Having success with a book—FC example

[Anonymous]

I’m hoping this isn’t off topic since it does relate to what you’re saying, but my husband and I really struggled with the new policy about the children of gay couples. My husband is very in tune with the spirit and prayed about it and got the answer that basically ‘it comes from God, but it’s not exactly what God wanted. And as long as the prophets don’t do something that will horribly mess up His plans, He will allow them to say things that may not be exactly true, or may even be completely wrong.’ That was his personal revelation about the topic, so I just thought i’d throw it out there. My husband also was pondering on the idea that our own personal biases and ideas or even moods can effect revelation, so it may also affect the prophet and apostles revelations as well. It can sometimes be confusing whether you are just feeling good/bad about something or if it’s the spirit. So my husband’s revelation could have been inaccurate as well, but it made sense to me. It really helps me personally to know that the prophet is capable of making mistakes, because then if he says something that I don’t feel right about I can feel okay that it may be wrong and just pray about whether it’s true or not. Hopefully that wasn’t off topic. I’ll have to check out the book that you’re reading, it sounds very interesting

[Anonymous]

Rob4Hope wrote:

Anyway,…I don’t know what stage 5 feels like, but I am feeling different after reading this book and processing some things. I had never considered that forgiving the GAs for the mess they sometimes make (and cover up) was a solution. WOW! Full circle for me,…because at one time, I was the most orthodox stage 3 person there could have ever been.

I agree that the Gospel tells us (and even mental health experts agree) that we should forgive others. It is just so much harder when many are saying, “Everything is perfect and God is fully in charge of every decision.” It would be MUCH easier, at least for me, to be forgiving if there were some apologies for at least the egregious stuff. But I have come to the conclusion that the church is too protective of leaders and TBM’s, so as was said above – some group has to be written off and I am coming to feel more like it is the group that does look at the ugly history and men that have failed and willing to call it as it is – even if they do or do not keep believing in LDS theology in general.

Rob4Hope wrote:

I wish this Fowler progression through stage 4 didn’t hurt so damned bad though! Cuz hurt it really does…

Amen!

But I just worry that the cycle is being perpetuated and more people are going to go through unneeded emotional (and familial) pain because nobody (near the emperor) is willing to stop and say that the emperor isn’t fully clothed. They don’t listen to the honest little boy – they shame him to try and keep him in line.

I am trying to figure out how I can move the ball a bit and make things better without sticking out so much that leadership pounces on me.

Always Thinking wrote:

It really helps me personally to know that the prophet is capable of making mistakes, because then if he says something that I don’t feel right about I can feel okay that it may be wrong and just pray about whether it’s true or not.

I have to have the frame of reference that prophets can make mistakes. Otherwise after reading church history I would be gone in a second.

Moving from Fowler’s stage 3 faith to stage 4 and 5 you will feel that YOU have the ability to have God talk to you. You don’t have to get your revelation exclusively from leaders.

[Anonymous]

We get the same thing in my area which is well outside the Mormon corridor. There’s a culture of silence. In thinking of the whys:

People that police orthodoxy have policies and leaders on their side and it’s further complicated because, as you say, we don’t do a good job as a church of disavowing old, outdated teachings. All it takes is one or two vociferous members of the old guard to silence an entire class and hold people to some outmoded standard. Any dialog gets shut down because what the leaders have said, regardless of how dated, is held in higher regard than some schmo in the “mission field.”

In other words: there are wrong answers in our classes and that should never be the case.

I get the impression that all of us would find like minded people in our wards and we could have more interesting dialog if the discussion wasn’t so policed. So, how do we create a culture of open dialog in our wards? It’s tough. People in stage 3 are, more often than not, going to defer to authority and some random guy and their opinion in a Sunday School class doesn’t constitute authority.

I don’t see that aspect of the culture changing, at least any time soon. The question is how to thrive in spite of it.

