Just check out http://www.snopes.com for glurges.

Here’s one of my favorite heart-tugging and faith-promoting stories, which I think is actually true, by female evangelical minister Beth Moore:

http://www.proclaimhisglory.org/html/lesson_with_a_hairbrush.html

Some may call it a glurge, but it is also so “mormon-y”. And I take her at her word in relating that story. From my experience, such things are very plausible.

–

Seth R: “I say insensible, and often incomprehensible things all the time.”

After all, that’s your job, what you get paid to do.

Obviously, you haven’t read enough of my stuff. I say insensible, and often incomprehensible things all the time.

The truth of actual events can often be so outlandish, that no fiction is needed.

In fact, the prophets wrote in the scriptures, and Joseph Smith reiterated, that there is much more truth, and many more mysteries that God wants to reveal to us, but

a) we aren’t living up to the truths that have been revealed so far, and
b) we just aren’t ready to receive more, as evidenced by our frequent whining and excuse-making about how our personal situations exempt us from prophetic pronouncements.

I’ve done plenty of both a) and b).

I think there’s _relatively_ little that the Lord gives to the modern church as a whole. What is given to the church as a whole might be a least-common-denominator thing, tailored “to the weakest of the saints.”

I think the “higher mysteries” are given by the Spirit on a one-on-one and one-by-one basis.

the real issues was that I read you wrong. You actually said: “informal myth” and I read (and typed back) “informational myth”.

Reading your response confused me so I went back and re-read without my dyslexia this time and what you said made sense the 2nd time around. Thanks for the further explanation. Guess I won’t be winning my own $10 any time soon.

I think we strengthen our faith and the transmutive power of one’s faith community to stay relevant to new generations by keeping ourselves always firmly rooted in Bible myth to provide context, both powerfully positive and powerfully defeatist, for our spiritual experiences and stories. Does that make sense?

JFQ,

What do you mean by “informational myth?” Are you talking about, say, deciding the earth is only 6,000 years old or the like?

Not a bad idea, John. On the other hand, I think this should be done in the classroom at all phases of teaching history too and it’s not done there either, or at least was never done for me. I think this is a serious short coming with the way we teach history all the way up to the college level (for general ed anyhow).

Hawkgrrl,

I like your approach of letting them form their own alternative narratives rather than making up a fictional one like I did here.

As far as Sunday School, I think it would be helpful the first Sunday of the year to have a brief discussion about the trickiness involved in historical sources, from everyone’s point of view. That way it wouldn’t need to be addressed every Sunday, but a good teacher should lay a good foundation, I think.

You pose a good question. The problem is that you don’t normally quote a source in a story of the nature you are talking about because the source is “private conversation with Johnny” which doesn’t really help much.

What do other’s think of sharing such stories? Again, I have no issues with them. If I know them to be false, of course I’m against sharing them. But if they are honestly believed to be true by the speaker to the best of their knowledge, I have no issues. How could you share anything if you had to have 10 eye witnesses and a notary public before you were allowed to say it?

A related question is “what about those movies the Church makes where they use actors to portray converts.” I was interested in finding out that the people in the movie that actually testify are always slotted to be believing Mormons. The actors (who aren’t Mormon) are always written to not bear testimony.

In answer to your question, Bruce, when I teach RS, I do like to bring up these alternate viewpoints, and I do so all the time by talking about how “believers” or “we” view these things, and then how others have viewed them. The reason I like this approach is that it helps people start to understand better where people are coming from and to empathize (a little bit) rather than to just judge. I find that reinforces faith.

Excellent example. It’s so easy to come away with such different understandings.

Carlos U,

No worries, this post may not be for you.

But it had to be hypothetical for the point to be made. This post isn’t about a certain historical event, it’s about history itself and why it’s difficult to draw conclusions from it and how that affects telling stories like this for inspirational reasons.

This speaks to quite a difference in the modern world-view that, from both a believing and critical POV, prefers to present or evaluate the experience from a more physically-grounded-time-and-space.

The Antis today even clamor “Show us the plates! Show us the plates! Or any archeaological evidence, and then we’ll believe.”

Seeing the plates didn’t work in the past, and it won’t work in the future.

And there are dozens, well over 100, archeaological and historical discoveries that lend credence to the Book of Mormon, yet they are all discounted and disbelieved.

The “silly faux-Jewish/Hebrew” names in the Book of Mormon have turned out to be real Jewish names that no one knew about, and were only discovered relatively recently in the Old World. The discoveries of pallisades and moats around ancient New World cities.

————

I tell a lot of stories about my encounters on my blog. Isn’t it obvious, and doesn’t it go without saying that I’m only telling my side of it? Wouldn’t the people I encounter have a different viewpoint or take on the very same event?

I remember one encounter that I wrote about, where the other guy said first that he wanted to visit our church. Yet, later on as he told of the enounter to someone else, he said that I invited him to church.

If I were to give every little detail, it would go more like this:

He: Where’s your church? I’ll ride my bike there.

Me: Here’s the address (on the flyer inside the book). But, it’s a bit far to ride a bike from here. Would you like me to give you a ride?

He asked for the address and expressed his desire to visit before I offered him a ride. So did I invite him, or did he invite himself?

And even my quotes above are a paraphrase, as I remember them, and not verbatim. The question is, now does one summarize? How do you create a “small plates” version of the actual events. How do you take the halting, informal and incomplete sentences that we use in normal conversation, plus the body-english, inflections, and tone of voice, and convert it all to printed readable English ? Aye, there’s the rub.

Dan, I agree with this point. Herein lies the problem. History is primarily about the present, not the past, especially when we are passing along inspirational stories to understand ourselves better. Sunday school, in my opinion, is not a good place to start talking about how iffy historical sources really are. Sunday school is a place to be inspired by a “true” story (“true” at least in the sense that it was really told this way and they claimed it was true).

Thanks for commenting.

Don’t worry, John, I’ll fax that $10 right over to you! Trust me.

Please mail me the $10. Cash only, please.

“Likely, they simply would discount his testimony and give weight to his rejection of Joseph as a prophet.” and ” think it is also stretching hypotheticals to add the last half of that statement”

You’re right, of course, Ray. My real point was that it was a bit too good to be true and I having fun when I wrote it. Guess this proves you actually read the whole post. One of these days I’m going to slip in a statement about owing anyone that reads this line $10 if they email me to see how many people actually read really long posts like this.

Excellent post and questions, Bruce. I agree with just about everything you wrote – at least the points you made. Just to nit-pick:

The following statement is a bit of a stretch –

“If it really happened exactly the way Elder Turley tells the tale, why didn’t the mobbers all ask for baptism, or at least tar and feather John Whitmer?”

I don’t see either of those reactions as real possibilities. If John Whitmer was willing to deny the truthfulness of the Church organization, while holding on to his testimony of the existence of plates (particularly with writing he couldn’t read), I don’t see how his associates would have felt any desire to be baptized OR punish John Whitmer. Likely, they simply would discount his testimony and give weight to his rejection of Joseph as a prophet.

Also – [Losing his cool and a little worried about his own testimony]

I think it is also stretching hypotheticals to add the last half of that statement. I don’t read anything in any account that justifies such an insertion, and I think it weakens the overall point just a little.

Those are small things compared to the overall points you made.