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Can I start with a story? I will try to keep it short and relevant. I have been struggling for several months, close to the beginning of my struggles the RSP, who is also a good friend, came to me and said she had felt like she needed to talk to me, but she didn’t think that there was anything wrong, so she decided to ask if I was OK.
I responded that I was indeed having a hard time.
She called me the next day and we had a good talk. She asked if she could share specific things with the bishop for a specific reason, and I agreed.
The bishop calls me in a couple of days later and said he was “inspired” to talk to me.
This bugs me a lot, the bishop clearly called be in because of his conversation with the RSP. I stew about it for a few weeks, then decide that I need to talk to him about it.
I sit down and say that it troubled me that he said he was inspired when it was clearly a conversation with the RSP, not the Holy Ghost, that caused him to want to talk to me.
He responds that talking to other people counts as inspiration and that he can’t be expected to receive inspiration from the spirit. (He didn’t say all the time, or sometimes, just that it can’t be expected.)
I have NO problem with the bishop using all the resources at his disposal to do his very difficult job. I have no problem with him talking to me. However, I think that the word “inspiration” in a church leadership setting should be reserved for spiritual inspiration. If that never comes, that is fine, carry on and do your job, but don’t say that it did.
My bishop uses the word “inspired” a lot.
Right now, my personal feelings about inspiration are complicated. I’m not sure I’m ready to believe in the Holy Ghost, or at least that he guides very many people very often. I think that people do things for a lot of reasons, some of which they understand and some of which they don’t. I think there are a lot of subliminal cues and other things outside of our awareness that we don’t understand. Sometimes we respond to those things and call them inspiration. I think the RSP was inspired to talk to me, either from picking up on something, or possibly by the “Spirit”.
I don’t think that someone picking up the phone and telling you, “Bishop, Sister Jones has this problem” counts as inspiration.
I am pretty divided within myself about this though, because spirituality is a very personal, private thing, and if the bishop wants to call that inspiration, for his own purposes that is his own business, not mine at all.
However, he also holds a very public calling as bishop, and using such a definition of inspired and using the word frequently may be deceitful to people who define inspiration as coming from the Holy Ghost.
When someone says they were inspired, what does that mean to you? Would you feel deceived if you were in my situation?
Just because the bishop got the information from the RSP doesn’t mean he couldn’t feel inspired. He gets a lot of information and is very busy. He doesn’t necessarily have time to act on all of it or to make everything a top priority. He very well may have felt inspired when he heard the information from the RSP that he should act and give you a call. Receiving information in mundane ways and then feeling a prompting to do something about it fits in very well with the definition of inspired, IMO. Here’s a scripture that I have always found a bit humorous with sort of the same idea:
Alma 18:
13 And one of the king’s servants said unto him, Rabbanah, which is, being interpreted, powerful or great king, considering their kings to be powerful; and thus he said unto him: Rabbanah, the king desireth thee to stay.
14 Therefore Ammon turned himself unto the king, and said unto him: What wilt thou that I should do for thee, O king? And the king answered him not for the space of an hour, according to their time, for he knew not what he should say unto him.
15 And it came to pass that Ammon said unto him again: What desirest thou of me? But the king answered him not.
16 And it came to pass that Ammon, being filled with the Spirit of God, therefore he perceived the thoughts of the king. And he said unto him: Is it because thou hast heard that I defended thy servants and thy flocks, and slew seven of their brethren with the sling and with the sword, and smote off the arms of others, in order to defend thy flocks and thy servants; behold, is it this that causeth thy marvelings?
I always thought that it was funny that Ammon figuring out that the king was blown away by his defending the sheep was attributed to inspiration. Perhaps there is a gem in there for you somehow?
With that said a couple of personal opinions:
– I agree that your bishop was being somewhat disingenuous. It does seem that he was trying to imply something miraculous to bolster your faith in a less than direct manner.
– Personally I believe that the spirit is in fact a human emotion that was evolved before religion and that religion discovered that emotion there and played on it.
Here are some musings I wrote up about a year ago on some of my thoughts on the matter. I really just wrote these down to help me think through it so take it for what it’s worth to you if anything: Why I don’t think I can rely on the “Spirit” as a source of truth.
1) The church has a list of hierarchy and rules of who and in what circumstances you can receive revelation. You can receive a revelation but only if it agrees with the church and prophet and only if you have official church stewardship for someone. Therefore it is circular logic – a spiritual prompting is only valid if in line with the prophet, but the only way to validate the prophet is through the spiritual feeling.