Maybe it’s like being the only adult at a birthday party with a dozen 5 year olds, or being the only 5 year old at a birthday party with a dozen adults. Most of the party isn’t geared towards entertaining you but if you grin and bear it there’s still cake at the end.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

Maybe it’s like being the only adult at birthday party with a dozen 5 year olds, or being the only 5 year old at a birthday party with a dozen adults. Most of the party isn’t geared towards entertaining you but if you grin and bear it there’s still cake at the end.

Where is the cake!! Or are you talking about treats in nursery?

[Anonymous]

LookingHard wrote:

Where is the cake!! Or are you talking about treats in nursery?

Ever heard of the PC game Portal?

[Anonymous]

Rob4Hope wrote:

I wish this Fowler progression through stage 4 didn’t hurt so damned bad though! Cuz hurt it really does…

That’s part of it apparently. Here’s a picture of a Fowler stage 5 dog to cheer you up:

[attachment=0]images.jpg[/attachment]

The dog is empowered, he walks himself, yet it realizes the importance of the leash, it does not want to raise eyebrows with the local authorities.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

Some might need to view a leader as being something more special than the way they currently perceive themselves in order to believe that god can talk to man.

I remember talking to a former member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses about their beliefs. One area where we differed was that their leadership was given a stewardship over the church. They are inspired men that use their best judgment. In contrast to our belief in being led by men in direct revelatory contact with the Almighty, it just seemed kinda mediocre.

If our leaders are not being told how to run the church then how is our church different than any other?

If church leadership since the beginning has been much more human than divine, perhaps cherished doctrines like eternal families were the result of human speculation/imagination.

Seeing these testimony dominoes potentially fall may tend to keep members and leadership erring on the side of infallibility. (We are not alone in this. Catholics teach that the Pope is infallible and Evangelicals teach that the bible is infallible)

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

Rob4Hope wrote:

I wish this Fowler progression through stage 4 didn’t hurt so damned bad though! Cuz hurt it really does…

That’s part of it apparently. Here’s a picture of a Fowler stage 5 dog to cheer you up:

[attachment=0]images.jpg[/attachment]

The dog is empowered, he walks himself, yet it realizes the importance of the leash, it does not want to raise eyebrows with the local authorities.

LMAO!!!!!

😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

[Anonymous]

Nibbler, that is the funniest thing I have seen this year (but there are still 360 days to go).

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

If church leadership since the beginning has been much more human than divine, perhaps cherished doctrines like eternal families were the result of human speculation/imagination.

Seeing these testimony dominoes potentially fall may tend to keep members and leadership erring on the side of infallibility. (We are not alone in this. Catholics teach that the Pope is infallible and Evangelicals teach that the bible is infallible)

Roy, this analogy makes a lot of sense…and the idea of falling dominoes is QUITE accurate IMHO.

I often wonder what the GAs think themselves. In the early days of the church, Oliver Cowdry put a lot of pressure on apostles to so order their lives that they could have a visit from JC himself. I’ve read from several apostles that they didn’t have this experience, and many of them felt unqualified because of it. I don’t know if that continued in their experience, but I do think that the pressure and the teaching would be very frightening.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be a GA, at the apostle level, and not have a visit from JC, as well as find out there are problems in the theology that are not something you can make a change about? What a pressure cooker! It was Greg Prince’s opinion that many of the GAs don’t have a clue about the historical problems. Why?…because their responsibilities so consume their life they don’t have time to invest in learning things.

I don’t know what those men feel, nor what they believe, but I do believe very much that many of the TBM members are frightened to look under the covers of the history lest they find something they wish they didn’t know. The analogy of an ostrich with head in sand comes to mind….and I am not trying to be rude.

I feel like I have seen a trend appearing under the surface in many TBM when some of these things started coming to light: they shake and begin to fear. “What if there is something here that will challenge my faith?”…they think. “What if there are things in the Book of Mormon that are not true?”….and so forth. Rather than plod forward and look for themselves, they cower away, afraid that a domino may topple…and who knows what dominoes may topple behind them.

