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Carburettor wrote:
AmyJ wrote:
If there is a purpose here to my rambling, it’s that you go about as the father of the blind man – doing your thing and caring for your family instead of being one of the judges on the side of the road. Maybe things are what they are in part to “make manifest the glory of God” – and maybe your load will be lighter if that is something that you look for and make as part of the family narrative.
I suspect no one has any answers that will ring true for all people in all situations. It seems that the constant shifting of social values (which remains beyond the control of any parent) turns child-rearing into a lottery.I sacrificed myself at core-identity level to become a covenant-keeping husband and father. I believed my choices would count for something. Ultimately, they didn’t — or at least not for my children. I love them regardless, but loving and respecting them has meant letting go of the reins after nurturing them according to our set of values throughout their formative years.
It would be really nice if parenting was a transaction-based formula where you did the work at a front end and got the end result of a clear sample of those values.
The “end goal” of parenting was to be able to “let go of the reins” – because they had enough information to make decisions. A sub goal is “what is the legacy I gave to my children” – and it sounds like you were expecting to see your values in a specific way being illustrated in their lives and the choices they make. I can’t help you determine any of that. I got my values-based expectations handed to me on a silver platter when I was busting my butt to get my daughter to church and she decided at the age of 9 that she didn’t believe in God and that church was worthless. She and I worked for a few more years on what a “valuable church experience” would look like – and it included her going to Relief Society sometimes and me going to her Primary class. Eventually, that wasn’t enough either – and so we have random conversations about the nature of God sometimes. And I am trying to pass on “values” to her about “sexuality”, “community-building”, “work” and “clean living” without the religious framework and hoping that the way she interacts with them will bless her life.
I got my metaphorical butt handed to me less when I started asking what she valued instead of judging her and/or assuming that she valued what I expected her to value. Your mileage may vary. And yes, I got both guns blazing at me a few times for “being a coward” and “not judging her when she wanted me to judge her”.
Who I am at a core-identity level is informed by what I value about being a parent and how I see myself as a parent, no doubt about that. And if I had a glass of something suitably celebratory – I would raise it to you for contributing to raising a child who does make decisions that aren’t what you expected – that means you raised a person who does make decisions (which is never a comfortable thing, but not necessarily a bad thing).
I had kept my wedding dress around for years hoping that it would bless my younger sisters and maybe my children but it was an item that was getting hauled places and taking up space in people’s lives. Eventually, I had to face either storing it forever, or recognizing that as a dress it was worthless to my siblings because of sizing and personal taste, and that it was worthless to my children because it wasn’t something they would cherish either. After a few months of analysis, I realized that I could be ok with that not being a part of the legacy I left for my siblings and children. I heard about and donated the dress to a hospital nonprofit to be cut up and used to sew baby clothes instead. To me, that became a better legacy.
AmyJ wrote:
The “end goal” of parenting was to be able to “let go of the reins” – because they had enough information to make decisions. A sub goal is “what is the legacy I gave to my children” – and it sounds like you were expecting to see your values in a specific way being illustrated in their lives and the choices they make. I can’t help you determine any of that.
Sorry, yes, I wrote something stupid. Rather than letting go of the reins — which should eventually happen in every healthy parent-child relationship — I guess I meant letting go of our values; the parts of ourselves to which we attribute the greatest worth. For the most part, they concluded that our faith values were worthless to them. That’s got to be disappointing for any parent.AmyJ wrote:
I had kept my wedding dress around for years hoping that it would bless my younger sisters and maybe my children but it was an item that was getting hauled places and taking up space in people’s lives. Eventually, I had to face either storing it forever, or recognizing that as a dress it was worthless to my siblings because of sizing and personal taste, and that it was worthless to my children because it wasn’t something they would cherish either. After a few months of analysis, I realized that I could be ok with that not being a part of the legacy I left for my siblings and children. I heard about and donated the dress to a hospital nonprofit to be cut up and used to sew baby clothes instead. To me, that became a better legacy.
My wife stored her wedding dress for over twenty years before burning it when she discovered it had turned an alarming shade of daffodil yellow. I hung on to my suit for 26 years before putting it in a charity collection — perfect for a nineties-themed fancy-dress event.Carburettor wrote:
…I meant letting go of our values; the parts of ourselves to which we attribute the greatest worth. For the most part, they concluded that our faith values were worthless to them. That’s got to be disappointing for any parent.
I agree. I felt that way with my daughter more than once already (and she is a young teenager – we haven’t hit the really growth-intensive phases).
