Is the Church really a dichotomy?

And there is the rub for so many of us here on this and other sites. We don’t see everything black and white, we want to keep the the baby and there in lies the problem. I have learned that for me there is a middle way. I think I can make this work but not like before. Many others might take the all or nothing and that is way many are leaving and the church isn’t making it easier with that kind of talk but the church is waking up and we are hearing less and less of that and more it’s ok to behave other ideas. Keep reading and posting and you will see what I’m talking about. Welcome.

What do you make out of that? To me, it seems like a shaky ground for a testimony– as soon as I something amiss, then I have to consign it to Hades, that is the end of that.

I believe he meant well but sadly was just plain wrong. I believe he thought that by painting it black and white it would some how strengthen the faith of those with some doubts, which thinking back to my TBM days it probably does for alot of people. Recognizing that the leaders are imperfect means sometimes they will get it wrong.

To reinforce the idea, when I was on my mission a GA spoke to us. He used specific examples od how we could better share the gospel. He meant well. However, his example was almost word for word out of an example of what NOT to do in the missionary manual. Thankfully when we realize and truely internalize the idea that even the 15 are fallible, we don’t have to feel bad if the spirit contradicts them.

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Thanks for the input, I am glad to see the church progress and change but I guess sometimes it just feels way too slow. Also trying to handle the Prophet, Apostles, etc. being the servants of God, but also faillible men who say incorrect things. How do we know when they are speaking for God and when they are speaking personally?

To clarify, I really do like the church at the local level, where I am– people are kind, it’s very multicultural, many opportunities to serve and learn. I just have issues with the institution on the larger scale, like with some of the things Sam Bee mentioned (commercialism, whitewashing). I’m looking forward to reading more posts and hopefully contributing!

Welcome. I always suggest reading previous posts and threads, since we’ve talked about almost everything imaginable over the last few years.

Shedding the black-and-white, all-or-nothing mentality and finding your own personal faith is the first step for many people – and it’s the only realistic AND powerful view, in my opinion.

Remember, we are told in Primary that at some point we need to stop living on borrowed light and learn to see things on our own. There’s nothing wrong with actually following that ideal, even if many people, inside and outside the Church, fight it.

It’s called worshiping according to the dictates of our own conscience (agency) – another ideal in our theology.

We as a people and as individuals (including I) don’t live that ideal, so I try hard to cut others the same slack I want them to cut me. It’s the whole charity thing described in 1 Corinthians 13 – and it’s really, really, really easy to forget in the midst of pain and disillusionment. Just remember, it’s disillusionment – which means the destroying of an illusion.

It can be painful, but creating your own perspective can be much better in the end than living with an illusion once you recognize it as an illusion. Just don’t shatter others’ illusions if they have nothing to replace it. Shattered illusions void of a replacement is worse than the previous illusion.

I know that I feel good when I do read it and try to apply its principles of humility, righteousness and Christlike love in my life. Is that enough? But this is what Jeffrey R Holland has to say about it:

“I am suggesting that we make exactly that same kind of do-or-die, bold assertion about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the divine origins of the Book of Mormon. We have to. Reason and rightness require it. Accept Joseph Smith as a prophet and the book as the miraculously revealed and revered word of the Lord it is or else consign both man and book to Hades for the devastating deception of it all, but let’s not have any bizarre middle ground about the wonderful contours of a young boy’s imagination or his remarkable facility for turning a literary phrase. That is an unacceptable position to take—morally, literarily, historically, or theologically.” “True or False”, June 1995.

First, welcome

I read that quote and reckon it can still fit my perspectives.

I believe in God. I believe one of Christ’s last messages before death sums up the ultimate purpose of life (Matt 25): get to know God and don’t delay, make the best of yourself and be kind to and serve each other.

If that’s the central message of what our time is ‘for’ then I think God helps us along the way.

I don’t see the Book of Mormon as a manipulative fraud that came solely from Joseph’s environment and imagination.

I’m willing to say that Nephi and co might not have ever really lived but the Book is still divine and “miraculously revealed and revered word of the Lord.” When we apply Alma 32 to the Book of Mormon then it is ‘true.’ Applying the word and seeing its impact allows us to see that the words work, regardless of its origins. I don’t think Joseph could dictated/written it up without some divine support. I think the same of Les Miserables, most of CS Lewis’ writings and a lot of Confucius and Lao Tze. They all also have a message that fits Matt 25. I still consider BoM to have more historical basis than Narnia (!) but it doesn’t all need to be. Perhaps, like those novels, it starts in a reality that we can map (London/Jerusalem) and then sets off into a world of allegory (Zarahemla/Narnia). NHM and Wadi Sayq is pretty convincing (http://www.jefflindsay.com/BMEvidences.shtml)

Given we should judge the root by the fruit and not the other way round then I feel the fruit is divine and therefore presume the root is the same (even if the root is not historically sound).

Some of the militant apologists will disagree and will force the historical belief to be the dichotomy. I think they’re wrong to do so.

Having said that, I think it would be a mistake for the leaders to teach the Book as ‘allegory only,’ it would undermine the foundations too much. But I’m happy to embrace the book and see the messages as divine without having to believe Nephi existed (I consider the historical part as ‘possible’, even ‘probable’ on some days, but not ‘essential’).

Maybe Elder Holland privately regrets his comments from ’95 (only a year into being an apostle and perhaps still a little gung-ho) because in a PBS interview 12 years later he gave a very different message:

PBS: [You say] there are stark choices in beliefs about the origins of the book. Explain why there’s no middle way.

EH: … If someone can find something in the Book of Mormon, anything that they love or respond to or find dear, I applaud that and say more power to you. That’s what I find, too. And that should not in any way discount somebody’s liking a passage here or a passage there or the whole idea of the book, but not agreeing to its origin, its divinity. …

I think you’d be as aware as I am that we have many people who are members of the church who do not have some burning conviction as to its origins, who have some other feeling about it that is not as committed to foundational statements and the premises of Mormonism. But we’re not going to invite somebody out of the church over that any more than we would anything else about degrees of belief or steps of hope or steps of conviction. … We would say: “This is the way I see it, and this is the faith I have; this is the foundation on which I’m going forward. If I can help you work toward that I’d be glad to, but I don’t love you less; I don’t distance you more; I don’t say you’re unacceptable to me as a person or even as a Latter-day Saint if you can’t make that step or move to the beat of that drum.” … We really don’t want to sound smug. We don’t want to seem uncompromising and insensitive.

http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html (2007)

I have that saved on my phone for when/if it comes up at church or family (along with this official church statement that basically dismisses anything other than the standard works as ‘not official doctrine’:

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/approaching-mormon-doctrine )

Polemic statements are not great missionary tools. Some church leaders are not great missionaries. To be a great missionary, you have to find the good in many things, not only inside the church. You have to have above average listening and empathy. You have to be able to speak the language of the non-LDS person. In the threefold mission of the church: preach the gospel, perfect the Saints, and redeem the dead, maybe another way to look at it is that to preach the gospel you need to be multi-lingual with people of other faith and broader persepctives, to perfect the Saints, mormonspeak is sufficient and speaking in polemics can be rousing to the base, and to redeem the dead you can have no interpersonal skills at all! Personally, I’m a preach the gospel gal. I would argue on some level though that rousing speeches to the insiders that don’t broaden minds but just bolster assumptions don’t lead to personal growth and “perfection.”