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My wife & I have lived in the same house for over 45 years. We raised 3 children there and we just moved to another state. It has been an interesting experience. We moved to be closer to our youngest son & his family. During the process of selling one
house & buying another, it became very apparent how much we had to rely on the honesty & trust that we placed on the
professionals we were dealing with. The transactions are all done electronically. There was only one time that we had to go
into an office to meet people & sign papers.
That experience had me thinking about the process of trust & the gospel. Didge has an interesting post titled: on scripture.
That topic made me consider trust as it relates to scripture. When we went to church on Sunday, it made me consider trust as
it relates to what is said & taught in church. If I were a missionary (& I’m not), I would say that’s where the HG comes in.
As a side note, I was talking to my daughter this weekend & she told me the story of a friend who works in a supermarket in
SLC. This friend was talking to a coworker who is the wife of a Bishop. This woman was gossiping about members of the ward
that were having conversations with her husband (the bishop).
In my personal opinion: Trust builds up over time. Trust can be destroyed in a moment. (I’m sure that’s embroidered on a pillow
somewhere). I’m in my 80’s now. At this point in my life, I say very little about what I believe, think or what I’ve done in my
past. I appreciate a forum like this, where I can share all of the above & be accepted or corrected without judgement.
I can truly say that I appreciate your perspective. It helps keep me grounded. I think there is a distinction here between “the gospel” and “the people”. “The Gospel” is the operating system. We are trying to make decisions to “run our lives” in a way that is in line with “the gospel”. Generally, that is Christian teachings found in the New Testament. It’s what is displayed (the icons, the placement of the icons, the text, the sizing of text and icons, etc.) on the page you log into your computer using and then all the menus and buttons that you can access after being logged in. The 10 Commandments is one cross-cultural legacy from the Israelites to the Jews, to the Christians (which LDS doctrine is a Christian subset).
“The People” are those individuals in the church community.
– You can trust the people to “human” in all of humanity’s downfalls and glory.
– You can trust that a bunch of people will get together and form 2 main groups (ish) and a bunch of fringe groups to argue with each other.
– You can assume as a deflection tactic that “they got offended” will shift the accountability for the community’s behavior back to the individual. The community doesn’t always protect the individual when given the chance.
I disengaged from the church doctrine because my flavor of faith transition made most of Christian doctrine not personally relevant and my life hasn’t circled back to make it relevant.
From a community perspective, the church culture grown under the church doctrine umbrella has different values then I do. I could still participate with specific boundaries on my level of engagement (many do) and I have tried to do so. I stopped trying to do so for a lot of different reasons.
Taking this a slightly different way, there were times when I saw my Bishop, Mission President, and Temple President as people with knowledge and authority over me to be trusted on what to do in my life. I currently understanding that their knowledge might not be as extensive as mine in various aspects of LDS theology, doctrine, and history. This is partly because being a good administrator does not require a theologian or a historian.
I also do not recognize their authority over me. That is a different form of trust – a reliance, like a child looking up at their parent. I feel as though I have grown up and now recognize my parents/church leaders for the well intentioned but imperfect individuals that they are.
CHILD-PARENT RELATIONSHIPS AND TRUST NOTE: I get a little uneasy when I hear the “child to parent” analogy these days – so it’s totally a “me” thing. It might be because I have watched “Tangled” too many times and heard the “Mother Knows Best” song
[“Tangled” is the animated cartoon from Disney of the story “Rapunzel”. Citing it here is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the many times that “parents do not know best”.]
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EQAUALIZED LEADERSHIP MODEL OF RELATIONSHIP & TRUST
But Roy, I think that what you are saying is that
how you relate to the church leadership you encountered(Bishop, Mission President, Temple President, etc.) has changed as you have changed your expectations of yourself and of them. - Previously, you expected them to be “the people with knowledge and authority over you” and relied on that certainty.
- Eventually, you changed your expectation about what they knew (because you had more information on specific topics – theology and history are cited) to “administrator” (one with more generalized information and a more communal perspective).
- Now, you seem to relate to the church leaders as “well-intentioned but imperfect individuals” and you relate to them on a person-to-person equalized footing.
