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I admit it; that’s a leading statement. Here are the details. On Sunday, a sister missionary (from Independence, Missouri) gave one of the talks in Sacrament Meeting. She recounted what she must have imagined would be a faith-promoting story in which she borrowed a jigsaw puzzle from one of the elders and completed it except for the final piece, which was missing. Fearing that she must have lost the final piece, she explained how she searched high and low yet couldn’t find it. So she prayed and felt prompted to return to the jigsaw.
She then said, “Heavenly Father had placed the missing piece on top of the jigsaw” for her.
The faces of my wife and I must have been a picture. In my view, that wasn’t a faith-promoting story — it was false doctrine. She tried to convince the entire congregation that HF answered a prayer with a physical intervention. I fear this is one of many ways in which we turn the Gospel of Jesus Christ into a selection of ritualised magic tricks. And people lap it up. Whatever next? Public displays of speaking in tongues or healing the sick?
If she was right, HF placed the puzzle piece for her to find, yet he didn’t spare the lives of some 500 other missionaries whose parents offered up daily prayers for their safety, yet who were murdered while going about their service.
I simply cannot warm to what feels to me like a naïve corruption of prayer or other principles. I do not believe a word of it. But what of the rest of the congregation who were convinced by her story?
I don’t see that as a false doctrine. I share your concerns, I think it’s unintentionally insensitive to people facing more difficult challenges that
haven’tfelt like their prayers have been answered but I don’t think it rises to the level of false doctrine. Certainly not to a level that I personally would feel the need to challenge. I hear testimonies about praying to find lost objects all the time coming from all levels of the church. Sacrament meetings, Liahona articles (that are heavily vetted for doctrinal accuracy), even during
general conference talksI’d define a false doctrine as any teaching that doesn’t hold up to my lived experiences. This makes a false doctrine limited in scope to just me, not something that’s universally false for everyone. With that in mind, I don’t feel the need to challenge people at church or burst their bubbles.
Maybe some people at church need to believe that god intervenes in the minutia of their lives. They may feel like god helped them find their keys that one time because it gives them that spark of hope that god is there in the larger challenges in life, even when the larger challenges don’t work out so well they still have that small hope to fall back on.
I’m totally with you on this and I am not a believer in “Mormon Magic.” This is actually one of the big things that bugs me about church and why I have a hard time convincing myself to go. But it is a bit of a sticky wicket. If you were to directly confront the sister about it she’d likely take offense and it is unlikely you’d convince her story was anything short of a miracle (even though a rational person would have probably concluded the piece was there all the time and she simply didn’t see it because it blended in or something). And if you go to the bishop you might feel better about getting it off your chest, but what’s he supposed to do? Is he supposed to give a short talk refuting such magic next sacrament meeting? Not to mention he may have actually believed it himself (Mormons can be pretty gullible). Once when I was a high councilor this topic came up in one of the meetings – what if we heard egregious false doctrine being taught while visiting a unit? The SP’s answer was to do nothing in the moment, maybe point it out to the bishop after and if the bishop might want to correct it, fine.* If it was very egregious the SP said he’d like to know as well (there was a branch that had gone a bit off the rails on something not long before and he intervened). But I don’t think this story falls into that category, and probably was accepted by many as doctrine or at least commonly held belief.
In SS/PH if I feel like I have enough allies in the room I sometimes speak up about such things, but again this would be a hard one because most people probably accept it for what it is and meant as a faith promoting story.
So I feel for you and certainly relate, but I don’t think there’s anything you can do. It is in these situations that when I do go to church I turn to my tablet and try to completely ignore what’s going on.
*I did once in my own ward see the bishop stand up at the end of a meeting and correct something he thought was incorrect. I can’t even recall what it was but I do recall that I thought he handled it well, he didn’t call out the individual but said something along the lines of it not being something taught by the church leadership. I was also once in a situation where an uncredited/undocumented quote by a former GA was used (interestingly also by a sister missionary) and while I didn’t point it out, someone did and the following week the sister apologized and retracted her statement – which I thought was very big of her. This had occurred during a fifth Sunday lesson, not SM (or F&TM which are often the worst).
(Note that Nibbler and I were typing simultaneously, and I do likewise agree with Nibbler.)
