Author Profile: Andrew S
Grew up in a military family, but didn't pay much attention to military stuff. Still, it has a way of stickin' with you, so I've got a few different experiences there.
I'm a lifetime member, but also one of those terrible heathen disaffected mormons you've probably have heard about (or, if some people would have their way with definitions, one of those terrible and rude anti-Mormons you've heard about). Mormon culture has probably been the most constant thing in my life though (remember, military means changing scenes, but correlation makes the church familiar everywhere), and it still plays an important role in my life, so I hope you'll find I'm not too incorrigible. I run the blog called Irresistible (Dis)Grace.
I won't bite.
Author Archive for Andrew S
This is a question I just had for everyone…because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this blogging, it’s that people have such widely differing relationships with Mormonism. I’ve taken for granted that people are looking for the same “things” from it as I was/am, but that is not the case.
So, my question is: what is (or was) your relationship with the church and Mormonism? (I asked this question on my blog too, and there were a few answers.) What purpose did it/does it serve…what do you look for (or what did you look for) from it?
To give an example of what I’m trying to think about, let’s take three different people, whose positions I hope I have correctly surmised. These types aren’t meant to be comprehensive…I just had three people in mind.
Person A:
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I’ve always taken it as a given that Mormonism’s view of the afterlife shuffle has always been more universalizing than most of the other alternatives. Our formulation of heaven intuitively accommodates for the varying levels of understanding people can achieve in this life and in the spirit world: instead of a binary — heaven and hell — we have glories of heaven. So, we can safely say that although most people aren’t Mormons, most people won’t go to “Hell,” or at least, not the kind of Hell that many non-LDS religious people want to posit for nonbelievers of their religions. Regardless of people’s disagreements with the particulars of exaltation for the celestial aspirants, things actually look pretty good for the rest of us non-celestial people.
That being said, we do know that there is a divider between the glories and the non-glories. We have that ominous concept: Outer Darkness. But what does it mean? Who is it for? Continue reading…
Could God evolve?
As part of a discussion group, I have been reading Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God. My group isn’t anywhere near finished (the “heart” of the book focuses on the three major Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — yet we’ve only finished through the part on Judaism that sets the stage for Christianity), but as I blogged about on my personal blog, I already have concerns about the arguments that Wright presents.
Some of my comments, however, may not necessarily apply to Mormonism. For example, Wright seems to rely on this idea of a God that can evolve. The big issue is that many believers are constrained to believing that God is constant and thus ineligible for evolution. However, Mormons — through ideas like eternal progression — may not have that reservation (depending on whether or not eternal progression is “in” or “out” of the theology du jour.)
So, what does Wright say?
A few days ago (depending on when I get to publishing this), we had a rather lively discussion about Elder M. Russell Ballard’s Engaging Without Being Defensive. Batman highlighted one line in particular from Ballard and then the discussion went from there. Later on, he (that is, Batman, not “the church” or anyone like that) decided (and everyone’s been commenting about this decision) that he wasn’t satisfied with the tone and direction of the conversation, so he took down the discussion, as well as its comments.
Look at my name under the title. I am not Batman and don’t speak for Batman. His reasons are his own, and I’m sure plenty of people may still respectfully disagree with his decision. Rather, I would like to use this opportunity (if my fellow bloggers will let me) to take a look at a different message that, interestingly enough, also came from Ballard’s discussion, and which I find to be quite relevant to past events.
So, it seems that some of the other sites in the Bloggernacle have already sidebarred something about this little article from the New York Times about the Prosperity Gospel. A few lines from that article:
“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like those worn by C.E.O.’s.
…
Stephen Biellier, a long-distance trucker from Mount Vernon, Mo., said he and his wife, Millie, came to the convention praying that this would be “the overcoming year.” They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line, Mrs. Biellier said.
They say the Copelands rescued them from financial failure 23 years ago, when they bought their first truck at 22 percent interest and had to rebuild the engine twice in a year.
Around that time, Mrs. Biellier first saw Mr. Copeland on television and began sending him 50 cents a week.
Others who bought trucks from the same dealer in Joplin that year went under, the Bielliers said, but they did not.
“We would have failed if Copeland hadn’t been praying for us every day,” Mrs. Biellier said.
Err, odd. Continue reading…
A while back on my blog, Seth R (usually of 9 Moons fame) posted a lengthy and detailed comment about the deficiencies of liberal religion (particularly of a hypothetical liberal Mormon denomination) and also the deficiencies of our current orthodoxy. I took a stab at part of his comment in a post on my blog, wondering if it’s possible for the church to be complacent.
But there was another curious (if bold) comment he had made…he points out how he feels in certain areas he hasn’t earned his morals, and that many members aren’t “earning” their morals. If one isn’t truly “earning his morals” from following guidance like the Word of Wisdom or the Law of Chastity, then how do we avoid or move past simply practicing a modern and vain form of legalism?
In the church, it seems to be a written rule (or perhaps it’s just one of those pesky unwritten orders of things) to use the King James Version or if we are part of those communities, the Joseph Smith Translation (or Inspired Version) of the Bible. Or maybe it’s not a rule at all, but since the KJV is the one with all the neat footnotes, Bible Dictionary and topical guide references, then if you want to make researching easier when you have to write a talk, that’s the one you use.
