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Wayfarer, you are correct in that the LDS faith has no creeds and despises them. Therefore there can be no set way of interpreting the foundational claims or doctrine specifically. In other words we believe Joseph had a first vision but there is no police to define what exactly that has to mean. The temple questions to this effect are somewhat vague on purpose. That said, We only despise the creeds because Joseph said Christ told him so. If Christ is not truly the Son of God and not truly divine, then one needs to ask how did he address Joseph in the grove to tell him the creeds were wrong? Thereby we go in a circle then coming back to no definitive source effectively taking the creeds off the table. I don’t expect an answer, I am not here to bait you, and you are more well versed in the details of theology then I am anyway. I can’t even wrap my head around those kinds of concepts.
Like I said to begin with, my feeling that I would likely offend both sides, which I seem to find is right where I fit in best.
Complete honesty – I fit in here because I grasp faith crisis, I fit in here because I am empathetic to the the struggle of those who don’t quite fit in, myself included, and willing to push back against those who look down upon the minority and cast dispersions on them.
But I don’t fit in in the respect that I have spiritual inclination to encourage all to hold to the basic tenants of the faith, and yes, in a way that I define them. Without plates, without a first vision that at least seemed physical in aspects to Joseph, without a historical Book Of Mormon, I lose meaning to my experiences to God.
He was who told me the Book of Mormon was true. It is he who has whispered to me to pray for someone in the middle of the night. It is he who whispered in my ear who to call a specific person to a calling in the church. And it is he who sent me a message that the church was exactly where I needed to be if I wanted to get where I desired to go.
So I have no choice then to hold the basic tenants high up in the air waving them as my standard of truth. I also can respect your ability to interpret God as you desire and feel inclined. I have no right to demand you accept my truth as your own, and so I simply say that while I will continue to share what I think, I also hope I never do so in a way that offends you in a way that you think I am being malicious. I also respect your opinion as well. In other words I will continue to put my 2 cents in but know I respect your feelings as well even when we disagree. I am obligated by my conscience to try and win you to my side though, but by charity and not coercion.
DBMormon wrote:But I don’t fit in in the respect that I have spiritual inclination to encourage all to hold to the basic tenants of the faith, and yes, in a way that I define them. Without plates, without a first vision that at least seemed physical in aspects to Joseph, without a historical Book Of Mormon, I lose meaning to my experiences to God.
I would suggest that for most LDS, the rich mythico-literalism of the LDS culture provides the comfort of certainty.DBM wrote:He was who told me the Book of Mormon was true. It is he who has whispered to me to pray for someone in the middle of the night. It is he who whispered in my ear who to call a specific person to a calling in the church. And it is he who sent me a message that the church was exactly where I needed to be if I wanted to get where I desired to go.
i absolutely accept your testimony: you have had encounters with the divine, and I frequently see this in your writings. I have to ask, though, does the Book of Mormon’s truth rely on literalism? Could the plates be simply a “MacGuffin”, something moving the mythological story along? To me, the truth of the Book of Mormon rests in the existential values represented in the book. Knowing that the same voice that whispered in your ears in fact wrote the Book of Mormon thru Joseph Smith should not diminish the divine experience, but in fact enhances it.DBM wrote:So I have no choice then to hold the basic tenants high up in the air waving them as my standard of truth. I also can respect your ability to interpret God as you desire and feel inclined. I have no right to demand you accept my truth as your own, and so I simply say that while I will continue to share what I think, I also hope I never do so in a way that offends you in a way that you think I am being malicious. I also respect your opinion as well. In other words I will continue to put my 2 cents in but know I respect your feelings as well even when we disagree. I am obligated by my conscience to try and win you to my side though, but by charity and not coercion.
I appreciate the respectful way you share beliefs. My hope is for dialogue, not to win you over to any position.Which “basic tenets” are you holding up as a flag? (fyi, “tenants” rent apartments, “tenets” are principles of a religion). one of Joseph Smith’s core tenets is to reject creed: LDS are to hold “the truth” as superior to mythico-dogmatism. for us to ignore historical facts in order to prop up a literal belief is out of harmony with the core tenet of the supremacy of truth. to “go back” to mythico-literal belief does not bring me closer to god, but stifles a richer understanding of our own divine nature and human capacity.
