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A couple of weeks ago, the Counselor responsible for Sac Mtg approached me and my daughter about giving talks. The talks were intended to be derived from Elder Jeffrey Holland’s April 2012 Conference Address, Laborers in the Vineyard. The theme of the meeting was from the address: “Be Kind, and be grateful that God is kind” My talk is posted on my blog:
Be kind, as be grateful that God is kindExcellent! Thanks for sharing! Was your reference to John McLay? and if so where did the news of their divorce come from?
Orson wrote:Excellent! Thanks for sharing!
Was your reference to John McLay? and if so where did the news of their divorce come from?
Yes it was about the McLaysIt’s on Brooke’s Blog in an entry entitled “
Chickpea Crunch SaladBrooke McLay wrote:But, as you may have been able to guess, it’s been a helluva month over here at the home of Le Cheeky Kitchen. Not only were we evacuated for canyon fires at the end of June, tripping to DOLE July, and moving into a new home (yet again) for the second time this year, but I am also in the process of letting life settle into a new normal after deciding mutually with my husband, John, to proceed with divorce. Which means I’m now wading through the summer as a working single mama, which, as it turns out, is insanely busy, chaotic, and wild.
As it turned out, it was a section of the talk I had to cut out because of time. I thought it was important to help people consider that making choices based upon faith disaffection has HUGE impact. I am quite sure the McLays did not know everything that would happen when they made this choice to leave. Of course, in the long term, It’s completely up to them to make whatever choices in life we make.My point was this:
Wayfaring Fool wrote:To me, this isn’t about that they made a wrong choice. It’s about making a choice without proper regard to the whole truth and an enlightened understanding of the Lord’s plan, the plan that involved messy humanity in all we deal with.
When the McLay’s considered their course of action, they bought into the concept, “It’s all true or biggest fraud”, and “There is no middle ground”, and hence, they did not consider StayLDS or a moderated view of the future. They did not take the counsel of moving slowly; but of course, they weren’t in a position that slow moving would have worked easily.I personally feel that they should not have left, and I may be selfish in saying that. The reality is that he was in a position that an enlightened individual could have made a difference, in time. Imagine, if you will, if a set of institute directors were able to help transform CES into a more truth-based curriculum — still faith promoting, but more attuned to ‘truth’. What a difference that could make. I know that is almost an impossible task, but had he taken the time to mature his faith into a more inclusive picture, while remaining faithful, I believe he could have survived to make a HUGH difference. He was on the royal path to CES and Church leadership, where we desparately need moderated views.
Incredible talk, wayfarer. I agree that doing the Lord’s work for us is not meant to be done imperfectly. Thanks for posting it, wayfarer. Wayfarer, thank you! This talk comes in the nick of time for me to share with someone else! Great talk! What was the reception in your ward? afterall wrote:Wayfarer, thank you! This talk comes in the nick of time for me to share with someone else! Great talk! What was the reception in your ward?
they allowed me to remain a member for another week….actually, it was quite positive.wayfarer wrote:When the McLay’s considered their course of action, they bought into the concept, “It’s all true or biggest fraud”, and “There is no middle ground”, and hence, they did not consider StayLDS or a moderated view of the future. They did not take the counsel of moving slowly; but of course, they weren’t in a position that slow moving would have worked easily.
I personally feel that they should not have left, and I may be selfish in saying that. The reality is that he was in a position that an enlightened individual could have made a difference, in time. Imagine, if you will, if a set of institute directors were able to help transform CES into a more truth-based curriculum — still faith promoting, but more attuned to ‘truth’. What a difference that could make. I know that is almost an impossible task, but had he taken the time to mature his faith into a more inclusive picture, while remaining faithful, I believe he could have survived to make a HUGH difference. He was on the royal path to CES and Church leadership, where we desparately need moderated views.
