Your Bishop represents Christ

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

Quote:

Mormons have this weird habit of making statements with no basis in fact. They just spout things off that sound good to them.

Cadence, so do non-Mormons; so do you and I; so do politicians and scientists and business leaders and athletes and any other type of person on this earth.

In fact, the sentence quoted above is a great example of this. It is overly broad and stereotypical, but it feels and sounds good to you.

I’m smiling as I type this, but I think it’s important to realize that tendency in each and every one of us and avoid labeling “Mormons” or even “TBMs” with such a broad, dismissive statement.

Like apostates, wolves in sheep in clothing etc etc.

I think the important part of your reprimand to highlight, is Spock, you, myself, and most folks will admit it. Will church leaders? Will church members admit it as well? Spock, you, myself and most folks aren’t claiming to be the one and only true church with all the answers and holding the keys to salvation for every person on the planet, and receiving revelation directly from god via a prophet.

[Anonymous]

I get that, cwald, and can’t argue with it – but it changes nothing about the importance of not doing what we chastise when done by others. We simply can’t let ourselves do that.

[Anonymous]

It’s not just the Bishop that some think is the intermediary between us and God. I wonder why we need a prophet to tell us things. We have the Holy Ghost who can speak directly to us, why can’t God communicate through that and not need a prophet or an organized church? I can see maybe that those who won’t listen to the spirit could maybe use someone who will “cry repentance” like the role of the prophets in the scriptures. But why do we need a prophet, stake president, or bishop to tell us how to live if we are already trying to do right?

[Anonymous]

journeygirl wrote:

It’s not just the Bishop that some think is the intermediary between us and God. I wonder why we need a prophet to tell us things. We have the Holy Ghost who can speak directly to us, why can’t God communicate through that and not need a prophet or an organized church? I can see maybe that those who won’t listen to the spirit could maybe use someone who will “cry repentance” like the role of the prophets in the scriptures. But why do we need a prophet, stake president, or bishop to tell us how to live if we are already trying to do right?

There has to be some kind of direction given and some standard or every one trying to do right would lead to all kind of weird things and abuses worse than what all ready occurs within the LDS church or any church. Beside we need Bishops to collect the tithing and SP to encourage the Bishops to collect tithing and the prophet to allocate the tithing to buy the new malls. Malls don’t build themselves you know.

[Anonymous]

church0333, as funny as that comment is, malls also aren’t built with tithing funds.

Admin note: This thread is NOT about tithing or malls. The threads about the City Creek project were shut down because they got too contentious and ended up with scripture bashing and name calling. That won’t happen to this one. It’s off limits for this thread. Period.

[Anonymous]

As much as Church’s last comment made me spurt Mtn. Dew from my mouth across my computer screen, I will refrain from commenting further. 😆

journeygirl wrote:

It’s not just the Bishop that some think is the intermediary between us and God. I wonder why we need a prophet to tell us things. We have the Holy Ghost who can speak directly to us, why can’t God communicate through that and not need a prophet or an organized church? I can see maybe that those who won’t listen to the spirit could maybe use someone who will “cry repentance” like the role of the prophets in the scriptures. But why do we need a prophet, stake president, or bishop to tell us how to live if we are already trying to do right?

“On own now” had some great thoughts on Bishops as administrative necessities:

Quote:

The bishop, however, is a “Judge in Israel” (http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testam … 4?lang=eng). I see that in this way: The bishop has the responsibility to ensure that the members of his congregation are properly qualified to participate and officiate. For example, the bishop is the first line of defense regarding who can enter the temple; ensuring that the person has sincere intent to worship God and not to desecrate it. In that same way, if a person in the congregation had a problem with stealing, he or she should probably not work in the clerk’s office, until they can get that resolved. So, I look at it as honesty between the person and the church, not between the person and God. If a member of the congregation has a serious fidelity problem, he/she needs to work that out with their spouse. If they want forgiveness from God, they need to involve God. But in addition, propriety and sincerity would dictate that the penitent man/woman would go before the bishop to allow the church to determine if that changes the penitent’s standing in church. I think it rightly belongs to the church to decide whether such a person should continue to teach sunday school, or operate as the primary president or YM’s president. In other words, there are two aspects of repentance that we normally conflate: 1) personal righteousness before God and 2) worthiness/preparedness/commitment to receive the ordinances of the church and act as a principal in the church. IMO the bishop has everything to do with the latter and nothing to do with the former (except the opportunity to provide guidance and help if desired by the individual).

I’m OK with that because I view the Gospel and the Church as two separate and distinct entities. Jesus said, “Render under Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” At the risk of blasphemy, I’ll say that, to me, this passage fits perfectly here. The church gets to decide its own rules of decorum… so, think of the church as Caesar, but forgiveness is between God and us.

The church has a leadership hierarchy for organizational purposes. If the church didn’t have an organizational structure we would soon come up with one to fill the vacuum. Whose job is it to pay the electric bill?

[Anonymous]

I think Christ was perfectly fine meeting in small groups on a hillside or at someone’s table. I don’t think the gospel requires huge church buildings and endless administration.

My most fond church memories are my little branch meeting in a living room and having a lunch after.

[Anonymous]

The title of this post is a good example of a religion trying to make people good Mormons rather than good Christians. In other words, good organizational members rather than simply good people.

The good news is this — I scanned the Table of Contents of the Lorenzo Snow Priesthood Manual and discovered only a small portion of the topics of the lessons (titles) were about making us good organizational soldiers — many of them were simply about being good people. I did find the inner wording of the lessons themselves were often peppered with statements like the opening post’s Subject line – or at least, statements that were about organizational loyalty etcetera, but the titles were at least in the ballpark of pointing to good character.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

The title of this post is a good example of a religion trying to make people good Mormons rather than good Christians. In other words, good organizational members rather than simply good people.

The good news is this — I scanned the Table of Contents of the Lorenzo Snow Priesthood Manual and discovered only a small portion of the topics of the lessons (titles) were about making us good organizational soldiers — many of them were simply about being good people. I did find the inner wording of the lessons themselves were often peppered with statements like the opening post’s Subject line – or at least, statements that were about organizational loyalty etcetera, but the titles were at least in the ballpark of pointing to good character.

Hmmm?

I haven’t read any of the manual. Haven’t been to SS or PHM since May 2011…two years now. Wow…

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