I have given this a lot of thought, and determined that not all “faith values” are created equal. Some of my values are ones like “academic honesty” that matter to me as well as my religious community. And not all “faith values” are actually values – they can be re-classified as “faith traditions” or “faith ways of doing things” such as temple attendance, etc.
It can be heart-warming when you see your children doing something you did, or following some of same traditions. But when children don’t do what we expect/hope/most value for them – it’s easy for us to look around for someone to blame – which may or may not be accurate.
Carburettor wrote:
My wife stored her wedding dress for over twenty years before burning it when she discovered it had turned an alarming shade of daffodil yellow. I hung on to my suit for 26 years before putting it in a charity collection — perfect for a nineties-themed fancy-dress event.
We all take something and leave something that was a part of us wherever we go – both physically and metaphysically. The older I get, the more I realize that I want to leave behind “connection” and “hope” and “sanctuary” instead of dwelling on my random expectations. Some days, that is a lot easier to say and do.
AmyJ wrote:
I have given this a lot of thought, and determined that not all “faith values” are created equal. Some of my values are ones like “academic honesty” that matter to me as well as my religious community. And not all “faith values” are actually values – they can be re-classified as “faith traditions” or “faith ways of doing things” such as temple attendance, etc.
Thank you, yes, “faith traditions” is a far better description in many cases.Roy wrote:
PazamaManX wrote:
*spoiler-ish warning* A couple points of struggle for some characters closest to Jesus in the show is ‘why is Jesus performing miracles for others but not me?’ The answer that they end up getting from Jesus boils down to ‘Do you have enough faith in me to trust that me not removing your difficulty/tragedy is what’s best for you?”
Yeah. The song “Blessings” by Laura Story presents a similar concept. Sometimes you need these sorts of narratives in order to make meaning and purpose out of suffering and disappointment.
I recently ran across an LDS daily blog post with the same general theme with a specific LDS twist. The idea is that God is putting us through our own personal obstacle course because He knows exactly what trials we will need to experience/endure/overcome to prepare us for exaltation. Jesus is held up as an example of someone that did no wrong yet received hardship at every turn.https://www.ldsdaily.com/personal-lds-blog/we-all-believe-this-misconception-about-how-god-works/ I am not a big fan of the idea that God has personalized plans for each of us (although I can understand the appeal and I think that this position could be fairly easily maintained/defended using moderate LDS sources). I prefer the idea that God has the same plan for each of us and that it only has a few requirements and the rest of our lives gets filled in with random chance and personal choices. In other words, I prefer the hands-off God to the micro-manager God.
However, We do have a teaching that God blesses the righteous and it can be demonstrated that sometimes the righteous suffer exceedingly. If your intent is to explain the contradiction then the idea that God knows best what will help each individual to grow the most works fairly well.
Roy wrote:
I am not a big fan of the idea that God has personalized plans for each of us (although I can understand the appeal and I think that this position could be fairly easily maintained/defended using moderate LDS sources). I prefer the idea that God has the same plan for each of us and that it only has a few requirements and the rest of our lives gets filled in with random chance and personal choices. In other words, I prefer the hands-off God to the micro-manager God.
I have come to the conclusion that what we say about God is a whole more more about what we want to hear being said/done than a fact-based observation. I know for myself, I want to believe/I hope that God is more of the “hands-off God” entrusting me to make meaningful/value-able decisions rather then a God who cares so much to micro-manage me (so God’s silence is one of impending doom).
It makes reading the Old Testament much more like a “story” of “who-dun-it” in the same vein as when you as a parent come home and hear 3 different narratives about “how the window was broken and by whom” from your children (and their related attention/anti-punishment bids) and their perspective.
AmyJ wrote:
I have come to the conclusion that what we say about God is a whole more more about what we want to hear being said/done than a fact-based observation.
I spent decades believing in a personal, loving God, who was entrenched in the minutiae of my life. Positive outcomes were the result of my being blessed for faithfulness — while bad results and suffering were God’s loving desire to test my spiritual resolve before opening the windows of heaven in his own good time.In the past couple of decades, I have changed my mind. I believe God’s handiwork is found in the minutiae of all our lives in the form of this world and its function within a great plan. Beyond that, I suspect we are deliberately and necessarily abandoned to find our own way. If we can even begin to wrap our heads around the concept of eternity, there should be no need to nudge people in the right direction when they can learn so much more by discovering everything for themselves. Time is ultimately meaningless because there is neither beginning nor end. So, why the rush?
Many unfortunate experiences have introduced doubts in my mind — or maybe they have simply helped me to question gullibility, superstition-style belief, and priestcraft. Years ago, I was asked to give a priesthood blessing to the husband/father of one of my home teaching families before he underwent a routine operation. I blessed him with good health and reassured him that he’d be up and about in no time. Two days later, he unexpectedly died of sepsis.
