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wayfarer wrote:
do you need to change your vote?
No. They’ll never find the bodies. My conscience is clear enough on that.
Wait, now you are confusing me more. I voted “no,” I have no unresolved sins that need confessing.
As someone who used to confess every little thing when I was a YSA and drove my Bishops nuts for a brief period, I not believe this question is for sins that are severe and clear-cut. Murder, theft, breaking the law, misdemeanors, felonies, etcetera. I also believe in looking at my life and acting as a judge first and deciding how I would feel in the temple with my weaknesses unconfessed. If I feel OK with that, I wont’ confess. I don’t believe leaders have the almighty magical gift of discernment anymore. I used to think they were magical. I now realize they might have discernment the same way I do when I am qualifying tenants for my rental properties. Stories that don’t add up raise alarm bells. Body language and insconsistencies, or one-sided descriptions of bad things that have happened to people cause red flags. If people are out to outright lie to you and have covered every area of made-up facts to make them seem credible will get you no matter how hard you try to uncover the truth.
Not that I’m advocating lying, just that my new mantra — listening to your inner voice comes first. It’s the filter of all information that passes through one’s mind and spirit.
So, I would answer No, I have no unresolved sins.
Even though this is an older thread that I never commented on when it was originally posted I have thought about this topic a lot over the years. I voted yes before not because I think there is any good reason why I should have to involve priesthood leaders in something that I now basically see as none of their business, relatively commonplace and harmless on average, and definitely not something that talking with them about would ever help but simply because according to Mormon lore I am supposedly guilty of a sin next to murder in seriousness and I have never confessed this to priesthood leaders yet. For example, Elder Bednar made the following comments in the April 2013 Conference. David A. Bednar wrote:…Because a physical body is so central to the Father’s plan of happiness and our spiritual development, Lucifer seeks to frustrate our progression by tempting us to use our bodies improperly…
Violating the law of chastity is a grievous sinand a misuse of our physical tabernacles…it is easy to discern that the counterfeit companionship advocated by the adversary is temporary and empty… Your bishop or branch president is the spiritual physician’s assistant who is authorized to help you repent and heal. Please remember, however, that the extent and intensity of your repentance must match the nature and severity of your sins—especially for Latter-day Saints who are under sacred covenant…The doctrine I have described will seem to be archaic and outdated to many people in a world that increasingly mocks the sanctity of procreation and minimizes the worth of human life. But the Lord’s truth is not altered by fads, popularity, or public opinion polls. I promise that obedience to the law of chastity will increase our happiness in mortality… When I still believed in the Church this was definitely a major factor in why I remained inactive for years and never got married in the temple because I felt like I would have to confess to the bishop in that case and I really didn’t want to in addition to having lingering doubts about how likely it was that some of the Church’s demands like tithing would ever pay off for me even if I tried to do what they expect. I always thought to myself maybe some day I’ll go back to the temple but right now I already have enough to worry about without needing to deal with this. The recent “Mormon advantage” poll where a relatively small number of active Church members admitted to having sex before they were married compared to other popular churches makes me wonder how many actually successfully go through the Church’s recommended repentence process versus how many never confess and how many are basically done and gone from the Church at that point at least emotionally if not physically as well.
[Admin Note]: This thread is NOT about the Law of Chastity. We have plenty of threads about that topic in our archives. It is about unresolved sins. If anyone wants to continue the topic of unresolved sins, that is fine. If it starts to turn into a thread about the Law of Chasity, it will be locked.
Ray, I understand your concern here…yet i think DA’s comments are about something deep in the past that hangs over him, and it has prevented him from moving forward. the problem is that the only problems that fit in this category are sexual in nature…no other sins seem to merit seeing a “spiritual physician” to use Elder Bednar’s words. And that’s the problem.
Without going into details, I’ve done some really awful things in my life — or at least i think they’re awful. i went through the twelve steps, inventoried them and confessed them to another person — not LDS. it helped a lot to do so. confessing liberates, but confessing to a “judge” seems to have the opposite effect. As part of my early journey in the 12 steps, i also confessed to my bishop some (not all) of my indiscretions…he put me on probation, which was testimony-destroying, fir i had already had a powerful spiritual experience liberating me from guilt: God had already forgiven me.
