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This is much longer than I anticipated, but this really struck a nerve…. This is one of the occasions I actually hope someone important is monitoring these forums…. Especially this:
Quote:Mr. Mattsson said he sought the help of the church’s highest authorities. He said a senior apostle came to Sweden at his request and told a meeting of Mormons that he had a manuscript in his briefcase that, once it was published, would prove all the doubters wrong. But Mr. Mattsson said the promised text never appeared, and when he asked the apostle about it, he was told it was impertinent to ask.
This is the part that puts the church in the worst light for me. Unfortunately this thinking is wired into many in mormonism. It’s the same story of JS and the plates…at least from my perspective. Perhaps JS had gold plates in another room under a cloth or in the bottom of a barrel. But no one will ever know because it was “impertinent” for anyone else to see them.
And say he DID have something in the briefcase that would dispel all doubt….How could he call himself a servant of God if he is withholding information that could prove the church right, convert the world, and turn earth into Zion. It’s a horrible place that GA put himself in. Either he’s a liar or he’s involved in a conspiracy that’s holding back the progress of humanity.
…Or he’s just deluded himself and like too many TBMs can’t process why people just don’t blindly follow leadership.
I think there is a middle way. But the church seems to deny that. Like cwald’s experience.
Or GBH:
Quote:Each of us has to face the matter—either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing.
There’s plenty of examples of that. And that’s what I find the most frustrating. All of us here are trying to find a middle way that the leadership of the church says doesn’t exist, or ropes in with other forms of “apostasy”.
Until they acknowledge their own imperfection and that of past leaders and stop being afraid to disown past falsehoods and cast aside current false teachings. Until they say that the priesthood ban was wrong, that polygamy was wrong, the Joseph Smith did not translate the plates in the manner they’ve been teaching. Until they give up the idea that no 18 year old could have written the Book of Mormon, inspired or not, or stop teaching the first vision as anything other than a spiritual vision of which several accounts–from JS himself!–exist. Until they stop building up the church to get gain through oil exploration companies, wagyu beef farms, and luxury malls.
Until they stop saying people need to accept whatever the prophet says and follow it, consequences be damned, people will continue to flood out of the church. I hate the lack of sympathy from a leadership that clearly doesn’t understand how HARD people are working to try and stay. But rather than feel accepted for what we can bring to the table, they try to make us feel guilty for not falling in line. And they heap calls to repentance upon us for no reason other than they are too afraid to use the common sense and free agency and desire and capacity for learning that God granted them.
I’m getting so tired of trying to make this work…. I could get past much of this, but there are so many problems with it. At some point it just gives…
I had a great conversation with my wife again. We talked about why the church is important to her–the support, the programs, the morals, etc. Especially for raising kids. I get most of it. And I want to try to make church work. And for all the bad past, the church is getting so much better! But it’s so slow…. What bugs me is still that in 1977 if I’d railed against the church for racism, I could have got myself excommunicated. In 1979, it was fixed. So what about those who now find fault with the church’s treatment of homosexuals? They can get ex’d. But in 20-30 years it’ll probably change. If these leaders are so inspired and perfect then why are they decades behind every major advancement of human rights? Be it rights for women, for those of another color, and now for those who are born with a different orientation. Jesus was incredibly progressive. Why isn’t the church?
I know why I want this to work. It’s because the core teachings of man’s nature and relationship to God resonate like no other religion. The idea that this life is ours to learn to exercise our free agency is beautiful. The idea that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me as his child, who is sad when I am sad, who struggles watching me struggle, but who lets me go through it knowing that it will be for the better–that is beautiful. The idea that I can use my own God-given senses to figure out right and wrong independent of any creeds, dogmas, or doctrines is beautiful. That my family will be together in the eternities (perhaps not 100% as the church teaches it now, but still…) is a beautiful idea. The idea that heaven is a place of continued growth and learning and progression and not a place where we will sing songs about God’s greatness all the time, is beautiful.
