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AmyJ wrote:
there is a good chance that if people in the community knew where my testimony was, they wouldn’t speak to me – let alone be my friend.
I sincerely hope that this would not be the case. like you, I play my cards close to my chest testimony wise. I do so because I fear that orginizationally some might misidentify me as a threat. Since I am not a threat, keeping my head down prevents needless conflict. I believe that Mormons can tend to let their guard down around other believing Mormons. There is just so much shared experiences that make developing friendships easier. I also believe that individuals that might know of your doubts might be a little more guarded around you because they may take your doubts about certain topics as a threat to their own beliefs. This can make things more awkward than they used to be.However, all of what I have desciribed above is not the same as defriending and receiving the silent treatment. I would hope that our community would respond better than that.
Roy wrote:
However, all of what I have described above is not the same as de-friending and receiving the silent treatment. I would hope that our community would respond better than that.
I would hope that our community responded better than that. One of the blessings in my life is that we are in a small branch – they need us. People know who they are and they seem to love us.
But for me, part of this faith process has been to mentally began to plan how to join/form other communities in case it doesn’t work out.
mom3 wrote:
GC is a week away. The web is rife with rumors. Most of them totally bogus. So…what is left to change?Thus far,
- church hours
- home study
- temple program
- mission rules
- seminary
- quorums
- classes
- death rituals
Your thoughts?
My thoughts on a few of the current changes:
Church hours – I think this is working. Except. Eliminate SS. Perhaps combined meetings once a month, or less like on a 5th sunday.
Home Study – I hate this. So far it seems to be more of a way to get a correlated curriculum of mundane-ness into my home. Used to be I could leave this at church.
Mission rules – This is big on my mind as I have an early returned missionary. My nephew got his call recently and tried really hard to be excited about his mission assignment. It may have even been genuine. We really need to see more options for missions. Service. Internships. Options in length. Let’s move away from the pure proselytizing model. I think that is broken. And it’s breaking our kids. I just heard an example of a mission president in South America that is completely ignoring the new communication protocol the church just released. That mission president should be released and sent home early.
Some things that I’m hoping to see:
1) Remove WoW from TR. Teach the principle of moderation and good health practices. Let us govern ourselves without the public obedience shaming.
2) Change missions (see above). Make them truly voluntary. Let’s go back to celebrating these kids when they go and return (with apologies to the late Elder Packer)
3) Allow temple sealings following civil ceremony without the mandatory 1 year wait period. Let’s start including families in our marriages instead of highlighting the “haves” and “have-nots”. Allow Elders (or Sisters) to officiate at weddings if you want a religious aspect in a civil ceremony (otherwise bishops time could get even more scarce). I officiated a non-denominational religious wedding for a friend of mine last summer. It was awesome!!!
4) Lets make garments special and spiritual again. Wear them only when going to temple or to church on Sunday. Like the WoW principle above, let’s teach modest principles and let people govern themselves.
5) Let’s make church open to all. Let’s be better with LGBTQ+. Let’s be better with long hair for boys, short hair for girls, beards, tattoos, earring holes, shirt colors, suits, dresses, etc. Let’s celebrate diversity and reduce conformity.
6) I’m no fan of BYU, but the Honor Code has to go. The expectation of college students being held to a behavioral standard in excess of what is required to have a TR is ridiculous. Add in the culture of “tattling” this whole HC thing is toxic.
7) Enough of the army style volunteerism. Or I also call this “make-up service opportunities.” Members cleaning the church needs to go. The worst calling in the church currently is the poor schmuck that has to coordinate the chapel cleaning. Weeding and planting the temple grounds needs to go. Assigned temple endowments and sealing sessions need to go. Can we not look for service amongst the poor, weak, lonely, aged, disabled, ect?
Let’s even out the male/female dynamic. I don’t know if this means priesthood “restored” to women, or if it means moving away from gendered callings, but women need more of a voice in the church. 9) Let’s focus on weeding out and replacing Pharisaical behaviors. This perhaps in inherent in all my other changes. But I think it needs a focus from the top down and the bottom up. This culture is toxic and hurtful. I think it’s one reason people leave the church. It’s hard to live an impossible standard.
