- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
mfree6464 wrote:
Then when it finally came time for me to cash in and ask for God’s help, I broke open my spiritual piggy bank only to find it was completely empty.That’s it exactly. It’s how I felt the first, second, and third time I got hit with Empty Piggy Bank syndrome. The church requires massive sacrifices now in hopes of after-life rewards. But for some of us, we have unusual needs that in a sense, puts the church to the test NOW, in this life.
Not because we WANT to make the church prove itself, but because our needs provide the church that opportunity in this life. When they come up empty-handed and callous and uncaring — yes — it seems very much like fraud to me. It makes it hard to have faith in their after-life promises. I am not talking about financial needs either — I am talking about spiritual needs or life circumstance needs that are fully in control of the church, for the benefit of individual members.
However, that’s not to say I’ll leave it altogether, it just means I’ll adjust my own behavior accordingly to make the empty church piggy bank less of an issue. I reduce my investment in the church piggy bank and increase my investment in other piggy banks for which I have realistic expectations.
BTW, I don’t see the Ponzi scheme analogy hanging here — a Ponzi scheme is where one person invests money for a return. The manager of the scheme uses the money from secondary investors to pay the return to the first set of investors, and so on. In this case, I don’t see people putting in effort and getting rewards from the sacrifice of people who join later in the game. The promise of returns is to everyone, and there is nothing beyond the intrinsic value of being a member of a community (if you even get that in our church) as a return on investment. EVERYONE has to wait until after retirement (death) to see if they get the promised rewards. And sadly, no one knows whether people who retired before them even got those rewards. Totally different analogy.
I will say the analogy holds if you, as an investor in the Ponzi scheme, go to the fund manager and ask for your principal back, or at least, a hefty amount of it back now. The fund manager comes up short or keeps putting it off until you have no faith you invested your money wisely.
I want to add — most faithful members will simply say it’s a test, or some other rationalization that excuses church behavior in this life. To them I quote Alma who said of Corianton — “When they saw your behavior they wouldn’t believe my words”.
The obvious difference is that a Ponzi Scheme requires new members to be recruited so the money flows. LDS are pressured to do that but don’t have to, to see a return. Kids maybe, but not necessarily new members. mfree6464 wrote:
Does it ever feel like it’s all just a big spiritual ponzi scheme to any of you? I had trouble sleeping last night (life continues to be very difficult) and this analogy came to mind. I paid in and sacrificed for so many years when life was relatively good. My thinking was (and this was taught to me various times in some form or another at church) that if I can fill that spiritual piggy bank now with good works and gratitude then God will be there for me when I inevitably need him later in life. Conversely, if I pridefully choose to mess around and take things for granted then the piggy bank will be empty and I will be unworthy to receive God’s help, comfort and guidance when needed. Additionally, (furthering the ponzi scheme idea) each time I went in for a Bishop’s interview or met with leaders I was reassured that my actions were indeed in line with God’s will and that the bank statement, if you will, on my spiritual piggy bank was looking great. According to my leaders, God was pleased and my piggy bank was indeed full. Then when it finally came time for me to cash in and ask for God’s help, I broke open my spiritual piggy bank only to find it was completely empty.For me, from the moment
realchallenges came into my life God has been completely AWOL. It was great when I needed help solving question #8 on my 10th grade math test, but in the challenges I’ve faced these past few years where divine help was (and still is) absolutely needed he seems to be non-existent. For every conference talk that reaffirms how difficult life can and will be, there seem to be 10 more conference talks that tell “faith-promoting” stories of how obedience kept people safe and spared them unnecessary suffering. I’m confused and not sure what to make of it.
We did Elder Anderson’s “Wounded” talk from last GC Sunday in PH. I didn’t really remember the talk, but it’s kind of a gem related to this. In my readings of Givens (especially The Christ Who Heals) I had come to an understanding that we’re kind of here to suffer. Put in a milder way, we here to have experiences that help us to understand the good because we experience the bad. That’s not a foreign concept to Mormons, it’s even part of the endowment rites (light/darkness, pleasure/pain, health/sickness), but it does fly in the face of the all-too-alive-and-well prosperity gospel. Interestingly in our discussion Sunday the prosperity gospel did not directly come up and our group seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the idea of it raining on the just and unjust alike – which I think was Anderson’s whole point. I think it’s worth a read.
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/10/wounded?lang=eng ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/10/wounded?lang=eng I think we did “Join with us” By Elder Uchtdorf https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/come-join-with-us?lang=eng We spent the entire time talking about what the gospel offers despite requiring so much (which is pretty sad considering how much gold is in this talk).
