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life is a journey, there really isn’t any moment that is too late to find the right Way to live. I agree, a lot, with what has been said here by others. Ray’s comment about getting a good counselor or therapist makes a lot of sense. Hawkgrrrl’s comment about setting aside self-destructive behaviors and embracing what truly helps you feel joy — are right on point.
You mention some specific behaviors for which you feel “unworthy”, that the Church deems that you don’t “keep the commandments.” the problem I had when I was younger is that the negative messages about porn, masturbation, and word of wisdom led me to a life of addiction, particularly to alcohol and drugs, to anesthetize my feelings of guilt. You see, we rise and fall to our self image and expectations: if you feel like a sinner, then doing what naturally comes to you will be “sin”.
The Apostle Paul says that there is nothing that is sinful in and of itself. This is not about moral relativism, but rather, the fact that certain behaviors that we consider sinful are the result and not the cause of our sinful self image. Once I learned that drinking and drugs were not sins but rather symptoms, then alcohol and drugs had no sway over me. The same is the case with porn and masturbation. It isn’t the porn or masturbation that is the problem — indeed, masturbation, for example, is a normal part of human development — but it is the idea that having a negative self-image, then we have an unhealthy attitude toward sexuality.
Let me restate what others have said here: God loves you. He (or she) accepts you fully for who you are. He will never give up on you. That has been my experience: when I was in the very depths of addiction to everything you probably can think of, God pulled me out f the bucket and embraced me with a love that goes beyond all I have ever experienced.
I just went through a temple recommend interview. I’ve done some things for which I’m not proud in the past couple of years. Yet I had already been forgiven by that same spirit that relieved my addiction years ago. It’s a mind-game we play — some will call it the adversary — but it’s the voice that tells us “you are unworthy”, “god doesn’t love you”, or “you are such a sh*t”. these are lies we must overcome.
the simple answer is “no” — it is never too late.
As we noted in the summary comment in the TR interview survey, wayfarer wrote:The Temple Recommend interview is not the time to discuss faith issues before the Priesthood. The questions are simple, and should be answered “yes” or “no” as appropriate. Because many of us are in a faith transition or hold unorthodox beliefs, our answers are often more complex and nuanced than the typical true believing, white-or-black response. As well, we often think we need to answer the question according to what we impute the intent of the question to be according to the interviewer or standard church definition of things. This is not the case.
There are multiple approaches to finding a faithful way within the church — one does not have to be orthodox or to believe standard doctrines in order to be worthy for a temple recommend.
– If you want to have a temple recommend and be authentic and honest, then basic observance to the behavior norms is in order.
– If you do not feel that basic observance (chastity, WoW, Tithing…) is in the stars for you, then perhaps it might be a good idea not seek a temple recommend.
– Faithfulness requires integrity — no one surveyed would recommend outright lying.
Please read the
full post herenibbler wrote:Thanks for the comments. I guess I’ve got some misunderstanding or other, maybe Ray or wayfarer could clarify.
A TR interview might not be the best place to confess something but it would seem like providing people with an opportunity to confess sin is one of the goals of some of the questions.
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I’m just wondering why it’s generally a bad idea to confess in a TR interview when the obedience questions seem to steer people in that direction. Especially with the “Are there any unresolved sins” question at the end, which I always took as being another way of saying “Are you reeeeeeeealy sure about your answers, you sure there’s not something you want to tell me????”
Like you note in your post, the bishops and counselors doing TR interviews are focused on getting through as many as possible. I don’t think it’s right for us to request an interview, knowing that we’ll fail and then expecting to get counseling for our disobedience in what should be 10 minute interview. If I were applying for a job requiring a clean record, why would I waste everyone’s time if I had an outstanding criminal offense? It doesn’t make sense, it wastes everyone’s time, and doesn’t serve either to get a TR, nor does it give your confession the due pastoral care it may require.Like we said in the
summaryafteryou have taken care of any past sins, sorted out your faith and testimony, and go in confidently knowing you are “worthy” of it. Too keep this within topic, the purpose of the question is to identify what there are or are not things for which confession is deemed by the interviewee as necessary. A TR interview is not the place to have that confession. The ideas of how long ago a given event occurred has more to do with the broader topic of “Church Discipline”.
The bottom line is this: if you actually feel like you need to confess something, don’t do it in a temple recommend interview. Do it ahead of time, or realize that you don’t need to do it at all.
i probably won’t either…although i was thinking about blogging a flipside version of each lesson…too ambitios though, and a waste of enerhy. cwald wrote:Sure. I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt as well. I’m just a little bit jaded right now.
-sigh- The best i can do, with the benefit of doubt, is 2.8
Hmmm. I take it you won’t be attending a full-year course on the teachings of the 14 fundamentals and the guy who spoke them?😆 well we can’t overhaul the questions, but in my impression, we can interpret them maturely. in your case, which with i agree, is there anything in the past that i haven’t covered? have i committed murder? no. done. cwald wrote:3.2
ok…i don’t really disagree, but i give the guy the benefit of the doubt.i guess it also boils down to whether there are “beings” like god, a resurrected jesus, or angels. maybe all visions are hallucinations. certainly MSU applies in a lot of instances.
as a figurative story, it is not only beautiful, it is probably THE most important and relevant book of the Old Testament. As a literal marriage, it is completely without merit. Like Shawn said, it wasn’t a marriage. Hosea has to be considered a matched book-end to the incident at Gibeah, in Judges. A levite (representing the alleged holiness of israel) has an unfaithful concubine (sound familiar?). He goes to her parents’ house to reconcile (symbolism?) and leaves. on the way back to his hometown, he stays in Gibeah, a city of the tribe of benjamin. they recreate the Lot/sodom incident (this is all figurative) insisting on raping the levite. instead, he pushes his concubine out of the house and the “Sons of Belial) rape her all night long. she crawls to the door, finding it locked, dies on the step. in the morning, the well-rested levite commands to her as if chattel, “get up”, but, being dead, she doesn’t. he packs her up on his mule, and when he gets home, cuts her into 12 pieces and sends them to all the houses of israel. nice guy, that representative if the holy priesthood! this started a war where all the men of benjamin are killed. the narrator of Judges comments that in those days, tnere was no king in Israel, every man did as they wished.
Shortly thereafter, god gave Israel kings — bad ones — because they wished to be like other nations. it’s an age old story: people want to submit to the powerful because they want the certainty and safety that “kings” and “king-men” give us. it’s the message of the book of mormon, so easily misconstrued that the bad guys are the “world”, when un fact, the bad guy, in he incident at gibeah, was the Levite! The priests in Israel had corrupted the love of god and converted it into a power structrure. It was the same in Israel, among the Jews at Jesus time, and it is just as true today, when in our church, we submit to the “king men” that want to dictate commandments of men taught for doctrine.
Hosea is the prophetic warning of a loving god who is fed up with his chosen prophets whoring after the things of this world. whether aligning with wealth in politics, or in hunting reserves, or in shopping centers, or in sumptuous temples that exclude all but the elite, or in doctrines taught over the pulpit requiring uncompromising loyalty or that god’s love is conditional, the god of israel is sick and tired of our whoredoms and idolatry.
Ray, I understand your concern here…yet i think DA’s comments are about something deep in the past that hangs over him, and it has prevented him from moving forward. the problem is that the only problems that fit in this category are sexual in nature…no other sins seem to merit seeing a “spiritual physician” to use Elder Bednar’s words. And that’s the problem.
Without going into details, I’ve done some really awful things in my life — or at least i think they’re awful. i went through the twelve steps, inventoried them and confessed them to another person — not LDS. it helped a lot to do so. confessing liberates, but confessing to a “judge” seems to have the opposite effect. As part of my early journey in the 12 steps, i also confessed to my bishop some (not all) of my indiscretions…he put me on probation, which was testimony-destroying, fir i had already had a powerful spiritual experience liberating me from guilt: God had already forgiven me.
DA, to you: there is no sin that god cannot forgive if you humbly draw near to him/her. none. i say that with certainty, not because i have any idea who god is, but rather, i have experienced that grace directly and powerfully in the midst of my afflictions. there is no man on earth that can do what god did for me.