2) Spiritual feelings that you should marry someone are only valid if the other person feels it too. So if it can be wrong about who you are to marry how can you trust it for other things? This happened to me personally as a teenager and caused me to make a huge fool of myself by continuing to pursue someone who wasn’t interesting – the spirit made me a stalker! (I’m still mortified.) There are many more examples of people having “false” marriage promptings where only 1 of them got the prompting.
3) Why could I go in the temple and feel the spirit bear testimony that the church is not true when fully worthy? It could not have been Satan – therefore I must have been able to create the emotion myself.
4) How come the D&C has so many sections talking about how to know if a revelation is real or not? Answer: because too many members were getting “false” revelations hurting Joseph Smith’s authority. More evidence revelation is fallible.
5) How come members of so many other religions have had spiritual experiences just as powerful that their religion is true? Why is a Mormon’s spiritual experience more valid than theirs?
6) This general conference talk:
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/04/the-divine-call-of-a-missionary?lang=eng “A couple of other times as the process moved along, Elder Eyring would turn to me and say, “Well, Brother Rasband, where do you feel this missionary should go?” I would name a particular mission, and Elder Eyring would look at me thoughtfully and say, “No, that’s not it!” He would then continue to assign the missionaries where he had felt prompted.”
Finally at the end Rasband guessed the same country as Eyring – once – well at least he got the country right if not the actual mission. Here’s evidence that even a general authority can’t get revelation consistently right – how are we supposed to be able to count on it?
7) How come I felt a strong spiritual prompting that my ex-bishops 17 year old son with cancer was going to survive? Then he died a year later.
Why is the spirit so often ineffective in prompting people do to things that could save major problems. One of many examples is several years ago in Salt Lake, 4-5 preschooler cousins from 3 families had locked themselves in the trunk of the car on the driveway. The very active Mormon parents spent several hours looking for them – not a single one of them felt the spirit to look in the trunk as the children slowly died of the heat mere feet away from their parents.bc_pg wrote:Here are some musings I wrote up about a year ago on some of my thoughts on the matter. I really just wrote these down to help me think through it so take it for what it’s worth to you if anything …
Thanks for sharing that. I have found myself doing the same kind of thing … writing down thoughts and impressions to try to achieve some kind of order out of the chaos. Reading your thoughts reminds me of what I thing I have known for a long time but am only now beginning to grasp — that (for me) in the church we spend an inordinate amount of time pursuing pointless conjecture and building logical houses of cards. It raises my blood pressure just to think about it. Perhaps my cynicism about it all has to do with the fact that I see the culture so tightly enmeshed with that way of thinking (or not thinking, as it were) that it seems hopeless. I think I’m going to go meditate now.
Quote:…that (for me) in the church we spend an inordinate amount of time pursuing pointless conjecture and building logical houses of cards.
What I see as one of the great values of this site is that so many have used pieces of the Mormon framework to find and define their own personal spirituality and to figure out how to make that work within the framework. There is much wisdom in that approach to be had for many I think. The temple recommend series now running illustrates this quite well…
Inspiration can come in many ways, and I agree with bc_pg that Bishops often receive inspiration about how to prioritize their time and what to do out of the overwhleming number of things they could do. I don’t think it’s disingenuous of the Bishop to say he was inspired – since I think there’s a good possibility he actually was. Now, if he’s said he had a revelation to talk with you . . .
I also believe we tend to attribute all inspiration to God in some way, when, in reality, it was a really good idea of our own. Otoh, I also think we sometimes classify things as good ideas that probably were inspriation from God.
I think the “gift of the Holy Ghost” is much more symbolic of an unlocking of the divine within us on a continual basis than some sort of endowment of outside power or insight.
Quote:I think the “gift of the Holy Ghost” is much more symbolic of an unlocking of the divine within us on a continual basis than some sort of endowment of outside power or insight.
Like. Ray and I probably differ widely on what our definition of “divine” means, but otherwise I completely agree with this concept.
Wow, the Ammon story is great. I love that, it illustrates a point, and made me chuckle (not loudly). Not only did it apparently take inspiration, but it took an hour. Quote:Why is the spirit so often ineffective in prompting people do to things that could save major problems.
This is why inspiration is such a big issue to me. My sister was abused regularly in a church full of people who were supposed to be able to be inspired. Why was no one ever inspired to do something as simple as walk in the room at the right time?
On a serious note: I should have included more versus (it was not a purposeful miss, I promise):
17 I say unto you, what is it, that thy marvelings are so great? Behold, I am a man, and am thy servant; therefore, whatsoever thou desirest which is right, that will I do.