AmyJ wrote:
Previously, you expected them to be “the people with knowledge and authority over you” and relied on that certainty.Eventually, you changed your expectation about what they knew (because you had more information on specific topics – theology and history are cited) to “administrator” (one with more generalized information and a more communal perspective).
Now, you seem to relate to the church leaders as “well-intentioned but imperfect individuals” and you relate to them on a person-to-person equalized footing.
Right.Some examples:
1) I remember that part of the BoA facsimile says that it can only be revealed in the temple. When I had the chance to meet a temple president in the temple, I asked about it and he didn’t know (I speculate that it was a reference to signs and tokens).
2) I had a doctrinal dispute with a companion and we asked the MP to settle it for us – which he did. This is an example of an appeal to authority.
3) Early on in our marriage, DW and I were having troubles and wanted the bishop to help sort them out (not unlike the appeal to the MP in the previous example). He wisely declined. Whatever may be included with the power of discernment, marital advice does not seem to be part of it.
Now, I see them as on equal footing to me. However, with my Bishop I have been careful not to flaunt this equality lest it be interpreted as apostacy.
Roy wrote:
Now, I see them as on equal footing to me. However, with my Bishop I have been careful not to flaunt this equality lest it be interpreted as apostacy.
Part of my personal faith transition was amplified by the way that I walk through life as if I was actually talking among equals.
There is a good reason why I have a pattern of social interactions (with mostly men – but some women) going as follows:
a) They say something.
b) I consider what they say and then raise my hand with a different (sometimes radically so) interpretation that I can back with scripture verse and history. But they have an equal chance of me hearing them out.
c) The conversation stalemates with social words, and then they never talk to me or look me in the eye again
NOTE: The 1 time in my faith transition that “apostasy” and “church attending” were interconnected, I sat down with our branch president who was a former atheist himself and he reassured me that I wasn’t an apostate as long as I didn’t preach in public at church:)
– He still says “Hello” and the other social nice gestures whenever I show up at church service projects.
A few years ago, people started talking to me as if I was an “expert” on my child – the child that I barely knew even though we had had the shared home and everything. It was really weird for me because on the one hand, I viscerally understood a few things about my kid – and on the other hand, she wasn’t talking to me/us and everything was “Fine” in that “I am lying to your face it’s fine” way and I could read her enough to know what that meant. I am also regularly complimented for “understanding my kid” – even though at first I was the most assured dupe you have ever seen, and I still feel more like a parent understudy rather then the parental “leading lady”. I am a good 6-8-10 years into a crash-course on my kid, and what I know the most is that the church doctrine, culture, traditions, community, and expectations didn’t work for her.
AmyJ wrote:
I am a good 6-8-10 years into a crash-course on my kid, and what I know the most is that the church doctrine, culture, traditions, community, and expectations didn’t work for her.
Kuddos to you. Our children challenge many of our preconceived notions … again … and again … and again.
Roy wrote:
AmyJ wrote:
I am a good 6-8-10 years into a crash-course on my kid, and what I know the most is that the church doctrine, culture, traditions, community, and expectations didn’t work for her.
Kuddos to you. Our children challenge many of our preconceived notions … again … and again … and again.
Thanks.
My hang-up is that I am still grieving that it didn’t work – I actually thought that there was Divine oversight that prevented our children under 8 from these types of situations. I get outrageously mad sometimes that the system isn’t as expansive as it was advertised to be, and that the God Who Knows Us didn’t pull a “Brother of Jared” and metaphorically lead us to lead our kids into greener pastures (at least about our kids who check out before the age of accountability – they’re still protected, right). Most of the time, I just get cynical because “of course” you set up a variety of factors and hormones and cultural stuff that sets everyone up to prioritize exclusivity and self-righteousness to upsell tribal belonging, inclusiveness is the first value to go.
In our corner of the universe, “demand avoidance” is the watch-word for most interactions between our child and any environment and “demand-centric” is how the church functions when it advocates in shame-inducing ways to impose pronouncements as prophesy. It’s like my child is the con artist who spends 3 days creating the counter-fit product and the church model expects a 1-2 day creation of a specific product under specific “legalized” conditions. Oh, and sometimes the counter-fit product produces better results in testing:)
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