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SilentDawning wrote:
I think the scripture said we would be considered a “peculiar people”. So, people think we are very strange. Magical underwear, salamanders, secret ceremonies. I had one person tell me he’d heard about Mormons. He drives by the temple regularly and said he heard “it takes a lot of money to get it”. I shared the story in Sacrament meeting years ago, and everyone broke into laughter.
I guess hearing it in its naked truth form was amusing. But it’s the way it is to an outsider.
We had a discussion about “peculiar” in priesthood a year or so ago. Peculiar does mean odd or unusual but it also means unique or special. We decided we like the latter definition and being that it’s coupled with the chosen generation idea in 1 Peter, unique, special or chosen fits better. Other discussion also brought out that we (our HP group anyway) didn’t think God means for us to be “weird” because people wouldn’t be inclined to listen to the message if we were perceived as too weird.
My mother always said I was “special”. Minyan Man wrote:Christ looked strange in his day too. To some of the Jews he was inactive or “Jack Jew”.
Wonder if they hassled Him in the cafe while He was just trying to eat His bacon wrapped catfish platter?
hawkgrrrl wrote:We’re like the insecure girl in high school.
More like the psychotic girl.
Every time the local ward does an open house or any other sort of attempt at an interfaith thing, and five random people show up for the cookies, they wonder what they did wrong. Then they look at me like I’ve just turned purple and sprouted wings for asking if anyone besides me has gone to any of the other area churches’ interfaith activities. They’re completely incapable of grasping the concept that they should be doing exactly what they’re asking others to do.
DarkJedi wrote:Honestly I’ve never run into a non-member that cared about the church and Girl Scouts. I have met lots of people who think some of the doctrinal stuff is weird though.
I think our weirdness is overstated by non-members.
What do we do which is actually weird:
* Revealed new scriptures.
* Garments.
* Temple
Mildly weird but not actually that strange these days:
* Genealogy.
* Word of Wisdom (given the world is full of vegans, food faddists etc this is nothing really)
* Modesty (let’s face it, only the young can flaunt their bodies anyway!!!)
Unusual but once very normal:
* Chastity and marriage.
* Gender roles
* Gays
The rest is surprisingly mundane and even mind-numbingly boring. Non-members latch onto Moon Quakers, the Curse of Ham, polygamy, odd things that JS and BY did… things that are not part of contemporary Mormonism.
My thoughts here, Sambee, turn more to the things like polygamy, becoming Gods, and Heavenly Mother. When people bring those subjects up it to me it is clearly because they think it’s weird, and it is. I think the weirdest part about us is our history. Leaving the United States to gather in the desert, practice strange marital and family customs (polygamy), establish a theocracy, and even develop our own insular alphabet – seems like crazy cult talk. Roy wrote:I think the weirdest part about us is our history. Leaving the United States to gather in the desert, practice strange marital and family customs (polygamy), establish a theocracy, and even develop our own insular alphabet – seems like crazy cult talk.
That’s kind of my point… it’s mostly our history, a century back apart from the 1978 stuff and the temple. Even the blacks thing… it’s not long ago in historical terms really and is well within living memory, yet it is also two or three generations ago. I’ve had arguments over the matter and strongly disagree about it, and yet to be fair I’ve never really seen overt racism in our ward at least at official level.
I doubt a dozen people in Utah understand the Deseret Alphabet these days.
DarkJedi wrote:My thoughts here, Sambee, turn more to the things like polygamy, becoming Gods, and Heavenly Mother. When people bring those subjects up it to me it is clearly because they think it’s weird, and it is.
You should really point out that none of these are as weird as they sound.
Firstly, becoming gods:
* Beliefs of celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Shirley MacLaine are way stranger than ours. New Age ideas go beyond this and suggest we already are gods or going to reach that potential.
* Shinto considers humans gods, including the Japanese emperor… and also worships rocks, trees etc.
* Ancestor worship is extremely common especially in China.
* Some Oriental religions and Classical civilizations held to this notion… that’s why they often bow to one another or clasp hands.
All in all, not actually that weird in a wider context.
Heavenly Mother: the majority of Christendom – the RCs, Orthodox and Coptics place Mary high up, calling her Queen of Heaven. Some Catholic schismatics go further:
http://www.fatimamovement.com/ Tonight I saw a program in which Anglicans were using the term “she” and “mother” for God.
Female deities are extremely common outside Abrahamic religions. Hinduism and Shinto are two pr8me examples.
As for polygamy… Mormonism is often out of step with sexuality. However, outside Christianity polygamy is pretty common, especially in the Middle East. Mexicans and Italians have often given a semi-official status to mistresses and a blind eye gets turned…
But the LDS is out of step… while it anticipated sexual freedoms of the 20th century decades before, after polygamy it adopted the nuclear family and is sixty years out of step. Its treatment of homosexuals is fifty years behind…
Since the 1960s, a kind of polygamy has crept into the west too. Multiple partners are common and some are happy to accept “competition”. Some practise swinging and other things that go way beyond our historic polygamy. The great hypocrisy in the west is that polyamory is okay as long as you don’t put a ring on it.
We want to look weird, we want to fulfill prophecy of being a weird people. We also want to be mainstream. We’re peculiar that way. Re: Girl Scouts
My cynical side wonders whether we’d be more involved with Girl Scouts if the church could get several people on their National Board of Directors.
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