I love these ideas and many, many more. And So many of them came through Joseph Smith. I don’t know what percentage of his teachings were inspired, but I do know that many of them I’ve felt confirmed by the same spirit which now says the LDS church isn’t true in the way I’ve been taught. These ideas also have parallels in religions around the world, but I’ve never found what I consider the “truth” to be so concentrated in another religion. But the institutional church puts up so many walls around it with falsities that it’s hard to reach the core. And I can accept these doctrines as true and live them independent of whether JS was actually a prophet, whether he actually saw God and Jesus, whether he was actually visited by an angel, whether there were actual plates, etc. I can accept them because I feel they are right and they help me make sense of the universe. That acceptance isn’t dependent on what actually happened in that grove in 1820 (or 1821…or maybe 1822). It doesn’t matter. Truth is truth because it’s truth. Not because the source is. And if I’ve learned the truth about JS and I need to disconnect him from the equation a bit to make it all work, then what’s the problem? It’s not all or nothing! Stop teaching that!
Just admit you were wrong in the past, stop claiming to be the be-all, end-all of the universe and let people serve each other and try to lift each other’s burdens and mourn with each other and comfort each other and rejoice with each other and all of these other things that we can do without leaders telling us we just need to accept X doctrine or we aren’t righteous.
/rant.
I pray that “big tent” Mormonism is coming and that these things will change. They have to. Because this isn’t going to be the last area authority to do this if they don’t. NYT will get a lot more articles in the future….
It was memorable! 
I did have one spiritual experience I forgot to mention…
Since we were up for a weekend on the trek/YC we had church services outside. Taking the sacrament in a meadow by a creek surrounded by red sandstone hills with beautiful trees, birdsong in the air, deep blue sky with clouds floating by, and little butterflies everywhere, was an incredible experience. Something about communing with God both through the sacrament and through experiencing his creation at the same time was amazing. I wish I could always take the sacrament in a place like that. Our sterile building make me sad sometimes.
Oh, and when i said I wouldn’t encourage my son to go… it’s not that I wouldn’t let him go, or discourage him per se. Just that I would explain that he needs to be safe and not do anything that he doesn’t feel right about and not give in to peer pressure from the other kids OR from leaders. Basically what I hope to teach about church in general.
After a couple days (and some catching up on sleep from having a newborn) I’m much calmer. I know it’s not going to lead there. I was just half ready to write a whole letter of my objections and issues and why I can’t do it anymore. I’m usually much more rational than I have been lately. I’m pretty sure it’s the lack of sleep… Reading back through my post I don’t know why I was so paranoid…
Oh well. I appreciate the advice. I’m going to let them know I just can’t teach right now…and be much less dramatic about it than I would have been two days ago heh.
Thanks again all.
We did a handcart thing for yc one year. Each ward was supposed to build their own handcart. One of our leaders owned a machining shop so we had slick wheels with ball bearings. They didn’t search us for anything. One of the kids in my ward even snuck weed in… At night we snuck across the camp past the guards to the girls side and harassed them with laser pointers all night. They had cabins and guys were in tents… We had bags of flour that were supposed to be babies but when we got to the part where the baby dies the young women in my ward said they’d gotten tired of carrying it and left the bag on some rocks like a mile earlier. We were supposed to hike part of it barefoot through the desert but my entire ward including leaders said that was completely unsafe so we didn’t. When we got to camp, they had so many ill that the medical tents they’d set up were overflowing and 2 girls had to be taken to the hospital for heat exhaustion (It was august in Arizona). If they’d tried to deprive me of water I don’t remember it because I had enough redbulls to make up for it. Oh and a kid in my ward got caught sleeping with the bishop’s daughter from the next ward over in a medical tent at night…
So thats my experience. The whole thing was completely unspiritual for me. Was a lot of fun though…The adults got mad we weren’t playing along with their lessons a lot. But I guess you get out what you put in spiritually.
Also your daughter might be all into it but be careful of the kids like we were. That was 10 years ago. I wish I had a good experience but even then it seemed manipulative. I hate anything where people tell me when or how to feel the spirit. I also just don’t think god rewards stupidity, and hiking barefoot through the desert with limited water dressed like a pioneer for no good reason is stupid. Pioneers did what they did so we don’t have to go through what they did.
I would never encourage my son to go. My parents forced me.