For all the lurking I’ve done on this site over the last four years there are still some things I do not understand. What do you mean by “a more truth-based curriculum — still faith promoting, but more attuned to ‘truth’. “? Another is “mature his faith while remaining faithful” (?loyal). Also “moderated views”. In your sermon you bore testimony that JS and BY were prophets and President Monson is a prophet. What would they say about the “truth” and how “moderate” would you say their faith is? All I know is that for me I have to be careful every Sunday about what I say and do given what the conventional wisdom is about what is true and what is truth. This last Sunday I sat in a sacrament meeting in Roosevelt, Utah, and heard a 15 year old girl report on girl’s camp. She talked about kneeling and praying apart from the others and receiving an answer to her prayer if the church was true, something I have never felt. So how would her faith be characterized, naive, immature? And what if she maintains that simple faith, marries and raises a faithful family that furthers the principles of the church? What does that say about my faith? Is is mature and based on “truth”? Sorry for the rambling but there seems to be a lot of ways to spin staying LDS but I don’t think we’ll ever be anywhere but on the fringe.
GBSmith wrote:For all the lurking I’ve done on this site over the last four years there are still some things I do not understand. What do you mean by “a more truth-based curriculum — still faith promoting, but more attuned to ‘truth’. “? Another is “mature his faith while remaining faithful” (?loyal). Also “moderated views”. In your sermon you bore testimony that JS and BY were prophets and President Monson is a prophet. What would they say about the “truth” and how “moderate” would you say their faith is? All I know is that for me I have to be careful every Sunday about what I say and do given what the conventional wisdom is about what is true and what is truth. This last Sunday I sat in a sacrament meeting in Roosevelt, Utah, and heard a 15 year old girl report on girl’s camp. She talked about kneeling and praying apart from the others and receiving an answer to her prayer if the church was true, something I have never felt. So how would her faith be characterized, naive, immature? And what if she maintains that simple faith, marries and raises a faithful family that furthers the principles of the church? What does that say about my faith? Is is mature and based on “truth”? Sorry for the rambling but there seems to be a lot of ways to spin staying LDS but I don’t think we’ll ever be anywhere but on the fringe.
There are a couple of key things to know.1. The Gospel Schema. the “church” or “gospel” as we use the phrase “the Church is true” or “the Gospel is true”, constitutes an abstract set of knowledge that we accept as being ‘true’. This set of knowledge is structured to depend upon a few foundational principles: that god personally authorized Joseph Smith to form the church, that the book of mormon is a legitimate translation of authentic golden plate records from an ancient american civilization, etc. The church, by design, states that if these founding principles are true, then all else is true as well: priesthood control of the church, required ordinances, the 14 fundamentals of following the prophet, etc., etc… The term for this type of hierarchal, structured knowledge is a “Schema”. Another word for it is a “knowledge tree”, the roots and trunk representing foundational principles, the branches and so forth representing the dependent knowledge of the true.
2. The LDS Truth Paradigm. Because the Church teaches that the church and gospel are either all true or all false, and that your way of determining truth is by praying and seeing how you feel about it, the truth paradigm of the church is to get a comfort on the foundational principles through emotional experience. Therefore, the entire purpose and method of the conversion experience is to accelerate toward an emotional acceptance of the Gospel Schema through a spiritual experience. Once the adept has had a spiritual experience with the foundational principles, then the theory is that the rest of tree comes with it, and any future fact or observation then is measured within the LDS Truth Paradigm: (1) I know the church is true (because of that spiritual experience). (2) This [new fact] fits within the Church schema, therefore the [new fact] is true. (3) I go back to my testimony, and I know the church is true (cue warm and fuzzy feeling), and this [new fact] also gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Therefore [new fact] is true — let me add it to the Gospel Schema.
To see how these two work together, the case you cite of the young woman at girl’s camp is illustrative. She goes to the woods and asks, “Is the Church true”, and in response, has a spiritual experience: what in humans becomes manifest by certain emotional and physical feelings: warmth, comfort, even a biochemical cascade akin to
Kundalini RisingI think if we study the church at all, we see that preservation of the Gospel Schema in the form of the Correlated Doctrine, coupled with the LDS Truth Paradigm, governs all interaction with the church. The Church Educational System (CES) rigorously enforces both among its teachers, and uses both to “indoctrinate” students. All this is doing is hardening a mental structural schema and defending the schema by restricting the paradigm by which students accept truth. As a result, two things happen:
1. the students become incapable of recognizing objective truth that doesn’t fit the schema
2. when the foundational principles of the Schema become unravelled, the entire Schema collapses, as it did for the McLays.
