Mormon Matters » babies and bathwater http://mormonmatters.org A weekly podcast exploring Mormon culture and current events. Wed, 23 May 2012 22:28:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 2006-2007 dan.wotherspoon@me.com (Mormon Matters) dan.wotherspoon@me.com (Mormon Matters) 1440 http://mormonmatters.org/podcast/MormonMatters144.jpg Mormon Matters http://mormonmatters.org 144 144 http://www.mormonmatters.org/rssmm.xml A weekly podcast exploring Mormon current events, pop culture, politics and spirituality A weekly podcast exploring Mormon current events, pop culture, politics and spirituality mormon, lds Mormon Matters Mormon Matters dan.wotherspoon@me.com no no This Won’t Make It Past Correlation! http://mormonmatters.org/2008/10/08/this-wont-make-it-past-correlation/ http://mormonmatters.org/2008/10/08/this-wont-make-it-past-correlation/#comments Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:40:39 +0000 John Nilsson http://mormonmatters.org/?p=2186 Hi everyone,

Welcome to my new series where I provide you, the reader, with an excerpt from an LDS church manual, uncited, which I LIKE. That means no Journal of Discourses nonsense like blood atonement, racism, or Adam-God for starters. (Sorry to disappoint some of our readers with that caveat).

You can guess if you want, such things as the author (the Church used to have individual authors stand behind their words), the title, the era, or which church program the lesson was used in. But that’s all trivia, really, compared to this: You get to list ALL THE MANY REASONS why the excerpt I give you wouldn’t make it past the Correlation Committee today!

Here’s our first one:
Young people sometimes doubt the truth of the Gospel or some part of it, and feeling the worthy desire to be sincere, they cease to be active in the Church. The answer to them is to be sincere always. One must never violate one’s integrity, whatever it may cost. But must one believe all or nothing? Must one cut off Church participation-the great source of righteousness in one’s life and in the community, because there is some doctrine doubted or disbelieved? Rather, is it not wisdom to begin, not with doubts and faults, but with the simple truths and virtues one can believe, then move on from there to others? Surely no one would claim to know all the Gospel. Great truths are always just around the corner for those who seek. Jesus told us to knock, seek, and ask, not just once, but continuously. One step at a time applies to progress in the Gospel as it does to education or any worthwhile achievement. One is not a hypocrite if he has honest questions and is active in the Church at the same time. The leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would offer this suggestion:

Start where you are. What do you believe? Start with that and take it as far as you can down life’s highway. Another truth will meet you at nearly every bend in the road. God has never intended that an honest mind should be humiliated or made unwelcome in the Church by any other member because of honest inquiry. Above all, keep the virtues of integrity, sincerity, and genuineness. Nothing else can be right in a man’s life if he is not sincere.

Go for it (here’s a hint regarding the author:)

]]> http://mormonmatters.org/2008/10/08/this-wont-make-it-past-correlation/feed/ 43 Feeling Comfortable at Church http://mormonmatters.org/2008/08/17/feeling-comfortable-at-church/ http://mormonmatters.org/2008/08/17/feeling-comfortable-at-church/#comments Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:50:08 +0000 Stephen Marsh http://mormonmatters.org/?p=1143 Recently someone noted that the covetous feel comfortable at church. Indeed, neo-Calvinists tend to embrace the doctrine that you don’t need to choose between God and Mammon — if you worship God he will deliver Mammon. They tend to think Christ was just a little bit befuddled. They often embrace a “style of their own” and complain if they are not fully welcomed outside of special clusters of believers who understand that, perhaps, if she is wealthy enough a young women’s advisor should be expected to wear trendy clothing, perhaps with see-through shirts and no bra, usually baring her midriff and diamond stud.
But what about those who do not feel comfortable at Church?
I’ve known those who stayed away from the Church because they felt that the smell of tobacco they brought with them was not welcome enough. Indeed, there have been sermons on how we should embrace members with problems with the word of wisdom, helping them return to full faith and fellowship and helping them overcome, though I’ve known a number of members who felt that rather than helping them overcome the Church should just embrace coffee and tobacco, a little ice tea, a small amount of daily weed. In fact, some areas have had approaches that embraced all or portions of that list.
And we all know people who feel that the Church would be just fine if they would give up on home teaching and loving each other. Or just close all the Temples. Or just drop that claim to authority. Or that claim that Christ is the way, the truth and the light, that no man comes to the Father, but by him.
Every issue in the Church has the potential to be divisive. Christ noted that when he said that he was not come to send peace, but a sword, dividing people, families and groups over his doctrine. Not only is having any doctrine divisive, it is very easy to underestimate how divisive doctrinal changes can be. Especially in our Church, given how smoothly the change in extending the priesthood went.
I have dispute resolution as a kind of hobby, or I did (you can visit http://adrr.com/ to get a feel for what I used to do). A major part of the community is the Mennonite organization and those who practice healing congregations and Churches. Some of the best trained and experienced people, dealing with some of the most liberal churches they knew, engaged in more than a year of conciliation efforts on some issues that we discuss regularly on Mormon Matters. They were stunned at the lack of progress they made.
Not that people do not continue to try. Not that they do not continue to fail. In the Anglican Communion, for example (all of the various forms of the Church of England, a Catholic, though not Roman Catholic Church), they recently had a schism that took a majority out of the mainstream of the communion (so to speak. If a majority schisms, are they out of the “mainstream?”). Over forty million members are in the schism. Several other denominations have had similar experiences over gay issues.
We’ve had a pope express that the unusual pedophiles in the Roman Catholic Church are really just an expression of American clergy issues. (Most pedophiles target pre-teens of the opposite sex. Those who target same-sex 14+ year olds are extremely rare and a different pathology). That the statement occurred in the context of discussion AIDS spread in cloistered communities, the transfers of male priests with their life companions and the general acknowledged celibacy exception for homosexual priests in the United States Catholic priesthood is probably not a coincidence. Was he correct? I don’t believe in papal infallibility — and it would not apply to that sort of off the cuff remark anyway.
What is the proper resolution of gay issues in the Church? I don’t know.
I do know that like all of God’s other children, God loves gays, they should be welcome in the Church and that Christ is there to receive them home again as heirs of exaltation. I also know from complexity studies that it is more likely than not (by an r squared of around .75) that the solution we will see will not be one that anyone in the first round of discussion has proposed.
I think it is important to stay respectfully engaged. Very important. I also think it is important to remind people in the Church of the need others have to feel loved and hopeful and of how much pain they feel. That is why when John Dehlin asked if members here felt he should post http://mormonmatters.org/2008/08/14/the-lds-church-homosexuality-and-suicide/ I told him yes — it is important to pay attention to the need to bring all to Christ and to the Church and we need to be sensitive and engaged.
Do I think every issue can be abused? Of course.
But that does not mean that we should not stay engaged, even with the neo-Calvinists, who seem to be having a hard time fitting through that eye of the needle.
Just remember, with man it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.
I’ll get my post on understanding General Authorities done and up latter. I just thought this needed to be said.
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