Informal mental log of Church experience lately

[Anonymous]

I’ve been trying to pay conscious attention to my direct experiences at Church lately. This is a little exercise I do when I attend, and it helps me separate the baggage of Church history from the reality of my experience on any given Sunday in Church. What I mean by that is this. I clear my mind and pretend like I know nothing about history or doctrine development and try to just look at what we talk about in classes as if I was an outsider with no baggage.

So the past couple Sundays we talked about the following topics in Sunday School and Elder’s Quorum. I have to confess that I have not been attending Sacrament Meeting much lately:

1. Patience. What is is. How to cultivate it. How it relates to a spiritual life.

2. The Holy Spirit. What it is. How does it work. What is the experience like.

3. The creation stories in the Old Testament.

4. The story of Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament. This particular lesson in SS was attended by a great young lady that visits sometimes, and she was asking REALLY tough questions about the standard obedience line and the contradiction of murder and human sacrifice. It gave me a chance to jump in and “save” the teacher by talking about paradox in scriptural stories. He thanked me after class.

5. The story of Enoch in the Old Testament and being “one people” of one heart and one mind, and not having any poor among us.

Now I am actually forgetting the others because I didn’t write them down like I should have. Anyway, the point I am trying to make is this: these are all great topics to talk about with other people. I really enjoyed hearing how other people made meaning out of the stories in scripture. It challenged my love and acceptance at times too because I did not agree completely with everyone that spoke. But one major thing — nobody was talking about plural marriage, racism, blood atonement, adam-god theory or what types of food Celestial beings eat. There wasn’t any of that far out stuff that we sometimes have a hard time with literally. We were just talking about topics that helped people become good and decent human beings.

It’s nice to set aside some time every week to go hang out with other people and talk about stuff like that.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

It gave me a chance to jump in and “save” the teacher by talking about paradox in scriptural stories. He thanked me after class.

Can you expand on this please.

Good post BTW

[Anonymous]

Brian Johnston wrote:

There wasn’t any of that far out stuff that we sometimes have a hard time with literally. We were just talking about topics that helped people become good and decent human beings.

I find that to be the good part of church as well.

I don’t think that means we don’t talk about things that aren’t interesting, just that the topics we talk about have valid application to my life. As you said…some of the historical topics don’t apply to me directly in my life…only about how I try to reconcile church authority statements.

[Anonymous]

For me, the best experiences are when I feel the Spirit in connection with something that is truly inspiring. Or when I teach a lesson and come back with my spirit feeling clean and swept…or when I leave Church without anything to do but make my NEXT lesson spiritual and uplifting for everyone who comes to my class.

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

Quote:

It gave me a chance to jump in and “save” the teacher by talking about paradox in scriptural stories. He thanked me after class.

Can you expand on this please.

Good post BTW

It was SS, and the topic was the story of Abraham being “tested” through the sacrifice of Isaac. We all know the usual direction this lesson tends to go — people talk about obedience, and it sometimes drifts into a theme of blind obedience.

Well … this wonderful young lady was in the classroom, and she was not going to accept that idea 😆 God bless her soul. It turned a potentially dull class into one where everyone was all fired up and sharing their views. I am new in the ward and did not feel like I could spend that much capital yet being so controversial. I don’t know who she was, but she isn’t always there every Sunday. She had the feel of someone who was perhaps an investigator.

She did NOT jive with the idea that God wanted Abraham to kill Isaac. She pointed out a couple times that God has told us NOT to kill other people (that is one of the ten commandments). Then how could he tell Abraham to kill his son? I jumped in to point out that human sacrifice was also strictly forbidden in the Old Testament teachings, and often sited as the most wicked thing other groups were doing around Israel (or Israel itself being guilty of this at times).

The teacher and the class tried to brush it aside, hoping she would drop it. But to my deep amusement she would not. It truly is a story with deep contradictions. The teacher is a great guy, but did not know what to say and also did not want to come across as bullying (he told me later, trying to be sensitive to her sincere question), which is why he was glad I jumped in right as the class got really hot and agitated by her. She was not going to let them overlook this problem in the story.

I started talking about how perhaps the story could have been told a different way. Abraham might have also passed the “test” by telling God he would NOT kill his son, being obedient to what God had told him in the past, and being obedient to the “spirit” telling him killing humans was wrong. The story could have been that way and made the point. It is a story in the Old Testament (I was purposely implying a sense of myth to those who had “ears to hear” in the room), but we find it as we find it and have to make meaning out of it the way it is.

Then I added that this is indeed a paradoxical story. The scriptures are full of paradoxical stories, even contradictions at times. Nephi murdered Laban to take the Brass Plates. That is a similar conundrum. But to me personally, these are often the juiciest and most profound parts of the scriptures, where our souls and our minds are stretched, where we find the most divine growth in working through the paradox like a spiritual exercise.

The sister next to me nudged me and said “A+ answer.” She is one of the early morning seminary teachers

The young lady seemed satisfied with that. I purposely looked for her after class to say that I really loved her question, and to thank her for it. It made the class very interesting. She felt good about that, and was glad not to be “crazy” or the only one in the room that thought something was wrong with the story and equating it to blind obedience.

[Anonymous]

Actually, that is a really good answer… but I’ll keep the flattery to a minimum. 😆

The people in that part of the Middle East did have a serious problem with human sacrifice, and sacrificing children, there’s quite a bit of independent corroboration of that. I suppose it was partly a test to see whether Abraham would revert to the old ways, much like the children of Israel did in the Exodus, worshiping the Golden Calf idol etc. If Abraham could move forward without the worst traditions of his culture, then he would be free.

My own view, which isn’t probably as original as your one, is that in the story God never intended for Isaac to be sacrificed, but he wanted to test Abraham’s loyalty. Job which is one of the crueler books in the Bible also has a God who tests a saint’s loyalty to the max.

Of course, the New Testament also has its Isaac, but one who undergoes a genuine sacrifice. God does it to his son, Abraham does not. Interesting.

The story of Laban is similar, and I admit it is one of the more troubling bits of the BoM. I suppose looking in the Bible, there are worse stories. Numbers 31 gets mentioned in another thread –

http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1510&start=10

Freshness is all important though, and I think that we sometimes lack that in the church. When I was sitting a religious studies exam many years ago, I got asked a question as to whether the crucifixion or the resurrection was more important to people who were ill. I said the resurrection was, because it offered hope after death. I got told off, and told it was wrong! Anyway, it turns out that Mormonism has this belief, although I didn’t know it at the time. I don’t think my answer was good necessarily, but it wasn’t wrong, I was trying to go at it from a non-traditional perspective.

[Anonymous]

Great story.

It makes me think that sometimes I don’t care to respond to some comments and am ok with brushing it aside to get through the lesson…but actually, those exchanges, when the thoughts are sincerely seeking understanding, provide a great environment to interact with ward members.

Looks like you are rapidly building your capital in your new ward, Brian! :ugeek:

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