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Morzen wrote:
I know it’s a tired cliché, but I am not totally “throwing the baby out with the bath water,” […] It doesn’t necessarily exclude the LDS church, but I am realizing more and more that the LDS church with all of its ornaments, doctrines and memes is not at the center of the stage — it’s just playing its own role like everything else in the world.
I (and I think many of the others here) can identify exactly with what you are expressing. It’s quite a time of discovery. When I say I can identify, I mean your entire paragraph. For example, I, too, have been a bit shy to call my new experience “greater”. But that’s certainly how it feels!
Morzen wrote:And to Tom Haws: I have never heard of that express before — “weasel words” being grace words, but you’re right I do consciously insert them. I just hope it doesn’t come across as being insincere or worse — ‘weaselly’ obsequious.
Not at all. You’re good. It is gracious, and as I wrote, it struck me how gracious it is to pull back and use language like that. So I called them grace words, which I think is appropriately descriptive of one of the ways we love one another here.
Tom
This is why we try hard to have constructive discussion on this forum. I have no disagreement with anything in your last comment, morzen – and I also tend to use qualifiers in many of my statements. I genreally don’t like speaking in absolutes. Morzen wrote:I know it’s a tired cliché, but I am not totally “throwing the baby out with the bath water,” i.e., I am still grateful for a lot of LDS teachings and for the influence it has been in my youth instilling good teachings to be a good person. And to be sure, being a member of the LDS church has been a real learning experience in the school of hard knocks a lot of times — but as we all know, that’s partly how we really learn and develop. But returning to the main point, I don’t know if you would describe my current personal paradigm shift as being ‘more’ or ‘greater’ or whatever, but there is certainly ‘something other’ that I have a greater and more acute sense of. It doesn’t necessarily exclude the LDS church, but I am realizing more and more that the LDS church with all of its ornaments, doctrines and memes is not at the center of the stage — it’s just playing its own role like everything else in the world.
That was beautiful Morzen. Thanks for sharing that. I feel similar to how you have been experiencing that shift and transformation. Instead of calling my new view “better” or “superior,” I try to think of it as more broad. It’s a wider angled lens (to draw from a photography term).
I still find a lot of things truly inspiring, I can even say divinely inspired, from my LDS origin. I feel “Mormon.” That is my life heritage. But my view of Mormonism is much more like the grand reformation JS envisioned in his Grand Principles of Mormonism sermons in the last days before he was killed. In particular, his ideas on finding truth whatever the source (drawing in from all great traditions) and also his ideas on “friendship,” brotherly love for all regardless of what community they are in.
Most of us find the need to supplement from outside the LDS world in order to satiate our spiritual hunger. And that is totally ok.
I like the idea of how a wide-angle lens sees a different picture than a telephoto lens. If two people are viewing a beautiful scene using each -– there is bound to be some frustration when they try to talk to each other about what they see. It took me a while to get caught up with this thread…lotsa good discussion! My oblique input, like usual, may be more than “heretical,” but here goes: we often talk as if God is the perfected human (the common LDS perception) with desires and processes like we have. Stepping way outside the Mormon box for a minute…what if God is simply “the loving, guiding, creative energy of the universe?” If we take all the entropy, “good and bad” actions over a given time period, do we end up with a better world than before? I may be the eternal optimist, but I think the answer is yes…and I might give “God” credit for it.
What I see happening is that we humans are getting to know each other better than ever before. Media, internet, technology in general is making our world smaller. We have friends in other countries that we communicate with regularly. Their parents didn’t have that luxury. That has allowed us to see that despite our vast differences, we are ultimately the same. And we respect each other because of our relationships.
So in a round about way, I think the answer to the topic question is yes…”He” is correcting each church by exposing us to others…and that instills…love.
Imagine that?!
I liked that oblique input, Rix. And thanks for pulling the thread back toward the original topic. The rash of syrupy loving mariposa mormony boy messages was starting to make me sleepy. Ha, no offense you fruitcakes, I’m just kidding. Speaking of gays… (insert sideways segue grin), no one ever posited an opinion to my question of whether or not the church, given hypothetical scientific proof of the existence of a “gay gene”, would evolve to the point of allowing a gay person to be baptized. My guess is no, since it could still be argued that a biological press does not necessarily a behavior make. Maybe a more likely scenario would be given hypothetical legalization of plural marriage in the USA, would the church eventually evolve to allow Jack, Jill, and Jennifer, a happily and legally married trio, be baptized if they met all other requirements. Again, I’m guessing no, since this situation surely exists somewhere else in the world where plural marriage is legal and surely we would have heard of it. So, maybe these questions are superfluous, like much of what I write.
Does God use the world to correct the church? The church is people. People progress, advance, learn, and grow, using the systems and knowledge available to expand, press, and push toward a better understanding of themselves and their environment. With God, people feel desires to become better and feel prompted to help one another and make the world a better place. People change the world, yet people also destroy the world. Deus ex populus!
Quote:no one ever posited an opinion to my question of whether or not the church, given hypothetical scientific proof of the existence of a “gay gene”, would evolve to the point of allowing a gay person to be baptized. My guess is no, since it could still be argued that a biological press does not necessarily a behavior make.
I think the tricky aspect is that someone who is gay may have a strong testimony of the church while still being gay. A lifetime of celibacy in a church focused on eternal families is not a recipe for a successful membership for that individual. Perhaps the church could create “gay” wards like we have singles wards. That’s obviously a huge paradigm shift from today, though.
The “gay ward” idea is interesting, however. I lived in SF several years ago and they split three wards not by geography, but by age and marital status. There was an “old ward” full of retirement age people, the “young married ward” full of newly married to non-retired couples and their families, and then the “single” ward full of many gay members, members trying hard not to be gay, and members wondering where the heck they landed. I was in the young married conglomeration, but heard stories from friends and acquaintences in the singles ward. An interesting place with problems this country boy had never considered, such as “Bishop, why can Jack and Diane hold hands in church, but not Bill and Ted?” Reportedly, one of the bpric members of that ward was single and gay, but behaved in a celibate and modest manner, remaining worthy. Interesting perspective Cnsl1. I wonder even from a theological perspective if we can come up with a reason for a SSA pair of people to hold hands in Church, assuming for the sake of argument here they are “perfect” in all other ways. Does non-sexual, physical expressions of affection break the law of chastity in any way? I think this really tears at the heart of the difference between culture and religion.
I think it’s interesting how the church usually trails society on social issues, rather than leads it. I don’t recall that it ever spoke out against slavery, yet now we virtually all acknowledge it as wrong. The same goes for civil rights. And how the homosexuality issue. The closest we ever got to being progressive was with the tenure of David O. McKay. silentstruggle wrote:I think it’s interesting how the church usually trails society on social issues, rather than leads it. I don’t recall that it ever spoke out against slavery, yet now we virtually all acknowledge it as wrong.
Not that the Church didn’t fall far behind this societal trend in the 20th Century, but we did start out very progressive and ahead of the curve. The Church’s anti-slavery image was one of the main issues of contention with the native Missourians that eventually lead to our expulsion from the state. Joseph Smith’s presidential platform in Nauvoo included the idea of selling off federal land to purchase the freedom for all slaves in the US (end slavery). He also made statements in sermons about blacks being equal to whites if they were just given the same chances at education (this was very progressive for his day, not even all abolitionists believed in actual racial equality).
I can’t help at times to see parallels with Islam. The Prophet Mohammad was also very progressive for his day regarding rights for women and non-believers (those outside “the tribe”). Now days though, traditional Islam is not seen as progressive in this area (compared to the rest of western society).
It’s interesting to see the trend of liberal and progressive charismatic leaders being quickly overshadowed by conservative elements within their cultures.
Thanks for the correction Brian. Do you know where the church regarding slavery during Brigham Young’s time as president? Also, did the anti-slavery stance in Joseph Smith’s time come from Joseph, or was it just inherent in the primarily New England background of the members? silentstruggle wrote:Thanks for the correction Brian. Do you know where the church regarding slavery during Brigham Young’s time as president?
In an interview with Horace Greeley, Young called slavery “inspired” and also acknowledged that it was practiced in the Utah territory. Here is the link so you can read it for yourself:
silentstruggle wrote:Thanks for the correction Brian. Do you know where the church regarding slavery during Brigham Young’s time as president?
silentstruggle wrote:Also, did the anti-slavery stance in Joseph Smith’s time come from Joseph, or was it just inherent in the primarily New England background of the members?
I think there were three large influences on the shift away from progressive racial equality in the early days of the Church:
1. Brigham Young took the lead of the largest and most zealous population of Mormonism. Brigham Young was not as liberal and progressive as Joseph Smith. You have to remember that none of these people would really pass with flying colors when looking through the lens of today’s standards, but JS was IMO very progressive compared to the context of his contemporary culture. Brigham Young was “old school” for his day, but was far from pro-slavery or anything like that.
2. Brighamite (LDS Church) missionaries had good success in the south eastern United States attracting converts. I recall reading about some wealthy southern converts joining, bringing a lot of resources that the Church desperately needed. Unfortunately, they also brought with them a desire to continue the economic practices that made them wealthy (slavery). So I think this ended up being tolerated by Brigham Young in the Utah territory, even though I don’t personally think it was something BY was all gung-ho about. I just don’t think it was a primary concern for him either way. Slavery was allowed in the early Utah territory, but I don’t think it was widespread. A large portion of the dedicated and long-time members and leadership were from the New England area originally. They leaned more towards being abolitionists.
3. The LDS Temple development took on a lot of characteristics from the leadership’s exposure to Masonry in Illinois. Segregation was the policy generally within Masonry, and in fact I don’t believe a slave could be a Mason. I think you have to be a free man in addition to affirming some level of belief in a supreme being (those being two of the three basic requirements). Priesthood organization in the Church was influenced by this IMO.
Tied into this was the fact that the early Church was rapidly dealing with integrating many groups of protestant Christian converts who brought their own “baggage” from their previous experience. I know the LDS Church takes a lot of flak for the Ham / Curse of Cain / Dark Skin belief, but it actually isn’t an idea original to Mormonism. It was also very common in the U.S. among the rest of Protestant Christianity, who also banned ordination for Blacks commonly all the way up to the early 1960’s. The earliest notion of the Curse of Cain being related to skin color goes back possibly as far as the 4th Century AD.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_and_mark_of_Cain Like I mentioned above though, it still sucks that we were one of the last groups to correct the problem (a mistake IMO). It would have been nice to have been on the leading edge of social justice movements like that, which to me is very authentic to following the example of Christ.
So to wrap this back into the topic, the Lord used the world to correct the Church. That’s my perception of how it played out. Good. I don’t really mind. Better is better.
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