I recall Bill Reel posting something a while ago about the “warm fuzzy feeling” so many attribute to a testimony. Others in other faith traditions have had that exact same feeling. The question came up of how do we discern which is right since they both seem to point different directions? A TBM would probably summarily conclude: “Well, what hey are feeling is a counterfeit to the real thing!”…but is that really the case? We teach our faith is contingent on spiritual experiences, even revelation, and yet where are the visions and revelations that once dominated the church at the higher levels? The GAs would say: “Those things are too sacred to share, but we KNOW this is true…” and the membership is left to just take it on faith. And then enter history and problems (that are covered up), and all of the sudden, what are TBM to do? How can they react and respond to those things that challenge their faith when all they have is a warm fuzzy feeling to hold them against historical facts that are difficult to reconcile with teachings that are suppose to be from a pure and benevolent source?

I once was terrified, as a TBM, to look under the covers to see what was really there. Now that I have seen things, I can’t go back. I need more than a warm fuzzy feeling, if spiritual experience is the ONLY way to validate this being true.

[Anonymous]

When I first found out about many of the issues that have been repressed, I was a bit more upset with the walled-off approach many members would give me to these “issues”. I have become less upset over time with the average member as what I generally see is fear – even from those that are fist pounding on the pulpit every fast Sunday just how beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is all 100% true.

But like you say – once you have gone down the rabbit hole – things will never be the same. I can see some people moving to the Dan Witherspoon model, or the John Dehlin model, or the John Larsen model, or the NOM model, or the angry-as-hell “burn the whole church down” ex-mo.

[Anonymous]

LookingHard wrote:

When I first found out about many of the issues that have been repressed, I was a bit more upset with the walled-off approach many members would give me to these “issues”. I have become less upset over time with the average member as what I generally see is fear – even from those that are fist pounding on the pulpit every fast Sunday just how beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is all 100% true…

There was another side of this for me. I thought I had a number of good friends in the church when I went inactive. Now that I look back, I wonder why didn’t

anyone come to me personally & say, “what the hell is going on?” “Why don’t I see you any more?” A number were assigned as HT’s & came by to deliver a message then ran away. On the other side of the coin, there were people that I knew who went inactive & I did have that conversation with. They still remained inactive.

I do feel that there is an element of fear. As if I had a contagious illness.

Note: I had a golden retriever that insisted that she walk with the leash in her mouth. Thanks for reminding me of her. She was special to our family.

[Anonymous]

Minyan Man wrote:

LookingHard wrote:

When I first found out about many of the issues that have been repressed, I was a bit more upset with the walled-off approach many members would give me to these “issues”. I have become less upset over time with the average member as what I generally see is fear – even from those that are fist pounding on the pulpit every fast Sunday just how beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is all 100% true…

There was another side of this for me. I thought I had a number of good friends in the church when I went inactive. Now that I look back, I wonder why didn’t

anyone come to me personally & say, “what the hell is going on?” “Why don’t I see you any more?” A number were assigned as HT’s & came by to deliver a message then ran away. On the other side of the coin, there were people that I knew who went inactive & I did have that conversation with. They still remained inactive.

I do feel that there is an element of fear. As if I had a contagious illness.

Note: I had a golden retriever that insisted that she walk with the leash in her mouth. Thanks for reminding me of her. She was special to our family.

I think it is fear, and also feigned immature love that hides behind an idea of glamorous gospel living. Let me explain:

Years ago I noticed something–real love is not glamorous. You get dirty, sometimes hurt, always exhausted, sometimes broken yourself,…and that is how it really works. I have a friend, for example, who hit rock-bottom depression. He had health problems and struggled to get a job. When he did, it required him to be on his feet all day long, and he would come home in agony. I went to his home, sat in a dirty chair, and cried with him. I told him I loved him, and I did everything in my power to pump him up emotionally to keep going,…and to make health changes in his life. I gave of myself as best I could.

