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You might also mention to your bishop what Jesus said was the greatest commandment: to love! and upon this hang all the other commandments. Joseph Smith taught principles not rules and let the people govern themselves. To Christ its always been the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. Your husband blessing his son would be the most loving thing to do! If the bishop says no, ask him what message he wants to send to your son? I guess pharisees and sadducess are still well and alive in the latter day church as well as it was in the former day church. It takes courage to stand up for the right thing and we are always being forced to learn courage by standing up to intimidating people. I hear you. Let me tell you my story. I was similarily offended by some out of place comments relating to an adoption. It devastated me for a long time. I literally could not sleep for a couple days. I woke up every day with a knife in my heart for a week. The sacrifices to keep my covenants, the good clean life I’d shown, all that seemed like it didn’t matter.
Although I had a testimony, it felt rocked to the foundations. My wife and I went into semi-activity for 7 years after this, so I have some sense of how you might be feelings.
But back to you — I feel your Bishop was very wrong the way he spoke to you. He gave up on your husband. And he shouldn’t have. I think the answer is time. Keep going to Church and let the lessons and the Spirit “wear positively” on your drained spirit.
That’s what worked for me — after 7 years of semi-activity, the Sunday lessons touched me week after week and my faith returned. I eventually accepted a little calling that I actually wanted to do, magnified it, and then moved to a new Ward. In the new Ward, I got a fresh start and took another little calling as a magazine rep, and then, was eventually called into the Bishopric, suddenly as a result of what my Bishop said was pure inspiration.
This situation will get better by degrees but you have to stay connected somehow to the Church and to God. You’ll have to also try to separate your Bishop’s comments from the Church itself. This is hard since we are taught it’s all by inspiration. But guess what — I don’t believe it is always. Leaders are not perfect. They are definitely fallible — I was one myself and did and said some dumb things to people as a Bishopric member when I was presented with sudden questions in interviews etcetera.
Regarding your husband. My wife, at one point, was planning to leave me because I was no longer into the church. (She was still active for a while after the adoption rejection, but I was stone cold). But she got some counsel from a woman in our Ward who had a non-member husband. This woman said that “love should transcend your husband’s activity in the Church”. My wife shared the counsel and stayed loyal to me, and it helped me feel warm about the Church eventually — way eventually. If she had’ve rejected me over it, I think I would’ve believed in the Church even less at the time.
Try to do things that are spiritual together, like family home evening on topics that are of general spirituality if you have children. Or the love box where you drop notes about kindnesses the other does for you, and share them at the end of the week, or pray together in general to God, if he still believes in Him. Also, if it feels right, meditating to spiritual music together over your life’s blessings and sharing those thing for which you are thankful. We do those things and it brings the Spirit — this may well cause awakening and strengthening of the Spirit in both of you.
I felt a bit of tears when I read your story. I feel sad for how you’ve been let down and I have faith things will change for you, and I feel the Spirit as I write this to you. Stay connected to God and don’t let the Church interfere with your relationships with Him.
Silent Dawning, thanks for sharing your story. I don’t remember who said this, but I liked this thought. Christ is not here to save us from our problems. He’s here to save us from our sins. I think God expects us to kind of work things out on our own. And sometimes he’s there to help us out. SilentDawning wrote:This situation will get better by degrees but you have to stay connected somehow to the Church and to God. You’ll have to also try to separate your Bishop’s comments from the Church itself. This is hard since we are taught it’s all by inspiration. But guess what — I don’t believe it is always. Leaders are not perfect.
I agree with this. I don’t want to give up on the church. And I’m dealing better with my anger at the bishop. I’d like to distance myself from him, but unfortunately it seems like he’s here to stay and there’s no chance of us moving to a new location. I’m trying to have compassion for his situation. Trying. I’m just hoping to get him to understand our point of view.