My own father’s health reached the end of the line when he experienced organ failure, also due to sepsis. I lived over two hours away, and, while I was driving to where he was in hospital, his home teacher, the stake president, blessed him in his unconscious state that his passing would be quick and comfortable. And then the emergency-treatment team injected noradrenaline into his neck (my dad’s neck, not the stake president’s), and he recovered. Awkward.
I suspect we attribute far more to God’s engagement in our lives than we really ought.
Roy wrote:I am not a big fan of the idea that God has personalized plans for each of us (although I can understand the appeal and I think that this position could be fairly easily maintained/defended using moderate LDS sources). I prefer the idea that God has the same plan for each of us and that it only has a few requirements and the rest of our lives gets filled in with random chance and personal choices. In other words, I prefer the hands-off God to the micro-manager God.
However, We do have a teaching that God blesses the righteous and it can be demonstrated that sometimes the righteous suffer exceedingly. If your intent is to explain the contradiction then the idea that God knows best what will help each individual to grow the most works fairly well.
My thoughts on how God “manages” our lives falls somewhere between hands-off and micro-manager. I won’t pretend to understand Him well enough to know how He runs everything. But I do believe that He’s somehow in the details while also leaving us to our own devices.
I’ll admit, some of my views are influenced by those who claim to have had near death experiences. I think most NDE claims are hooey, but the more believable ones do have quite a few similarities. One thing mentioned is that while they were on the other side, part of the peace that they felt also came with a sense that everything happens for a reason and that He is in control of everything.
But, I can also understand people who don’t want to believe that God allowed bad things to happen to them simply for character development. The thought that you’re a better person now in exchange for the tragedy you just suffered is hardly comfort.
PazamaManX wrote:
But, I can also understand people who don’t want to believe that God allowed bad things to happen to them simply for character development. The thought that you’re a better person now in exchange for the tragedy you just suffered is hardly comfort.
Quite so. Stubbing a toe or burning a pie is one thing, but my maternal grandfather killed himself a week after my maternal grandmother died from illness — leaving my five-year-old mother and her seven-year-old brother orphaned. To me, the idea of character development is preposterous; it was simply misfortune. Were it not so, perhaps I should consider topping myself for the benefit of my children’s character development.PazamaManX wrote:
part of the peace that they felt also came with a sense that everything happens for a reason and that He is in control of everything.
Yeah, I’m happy for people that find comfort in that. I like to picture God embracing me and we cry together. I cry because some of life experiences were very deserving of tears and I’ve held it in for so long and now that I am finally with Him it just comes out like a dam breaking. God cries with me because of His perfect empathy. After I my tears have exhausted themselves, God will show me all the good that is in store for the afterlife. But first it was necessary to honor the pain of my experience with a good cry. (and I take parts of LDS doctrine on the God Who Weeps for this concept).I think this is not terribly unlike a toddler that sees their parent after falling down and scraping their knee. Even if the damage is not permanent, the feelings are real and deserve to be validated. I personally do not find comfort in the idea that the scraped knee was somehow character building unless maybe you say that it was part of a mortal/earthy experience and the whole process was generally necessary and character building.
Once again, I have come to the point where I am perfectly comfortable crafting a Godhead and afterlife that works for me and allowing others to do the same. I make no claims that my ideas are more right or correct than anyone else’s. The just resonate for me personally.
Roy wrote:
I like to picture God embracing me and we cry together.
This will come across as harsh and cynical, but please rest assured that I’m smiling while writing it.In my opinion, a crying god is the epitome of anthropomorphism. It is the attribution of Earth-based, human biological functions to a “supernatural” being and is simply a fantasy. Does God really have functioning lacrimal glands to produce tears? Loss of any such substance requires replenishment from somewhere. Does he have nails and hair that grow — and bowels that must be emptied every few hours? It is so far into absurd territory as to be utterly pointless to consider — let alone have strong opinions about.
Everything about humans and all life on Earth is a product of our physical environment and ultimately an expression of our planet’s geology and primary energy source (i.e., the sunlight that powers the food chain, the gravity that determines the size and structure of all life, and the minerals and chemistry that compose our flesh and bone) — yet we make God look and behave just like us. Why? It’s because doing so makes God relatable, which we find comforting.
I suspect God is nothing like we imagine. And if God should present himself to us in a vision, he’ll doubtless appear in a familiar format to avoid terrifying us. A god who cries is probably not dissimilar to a bedtime story in which a princess kisses the frog, which then turns into prince. And they all lived happily ever after.
