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I am not sure what I will do yet. I know I love teaching, and I work in therapy. Maybe I will focus on being my brother’s keeper, and practicing the healer’s art. That I what I always loved best about the church anyway. I would suspect that whatever you get out of religion will greatly effect what you seek in its absence. My advice about a mission is don’t go if you aren’t gung ho about the whole thing. Can you devote all your time to something you aren’t convinced of? Can you tell people it is what is best for them when you don’t know it is best for you? My mission had good points, but it also was full of guilt and sorrow. I should have spent the time wandering in another culture, working a job and learning about people. I could have achieved the same without spending the money and suffering so much angst. I just read an uctdorf talk about truth. Talks about praying for confirmation. Says if you do our church will be confirmed the true one. Seems pretty straight forward. In fact, seems like th premise since day 1. I am more interested in good, but I tire of the claims of having all the truth. I breeds a certain arrogance in many of the young adult men. So yeah, maybe we need to start a thread simply devoted to to tricky definitions. If the scriptures had had one of those from day 1 then life would be more simple. I understand that is what we all do. Buffet Mormons all the way. But you aren’t describing true in the sense the church means when it says true. Essentially you are describing good.
But if the Church is true in the sense the prophets mean when they talk about keystones, obedience, and authority then we are denying the will of God. If it is true like the OT claims made by Moses (kill the man who picks up sticks on the sabath) then even if the church has not caught up to us and will change in the future to be like us we are still in apostasy now.
We are like the boy who was excommunicated for being anti-nazi and distributing anti-nazi propaganda. Only at least he was brought back in after public opinion moved to his side. He was already executed by Nazis at that point, but at least his soul was saved.
Binary would either true or good. That isn’t the question at all. That would only be the question if Satan were God. The point is, there are a lot of good organizations. The only way the church is at all compelling is if it is both good and true. Otherwise I can find good organizations that won’t do the emotional harm the church does and don’t claim to be the only true organization.
I want sealing to be real. I want it bad enough that I haven’t written the church off as fake. Not entirely. But did it used to be about binding people to their loved one forever? Seems like it was different before. I always understood continuing revelation to apply to adapting to new changes in the world and repairing traditions and doctrines gotten imperfectly. The specificity of the temple ceremonies suggests it was a tutored and practiced thing. Otherwise I can’t imagine how it was revealed. Did JS just do what felt right? Did he just get told to take it from the masons and adapt it according to promptings? Either of those works with a continuing revelation model, but if his revelations were as precise and perfect as he often claimed then that does not fit. I find it odd and I don’t get a confirmation from it. I have figured out some of the symbolism I think but it hasn’t helped. Too much of it has little to do with what I’d call Godliness and too much to do with being in a club. I think the ritual is designed to tie us closer to the church, and that doesn’t preclude it being divinely revealed, but neither does it support it. Plus the changes over the years make it seem like a work in progress, which doesn’t with the revelation theory. I don’t feel like this article is attacking anyone. I do think it fails to address the real issues. It suggests the average follower bares a higher degree of responsibility for obedience than leaders. Those who examine the history will learn, by the words of faithful members of the time, that the founders of the church did not keep their own teachings. They acted as though there were two classes: the followers who must be obedient, and the leaders who must lead. Joseph Smith preaching the importance of honesty but lying for and to the church, and for himself. Preaching the WoW and then riding through town smoking a cigar. Even now the church puts obedience above openness, withholding the truth about the president’s mental health for the good of the followers, even while talking about how the individual has the power to speak with God and reason for themselves. I don’t demand perfection from my leaders, but I do hold them to their own words, and I don’t see the church keeping that standard.
The ideal I look for is a church that is open with its members because it knows if they doubt its actions they can pray and receive confirmation that the leaders are following God. A church that works in darkness, even for fear of being misunderstood, cannot claim its members follow in anyway but blindly.
Another example is money.
If the church believes the members won’t receive a witness that it is God’s will that they spend more money building a mall than it has on service in the last five years, either doubts the justness of their actions or the ability of the members to receive revelation.
It seems like a lot of hypocrisy on par with what you see from the governments of the world.
That said, I do keep the commandments, pray and read my scriptures. I just no longer expect that to lead to a witness of the truthfulness of it all.
The problem with that model for belief is that the more you invest the more you have riding on a positive answer, to more likely you are to perceive one. An unbiased approach would be to consider the possibilities and then pray to see if you get an answer, not devote your life to it and then use confirmation bias to convince yourself it is right.
