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This blog postThis is a concept that has been taught at GC on at least one occasion, yet so frequently when we talk about “feeling the spirit”, there’s a lot of talk about warm fuzzy feelings and the like. I often see speakers presume that their audience is feeling something, which is then tied to the spirit. Many times, I do not actually have those feelings.
A few months ago, I came to realize that some of those feelings–what I once thought was the Spirit–were not from God (that’s not to say they were bad- just incorrect). It was simply me feeling emotional or excited about something. Emotions are sometimes an indirect effect of the Spirit, not the Spirit itself. The effect of the Spirit is enlightenment and revelation. While it’s much harder to distinguish that from intuitive hunches and spurious thoughts, it should (if truly the Spirit) be more reliable and consistent than going on feeling.
And yet emotion and spirituality are often conflated. How is it that this came to be?
Mormons catch many of their members so young that they fail to realize that just feeling happy or elated is not the Spirit. This is because they have so little of these experiences outside the context of church membership. I agree absolutely with the central message. However, “the Denver Snuffer witch hunt” is not an accurate description. He actively challenged the church leadership as being apostate and began organizing a personal following, as an alternative to the LDS Church, prior to being excommunicated. I am not a fan of excommunication, generally, but his case was about as open-and-shut an example of classic apostasy as it gets.
Old Timer wrote:
I agree absolutely with the central message.However, “the Denver Snuffer witch hunt” is not an accurate description. He actively challenged the church leadership as being apostate and began organizing a personal following, as an alternative to the LDS Church, prior to being excommunicated. I am not a fan of excommunication, generally, but his case was about as open-and-shut an example of classic apostasy as it gets.
And the very title of the blog indicates that Larsen is a “Snufferite” (AKA Remnant).
When I gave up the idea that The Spirit === truth, I found myself feeling the spirit in all sorts of places I’d never expect. Beauty != Truth != Goodness. It doesn’t have to be true to be enlightening or inspiring. Lao Tzu wrote:“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth. Good words are not always persuasive; persuasive words are not always good. ”
Religion answers some of the deepest mysteries of the universe… even if those answers are false. They give comfort and certainty, where cold, hard fact gives none. I don’t think many people could bare to survive without the consolation their religion provides, even if their religion is fake. And I think there is a lot of goodness that can stem from believing in certain things that may or may not be true.
I’ve made it a point to never correct someone because I felt they were wrong in their religious beliefs. I couldn’t reason them out of it, even if I wanted to. And even if I did, it’d be like taking the lifejacket, from someone who doesn’t know how to swim.
LookingHard wrote:
I just saw a link to this. InterestingElevation
Quote:Positive psychologists are interested in understanding the motivations behind prosocial behavior in order to learn how to encourage individuals to help and care for each other.
Or more likely they are being employed by corporations trying to monetize this behavior or by governments to try and work out how to use it to their own ends.
The teachings on the spirit are all over the map. I am not convinced by anything written in the bible that the spirit was intended to be a person/sentient being. It could just as easily be a power or force or energy (as described in the Lectures on Faith). I believe that the scripture (Galatians 5:22) that we use as missionaries to identify the spirit with feelings is misapplied. If we read the whole chapter we can see that these verses are describing what we LDS may be familiar with as “the natural man” that is an enemy to God unless “he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” For behold, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no Law” (for the sake of transparency, I spliced together Mosiah 3:19 and Galatians 5:22 to help make my point)
I strongly believe that Galatians 5:22 is not describing emotions that the spirit will use to help us identify eternal truth.
Furthermore, IMO almost everything about the holy ghost (who/what it is and how it operates) is unclear.
Considering that the feelings that lead people to join the church are essentially the same feelings that lead people to join Islam- and pretty much every other faith, I don’t think emotion is in any way a reliable test for truth- however it may be a test for goodness. With the Spirit, what is it? Is it? Is it even a personage, or is it more like a divine influence (“The Universe”)? How does it speak to us? Does it?
Every religion has a different name for this influence and a different way of interacting with it, but there is one common thread: love, peace, and goodness. It’s all the same, but with a philosophy built around it. When you cast aside the exterior, nearly everyone in the world believes in essentially the same thing. And yet we let that outside define and divide.