Thanks to both. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. I do not in any way believe the missionary’s prayer was answered, but I must allow others to believe whatever they wish — even when they teach it as a principle of their faith from the pulpit. I’m the same way about the prosperity gospel. The teaching that if you’re more obedient then you’ll get blessing xyz hasn’t held up in my experience. I don’t consider it to be doctrinally accurate. Wasn’t that the entire point of the Book of Job? I could be waiting for sacrament meeting to be over to go to the bishop to say
Quote:Bishop, when you were talking about our ward goals for baptisms this year you said something about being able to achieve the goal if we’re all more obedient. About that…
but I’d hear a dozen more instances of the prosperity gospel before the meeting even ended.
Whenever I hear a teaching at church that doesn’t resonate I just have to internally sigh, think here we go again, and try my best to suppress the involuntary eye roll.
nibbler wrote:
Whenever I hear a teaching at church that doesn’t resonate I just have to internally sigh, think here we go again, and try my best to suppress the involuntary eye roll.
Yep.It is interesting that what is viewed as a key principle of faith by one person should be viewed as utter nonsense by another — that both individuals can have a common belief in a tenet of religion yet have entirely different convictions about the execution of it.
The Church is so prescriptive about certain concepts while others are simply left to individual imagination.
I have some thoughts and experiences that may relate to this subject. The idea that God blesses us with tangible things. I was talking with my bishop some years ago about this subject and how it is difficult for me to believe that God blesses others when He did not prevent the stillbirth of our third child. The bishop responded that sometimes members exaggerate and make claims that might be more a matter of opinion. My bishop said that he personally thinks that God blesses us spiritually. I expressed that I agree and I was similarly frustrated that a recent church publication said explicitly that God gives us spiritual AND tangible blessings in exchange for honest tithe payments. The Bishop immediately backtracked and said that God CAN give us tangible blessings if He wants to.
So anyway, I think if you talked to your bishop he may be sympathetic but would probably consider this as a “you” problem and certainly not false doctrine.
I remember a member of the stake leadership taught our EQ class and said the statement “The church is perfect but the members are not.” I thought that this was a demonstrably false statement. In what way is the church perfect?
I spoke to him privately after class and asked about the use of the word perfect when the church is still changing.
He seemed very concerned about the state of my testimony but after I reassured him that this was just a matter of academics, not testimony.
We had some discussion about the use of the word “perfect.”
Ultimately, he told me that he doesn’t really get into the academic minutia but that he is rather a simple farm boy with a simple faith. (This, to me, had the same effect as if he had testified to me. I was slightly annoyed that he felt that his refusal to discuss the definition of a word that he was using made him somehow superior)
The conversation ended amicably.
Therefore, even if you have what might be considered an open and shut case for false doctrine I do not think it would go very far. If whatever you are challenging falls within the generally accepted LDS beliefs then it is likely that you will be considered the problem.
On the StayLDS Webpage there is a link to the “What is official Mormon Doctrine” essay. This essay make the case that the only sources of doctrine that we are bound as members to support come from the standard works. By that definition, there are LOADS of things taught in church that are not found in the standard works. Many Christian churches go by the maxim, “Sola scriptura” to mean that it is not found in the bible then it is speculation and not authoritative. We LDS tend to be much more broad in our definition of doctrine. This is in part because of our belief in living prophets and our bi-annual general conference addresses that many members consider scripture.
So, technically, I think that anything not found in the standard works (and that hasn’t been voted on by the membership) is unofficial speculation (opinions of men mingled with scripture). I feel that this distinction can be helpful for you as an individual to mentally separate those things which you as a church member are obliged to more or less believe and those things that you are free to discard. However, these distinctions are better kept to yourself. People tend to draw the line differently and some in leadership would be highly offended to hear you label some of their cherished beliefs as false doctrine.
I never challenge someone else’s beliefs publicly, unless they actively harm others in objective ways – and, even then, I try to do it as much as possible in a soft and gentle way (especially if it is not a private conversation). My response almost always is meant to be unifying, not dividing, I am an old man with decades of practice, but I still make mistakes in this area occasionally. “A soft answer turners away wrath,” is an excellent standard, with exceptions in cases of direct harm.
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