RWW - This one's for you!

... and for the rest of those who have been wanting to hear from me again. Thank you all for your concern, your prayers, and your support. For better or for worse, I have found that blogging specifically to a Mormon audience is utterly not worthwhile. The Mormonism of today has its truth already, and is not looking for any innovation whatsoever. Innovation would separate it from mainstream Christianity, and favor with mainstream Christianity is that which the Saints of today most deeply covet. Strong words, perhaps, but true: If not individually, then collectively.

I am forever the heretic because I believe that Jehovah is the Father, as Joseph Smith did, and because I side with Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff on certain issues which, according to Bruce R. McConkie, implies that I "have the intellect of an ant and the understanding of a clod of miry clay in a primordial swamp" and that I "do not deserve to be saved." Why won't "our" apologists apologize for statements such as this?

(Side note: 2,555,000,000 years old. Hmm.)

And yet I believe! Well, I believe in something, and my beliefs are deeply intertwined with Mormonism. They may not be the Orthodox religion, but they are Godly, or, if they are not, then I have been deceived. But, I choose to believe that the Holy Ghost I have felt is real, that the answers to prayer I received about Joseph Smith are true. But I am not part of mainstream Mormon culture. They look at me funny. I scare some of them. They just don't know how to deal with me. And the more I endure, the more sick I feel when I hear their teachings. I mean their pet teachings, their naive teachings, not the truth. When they preach the truth it is still sweet, but the other things, the naive assumptions and philosophies of some of their most prominent men which they have blended with the gospel offends my spirit in subtle ways, and I would rather be in an environment more facilitative of my spiritual growth.

Is this selfish of me? I'd like to help them grow. I'd like to pitch in and teach, but I can't. My teachings are not permitted. So I feel saddened by it all.

If you like my posts, my thoughts, and want to hear more from me, or speak with me, please consider reading and commenting on my Masonic blog: Lodgical. Nearly everything I write there and elsewhere has personal religious significance to me. Even the articles I write for other organizations. If you have comments or questions to share with me of an overtly Mormon nature, or just want to chat, please contact me directly by email at jeffREMOVE_THIS_PART@storago.com

I want to talk. I have very little religious fellowship now. I am currently accepted as a sort of sojourner ("on the path") in the Jewish community, but that is not a place to deeply discuss my Latter-day Saint beliefs.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

A Just and Loving God

Doing some digging in the Journal of Discourses, I found something so close to the very line of thinking that made me give Mormonism a chance in my life, and was instrumental to my conversion, that I feel I could have said it myself (and I have said more or less the same to many people), JD Vol.26, p.313, Moses Thatcher, August 28, 1885:

If every human being who has, or ever will live is to be judged by the law of redemption as Christians believe, and there be no repentance beyond the grave, how then shall infants and heathens who never heard of Christ or his law be redeemed? To say nothing about the dead what is to become of the four hundred millions of Chinese now inhabiting the empire of China, who do not, and in all probability will not in this life, know anything about the Gospel? What about the two hundred and eighty million followers of Mohammed, who, like the Chinese, have never heard of water and spirit baptism? Then think of the billions who have died equally or more ignorant of these vital questions, and tell me that God intends to mix them up with infants a span long, who died without being sprinkled by some poor, narrow-minded priest without authority from heaven, and I will tell you that I don't worship that kind of a God. Christians may do so, and speak of him as bodiless and passionless; he certainly would have no passion either of justice or affection. The God we worship is full of compassion, justice and love. Hence the broad scope of His plan of human redemption, reaching the living and the dead, in time and in eternity. I can comprehend how a demon might want to consign to eternal punishment without a hearing, without law, His creatures, but how men can pretend to worship a God possessed of such attributes is a mystery.

This is why Mormonism is the only practical Christian religion, in my opinion. No where else within the vale of Christianity do I find a God who is truly Loving. It is either Mormonism or Nothing, and after some experience, I determined that Mormonism is the truth, but that is something that has to be learned by each of us through the Spirit. No other Christian religion has any ground to stand on if they cannot answer the simple dilemma put forth above in a satisfactory manner, and even if they were right, and their God would send millions to Hell for such a petty reason, I would gladly be thrust to hell with them than be eternally under such a monstrosity as they believe in.

Misunderstood LDS Temple

Although I totally dig the Temple, I think the ever increasing trend to Mainstream the Church has created a strange and unnatural dichotomy. The difference between the "Sunday" Church and the Temple is so stark and vast that I believe it actually hurts many who go through the Temple for the first time, or even every subsequent time.

The Church has worked hard to present itself as a mainstream flavor of popular Christianity, perhaps as a way to gather converts (or maybe as a way of appeasing the populace of Utah who are born into the system unwittingly), and in so doing, it has cast aside (if not altogether out) many of the doctrines that mark our distinctive theology and enlightened understanding of the after-life.

Steps have been gradually taken to modify the Temple Ceremony in order to minimize the impact, but they are in a tough bind: The Temple contains eternal, unchangeable ordinances. Straying too far off the mark would invalidate them. So only miniscule and gradual changes are made here, where the rest of the Church can be recast to fit any Public Relations need by publishing a few new Sunday School manuals, and merely omitting the interesting (offending) parts.

I do not believe this is a deliberate attempt to throw off the Restoration, but that cultural differences and generations of born-in-the-covenant members have failed to receive the further light and knowledge which was had by their grandfathers. They are making a sincere effort to do what they believe is right, to retain members, to gain converts. But anyone who studies Church History soon learns that the official histories of our day are like Fairy Tales compared to what has actually transpired.

The funny thing, I think, is that if the modern Converts, with the aid of the Internet, could start deciding what would help them, instead of those born into the Church, we would have far less cover-ups. I, for example, am a convert. In the process of investigating the Church, any thinking young person would naturally study it the same as any school subject - that means turning to Google.com for many, and we become painfully aware of the Cover-Ups involved in history. But, those who do, and yet join anyway are not ashamed of the things being covered up. The cover-ups themselves are what we see as shameful, and cause more harm than the doctrines, history, and practices supposed by the "Molly Mormons" to not be faith-promoting.

Give us the meat. Everyone knows that the meat must be eaten before the milk (dairy) or a meal isn't Kosher. Don't give us the pearls before swine line. We aren't swine, and take offense at being considered unclean animals. Meat is presently not given at all, it must be sought after on the Internet and in old books.

If the Church would embrace its "strangeness", and encourage study of things like the Temple, in a respectful manner, many valuable preparations could be made by studying the Old Testament, or extra-biblical Jewish histories and commentaries, for example, which would make the Temple a comfortable and spiritual experience for the first time patron.

The focus should be on converting people instead of getting converts. Getting a convert is nothing, if they are only going to fall away or feel uncomfortable upon future study and research, and feel betrayed by misleading statements received in their "youth" in the study of the Gospel.

I was reading several people's anonymous comments on the Internet about their reaction to their first Temple experience. It is extremely plain to me that numerous people go through the Temple, tolerate it, and due to peer pressure are prodded to lie and say that they enjoyed it. It gnaws at their minds and they either deal with it until they become numb to it, or some time, maybe years later, they fall away.

It just shouldn't be that scary. The answer isn't to make it less scary by altering the ceremony, it is to make it less scary by teaching and preparing people for the experience, by gaining true converts to begin with. If they feel more comfortable being a Protestant, let them BE a Protestant. We don't need them occupying space in our chapel if they are not interested or open to the Fullness of the Restored Gospel and if they are preventing those of us who are truly there to Fellowship, Worship, and Learn, they are stumbling blocks to the Saints.

That may sound harsh - But rather than throw them out, lets try to really convert them.