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Excellent comments, SamBee and Cadence. Thanks Ray. Yes, Cadence, I can sympathize with that position.
Personally while I get irritated by the church sometimes, I wouldn’t
describe the feeling as icky. I feel more beleagured or ground down by blinkered bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy, dress code and correlation are our curse, our prayers, service and fellowship our blessing, including in relation to the suit and tie Jesus perhaps.
journeygirl wrote:I can’t think how else to describe it. Lately when I contemplate the church, I just sort of have this weird feeling about it. On some blog somewhere I read a comment along these lines, “when Jesus was here on earth he was a radical, but now he seems to be a suit and tie conservative.” This is how I feel when I compare the teachings of Jesus to the church. He rebuked the people in the bible who were strict to enforce made up rules, and yet the church is always adding new requirements or programs that to me detract from the simple gospel of Christ.
We are taught at church to follow the spirit in discerning good from evil, and yet many TBM’s response to my feeling would be that it is wrong. That I need to keep praying etc. to get the “right” answer that the church is true. So I can never win with that approach. I came to distrust my own instincts. So what do I make of this? Is it the spirit telling me that Mormonism is wrong, or am I “passed feeling”? I think I could continue to be a Christian, in the sense that I would want to follow the teachings of Christ in the bible. But I don’t know if I want to stay with this church if it makes me feel weird, but then I don’t believe I can feel the spirit, since I can’t trust my own feelings it seems.
Yes, I’ve had a feeling that I can’t describe at times when I attend church.
I wouldn’t say it is “icky”, but it is weird.
What I think is causing it is just the way in which I see things at church now, as though I have a different set of eyes when it comes to how I view the church.
SamBee wrote:
[img]http://www.lucianosbooks.com/files/revolucionario.jpg [/img] Ya, I don’t go hung ho on personality traits of Jesus but it is interesting. To get into what Jesus was or wasn’t or what he taught it. It defeats the point. Which is to take all they is good that you can find, looking for approval from a higher authority for doing good for goods sake or leaving bad or sake is like looking to the law to see what good you are allowed to do, or what bad you must or must not do.
In a twist that I usually do to pledging “we hold these fruits to be self evident”.
Good is manifest by its fruit and joy. Not by the approval of authority.
As such I don’t look to get permission from anyone on doing good. That maintains a child’s perspective, don’t grow while dependent on others(I’m talking co-dependency not inter-dependency).
We are interdependent adults, we need each other, god and sometimes the church and they need us.
But to be codependent on others, including the church is to remain a child indefinitely and to experience no growth.
Interdependent–not co-dependent. Sometimes people try to become an island into themselves and others can’t seem to detach themselves from co-dependency of others including the church. Either way growth stumps. Finding the middle interdependent way–becoming an adult and acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses as an individual and as a species.
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