DA, to you: there is no sin that god cannot forgive if you humbly draw near to him/her. none. i say that with certainty, not because i have any idea who god is, but rather, i have experienced that grace directly and powerfully in the midst of my afflictions. there is no man on earth that can do what god did for me.
wayfarer wrote:Ray, I understand your concern here…yet
i think DA’s comments are about something deep in the past that hangs over him, and it has prevented him from moving forward…the problem is that the only problems that fit in this category are sexual in nature…no other sins seem to merit seeing a “spiritual physician” to use Elder Bednar’s words. And that’s the problem…Without going into details, I’ve done some really awful things in my life — or at least i think they’re awful. i went through the twelve steps, inventoried them and confessed them to another person — not LDS. it helped a lot to do so. confessing liberates, but confessing to a “judge” seems to have the opposite effect. As part of my early journey in the 12 steps, i also confessed to my bishop some (not all) of my indiscretions…he put me on probation, which was testimony-destroying, fir i had already had a powerful spiritual experience liberating me from guilt: God had already forgiven me…DA, to you: there is no sin that god cannot forgive if you humbly draw near to him/her. none.i say that with certainty, not because i have any idea who god is, but rather, i have experienced that grace directly and powerfully in the midst of my afflictions. there is no man on earth that can do what god did for me. Thanks wayfarer, I appreciate it; I am already basically at peace with my past actions regardless of whether others think the way I handled this situation was wrong or right, it just bothers me to repeatedly hear the idea that I should supposedly feel really bad and ashamed about what I did in order to truly “repent” and also let local priesthood leaders decide what the best thing to do is in cases like this when I couldn’t disagree more not just for my own sake but for other Church members in a similar situation as well. For one thing these local leaders are not well-trained counselors, they are basically part-time unpaid amateurs as far as dealing with complicated issues that are often completely foreign to their own direct experience and they also have the added disadvantage of being specifically instructed by the Church that pre-marital sex is much more serious than it looks like it really is based on the typical actual real-life consequences (or lack thereof). That’s why my advice would be that it’s generally a bad idea to confess about anything like this to local Church leaders because no matter how much they are sincerely trying to do what they think is best they have basically been set up and put in a position to quite often end up doing much more harm than good in cases like this.
Old-Timer wrote:[Admin Note]: This thread is NOT about the Law of Chastity. We have plenty of threads about that topic in our archives. It is about unresolved sins…If anyone wants to continue the topic of unresolved sins, that is fine. If it starts to turn into a thread about the Law of Chasity, it will be locked. To be honest I don’t see what the problem is here. I understand the idea of not wanting to derail a specific thread and go off on some tangent unrelated to the original topic. However, in this case it seems like the whole point of this particular temple worthiness question is the general idea that some sins are so serious that they cannot be quietly left behind and effectively resolved on your own so even if they are no longer an issue you should supposedly still confess them to local priesthood leaders and face possible Church discipline based on their judgment before you can really feel like they are in the past and honestly say that you deserve to be in good standing with the Church.
Well some of the most common examples of what most local Church leaders would include in this category of especially serious sins are easily fornication and adultery. What else could Church members typically be excommunicated or disfellowshipped for? Possibly breaking the law beyond basic traffic and parking tickets whether prosecuted or not, domestic abuse, open apostasy, abortion, and a few other things would be included as well but it still seems like a fairly short list of general categories. So it looks to me like enforcing the Law of Chastity and what Church leaders think is sufficient punishment for the most glaring examples of disobeying this traditional standard is actually a major part of what this question is all about in reality if not the single most significant aspect of this question in terms of the sheer number of Church members it applies to.
There was no problem with your comment, DA. I didn’t say there was. The admin note simply was a reminder to keep the discussion focused on the topic (unresolved sins and confession of them) and not turn it into a thread that is SOLELY about the Law of Chastity. None of the subsequent comments has done that, so the discussion is continuing.
Also, just to say it, there are plenty of things that could constitute unresolved sins that are not part of the Law of Chastity – which is why the question is worded in an open-ended way. Just because the Law of Chastity probably dominates the percentage of responses doesn’t mean other things don’t exist – like habitual dishonesty, abuse of various kinds, recurring theft of various levels of severity, grinding the faces of the poor, etc. The fact that most of the other things don’t come to mind in our culture illustrates issues in our culture – and it also illustrates the wisdom of the actual interview question being as broad as it is. The issue, imo, is not the existence of unresolved sins (things that keep me from being godly, in my own definition), since all of us have those things in our lives, but rather the question of which of those sins need to be confessed to another mortal.
