Review that caught my interest

I haven’t read the book, but I have listened to a series of podcasts from Mormon Matters about it. It sounded really great. Sam Brown, the author, is a little dry as a speaker, but he has amazing ideas and a poetic soul.

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I just finished this book. I really liked it. Some of his quotes are:

– I believe that the first principles and ordinances are much more about relationships between humans and the Godhead than is generally recognized.

– Repentance is a process of loving as saints and asking for love as sinners: through our shared repentance we come to constitute the body of Christ, and that

body suffused by Christ’s atonement, makes exaltation possible. I see the atonement as representing our willingness to be with Christ in our trials. We may

or may not earn those trials. The trials are not themselves the point. The atonement, which resides in Christ, is the point; we are called only to reach out to

him.

– ordinances serve relationships: ordinances allow us to participate physically in a community and imagine lives outside our own, even lives widely separated from ours in time or geography.

– Joseph Smith taught that baptism was an ordinance for creating and sustaining relationships that could survive death.

– the temple mediates between our tiny bodies and lives and the vast grandeur of all creation.

– Faith to me is a story about commitment and abiding relationships; we limit the power of faith when we fail to see the role we have to play in our faith.

– Millions of people have come to faith without spiritual fireworks. They have found God and faith through a thousand simple acts of service, through the love they feel in the presence of the saints, through God’s quiet presence in their worship meetings and their scripture study. Focusing on the spectacular spiritual

experiences leaves some saints to believe that the believe.

– Faith – the knowing that matters – transforms, unites, and heals Faith is much more than the retention of facts or an endorsement of a particular body of doctrine. Faith is spiritually active, a kind of strenuous commitment that carries us through the vagaries of the fits and starts of our spiritual lives.

– The facts or doctrines alone won’t save us. There is something that changes within us as we live the teachings, as we consciously choose to accept doctrines and follow them into the church community. In this model, doctrine refers largely to specific claims we might make while trying to talk about faith in God. We should be careful not to confuse doctrine and faith; they are distinct, and the distinction is that faith is a lived action made real in the world.

– According to Alma, hope is something that we cultivate, something we strive toward. Faith as hope is a yearning to believe God.

– What do we do when we lack perfect evidence, when we do not have complete answers? Committing to each other, to our shared faith, is a glorious exercise of agency in the face of life’s uncertainty. The choice of faith-truly active and truly transformative-makes the difference.

– When I am feeling vexed by a particular doctrine or cultural understanding, the practice of my faith is to acknowledge that tension or conflict or discomfort in my mind and then place it into the balance of my entire relationship with the church.

I’m not sure that I agree with everything he said. It is a different approach. It is the first principles & ordinances with temple work & our community of faith & families.