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cwald wrote:
“whether or not the june disciplinary courts for kate and john were coincidental, i am now hearing every day about more bishops seeking unsolicited meetings with women who have been publicly feminist. not just leaders, but rank and file members with views no different than mine. i so wish this were not the case. but it goes to show how high profile courts create an environment where local leaders and members feel empowered or obliged to “act” towards mormon feminists. a very difficult time.”
It is a highly polarized moment. Absent clear leadership direction from the top, the situation at the local level among conservative leaders is “retrenchment”. Others wisely are steering clear of the situation. I checked with my HC and executive secretary friends, and my stake is not taking any action. This seems to me that “Priesthood Roulette” is ruling the day.i have to say that the press response to our letter has been amazing: huffingtonpost, nyt, wsj, others have taken up the story. sadly, though, the more conservative wing of the bloggernacle think us to be like the expositor….interesting analogy.
the divide in the church is as deep as ever.
On Own Now wrote:
Wayfarer! So good to hear from you again! I do believe that it is important not to think of ourselves as ‘more’ or ‘better’ or ‘higher’ than anyone else. It might be better FOR ME, but I don’t need to compare myself to anyone else. My SP and his wife are wonderful people. They are faithful believers and their faith works beautifully for them. I can think of dozens of ‘literalists’ whose faith works better for them than mine does for me. If the ‘way’ that a person finds is fully in the Church or fully in Catholicism/Buddhism/Christianity/Islam/Veganism/Bike-rider-ism/Atheism/Beer-ism, then I think it’s good for them.
I agree. I guess my point is that a reconstructed faith is not “less” than literal belief.beer-ism…
This probably won’t work, but it’s worth a try: What if we consider that a person who has come to question or even reject his or her literal faith is someone who has progressed to a higher spiritual plane than those who require literalism?
Alma 12:9 suggests that the Church teaches “the lesser portion of His word”. Jesus taught in parables and metaphors, and to the audience of the Gospel of John, literalism was a live and well. Literalism is the “milk”. At some point, we outgrow it, and realize that universal, unconditional love is far more important than believing in some literal aspect of church history or doctrine.
breaks are good for the soul, particularly when we become resentful of the complicated, forced way to live life as a TBM. I have come to realize there is a more real god than the big judge in the sky. honestly, i have never understood it: we taught in missionary discussions that Jesus was our judge…and we’re supposed to love him and he loves us. Personally, I have never experienced “love” from a judge (too many traffic tickets I’m afraid), so the metaphor seems to be just BS.
At some point, i deconstructed ALL my beliefs in mormonism, christianity, and the whole schmear. it’s all make-believe. But when I came to this conclusion after two years in India, and found hinduism at its very depth is just as shallow as mormonism, or not, but it was all the same to me at that point. And I missed the community of the saints, so I returned, both from India, as well as to the Church.
Now i can find joy in agitating HP group discussions, and calling BS on some of the outrageous stuff in Sunday School False (er Gospel) doctrine class. I don’t let the church affect my spirit, and when it does, I take a break.
Peace, my friend. I have long lost any beliefs in the truth claims of the church…or any other church for that matter. Each person’s solution, once coming to this place, is a bit different, and I do hope you keep in touch. Cheers!
this is really a great thread to read. I think the key comment in all of this is:
Quote:With that, we talked about how digging into the answers some people give, such as apologists, can be an addictive habit. I realized that I need to stop looking for answers from apologists.
amen, amen, and amen.We have learned through sad experience that apologetics destroys faith. The apologetic heuristic twists truth-finding, allowing us to hold onto beliefs that cannot be true. This is not faith, it is deception. Faith and doubt go hand in hand: doubt is the gap between what we know and that which we cannot know, and which we take on faith. Faith is the great Middle Way.
Like Ray, I think I’m impressed with your Stake President. That he has called you to the HC knowing your issues, he has a purpose. I suspect that the amount of disaffection in the church is rising to epidemic proportions. I moderate a Facebook group supporting those with faith challenges, and we are finding a dramatic increase in membership requests. We cannot keep up with them (we don’t automatically admit, but try to grok why a person would want to join a faith support group).