DB, I think our mutual goal here should be to help ourselves and others work through faith crisis, not work backwards. 25 years of this journey, to me, has proved to be rich and wonderful. to go back denies the divinity of the Way: we are to learn through our own experience, and not rely on the control structure of the tree of dogmatic creeds of good and evil. It is only by freeing the mind from dogmatic bondage do we embrace the more excellent Way.
I really appreciate your dialogue wayfarer. Also sorry for Grammar, with all going on I sometimes get lazy and fail to do spellchecks. Bill Bishop Reel…. I’m glad you are here. I think you are nuts…but so what. Your empathy with those who doubt and seek a middle way, will certainly help and be appreciated much more here than at MDDB.
The check and balance thing is important to me. I don’t mind getting called out and put in the straight jacket when its deserved. I seek to forgive and find charity for the lds church and its people. That is why I stay here, even though I have no hope in the church, and very little personal involvement. I’m trying to transcend the bitterness, and the shackles of organized religion.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk 2
No offense taken, You think I am crazy, I think your crazy…. that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends
Bill
Quote:You think I am crazy, I think your crazy…. that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.
or that both of you aren’t correct
Also, now I have the Billy Joel song running through my mind.
Good song. Thanks!
:thumbup: Here is Midgley’s comments about his article from Bill’s thread at MDDB. I think it is obvious, IMO anyway, that his article was a direct attack on StayLDSers. Well, at least it was a direct attack on John Dehlin. Of that there is no question. From the horses mouth. http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/59514-midgleys-defending-the-king-and-his-kingdom/page__st__40 Quote:One thing that has puzzled me about the comments on my essay on both the Interpreter website and on this board is that I have not why I focused on those who deny that there was ever a Jesus of Nazareth. No one seems to realize that doing this was in part my response to a bizarre incidence where Professor Peterson was either ordered or advised not to publish an essay spelling out the recent descent of a former student of mine who even while I was still teaching at BYU in the early 1990s had undergone what he calls a crisis of faith and hence gone missing. My essay contains a subtle reference to some of his recent confident opining about divine things, which include an assertion that (1) there is very little reason to believe that there is a God, (2) that there is very little reason to believe that there ever was a Jesus of Nazareth, and (3) that it makes no sense to hold that a person has to die to somehow overcome the mistakes some other person has made. This last assertion is, of course, not an utterly absurd misunderstanding of the victory over death both of the body and soul made for us by God, which we call the atonement. Please note that if one does not even think there was a person known as Jesus, it makes no sense at all to talk about his having accomplished a thing for humans all of whom face physical death and the abundance of evils found in this world. Such a crude collection of opinions is, from my perspective, clearly anti-Christ in the way it which that label is used in both the New Testament and Book of Mormon. I am not exactly known for being subtle.
All of this, it turns out, has something to do with the firing of Professor Peterson.
It appears that no one is interested in knowing that in my remarks in the section of “Defending the King” entitled “Green Cheese Anyone?” I specifically had in mind some blunt opining by John Dehlin in a Podcast in which he was interviewed.. If Greg Smith’s famous censored paper had been published in the censored and then cancelled issue of the Review, the exact language from, what was an alarming and deeply disappointing statement by a former student would have been woven together other similar and related bits of information. Of course, I truly hope that Dehlin has a radical change of mind and heart on this and many other issues. If one reads the comment on the Interpreter webpage by Robert Smith, he correctly points out that my sermon is too narrowly drawn, since many Latter-day Saints missing during periods of the faith journey and there is always hope and much effort to revive or ignite the spark of faith. No one should be pleased to seen disaffection. And I certainly do not take pleasure in seeing someone I know go missing. My sermon is, among other things, a call for those who once could sing the song of redeeming love to do so again. We come often to partake of a symbolic ritual meal in which we renew our covenants with the Lord. The reason for doing this is that it is possible to fall from grace. And it is, thankfully, also possible to retuurn and remember and begin anew to keep the commandments. My own experience is that for this to happen we all need to face some very hard truths about ourselves and our relationship with divine things.
I don’t know when or even if Greg Smith famous unpublished paper will be published or otherwise made available. It seems that the Brethren have not leaked it, nor have the brethren, or those academic people who have read it. For reasons I will not go into, this actually pleases me.
I don’t think that the Brethren had a thing to do with the censorship or quashing of Greg’s essay. No one of the Brethren under the current policy can meddle in what goes on at BYU. Only the Trustees acting officially or the First Presidency can set policy or give instructions to the BYU Administration.
