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Supposing God did say to establish a church (and I’m not sure He did), it does make sense to me that He didn’t give step by step or even general instructions as to how. My deist view would hold that God might just let us develop whatever works for us. In truth, I think that’s what happened. Joseph was dissatisfied with the existing churches, so he made one that fit what he wanted. Just my opinion, of course. I recognize the purposes of the church (pretty much per Givens in Crucible) but I still wonder if God needs or wants a church. People probably need it more than God. Roy wrote:
For the theory to work, we would need to understand all or virtually all of the D&C revelations to be man made.Thank you for the additional explanation. It helps me understand your working theory. You present an interesting framework and it makes a lot of sense.
SilentDawning wrote:
No more licenses to kill….authority and power, with no accountability is a recipe for misery. I have felt at times, that the church claims this license to kill by avoiding accountability, taking credit for the good things that happen as the result if divine intervention and revelation, while writing off the bad stuff as the frailties of men…you can’t have it both ways.
Insightful, thanks SD.
All: this has been a helpful thread for me… thank you, and Happy Easter.
🙂 Gerald wrote:
… I believe that we often construct God in some image of ourselves. If you are an individual who wants and desires justice in an unjust world, God becomes a judge visiting His wrath on the unrighteous. If you tend towards a more compassionate view of the world, you might conceptualize God as a loving Father, warm and caring. I’m no historian but what little I have read and heard does indicate to me that the Church under Joseph Smith was different than the Church under Brigham Young. That MAY have been partially due to the different natures of the men involved. God provides an outline and we fill in the gaps. What do we fill the gaps with? Ourselves (meaning our predispositions, biases, and beliefs.) …
That’s pretty much where I’ve landed. I’ll channel Heber13 too. God didn’t solve the brother of Jared’s issue of dark boats. He left the brother of Jared to his own devices and god later blessed his mortal efforts.
Oh yeah. I’m taking that in the thread we’re making the assumption that god knows what god is doing. For all we know god could be making it up as god goes. Me, filling gaps.
Let me use my favorite example of God telling us what to do but not every way to do it: Quote:“Love (God and neighbor) as thyself. On this hang all the law and the prophets.”
Notice “law” is singular, not plural – and that he distinguished between the law (basically the Ten Commandments) and the prophets (all the rules and statements that get added to the law). We miss that important distinction too often in our modern culture, just like they did back when Jesus said this.
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