Thank you for your concern. I really appreciate all the support and encouragement I’ve received here.
bridget_night wrote:You might also mention to your bishop what Jesus said was the greatest commandment: to love! and upon this hang all the other commandments. Joseph Smith taught principles not rules and let the people govern themselves. To Christ its always been the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. Your husband blessing his son would be the most loving thing to do! If the bishop says no, ask him what message he wants to send to your son? I guess pharisees and sadducess are still well and alive in the latter day church as well as it was in the former day church. It takes courage to stand up for the right thing and we are always being forced to learn courage by standing up to intimidating people.
Bridget, I’ve been compiling a list of talking points for my next interview with the bishop. I’m adding your ideas to the list. But I’ll leave out the part about the bishop being a pharisee.
Hey new Girlfriend, I truly believe the Spirit will be with you as you go through this as I see your good heart. btw, I was the one that made the comment about Christ coming to save us from our sins and not our problems. I learned that big lesson from a small book called “The 5 day plan to know God” from a 7th Day Adventist Pastor. It was talking about the early Jews who were always waiting for this Messiah to come and save them from the Romans. When Jesus claimed he was the Messiah and came to save them from their sins, they did not like that. I had gotten so discouraged at that time because I had done “all the right’ things (paid tithing, gone to temple, did my callings, FHE, etc) and none of the promised blessings were happening that church leaders were constantly promising us from the pulpit. Please keep us posted on what happens.
Quote:I agree with this. I don’t want to give up on the church. And I’m dealing better with my anger at the bishop. I’d like to distance myself from him, but unfortunately it seems like he’s here to stay and there’s no chance of us moving to a new location. I’m trying to have compassion for his situation. Trying. I’m just hoping to get him to understand our point of view.
You know, I’m questioning whether you should even try to change his perspective. I’m afraid you may be frustrated by this given the hard line he took in that devastating interview you had with him a while ago. Greater peace may be had by dealing with your anger and moving on, and being proactive in trying to restore the Spirit through attendance and being part of the lessons on Sunday etcetera.
By the way, this Bishop will move on eventually; you’ll get a fresh one at some point, although it may take years. That’s what’s good, the only thing that stays the same about priesthood leaders is that they are always changing!
I believe in seeking to understand before insisting on being understood. Have you considered that you might not understand him yet? I’m not saying you have to agree – to any particular degree or even at all. I’m just wondering if you really understand him. If not, trying to change his mind probably will do nothing more than entrench both of your existing positions.
The only reason we are meeting with the bishop at all is to plead our case for DH to be able to baptize our daughter. If it weren’t for her we would stay as far away from the bishop as possible. As for seeking to understand him, DH served as his clerk for two years before his disaffection. We know his personality pretty well. Also, one reason he gave me for refusing to allow DH to baptize our son last year was because of a bad experience between his son-in-law baptizing his grand-daughter after a bad divorce.
We feel like we do understand where the bishop is coming from. I think its important for him to at least hear our point of view before he makes another judgement on our worthiness. Last year all of the anger and bad feelings about the church were running close to the surface. By now we’ve been able to resolve some of those troubling questions and feelings. We hope to present a better case for our family this time around.
Cool. Good luck. Well, we met with the bishop today. It went pretty much as we thought it would. We talked for about an hour. I think we were able to express our view point pretty well. We brought up the points that we felt would present the best case. We were very respectful but we made it clear that we disagreed with him on a few points. Bishop said he would like to see DH do the baptism and the ball is in his court. Bottom line is that bishop doesn’t think DH is worthy at this point.If he can improve his “worthiness” and show his willingness to follow the commandments for the period of time up to the baptism, he implied that DH could do it. We believe DH is worthy in every way. He has a strong faith in God and Jesus Christ. He is devoted to his family. He lives a clean life. But the problem is the bishop is requiring us to pay a full tithing before he will consider DH worthy. And tithing is something DH is not willing to do at this point. I’ll post a question about this in the Doctrine topic because this intro post is getting way too long.
BTW thanks everybody for all the kind thoughts and words of encouragement.
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