Critical thinking is the antithesis of the LDS Truth Paradigm. Critical thinking suspends placing a priority on our mental schemata (plural of schema), and opens up the possibility that we could be wrong, either in detail or in the foundational principles of our schemata.
We need to recognize, as Paul the Apostle did, that our Gospel Schema is only a part of the truth, and that some of our Gospel Schema may be wrong. This requires both suspended judgment and critical thinking: two things that the church does not promote in its CES program. to get to the truth, we need to help those in faith understand the limits of our knowledge rather than enforcing a rigid knowledge schema. And we need to help students adopt an open Truth paradigm based upon critical thinking for those things provable, and faith-based suspended belief for those things that are unkwown or unknowable. It is much more important to teach both critical thinking and what it means to have faith without knowledge than to indoctrinate students on a vast tree of unknowable ‘doctrine’ and pass it off as being as legitimate or more so than objective truth.
We should be teaching that with respect to things unknowable, like the afterlife and 3 degrees of glory, that these things are what we have received, and we trust them to be true, but we don’t know, and we accept that in some areas, we might be wrong — this is what it means to have mature faith. To say that the 3 degrees are absolute fact and I know it to be true, is to be naive and immature in faith, because it convolutes faith with knowledge of that which is unknowable. While it may seem insulting to some who make claims of knowing the unknowable, I cannot change the fact that such claims are unwise in the light of the limitations of human understanding.
That’s how I see it. It isn’t the nicest way to put it. Does this answer your question?
I already understand the “schema” and conversion process with the emotional experience that’s interpreted as the Spirit. It’s just that the “mature” faith you describe would be interpreted as loss of faith by leadership. wayfarer wrote:Critical thinking is the antithesis of the LDS Truth Paradigm. Critical thinking suspends placing a priority on our mental schemata (plural of schema), and opens up the possibility that we could be wrong, either in detail or in the foundational principles of our schemata.
You could say that about any religion or school of thought that has a set of foundational claims. Catholicism, ultra orthodox judaism, evangelical christianity, etc.. What results from critical thinking is new religion with new foundational or lack thereof claims with the old remaining. It may not take on a new name and move to a new location but it’s not just a change in the old.
Quote:We need to recognize, as Paul the Apostle did, that our Gospel Schema is only a part of the truth, and that some of our Gospel Schema may be wrong. This requires both suspended judgment and critical thinking: two things that the church does not promote in its CES program. to get to the truth, we need to help those in faith understand the limits of our knowledge rather than enforcing a rigid knowledge schema. And we need to help students adopt an open Truth paradigm based upon critical thinking for those things provable, and faith-based suspended belief for those things that are unkwown or unknowable. It is much more important to teach both critical thinking and what it means to have faith without knowledge than to indoctrinate students on a vast tree of unknowable ‘doctrine’ and pass it off as being as legitimate or more so than objective truth.
But how can something be part of the truth if at it’s foundation claims truth with a capital “T”? What you describe is a new religion with a more fluid and liberal belief set, something that the LDS church would never accept.
Quote:We should be teaching that with respect to things unknowable, like the afterlife and 3 degrees of glory, that these things are what we have received, and we trust them to be true, but we don’t know, and we accept that in some areas, we might be wrong — this is what it means to have mature faith.
But if those testifying can’t be trusted to know or accurately teach the truth, how can what they teach or what is written in the D&C about the 3 degrees for instance, be accepted as anything more than interesting opinions?
Quote:To say that the 3 degrees are absolute fact and I know it to be true, is to be naive and immature in faith, because it convolutes faith with knowledge of that which is unknowable. While it may seem insulting to some who make claims of knowing the unknowable, I cannot change the fact that such claims are unwise in the light of the limitations of human understanding.
A number of years ago I started a drift towards Episcopalianism. Their triad of scripture, reason, and tradition as measures of truth appealed to me along with the liturgy and the kindness of the people at a difficult time in my life. And as one priest said, “you’re not expected to check you brain at the door”. A good share of the time that’s not expected at the LDS church but the fact is that the church on a day to day basis is less about theology and intellectual discourse and more about people trying to take care of each other. That makes the LDS church as good as any other but as I follow your comments and others here, no better or more likely to help me enter heaven justified.
Quote:mental schemata (plural of schema)
Learn something everyday.
