The Great Temple Conundrum

[Anonymous]

I have to be honest with myself — my testimony is not what it once was. I question if the church is even true given factors I won’t mention lest I hurt the faith of others. But relevant to this discussion is one belief I have developed. This is based on several, deep personal experiences — that the church tends to act out of self-interest at the expense of individual members, regularly. I also believe that temporal concerns are far more important to the church than they should be for a divinely appointed institution.

But one thing that doesn’t fit with this theory is temples. These are very large assets that seem to serve no temporal purpose other than to further our doctrine of eternal family and the need for baptism for those who died without the gospel. I don’t see them as furthering the profitability of the church either, unless you look at them as real-estate investments — which I don’t think they are. If I had extra money and wanted to make a profit in real estate, I’d be buying malls and other income-producing assets (oops!). You could argue that the presence of a temple keeps people invested (no pun intended) in their temple recommend and therefore paying tithing, but this is a bit of a remote conclusion.

So my question — do you think temples are an exception to the “Church as a temporally self-interested entity”? Or do you think they serve a temporal, self-interested purpose for the church? [Note, the argument that all things are spiritual doesn’t really wash with me on this one, as I view it as blatant justification for the church to act temporally even when in my view, it shouldn’t].

[Anonymous]

All organizations are interested in self-preservation and that can sometimes conflict with other goals.

That does not mean that the organization doesn’t do things that don’t further self-preservation.

I recently have been theorizing that weekly sacrament might be some sort of marketing ploy. I have heard over and over that the most important part of church attendance is to partake of the sacrament but some other churches might do it once per year. Turns out that there is a long tradition of “breaking bread” together regularly (which has morphed overtime into the current LDS sacrament).

The point is that the weekly sacrament was not instituted in order to force everyone into weekly attendance even if that might be a side effect.

Temples are similar. I believe that the church invests in temples because the church leadership believes firmly that they bless the lives of the members and humanity generally.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

Temples are similar. I believe that the church invests in temples because the church leadership believes firmly that they bless the lives of the members and humanity generally.

The quote above is part of the conundrum — that belief you assume is for the general good of society and the members and not self-interested.

But…temples do have the effect of reminding us of the eventual glory we might attain. LIke the sacrament, they also remind us of the commitments we made for our own endowment. In that sense, they keep commitment levels up so the church can move forward in its day-to-day activities. They also provide a hammer to bring down on members who aren’t towing the line. I have a friend who is TBM and who constantly uses the reminder of temple covenants to me when I talk about ways I’m not living the gospel right now.

[Anonymous]

I think the temple plays the part of the carrot in the LDS church, something to incentivize less active members to come into full activity and a reward for members that are already in full activity.

I believe they’re on a building spree because of several factors:

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

The culture of ordinance chasing presents another conundrum. What does the dog do when it finally catches the car? The next checkbox on the covenant path is always dangling out there to serve as inspiration. What does the typical adult do when they’ve checked all the boxes? I guess that’s when you fall into the role of making sure everyone in your family does too.

I’ve said as much before but these days I feel the temple has become an idol. Maybe that reflects my transition more than anything.

The part in bold is my formatting. This is a really good question. Enduring to the end is really hard. It’s all exciting to go to the temple for the first time, to serve a mission and actually finish it. Getting married is exciting, having babies is exciting, raising children can have its moments of joy, but then, after all, that is done, then what? Setting up chairs? Sitting through meetings? Attending classes with often poorly prepared teachers (and some really good ones too).

What keeps you going, if you still go? What keeps you living all the principles full-on after you’ve jumped through all the hoops?

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

What keeps you going, if you still go? What keeps you living all the principles full-on after you’ve jumped through all the hoops?

I live the principles because I think they’re worth living and because I want to. I couldn’t tell you whether or not the temple actually helped me arrive at that destination.

For me the conundrum comes from trying to extract value from church meetings when most of the time is spent talking about how important it is to do ordinances I’ve already done and how important it is to attend church when I’m already there. Shouldn’t we devote more time to talking about gospel principles?

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

So my question — do you think temples are an exception to the “Church as a temporally self-interested entity”? Or do you think they serve a temporal, self-interested purpose for the church? [Note, the argument that all things are spiritual doesn’t really wash with me on this one, as I view it as blatant justification for the church to act temporally even when in my view, it shouldn’t].

I am not sure that I can answer the question properly, but here are my thoughts.

Temples are a self-reflecting symbol of past, present, and future experiences in a linear, connective fashion.

I think that a case can be made that the early church with Joseph Smith and a good 100 years beyond that was very nomadic, and its population was primarily outsiders and refugees.

The needs that these individuals subconsciously had (and were using the church to solve) were a) meaning, b) beauty, c) permanence. The temples were beautiful buildings that were more permanent and created cosmic meeting for the individuals involved. Even before the temples were built, the ordinances were designed to foster a sense of continuity and permanence – to link generations in a divine way.

It gets messy when meaning cannot be made (family members should not be linked together), and when the permanence of the church building and/or the church meaning becomes irrelevant. Honestly, I think the tensions about who should be linked together/remain sealed together and the language behind it is the greater threat then the logistics of building temples. A huge conformity carrot is lost when the permanence of family relationships is not desired and/or the individuals no longer believe that the power to create permanent families and permanent legacies is controlled by church contracts/ordinances. The other, deeper problem, is that the temple ordinances either explicit explain and/or implicitly define gender roles that are being redefined and/or rejected by the members.

To solve any of the problems mentioned above, the church leaders would probably need a different paradigm. The foundational shift would be from “biological gender defining roles and responsibilities” to “individuals defining roles and responsibilities” with a potential expansion of “priesthood power” to women to “act in the name of God” in expanded capacities. The church would have to get out of the business of telling married people what to do and join the Catholics in developing programs like the Worldwide Marriage Encounter where questions of religious origin/related to religious legacy are asked by the couples to themselves.

[Anonymous]

I think looking at history is very helpful.

As a side example, I look at the US 2nd amendment right to guns. Many flourishing democracies do not have such access to guns so I do not put much stock in arguments that somehow personal gun ownership is necessary to maintain freedom. However, our country was born by literally overthrowing the government by force and bloodshed and so the Founding Fathers were sensitive to this at the time.

Looking at the history of the creation of the temple ceremonies under JS…

I see him borrowing heavily from Masonry. JS was good at repurposing ideas that where present in his environment. We could argue that JS liked the concepts of ascending in rank etc. and receiving hidden knowledge as he experienced it in his masonic lodge.

I see him creating different tiers. With the various priesthood bodies, and now the endowment, Celestial marriage (polygamy), Second anointing, council of 50, etc. There seems to have been many different tiers. It was not at all clear at the time which body was subordinate to which and this was an important difficulty of the succession crisis after the martyrdom. The temple creates some cool new tiers or distinctions among the membership.

I see the temple as a largescale building project. The early saints were pretty poor. By building up the sacred nature of the structure and the promised blessings that would flow from God upon its completion, Joseph received more buy in. The temple becomes the show-piece and center of the communities that JS was creating.

Because the only temple that was completed during the life of JS also functioned as a public meetinghouse, I do not think that the current carrot of the temple recommend was on the radar of JS during that time.

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