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Tom, does your truth have to be my truth in order for it to be actually "true?"
I mean, how can you really know the full story until you've shuffled off your mortal coil and found out how right I was all along?
I understand being bother by the claims of others. I too prefer it when people say "I think" or "I believe" instead of "I know." But I also can't gainsay when someone says that they are certain. They are. Fine. Given the same events I might not be as sure as they are, but what have I got to go on there but a feeling?
Even if you studied this night and day, you couldn't possibly resolve the issue even to your own satisfaction, I suspect, let alone the satisfaction of a believer.
Also, calling it delusional is not helpful. Belief without evidence is the essence of faith. And matters of faith are not even worth disputing, as far as I have ever been able to tell.
Sadly, we humans tend to fight wars ofver them.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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And back on topic, since I really have no grasp of the organization of your church. I wouldn't assume you could volunteer for leadership positions, though I'm not sure we are both defining those as the same thing. How far out does "calling" extend? We did a lot of charity work through the church, building houses, running soup kitchens, stuff like that, are you called for that type of thing as well?
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For service, there is usually a service coordinator in both the Relief Society and the Priesthood quorums. They find the opportunities (like in soup kitchens and such) and yes, people volunteer for the actual helping body count.
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hi, aj! only just got back into town last night. all my online time over spring break was devoted to winning mafia. Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Celia, I think that volunteering or someone suggesting a name can definitely influence callings extended by the bishopric. I have seen it happen more than once, and I think it is a very good thing. But the decision ultimately lies with the bishopric, as does responsibility for that decision in the Lord's eyes. They do their best to seek to know God's will. We give them our trust in that matter.
On a side note (lest you worry that our leaders are given full, absolute reign) if for some reason the person in authority is not worthy of that trust, the reasons for that lost trust would be brought to someone in a higher authority and they would be responsible to decide what needed to be done about it.
I do not know much about how this actually would happen because I have not personally ever been involved in such a situation. Others here on the forum may know more than I.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:The bishop clarified some things in Relief Society.
He said sometimes there are definite clicks in the brain and heart - this person MUST go here. And sometimes...it doesn't really matter. There are some people that don't feel right, but there's a pool of jobs that need to be done, and a pool of people that need jobs, and he matches them up. He was apologetic while telling us this, as in "Please no one rest your testimony on your bishop's ability to listen." but that does make sense. In terms of decisions in our lives, sometimes it matters terribly what you do next, and sometimes whatever you want to do is fine. Even when it comes to spouses, some people report have practically an angel tell them this was the one, and for other people, the Lord said, "Sure. That's what you want, then go for it. That'd be fine."
Yep. This makes things a little messy and complicated sometimes (see some of what happens in the Doctrine and Covenants related to callings), but in the end it works. It's another one of those tensions that I harp on -- another thing that allow Mormons to believe that God is interested in and does influence our actions here on earth, but also preserves agency. There's no zero-sum game where it's all either God or it isn't (okay, actually it is on a macro level, but don't know the mind of God so trying to establish patterns from all the anecdotes and how they fit into the overall themes [justice, mercy, progress] is quite impossible). Neither is it some tally board -- this calling went right (check) this calling went horribly wrong (check) that we can check at the end of the day to see if us Mormons are ahead [althought this discourse is not absent from Mormonism].
The beauty and the problem of this whole thing -- and indeed of how Mormons approach truth(s) -- is that our subjective experiences, the anecdotes are what we have. We generalize from those. And I'm not saying that those generalizations are wrong -- I do believe that God directs this church and people although I also understand that let's us do a lot on our own as well (with mixed results) -- but I do think that it becomes difficult to *prove* anything about Mormon theology and the structure of the LDS Church by relying solely on rational arguments i.e. look at how great these results are, the Church must be true -- or -- doesn't this particulare way of doing things make a lot of sense? (it does, but how well is it implemented?), etc.
Of course, teleological thinker that I am, I think God wants these tensions to exist. There's a reason for him wanting us to rely on our subjective, personal experiences/testimony. That reason is rooted in the nature of who we are [his spirit children fused with motral, physical flesh stuck in a temporal sphere] and what we're here to do [gain godly attributes]. Obviously because of the subjective, wholly personal nature of our interactions with God, there need to be tempering elements -- thus science (our senses), scripture, community [the Church], families, leadership structures, official discourse, etc.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Amka, “minister” can be any Christian, since we believe every member is (should be) in ministry. “Clergy” is the most generic term for an ordained person. “Pastor” is someone appointed to serve a church. “Preacher” is often used, but somewhat inaccurate, since preaching is only a part of the duties of a clergyperson. “Pastor” can be used as a title or a noun – I answer to either “Pastor Dana” or, more formally, Rev. Williams. We also use “Bishop” as either a title or a noun.