Hoping for these things will probably lead to perpetual personal disappointment. But I intend to follow some of these whether or not they are mandated (particularly #9).
Rumin8 wrote:
Church hours – I think this is working. Except. Eliminate SS. Perhaps combined meetings once a month, or less like on a 5th sunday.Home Study – I hate this. So far it seems to be more of a way to get a correlated curriculum of mundane-ness into my home. Used to be I could leave this at church.
I like these ones! Bouncing back and forth between SS and EQ/RS every other week is annoying. Is there really any reason for the EQ/RS to have to meet apart from each other? Let’s just do SS every week or EQ/RS every week! Of course, that would throw off their correlated plan, so we’re stuck with the system we’ve got until they feel like we’ve done it long enough that they’ve seen a return on investment (however they might quantify that return).
The RMN Presidency has been an important step forward. He hasn’t changed anything that I would call major, but by all these small and rapid changes, he has introduced the idea that it is OK for the Church to make changes. This helps get us out of the mode of “we have always done it this way, so we will always continue to do it this way and don’t ask any questions.” I suspect that we won’t see any major changes any time soon, but I believe that people from this point forward will be more accepting of even major changes. Hurray for everything Rumin8 said! I’m glad there are a lot of changes happening. I’m a bit agnostic on some of them, and there are others that are clearly long overdue, including a few that haven’t been addressed really yet. The temple changes are a huge improvement, although a bit late for me, and I fear they’ve kind of subversively doubled down on polygamy with some of the wording, but it’s hard to tell if that was the intention (“new and everlasting covenant”).
Anyway, I think fixing early morning seminary is high on my list as well as dropping the honor code (and accompanying toxic tattle tale culture). If they want to relax WoW, which seems to be some kind of wet dream of the disaffectosphere, they won’t announce it. They’ll just quietly remove the question from the TR interview and that will be that. They aren’t trying to poke the old codgers in the eye with a stick (who’ve been living it their whole lives). Changes to the garments would also be welcome, but they’ve been making changes there, experimenting with designs and fabrics. The real issue is that they are not women’s underwear and are unhealthy for women in many significant ways (varying based on time of life, climate and the woman’s own genetics). You really can’t fix that without ditching the instruction to wear them 24/7, and again, the way to change that is to quietly quit reading the instruction.
The real issue, IMO, is that we’ve lost our way on what the unique Mormon take is on the gospel. There were some consultants in the 80s that said “Wow, that message on families is really resonating in a positive way with the public,” and it was! But it somehow became the whole message and completely eclipsed the gospel in the process, merging with the GOP-mindset of our leaders and turning into some horrific culture wars BS in which we have to get women back into the kitchen and gay people back into the closet. The church is starting to see (decades later) that this was not a good path, but I doubt they fully realize the root problem. The worship of the family was always an idol, not on point with the gospel. We are proud of our great families and our temple sealings, which is fine, but it really got out of control.
Looking over people’s ideas, I have suddenly become VERY curious as to what the Church will look like in 200 years. Look how much has changed, and the Church hasn’t even been around for 2 centuries! I wonder if we’d even recognize it. As I was reading through this post, I was wondering, Is there a downside to some of the changes? Has the Church membership been able to absorb & understand the changes made to date?
Are they ready for the BIG ones that maybe coming in the future?
For some, this is a BIG test.
Minyan Man wrote:
As I was reading through this post, I was wondering, Is there a downside to some of the changes?Has the Church membership been able to absorb & understand the changes made to date?
Are they ready for the BIG ones that maybe coming in the future?
For some, this is a BIG test.
I saw on facebook a lot of negative, scared or opposing reactions to the two hour church block due to fear of not obediently or exactly following the new Sunday school lessons that were presented for home use. So even something that I personally saw as a miracle others have seen as a curse.
If something radical such as gay sealings were revealed not only would it strike hard with all the believers against gay marriage, but it would require temple sealers to be open minded and willing to seal gay couples, which would likely be a massive challenge. so I ponder the consequences of these changes both how they will affect us but how we would react to them.