Going to put my apologist hat on and play devil’s advocate here for a minute. Note that I am smiling as I write this as well 
Carburettor wrote:Does God really have functioning lacrimal glands to produce tears? Loss of any such substance requires replenishment from somewhere. Does he have nails and hair that grow — and bowels that must be emptied every few hours? It is so far into absurd territory as to be utterly pointless to consider — let alone have strong opinions about.
…
I suspect God is nothing like we imagine. And if God should present himself to us in a vision, he’ll doubtless appear in a familiar format to avoid terrifying us.
Following along with the idea that we are made in God’s image, and that these squishy things we’re walking around in have the potential to become divine, then yes. “As man now is, God once was…” and all that. If we eventually graduate to godhood as LDS theology suggests, and have to take on a human form to not scare our future spirit progeny that we appear to, what would our much scarier form look like when we are not appearing in visions?
To reference a less than authoritative source, the book Life Everlasting by Duane S. Crowther mentions an NDE or two where people claimed to have seen food and dinner parties on the other side. Which would suggest that what we do here, we also do there. As flippant as this will sound, perhaps there is a throne in Heaven, and not one that is seen in visions
Carburettor wrote:Everything about humans and all life on Earth is a product of our physical environment and ultimately an expression of our planet’s geology and primary energy source (i.e., the sunlight that powers the food chain, the gravity that determines the size and structure of all life, and the minerals and chemistry that compose our flesh and bone) — yet we make God look and behave just like us. Why? It’s because doing so makes God relatable, which we find comforting.
That would suggest we were made for the Earth. Perhaps the Earth was made for us?
I haven’t read The God Who Weeps yet, so I don’t know what Terryl and Fiona Givens have to say about it. But I like the idea of a God who has perfect empathy. The scene that Roy described in the first paragraph of his post is one that I would look forward to.
PazamaManX wrote:
To reference a less than authoritative source, the book Life Everlasting by Duane S. Crowther mentions an NDE or two where people claimed to have seen food and dinner parties on the other side.
That’s hilarious.When we project the best imaginable versions of ourselves onto God, we reveal more about our insecurities than we do the true nature of God.
The notion of post-Earth dinner parties is beyond absurd. I recently listened to a podcast in which it was suggested that the human brain releases dopamine among other things when death is imminent. Triggering this process prematurely could explain a bunch of NDEs.
It was Moses who said that we are created in God’s image, and we conclude that he meant it in the context of physical appearance. But did he? He also said that Adam was the first man, but that is patently implausible in a literal sense because there is abundant evidence that shows Adam’s “ancestors” were living tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands before any Adam figure might have been born. We apply literalism to everything that offers us warm, fuzzy feelings — and chuck out the rest. However, I suspect the truth is likely to be in the stuff we chucked out.
Carburettor wrote:
PazamaManX wrote:
To reference a less than authoritative source, the book Life Everlasting by Duane S. Crowther mentions an NDE or two where people claimed to have seen food and dinner parties on the other side.
That’s hilarious.When we project the best imaginable versions of ourselves onto God, we reveal more about our insecurities than we do the true nature of God.
The notion of post-Earth dinner parties is beyond absurd.
I’m not interested in a back and forth debate, and that would depart from the purpose of this forum anyway. But I am curious, why do you think it’s hilarious and absurd? I find it perfectly reasonable. Perhaps a better question for me to pose to you would be: what do you think awaits us in the next life?
Quote:I recently listened to a podcast in which it was suggested that the human brain releases dopamine among other things when death is imminent. Triggering this process prematurely could explain a bunch of NDEs.
I’m familiar with the attempts at using science to explain/debunk NDEs, I do think their theories would explain the more questionable NDE claims. But I do believe there is something to some of them. If you don’t, that’s fine too.
PazamaManX wrote:
I’m not interested in a back and forth debate, and that would depart from the purpose of this forum anyway. But I am curious, why do you think it’s hilarious and absurd? I find it perfectly reasonable. Perhaps a better question for me to pose to you would be: what do you think awaits us in the next life?
Please accept my apology. I didn’t mean to trample on your hopes and dreams of what the afterlife might entail.I believe that God and, hopefully, progression await us, and I suspect neither will look remotely like anything we can conceive with our childlike, mortal perspective. Some are convinced they will spend eternity lounging on clouds, playing harps. Others imagine they will be rewarded with eternal misogyny in which they gratify their insatiable sexual appetites with an unlimited supply of comely virgins.
As for me, I see little point in projecting my foolish shortsightedness onto a realm of which none can speak with authority until they get there. We may as well share our opinions on whether we will wear clothes in the afterlife; and, if so, who will make them — and out of what?
🙂
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