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taletotell wrote:
Binary would either true or good. That isn’t the question at all. That would only be the question if Satan were God.
The point is, there are a lot of good organizations. The only way the church is at all compelling is if it is both good and true. Otherwise I can find good organizations that won’t do the emotional harm the church does and don’t claim to be the only true organization.
We’re in a fallen world. A “true” organization only exists in abstract and by that measure no organization is compelling. They’re all fallen.
For some reason I had to do images, bear with me.
Let’s say that our favorite jelly bean is red, we hate any other flavor. There are lots and lots of bags of jelly beans out there but for the sake of argument let’s narrow the choice down to just two bags of jelly beans:
[attachment=1]red.png[/attachment] [attachment=0]green.png[/attachment]
If those are the choices which would you pick? If we love red jelly beans we might start with the top bag… we still aren’t going to eat any non-red jelly beans but it’s far easier to pick around the gross flavors and only eat what we want.I kind of scoff at the idea that any particular jelly bean bag can lay claim to being the perfect bag. Some people might like green jelly beans and select the bottom bag. The top bag can continue to insist that it’s the better bag but at the end of the day the best approach is probably going to be grabbing the bag that comes the closest to our tastes, eating our favorite flavor, and leaving the nasty ones behind.
Ok, so a strained cafeteria mormon analogy. If you want to stick to red=good and green=bad a perfect bag of jelly beans doesn’t exist. All organizations have their faults, all individuals have their faults. We’ve got to be cafeteria mormons, otherwise we end up propagating all the imperfections from previous generations along with the good that we actually want to carry forward. This process requires us to acknowledge the bad.
I understand that is what we all do. Buffet Mormons all the way. But you aren’t describing true in the sense the church means when it says true. Essentially you are describing good.
But if the Church is true in the sense the prophets mean when they talk about keystones, obedience, and authority then we are denying the will of God. If it is true like the OT claims made by Moses (kill the man who picks up sticks on the sabath) then even if the church has not caught up to us and will change in the future to be like us we are still in apostasy now.
We are like the boy who was excommunicated for being anti-nazi and distributing anti-nazi propaganda. Only at least he was brought back in after public opinion moved to his side. He was already executed by Nazis at that point, but at least his soul was saved.
First we’d all have to settle on the definition of the word true. What does “true church” mean? nibbler wrote:First we’d all have to settle on the definition of the word true. What does “true church” mean?
How true! Wait – circular reference detected!!!😮 taletotell wrote:I understand that is what we all do. Buffet Mormons all the way.
But you aren’t describing true in the sense the church means when it says true. Essentially you are describing good.
But if the Church is true in the sense the prophets mean when they talk about keystones, obedience, and authority then we are denying the will of God. If it is true like the OT claims made by Moses (kill the man who picks up sticks on the sabath) then even if the church has not caught up to us and will change in the future to be like us we are still in apostasy now.
We are like the boy who was excommunicated for being anti-nazi and distributing anti-nazi propaganda. Only at least he was brought back in after public opinion moved to his side. He was already executed by Nazis at that point, but at least his soul was saved.
I am very familiar with Helmuth Hubener story. I think he is a prime example of doing what is right even when the church wasn’t (or wasn’t able to do for the better good – and I do see that there were some reasons to allow the church to continue to operate, but also the church was not exactly calling out the evil that was happening). I also don’t see that the decision of men have anything to do with Helmuth’s soul being saved or not.taletotell wrote:But if the Church is true in the sense the prophets mean when they talk about keystones, obedience, and authority then we are denying the will of God. If it is true like the OT claims made by Moses (kill the man who picks up sticks on the sabath) then even if the church has not caught up to us and will change in the future to be like us we are still in apostasy now.
This is a really good point.For me…I have come to see that what others are claiming or talking about is about them. Even if that is prophets, or church leaders. (By the way…the church is a thing and doesn’t speak, right…so when you say “the church”…it is really the current church leaders, right?).
So…no matter what others claim, at some point…it becomes my interpretations of good and truth and I decide what I believe. And if others in the church say that isn’t right, that is about them.
Quote:Moroni 10: 4And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
So yeah, maybe we need to start a thread simply devoted to to tricky definitions. If the scriptures had had one of those from day 1 then life would be more simple. taletotell wrote:The only way the church is at all compelling is if it is both good and true.
