It's always interesting reading old posts in this blog. The last couple of times I have posted, I was pretty disaffected. I guess my heart has softened some since February. I really enjoyed the March issue of the Ensign, which really collected together a lot of doctrine about Christ in one place, where I really needed to hear it. My daughter was out here a couple of weeks ago and I became kind of reconverted to the extended family aspects of the church. Which, granted, don't save us, but it's still pleasant to be a part of.

I read a run of conference talks from the October conference that seemed very shallow to me early in the year, and I just had to put the Ensign down for a couple of months. Lately I've been working on the Sunday sessions from last October, and there were a lot of really powerful talks in that conference. And IMHO a couple of clinkers, but in general it seemed like the right things were said.

I had a nice experience in the temple this evening, plus I listened to an uncut version of an NPR "Speaking of Faith" interview with Robert Millett:

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/insidemormonfaith/index.shtml

He pushes all the right buttons with me. He's open about the fact that he doesn't understand some things, but for him it's more about the process that Joseph Smith started rather than the lurid details about Joseph Smith himself.

I went to the temple with my daughter a couple of weeks ago and had a good experience. Tonight was good because there were some odd disruptions in the session that left me with a lot of time to think. I really enjoy that feeling of separation from the world I get in the temple. I remember reading (really skimming) a book on Heaven once written by Baptists with varying opinions on what it would be like. I realized that I know exactly what heaven will be like. It will be just like the temple, with people dressed in white moving about in quiet reverence. I'm coming to believe that I needed to go through a process of tearing my testimony down to the chassis and rebuilding it, in order to get rid of all the cultural mormonism and to replace it with what the scriptures actually say and what you can find the general authorities teaching. I still don't understand why some of the history happened the way it did and why the church obscures its origins so much, but I guess I just find the doctrine too compelling to walk away from. In many ways I think Evangelical churches do a better job of explaining the bible, and Anglican churches do a better job of pure worship. As a doctrinal package, though, I seem to be stuck with being LDS. It just reflects what I believe and is the best approximation I can find right now of biblical community.

Check back in a couple of months and I guess I'll be disaffected again, but for now I'm enjoying what I have.

Thoughts on President Hinckley, part 5 --

I thought this was a pretty moving testimony.

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-4-27,00.html

How different would the church be if the GAs spoke like this about Christ more often?

Thoughts on President Hinckley, part 4 --

Well, this isn't actually about President Hinckley, but I'm still going through old conference talks as a memorial, so he gets the credit/blame either way.

I listened to this one today:

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-4-19,00.html

There was something about it that bugged me, so rather than continuing with another conference talk I listened to a sermon from one of the Protestant pastors I follow.

The difference jumped out at me immediately.

His latest sermon series is on the book of Collossians, and in summary the Collossians are overwhelmed by Roman culture and the messages of "Caesar is Lord". Paul preaches the contrary message that "Jesus is Lord". The pastor's premise is that our society is just not that much different culturally from the Collossians. Nike is Lord. Cadillac is Lord. Microsoft is Lord. Etc.. We're bombarded with messages from people demanding to be our Lord, yet there is only one Lord who will save, redeem, and satisfy, and that is Jesus.

Considering President Faust's talk, who is Lord?

I think he sums up his opinion in this kind of weird quote of "Invictus":

"I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul"

Why, we are, of course. The important thing is self-mastery. We are the masters of our fate. We are the captains of our souls. We are in control. We are in charge.

I guess I no longer suffer under the illusion that I am the master of my fate or the captain of my soul. I tried that for a long time, and it didn't work. I think Jesus is a better Lord and master than I am.

As a complete aside I thought this was a particularly unusual thing to quote, for a special witness of Jesus Christ:

"I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul."

Invictus strikes me as vaguely Deist and not very Christian, but I'm no English major.

Thoughts on President Hinckley, part 3 --

As a sort of memorial I am trying to listen or read all of President Hinckley's conference talks. I guess I am giving him one last chance to try to convert me. So far I would have to admit it's not working terribly well.

I have several years' worth of conference on CD, and while I was grabbing talks for my iPod I also ripped President Faust's talks also, as I always loved his talks and his plain-spoken and gentle way of making his points.

Last night while walking I listened to these talks:

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-1,00.html

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-6,00.html

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-20,00.html

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-22,00.html

It was sort of an interesting view of the gospel. In summary the church is a large and impressive organization that requires a lot of skill and resources to manage. Primarily the gospel seems to be about my behavior. I need to be faithful and obedient and work hard to move the kingdom of God forward. I need to reach out to others and serve. I need to be a moral and spiritual person. I need to work on being perfect, which admittedly I can only completely achieve through the atonement, but there is a long list of things I need to work on.

Additionally, Bishops are caring, capable people and need to be respected and venerated as they carry out their many challenging responsibilities. More than the rest of us they are to be held to an incredibly high standard, serving not only their congregations, but being exemplary in the workplace and not letting their families down either.

By contrast, I also listened to this talk:

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-26,00.html

Now, of these people and these talks, which one is the special witness of Jesus Christ?

As sort of a postscript to yesterday's entry, I had kind of a trifecta yesterday. I listened to one of President Hinckley's conference talks, I went to an Ash Wednesday service at our Episcopal church, and I listened to a sermon from a local Baptist church while I walked in the evening.

I realized that I spent a lot of yesterday in kind of a funk, which I often do when I get drawn back into LDS church issues.

President Hinckley's talk reminded me that the church is less a congregation of worshipers than a large management training exercise for priesthood leaders. Probably the best thing the church does is to train people who can speak in public, teach classes, and run groups. After all, is BYU known for its school of social work, or for its school of management and its business programs?

The doctrines of Joseph Smith, expanded on by those who followed him, creates an organization that is really one large food chain leading to godhood for those with "demonstrated ability" and being put out to pasture in the telestial kingdom for the lesser.

I am not one with "demonstrated ability". I'm a passable speaker, but at the time of my disaffection I was the oldest person in the Elders Quorum. I'm a counselor, not a presider. When I was 1st counselor in the EQ presidency the president moved, and they called the 2d counselor to be the president. It was hugely embarrassing to me, and a tremendous lesson I won't expand on now.

If the church is really true I will always inhabit the lower rungs of whatever kingdoms are present. I will never rise in the food chain, because of my lack of "demonstrated ability". Thus the closer I get to it the darker my mood.

Despite all that I still want more than anything to belong to the church the missionaries taught me about. That vision somehow won't go away. I was talking to Wife of Bath last night, and I told her that I would go back to full activity and give my heart to the LDS church if it would only do two things: tell me the truth and let me think for myself. If it would be honest about its history and the frailty of its leaders and allow me to follow my own spiritual witness about doctrine and practice, I would go back. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

Thoughts on President Hinckley, Part 2 --

This is going to be kind of a multicultural day for me. I started out by doing my Bible Study Fellowship homework, listened to a general conference address from President Hinckley on the way to work, and I'm going to an Ash Wednesday service in an Episcopal church this evening. I should find something Buddhist to do after the Ash Wednesday service just to round things out.