Thanks cwald. Ray,
I guess I’ve been raised passive aggressive. So my instinct is to just back off. I know passive agressivenesss is NOT good… I understand the idea of holding them to it but I’m trying not to get called in for an interview that leads to me saying things that get my TR taken away. Im afraid if i tell them what you just said it might get me there… I need to chill before i say anything to anyone anyways. I understand that staying is probably the better path for me but I know that I’ll blow this out of proportion because I have pent up anger from the last 3 times this happened just wanting to burst out….
I don’t want to leave the church, there is just such a pattern of this kind of stuff that is pushing me out. If it was just me I’d make my stand on it and other things that bother me–consequences be damned. But if I get myself labeled or get my TR taken its my wife they’re hurting. And I don’t want to hurt her. She’s struggled enough with me and my faith transition already. She suggested I just quit the calling though. Since my relationship with the church right now is mainly to please her I’ll probably just defer to what she wants.
But trust me, deep down I would love to make an issue over this. I don’t plan on leaving the church. But I find it more and more inevitable that at some point I’ll have to take a stand on something like this that will lead to them forcing me out of it.
My wife is istj and I’m intp. SJ and NP can have issues but honestly I think its the difference I find attractive. I don’t know. I’ve just had to learn to find other places to share my deeper thoughts. I love my wife but she gets frustrated with my abstract thinking and I get frustrated with her worrying about who’s going to do the dishes or exactly how much money we have and trying to hint at things(which I don’t pick up well).
I think she’s generally OK with my belief changes as long as I demonstrate they aren’t a threat to our family’s stability. Fortunately she puts family before church.
I think the key is that in addition to religious things, I also ramble on about random science stuff all the time. She usually finds it interesting, but too much work to really understand and she usually shuts off. But at least she knows its just my personality and I’m not just obsessed with religion or the church. As an infp it’s a bit different. Generally you probably want to make moral, rather than logical stands on issues. But you’re going to base it on a universal morality and she’s going to base it on the structure she’s been taught. But I’ve found a lot in the church that I see as truth, even if the whole story isn’t. So I try to focus on that.
With mbti as well its important to note that you aren’t set in stone, its just you are predisposed to acting a certain way. We should all try to develop the other side of ourselves and become a more complete person. I can learn a lot from SJs. By marrying someone so different I hope some of her qualities rub off on me. Mainly time management and not walking around with my head in the clouds all the time.
So I would view your personality type as a starting point, not a track you’re stuck on forever. “God made me this way” isn’t a good reason to not change, assuming the change would make you a better person.
Just my 2 cents.
You had to drag mbti into this. I am also intp(and infp… was almost split exactly.). I find, however, that my intp side makes me happier when I’m not talking with people. Especially the small talk stuff…. I would enjoy discussions on deeper things–but intps like logic, which is also rare in church discussions. So I’m perfectly happy being left alone. In fact I need to be left alone with my thoughts or books or wikipedia or staylds.com for significant periods of time or I get frazzled and very irritable.
My infp side wants to be in harmony with everyone. Once again this is most often accomplished by keeping my opinions to myself at church. Only occasionally, when someone says something outrageous and offensive to my sense of universal morality do I feel compelled to correct it.
So I don’t know. I envy your situation, personally. I can’t go to church without being mobbed with people trying to fellowship me.
Grass is always greener I suppose…
The concept of becoming “adults of God” has been mentioned several times here. I really like the analogy. I think a lot of this echoes what mackay said. I think what you’re describing is how i felt a few months ago when I started here. I think it’s the teenager of God (or at least of the Mormon concept of God) phase. somewhere between child (willing to submit to all things) and adult(mature enough to make decisions for ourselves without relying necessarily on an outward source for morality {my definition of it anyways…})
I’m reminded of when my family moved me away from all of my friends and turned my life upside-down right before my senior year. I proceeded to “show them” by slacking off, skipping class, ruining my gpa, not preparing for college, and other things–mostly playing video games all day. In the end, it didn’t really affect my parents. But it set me back. A lot. I didn’t get into a good college, which i should have. I gained a ton of weight sitting around all day playing games (which i still haven’t lost 10 years later) and I wasted a whole year of my life doing it.
When I realized the church wasn’t what it said it was, a lot of things suddenly became super appealing. Things proscribed by the WoW especially. But, like you, I realized I was doing them out of spite, not just because I was doing them. I quickly found out a week of rebellious starbucks consumption is pretty darned expensive.