🙂 GBSmith wrote:I already understand the “schema” and conversion process with the emotional experience that’s interpreted as the Spirit. It’s just that the “mature” faith you describe would be interpreted as loss of faith by leadership.
faith is earned by trust, and yes, the lack of transparency about past and present involve a loss in trust and faith. The church should be concerned about that, and perhaps have been, but their approach has been to double-down the bet — “it’s all or nothing, baby.”That no longer works. so, at some point, the church will need to at least let those of us who choose to have ‘informed faith’ do our thing.
I don’t see much of any alternative. I’m starting to see more and more people — really great, faithful people — question and say, why bother? I’m feeling the need to bother, but its going to be on my terms, and if the church doesn’t like how that works — i’m ok with that. If they want to take away my membership or TR, let them come and get it.
GBSmith wrote:(regarding the LDS Truth Paradigm) You could say that about any religion or school of thought that has a set of foundational claims. Catholicism, ultra orthodox judaism, evangelical christianity, etc.. What results from critical thinking is new religion with new foundational or lack thereof claims with the old remaining. It may not take on a new name and move to a new location but it’s not just a change in the old.
I’m not sure I understand fully what you’re saying here but…Yes, on one hand it is a general Truth paradigm, and it applies to all of us, not just within religion — we do the same with nations, sports, philosophy, field of work, everything has its dogma — and unfortunately, the paradigm of dogma is to evaluate and accept or reject phenomena based upon its ‘fit’ into the Schema.
Jean Piaget clearly laid out the cognitive challenges with the Schema, but he mixed schema and paradigm into one seamless whole. Since schemata are a fact of life, we need to address the paradigm rather than just rethinking the schema. the Truth Paradigm is what we do with observations of truth. a closed paradigm says that my schema cannot be changed except by those I trust to change it. In the LDS and lesser so with other dogmatic religions, the keys to the schema are only by the priesthood, and especially, the 14 F. This is why the 14 Fundamentals are so heinous — they are forcing an infallibility criteria into an individual’s truth paradigm.
GBSmith wrote:But how can something be part of the truth if at it’s foundation claims truth with a capital “T”? What you describe is a new religion with a more fluid and liberal belief set, something that the LDS church would never accept.
no, i don’t think so. the only founding truth claim that should be in someone’s schema is what Rene Decartes laid out: Cogito ergo sum. I exist. everything else is contingent on that. My existence is not contingent on the truth claims of any church or organization. I would go further to say that the founding truth claim is personal, it is “I AM”. and in the personal realization of I AM, then nothing else really matters. It is the only truth with a capital T.Does that mean another religion? No. It is a meta-religion — a thought process above and beyond religion, that imbues meaning to my interaction and iterface with religion. Importantly, the realized “I AM” is not the conscious self asserting one’s own ego, but rather, the divine self — outside of consciousness, unified with the receptive conscious mind in an integrated oneness. When we are fully in tune with our inner divine self, WE ARE. When we try to do with our own ego and will, selfishly serving the ego, WE ARE NOT. I love it the way expressed in Moses 1: For this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never supposed. our conscious, willful selves are not it.
A person who has come to a realized state of consciousness, that “I AM” independent and existentially valid, returns to religion for what it is — a place to serve, to relate to people, to talk about higher principles at a level people can understand. There is no ‘separate religion’ here. Religion becomes a staging ground for a higher consciousness.
Think of a sufi’s relationship to Islam. The hard-core islamicists try to destroy the sufis, but they are cmpletely supportive of the Qur’an and islam. They see sufism as the ultimate to which islam and all other religions point. And to some extent they are right, except that their meta-religion is still pretty tied to islam. In judaism, the esoteric movement is called “Kaballah”, although it, too, is infused with symbols and concepts that tie it to judaism. Christian mysticism also had its adherents — but they remained faithful to catholicism.
I believe that within mormonism is a more enlightened framework we can adopt on our own, as long as we don’t try to teach it and preach it. Here is Alma:
Alma 12:9-11 wrote:And now Alma began to expound these things unto him, saying: It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God; nevertheless they are laid under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men, according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him.
And therefore, he that will harden his heart, the same receiveth the lesser portion of the word; and he that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full.