That determination is where things get really messy – and where leadership roulette comes into play.
wayfarer wrote:
Without going into details, I’ve done some really awful things in my life — or at least i think they’re awful. i went through the twelve steps, inventoried them and confessed them to another person — not LDS. it helped a lot to do so. confessing liberates, but confessing to a “judge” seems to have the opposite effect. As part of my early journey in the 12 steps, i also confessed to my bishop some (not all) of my indiscretions…he put me on probation, which was testimony-destroying, fir i had already had a powerful spiritual experience liberating me from guilt: God had already forgiven me.I went through a similar experience with my Bishop. In my case, I quickly realized that he didn’t know very much about alcoholism. There was no action on his part because of the length of time involved.
As we were finishing up the interview, he began to tell me things (rumors) about some of the current members in our Stake. I wondered if he was going to betray my trust too. It can be tricky confessing to a lay ministry. I considered him a good friend too. You never know.
Wayfarer, it is good to hear your voice on this forum again.
Since sin is a construct of most religions I have no need to confess anything. In fact I do not believe in sin at all, just consequenses. I may confess to someone I hurt and ask their forgiveness in the healing process, but never would I confess anything to a church authority. My daughter is an active millenial aged mormon, the past 6 years she has been in multiple Young Adult wards, some on campus others off and has decided that save murder only she is keeping her stuff to herself. She has watched leadership roulette and ecclesiastical opinion wipe out many of her friends. Some leaders are so lax, others are so hard line. In her last ward most of her peers couldn’t take the sacrament. It was crazy. She said she heard from one friend that 3 months was the base line for repentance seekers. Pretty quickly everyone got the idea – Don’t give the Bishop any info. I for one think we need to serious overhaul of the questions.
well we can’t overhaul the questions, but in my impression, we can interpret them maturely. in your case, which with i agree, is there anything in the past that i haven’t covered? have i committed murder? no. done. Mike wrote:There was no action on his part because of the length of time involved.
Length of time is an interesting factor.Why would length of time, but no “healer”, make a difference to bishops? I think it is because it would give time to show you didn’t succumb to the worst fears that others have about sin…such as a sip of tea will be a gateway to taking things into your body and eventually taking meth and ruining your life, or breaking the law of chastity will lead to children out of wedlock or a sex addict lifestyle in the worst way.
When you have made a mistake, but you’re still a good person over a long time, and still do really good things with your life…does that mean it wasn’t a sin?
What’s the difference between letting time be the healer, and the priesthood leader being a healer?
Heber13 wrote:Mike wrote:There was no action on his part because of the length of time involved.
Length of time is an interesting factor.Why would length of time, but no “healer”, make a difference to bishops? I think it is because it would give time to show you didn’t succumb to the worst fears that others have about sin…such as a sip of tea will be a gateway to taking things into your body and eventually taking meth and ruining your life, or breaking the law of chastity will lead to children out of wedlock or a sex addict lifestyle in the worst way.
When you have made a mistake, but you’re still a good person over a long time, and still do really good things with your life…does that mean it wasn’t a sin?
What’s the difference between letting time be the healer, and the priesthood leader being a healer?
There was no
actionbecause of the length of time involved. I take that to mean that the BP didn’t impose a “punishment”, like telling someone not to take the sacrament for x number of months or something similar in nature. I get the feeling that the punishments are meant to instill godly sorrow to bring about repentance. If significant time has already passed and a person hasn’t sinned in the interim some leaders may take that as a sign that the person has already repented, making any punishment moot. My point of view is that confessions are for when people need to reach out to an ecclesiastical leader for help in overcoming sin. For me the question might as well be:
Do you need the lord’s help with any other thing in your life?
Confession should be a healing process where sin is killed off by an increase in love shown toward the person that’s suffering. For the record I don’t feel like confessions are requisite – at least not in the sense that certain sins
requireconfession. Our relationship with the lord is personal, we need to feel and know that we are all squared away in the eyes of deity. Some people may need an ecclesiastic leader to tell them that they are forgiven before they can feel completely forgiven. I think we are our own harshest critics, I believe that the ideal is to get to a place where we can feel forgiven without requiring a 3rd party. Worse case, a person feels forgiven but local leadership decides to punish harshly anyway during the confession. The message is mixed, the person might doubt their earlier feelings of being forgiven. Better stop there before I get too far off topic.
😳 Too keep this within topic, the purpose of the question is to identify what there are or are not things for which confession is deemed by the interviewee as necessary. A TR interview is not the place to have that confession. The ideas of how long ago a given event occurred has more to do with the broader topic of “Church Discipline”.
The bottom line is this: if you actually feel like you need to confess something, don’t do it in a temple recommend interview. Do it ahead of time, or realize that you don’t need to do it at all.
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