- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
PazamaManX wrote:
But because I’m not showing my face very often in the ward I’m assigned to, I get to play a round of leadership roulette and hope I’ll get the endorsement.
Back in the 80s, I spent four weeks at the Provo MTC before heading to the mission field proper. I got to walk through the BYU campus several times, but I have never since returned to North America — and certainly not BYU.I simply don’t understand why people even want to go there. There are other universities.
nibbler wrote:
Something different stood out to me. Something I’m seeing more and more of, shoehorning Jesus into the conversation. I feel sometimes it’s done just so they can say they talked about Jesus. People say we aren’t talking about Jesus, well here you go, box checked. In this case it feels like they’re hiding behind Jesus. These policies are focused on Jesus, if you don’t like them your focus is on something other than Jesus.
I really wonder what bible story about Jesus makes people think that He would want a prescribed, enforced, and somewhat arbitrary dress and grooming code to begin with. Seems to me that Jesus generally stood against that sort of thing.
nibbler wrote:
Perfect is the enemy of good. We’re so wrapped up in putting on airs of being a perfect church that we fail to even be a good church. We could be a church that more and more people wanted to be a part of if we dropped the insistence of being seen as the true church and looked for ways to go about doing good in the world.
I know some other churches that are more focused on creating an environment that people would want to be a part of and maybe the belief part will grow from there. That is not our model. I have heard plenty of active, TR holding, ward leadership types say that they would love to do other things with their Sunday. But they can’t because they made commitments… It is openly admitted by active believing members that time spent at LDS church is sorta a drag and downer.I do think that the global church leadership honestly believes that many of the things and traditions that have been handed down to them are God breathed and God inspired and for that reason they are very reluctant to change them. Just think of what it took to reverse the priesthood and temple ban (and that even with early examples of black men receiving the priesthood and a lack of revelation implementing the ban). President Nelson has been fairly aggressive with his willingness to make changes early on in his administration but I feel like he had been saving up all the stuff that he wanted to do if he ever became prophet and then when the moment finally came he wasn’t sure how long he was going to be alive to get it done. I don’t observe many changes now.
I do think that there is a demographic of what might be termed the core members of the church (older members that have made sacrifices and raised their families in the church. These are the more reliable sort when it comes to paying tithing and serving in church callings.) and these members might be shocked if some of the things that they had been taught where non-negotiable eternal principles suddenly became optional.
I think of Historian Richard Bushman referring to these “Grandmothers living in Sanpete County.”
Quote:“I think for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true. It can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds, and that’s what it’s trying to do. And there will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change. Elder Packer had the sense of “protecting the little people.” He felt like the scholars were an enemy to his faith, and that we should protect the grandmothers living in Sanpete County. That was a very lovely pastoral image. But the price of protecting the grandmothers was a loss of the grandsons. They got a story that didn’t work. So we’ve just had to change our narrative.”
I also observe that we LDS have a nasty habit that whenever we have something that people might want that we create restrictions to limit who might partake. I look at girls camp and the enforcement of shorts length and swimsuit styles (these things are not commandments but if a YW wants to go to camp she has to play by the camp rules).
We have an online option for seminary but it has to be authorized by the bishop (we asked about this but were turned down because we do not live sufficiently far away from the church). Similarly for when our area started with a zoom option for seminary. It was described that the people on zoom had to be every bit as uncomfortable as the people attending in person (no reclining, eating, petting your pets, etc.) When the time came for DW and I to decide if our children should attend seminary I had the question of what is even desirable about seminary? Is it just a “red badge of courage” to show other LDS how committed you are? Are people really worried that someone might slacker their way into a seminary graduation certificate?
Our local church has also recently stopped doing the online stream of the SM service. My impression is that the local leadership views people that might attend virtually to be somehow cheating (with the rare exception of someone that might be bedridden) and getting access to something without putting in the requisite sacrifice.