I guess what I’ve realized now is that in the end, the church loses hardly anything from someone being “rebellious” like that. We stand to lose a lot. Friends, family, neighbors, etc. Not to say moving away from the rules is bad, but take it slow. mackay11 wrote:In other words. Do what you think is right (for you). The consequences will naturally follow. Some things that are ‘commandments’ are also ‘good principles.’
I want to echo that. Especially that commandments can be good principles. There are usually good reasons behind many commandments. It’s only that we focus on either “because god said so” or to get “blessings” so much that we may not realize the logic behind many of them. A lot of times I think it’s about making the shift in the reason for keeping a commandment from “because i’m supposed to” to “because i want to”. And then if you can’t really find a reason you want to, I wouldn’t worry about it.
I’m really glad you had such a good time with your client. Sounds like things got a lot better from just getting it out there. That’s half the reason I like to reply. Getting my thoughts out helps.
Even a couple of months ago I would have wanted to hear “meatier” talks from the past. But not anymore. I don’t see it as green pastures. It frankly scares me. I think the reason we hear little more than plattitudes today is that for the most part they are helpful and don’t paint us into doctrinal corners. If it was more like the 1850s I’d probably not be able to find what little bit of middle ground I have. I’d have left long ago…
I’m glad a few plain and precious things survived and werent blown away in all the hot air of the past.
Perhaps the stopped clock analogy was a cheap shot. But I have issues with BY that can’t be resolved above the few you mentioned. But this isn’t the forum for that.
…
A thought on Adam-Michael…
Michael means “who is like God?” Then when he comes to Earth his name is Adam, meaning “man” or “mankind”.
Question and answer?
I find meaning in it anyways…
Tithing is generally taught as “fire insurance” in my experience. I like the idea of teaching about the practical things it pays for, but that’s not really why we’re taught to pay it. It’s either to show god we love him so he’ll bless us or just “because god said so”. With the WoW it’s not that it’s bad advice. A lot is good. Some is eh. I could stand to eat healthier, for sure. But we don’t stress the eat healthier part. We teach that God will help us run without fainting if we don’t drink coffee. Personally, I think I’d run a lot better if I ate less meat. I’d also probably run a bit faster if I had a double espresso. But I can eat all the meat I want and still get a tr.
If we taught the wow better as a principle of being healthy instead of a principle of proving ourselves to god so he’ll bless us, or simply as a way to separate ourselves from the “gentiles”, I think we’d all be better off. The problem isn’t the WoW as a principle, its the doctrine built up around it and the way its taught.
But the way I understood the question was that all of my above discussion is pointless if none of it is actually doctrine from god.
Its like people arguing over whether my doctrine is to cheer for club america or for chivas. But in reality I could not care less about Mexican football…
That’s how I look at a lot of this. We debate this and that in church and in reality I doubt god cares one bit what I drink or how much I help pay for the church to buy iPads for missionaries, he cares about how I treat the gift that is my body and whether or not I use my excess to help those less fortunate than myself.
I can’t wait for the day we focus on principles and not applications. The only principle focused on seems to be obedience. Everything comes back to “because god said to”. But there has to be more. We’re supposed to be becoming more like God, yes? What part of blind obedience helps us become like him?
Unfortunately debating the tangible merits of church teachings is hard. Half the things in the wow are in direct opposition to medical science. We can’t really know where our tithing goes because they won’t tell us. So we speculate. We rationalize.
The intangibles are harder. Whether obeying commandment x leads to god granting blessing y is not really demonstrable. Even if a perceived blessing is received, correlation cant prove causation. But reducing doctrine to such quid pro quo statements happens all the time and is unfortunate. Moreso when the stated blessing is something that isn’t even realized in this lifetime. We should choose the right to show our unconditional love for god without an eye to a “reward”–temporal or spiritual–just as we’d expect god to love us without conditions.
Phantom doctrine is found in the contrivance of the aforementioned quid pro quo statements. It is also found in other forms of tangential speculation regarding teachings “not pertinent to salvation”.
For me the things pertinent to my salvation is a short list.
mackay11 wrote:I don’t consider BY a particularly trustworthy source of doctrine. Having said that there are probably more quotes from him in the quotes thread than anyone else. He seems to have said so much that eventually some of it was worth keeping. Adam-God isn’t one of them for me.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, eh?