Kat, I was trying to point out a similarity, not a difference.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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dkw: Thanks. I always appreciate it when you clarify aspects to the Protestant tradition that most of us LDS (myself included) aren't very clear on. We, of course, tend to want to emphasize our differences, to claim unique status. I think there are many very unique things about our theology, but there are also many areas where how we cast that uniqueness in relation to other Christian denominations isn't quite right.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I've been typing this, but had to get my daughter off to kindergarten. I'll finished and then see if there have been other replies to answer.
The BIG answer is that there is no logical resolution.
That is what I learned from Tom.
I crawled all the way back through my assumptions and realized that I could never KNOW this in my life. I would have to die first.
Therefore, there must be a leap of faith.
So I prayed:
I don't know if you exist, but my concept of you is good. I believe the concept of a good and caring God is more beautiful than the concept of no God. So, I want to believe in you. I'll follow you, regardless of your existance. Take this offering and perfect my understanding, if you can, please. Fill in the gaps of my weakness. Help me do good despite myself.
There was little comfort in this, knowing that I must act without knowing, and risk weakness. But this is my truth. It is not rational because by nature, it cannot be.
So this is the other truth: Rationality is cold and meaningless without faith and wonder, compassion and love.
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Sorry that I missed your other question, kat. Look here for what I wrote a while back on revelation / God's guidence in UMC beliefs/practice.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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In my ward we have called several persons who are not members of our church to serve in the scouting program, and they have accepted willingly and perform their jobs better than a lot of the dopes in our ward.
***
And guys, we need to leave Tom alone about this. I honestly feel that Tom, in his own way is having a mighty struggle in an attempt to find God on his own terms. I hope he suceeds. I doubt he will.
Posts: 1481 | Registered: Mar 2003
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"Tom, does your truth have to be my truth in order for it to be actually 'true?'"
Yes. Or it's not actually truth. That said, I love Amka's approach, and kind of wish I were capable of it.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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See, I've decided that truth isn't immutable. Or rather, it doesn't need to be. On some level, it must be, but not in the realm that we normally live in.
The important thing is to find what you can use and accept and not get all wound up in whether people are right absolutely in what they believe and what the say about it.
There's a point at which some people become insufferable in their attitudes, but that's not the fault of their truths either. It's the feeling they get when they ponder their particular truth.
When we accept things that much bigger than ourselves, and make it part of us, sometimes it just sort of busts out in an ugly mess.
Oh well. That didn't make a lot of sense. But it's what I believe.
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I think you're defining "truth" as "idea which is valuable." The problem I have is that there are lots of ideas which I think are more or less valuable which may or may not be actually TRUE. And if you value truth as a concept in and of itself, that inevitably reduces the "net" value of the associated idea. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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What if you decide that the truth is unknowable in our lifetime? Does that stop you from exploring the valuable ideas?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Faith is illogical. Few in this life are going to believe in God unless they want to believe in Him and put effort into seeking Him. He said many, many times, "If ye seek me, ye shall find me."
Many people in this world are like the apostle Thomas who would not believe until he had physical proof. After he saw, he believed. The Savior acknowledged his belief. The Savior also said that those who believe without seeing are blessed.
I do not know why having faith is so crucial to God and His plan. I have some ideas, but mostly I just don't know. He tells us in the scriptures that it is important, so I believe it is. I believe it is part of our mortal "test", especially since I believe that before this life we all lived with God as His spirit children and had a sure knowledge of Him.
I think there are a lot of people like the above posted comic, they want proof, but what kind of proof? If they had it, would they really change their lives? I think that may be one of the reasons that we have to really want to have faith and work for it. If we didn't we might not be very motivated to live according to our understanding of a universe with a God and divine laws.
Only God knows our individual cases and our desire (or lack thereof) to find Him. He could easily prove His existance if He wanted to. But He doesn't. So either He doesn't exist, or He has a very compelling reason for wanting us to find him through faith rather than proof.
By the way, I believe that faith is based on evidence. I don't believe in "blind faith" (faith w/o evidence), I think it is an oxymoron. I think that we can start out just desiring to have faith. Assuming the desire is genuine, if we seek to have faith I believe we will be given the evidence we seek--in God's way and in God's time.
I totally understand why many people have no faith. I particularly feel for those who desire to have it and get stuck between that desire and the hesitancy to trust without firm evidence.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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"Many people in this world are like the apostle Thomas who would not believe until he had physical proof."
In all fairness, given that the percentage of the faithful in this country is something like 94%, I'm not sure you can use the word "many" here. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Celia, think of evidence like what is used in court. You can have evidence for a case and evidence against a case. A jury decides if something is proved. Thus Tom's statement, "The jury is out."
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I am that doubting Thomas. I care more about the truth than anything else. Ever since I can remember I've just had to understand everything. I want to know how things work. It was extremely frustrating for me before I understood how everything worked to the limit of what we know. For instance, other people seem satisfied with knowing that if you tell THIS to a computer then THAT happens, but it bothered me that this was no explanation. So I learned about computer languages and software, only those were based on assembly language. So then I learned how it worked, and there was this magic thing called an instruction decoder. It had a firmware base. Then finally I learned in electronics about how flip flops and transistors worked, and I already knew physics from earlier studies, so finally I realized why computers do THAT when you tell them THIS, is simply because the laws of physics are true.
That bottoms out on the question, WHY are the laws of phyics the way they are. Which gets into metaphysics. We can speculate about the whys, and we can invoke the anthropic principle, but the truth is that we don't have a satisfying explanation yet for why the laws of physics are the way they are. That trail stops there.
Yet it's satisfying to understand all the intervening levels. I feel as though I do understand why a computer works, now.
I went into such great detail to explain how I am a doubting Thomas, yet I came (very late) to see that God does exist. What happened first is that the people I most admired in history were religious. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and so on. No problem, though, since I just decided they were naturally wonderful people who happened to have a rather odd brain quirk in this area. Next it turned out that the people I admired most that I knew in person were mostly religious. Again I dismissed this as being an anomaly.
Finally, though, I realized that someone I admired, who seemed to be so much happier than I, able to spread so much enthusiasm and joy around him, who always had attention and care and love and happiness left over to give away, when so many of us were just hungry for what attention and love we could get from other people, who just glowed with life, who seemed to have a fantastic loving family life, and just enjoyed life so much, that this person understood something about living that I did not. Then I took the truly extraordinary step of taking his simple word for where all that extra joy came from.
So I decided to try praying, unbeliever that I was. I prayed, and was prayed for. I got stuck over one thing, but my friend brought me a C.S.Lewis book that showed me a way past the sticking point. I just honestly sought whether it might be true, with a true thought that it was possible, and then I received confirmation. A little at a time. I took one step toward God and He took two steps toward me. Gradually the way rain melts a mud house, my understanding grew.
Now I have no doubt at all of the existence of God. God proves to me over and over that He exists, that He watches over me and guides me and thinks of me always. That He loves me greatly. Far more than I think I deserve. In fact, when I decided to give my life to Him, I laughed bitterly at what a pathetic revolting gift that was.
Over time, He exalted that gift and gave it back all beautiful and shiny and glorious, even, though I blush to say it. Gave it back so I can give it again, this time without the bitter laugh, this time with the feeling that it's a gift that's worth something. And so it spirals ever higher.
Wow, I totally didn't intend this to be a testimony post, but that's what it's turned out to be. God lives. I, Thomas, know it to be true.
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I guess I don't understand the purpose of this type of trolling. For some reason, lying about religion seems so much skeeveier than lying about other things.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I think it is because religion to us, is based on sincere belief. So insincerity is the ultimate betrayal in the way.
Even when there is bickering and church splits (in non LDS churches) most of the time it is because people sincerely believe even trival things that they should lay aside in the interest of harmony. But no one for the most part on either side doubts sincerity.
In the interest of disclosure, there have been splits in the LDS church - the big one was when Joseph Smith's widow did not go west, and they formed the RLDS church with Joseph Smith's son. But yeah, I think just about everyone was sincere.
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I’m going to be extremely cynical, and suggest that if one were interested in attacking a particular religion, pretending to be a member of it and then acting in a way that is less than attractive might be a subtle way of going about it.
Fortunately, as I’ve said before, there are too many intelligent, articulate, and gracious LDS members of Hatrack for such a technique to be particularly effective here.
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