One of the recurring themes was that the church provides a substitute purpose for the men in the room. Rather than the rat race of the corporate ladder and consumerism (bank accounts, cars and other trappings of wealth), the church offers another measure of success. The success of raising a family, contributing in the community, and passing on the heritage. The success of making and keeping covenants to make the ultimate glory and achievement within the reach of all members.
The belief changes the perspective and redefines what it means to be successful. This can be very attractive.
P.S. this is similar but different than the paradigm change offered by many evengelical Christian churches. People go in feeling like they are failures, people leave feeling like they have been born anew, that God redeemed them from everything painful in their lives and welcomes them home with open arms. This too can be very attractive.
DarkJedi wrote:
Interestingly in our discussion Sunday the prosperity gospel did not directly come up and our group seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the idea of it raining on the just and unjust alike – which I think was Anderson’s whole point. [/url]
Generally I think we do a good job at church of recognizing that bad things can happen to good people. Where I feel we need help is with the belief that being more obedient will earn us our desired blessing. Should the blessing not come, the default position becomes, “we must not have been obedient enough.” I hear a variant of this most Sundays.
If we look at the early history of Mormonism (or whatever we call it these days), it was not a straight path upwards. In fact during the 19th century, many members were poor, and the church was often quite poor. What comes out of LDS history again and again is victory against the odds. I don’t see that as prosperity gospel so much as refiner’s fire. We see farmers who built great cities and temples, and city dwellers from Europe who became successful farmers. All of this was done with very little money.
nibbler wrote:
DarkJedi wrote:
Interestingly in our discussion Sunday the prosperity gospel did not directly come up and our group seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the idea of it raining on the just and unjust alike – which I think was Anderson’s whole point. [/url]
Generally I think we do a good job at church of recognizing that bad things can happen to good people.
Where I feel we need help is with the belief that being more obedient will earn us our desired blessing. Should the blessing not come, the default position becomes, “we must not have been obedient enough.” I hear a variant of this most Sundays.
AKA Prosperity Gospel. I agree with you that to an extent we do a fair job recognizing bad things happen to good people (and to a lesser extent good things can happen to bad people). But, as I said earlier, the prosperity gospel is alive and well in the the Church. My own ward is probably a bit better at what you describe than some others (including the ward I visit often), perhaps because quite a few people in my ward have experienced great adversity. That doesn’t keep the prosperity gospel from rearing its head from time to time, though. I was actually a bit surprised it didn’t become more of a theme in our PH meeting, but only one guy started to come close to it and he was headed off (not on purpose).
Sam’s comment deserves attention. He makes an interesting point. SamBee wrote:
If we look at the early history of Mormonism (or whatever we call it these days), it was not a straight path upwards. In fact during the 19th century, many members were poor, and the church was often quite poor.What comes out of LDS history again and again is victory against the odds. I don’t see that as prosperity gospel so much as refiner’s fire. We see farmers who built great cities and temples, and city dwellers from Europe who became successful farmers. All of this was done with very little money.
I agree, we’re all in the refiner’s fire. As I stated earlier, we are all here to learn and at least some of that learning experience comes from suffering things like pain and sickness. Early church members and the pioneers are fine examples of how they dealt with the harshness of real life of the day and even choices they made (like the Kirtland bank thing, for instance). Without them there wouldn’t be an us. There was an interesting little discussion in our lesson Sunday when one old venerable asserted that all bad things that happen to us involve other people, which at face value I don’t think is true but it bears some pondering.
Anyway, I think the prosperity gospel part comes in when people believe that because they pay tithing/hold a temple recommend/read the BoM every day/
fill in the blankthis suffering won’t happen to them or that the suffering is way less than it is for those who don’t pay tithing/read the BoM/etc. More than one of us here have that as at least part of our personal faith crisis. There are different points of view (as there are with most other things) and there are other contributing factors to our points of view – like our own faith, judgementalism, the level or perceived level of the suffering (perhaps compared to others) and many other things. While there are many paradoxes in Mormonism, I don’t think this is really one of them. I think the Refiner’s Fire is closer to doctrine than the prosperity gospel – but some fast Sundays that might be hard to see/hear. Also… There were times e.g. the abandonment of Kirtland and Nauvoo when church members went from having built towns and beautiful temples* to nothing.
Personally, I think people lean too much on tithing. I see it as a membership fee, which keeps the church going and the buildings working. Will it protect my investments, or my crops? Well I don’t think I have experience of that, although I’m glad that I’ve never gone bankrupt.