BYU offers a world quality education at a very reasonable price. It is clearly an investment of church resources. It also cannot accept everyone that applies, therefore there is a sense that everyone that attends is taking the spot of another potential student. In my opinion it becomes a perfect storm of conditions for the Honor Code.
Honor Code Administrator: I think that female students wearing two pairs of earrings are less valiant and are taking the place of more valiant female potential students with only one modest pair of earrings. We better restrict that.
[Edit – I was trying to come up with a hypothetical and fairly arbitrary restriction that BYU Honor Code Administration
coulddo. Unfortunately, the two earring thing was already banned by the honor code about 20 years ago when GBH suggested that YW limit themselves to one pair of ear piercing. I guess not having a second ear piercing helps bring the student body closer to Christ. 😥 ]Roy wrote:BYU offers a world quality education at a very reasonable price. It is clearly an investment of church resources. It also cannot accept everyone that applies, therefore there is a sense that everyone that attends is taking the spot of another potential student. In my opinion it becomes a perfect storm of conditions for the Honor Code.
BYU often talks about the dual purposes of quality education and spiritual nourishment, but I fear they are forgetting the former in favor of doubling down on the latter.
For a while, it seemed there was a system with the different BYU campuses serving different purposes. Provo was a highly-ranked and competitive university. BYU-I was less selective but in many ways more focused on the spiritual and “churchy” elements instead of academic competitiveness.
That’s at least how I and many students I knew viewed things. We were more focused on academics and secular education, and Idaho was for people who wanted the spiritual environment and were too righteous to wear shorts.
😆 I know that’s an oversimplification but I think there was an element of truth to it.Arrakeen wrote:
Roy wrote:BYU offers a world quality education at a very reasonable price. It is clearly an investment of church resources. It also cannot accept everyone that applies, therefore there is a sense that everyone that attends is taking the spot of another potential student. In my opinion it becomes a perfect storm of conditions for the Honor Code.
BYU often talks about the dual purposes of quality education and spiritual nourishment, but I fear they are forgetting the former in favor of doubling down on the latter.
For a while, it seemed there was a system with the different BYU campuses serving different purposes. Provo was a highly-ranked and competitive university. BYU-I was less selective but in many ways more focused on the spiritual and “churchy” elements instead of academic competitiveness.
That’s at least how I and many students I knew viewed things. We were more focused on academics and secular education, and Idaho was for people who wanted the spiritual environment and were too righteous to wear shorts.
😆 I know that’s an oversimplification but I think there was an element of truth to it.
From my experience with BYU-I, I’d say there’s truth to it. I’ve never attended a class in Rexburg, but the online curriculum is loaded with spiritual stuff. Between talks by GA’s being required reading in very unrelated classes, and the teachers being required to give a spiritual thought in their weekly updates, you never forget that you’re taking classes from a church school.
Supposedly, we are supposed to be held to the same standard as those on campus. But, I’ve been in many zoom meetings with teachers while myself and other students were sporting beards and I’ve never heard anything about it. They couldn’t care less about the dress and grooming standards. The cheating part of the honor code, on the other hand, is something they care very very VERY much about.
PazamaManX wrote:
The cheating part of the honor code, on the other hand, is something they care very very VERY much about.
I don’t follow. Which cheating part do you mean? Failure to follow the dress code if you can get away with it, cheating in respect of prescribed standards of morality, or something else? Perhaps it’s all of them and more. I’m simply trying to understand.Carburettor wrote:
PazamaManX wrote:
The cheating part of the honor code, on the other hand, is something they care very very VERY much about.
I don’t follow. Which cheating part do you mean? Failure to follow the dress code if you can get away with it, cheating in respect of prescribed standards of morality, or something else? Perhaps it’s all of them and more. I’m simply trying to understand.
Cheating – copying someone else’s answers on tests, submitting someone else’s work as your own, etc. This was what the original version of the honor code was about.
DarkJedi wrote:
Cheating – copying someone else’s answers on tests, submitting someone else’s work as your own, etc. This was what the original version of the honor code was about.
Thanks.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.