Anyway, as kind of a personal tribute to President Hinckley I decided to listen to as many of the general conference addresses he gave as president of the church as I could find, and read the others from the church website. I have the October 2001 GC on CD, so I started with those.

So far I have listened to his talk from the Priesthood session and the Sunday morning talk he gave. This was the first general conference after the introduction of the Perpetual Education Fund and after the September 11th attacks.

I'm used to listening to podcasts from Protestant ministers, so the differences in content were pretty apparent. In these two talks President Hinckley doesn't really dwell on God or spiritual matters much. His September 11th talk starts on the theme of defending ourselves from evil and the sacrifices involved, and segues into fairly familiar themes of getting out of debt and self-reliance in the face of global economic uncertainty. The PEF talk was designed to boost support for that program and talks a lot about the mechanics of it and gives some vignettes of the participants.

A couple of things that caught my ear were the way he described the two men running it, John K Carmack and another emeritus GA, (Richard ?) Cook. He venerated their worldly accomplishments as an attorney and a former comptroller for the Ford Motor company and described them as men of great ability.

He likewise talked about the beneficiaries of the PEF as returned missionaries of faith and ability who need a little help to get started so they can start careers, raise families, and become future leaders of the church.

You can tell from these talks that he really judges success in terms of character. Thrift. Self-reliance. The ability to work hard. Obedience. He doesn't really describe the PEF administrators as men of compassion. He admires them as good managers and men of ability. Likewise the PEF is not about homeless people or the desperately poor. It's about returned missionaries who need a little help to become successful. Always the scorecard. Those who have, get. Those who qualify, prosper. Those who don't are like the 5 slacker virgins. Unless you make it over the line, the lifeboat with the more worthy pulls away and leaves you behind. Always the church is about venerating the successful.

The talk finished before I got to work, so I listened to a MoTab choir hymn from the same conference, "Nearer My God To Thee". That hymn always reminds me of my mother's funeral. There were six people at the graveside, including Wife of Bath and I, pretty much everybody left in the world who cared about her at all. We couldn't find a minister, we couldn't find an LDS bishop, or anybody else to conduct, so the funeral home asked me to do it. Having been in an Elders Quorum presidency and having spoken in church several times this was not a great stretch. I conducted, assigned prayers, WoB and I picked the songs, I gave the eulogy, and either the opening or closing prayer. I had the skills to do all those things because of the skills the church had developed in me as a priesthood holder.

As I pulled into a parking space I had just a few moments to reflect on the many ways I have been shaped as a person by the church and the many things I have learned. It certainly refined my character and taught me how to speak and preside in religious meetings. I have always been blessed in the experiences I have had exercising my priesthood. I would certainly not be the person I am today without those things.

I just wanted to record a few thoughts about Gordon B Hinckley.

Wife of Bath and I went to the broadcast of his funeral Saturday, and it was a moving experience. My father died when I was 17, and my mother died about six years ago. I wasn't that close to my father, and my mother was clearly ready to go home. I didn't cry at either of their funerals, and wasn't really that upset at their deaths. Both had had long illnesses, and I was just worn out by the experiences.

President Hinckley's funeral was a very emotional experience for me. He touched me deeply in many ways. His practical wisdom and gentle humor was very endearing. Much of my vision of what it means to be married comes from his relationship with Marjorie. Several parts of the funeral just made me gasp out loud in tears. One was after his coffin was wheeled into the Conference Center and they showed the First Presidency with his empty chair. Another was at the end of the funeral after all the tributes about him, when after having watched his coffin placed in the hearse, without warning they cut to a documentary of him being with the people of the church around the globe, loving them and being loved by him.

I never actually met him, but I saw him in person three times. Once at a regional conference where he spoke with Sister Hinckley and twice at the dedication of the Raleigh NC temple. In all those occasions you could tell he really wanted to speak to and touch each person individually, but time and numbers just wouldn't permit.

At the funeral they recounted his legacy. They talked about the hundreds of thousands of miles he traveled. The growth of the church. The number of temples he built. The number of temples he dedicated. His warm and folksy humor. His love for the people of the church, and their love for him. His testimony of the restored gospel. His accomplishments were numerous.

Having said all that and despite my feelings for the man personally, it just seemed to me like there was something missing.

Given all his personal accomplishments, is all this really what prophets of the Lord are known by?

What does it really mean to be a special witness of Jesus Christ?

The one thing that seemed conspicuously absent to me was much discussion about his testimony of Jesus Christ. He obviously had a burning testimony of Joseph Smith and the "restoration" of the gospel, as we tell the story in the LDS church. His last General Conference talk, his last message before being called home, was essentially a recital of the Joseph Smith story. I counted, and there were 12 references to Joseph Smith and 6 to Jesus Christ. So, at least at the end, who was he a special witness of? He recited facts about Jesus Christ in his talks, and he clearly understood the mechanics of the atonement and Jesus' role as savior. It strikes me that the primary love he always expressed was his love for the church, the "restored" gospel, and Joseph Smith. A few years ago when he was diagnosed with cancer he gave what sounded so much like his eulogy that he included a disclaimer that it wasn't. In it, in his warm personal way, he talked about the many ways in which the church had blessed his life and the inspiring people he had met and served with as a result. Any serious discussion of the nature of his personal relationship with Jesus Christ seemed particularly absent, as though the saving relationship were the one with the church, the one that prepared us for judgment, and Christ was a distant figure we only meet at the end, the one with the scorecard in his hand.

In the Baptist bible study I go to we discuss the concept of saving faith. Their definition of saving faith is an understanding that we are saved by faith in Christ alone, and works are an inevitable byproduct of that faith. Unless we truly understand that we are saved through the atonement and not as a reward for our own works, we don't understand Jesus as our savior and we are not truly "saved". At this writing I'm not totally sure what I think of that, but it's an interesting concept to think about.

During the funeral, despite the love I have for Gordon Hinckley as a person, I found myself wondering whether he really thought he was saved by the atonement, or whether in his heart he felt saved by his relationship to the church, through the doctrines expounded by Joseph Smith, and through the ordinances performed through the priesthood authority of the LDS church. Did he really have "saving faith"? Only God knows for sure.