I have both read and also copied into my diary the significant language in the memo that was shown to Professor Peterson by the current director of the Maxwell Institute. The way I read that memo, in addition to stating forcefully that the one who drafted it does not agree with, support or accept anything that Dehlin has said or done,
it merely speculates that the Brethren may wish to deal with Dehlin in their own time and way.The implication is that Professor Peterson should leave Dehlin to others. My hunch is that this memo was an attempt to lure Professor Peterson into resigning. If that was the case, it failed, since he immediately withdrew Greg’s paper from the list of forthcoming essays for the now cancelled issue of the Rev. This seems to have forced those who wanted to get Professor Peterson out of the Institute to more from Plan A to a hasty Plan B. Be that as it may, he was simply fired by email when he was in Israel. The problem is that someone or ones other than Professor Peterson immediately leaked the resulting exchange of email. This made the news, and thereby sullied Elder Maxwell’s name, which the original memo warned should not be done.
It is not clear to me why a Maxwell Institute employee whose job did not have a thing to do with the Review, intentionally but indirectly informed Dehlin of the existence of Greg’s paper. Was it, I wonder, the hope that Dehlin would write email messages appealing for censorship, and hence give an excuse for the memo I mention above urging, suggesting or ordering, depending on how you read it, that Greg’s paper not be published? Be that as it may, in what appears to be a panic, as one might expect, Dehlin sent a series of email messages to various people, including one of the Brethren, in an effort to prevent publication of what was described as a “hit piece.” This seems to me to have provided an excuse for the memo (I have mentioned above) that either ordered or suggested, depending on how you read it, that Greg’s essay not be published. Professor Peterson, instead of being at all insubordinate, instantly agreed not to publish Greg’s paper. Hence what seems to me to have been the eventual firing of Professor Peterson. In any case, he was given the boot.
I am reasonably confident that Dehlin was merely a pawn in a game he did not understand. To put it bluntly, he was used.
It would, I must admit, displease me if it were turn out that Dehlin’s recent seeming softening of his objection to the Church of Jesus Christ is not merely an attempt to avoid discipline and hence retain some credibility with those to whom he appeals. He is, however, nothing if not unstable in his opinions. Anyone who has followed his career, knows this to be a fact. He is constantly advancing one after another initiative, and then shutting them down and changing directions, in what can be understood as an effort to get attention. Anyone who has charted his various initiatives will notice instability in his opinions. However, he seems confident that his followers will tolerate his instability. And he could well be right about this. I really hope that this time there has been a genuine change of heart.
In on sense Greg’s essay, which has circulated in Salt Lake, has done some good. It may even have sobered my former student and thereby initiated a change of heart. It would please me greatly, if it eventually turns out that this is actually the case. So I hold out hope for Dehlin despite all the previous experience that I and others have had with his constantly shifting opinions and initiatives.
cwald…thanks. midgley’s response clearly shows his intent. Wyafarer, Your discussion with Migley at MDDB has become quite the sensation on the MD board. You’re a superstar! Here are some thoughts about Midgley’s comments that I read this morning…and it sums up so well why myself, and I would guess reason that Wayfarer started this thread to begin with.
Quote:Kishkumen said: “…the Church promotes the idea that it implicitly constitutes the Truth and the Gospel, then any criticism of the organization is illegitimate at the outset.
There is no winning against that.
One either buys into that, shuts up about it, risks getting tossed out, or leaves voluntarily.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that the Church has become a Golden Calf.
I think the Church’s problems stem from the fact that it is not really the Gospel as much as it is a theocratic corporate kingdom. How one untangles that mess I do not know.
I love the basic principles of the Gospel. I love the teachings of Christ, the ordinances of salvation. I love partaking of the sacrament, singing hymns, listening to good moral teachings. I love the warm feelings of the Spirit. I want to be a better person by:
1) Loving God
2) Loving my fellow humans
And yet so much of the stuff we end up talking about in our criticisms of Mormonism have almost nothing to do with any of this stuff.
The entire subtext of Midgley’s latest rant, in my view, is that the LDS Church is your King, and if you cross it you should be booted out.Sure, he didn’t literally say that. But if you connect the dots, this is what it amounts to. Personally, I refuse to worship any human being or human organization. I consider that blasphemy and idolatry.
