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mom3 wrote:
Our religion is set up that way. Here is the list, the books, the way to highlight and read them. Now go. …
Elder Bednar did a private Q & A, much like the large broadcast one, for her region. He assured them that if they stuck to the Scriptures and Priesthood all their questions would be answered. I didn’t say anything but I wanted to scream, “NO” “It’s not that simple”, but I have already shot enough holes in her heart, I decided to let it go.
E-x-a-c-t-l-y!
The religion really does get setup like a syllabus, and checklist, a path. For converts…I think they love someone telling them that there is that and it will help. For young people, some really embrace that and want that to know how to get started. For people who don’t know how to start on a path…a syllabus helps get them going. But the syllabus only takes them to a certain point and then that class is over. What does the university student do when they graduate and there are no more syllabi to tell them what to do in life???? Some are ready for that transition in life. Some find it difficult and miss the structure of university life where things are planned for them to know what to do and what to study.
It is just sad that the religion doesn’t have an advanced class. In university, you take the GE classes that touch the surface of things and expose you to lots, but simplifies it. But then when you declare a major and get into the advanced classes, you see that nothing is so simple, and it takes work and new theories to be developed, to fill the holes of what we don’t know and keep us evolving and progressing…but it is not so simple and we do not have all the answers, and you learn to still become a lawyer or an engineer or whatever, even if the work environment and life doesn’t really work the way you thought it did when studying textbooks. Getting a degree in uni doesn’t mean you know how to solve problems at work…it just means you have studied things in uni, you have tools, but you have no experience in using them.
They taught me that at BYU for social sciences and the hard sciences. Why can’t they teach that on religion?
The simple gospel truths (the milk) help us with a direction, with goals and hopes and faith. But the advanced class, the idea that you there are some unknowns still in the gospel, that at some point prayer doesn’t work, at some point you go on your own to figure things out and have faith God lets you wander and that the milk only takes you so far…that just isn’t taught in the church.
Because of that…those who are taking the gospel GE classes think that is all you need and they have false security and false expectations. They can’t accept others who think differently. Elder Bednar and others reinforce that, which causes our families struggles to work through the differences. I don’t know how to explain it to my daughter that her lack of life experience makes her current views limited. I don’t think I can explain it. I think she needs her own experiences in order to grasp it. And that will take years.
But good job for you on talking about some things while holding back knowing it wouldn’t be productive to go further. Sometimes we have to let our children learn for themselves. I think they will.
Perhaps we can try to setup a safety net, that should they ever hit a faith crisis…they can come back to us and cry and vent and ask why and we can tell them not all is lost. But let them try to soar as high as they can on their faith and not hold them back…even if we know…there is a good chance they’ll fall and so a safety net is just what we do as responsible parents.
Ann wrote:Thanks mom and Heber for talking about your girls. This is so very heavy on my mind and heart right now. I’ve been purposely vague and not truthful out in the public part of the site for privacy reasons. It was our daughter, not a son, who headed off on her mission to South Korea two and a half years ago, right as my former testimony went up in flames. She and I are very close. Maybe it’s an oldest child thing, but she’s very dutiful and black and white. She feels like I’ve pulled the rug out from under her, but she is, above all, kind.
So, day by day….
Yes…day by day, Ann. Perhaps it is the oldest child thing. Perhaps it is also the times we live, with the Internet and more knowledge and exposure and a progression that we have stumbled across deeper meanings and a broader view of the world than our parents ever had to deal with, and our kids are exposed to way more than we had to deal with at their age. And so with changing times, this is just the way things are. Religions around the world are seeing these challenges, not just LDS, and not just you and me. There is more going on here than us.Perhaps that is where we find beauty in the gospel plan. No matter what changes…early saints get persecuted, pioneers travel across the country, missionary programs go global, families move from farming to educated careers and moving around for jobs, there is the correlation movement, temples get built everywhere and the endowments move to a standard movie and translated to every language, technology used in temples and extending mission calls, there is the Joseph Smith papers and other “open” projects the church does, and on and on….no matter what changes…love in the family is still the thing that gets us through our daily lives. Staying close and loving each other, despite our world, is what it is all about.
There are people in the church (probably in every church) who just love that checklist achievement approach. Maybe they are the bread & butter of any organization. I had made the observation elsewhere that Mormonism seems particularly good at making unspiritual people religious. If they have a faith crisis, they either turn away from religion or they learn to be more spiritual and then they can re-engage with the gospel. And the other issue is that we practice a lot of Mormonolatry, worshiping the church instead of trying to live the teachings of Jesus. But again, that’s a religious thing to do, not a spiritual thing to do. Yet there are several of the Q15 who think “spiritual” means tree-hugging hippies who have no discipline, duty or respect for authority. As Robert Frost said, “We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.” mom3 wrote:As a Mom I never dreamed I would burden my child with anything like this. We both have a lot of hopes and expectations laying on the floor shattered. It may take eternity to fully restore the pieces. I did appreciate your warmth and maturity when she was here. I don’t know if our rolls had been reversed if I would have done my end as well as she did.
I totally relate to this Mom, I feel the same has happened with my children. I simply hold out hope that we can move past it, and I feel the same – it may take an eternity.
hawkgrrrl wrote:As Robert Frost said, “We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
I’m looking that up.
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