And they that will harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion of the word until they know nothing concerning his mysteries;
I am suggesting that the hardened heart can be at two levels: (1) the one referred to here in Alma, where the person wants nothing to do with the gospel, and (2) the one who already thinks he knows the gospel and won’t open up his heart to learn more.Why not consider that within mormonism, we can have a rich, personal understanding of truth that is independent of the standard definition of things. the standard definition is the “lesser portion of the word”. In fact, note carefully at what alma is saying: “they are laid under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men” — this means that by rules of engagement, we only teach in church the “portion of his word” that he grants generally. but what we hold as personal beliefs, revealed to us according to the spirit of enlightenment within us — there is no limit or bounds to this.
GBSmith wrote:But if those testifying can’t be trusted to know or accurately teach the truth, how can what they teach or what is written in the D&C about the 3 degrees for instance, be accepted as anything more than interesting opinions?
They aren’t just interesting options, they are the standard definition of the order of the heavens. It’s “what we have been taught.” It’s also got an interesting history, coming from a Christian mystic who was quite enlightened: Emmanuel Swedenborg.But let’s just say for ducks that we don’t know what the heavens look like. Paul speculated, swedenborg speculated, JS and BY speculated. They came up with the standard definition: it’s what we preach, what we teach. It’s one of three things, then: either it’s pretty much like the standard definition, or it’s something else, or it’s nothing at all. I’m pretty sure that if there is something out there, it’s nothing like we think it is, nor does it really matter. We preach the standard definition because (1) it shows god is merciful in providing a heaven for everyone according to their suitability, and (2) it gives people something to look forward to. Ok got it. I personally don’t need that belief any longer, and many don’t. But it helps those who need to have that feeling.
We preach a standard definition of god. This has become incomprehensible as LDS have tried to reconcile to the god of the creeds. we preach a standard definition, because there needs to be someone out there that makes sense of all this crap for us. I don’t need the standard definition of god — at all. Doesn’t make sense to me any longer. But for many, it does, it comforts, so we preach it.
GBSmith wrote:A number of years ago I started a drift towards Episcopalianism. Their triad of scripture, reason, and tradition as measures of truth appealed to me along with the liturgy and the kindness of the people at a difficult time in my life. And as one priest said, “you’re not expected to check you brain at the door”. A good share of the time that’s not expected at the LDS church but the fact is that the church on a day to day basis is less about theology and intellectual discourse and more about people trying to take care of each other. That makes the LDS church as good as any other but as I follow your comments and others here, no better or more likely to help me enter heaven justified.
yes, well, you know, scripture, reason, and tradition fail to capture the emotional aspect of our spirits, hence mormonism does have something to say to (as do pentacostals, but that gets kind-of crazy). There is something to be said for spirituality. there is something to be said about the mormon doctrine of how we are all spiritually brothers and sisters. Love is an emotion, a spiritual experience. How does that fit into “scripture, reason, and tradition”?I think the magic in mormonism is the spiritual side of it. It can be wonderful, if we would simply allow it to be such.
GREAT discussion and posts GB and Way. Carry on.
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Just a few last words from my side. wayfarer wrote:That no longer works. so, at some point, the church will need to at least let those of us who choose to have ‘informed faith’ do our thing.
I think it’s the “our thing” part that has got the church nervous. As I recall it was CWald that ran afoul of that. If you’re an outlier in thought fine, but action is another matter.
Quote:There is something to be said for spirituality. there is something to be said about the mormon doctrine of how we are all spiritually brothers and sisters. Love is an emotion, a spiritual experience. How does that fit into “scripture, reason, and tradition”?
I think the magic in mormonism is the spiritual side of it. It can be wonderful, if we would simply allow it to be such.
I guess it’s how we react that makes up the “spiritual” side of what ever faith. When I share the peace of the Lord, I feel loved and when the priest forgives me or blesses me, I feel that I’ve received a gift. Scripture, reason and tradition are the measuring sticks for truth but the Spirit, what ever that is, seems to be there as well and that’s ok with me. I’ll take your word for it that it’s in the LDS church, though I’m not sure about the magic part, but I don’t see it as exclusive anymore.
And with that I grant you the last word.
GB, I don’t think anyone here sees it as exclusive – and, fwiw, I think that’s a core, vital part of pure Mormonism.
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