyed John Dehlins ” How to Stay …” essay .
3rd : these boards have been a huge help to me.
4th : helping others within the faith that struggle with testimony helps me see were the church needs people like me even if they will never admit it.
PS :
Old-Timer wrote:I believe strongly that the term “Dispensation of the Fullness of Times” refers to the condition at the END of the dispensation, not the beginning. I also believe that the term “Restoration” refers to a process, not an event.
Ray, I think this is a clever approach and helpful to people trying to maintian their faith.
I think polygamy is something everyone struggles to understand in the church myself included. I am working from the point of view that polygamy was not inspired of God so you can take or leave what I have to say. I don’t look at the early participents as being evil or filled with the devil, I think they were trying to work out what there relationship to God should be and how they should live. I think JS had a dangerous world view , He believed he was a prophet of God and he believed that if he had a thought/inspiration/revelation then he had to see it threw. Polygamy was one of those thoughts. It is dangerous to think that if it goes threw your head then it is inspired of God it is fair to say that what made JS brilliant also made him dangerous. This was the first time in America that people had the right to create there own system and experiment socially , part of making chioces is making poor ones. I look at polygamy largely as a social experiment that would ultimately fail. Here are some of the good things that came out of polygamy first I think it served as a way to insure that JS’s teachings would out live him people that would follow him in polygamy would follow him in death, further it separated believers from non believers to some extent it lead to many people leaving the church many of whom were luke warm members I think the trip west would have been extremely hard for those people and that there presence on the trip would have been negative and added to the burden of the group. It also helped to unite members to each other ,polygamist were shunned by the world so there persecution united them to eachother this allowed the church to grow and build its roots. Could the church been established without polygamy this is a hypothetical question, we don’t know we just know that it was a key factor in the development of the church and the way it was done . It is to bad the modern church tries to hide from its past and tries to present JS as someone he wasn’t .In my earlier post I discussed how I think polygamy helped establish our doctrines but also people in those days suffered greatly and I think polygamy was a way to be incontrol of there suffering and to give there suffering meaning. I think JS was a man who a times was lost in his own genius he was a great religious thinker and revolutionary but he didn’t always see how those theologies and experiments affected others, polygamy is a example of that . I hate to think of people like Emma and the heartbreak polygamy caused them. I also don’t count out that JS was a powerful man and as he told us it is the nature of all men to abuse that power. It is easy to see polygamy as a abuse of power I don’t like to think of him telling teenaged girls that a angel with drawn sword told him they must marry him . Yes I think sexuality was a factor not the only one but we cannot rule out that it played a key role or motivation . I think it was a attempt to blend sexuality and religion which always comes across as creepy to me. As I said I think it was a failed social experiment. As far as BY’s polygamy goes, polygamy was JS’s baby and BY did the best he could with what JS gave him to work with, in the end it failed because the system was flawed and not of God IMO. Orson, Where you saying you personally believe the Rigdon theory or were you just putting it out there ? What do you think are the main evidences that point towards it ? I think the Rigdon theory is a intresting one , Here’s some of my thoughts against it though , first the time lines don’t add up ( yes we can get around that one ) 2nd JS would go on to produce a whole pile of writings in his career but Rigdon did not , when I look at things like the BofA and the King Follet discourse it becomes apparent to me that JS wouldn’t have needed Rigdons help to produce the BOM. Further I figure if Rigdon did write it I think he would have claimed to have . He seems more the zealous follower of JS to me than the brains behind the scene with JS being the charismatic frontman . I think this theory is largely born out of the fact that some people don’t want anything good attributed to JS to them he can’t of been a genius even if it was a evil genius. Also the church has always said JS was to unschooled to have written the BOM alone so the Rigdon theory serves to play into that mindset. But I have already given my thoughts on that. Orson wrote:but how do you deal with the fact that Joseph married other men’s wives? I think one of the most difficult questions to answer is “why did Joseph marry Orson Hyde’s wife when Orson was still out on his famous mission to the holy land?”
I’ll try to give you my answer on your original question 1st . I believe that some of the spiritual justifications for polygamy help to explain how JS could rationalize things like marrying men’s wives while they were out on mission. I remember from Comptons “in Sacred Loneliness” the idea of the docrine of Kindred Spirits which basically states that if you met a women and you felt a kinship towards her that you must have known her in the prexistence and that you were preordianed to find eachother. Also there is the thought that if a women was aready married but a leader with higher athourity desired her then it was OK for the said leader to take the women to wife as she would have a greater chance to gain exaltation sort of by piggybacking her way into that leaders kingdom. It is intresting to note here that people were so eager to join leaders families that you see grown men in Nauvoo being adopted into the families of men like BY. Also it was believed that earthly athourity was not binding so these women in JS’s eyes were not really married or taken in the sence we understand a married women to be , while very rough we see in my opinion the begins of the concept of priesthood authority in this and of temple marriage and eternal families ( Mormonism is unique in teaching that we are saved as a family unit this is probally the origins of that teaching ). In the docrine of Kindred Spirits we see the rough beginings of our belief in pre existence and eternal progression. The way I appraoch these difficult topics is to look at the church as a evolving system and allow it the right to refine its teachings over time . Hope this was helpful i’ll give my thoughts on polygamy soon.
My appraoch to the BOM is that it is a 19th century production and that it is a window into the inner struggles of JS . Like most of the people here I believe it is inspired and sacred in some way , as I think anything that gives us a portal in to a human soul is . I have always found it hard to believe that it was a history of the ancient america’s even as a missionary I was a little embarrassed about teaching this point. I am still trying to figure out what camp I belong to, i’m not sure if JS believed the BOM to be ancient or if he simply saw the value in using mythology to teach gospel principals , neither would suprise me all that much . If the BOM people existed they did so only in JS’s subconscious IMO. I believe JS would tell stories of the ancient americans to his family long before the BOM , also I see stories like the tree of life being a adaptation of JS seniors dreams/visions. I see the Nephi character being a loose version of JS and the whole opening story in the BOM paralleling the life of JS to that point in his life . IN the BOM I see JS trying to work threw the great relgious concerns of his day .Further after reading View of the Hebrews and BH Roberts BOM studies I am convinced that View of the Hebrews served as source material for the BOM and that JS’s genius and creativity did the rest . I could go on but I hope that I have explained my position well enough. If I could believe the historicity if the BOM I would but I just can’t and the fact that all of the BOM defences I believed as a youth just haven’t stood up as I got older has been frustrating and heartbreaking to me. I still enjoy the BOM stories in some ways but I have to admit I have not got back to a place were the book spiritually feeds me as I would like it to . Maybe we can help eachother .