Gordon, God be with you until we meet again. I pray you had saving faith in Christ. Give my love to Marjorie, because I'm sure that wherever you are, she is there also. The alternative would be hell for you, whether it was the highest degree of celestial glory or not. Tell Jesus how much we love him, even though we don't show it very well or very often. Help him understand how hard it is to sort all this out sometimes, and encourage him to have compassion on us sinners who are just trying to figure all this out. Thanks for everything you did for us. Thanks for doing your best to lead us down the road you thought led to Christ, even if it was a long and circuitous path at times.

The latest --

I haven't posted in awhile, so I thought I would provide a short update.

The last few entries I made here were pretty positive about the church, but since September/October I have been trending the other way pretty substantially. In summary I have been attending a non-denominational bible study, and the contrast between how other churches teach the bible and how the LDS church approaches it is stark. This bible study basically talks about the bible and Jesus and not much else. It serves to illuminate just how much of what we do in the LDS church is focused on promoting the church and reinforcing the authority of the leaders. The study is held in a large Baptist church and most of the people in the class (200+) are Baptists, yet they never talk about the Baptist church, quote former Baptist leaders, etc. Just the bible and Jesus.

One of the things we covered a couple of months ago was the concept of "saving faith", which is basically an understanding that we depend on Jesus for our salvation and nothing else. Not ordinances, not our works, etc. I can't hope to do this subject justice in the space I have here, but it again helped me to appreciate how much we do in the LDS church is designed to convert people to the church rather than to Christ. Basically other churches try to convert people to Christ and then hope they find a church. The LDS church converts them to the church first, and then hopes they find Christ.

I'm also disheartened by the way they are handling the media issues surrounding Mitt Romney and some of the uncomfortable doctrine being exposed. i.e. whether Jesus and Satan are brothers, whether polygamy actually did take place after 1890 when it was officially abandoned, etc. Rather than being upfront about these things they are resorting to mealy-mouthed PR responses which are technically correct but not really truthful. These are questions that should be addressed head on and not obfuscated.

Recently Mitt Romney said he doesn't believe God has spoken to prophets since Moses, which totally disavows Joseph Smith and every other LDS prophet. Granted he doesn't speak for the church, but I think this is a representative approach. Officially, instead of standing up for what we believe, they are trying to blur the very distinctions we should be the most proud of, if this is really God's true church on the earth.

In summary I am not in a good place with respect to the LDS church right now. I love the people. The culture is my adopted heritage. Much of the unique doctrine Joseph Smith taught may well be true. However, I have difficulty giving my heart to a church that doesn't teach what I consider saving faith and that continues to be deceptive in public about its doctrine and practices.

It's hard to say where I will be a year from now, but before, I was unsettled by my concerns. I wasn't sure what to do. I was torn between the good and the bad in the church. Now I understand why things bother me, and I can easily separate my love for the people from my disdain for the institutional church. I understand that the "restoration" merely restored priesthood authority, and I just don't think that's important anymore. I have trouble sustaining leaders at the general level who are not totally honest in what they present to the public.

Returning to the Temple --
I had a really good interview with my stake president a couple of nights ago. I re-iterated all my concerns, as well as the fact that despite all that I feel called to stay in the church for whatever reason. It's too much a part of my outlook on life to do anything different. For some reason I have been planted in the LDS church, and I feel like the right thing to do is to work out my salvation within that context rather than elsewhere. I mentioned my evolving understanding of what "worthiness" means, and how I used to think it was mostly up to me to be worthy, but now I appreciated that as long as I was doing my best I was worthy, because the atonement makes up the difference. Instead of 99% being on my shoulders, I can rely on Christ for that 99% through the miracle of grace. He told me he wished he could bottle that and give it to most of the members he meets with, who are crushing themselves under the weight of perfectionism. He felt I was ready to return to the temple and signed my recommend.


I went to the temple for the first time in about a year last night and had a good experience. Nothing really earth-shaking in the presentation of the endowment. I realized that I put the temple in a different context now. Before I went because I was supposed to, because it was ward temple night, because we are supposed to go once a month in order to more fully use the temple, etc.. It was time to cut the grass, throw on a white shirt, race out the door to the temple, race home, and get ready for the next day. I no longer subscribe to that approach. I should go from now on when the spirit dictates and not cram other activities around it.
I am very "different" in the temple, since I have a beard and haven't had a real haircut since September. I think I will progress to the ponytail stage next month, and it will be interesting to see what kind of reaction I get to that.


As I entered the Celestial Room I realized how much I missed that sense of peace that can be found there. Our temple is right next to a busy road, so you can almost always hear faint traffic noise outside. I guess that serves as a reminder of the intrusion of the world outside and the inevitability of having to make our "re-entry". For me I appreciated that the temple is truly a holy place, and temple worship is something I need to hold onto and not let slip out of my grasp again.


I guess another major difference I realized is that I don't see the temple as the only "holy" place. I am looking forward to visiting the National Cathedral with Wife of Bath sometime, and I realized also that there are probably other "holy places" in the city where I live that I have overlooked. For me, though, the temple still has a great deal of meaning.


As I sat in the Celestial Room I thought of a scripture, and went got a bible and looked it up: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%203:14-19;&version=31;
I guess that's what the temple means to me now, rather than being a "good conduct" award as I viewed it before.


All the other concerns I had before are still out there. The church oversimplifies its history to the point of being deceptive, maintains an almost cult-like reverence of its leadership, and focuses way too much on works and conformity to the point where it chews some people's self respect to pieces, when it could serve as a poignant reminder of the love of God, who gave his son as a sacrifice for sin and to exemplify what it means to lead a moral and meaningful life. Somehow those concerns seem secondary to me now, with the most important thing being working out what God has called me to do despite all those things and to live the Kingdom of God in whatever faith community I'm supposed to do that in.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Bishop's Office --
I've had a number of really positive experiences with the LDS church over the last several weeks. I was involved in a move project for a sister with no able-bodied males around the house, pneumonia, a handicapped mother, and a two-story house literally packed from floor to ceiling with dusty stuff. Dolls, fabric, books, clothes, etc.. She was using an "owner's suite" sized bathtub as a laundry hamper, for example. Clothes everywhere. I think we moved at least seven full containers worth of stuff out of that house. She was in trouble, and the ward bailed her out.
During the project one of the high priests from our ward, who happens to be a high councilman, called me aside and asked me to help give a blessing. Now, I probably haven't been in church more than half a dozen times this year and he knows that, yet he called on me anyway. I was just really touched by his faith in me and by the simple faith of the sister involved, who is going through a nasty divorce and has seven kids at home.

Then I had my PPI with my EQ president, which was likewise a positive experience, full of Christ-like concern for me and the families I home teach.

As I pulled out of the stake center parking lot I stopped to look at the temple (which we share a parking lot with), and I came to the realization that despite all my concerns about the church, I couldn't imagine not being able to worship in the temple.

I reflected back on some of the thoughts I had about the PBS special on the church.