18 Now when the king had heard these words, he marveled again, for he beheld that Ammon could discern his thoughts; but notwithstanding this, king Lamoni did open his mouth, and said unto him: Who art thou? Art thou that Great Spirit, who knows all things?
One possible interpretation was that what Ammon was inspired to discern that Lamoni thought that Ammon was a God and that Lamoni was afraid of him for that reason. So Ammon realizing that this was the case and addressing that issue could be considered very inspired.
bc_pg wrote:Just because the bishop got the information from the RSP doesn’t mean he couldn’t feel inspired.
I agree.
There are so many loaded words in our culture that it’s often impossible to figure out what people are talking about amidst all the mormonspeak. The bishop, whose job it is to be everything to everybody, is particularly susceptible this. It must be exhausting. I would take any bishop’s “inspiration” with a grain of salt. On the other hand I think you should try to take your particular bishop’s inspiration for what it’s worth — that he’s concerned enough about you to call you up for a chat.
While I don’t doubt the bishop was inspired according to his definition of the word, I take all spiritual experiences of other people with a healthy dose of salt. I realize that I would almost always interpret experiences differently if they had happened to me. That’s just the way it is, different strokes for different folks. I can see how the realization that a church leader may define “inspiration” differently than many members can be troubling, but I also see this realization as one of the many steps that take us from being a child of God to becoming an adult of God. We learn to live and forgive and allow everyone to think and believe as they do.
It is possible that he was inspired to talk to me after talking to someone, but that is not what he told me. He told me that he considers a conversation with the RSP to be inspiration. Fine. He can call anything he wants inspiration, that is none of my business at all. But when he has such a broad definition, it makes it harder for me to trust in his inspiration, which I am regularly asked to do.
And I have to ask myself if trusting in his inspiration is part of sustaining him, which of course is relevant to the TR question. (I would have posted this on the TR thread, but I didn’t want to hijack.)
Quote:when he has such a broad definition, it makes it harder for me to trust in his inspiration, which I am regularly asked to do.
Yep. I agree with that.
Quote:I have to ask myself if trusting in his inspiration is part of sustaining him, which of course is relevant to the TR question.
Nope, doesn’t have to be part of it at all – at least, not carte blanche trusting everything he says he feels is inspiration.
There’s a huge difference between believing someone CAN received inspiration and believing that same person always DOES receive inspiration.
bc_pg wrote: (musings about inspiration point 2) Quote:2) Spiritual feelings that you should marry someone are only valid if the other person feels it too. So if it can be wrong about who you are to marry how can you trust it for other things? This happened to me personally as a teenager and caused me to make a huge fool of myself by continuing to pursue someone who wasn’t interesting – the spirit made me a stalker! (I’m still mortified.) There are many more examples of people having “false” marriage promptings where only 1 of them got the prompting.
i can so relate to this bc_pg. similar situation happened to me. it was a nightmarish social circumstance for me that lead to me becoming inactive as a result. difference was i was in my late 20’s and in ysa at the time.the real kicker was i had planned to move away because it seemed like an impossible situation. i even approached my bishop about going into the SA program. he denied my request. all this was happening and then, get this: i was approached by the stake presidency at the time to take a call as a counsellor in the elder’s quorum presidency. i took the call and didn’t move. to make a long story short – life in my ward got bad to worse and i ended up inactive. so here i am over a decade later – a participant in this Mormon forum telling my story.
i guess the question to ask is are we getting a false prompting ? or is it a case of us misinterpreting or mishandling the prompting ? it could be just a case of God letting us know that a certain individual might be good for us and to give the person a second look. and in such an instance the other person might not get a prompting.
Quote:Fine. He can call anything he wants inspiration, that is none of my business at all. But when he has such a broad definition, it makes it harder for me to trust in his inspiration, which I am regularly asked to do.
And I have to ask myself if trusting in his inspiration is part of sustaining him, which of course is relevant to the TR question. (I would have posted this on the TR thread, but I didn’t want to hijack.)
I think you are being too hard on yourself and narrow in your definition of sustaining. Even to the most converted sustaining never meant believing the person in authority is perfect. In fact sustaining is all about respecting their authority despite their flaws. You can greatly disagree with his definition of inspiration and still respect his authority and even support him as a bishop. Honestly, I don’t see a conflict. Also, he may have not worded what he meant perfectly – you probably caught him off guard by calling him on it.
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