You don’t create Zion by becoming Babylon. It simply does not work.
Something at the core has gone wrong. I don’t blame a single person. I can’t point to a single event. But how does one get from “all things in common” to “let’s go shopping”?
Now, I don’t see it as my personal mission to go out and decry this stuff. People simply will not listen. I get what I can from what there is. No one has called me to be a prophet or a martyr.
And yet, why should I call evil good? I refuse to do so.
Not because I think I am a great white knight or a perfect person, but I am certainly entitled to say what I think.
I hope you don’t mind Wayfarer….but you say it so well. I think it needs to be preserved over here, a site where people in faith crisis, can go to get help and understanding. If you request…I will delete this entire post.
Quote:View PostLouis Midgley, on 11 December 2012 – 09:00 PM, said:
….I wrote what has correctly been called a sermon in an effort to set out my reasons for disagreeing with those currently in charge of the Maxwell Institute, who I believe have indicated that they intend to take the Institute in a different direction. Put bluntly, I drafted “Defending the King and His Kingdom” in an effort to have my say on whether defending the faith is a proper academic endeavor for Latter-day Saint scholars.
Wayfarer Responds:
I question whether a polemic sermon is worthy of inclusion in what purports to be an academic journal.
View PostDaniel Peterson, on 11 December 2012 – 05:20 PM, said:
Interpreter is, if anything, more rigorously peer-reviewed than the Review ever was. The Review was peer-reviewed by readers who acted at the invitation of its editors, but Interpreter has an absolutely independent article-review committee.
Wayfarer Responds:
Dan, I wonder how ‘independent’ the article-review committee is, when it allows a polemic sermon against those who differ from the prevailing literalist interpretation of mormonism — calling such ‘anti-christ’ — to cap off an issue of a ‘peer reviewed’ journal.
View PostLouis Midgley, on 11 December 2012 – 09:00 PM, said:
My critics have noticed that I use the label cultural Mormon to describe the most radical of the new critics who more of less retain at least a nominal membership in the Church of Jesus Christ. Please notice that I use the label in the “Abstract” (p. 127), and again on p. 140 to describe some critics of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I indicate that some of these now also self-identify as New Order Mormons or use other similar or related labels. And on p. 142 I indicate that cultural Mormons (understood my way) are not genuine Saints. If one finds no good reason to believe in God, or that there was even a Jesus of Nazareth, and hence finds the atonement silly, one can hardly qualify as a Saint. And there is at least one person who has boasted of holding just such an opinion while also giving advice to others about dealing with doubts.
Wayfarer Responds:
Reasonable people can have differing beliefs. I hold the position that none of the historical events claimed by the church or Christianity need to have happened literally as they have been reflected in scripture. To be clear, I am one of those you find unworthy to qualify as a “Saint”: I categorically reject the creedal definition of God as “omni-whatever”, and say that such a being does not exist. I offer that Joseph said as much in the King Follett discourse, but the nuance is lost on most LDS. Whether Jesus ever lived in a town of Nazareth is immaterial to my faith, and I find the literalist definition of the atonement, often taught in the church, that God the Father was so bent on “Justice” that he had to torture and crucify his son to be a silly and contemptable doctrine. And yes, I am an active LDS, and try to share my experience, strength, and hope with those who deal with doubt. My ‘Faith’ is in understanding the difference between hope and perfect knowledge, in the dimension to which God is a man and we are one with him, and in the singular atonement of Christ as being uniquely relevant to my reconciliation (at-one-ment) with my divine nature in the present as opposed to concerning myself with a specutive outcome for some future state. And, yes, multiple people have returned to the Faith as a result of my Way of expressing the truth as I see it.
So, from my point of view, you have judged people like me unworthy to qualify as a saint and “anti-christ” by virtue of my beliefs. I wonder where the “More Excellent Way” of agape exists amidst your polemic writings about this topic.
Do you require that I subscribe to your creed (in the sense of a defined belief) in order to qualify as a “saint”? While I claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of my own conscience, and do not preach in a church setting my non-literal beliefs, I do allow all others the same privilege. Hopefully, I let them worship how, where, or what they may.