I realized while watching that documentary that for better or for worse the church is part of my heritage, even though I'm an adult convert. The way I view religion is through the paradigms I have been taught. Tithing, sabbath observance, scripture study, the desire for true Christian community, and many other things are just part of who I am now, and I can't deny it. I was touched by many of the stories, both by Marlin K Jensen's "conversion" story on his mission and by Margaret Toscano's story of her excommunication.

For whatever reason the Lord led me into this church. I don't claim to know all the reasons why. It just is that way. I don't understand all the historical issues, the Book of Abraham, post-manifesto polygamy, etc., but despite all that I continue to feel a spiritual witness that I'm supposed to continue to be a part of it. At least for now.

Anyway, given all that I felt like the time was right to meet with my bishop to find out what the roadmap was to get my temple recommend back. I haven't paid tithing to the church in over a year, my attendance has been spotty, and I have had some word of wisdom issues, all of which he knows about. I was expecting some kind of metric I had to meet, like being fully active, paying tithing, and holding a meaningful calling for six months or something like that.
He basically looked at me and said, "do you think you're ready to go back to the temple?". I said I did. And he just whipped out the recommend book and we went through the questions. My understanding of what those questions mean has evolved a lot over the last several months. Based on my understanding of what I think they mean, along with my commitment to fix the things we both knew were broken, he handed me a signed temple recommend.

It was a very moving moment for me, mainly because of the level of trust my bishop showed me. He told me what a good person I was and how happy he was that I had reached this point again, and he actually cried. As a former Air Force pilot he told me he would be happy to have me as his wingman anytime, and from a pilot who flew in Viet Nam that meant something.
Another funny thing happened also. Since then I have had a lot of trouble getting worked up over all those irritations with the church that used to just push me over the edge. I was reading some statements of Brigham Young's just yesterday about how women could essentially "trade up" to a priesthood holder with a higher office without needing a divorce, much like you would shop for a nicer car. Things like that used to just push me over the edge, but I just can't get worked up over something Brigham Young may have said 150 years ago. It just doesn't seem relevant to me right now.

Well, this process is ongoing. I am not and will not ever be TBM again. I am probably too broken to ever do missionary splits again, or to teach Sunday School in any fashion other than maybe Elders Quorum lessons. I know too much. Although I can sustain the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve as prophets, seers, and revelators, that is probably more because I have dumbed the title down more than anything. I think lots of religious leaders are prophets, seers, and revelators. God works through lots of people and lots of churches, even non-Christian ones. If you asked me if the Dalai Lama was a prophet, seer, and revelator, I would probably say yes.
At this point in time I guess I am seeing the church sort of like a marriage. You enter relationships with people mostly on faith, and they disappoint you. Mature, committed people try to work through relationships rather than just ending them and moving on to the next one, carrying the same baggage that doomed the previous one to failure. For whatever reason I think I am supposed to stick with this and try to work it out, at least for now. Naturally your answer will be different, and that's how it should be. I recognize that many people are damaged by their experience in the church, and I am not trying to say that you are not "mature" somehow if you have decided to quit or stop participating. Only that this what I feel like am being called to at this point in time. More later, no doubt.

The Bearing of Testimony --
I got out of bed yesterday morning with the realization that I was going to bear my testimony in church.
This was a little unusual for me, since in 23 years in the LDS church I have only borne my testimony in fast and testimony meeting twice. Also, I haven't been to a sacrament meeting since about the second week in March. Nonetheless I knew that I had a message to deliver on the subject of joy.
The 1st counselor in the bishopric went first and bore a stirring testimony about the reality of God and Christ and talked about his wife being able to be in Utah when her mother died of cancer. As I listened to that I realized that I wanted to follow him, before somebody else got up and spoke about a family vacation, the knowledge that their dog was going to be resurrected, etc..
Basically what I said, to quote from a Chris Tomlin song, is "the joy of the Lord is my strength", and that joy is our birthright. Romans 8:16-17 tells us we are children of God, and if children, then heirs. If being an heir to everything God has, including possibly his very nature, is not a source for joy, I don't know what is. The problem is, we let things get in the way. Sin, materialism, and most commonly filling our lives with too many good things that distract us from being able to ponder and feel the spirit and remind ourselves of that joy that should be ours.
In summary I bore my testimony that I knew the church was true. My understanding of that was evolving, but I knew it was true. I testified that Joseph Smith was a prophet who translated the Book of Mormon. My understanding of that was evolving, but I knew it was true. More than all that I bore my testimony of the risen Christ as not only the example of perfect morality, but perfect compassion.
Of all the times I have ever spoken from the pulpit, this was probably the most "on" I have ever been. It couldn't have really come out better if I had written it out. The interesting thing was that despite feeling the Holy Spirit like a rushing wind, I was a little hung over from the night before. :-)
I rarely drink alcohol anymore because one drink is enough to give me a headache the next day, along with an upset stomache. I haven't had beer in nearly 20 years, but I was at a going-away party for a co-worker and kept eyeing the kegs in the corner. Finally curiousity got the better of me and I had two cups of beer. After that my boss immediately pigeonholed me about a change in top-level management for about half an hour, and the beer made it a lot easier to listen to him go on and on about a tedious work situation at a party.
I paid for it a little bit Sunday morning, but it wasn't too bad.
Over the last couple of months I have come to some conclusions, especially after listening to the PBS special on the church. Despite my many concerns, the Lord led me to the LDS church for some reason and refuses to lead me totally out of it. It's my cultural heritage, even though I'm an adult convert with no real pioneer heritage. The stories of Jackson County, Far West, Nauvoo, and Kirtland are my stories. The community that was functionally pushed outside the United States because of their religious beliefs and practices is my community. I look at the world through Mormon eyes, at least for right now. Having been away from my ward for over a month, even having attended another church, I miss the conviction and the sense of purpose. I miss people so moved by their testimonies of Christ that they cry over the pulpit. I don't deny the historical coverups, Mountain Meadows, dissembling statements by President Hinckley that "I don't know that we teach that", etc., but for all intents and purposes this is my church and my heritage and I can't walk away from it just yet. Neither can I be fully a part of it, because the spirit that I carried into my meetings yesterday is not totally sustainable in church. There's a real spirit of worship in my Episcopal congregation, and I could never stay away from the celebration of the Eucharist for too long. It's just too moving. For the most part my ward is in need of an infusion of worship and joy. It doesn't produce it. It's too full of tired young couples trying to manage their kids and callings and careers, just putting one foot in front of the other and slogging through the lessons and talks and trying to keep the programs running.
I come to this position especially in light of some of the interviews that were posted from the PBS special, especially http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html and http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/jensen.html. Elder Holland made some fascinating comments about how the issue of Blacks and the priesthood was handled in the past, and he acknowledged that many people have issues with the historicity of the Book of Mormon without being run out of the church. I thought Elder Jensen made some interesting comments about opening up the archives of the church to foster a second type of history. The church's area is faith-promoting history, while at the same time allowing others to pursue a more balanced approach. There is more going on here than just the correlated product that is the public face of the church right now, and I sense sort of a tacit permission to go beyond that. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. We actually spent about 5 minutes talking about the Mountain Meadows Massacre in priesthood opening exercises yesterday, so real history is beginning to slowly work its way through the membership.
Anyway, that's how it looks this month. :-)

The Smell of Death –

I make no secret of the fact that I tend to bridge the LDS and non-LDS doctrinal worlds. I find witnesses of both things. Some say I have to choose. I’m not sure I do. When I go to a library do I have to pick books by only one author, or do I have to read books by different authors from different perspectives in order to find truth for myself? You probably have your own opinion on this question, and whatever it is, if it’s right for you I won’t disagree with it.