The one change that I have scoffed at as being utterly ridiculous is a relaxation of the WoW. The only persuasive argument I see is that it is a huge block for winning new converts (although not as big an obstacle as chastity, and I don’t see that going anywhere). So maybe on that premise there could be some relaxation, but the church is loath to give up control in general. We shall see. hawkgrrrl wrote:
The one change that I have scoffed at as being utterly ridiculous is a relaxation of the WoW. The only persuasive argument I see is that it is a huge block for winning new converts (although not as big an obstacle as chastity, and I don’t see that going anywhere). So maybe on that premise there could be some relaxation, but the church is loath to give up control in general. We shall see.
The problem I see with the word of wisdom is
1. The name itself vs how we treat it. A word of wisdom is advice that could be beneficial to follow. It’s not a commandment, rule or requirement like other commandments have been presented. Yet this word of wisdom is treated as though it were a word of commandment.
2. The do not’s are blurry; different apostles have given different opinions and even places such as BYU or temple recommends are often giving a biased perspective of a blurry set of guidelines. We all seem to agree that “Hot drink” means coffee / alcoholic drinks. And tea is evil, except herbal tea. But we don’t always talk about things such as using illegal or other people’s medications. And then sometimes people think soda is evil. Lots of detailed trivial confusion.
3. The do’s are almost never mentioned, or done so vaguely. Excercing and caring for your body is important, but I personally haven’t heard much of that being emphasized. Moderation in all things is part of the word of wisdom. Not just “don’t have too much sugar” but also “don’t overdo physical excesize”. The open interpretation is a blessing in my view, but a curse when someone in authority has the final say in what it means.
grobert93: I’m not arguing that the WoW should be kept. I’m scoffing at the idea that the church will go there. I don’t see them tackling it. If they do, the one compelling reason is to lower the bar for entry to the church by removing something that is really just indefensible anyway. There’s really nothing inherently wrong with drinking coffee or tea except that we say you can’t. hawkgrrrl wrote:
There’s really nothing inherently wrong with drinking coffee or tea except that we say you can’t.
There are some pretty good health arguments against them, insomnia being one of the milder ones.
If they lift the ban, I’m not going back to drinking these.
grobert93 wrote:The problem I see with the word of wisdom is
1. The name itself vs how we treat it. A word of wisdom is advice that could be beneficial to follow. It’s not a commandment, rule or requirement like other commandments have been presented. Yet this word of wisdom is treated as though it were a word of commandment.
This is very much the same as we treat modesty and other things. I suppose at its heart it’s an argument about the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law. As a people we tend to take things that are meant to be sort of vague and open to interpretation and attach rules to them. Hence hot drinks become coffee and tea (but not hot chocolate or herbal tea) and modesty becomes no cleavage, shoulders or knees (unless you’re male and then almost anything goes). In my own mind I see no difference in this and what the Pharisees did in trying to make sure everybody obeyed.
DarkJedi wrote:
grobert93 wrote:The problem I see with the word of wisdom is
1. The name itself vs how we treat it. A word of wisdom is advice that could be beneficial to follow. It’s not a commandment, rule or requirement like other commandments have been presented. Yet this word of wisdom is treated as though it were a word of commandment.
This is very much the same as we treat modesty and other things. I suppose at its heart it’s an argument about the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law. As a people we tend to take things that are meant to be sort of vague and open to interpretation and attach rules to them. Hence hot drinks become coffee and tea (but not hot chocolate or herbal tea) and modesty becomes no cleavage, shoulders or knees (unless you’re male and then almost anything goes). In my own mind I see no difference in this and what the Pharisees did in trying to make sure everybody obeyed.
For sure! Look at the sabbath day and how depending on who you ask you will get an different answer to how they perceive keeping the sabbath holy entails. Even the law of chastity, while pretty straightforward, has been extended to include all sorts of guidelines that are treated as strict rules.
Which is why I hope for a clear stance on having open interpretation so we can rely on the spirit and our relationship with God to determine what He would deem appropriate for us.
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