He called me once, told me he was in the hospital, and that he had no way of getting home. I was angry he let it go that long without letting me know and making better arrangements, but I went and got him and took him home. I made sure he could get inside, and I waited for several hours until someone could come be with him, making sure he was OK through the evening as per doctor’s orders.

The question I found myself asking was this: I wasn’t an LDS member at the time of this. Where were his home-teachers? Where were the others in his life?

It cost me to do this. He bitched at me, argued with me, and eventually cried with me. We made it through some difficult times. I didn’t get any acknowledgement from the work; I didn’t get to count a statistic; but what I did get was tired, sore, worn out, sore eyes from crying, and emotionally drained. And I slept knowing that my friend didn’t have to cry alone.

I know what it means to love someone. It means you take the lumps–you pay a price.

I have since thought about this experience and others like it. It seems like many are afraid to get dirty because somehow the gospel is glamourous. Well, it aint, and I honestly think there is a false idea of what real love is about.

Part of what I am learning is that I have mixed religious history and discounted the pure-religion JC actually taught. I can see how culturally many LDS people confuse a type of glamorous living with gospel living to.

So MM,…I understand what you are saying about your supposed friends not visiting you, being afraid of your opinions that had drifted, and so forth. The don’t know what it is all about yet. Yeh, the church has history problems; yeh they cover things; but the commandments I remember from primary are about love…period.

I don’t think the average member has a clue about love and the role it plays in pure religion. Love costs….you pay a price. Sometimes when you love someone, you fight to….and if your friends had visited you, perhaps you would have all got into an argument. It is difficult for some to know that even in the midst of something like that, you are connecting. Had such an argument ended with one of them saying: “You stubborn goat!…I think you are dead WRONG! But,…I’m still hear because I give a damn about you…so there!”

That’s love. Might not have brought you back into the church,…but at least that person had tethered to you and won’t let your FC destroy what really matters the most.

My $0.02…

[Anonymous]

Rob4Hope, that to me is a definition of a REAL friend.

If someone had done that to me at the time, I don’t think I would have been offended or hurt.

[Anonymous]

Rob4Hope wrote:

Years ago I noticed something–real love is not glamorous. You get dirty, sometimes hurt, always exhausted, sometimes broken yourself,…and that is how it really works. I have a friend, for example, who hit rock-bottom depression. He had health problems and struggled to get a job. When he did, it required him to be on his feet all day long, and he would come home in agony. I went to his home, sat in a dirty chair, and cried with him. I told him I loved him, and I did everything in my power to pump him up emotionally to keep going,…and to make health changes in his life. I gave of myself as best I could.

I’m singling out this part but thanks for the entire 2¢. Yes, I’m finding that love is exactly this. So why do we have trouble creating these types of bonds within the church community? I believe they exist but more often than not they exist outside of the official programs of HT and VT. In the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can’t see. Thanks for not adverting your gaze from your friend.

Relationships are a complicated matter and I believe they are much more complicated than putting two strangers together and telling them to visit a list of other strangers. Maybe it’s easier for certain personality types but as an introvert (likely with social anxiety) I’ve found nearly all of my relationships with people at church to be superficial. I certainly can’t cast all the blame on others, in fact I blame me for 99% of that. It takes effort from me to create those types of relationships but I was never able to use HT as a tool to help me do that. I guess for me the relationships felt forced, never genuine. Maybe I’m the odd one out that way.

I have friends in the church that I consider a true brother, a true father, etc. but none of those relationships came as the result of the HT program. In that sense I’d do anything for those people but still likely end up failing to visit my HT families. I have a need to chose my friends, a need that isn’t being met by the HT program. Maybe someday I’ll progress to the point where you can stick me with anyone and they can be my best friend but I’m not there yet. Sometimes the wall I put up blocks all incoming and outgoing traffic. 😳

I get the intent of the program though. If everyone selected their companion and their families the popular people would have 30 home teachers and the wallflowers like me would end up with none. The program ensures that everyone has someone… except they still don’t because the HT program is kind of busted.

[Author]

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