Anyway, I’m reading the Spencer W Kimball lessons out of order and read this one this morning:

http://www.lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.b3bc55cbf541229058520974e44916a0/?vgnextoid=da135f74db46c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=9629862384d20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1&contentLocale=0


I found it very disturbing. Not so much because it isn’t true. For all I know it may be true, and I am disturbed because I have wandered too far from the undeviating course leading to eternal life.

No, I read this and was disturbed, because I knew I was dead. I think President Kimball makes it quite plain that my salvation is in my hands. Faith alone won’t save me. Ordinances won’t save me. My church membership won’t save me. The only thing that will save me is a constant and diligent attempt to perfect myself. This life is a real-world game of “Survivor”, and only a few will make it to eternal life, those with the knowledge of the restored gospel who make all the correct choices.

"The Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Savior, has given us our map—a code of laws and commandments whereby we might attain perfection and, eventually, godhood. This set of laws and ordinances is known as the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is the only plan which will exalt mankind. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the sole repository of this priceless program in its fulness, which is made available to those who accept it."

"The treasure house of happiness is unlocked to those who live the gospel of Jesus Christ in its purity and simplicity. … The assurance of supreme happiness, the certainty of a successful life here and of exaltation and eternal life hereafter, come to those who plan to live their lives in complete harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ—and then consistently follow the course they have set."

“We are deeply grateful that we have his definite promise that where there has been sin and error, they can be followed by sincere and sufficient repentance that will in turn be rewarded with forgiveness.”

“The glorious thing about the whole matter of repentance is that the scriptures are as full of the Lord’s assurances that he will forgive as they are full of his commands for us to repent, to change our lives and bring them into full conformity with his wonderful teachings.”

“Why will only a few reach exaltation in the celestial kingdom? Not because it was not available to them, not because they did not know of its availability, not because the testimony was not given to them, but because they would not put forth the effort to pattern their lives and make them like the Savior’s life and establish them so well that there would be no deviation until the end.”

Of course I can repent, but in my case repentance is like bailing out a leaky rowboat with a teaspoon. I can’t repent fast enough to keep up. I’m short-tempered and self-centered at times. Times? Like when the second hand on the clock is moving. I provoked a fight with my wife last night just asking what time she wanted to leave for church and trying to take her car out to fill it with gas for her. That phrase "sufficient repentance catches me up. We are taught that true repentance means to forsake the sin and turn away from it. Returning to the sin is evidence that repentance wasn't sufficient. We are commanded to change our lives in "full conformity" to his teachings. I've been trying for 23 years, and I still can't do it. At the pace I am going I would need to live to be 300 to get even close, and I don't have it in me.

No, if I have to do this on my own effort, I am lost indeed. Jesus may have marked the path and showed the way, but I am buffeted about too much by my own short-comings to be able to reach the gate and enter in to his rest.

I was actually planning to attend my ward today, but after this message I couldn’t. Attending my ward would have been like throwing two more cinderblocks to someone who was already drowning. I went to our Episcopal church instead, where one of our readings was this:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians%203:3-14;&version=31;

Imagine this. Even Paul, the super-righteous Pharisee, wasn’t good enough based on the law. He felt what qualified him was his faith and his willingness to share Jesus’ suffering and to press on. Maybe I can do that. Maybe I can throw myself on the grace of God and rely on Christ’s merits, and so win the prize and eternal life.

For those who can be like President Kimball and do it on their own, I’m happy for them, much as I glory in the successes of athletes in the Olympics. For the rest of us, thank goodness we have Jesus.

Worldwide Training –
I need to say in advance that if you’re not LDS much of this is probably going to go over your head, because you don’t have the cultural context to understand it.

This is going to seem like a lot of rambling, but I promise it all ties together at the end. Trust me on this.

It’s been an interesting few weeks. This year Wife of Bath and I have been on the “one Sunday a Month” plan in our ward. Otherwise we have attended our Episcopal church. One Sunday we played hooky because we just needed to talk more than we needed to be in church. So most of my exposure to the LDS church has been either the Ensign, conference talks, or the DAMU (aka the Disaffected Mormon Universe).

In general the Ensign has made me mad as hell.

I’ve been reading in the New Testament with a new enthusiasm, starting in 1 & 2 Thessalonians and James, because they appear to be the oldest books. I have developed a real love affair with coffee over the last month, because I have been trying to quit drinking so much soda and was looking for a caffeine replacement so I didn’t get headaches. Caffeinated coffee and scripture study are a marriage made in heaven. In the mornings I get a lift, a sense of focus, and a general sense of well-being from a freshly brewed cup of coffee that I spend the rest of the day looking forward to. The writings of the New Testament are elegant in their subtlety, inspiring us to faith while at the same time reminding us of the perils of falling back into putting our own wants (i.e. sin) ahead of a simple love of God.

On the other hand the Ensign and most conference talks are extremely simplistic “gumball” theology. It’s all about you and your choices. God punishes disobedience. God rewards obedience. Sacrifice brings the blessings of heaven. Worthiness brings the influence of the spirit. Unworthiness drives it away. Just one absolute statement after another. Good or evil. Obedience or disobedience. Worthy or not worthy. The funny thing is that experience teaches us that real life is not really like that. Most situations are shades of gray in which both elements of good and bad may be found. God’s will is not always our immediate happiness, and the spirit doesn’t always flick on and off like a light switch based on our most recent choice. Good behavior is not always rewarded in the way we might expect, and bad behavior is not always punished in the way we might expect. That’s why they call it “faith”. We don’t usually get that kind of “red light” “green light” feedback.

The Ensign makes me mad as hell lately because this kind of oversimplification just confuses people and guilts them out. It forces them into a great deal of stress trying to convince themselves that what their mind tells them must be true because of what the Ensign says and what their eyes and actual experience show them are actually happening are actually in agreement. In the physical world this type of experience produces motion sickness. The eye says “I’m not moving”, and the inner ear says, “yes you are”, and vomiting results. The Ensign may affect some people this way also.