Beefster wrote:
Considering that the feelings that lead people to join the church are essentially the same feelings that lead people to join Islam – and pretty much every other faith
Are they? Have you ever become a Muslim? How do you know?
Most people have joined Islam because of the sword and still do so today. Saddam Hussein’s family were Christian a few generations back but his village mass converted. And the trouble with Islam is that if you unconvert, you run the risk of being killed.
In the case of Islam, fear (of people not of Allah), social pressure and economic advantage have been key drivers into modern times. While many places became Christian in a similar fashion, this is not really the case with our church, Pentecostals or the charismatic movement.
I see little evidence that people become Buddhists, Hindus or even Taoists through a similar conversion process. In the case of Buddhism, people tend to become interested in its philosophy and meditation practises, not a burning bosom.
Beefster wrote:Every religion has a different name for this influence and a different way of interacting with it, but there is one common thread: love, peace, and goodness.
Totally disputing this again – there are minor religions which worship evil, and ancient tribal religions which are based on war. Do we think the cults of Mars, Kali and Shugden were based on this? No. Nor are many forms of Satanism. Anton LaVey’s brand is based mainly around selfishness and self-advancement.
For example LaVey writes – “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!” and “Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek.”
As you can see in my signature I am not completely against other religions, but I do find the one size fits all concept of them misleading. There is a lot of wisdom in many of them, but are they all the same? No.
SamBee wrote:
Most people have joined Islam because of the sword and still do so today. Saddam Hussein’s family were Christian a few generations back but his village mass converted. And the trouble with Islam is that if you unconvert, you run the risk of being killed.
Good point. Though there are still people who convert by choice and from some of the Muslims I’ve talked to who were born into their faith, it appears their “conversion” process is in some way similar to the LDS process.There were historically some Christian conversions by the sword (the Crusades)
It happens with a lot of religions, but from what I hear, violent conversion is encouraged by the Quran. I haven’t fact-checked this personally, but it seems to be a commonly-held opinion from non-Muslims who have actually read the Quran. At least from those not wearing rose-colored glasses.
Right from the beginning. Mohammed was a warrior and conquered a substantial territory… in this he was unlike Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster etc. There are some parts of the world such as south east Asia where Muslim conversion was not by force, but in most places it was.
Christianity has converted by force – but its founders did not, and in more recent times it has not tended to. However, Islam still is doing this in some places, notably in Africa.
The Koran is contradictory on certain matters – notably on how to treat Jews and Christians. In many Muslim countries, they are still forced to pay the jizya which is a compulsory tax on them, so there are financial reasons in these places to convert.
Mohammad did preach a certain level of religious tolerance, allowing those of other faiths to live in the areas he conquered. When the crusades happened, Christians were freely allowed to take pilgrimage into and out of the holy land. When the Christians conquered, the Muslims were slaughtered. I’d say that most Muslims convert and remain Muslims because it is something they honestly prayed about and believe in, same as the LDS. https://www.britannica.com/topic/jizya Quote:Jizya, also spelled jizyah, Arabic jizyah, head or poll tax that early Islamic rulers demanded from their non-Muslim subjects.
Islamic law made a distinction between two categories of non-Muslim subjects—pagans and dhimmis (“protected peoples,” or “peoples of the book”; i.e., those peoples who based their religious beliefs on sacred texts, such as Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians). The Muslim rulers tolerated the dhimmis and allowed them to practice their religion. In return for protection and as a mark of their submission, the dhimmis were required to pay a special poll tax known as the jizya. The rate of taxation and methods of collection varied greatly from province to province and were greatly influenced by local pre-Islamic customs. In theory the tax money was to be used for charitable purposes and the payment of salaries and pensions. In practice, however, the revenues derived from the jizya were deposited in the private treasuries of the rulers. The Ottomans usually used the proceeds of the jizya to pay their military expenses.
A convert to Islam was, in theory, no longer required to pay the jizya. The Umayyad caliphs (661–750), however, faced with increasing financial difficulties, demanded the jizya from recent converts to Islam as well as from the dhimmis. This discrimination against converts was a cause of the Abū Muslim rebellion (747) in Khorāsān and helped to precipitate the downfall of the Umayyads.
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