Ann wrote:I’d have my own list of what’s no longer interesting, but plain old indifference to many discussions at church is part of what fuels my “crisis.”
I agree. I think although I find it somewhat interesting still I find that it’s much less so now.
I think that a great product of our “crises” is usually an increased ability to worry about and live in the “now”. Its much more productive IMO.
cwald wrote:I love the AGT.
I dont believe it…but I love to dwell on it. It would make an excellent science fiction movie, or star trek episode.
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Or a whole TV series. Battlestar Galactica… Brigham Young never mentioned Cylons though. War in heaven = war in space? Hmm…
Personally I don’t believe in Adam the same way BY must’ve. I still think there may be an Adam in the sense of the first man to achieve sentience and ponder his own existence. Interesting that if the story is true that it was a woman who first achieved it.
Anyways, not to talk about evolution, I think that the AGT is interesting. If Adam is God, and Adam is a metaphor for us, then we are God. Each of us. I think JS was probably trying to explain something BY just didn’t get if what BY said about learning AGT from JS is true. If not then BY made it up.
So that’s how I find value in it. And if BY said that Adam is the only God we should worry about then I need to focus on bettering myself.
I know that’s not at all how BY intended it but that’s all I manage to get out of it.
I haven’t posted much lately but this caught my eye. I’ve come to a point where I don’t think that the CoJCoLDS is the “one true church” or that JS had all the experiences he said he did or whatever. So many of the church’s teachings and doctrines are completely uninteresting. WoW, tithing, obedience to prophets, etc. are just not worth the contemplation I used to give them because I just don’t believe everything is direct from God as church teaches.
That being said, I am fascinated by the teachings surrounding agency, the eternal nature of families, eternal progression, and other things. I think for me it’s that the doctrines surrounding the nature of our existence seem so much more important than the overemphasized temporal obedience parts of the church.
Although I may not believe everything was restored and the church is God’s one true church, I can’t say God hasn’t worked through it. I have felt it. Even the priesthood power, whatever it is, is something I’ve experienced. Do I believe it was restored the way JS said? Not really, but I’ve still felt it when giving blessings. So something IS there… I’ve just let go of worrying about how it got there or if the church has a monopoly on it. It is what it is.
Perhaps the biggest change is that as a tbm I liked to try and connect weird doctrines to a greater whole. I had the assumption they were all true so somehow they must fit together. It was through this process that I came to realize how much they don’t fit.
I guess I still find value in discussing/contemplating how the church and some of its teachings fit in the universe, but no longer how to fit the universe into the confines of the church and its teachings.
That’s great! I also had really good luck talking to my wife this week. I’ve been feeling so alone about it. She called me on my inactivity and we had a largely unpleasant talk. She never said the “if you aren’t active i don’t know if we can be together” thing luckily, but she wasn’t happy.
But I’ve been trying to show increased affeciton and caring and show that just because the church doesn’t mean what it used to to me that I’m not a different person.
So then a couple nights ago it came up again and I was able to get almost everything off my chest. Not too many specifics about issues, but the ones I shared she sympathized with. We have a hard time talking about it sometimes because I have incredibly hurt feelings right now from feeling like the church lied to me for most of my life. She wasn’t brought up in primary or anything so she doesn’t understand that feeling of betrayal. She never had “the church is perfect” idea drilled into her head so she’s not quite able to understand how hard that realization has been. But she was very understanding and feels better about me not attending all the time. She wants to study church history more. I’m not sure what she’s hoping to find. I’m not sure what part I want to play in her joining us down the rabbit hole either. But I don’t get the feeling she wants to study it to try and fix me. And I appreciate that.
I know it’s a different issue from your husband’s, but I think that a little time to let them process coupled with a good demonstration that you still love them and care about them and aren’t becoming a totally different person goes a long way.
The church teaches us to build our lives and marriages around it so much that when that gets yanked out it can feel like the glue that held us together is suddenly gone. Especially since for many of us the church was one of the biggest things we had in common…and it’s been taught at church that it’s really all you need in common…ugh.
But I feel like getting the church out from between me and my wife’s relationship makes me love her even more.