In the meantime I have been listening to the Richard Bushman podcasts on www.mormonstories.org, and it has been fascinating. I have learned less about Joseph Smith and much much more about how someone like Richard Bushman, who knows more about Joseph Smith than any anti-mormon alive, manages to maintain his sanity, let alone his faith. In summary I believe Bushman manages to maintain his faith because he sees the church at many levels. His foundation is a feeling that the church is a force for good, and that is solid granite. Built on top of that is his historian’s training, which teaches that facts can often be assembled into more than one story, depending on the bias of the teller, and all tellers are biased. There’s no such thing as an absolutely true interpretation of history, because even eyewitnesses to the same event may differ on what actually happened. I don’t think he really takes the history of the church as seriously as he takes his basic belief that the church is a force for good. Whether or not Joseph Smith used seerstones, propositioned 14 year-olds by promising their parents eternal security, actually translated the Book of Mormon from any sort of plates, whether the three witnesses actually physically saw anything, etc., is just not important relative to that foundational truth that the church is a force for good.

Likewise his understanding that the official church history is more of a public relations effort than an attempt at real history. It just seems obvious that the church has to tell it in such a way that it doesn’t shatter the faith of the members, while at the same time not going so far afield that people are shocked by some of the actual details.

Fast-forward to yesterday.

I attended the Worldwide Training meeting broadcast by satellite from Salt Lake City at our stake center.

The subject was basically on teaching, primarily in the classroom setting, but also in the home.

It consisted of three basic parts: a “conversation” between Elders Packer and Perry, a generally unscripted teaching demonstration by Elder Holland, and a wrapup talk by President Monson.

I thought the unscripted class part with Elder Holland was the most effective training coming from church headquarters that I have ever seen. He had a "class" assembled of about 15 people, some GAs, some in the auxiliary presidencies, and a few younger folks who I guess are from the area, work in the office building, etc.. He taught them a class on teaching, basically by example. Here's an "apostle of the Lord" up there, yet he got the class to answer most of the questions, encouraged them, brought out people who weren't saying much. Members of the class challenged him a little on some points and sisters from the presidencies actually admitted *they didn't know things* and asked for real answers to their questions. He didn't say one thing I remember about obedience, modern prophets, etc.. His basic message was communicating the love of Christ to our classes by the spirit. He cried a few times during his lesson, and I did too. One thing he said that broke him up while he said it was, "if you can't teach them, at least show them you love them, and maybe you'll be able to teach them later", referring to difficult students.

By contrast President Monson gave the closing speech, a typical scripted rehash of stories we've all heard before, standing behind the podium in the conference center reading from the teleprompter.

On one hand you have Holland living on the edge (so to speak) and trusting the spirit in front of a worldwide audience. On the other hand there's Monson, afraid to turn loose of the old forty year old formula and share a little bit of himself.

In trying to bring all of these experiences together, I realized that to a large extent the church is what you want it to be. To another extent it resembles an onion with many layers. Bushman makes a similar point. If you want to believe in modern prophets and that God has an orderly plan for the universe, you’ll probably believe in the Book of Mormon. If you don’t, you won’t. He explicitly said that the facts by themselves don’t draw you absolutely to one conclusion or the other.

I believe Elder Holland was speaking to a mature audience, and as such assumed we could handle a certain sense of unscriptedness about not only him, but the luminaries in his “class”. In order to invite the spirit he had to take some risks and abandon some structure and allow us to see a more personal side of not only him, but his class. He spoke quickly and animatedly, jumping from one thing to another, a restless intelligence. Julie Beck seemed a little slow, like she had had some kind of brain trauma at some point. Kathleen Hughes broke down and cried during Elder Holland’s summary. They were real people, just like us, with emotions and questions and imperfections.

On the other hand, President Monson obviously felt that the men and women of experience and maturity in the worldwide audience were not ready for that kind of informality. What we needed was an authority figure behind a lectern reading simple and easily understood platitudes.

In general the LDS church is trying to present a very complex and subtle organization and doctrine in simple, easy to understand ways. It does that by dumbing down the doctrine and the history. The idea is that this works fine for most people and is very soothing and comforting. Eventually some people break out of that level, much like finding out that the stars we see above are really just a painting on the ceiling, and we break through the shell and find something else beyond. I think most leaders at the bishopric level and above have broken through that ceiling. They know the leaders are just people, sacrifice doesn’t always bring forth the blessings of heaven, maybe Joseph Smith had a little drinky once in awhile and cast an approving glance on a fine specimen of womanhood, but fundamentally they’re going to perpetuate the simple story the general membership and the public can understand and not confuse them with details.

I guess maybe the realization I came to is that the leaders don’t really believe the simple story, any more than we believe that Primary lessons encapsulate the entire gospel. They can sit through dumbed down Gospel Doctrine lessons, seminary lessons, and priesthood/relief society lessons, knowing that there’s a deeper truth out there because they’ve found it on their own. Since they don’t believe it, maybe it’s OK for us to not believe it either and not feel somehow unfaithful, apostate, or somehow morally wrong.

Put another way the church teaches a very simplistic view of Sabbath observance, with stories about Joseph Fielding Smith walking past a corner grocery store to patronize one that was closed on Sundays. Yet really the General Authorities don’t believe this, because they eat in restaurants when traveling away from home on church business on Sundays, and many church-owned businesses function on Sundays. They are more than happy to have people standing by to collect offering reports on Sundays, the church websites will take orders on Sundays, etc.. They teach something simple the members can understand, yet practice something much more nuanced. They have broken through that painted ceiling, so maybe we can too.

What church do you want to believe in? The one where a 14 year-old boy went into the woods to pray and saw two personages, or the one where a boy somewhere between 14 and 16 may have had a spiritual experience that evolved as he grew older and his understanding grew and what he was trying to communicate evolved?

What church do you want to believe in? The church where God always answers the prayers of the faithful and punishes the wicked, or the one where sometimes children of full tithepayers get cancer or fall into swimming pools and drown while their parents are distracted.

What church do you want to believe in? The one where modern prophets speak to God and will never lead the church astray, or the one where they pray and sometimes get answers, and other times are completely fooled by document forgers just to remind them that they are only reflectors of divine light and not the sources.

The thing is, it’s all the same church, and you have a choice as to which view to use, just like the General Authorities do. You can either view what’s put in front of you, or you can break through the painted ceiling and see what the real immensity of the universe looks like, unscripted and unpredictable in all its glory.

