Temple Recommend Interviews… What if?

I like your version of the temple recommend interview.

Thus, we must refrain from making final judgments on people because we lack the knowledge and the wisdom to do so. We would even apply the wrong standards. The world’s way is to judge competitively between winners and losers. The Lord’s way of final judgment will be to apply His perfect knowledge of the law a person has received and to judge on the basis of that person’s circumstances, motives, and actions throughout his or her entire life.

I know this talks about “law received” and that members of the church have supposedly received the law but what does it actually mean to receive the law? To hear it once? To hear it and gain a personal testimony of it? To start living a principle? Can we say we have truly received the law before we start living the law?

I believe that everyone has certain strengths and weaknesses and a perfect judge would look on the totality of our lives and not just the actions themselves. A perfect judge may take what tools a person has at their disposal into consideration when applying judgment. We believe that children and people with certain disabilities are shoo-ins for the celestial kingdom. I’ve seen enough in this life to make the determination that we’re all children and all have disabilities to one degree or another. There are certain things that we just can’t help, we’re wired certain ways and we’re all wired very differently.

Determining worthiness to go to the temple really shouldn’t be the same for everyone. If our testimony doesn’t have to be this tall to enter do all of our behaviors? Are testimony and behavior inextricably linked? For what it’s worth I believe that’s how things operate today. The temple is full of imperfect people all at different stages of progression. The interview may be the same but I think it still affords wiggle room for people with different struggles.

For I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts.

Our actions don’t always line up with the desires of our hearts. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Becoming perfected in Christ is a process and we’re all at some stage of that journey. Your questions reflect desire, do you want to go? They also get at personal accountability, do you believe you are worthy? Most of us are our own harshest critic so I think that would work out for most situations.

But… there’s always a but.

1) Granted I do think there’s a cutoff. One of the reasons often cited for excommunicating people is to protect the good name of the church. I imagine the threshold would be even higher for the temple.

2) We already have a big problem with local leaders going off the temple recommend script. Limiting the TR interview to just those two questions may make things worse in terms of leaders coming up with their own versions of the interview and making the interview variable depending on which member they are interviewing.

I know this talks about “law received” and that members of the church have supposedly received the law but what does it actually mean to receive the law?

If I was in charge “law” would be changed to something that more reflects enlightenment. In the final “judgment” we will be seen for the amount of divine wisdom that we reflect. The image of a judgment exists to help us consider our personal growth through mortality. God doesn’t need to judge and sentence us, we do that to ourselves. God’s job is to help us see the divine within ourselves that we lose sight of.

Do you think the privilege of temple attendance would really be abused if our worthiness was seen as a matter between us and the Lord?

In a word – yes. I know people who have lied about adultery for years, and I think for big sins lying is the default. Maybe *that’s* also between them and the Lord and they’ll pay for it later, but if we want a minimum standard of worthiness I think more specific questions does help ensure it.

Then again, there’s nothing preventing them from lying about adultery and other “biggies” with today’s questions either…

But if people are currently lying (in the temple recommend interview) about adultery, how would not asking the question at all really change anything? I guess I’d be okay with an interview that asked about the “biggies.” I just think the trivial questions have gotten out of hand. See, here’s what bugs me: You’re asked if you pay a full tithing, but bishops have been told to leave the matter of what constitutes a full tithing up to the individual (which I think is as it should be). So if you have made a decision that paying on your net income constitutes a full tithing, that’s acceptable, even though everybody you know pays on their gross income. When it comes to the Word of Wisdom question, though, there are certain “assumptions” that people (bishops and stake presidents included) make, and those are that obedience to the Word of Wisdom means abstaining from tea, coffee, alcohol and tobacco. Period. How many people go in for a temple recommend thinking, “I wonder if I should mention to the bishop that I eat a whole lot more meat than I probably should”? If a person came right out and said that to his bishop, they’d both chuckle and move on to the next question. I have a glass of wine at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas. Every time I go in for my temple recommend interview, I struggle with whether to mention this to the bishop or not. I end up saying that I obey the Word of Wisdom, because I know I obey it, in its entirety, every bit as diligently as anybody else.

Then there’s the question about supporting and sustaining the General Authorities. After this recent LGBT-related policy change, I feel like I need to say, “Bishop, if you’ll tell me what that means, I’ll try to answer the question.” Since my bishop knows of my affiliation with Mormons Building Bridges and that I march with them in Salt Lake’s pride parade every year (and supports me in that), he’d probably tell me that I don’t have to agree with everything they say and do in order to say that I sustain them. On the other hand, I know full well that if most of my previous bishops knew how I felt about LGBT issues, there’s no way they’d give me a temple recommend.

So that brings up yet another question: If you live the same way throughout your life, and if you believe the same things throughout your life, why is it you can be considered worthy to hold a temple recommend for one 5-year period and not the next? It’s so subjective!

I know nothing’s going to change, though, so it was really just a hypothetical question, and I’m just venting my frustration, because this is the only place I feel I can do that.

Nibbler, that’s a really good way of putting it. My definition of ‘sustain’ is between me and the Lord in the same way that my definition of a full tithe is between me and the Lord. I’m going to have to keep that in mind when TR renewal time comes around.

In a way, the TR questions are less intrusive and less specific than they used to be. At least they don’t ask us anymore if we’ve been pasturing our cattle on someone else’s land.

In a way, the TR questions are less intrusive and less specific than they used to be. At least they don’t ask us anymore if we’ve been pasturing our cattle on someone else’s land.

Yeah, now they’ve reduced it to a simple, “Do you live the law of chastity?”

This made me laugh. :thumbup: