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Lately I have been downplaying my knowledge of the gospel. I do not want to research anything anymore. My quest at embracing knowledge, or so-called truth has ended. I’m not interested in academic, philosophical or religious discussions. I admit to going to church for the sake of going. In my thirties I was in the phase of all truth comes together, but realized the Church could care less about the pursuit of truth, but we are just to live a good Christian life, and not much emphasis is placed on Scripture except the Book of Mormon and Conference Talks. The problems I see:
1) Church is mediocre. We have sensational claims, but our lives do not necessarily reflect a grand theophany like the life of Joseph Smith i.e. first vision.
2) The Church unit or ward is a microcosm of an idealistic culture where do-gooders help one another. However if you are not reciprocating by doing good you may as well stay on the margins and enjoy the pathetic sidelines, and wonder that people think you do not care, are lazy or otherwise stuck up or indifferent. When the truth is you struggle to take care of yourself and family and when you decide to help out, someone else beats you to it, so why bother.
3) Some say the death of home teaching was welcomed, but now when you do not know who your home teacher is, who are you going to call? I believe the Church went too far by doing away with home teaching when it should have just been re-defined. Radical change is not good for older people, and new converts who are just trying to stay afloat.
4) Personal life, my father passed away and I see that he was ready to go on the other side, but I see this whole transition to the otherside by becoming perfect in the love of Christ when actually I have a hard time loving my fellow man and see myself competing against a lot of people in the rat race of life, and that it is every man for himself, and the survival of the fittest. In religion: To live is to die since that is the ultimate goal to rack up do-good brownie points for the platinum retirement plan. (I believe the grace of Christ will cover me, as long as I do not commit grave sins and I am happy with thinking this).
5) I find myself adhering to many philosophies that the Book of Mormon speaks out against.
i.e. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Spend a lot of time maintaining the creature, self-preservation through exercise, fixing up my home and spending a lot of time with just living life, and don’t give a damn about the afterlife and spiritual matters.
As an active home teacher I appreciate the change. We really needed less box ticking. jamison wrote:
Lately I have been downplaying my knowledge of the gospel. I do not want to research anything anymore. My quest at embracing knowledge, or so-called truth has ended. I’m not interested in academic, philosophical or religious discussions.I feel the same way. After you start questioning whether the church is all it says it is, you find these discussions a bit pointless — like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound. If it’s not totally verifiable, why engage in speculation?
On the other hand, I do enjoy academic conversations, or philosophical conversations that merge with my personal, practical interests. Also, questions about how to survive in church culture when you have created a web of relationships that depend on your involvement in it.
I like the change to home teaching — provided they stop the guilt trips and make it a truly different experience that focuses on outcomes.
I can’t subscribe to the “look after yourself only” philosophy. If that is what you meant. I do believe in prioritizing myself higher than the church would suggest is healthy. This means refusing unsuitable callings, not signing up for chapel cleaning, etcetera. But I also believe in continuing to serve my fellow human beings. Not only for the blessings it provides to others, but for the sake of my own character.
SamBee wrote:
As an active home teacher I appreciate the change. We really needed less box ticking.
Totally agree, even though I am not so active with it. I think it can be validly argued that home teaching was just re-defined and that they have been attempting to do so for the last several years until it came to the more radical “call it something else.” The biggest change from my point of view was eliminating the checkbox. What else has really changed? No lesson? Great! If I don’t know who my ministering brothers are or who I m supposed to minister to, all I have to do is take a look in LDS tools – it’s all right there.
DarkJedi wrote:
SamBee wrote:
As an active home teacher I appreciate the change. We really needed less box ticking.
Totally agree, even though I am not so active with it. I think it can be validly argued that home teaching was just re-defined and that they have been attempting to do so for the last several years until it came to the more radical “call it something else.” The biggest change from my point of view was eliminating the checkbox. What else has really changed? No lesson? Great! If I don’t know who my ministering brothers are or who I m supposed to minister to, all I have to do is take a look in LDS tools – it’s all right there.
NOTE: The sister assignments are not available to me directly to see who is assigned to me. I had to request my husband use his higher level of permission login to research the information.
AmyJ wrote:
DarkJedi wrote:
SamBee wrote:
As an active home teacher I appreciate the change. We really needed less box ticking.
Totally agree, even though I am not so active with it. I think it can be validly argued that home teaching was just re-defined and that they have been attempting to do so for the last several years until it came to the more radical “call it something else.” The biggest change from my point of view was eliminating the checkbox. What else has really changed? No lesson? Great! If I don’t know who my ministering brothers are or who I m supposed to minister to, all I have to do is take a look in LDS tools – it’s all right there.
NOTE: The sister assignments are not available to me directly to see who is assigned to me. I had to request my husband use his higher level of permission login to research the information.
I got a new Android phone about 2 months ago. Before that people were saying how cool it was they could see their ministering stuff on their phones, but I couldn’t. However, with the new phone I can. I could see all the other stuff (like the personal membership info) before but not the ministering stuff. Even updating and syncing didn’t solve it. I don’t have a higher level of login, the only thing that changed was getting the new phone.
I had problems using it on my iPad originally, and the lds.org website.
But then, dinosaurs carried my cell phone as state of the art technology before they went extinct.
I think you can feel apathetic about a pursuit of linear progression for knowledge and doctrine, let go of the desire to “figure it all out” and begin a journey of embracing paradox and experiences as they come. Then you begin feeling what’s important at church and what is not.
It can feel like it starts to make sense on one level, while acknowledgement we won’t figure it out on a thinking level. You can practice the religion.
It becomes easier, simpler, and less complex. It basically becomes “Love your neighbor as thyself.”
jamison wrote:1) Church is mediocre. We have sensational claims, but our lives do not necessarily reflect a grand theophany like the life of Joseph Smith i.e. first vision.
I wonder how much grand theophany went on back in the day and how many mediocre stories in the early church got turned into legend for us to consume.
Correlation was the double edged sword though. It both stabilized the church experience and made it incredibly boring/formulaic.
jamison wrote:2) The Church unit or ward is a microcosm of an idealistic culture where do-gooders help one another. However if you are not reciprocating by doing good you may as well stay on the margins and enjoy the pathetic sidelines, and wonder that people think you do not care, are lazy or otherwise stuck up or indifferent. When the truth is you struggle to take care of yourself and family and when you decide to help out, someone else beats you to it, so why bother.
Where I struggle in this department is that at church it feels like there is only one way to be. You are only a do-gooder if you do specific things within the programs. If you operate outside the prescribed programs or opt out you’re on the margins, lazy, stuck up, indifferent, etc. I think it’s a byproduct of measuring ourselves against others and the more general outward appearance culture. It’s easy to say I don’t want to measure myself against others but it’s another beast when walking the walk.
jamison wrote:3) Some say the death of home teaching was welcomed, but now when you do not know who your home teacher is, who are you going to call? I believe the Church went too far by doing away with home teaching when it should have just been re-defined. Radical change is not good for older people, and new converts who are just trying to stay afloat.
Welcome for some, not for others. It doesn’t have to be one size fits all for having home teaching or one size fits all for not having home teaching, but that’s kinda how things work at church. You’re this gender, this age, and this marital status. Here’s your to do list and your mold, please squeeze into it.
:angel: Home teaching didn’t die in my ward, it just got renamed. Personally I feel like they didn’t go far enough in killing home teaching. This isn’t a rebuttal to your point, I’m just pointing out how we are all different and the one program/decision fits all method isn’t the best approach. jamison needs home teaching, I need to opt out. We’re both right.
jamison wrote:4) Personal life, my father passed away and I see that he was ready to go on the other side, but I see this whole transition to the otherside by becoming perfect in the love of Christ when actually I have a hard time loving my fellow man and see myself competing against a lot of people in the rat race of life, and that it is every man for himself, and the survival of the fittest. In religion: To live is to die since that is the ultimate goal to rack up do-good brownie points for the platinum retirement plan. (I believe the grace of Christ will cover me, as long as I do not commit grave sins and I am happy with thinking this).
I know what you mean. Sometimes it feels like we treat the CK like it’s terrible towel night at a Pittsburgh Steelers home game. The first 3,000 people to the stadium get a free terrible towel. Lots of people compete so they can be first in line to get a towel, maybe even knock over a senior citizen on their way to the front of the line and… it’s just a towel.
We compete with peers in a religious setting, and for what, appearances? We don’t even view heaven as finite, yet we compete for it as though it were a limited resource. Or is the competition more for earthly reward? To be esteemed of men. Meh, it’s all good. More grace and a less finite heaven usually helps.
jamison wrote:5) I find myself adhering to many philosophies that the Book of Mormon speaks out against.
i.e. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Spend a lot of time maintaining the creature, self-preservation through exercise, fixing up my home and spending a lot of time with just living life, and don’t give a damn about the afterlife and spiritual matters.
The BoM teaches another philosophy. Experiment. Plant the seed, see if it grows. If it does, it must have been a good seed. If it doesn’t, plant something else. At church there’s lots of, “this seed is good, now here’s some dung for it” and there’s very little, “find your good seed and add it to our garden.”
As to your #5, enjoying your life, improving your home, etc., is not hedonism. That’s just human flourishing. This is an interesting dichotomy in religion, and it goes to the heart of several very old Christian debates. Should we hate the body (corporeal mortification at one extreme, wearing a cilice or a hair shirt or garments, etc.) as the source of all temptation, should we hate our earthly lives, only focusing on an eternal reward? Or should we love the body as a gift from God and love our life as a gift from God? Does God only care about our eternal state or does he care about human flourishing? Personally, I believe that human flourishing is important, not just eternal reward, including in a theological sense. We are told to build Zion, and that involves human flourishing. We are told to love our spouses, and that involves human flourishing. We are told to treat our bodies as temples and that involves human flourishing. We are told to be stewards of the earth and to have a food supply–these are all about human flourishing.
These are a few silly specifically Mormon examples that run counter to human flourishing:
– tithing yourself into poverty
– wearing garments when they give you a rash or infection or heat problems
– divorcing your spouse for non-belief
– punishing your children for leaving the church or loving them only conditionally
– not caring about environmental issues because the earth will be burned at the savior’s coming anyway
Regarding the theophany thing… Mormonism is essentially the weird kid at school who tries and overcompensates for their eccentricity and ends up being less interesting in the process. Because it is hard to dump our past, mainstreaming takes time and it often takes a major event to change major doctrine like government intervention with polygamy and the black power movement with the priesthood.
hawkgrrrl wrote:
These are a few silly specifically Mormon examples that run counter to human flourishing:– tithing yourself into poverty
– wearing garments when they give you a rash or infection or heat problems
– divorcing your spouse for non-belief
– punishing your children for leaving the church or loving them only conditionally
– not caring about environmental issues because the earth will be burned at the savior’s coming anyway
Good examples. The not-so-good side of religion we sometimes see from a focus on being “exact” in obedience, but missing the mark.
To everyone that wrote I appreciate what you have said. Lately I’ve been feeling a little down. I got my Ministry assignments. I have 8 people that I have to visit, or email, or pray over, ordo something for, and I’m not that excited about it. I guess I will just try to do my best and try to put in the time. I gave ministering the old college try but in the end it really did become home teaching part 2. Expected monthly, in home visits. I ended up opting out, which is an option.
nibbler wrote:
I gave ministering the old college try but in the end it really did become home teaching part 2. Expected monthly, in home visits.I ended up opting out, which is an option.
I haven’t “opted out” but I did tell my EQP that I’m not the type who is going to go out and do monthly in home visits and asked that he not assign those who desire or need that. He has been compliant with my wishes as far as I can tell.
(FWIW, I have in the past opted out of home teaching.)
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