It’s OK to sit through a lesson on Jesus choosing the original apostles that morphs into “follow the current leaders and you’ll be blessed”, like I did today. Or a priesthood lesson on the Atonement that tells us that all we have to do for God to love us is to keep the commandments (except if we could do that, why would we need the atonement?) The leaders know these things aren’t completely true, and it doesn’t bother them. It’s OK to break through and see the truth. It’s OK to stay where it’s safe and simple. Ultimately it’s up to you which view you want. Either is OK.

I haven't posted in awhile, so I thought it might be time for an update.

I just re-read my last entry, and it was better than I remembered. :) I can't say things have changed much in what I covered.

I realized a few weeks ago that I was actually getting a little flat in my spirituality, which hasn't happened to me since my de-conversion from being a "True Believing Mormon" began a couple of years ago. I trace it to a couple of things. I mentioned last time that I have been reading a lot of "liberal" stuff. My latest books are "Mormon Origins: Hierarchy of Power", which shows how the control structures of the LDS church evolved and the "revelations" backdated to make it look like it had always been that way. His claims are pretty easy to verify, because you can go online and find copies of the 1833 Book of Commandments and the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants and see the changes. Basically most of the story we tell nowadays evolved through the mid-1830s, with accompanying changes to Joseph Smith's revelations.

The other book I was reading was "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman, which describes some of the changes to the New Testament over its early history. Some were copying mistakes, and others appear to be intentional changes in order to grind some ideological ax or another. Most are minor changes. Some are not.

After all this I found myself wondering just who I could trust anymore and what from the scriptures could really be believed. I still had my core belief in God, but I was starting to wander just a little bit on just who Jesus was and just what the point of this whole thing was.

I honestly don't see Joseph Smith and many of the early Christian apostles as being that different in the nature of their writings. Generally I think they were recording what they thought God was telling them, and their stories don't necessarily always agree in detail and message. I think there's some level of inspiration in there, but not to the degree we say sometimes. With the documented copying changes, the difference in historical details, the difference in basic theology, I can hardly consider the scriptures inerrant in any degree. I think they primarily witness what the authors thought God was telling them, and our challenge is to figure out what God is trying to tell us through these divergent sources.

Given all that I just found more meaning and joy in motorcycle riding than in studying all this and doing all the writing I had been doing. Maybe it was all just a mysterious crap shoot anyway. I was tired of being blown this way and that in my faith. I'm tired of being the sheep for every self-appointed sheep herder out there who wants to tell me what to believe and what to do. The world is full of Eveready energizer bunnies wanting me to do my home teaching, give blood, rescue the poor, go fight and die in Iraq, buy their product, work my tail off to produce some product they can sell, and about a million other things. Everybody wants me to sign up for their cause these days, join their church, believe their version of the Christian story, spend money on their consumer product, and the list goes on. I'm tired of being herded by people like a sheep. I'm tired of junk mail and TV advertising. If I'm in any meeting with a person up in front with any other message than what they can unselfishly do for me, I've had enough of it.

All I really want to do these days is ride. Just ride. Engage in the real world, in small towns and farms and people living in the real world and not in a fantasy land they want me to believe is real so I'll invest my time and blood and treasure in it.

Well, you can tell I was pretty dead flat this week.

I decided to do something a little different in my morning scripture study routine, because I was beyond flat and into depressed. I ditched my study of the Doctrine and Covenants, LDS Church magazines, and LDS conference talks for a few days and just immersed myself in a parallel bible where I could compare things and see any translation differences, copying differences, whatever. I ran across something really startling to me:

Hebrews 10:10-24

The interesting thing is that this doesn't appear to be a disputed passage. It's pretty consistent across all translations. The writer of Hebrews is unknown, but the book can be dated to before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, just because the author doesn't mention it. The book is referred to by several early Christian writers. What all this says to me is really more the consensus of the early church than God appeared to the author and said, "write this".

I learned, or rather was reminded, of a couple of things. First, although Ehrman points out many things that were changed, there are a lot of core things in the New Testament that no evidence exists have been changed substantially. Whether what the author says is actually true or not is a matter of faith, but it seems to have been reliably transmitted, anyway, and generally accepted by the community as being doctrine. Otherwise it wouldn't have made it into the New Testament.

What it said was illuminating to me also.

I realized I had been immersing myself too much in LDS writings, which always have you doubting your worthiness and your relationship with God. God loves you based on how exactly you keep the commandments, and all these blessings are out there for those that do. Inspiration, guidance, a celestial family, etc.. The implication I think many people get is that, since these promises are so certain, if you're not feeling and receiving these things you must not be doing it right, and you need to clean yourself up more. You're always just one mouse click and one Victoria's Secret ad away from blowing it. The gospel is not about God's love for mankind, it's a massive filtering-out process, a game of "Survivor". We're tried and tested in this life to see who is worthy of godhood and who will eternally be a washroom attendant, serving those that get a higher score and make the final round in the quiz bowl of life. Plus I mentally fill in so much of the backstory about the organization's relentless push to reinforce its own authority and to bolster its legitimacy by sanitizing its founding history. It's just draining.

Anyway, verse 18 reminded me that Christ has paid the price for these sins I can't seem to get away from, once and for all. I think verse 22 was the real motivator. Drawing near to God with full assurance of faith. How often are we ever inspired to have full assurance of faith in the LDS church? It's always the refiners fire with angels, silent notes taking. Taking the deliberate path into sin is pretty damaging, but in absence of that I have that full assurance of faith and the hope of a fair deal, in this life and the life to come. God loved me enough to send his Son, and is not just waiting for me to screw up so he can give all my blessings to someone more perfect. At least that's what those who knew Jesus personally and those who received their witness seemed to think. Maybe that's what I think, too. It's at least one basic truth to hold onto.

Anyway, I've been studying in Hebrews and 1 John this week, and life seems a little better. The love of God seems more tangible to me than it did before and more accessible. There are promises I think I can trust a little more than I did before. If you weren't convinced before, you probably aren't now, but that's my witness, anyway.

Weekend Update--

It's been a long time since I posted anything here, so I thought it was time for an update. Since the last time I posted a lot has happened. I've had a lot of experiences and a lot of time to pray and study and think.

I haven't posted much for several reasons. Not much has really changed in my outlook, although I'm becoming more settled in what I see and how I think this all fits together.

Over the last year and a half some actual living of life has been sacrificed to web surfing and a lot of cathartic writing. I've gotten a little behind at work an in family time, and I've had some things to catch up on. Sometimes I think a well lived life has to be a blend of study and action. Some periods of life will focus more on study and contemplation, and some on living out the conclusions reached. Lately I guess the pendulum is swinging more into the "action" category.

So, after all this time and this wordy introduction, where do things stand?