I remember when I had to get bank financing for my business, and had to personally guarantee the loan. The wording said that it was a perfect guarantee, and i asked my lawyer what that meant, given there really is no such thing. He said that in legal english, the term “perfect” came from jacobian english, and didn’t mean flawless, but rather, “complete, whole, entire”. The language of the KJV is jacobian english. isn’t it sad that our drive for perfectionism comes from a misunderstanding of what the word means? The lord’s standard of perfection is different than ours. We read in Matthew 5:48, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect”, and sometimes we think, we need to do that of ourselves. But I would ask you “What is the ‘therefore’ there, for”? If we look back just a couple of verses, we read the followin:
Quote:I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matthew 5:44-45
In other words, god’s love isuniversal, unconditional, andimpartial. the opposite of “partial” today would be “impartial”, but in times past, the opposite of partial would be “whole” or “perfect”/complete. Jesus is comparing how the sun and the rain provide equal sustenance to all. God is complete/impartial in his grace, to give us all sunshine and rain — god, and he uses the term ‘Father’ here — loves us equally and unconditionally — as any father would his child. So now let’s return to verse 48 where Jesus says, “Be ye THEREFORE perfect (or complete, impartial), even as (Notice this is a simile, a comparison to…) YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN is perfect (in other words, complete, impartial, and not worried about who gets paid what).
i think the drive to ge perfect is the source of a lot of disaffection.
Because we have, perhaps, a distorted view of perfection, we think that the church of god must be without any flaws, that our leaders must be flawless, that the lord will never allow the prophet to lead us astray. We even get to the point that we think it’s all or nothing. I’ve heard myself say that god has had his hand in every aspect of the church and kingdom from the beginning.
But having a perfectly flawless world or church organization is not God’s plan of salvation for us. We learn line upon line and precept upon precept. Yes, there was a plan proposed in the premortal existence that provided for perfection — as in flawlessness — in everything. That wasn’t the lord’s plan. The Lord’s plan was that we would come here to this life, make free choices, and learn from our own experience to distinguish good from evil. Such a plan of learning is messy — people are going to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes.
So, to me, the key to a meaningful faith is to set aside the BS of perfectionism, and open myself to that which makes me “one”: the atonement. i truly believe that our performance-based drive to perfection as earned salvation is fatal to the soul.
mike, A lot of this is about boundary maintenance: the church needs to set a limit to what level of dialogue is acceptable. From yesterday’s statement by the FP and Q12, it is clear
First Presidency Statement June 28 2014 wrote:n God’s plan for the happiness and eternal progression of His children, the blessings of His priesthood are equally available to men and women. Only men are ordained to serve in priesthood offices. All service in the Church has equal merit in the eyes of God. We express profound gratitude for the millions of Latter-day Saint women and men who willingly and effectively serve God and His children. Because of their faith and service, they have discovered that the Church is a place of spiritual nourishment and growth.
We understand that from time to time Church members will have questions about Church doctrine, history, or practice. Members are always free to ask such questions and earnestly seek greater understanding. We feel special concern, however, for members who distance themselves from Church doctrine or practice and, by advocacy, encourage others to follow them.
Simply asking questions has never constituted apostasy. Apostasy is repeatedly acting in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the Church or its faithful leaders, or persisting, after receiving counsel, in teaching false doctrine.
Here is what this is saying to me:1.
Blessingsof the priesthood are “equally” available to men and women, but only men are ordained to serve in priesthood offices. This is the answer to OrdainWomen’s question, although I hardly think they’ll be satisfied by it. 2. You can ask questions, but questioning is problematic. there is a difference.
3. Distancing yourself from Church doctrine or practice is problematic. This means expressing views on the internet that are not in harmony with the church teachings.
4. Advocacy is especially problematic. If your blog is popular, then this consists of ‘advocacy’.
5. New rule: Clear, open and public opposition to either the church or its leaders is apostasy (this adds ‘leaders’, which may be interpreted as ANY leader)
6. Old rule: persisting in teaching false doctrine after being “counseled” is apostasy. This means if you post on the internet your beliefs, and the Bishop or Stake president tells you to stop, and you don’t: you’re in apostasy.
7. Old rule: not stated: Apostasy is mandatory cause for a church court.