And translation accuracy is very important to us. After all, we have an article of faith devoted to it.
We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
But even with this 8th article of faith, it doesn’t necessarily preclude the use of other translations. And it certainly doesn’t preclude any other official translations from the church.
First, Happy Independence Day (yay)!
…so I was digging through classic Mormon Matters and found Clay’s discussion asking: how much does church activity has to do with being Mormon anyway? He opened with something interesting:
Not so long ago, when I would hear about someone who didn’t go to church at all or have any interest in returning would refer to themselves as Mormon, I would be annoyed that they still identified themselves that way. I used to see being Mormon as a choice, as a religious path, and if you aren’t choosing it then you only make a bad name for the rest of us… or so I felt at that time.
I was excited…a post aimed at me! Yet later (the very next sentence), he writes:
Yet, it seems there is something deeply cultural about being Mormon, especially those raised or at least members from a young age.
Actually, we will begin with verse 28, but I don’t want to copy and paste everything…so I assume you all have scriptures (or can follow along with the link I provided). But I want to directly quote a few scriptures.
32 Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.33 And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.…36 Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither must ye lay aside your faith, for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good.37 And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.38 But if ye aneglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.40 And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the atree of life.…
So there. Let it be known that it’s untrue that we never use scriptures on Mormon Matters.
In an ideal world, we would like everyone to be members of the church (actually, this is just a generalization that I’m going to write just so I can have an introduction to this article). Ideally, we’d like them to be faithful members of the church who sustain the prophet, live great lives, enjoy their lives and find purpose with their lives that match up with the Gospel. In an ideal world.
Unfortunately, Liebniz was a little off the mark. We live in a good world (again, if you disagree, please just go with this one so I can have a snappy article)…but not the best of all possible worlds. So, now, we have to play a game of compromise. If you couldn’t have someone get everything and more from the church, what one thing would you want anyone to get from the church instead?
I was reading BCC the other day, and I came across this post that just seemed like this tremendous threat to me. I know John C had nothing in mind and really, I’m just writing this for the melodrama, but as an ex-mormon atheist, it seemed to hit close to home. John just had it out for those militant atheists, but I guess they do enough to deserve some of it.
I wanted to make a qualification and…perhaps…a defense…of what he lambastes as a “consumer model” of religion…especially since recently on my blog, I’ve been talking about the need to find one’s philosophical “fit” (and others have written about similar issues).
Part of me wants to summarize John’s main points. The other part (perhaps that militant atheist one) wants me to tell you all to not be lazy and read that BCC post (the first link — it’s good) [partially because I'll probably botch things up in a summary and partially because I will make this post too long if I summarize here.] Continue reading…
So, the church has a lot of commandments, pieces of advice, laws, words of wisdom (both the specific one and ones more generic). You might say that the church is…I dunno…demanding?
So why do we keep up with it? Why do we persist?
So over at T&S they’ve been having this discussion about the recent media report about the majority of America’s drifiting faith issues. And I know, you’re about to say, “Dude, this isn’t T&S. We do things differently at Mormon Matters,” and I understand. And while I discussed this a bit at my blog, I most definitely know we do things differently here than there. So I wanted to try to approach the subject differently here and add some value (well…perhaps I won’t be so successful at this latter endeavor.) Continue reading…
I know my mother has better things to do at work than to forward generic Christian chain mails to everyone in her address book…my problem is I can’t convince her of that. And so, every day, I receive a treasure trove of faith-promoting Christian stories that make me — a nonbeliever — cringe.
I couldn't resist one of these
And while I ranted on my blog about how offensive I found various parts of one recently received email…I realized too that I found a strange comfort in realizing that it was just a generic Christian chain mail. This served to be one of the times when I was deeply thankful that we Mormons are a peculiar people — I realized that some of the ‘pop’ doctrines espoused in this email would be uncharacteristic for an LDS email. So, I wondered…what if we could deconstruct Christian chain mail and come up with LDS orthodox counterpoints?
So, the email, and some points to lead our discussion after the break!
I decided to spare everyone the full title of this article: Why Bearded, Blue-Shirt-Wearing African-Americans Who Support Extension of the Priesthood to Women who love Pr0n are Depressed. (And that title, if you can believe it, is actually culled from what the internal memos discussed).
I’m sure there are several writers on site who are busily searching through intellectual copyright law as I speak, so I must speak quickly before I get shut down (not to mention before the Bearded, Blue-Shirt-Wearing African Americans and Women who love Pr0n nab me for libel).
The other day, John C at BCC made another Monday Morning Theological Poll and asked: “True or False: If someone wishes to leave the church, it is because they have some grave, unconfessed sin?”
…I don’t know how representative BCC is of Mormondom as a whole, but if we can but abuse statistics for this one time, we can come to the conclusion that, overwhelmingly, Mormons do not believe such a claim. Just looking at the stats, more Mormons percentage-wise say “no” to such a claim than Facebookers hate the new Facebook design (drat, that’s a lie: Facebook’s current 93% hate [with millions of votes] tops the 91% of BCCers that say false. But if Obama’s 53% of the popular vote can be a landslide and Prop 8’s 52% can just be a “narrow victory,” then I’m game for anything statistic-wise.) I’ll add Obama supporters to the list of people coming after me. Continue reading…
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