LDS.org blog repost about uncertainty

It is a message that needs to be shared more broadly – and having it on lds.org is an important step.

I think we as humans crave certainty and control. When we encounter complex issues and situations—more general ones like polygamy or priesthood restrictions, or intensely personal ones like having same-sex attraction or dealing with a devastating divorce or death—we want to make sense of them. We want to know why it’s happening and how everything is going to work out. In the absence of a clear explanation, we or others may invent one.

(Oncoming cynical remark.) Overall, I like the sentiment and the advice. On the other hand, I think it’s painfully inappropriate to group these things together. There’s got to be a word for this technique – we see it a lot lately. Lumping polygamy and racism (aka “priesthood restrictions”) in with life’s true uncertainties and disappointments doesn’t fly with me. Didn’t we acknowledge that the priesthood ban bubbled up out of the atmosphere of the times? How much clearer does it need to be? I think trying to fit the disease and disappointment so hard for us to bear at times under the same umbrella with the misery we’ve caused each other is poor form.

Sorry, I know it’s an attempt made in good faith. But they’ve got to let go. There’s this unwillingness to let us come to any conclusions. They’re craving control of us!

I disagree Ann. There are a wide varieties of concerns and doubts among the membership. While I understand that the majority of people here and on other support sites do have historical concerns, mine were not. My faith crisis started with me getting fired from a job that I thought God specifically told me to take, helped me to get, and that I was supposed to be doing. At that point polygamy, the priesthood ban, and other historical things meant nothing to me nor did the church’s treatment of LGBTs. It’s why FAIR and apologetics did nothing for me. I don’t think I’m alone. I think there are others who perhaps have bought into the prosperity gospel and lose faith because of devastating life circumstances or who don’t understand why God isn’t answering their prayers because “all prayers are answered.” We are admittedly the minority in the shadows with others who doubt, but we’re here and the blog applies to us as well.

My main aim in sharing was not that I think the blog itself is earth shattering or game changing. I shared it because it was on the landing page on LDS.org and as Mom and Ray said, it’s another small step in the right direction.

The essay didn’t say it explicitly, but it said it about as strongly as could be said without saying it explicitly.

It does. I think it says the writers knew they couldn’t risk saying it explicitly, given how many members can’t reject it completely for being man-made – but I am happy for a major step forward with a statement that can’t be read objectively as anything but a state,net that it was not instituted by God.

Seriously, there is no way to read the essay without pre-existing bias and come to the conclusion that the ban was instituted by God. That is not a small thing.

I think we as humans crave certainty and control. When we encounter complex issues and situations—more general ones like polygamy or priesthood restrictions, or intensely personal ones like having same-sex attraction or dealing with a devastating divorce or death—we want to make sense of them. We want to know why it’s happening and how everything is going to work out. In the absence of a clear explanation, we or others may invent one.

(Oncoming cynical remark.) Overall, I like the sentiment and the advice. On the other hand, I think it’s painfully inappropriate to group these things together. There’s got to be a word for this technique – we see it a lot lately. Lumping polygamy and racism (aka “priesthood restrictions”) in with life’s true uncertainties and disappointments doesn’t fly with me. Didn’t we acknowledge that the priesthood ban bubbled up out of the atmosphere of the times? How much clearer does it need to be? I think trying to fit the disease and disappointment so hard for us to bear at times under the same umbrella with the misery we’ve caused each other is poor form.

Sorry, I know it’s an attempt made in good faith. But they’ve got to let go. There’s this unwillingness to let us come to any conclusions. They’re craving control of us!

I disagree Ann. There are a wide varieties of concerns and doubts among the membership. While I understand that the majority of people here and on other support sites do have historical concerns, mine were not. My faith crisis started with me getting fired from a job that I thought God specifically told me to take, helped me to get, and that I was supposed to be doing. At that point polygamy, the priesthood ban, and other historical things meant nothing to me nor did the church’s treatment of LGBTs. It’s why FAIR and apologetics did nothing for me. I don’t think I’m alone. I think there are others who perhaps have bought into the prosperity gospel and lose faith because of devastating life circumstances or who don’t understand why God isn’t answering their prayers because “all prayers are answered.” We are admittedly the minority in the shadows with others who doubt, but we’re here and the blog applies to us as well.

My main aim in sharing was not that I think the blog itself is earth shattering or game changing. I shared it because it was on the landing page on LDS.org and as Mom and Ray said, it’s another small step in the right direction.

DJ, I can’t tell what exactly has happened here, but I’m sorry that I came across as I did. I’m definitely NOT saying that faith crises don’t blossom out from all kinds of experiences. I read them often here and I know they aren’t easily resolved. They raise a whole other set of harder questions about our very existence.

In that sense the blog rings true for me. I’m also not saying it isn’t good to acknowledge that people are struggling with their faith in general and give them ways to cope, process and hang on. I’m saying there seems to be a large number who are reaching conclusions about the historical items they’d previously shelved, and they’re often in recent-style apologetics told to keep the item in a limbo and wait for some vague future understanding. I start imagining a cartoonish scene where I take it off the shelf, happy that I finally see it more clearly, ready to move and recover what I can of my faith…but then they put it back on, I take it off, they put it on, etc.

I think the more interesting, profound, and dignified discussions are had in the arenas you describe, not in the church pulling the rug out from under people who are trying to get a new footing for their faith. I want to say, “Let me say how I think about these things so I can remodel my Mormon house!”