View PostLouis Midgley, on 12 December 2012 – 09:11 AM, said:
One thing that has puzzled me about the comments on my essay on both the Interpreter website and on this board is that I have not why I focused on those who deny that there was ever a Jesus of Nazareth. No one seems to realize that doing this was in part my response to a bizarre incidence where Professor Peterson was either ordered or advised not to publish an essay spelling out the recent descent of a former student of mine who even while I was still teaching at BYU in the early 1990s had undergone what he calls a crisis of faith and hence gone missing. My essay contains a subtle reference to some of his recent confident opining about divine things, which include an assertion that (1) there is very little reason to believe that there is a God, (2) that there is very little reason to believe that there ever was a Jesus of Nazareth, and (3) that it makes no sense to hold that a person has to die to somehow overcome the mistakes some other person has made. This last assertion is, of course, not an utterly absurd misunderstanding of the victory over death both of the body and soul made for us by God, which we call the atonement. Please note that if one does not even think there was a person known as Jesus, it makes no sense at all to talk about his having accomplished a thing for humans all of whom face physical death and the abundance of evils found in this world. Such a crude collection of opinions is, from my perspective, clearly anti-Christ in the way it which that label is used in both the New Testament and Book of Mormon. I am not exactly known for being subtle.
All of this, it turns out, has something to do with the firing of Professor Peterson.
Wayfarer Responds:
Yes, and very obviously so to those who have been following the events at the Maxwell Institute. But I seriously question whether the invective against John Dehlin (“the former student” you later name in one of these posts) is appropriate in taking exception to the firing within what purports to be an academic journal. It seems gratuitous to me. If the issue you want to take up is the firing, then do so in an open forum. A hidden message in a journal is hardly the way to handle it. If you would like to take up a discussion as to whether a non-literalist point of view is “anti-christ”, then let’s have that discussion — that may be more appropriate, but not as a personal invective.
Of all people, I would have expected greater things coming from an academic with intimate familiarity of the teaching of Paul Tillich and others.
You who have such background and credibility do not do yourselves justice calling those of us in the Middle Way your “anti-christ” enemy. Many of us in the Middle Way share a common goal with you: the preservation and enhancement of the LDS faith and culture — we have different ways of addressing it.
CWALD – I will add this. I absolutely see your point about the church being a Golden Calf. That in essence you feel many in the church would defend the church at the expense of Christ where we should be defending Christ at all cost assuming there could ever be a conflict between the church and Christ. Is that where your going when you say golden calf? I would agree the Church is imperfect in that it is a institution ran by imperfect people trying their best to gauge God’s inspiration and at times receiving revelation from him to make major adjustments and corrections.
I also see how we can make them one in the same Christ and the Church in that even if the Church messes up, that like our wife or kids we still support and stand behind it. This assumes it is the Lord’s Church and not just a worldly organization claiming divine providence.
Here is how I draw the line. I will not hide or cover up a person’s mistakes if it means more have to suffer because of it needlessly. But when it comes to the church I assume as an institution it is wiser then me and that it is indeed led by God. So I will softly try to work with the church while also letting my personal views be noticed… it is subtle and in no way try to subterfuge it’s policies or doctrines.
I disagree with those who place the Church above Christ if they ever perceive a choice between the two but also tend to find ways to give the Church the benefit when it is a choice between my own views and the Church. Even if we assume the church is 100% what it claims (which I do) and assuming we are as faithful as God asks us to be, we should still expect a difference at times in our opinions and Christ’s standards and truths.
Bill Reel
Quote:That in essence you feel many in the church would defend the church at the expense of Christ where we should be defending Christ at all cost assuming there could ever be a conflict between the church and Christ. Is that where your going when you say golden calf?
I would agree the Church is imperfect in that it is a institution ran by imperfect people trying their best to gauge God’s inspiration and at times receiving revelation from him to make major adjustments and corrections.
Sure. That is pretty well what I am saying.
Quote:I also see how we can make them one in the same Christ and the Church in that even if the Church messes up, that like our wife or kids we still support and stand behind it. This assumes it is the Lord’s Church and not just a worldly organization claiming divine providence.
But when it comes to the church I assume as an institution it is wiser then me and that it is indeed led by God. So I will softly try to work with the church while also letting my personal views be noticed… it is subtle and in no way try to subterfuge it’s policies or doctrines.
