The standards divide: Church vs The World

I actually think we have a pretty big divide now on social issues — same sex attraction being the forefront, as well as feminism. If you lived in Canada where I’m from, the divide is even greater. There, you have to be VERY careful what you say. Even qualified support statements for gays and women in the home, (qualified, meaning, some form of deference to these groups that shows love or support) is not enough.

On issues of sexual morality, there is also a big cultural divide. The stance of the Church compared to what you see on TV is astounding. With the sitcom Friends, it became mainstream for single people to have sex with every serious date they encountered. And its boring for sitcoms and Tv shows to have couples together for any length of time. Back in the 50’s and 60’s, and even into the 80’s, all the movies and shows were about more stable families and their interactions. Now, the characters have round-robin relationships with each other, and there is often a same sex couple involved as well.

So, I see the great divide. Mormonism’s fight to become mainstream is becoming an upstream fight among the unChurched and society at large. And they really think we are weird.

The latest saving grace has been the taboo on attacking people because of their religion in the political race for the presidency. I was relieved that people who resorted to that approach got lambasted by others. It was if for the first time, it was wrong to persecute a Mormon. That is the only narrowing of the great divide that I see in modern times.

Brian gets +10 points for using the word “milquetoast” :thumbup:

I absolutely disagree with Anderson. Here is why, it seems the Mormon version of morality is so solidly intertwined with sexual conduct, that they cannot see all the good things that society is doing.

And I also work with social services on a daily basis, and i see a lot of pain…

Yes, perhaps the world is more sexual permissive and open. But that is just a small part of morality. What about our society advancements in the moral spectrum of environmentalism, racism and sexism. NEVER has this planet had more freedom and democracy for all races and people, as well as women, as we have today. If FREE AGENCY is really what the plan of salvation is all about, than we are doing much better today than we were 100 years or even 50 years ago. We are WAY MORE moral today than we were 100 years ago. Sure, we hear about more sexual issues today, because of news and because of our population. But if one compared population percentage ratios….. I actually believe the prophets when they say that we are a “chosen generation.” We are —- we aren’t going to be content with authoritarian organizations that promote sexism, racism, homophobic ideals, blind obedience and organization abuse. Perhaps this is why religion, ALL religions, are failing, as well as all the political revolutions we have witnessed over the last century, and even the ones happening right now.

So with that personal view — I think there IS NOT a great divide at all with the universal ideals of our “people.” And if there is — the things that divide “us” from “them” is quite petty and irrelevant, IMO, such as earrings, white shirts, tea, tattoos, masturbation, dating before 16, sex next to murder on the sin chart, proper ways to address god when saying a prayer, making sure your big toe gets dunked during baptism, raising the bar for missionaries, using proper titles when addressing your ecclesiastical leaders, etc etc, and the LDS leadership would do well to wake up to that revelation.

I was listening to Elder Anderson’s talk this morning on my commute, the one titled “Children,” and one of his comments really struck me in a different way.

He said “Where once the standards of the Church and the standards of society were mostly compatible, now there is a wide chasm between us, and it’s growing ever wider. …”

From a more detailed and nuanced view of our history, I don’t think this is true at all. Or perhaps maybe it was, but only for a very short period of time.…We’re also an extremely conservative religion and culture, also easily confusing cultural preferences (such as hair and clothing styles) with divine and eternal principles…we just tend to lag now a long time behind cultural changes. And I also don’t think that we are all the consistent over our history.

I think there are definitely major differences between what the world typically considers normal and expected behavior and what the Church teaches; I just don’t believe this discrepancy has really changed that much in a significant way since the 1960s. In the case of Neil L. Andersen’s talk one thing he was specifically referring to was birth control and the traditional Mormon ideal of having a large number of children whereas the way of the world is often to avoid having more than a few children for supposedly selfish and materialistic reasons that are not approved of by God according to the Church. The answer is right there in Genesis that we are supposed to do our part to “multiply and replenish the earth” and as if that wasn’t enough David O. McKay, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson and other LDS prophets and apostles have reiterated this same message.

To me there is no question that the Church has made a mistake by putting so much emphasis on these differences and how wrong they think the world is. The problem is that active members are becoming increasingly exposed to the non-Mormon world so as soon as they see that at least some non-Mormons or inactive members are decent and respectable people or that sometimes breaking these strict rules results in little or no harm then they will start to wonder what the big deal is with some of these things the Church continues to harp on so much. Why is being different from the world to this extent so important to begin with?

I think there are some easily understandable fear-based motivations at work here that make the Church cling to some of these traditions and try to defend them at all costs. For example, it looks like some Church members and leaders associate not living these Church standards with members falling away from the Church permanently which also represents condemnation and lost blessings if they don’t ever repent and return to the fold. So these observed results serve as confirmation to TBMs that disregarding these rules really is evil and dangerous to members’ eternal salvation even if any immediate negative consequences are minimal or non-existent.

Another thing Church members fear in my opinion is facing the implications of admitting that maybe they were wrong about some of these things all this time. It represents a major blow to the fundamental LDS tenet that prophets and apostles are supposedly almost always right and will never lead the Church astray. So sometimes it’s not simply a matter of questioning individual ideas by themselves if it is seen by TBMs as a direct challenge to their entire belief system and identity which can make it very painful to consider. Because of this, sometimes it is easier to just try to re-write history with apologetic arguments such as the idea that Jesus didn’t drink wine and it must have been unfermented grape juice because these eternal gospel standards can never change and have supposedly been the same since the time of Adam barring widespread apostasy.