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But to answer what I think your real question is… “Is maintaining your own cultural identity important?” I would say, yes. I no longer believe the church is the one true church, but I’m a Mormon and always will be one, and I believe I can identify as a Mormon and be a part of the tribe regardless of what I believe. Even if I stop attending, or even get excommunicated (very unlikely), I’m the one who gets to decide whether I’m a Mormon or not. Roy wrote:Would not the plight of the tribal leaders be one deserving of sympathy?
It depends on whether you believe that being a part of the tribe is good for society or not.I attended a Community of Christ service recently, and it was filled with old ladies mostly.
Yes, I had sympathy for their dying church.
No, that didn’t make me want to join it.
I also don’t attend pointless work meetings or seminars just so that the meeting organizer can fill happier about how many people were in his meeting.
For me, it would be to see the bishop show up to church in jeans once in a while. To smell cigarette smoke and see tattoos a little more often on church attendees. To see fewer white shirts, and more sweat shirts. To allow people to openly discuss the issues with Joseph Smith and church history with just a “Yea, He made some big mistakes.” For people to feel free to be open about their weaknesses and imperfections. For the local leadership to realize that the church’s greatest strength is the community, not the doctrine, and to focus on that with fewer firesides and priesthood leadership training missions, shorter meetings, and more pot-lucks, linger-longers, barbeques, and talent shows. The temple recommend questions force people to be all in, or all out. The emphasis on the temple, and on being temple-worthy, and then the recommend questions make it so that honest truth-seekers who don’t employ biasses in their truth seeking can not be full-in members. They force out those like myself because they don’t allow me to be all in and keep my integrity. Those questions either deliberately marginalize me, or force me to lie. I know that the original purpose of those questions was to “protect the sanctity of the temple.” But the entire ceremony is on YouTube, and it will be there until the end of time. So that ship has sailed. What, then, is the real purpose of these exclusionary temple recommend interviews?
Do what makes you happy. Mormon men aren’t the only good men around. Not by a long shot. But find someone who can control themselves. You guys are going against everything I was taught on my mission. Which was disobedience = no spirit = sad failure as a missionary. We’re still in the midst of the struggle with our 10 yr old autistic son. Maybe 1/2 time homeschooling for next year? It has to be something different. This is an interesting part of human psyche that we like ritual, and like feeling good about doing it correctly and somehow feel smug about knowing how to do it right and self-righteously correcting others who don’t know as much as we do. It shows how so many different elaborate religious rituals in a wide variety of traditio s may have evolved. People believe what they really WANT to believe until they are forced to reconsider by the facts. Even then you can choose to view the facts in a biased way. There are different drivers in different people’s lives that make them want to believe one thing or another. All of us are perseverating on Mormonism because of our history and heritage with it and because of our family, friends, and associations who take your belief in it as a membership pass card (literally) for their acceptance of you into their community. If all of us were born and raised Muslim, or Orthodox Jewish, or any other religion, we would be here trying to talk ourselves into believing that set of beliefs or world views. What is really true often takes a back seat to what we want to believe.
And if believing those things, regardless of what they are, makes your life better, then that is a pretty good reason to try to believe.
I have many Chinese colleagues and in general they work really long hours and make large contributions to mankind yet they aren’t having any fun. Then there are Americans who live it up, enjoy their lives, but don’t contribute much. I can’t decide who is right. I have an evolutionary approach to this question. Happiness is an emotion that you get as a reward for doing things that are good for your survival and propogation. Like feeling connected to a loving and supportive family or community, being recognized and shown you are valued by that community, when you eat yummy and satisfying food, when you have a loving relationship with someone (being in love is one the happiest of all states), when you feel safe and protected, or when you acquire resources that improve your lot in life. Happiness is also a reward given for altruistic behavior for helping and supporting your tribal members. Happiness is also related to but different from excitement where your brain and body are actively engaged in the chase for survival (jumping out of airplanes) or for resources and a primary spot within the tribe. Fo example working to get promoted, experiencing new things like traveling, or working out problems like tackling home improvement projects. From an evolutionary stand point it makes sense that since women are so vulnerable during the very long time it takes to raise a child that they have evolved to especially focus on relationship building as there best chance for survival while men may be more focused on competing with each other (business, leadership positions, sports). Of course everyone is a bit different and everyone has different primary drivers, but I think happiness is best explained by evolutionary theories.
I stay for the community. Those who don’t fit in or don’t enjoy the community leave. Religion is all about the community. It makes people want to believe so they can fit in. I’m convinced that trying to fit in and gain status in our community drives the largest majority of what occupies our waking hours. Isolation is the harshest punishment that prisons hand out and it makes even the most hardened criminals penitent. It’s an evolutionary imperative that we fit in and are accepted by our tribe since humans are such weaklings and have such dismal chances for survival alone. Thus it’s a basal need that governs our emotions like our drive for safety and our drive to reproduce and care for our children. Our emotions are like animal instincts that drive us to these things and we are powerless to fight it.
One of the hardest things for me when I learned about the extent of Joseph Smith’s polygamy and polyandry is that I’m over 40 years old, and have gone to church every week my whole life, and attended seminary, institute and BYU religion classes, and I Never Knew This Stuff! I felt like I’d been lied to and deliberately deceived. That was the hard part for me. It was the shock to the system, not that Joseph had 33 wives and married women that were already married. They will find out about it eventually anyway. In this internet age it is no longer possible to keep information under wraps. Who would you rather they hear it from? You, or a bitter apostate who can prove it’s true? So I think that it is in the best interest of the church to inoculate the youth with this information while they are young and flexible. At least cover the information as it is presented in the new church essays, which is as faith-promoting as possible. I don’t find them helpful. Especially the Ensign one. In fact they are a little condescending. It boils down to “I know you are struggling with your doubts, so what you should do is… to not have doubts.” And: “Don’t reason, just believe.” It’s the “doubt your doubts” argument restated in a lot more words. They are right though. To continue to have faith this is exactly what is required. But it doesn’t help me much since I’m a pretty strong believer in the power of reason to lead me to truth. Faith in whatever you are currently believing (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) while doubting your doubts in these things that you have been taught has a much worse track record for arriving at truth. Especially when you look back at historical belief systems.