Sure that would be fine, if they didn’t run you out as an apostate for disagreeing and pointing out the obvious moral and ethical mistakes they have made, and are currently making. If the church would EVER admit they were wrong, and make/made mistakes, and apologize and take responsibility for it….all of this kind of stuff could go away. But they won’t. Even you made the comment that the church does not apologize because it’s god church, and the mistakes were made by men…so no need for apologizing. The church perfect, but the people aren’t’.
NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.
Wrong.
The church does need to apologize. It does need to admit that it, as an institution, has made mistakes, messed up, and hurt a lot of people on occasion.
I draw the line when I am told that loyalty to the church is more important to loyalty to the Jesus and the gospel. Golden Calf. And I draw a line when faithful members tell me and others who don’t fit in the box that I am a wolf in sheep clothing and that if I disagree with the church EVER, that I am an apostate and that if I don’t like the way the church is ran… “if we don’t like, why don’t you just leave.” Golden Calf. And I draw a line when we make man-made outward commandments the focus of the religion, and the basis of who does and does not get callings, and who is allowed “exaltation” within my culture. Golden Calf.
That is what I mean when I say that we have made the church a golden calf…and…it saddens me.
I don’t mind, cwald, but I think you’re exaggerating over whether it has stirred any interest there. I simply wrote to take exception to the treatment of those of us in the Middle Way. Sometimes BS needs to be challenged; but I need to stay away from that toxic environment and the “William Schryver”s of the world. What I find a bit funny is that Midgley has absolutely indicated that he was (1) preaching a sermon, (2) that he had Dehlin and StayLDS in mind personally, (3) that he intended to carry out the attack hit-piece on Dehlin and the Middle-Wayers that was supressed by the Maxwell Institute, and (4) that his piece was about a defense of Dan Peterson (he said this explicitly).
This is all gratuitous nonesense. And as one reads the posts by the apologist-sycophants on MDDB, it’s depressing how much they praise their heros in the Apologist community.
coming back to ground a bit — I see Dehlin has created three facebook groups — one for those who wish to stay (including himself), one for those on their way out, and one for LBGT (which has nothing to do with the first two, i would guess). Midgley calls us “Anti-christ”, who are to him “the most radical of the new critics who more of less retain at least a nominal membership in the Church of Jesus Christ”. We are the target — we are the “most radical of the new critics”.
Ok…I welcome that. From them, at least.
DBMormon wrote:But when it comes to the church I assume as an institution it is wiser then me and that it is indeed led by God. So I will softly try to work with the church while also letting my personal views be noticed… it is subtle and in no way try to subterfuge it’s policies or doctrines.
DBMormon – I respect and appreciate your faithfulness. That said, I would like you to consider a couple of things:1. An institution is never wiser than an individual can be. Institutions constitute aggregate emergent recessive properties shared in common among the founders and leaders of the institution. The church was founded by white men with a set of specific cultural proclivities. At some point, a prevailing point of view that blacks were inferior was shared in common among members, without being a spoken doctrine. Because of this cultural paradigm, it was easy to have an unwise and unjust position in the Church around blacks and the priesthood. This institutional position was eventually far more racist than the vast majority of the individuals in the Church. Racism was like a recessive gene, and when 12 white men got together, the recessive gene became dominant…all the way until 1978. The same is true to day about women, gays, and a host of other issues. The Church’s dysfunctionality is due to aggregated emergent recessive properties.
So I would caution you about thinking that the ‘Church’ is wiser — it is not.
2. The church may well be ‘led by God’, and that means, to me, and to a reading of Sections 8 and 9 of the D&C, that god reflects inspiration to the “mind and heart” of those leading it. Do you think that what emerges as leadership policy is free from uninspired thoughts and emotions that might have contaminated the “heart and mind” of the prophets?
You are correct not to subvert the policies and doctrines — it is a great way to become nullified yourself. And I respect your efforts to be out there, public, while being faithful as well — you are on a very hard path.
DBM wrote:
I disagree with those who place the Church above Christ if they ever perceive a choice between the two but also tend to find ways to give the Church the benefit when it is a choice between my own views and the Church. Even if we assume the church is 100% what it claims (which I do) and assuming we are as faithful as God asks us to be, we should still expect a difference at times in our opinions and Christ’s standards and truths.Bill Reel
Somehow the theme song to “Man of La Mancha” is running through my head at this point…Quote:Somehow the theme song to “Man of La Mancha” is running through my head at this point…
Who are the windmills?
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