I applaud your service, and sense that you’ll do immense good as a steward to the disaffected.
hope wrote:…The latest mind blowing realization comes on the heels of many others. I want to laugh and cry in the same breath, and sometimes I want to hide under the covers and cry. Mostly though I feel SO happy for this unexpected journey. I haven’t always felt this way and ‘it wasn’t always mine’ (a favorite phrase from the movie, The Book Thief). The ‘it’ I am referring to is this journey. But now it is my journey and I completely own it and am embracing it fully.
I feel so free. I feel as if I am stepping out of a black & white movie into a world of color I never before knew existed.
welcome to the middle way. some say that it is a temporary place, but i have been wayfaring for many years, and i love it.isaiah 35:8, 10 wrote:And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the
wayfaringmen, though fools, shall not err therein. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. cwald wrote:This article represents the best of Mormonism, IMO.
Indeed. one of the very best doctrinal dissertations i have ever seen by the church.church0333 wrote:I appreciate the honestly in this essay but is it really doctrine because JS made a comment about it in a speech and decades later another leader added to it. It is not really part of the scriptures and there is no modern canonized scripture on it, so why do we believe it? He said that the garden of Eden was in MO, so does that make it so. Many of the things he declared in the D & C did not happen, but we believe this. He couldn’t be honest about his wives but we base what happens in the afterlife on his word? I just don’t think we know or at least I don’t know. I like the thought of always progressing but I don’t think I want to become a god some day. I don’t even want to be a home teacher most of the time.
the concept of divine nature as opposed to human depravity clearly distinguishes LDS thought from mainstream christianity. That we share a divine nature is more important than how we derive that doctrine. there is abundant evidence in scripture that we have a divine nature and are gods and children of god, as shown by the article. no, we don’t teach very often from King Follett, because amidst the notions of divine nature, there are mentions of God coming from a different planet, and other speculations that are very hard to square with christian thought.As disaffected LDS, we are often forced into a false dichotomy of “all true or all false”. We think that because JS made profound prophetic errors we cannot trust his insight of the divine. When I came to realize that Joseph Smith was profoundly human, and that the book of mormon cannot be a true history of the Amerinds, I had to realize that there is a Middle Way between all true and all false: that the church and its profoundly uplifting teachings such as divine nature are completely “true” for me in the sense of how a compass points to the direction i should go.
Thoreau, I can totally relate. I have a deep, dark corner of my soul where I prefer not to go. There exists there a blackness, a despair that no words can enlighten.
I am there tonight.
Knowing the depth of your thinking, the thoughtfulness of your journey these years we have been dialoguing on these fora…I sense there is something else, something deeply human, that perturbs the waters of the deep. I don’t know what it is.
I have no advice, only a listening ear along the Way.
johndehlin wrote:Wow. What a nice treat. Thanks so much, cwald. And thanks to the others, too. Truth is, I’m barely hanging on at church right now. It has been very disappointing to me at times. This made me feel a little better….so thanks so much.
I can identify very well with the Church of Jesus Christ of Saturday Conference. After Sunday Morning’s session, i was grateful to be spared the rest, given i had to travel.The reality is that the Church both edifies AND seriously disappoints. As a result of Prop8, i sought in earnest to find a replacement, and I found that ALL religions both edify and seriously disappoint. It was so frustrating to return from that final stage of my faith journey and land here: is this all there is? it was if the Jenga structure of my faith journey had entirely collapsed, and there was nothing left.
But as i saw John Dehlin reconstruct some of his faith after a disasterous mission and various faith challenges, and as i found a community of people like cwald, brian, ray, and all of you, i realized that this is our faith: the trust and love we have for one another and share. Faith, to me, is no longer pretending to know crap. Faith is hope, and trust, loving and acceptance, caring and sharing. i have come to realize i don’t know much, and believe almost nothing, yet i can have faith…an optimism that we, together, can work through our faith transformation.
To me, the soft landing zone of a faithful Middle-Way is Dehlin’s most significant contribution, although I know, personally he is ambivalevt as to its long term viability.
