on the temple

The temple is certainly presented as the best thing ever in our culture but that doesn’t necessarily make it so.

I’ve come full circle on it myself.

I’m a convert, so there was a time where I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a temple. After joining the church and learning of temples I bought in fully. The temple became the best thing in my earthly existence, a little slice of the celestial kingdom here in this life.

I didn’t like the initiatory. To date, my live ordinance initiatory has been the only time I’ve ever done one. I was semi-prepped ahead of time, I wasn’t given specifics, just a warning that there was a portion of the ordinances where I’d be nude under a poncho, that portion of the endowment was short, the rest wasn’t like that, and to just muscle through that bit.

I fully believed the ordinances were necessary for my salvation and I took things very literally so I came out of the temple experience relieved that I had checked a necessary box. I also felt more special. I put that down to the promises made in the temple and me becoming a member of the “in” club.

These days I no longer feel the ordinances in the temple are required for salvation. While I’m there, I also don’t feel baptism is required for salvation. I may go to the temple to help with baptisms from time to time but it’s been …checks watch… over a decade since I’ve done an endowment session. It’s just not my thing and I no longer feel the need to force it to make it my thing.

In my opinion, the temple doesn’t have any intrinsic value. It only has as much value as we give it. Culturally we spend a lot of time talking up temples, so much so that at times it feels as though temples are an object of worship (at least that’s how it comes across to me). Temples are special because we believe they’re special, a self-fulfilled prophecy.

I don’t want to take away from the people that still hold beliefs that temples are at the pinnacle of our worship, I’m just saying that temples no longer do it for me, and that’s okay.

It can complicate things when family is insistent on making attending the temple a family event. In that regard I’m lucky in that being a convert means I only get half as much of that as I might otherwise experience.

While I’m giving my text wall on the mount…

Another thing that has been difficult for me with respect to temples is that our culture can use them as a lever of control. I don’t think that’s the motivation behind temples but in practice it can become that. Once I felt that way it was hard to unfeel and I’m sure that perspective contributed towards the erosion how special I felt temples were in my life.

If there’s no desire to go to the temple, there’s no need to get a temple recommend, and if I don’t need a temple recommend I can free myself of all the trappings associated with temple recommends. For me personally, I’m more orthoprax than orthodox. It’s not about failing to comply with any standard or commandment, it’s more of a desire to not be measured and judged by my community. I hate the concept of “worthiness” in our culture and the temple sits square in the middle of a lot of it.

Thanks for your thoughts, Amy and Nibbler. It’s been well over a decade since I last went, and I haven’t missed it at all. Last time I did go, I was roped into doing some initiatories, and I panicked, recalling previous negative experiences with that. But it’s all completely different now; you keep your clothes on and the officiator “symbolically” anoints you. My arguments with the temple go beyond the rituals. I suppose it can be a charitable gesture toward the deceased to make sure that their “work gets done,” but of all the billions of people who have lived on the planet, only a small fraction died leaving any record of themselves, and most of those were the nobility (my own pedigree goes way back, but only because I was able to plug into Anglo-Norman nobility, which then extends to nobility all over Europe and beyond, but I know nothing of the plebes who logically constitute most of my ancestry and who died leaving no record, so “work for the dead” ends up being “work for the privileged classes”). But unless their “work is done” for them, they have no chance at exaltation.

I would rather not bother with a recommend, but having one appears to be essential to receiving callings, and besides if I bucked that, then it would make for tensions with my wife. As for the questions relating to lifestyle, I can answer all those honestly in the affirmative. If I use some Clinton-esque fiddling with semantics, I can also answer the belief questions affirmatively. After all, I my faith is firm, even if my beliefs are not all orthodox. The question that really bothers me, though, is “are you worthy to attend the temple?” I’m not sure what that even means. Is it an invitation to congratulate myself? Am I being asked to put myself in a special category of human beings, better and more righteous than others? I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. As I get older, I only become more acutely aware of faults that had previously escaped my notice, and I don’t want to make pretentions to being more righteous than others. I’m always tempted to respond, “Well, you just asked me a battery of probing questions. What do YOU think?” Not that I have any vices that I’m hiding, but I always hate that question, and wonder how anyone could cheerfully answer “Oh yes, I’m very worthy!”

…my own pedigree goes way back, but only because I was able to plug into Anglo-Norman nobility, which then extends to nobility all over Europe and beyond…

It’s possible that us people with nobility in our genealogy truly are related to nobility but I think the further back you go, the more likely it is that someone fudged a connection to nobility in their genealogy. It’s like the peasant version of how some nobility trace their ancestry back to Jesus Christ himself.

Not trying to take wind out of your sails or cast doubt. I’m just a cynic. It’s what I do.

Back to the subject…

I’m not completely sold on the whole idea of vicarious work anyway. Why did we come to earth? To learn from firsthand experiences. Aren’t ordinances the same? Aren’t they personal rites that the participant benefits and learns from? What’s the point of someone coming to earth, dying, going back to the spirit world and saying, “Yeah, I went down. Some stuff was okay, some stuff wasn’t. I did a lot of it on your behalf so you needn’t bother going there. I got you covered.” It doesn’t jive, yet that’s what we’re essentially doing with ordinances.

Doctrines talk about a Millennium that lasts 1000 years where people will be resurrecting. I’ve always thought that would be the time to take care of ordinances. We don’t have to research anyone, here they are. We don’t have to say, “We did it for you so you don’t have to experience it for yourself,” Here they are, they get to make an actual choice and get to experience it firsthand.