That is accurate for many people but it is not for many others. I believe the Church is not “true” in the sense that it claims to be, but I find it helpful for my spirituality. A large number of people believe it is “true”, and I would argue that for them it doesn’t matter whether it actually is.It’s a bit of a paradox. Whether you believe there is an afterlife or not, you will only learn the truth if there is one. If there isn’t, neither the Atheist nor the Theist will find out who was right.
I am more interested in good, but I tire of the claims of having all the truth. I breeds a certain arrogance in many of the young adult men. taletotell wrote:I am more interested in good, but I tire of the claims of having all the truth. I breeds a certain arrogance in many of the young adult men.
+1taletotell wrote:I am more interested in good, but I tire of the claims of having all the truth. I breeds a certain arrogance in many of the young adult men.
taletotell, I know lots of young adult men who believe the Church is ‘true’ according to the Church’s definition. I can think of very few of them over the years that I would classify as arrogant. These same young men you refer to serve within their wards quietly. These same young men give up two years of their lives, while the peers they leave behind are enjoying casual sex with coeds, to go to places like Topeka and Madagascar to try to spread a message that they believe in and they do it without pay.I don’t live in the Mormon Corridor. My view of young men… and young women… where I live is that while they do believe the Church is ‘true’, they are very accepting of the beliefs of others, especially the current and up-coming generation of young adults.
The Church doesn’t claim to have all truth. There are legitimate issues to discuss, but that isn’t one of them. There are some members who believe it, but it is not a teaching of the Church or any top leaders. Seriously, not one top leader would make that claim.
Old-Timer wrote:The Church doesn’t claim to have all truth.
There are legitimate issues to discuss, but that isn’t one of them. There are some members who believe it, but it is not a teaching of the Church or any top leaders. Seriously, not one top leader would make that claim.
yes, but we claim the most truth- and i was one of those people on the mission who felt bad through a maybe misguided sense of “we have the truth, they don’t, i feel bad they didn’t accept it” or “we tried, they will be judged accordingly”. oh boy how bad do i feel for EVER having thought that way. And that was a common thought process in the mission field.
I’m at a stalemate and I don’t really know what to do next- I’m not really searching for more information but I’m not really acting in either direction- just trying to take care of myself and the things I enjoy doing and need to take care of and I feel bad about that.
metalrain wrote:yes, but we claim the most truth- and i was one of those people on the mission who felt bad through a maybe misguided sense of “we have the truth, they don’t, i feel bad they didn’t accept it” or “we tried, they will be judged accordingly”. oh boy how bad do i feel for EVER having thought that way.
Hah, often when I come to this forum, I think about how pre-FC I found myself in a car with three former Mormons, one who had left as a child and two who left when they were well into adult hood, and they started talking about how they had left the church (vaguely). I remember feeling bad that I “had the truth” and that “they would be judged, and I feel bad that I can’t help them.” Man, do I feel silly now looking back on those thoughts. Phew, glad I won’t be taking that on my mission.
Quote:I’m at a stalemate and I don’t really know what to do next- I’m not really searching for more information but I’m not really acting in either direction- just trying to take care of myself and the things I enjoy doing and need to take care of and I feel bad about that.
Sounds like you’re doing what you need to be doing. You don’t have to know what to do next. You don’t have to decide what to do next right now. I doubt God would want you to spend energy on feeling bad about this when you could be spending energy experiencing all the wonderful things life has to offer. Like the other members say around here, always trade up!
I just read an uctdorf talk about truth. Talks about praying for confirmation. Says if you do our church will be confirmed the true one. Seems pretty straight forward. In fact, seems like th premise since day 1. Old-Timer wrote:The Church doesn’t claim to have all truth.
I agree, Ray, but you have to really pay attention to know that. It would be interesting to poll the average member to see what the majority believes about this issue. My guess is most (especially those who live in the Corridor) believe the church does have all the truth and that is what is specifically wrong with other churches – they don’t have all the truth. Recently my missionary son wrote home about an interesting thing his MP said – that the church doesn’t have a monopoly on the truth. We did have some discussion about it, but most noteworthy to me was that I thought he understood that already – and he didn’t. Granted he is more orthodox than I am, nevertheless I would not put him in a category with the most orthodox.
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