But there is one name that counteracts prosperity gospel – Job. Also if we look at what Jesus says he suggests we are to seek after spiritual riches not material ones.
* Kirtland and Nauvoo have my favorite temple designs. Never been a fan of SL Temple TBH.
SamBee wrote:
Personally, I think people lean too much on tithing. I see it as a membership fee, which keeps the church going and the buildings working. Will it protect my investments, or my crops? Well I don’t think I have experience of that, although I’m glad that I’ve never gone bankrupt.I agree, but at the same time I think much of our belief/teaching related to the prosperity gospel is centered around tithing because of “the windows of heaven” thing.
And I agree with you about the Salt Lake Temple. I do like the Kirtland/Nauvoo/St. George temples and I also like the Manti/Logan design and its modernized adaptations (of which Rome is one). I do not like the sloped roof design that was common in the 80s (Dallas/Portland for example) or the plain box with a spire of the 50s/60s (London/NZ) and I don’t like the small temple design or its small predecessor (Atlanta/Santiago Chile for example). I guess I’m pretty picky about my temples.
:eh: DarkJedi wrote:
SamBee wrote:
Personally, I think people lean too much on tithing. I see it as a membership fee, which keeps the church going and the buildings working. Will it protect my investments, or my crops? Well I don’t think I have experience of that, although I’m glad that I’ve never gone bankrupt.I agree, but at the same time I think much of our belief/teaching related to the prosperity gospel is centered around tithing because of “the windows of heaven” thing.
My biggest qualm with the prosperity gospel, is that it leads to a mentality where “you get what you deserve”. Broke? Jobless? Homeless? You deserve it. Rich? Married? Successful in your career? You deserve it. Whatever happens, it’s all God’s will. Hence in this situation:
Quote:We see farmers who built great cities and temples, and city dwellers from Europe who became successful farmers. All of this was done with very little money.
Brigham Young in particular got the lion’s share of the wealth and women. It still appalls me that he could be making in today’s terms between $1.55mil (his own estimate, when sued for alimony), and $23.2mil (his ex-wife’s estimate), each year. Given how much he “borrowed without repaying” from the Church, at the time of his death, I wouldn’t be surprised if his own estimates were low.You can’t tell me that Brigham Young’s extravagant wealth, lifestyle, and multitude of wives was not directly correlated with his position as “prophet”. I have no doubt Brigham Young felt he deserved it. But when life gets tough and you’re found wanting, it’s your own fault.
SamBee wrote:
What comes out of LDS history again and again is victory against the odds. I don’t see that as prosperity gospel so much as refiner’s fire. We see farmers who built great cities and temples, and city dwellers from Europe who became successful farmers. All of this was done with very little money.
When the church works, it can work wonderfully. The church is great at building community and then marshaling that community for civil engineering projects. The church is great at asking the independant and individualistic American spirit to “bridle” its own self interest in favor of group and community well being. When it works (and for whom it works), it can work wonderfully.
dande48 wrote:You can’t tell me that Brigham Young’s extravagant wealth, lifestyle, and multitude of wives was not directly correlated with his position as “prophet”. I have no doubt Brigham Young felt he deserved it. But when life gets tough and you’re found wanting, it’s your own fault.
This is true, but even Brigham Young underwent hardship within his life. He probably made the most money off the LDS but he too had to flee the mid west and his origins were nothing special.
I suspect much of BY’s income was in kind and not monetary.
SilentDawning wrote:
BTW, I don’t see the Ponzi scheme analogy hanging here — a Ponzi scheme is where one person invests money for a return. The manager of the scheme uses the money from secondary investors to pay the return to the first set of investors, and so on. In this case, I don’t see people putting in effort and getting rewards from the sacrifice of people who join later in the game.
You’re right. That is what Ponzi schemes are all about and that really doesn’t apply to my analogy at all. I like how you referred to it as Empty Piggy Bank Syndrome. I’ll go with that from now on.
:thumbup:
SilentDawning wrote:
I will say the analogy holds if you, as an investor in the Ponzi scheme, go to the fund manager and ask for your principal back, or at least, a hefty amount of it back now. The fund manager comes up short or keeps putting it off until you have no faith you invested your money wisely.
This is exactly why I mentioned the Ponzi scheme idea. You never hear about a Ponzi scheme while it is working (ie. when people are getting their returns from newer investors.) Problems arise when later investors try to cash out and find that their “piggy banks” are now empty. That was my experience. I approached the fund manager (God), tried to make a withdrawal and got nothing after being assured for many years that my bank was full. I felt scammed. It felt like a Ponzi to me even though it was not.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.