I think vicarious ordinances were the solution to a fear people had at the time. Oh no, the priesthood got restored before my dad had a chance to be baptized. His baptism didn’t count. What do I do!?!? Vicarious ordinances. Now you can put those fears to rest. Plus it put a tidy bow on injecting meaning to that verse in the Bible about baptisms for the dead.

“The bishop has interviewed [name] and [name] has decided that he would like to serve the congregation by being a Priest in the Aaronic priesthood. All those in favor…”

Frame it differently. Don’t frame it as being good enough to do something, frame it as being willing to serve.

None of us is perfect. There are plenty of people out there that are “worthy” enough but don’t believe themselves to be and there are plenty of people out there that are extremely flawed individuals that believe they’re “worthy” so what are we accomplishing? I really wish we’d drop all the measuring.

This is actually more gender inclusive too.

The bishop has interviewed [name] and [name] has decided that she would like to serve the congregation by [Insert actions here – ministering, class leadership, greeting, etc.] All those in favor….”

It doesn’t actually work because our girls don’t have church community-based coming-of-age responsibilities list the way the Priests do. Most of our “Priests” are 16-17 year old boys (so the coming of age aspect is important), and converts (so the ordination ritual is more about to signal what they know about their community contribution).

Also, “Greeting the Community” has a lot in common with “Leading a Meeting” aka “Presiding” and we can’t admit that our women preside over the meetings they set up, design an agenda for, and usually provide treats at. There is also the slightly spooky association that “Community Greeter” = crowd & shop-keeping control retiree at chain stores. NOTE: As a mom with girls who possess an appealing appearance, I LOVE the older folks whose face lit up when we walked into the store, who cooed at my baby, or made snarky asides to my oldest (we were memorable favorites for sure). One does not equate to the other in terms of communal presence.

I bet a lot of priests would like to hang out in front of the hallways with their friends and say “Hi” to people rather then bless and prepare the sacrament:)

I went to the temple in the early 2000’s, before some of the changes were made. I got to experience the infamous “shield” in the initiatory – but that personally didn’t bother me.

In terms of ordinances, the sealing ordinance that was also my marriage vow made in 2007 has been the most problematic for me because of the wording and because of changes in wording. On some levels, it feels like I vowed to a “moving target of expectations”.

– “Obey” – I was of the generation that still had that wording in the “Love, Honor, and Obey” wording. I did sealings for the dead enough to know that was the language I would encounter – so I had a conversation where I told my future husband and God that under no conditions was I actually promising to “Obey” my husband (even if I said I did in the sealing room), BUT that I was vowing to give my husband’s words “consideration” when I said I would obey.

– “Hearken” – I gather that the wording changed from “Obey” to “Hearken” and I gave myself a pat on the back for being so proactive 10+ years earlier.

– “Preside” – I gather recently (2019 ish), that the wording removed “Hearken” and introduced that husbands “Preside” as part of the sealing language and ordinance, which I find problematic and exclusionary. I also believe it focuses attention on something that is less valuable for a couple to vow over.

In my family, I “Preside” (and I hear that a lot of women in the church do the same – and do it better than me) – I create the agendas we use for structured family meetings (all my family meetings are structured – if only in my head), I keep the calendar organized, I determine where we shop (mostly), I scan the property and determine what needs to be done and make assignments. I ask the questions to determine when we need to consult with experts and usually set up meeting those experts. Whenever I try to push family members to be “self-accountable” or report to the other parent (my end goal) – this does not sit well with anyone (yet).

The majority of the time, I “facilitate” shared conversations and transfer of power/respect/authority & autonomy as my “Presiding” go-to AND yet the “presiding buck stops with me” because I can do that role. I don’t want to give up that role, go through medical treatments to change my gender to qualify for the role that I identify with, or feel like my husband is guilted into a “priesthood duty” of competing with me. That never ends well.

I just don’t think that creating a situation where the men vow to “Preside” that sets an explicit expectation for their wife that they will “preside” is the best way to get men engaged with their households. The men who would anyways don’t need a formal vow to do so, and the men who wouldn’t don’t need another way to sell themselves short or another way to perceive themselves as “failing their families” and then disengage.

Quasi-Related…

My 15 year old tries to tell my husband to rein me in sometimes (for the same reasons and with the same tone as she uses to request that her high school stop having 1/2 days for the students because it annoys her and disrupts her schedule).

We both treat it with a light tone and hand because she is 15 and connecting to us (via instructions) and we are the parents.

My husband explained that he could not rein me in – I wasn’t “his human” to control, and he pointed out if anything, “he was Mother’s human”. Our functional reality is that “we are working on being each other’s humans” and relating to each other – and we do a pretty decent job of it bringing our shared values to the table.

Maybe our vow is that “we are each other’s humans” and we promise to abide by a specific list of protocols that work for us.

Like I mentioned earlier, I haven’t done an endowment session in over a decade but I have tried to keep informed of all the changes. There have been a flurry of recent changes so I can’t remember them all but I believe one of the more recent changes was standardizing the covenants that both men and women make.

Once upon a time it was men stood up and covenanted to A, then women stood up and covenanted to B. Now I think it’s men and women (seated?) covenanting to A, where the mechanics have both the men and women making the same covenant at the exact same time. No more turn taking.

Edit: I confirmed this. The change occurred in February of 2023.