In general I find that my faith in God and in Jesus Christ is as strong as it was before. I've been reading some of what you would call "liberal" books that attempt to tear down the historical and doctrinal foundations of Christianity, and for me they just don't hold up. Details available on request. I would be more than happy to see this blog spend more time articulating what I do believe rather than focusing so much on the things I don't.

I think it's possible to quibble over the historical details as recounted in the New Testament, but the primary event has to be the mission and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and my faith in those things stands firm.

On the other hand my faith in groups of people collectively has probably suffered irreversible damage. I have become mostly cynical about large churches, political parties, corporations, charities, etc.. As these organizations reach a certain size human nature seems to take hold. The primary focus of the organization seems to become its own survival and expanding its own power and influence rather than blessing its own members. The truth becomes secondary to the public image of the organization. People become secondary to growth and expansion of influence.

In this regard I see the LDS church as being no better or worse than any other organization.

Generally what I come around to is that the LDS church is just not that much different from the organizations around it. The people are no better or worse than most other Christians I come in contact with. Their focus just happens to be more on public morality issues that are more visible. IMHO the true mark of a Christian is probably their charity towards others rather than their personal morality, but this is a characteristic that is much less visible to the public eye. Put another way, other Christians are just as good as Latter-day saints, just in ways that are less obvious.

I spent a week and a half in the Salt Lake City area a couple of months ago. We made three visits to Temple Square, and I made it a point to see the films I hadn't seen before, like the new Joseph Smith film and another related film called, I think, "The Restoration". I went through both Visitors Centers, and I think for the first time was able to actually walk up and touch the outside of the Salt Lake Temple. It was really neat to be able to touch the doors and the doorknobs and to contemplate the pioneer craftsmanship that went into that magnificent building.

We also went to visit the Mt Timpanogos temple (the outside), and it is a wonderful and inspiring building. The pictures I've seen just don't do it justice.

Our visit to the Salt Lake area was extremely positive for me. The only downside was the sister missionaries on Temple Square. They're very nice and mean well, but they invariably pounced on me as soon as they saw me. I went into the South visitors center and was immediately engaged in pleasant conversation that quickly sequed to missionary work and a request for a referral. I was really there to see the visitors centers and not to be put on the spot to come up with a name to give to the missionaries. I told her I would pray about it and let her know.

I was confronted with a presentation on families, which was very nice, but I would expect to be introduced to the worship of Christ, not the ideal middle class suburban family.

The other end of the building was a nice exhibit on the construction of the temple, which was clearly visible through a large glass wall. I was again impressed with the faith, commitment, industry, and skills of the pioneers in building the temple, but I was still looking for some meaningful mention of Jesus Christ.

I then met my second sister missionary, who went through almost the exact same pattern as the first, asking me how the temple made me feel, sequeing to missionary work, and asking for a referral. I mentioned I had already been asked for a referral before and would let her know, and then just walked away to end the discussion.

I paused for a bit to contemplate the temple, and it was truly a wonder for me, once I could escape the sisters.

The North Visitors Center was a lot better. There was the presentation on Christ I was looking for. Only one sister missionary went through the commitment pattern looking for a referral. I ran into another who just talked about the things available on Temple Square and gave me what I was actually looking for, schedules for the films. She was very helpful and seemed guilty somehow, I'm guessing because she didn't ask me for a referral.

You can only view the Christus statue as part of a presentation now, and two sister missionaries pleasantly manned a velvet rope to block the way. I asked when I could go up, and she explained why I needed to wait. I stood there for awhile, and the sisters looked at each other and just let me go up.

The Christus statue is pretty impressive, and the sum total of all the exhibits in the North visitors center more than made up for the absence of much related to Christ in the other one. I just hope folks don't go to the South Visitors Center and then leave, thinking they have seen it all.

I got awhile to contemplate it all before the "official" group arrived and the Asian sisters bore their testimonies in broken English and then whisked those interested off to another presentation.

On a later visit I got to see the Joseph Smith movie at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Some have been offended because the movie plays fast and loose with several historical details. The official First Vision account is shown, to no one's surprise, there's no hint of polygamy, and the context behind all the persecution is completely eliminated, making it look like it was only their religious views that made them targets. The well-known fact that Joseph and Hyrum had pistols and fired back at their attackers is not present either. Joseph runs to the window and appears to be assumed into Heaven rather than being shot and falling into the street, which is what actually happened.

Many people in the theater were crying. I wasn't one of them. The movie was obviously not a documentary or designed to convey facts, so the selective storytelling didn't bother me much. I had a running chronology running through my head most of the time, noting what they depicted and what they sort of filmed around.

After the movie I had my chance to get up close and personal with the Salt Lake Temple. Before I don't think we could touch it, either out of security reasons or because of weddings. I got the chance to run my hands along the walls and doors and to contemplate what an achievement it was to build it. I was really moved by it in a way I can't really express and don't really completely understand. The closest I can come is that temples, especially the Salt Lake one, are probably the supreme monuments in existence to the faith of the Latter-day Saint people. I guess I am moved more by that faith than by the actual ordinances that are performed there.

After an entry this verbose some kind of summary seems to be required, but I wanted to be sure to include some of the experiences that have led me to where I am now.

Which is basically where I was before.

I am re-reading the Doctrine and Covenants along with Michael Quinn's book "Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power". I continue to find inspiration in those early prophetic works like the Book of Mormon, while at the same time being aware of their thoroughly human origins and the extent to which the LDS church has gone throughout its history to obscure those origins.

During my visit to Utah I was continually impressed with how nice the people are and how focused they are. Or at least appear. LDS chapels everywhere, and Sundays were a sea of minivans and white shirts. I attended church twice in one of the BYU wards, and they were some of the best LDS meetings I had attended in a long time. The speakers and teachers testified with power about both the Savior and about the "restored" gospel in a way I haven't seen in years. It was magnetic.

Having said that, the LDS church has always been surrounded by clouds of deception. Retroactively changed revelations. Secret marriage ceremonies not publically acknowledged, even to the members, for decades. Secret organizations like the Council of Fifty. Even today the General Authorities of the church, including the President, publish historical information that everyone who reads unofficial sources knows to be false and denies publicly doctrine we teach openly in the church.

As much as many get stirred up about this, I can't bring myself to see it as evil. Merely human, much as any other organization resorts to dissembling to maintain its public image.

My spiritual center has become much more personal, rather than relying on any human organization for ultimate guidance. I'm in church somewhere every Sunday, yet I treat what I'm presented more as input and perspective rather than fact.

I've come to the conclusion that most people's views on religion are based more on their biases than on the facts. Regarding Christianity, the facts and statements are contradictory, even within the same books of the Bible at times. We all filter out what we don't believe based on our biases, and what remains determines our religion.

God has left us a puzzle to figure out, with the basics in plain view and the details in turmoil. Just to confuse things further, the pieces can be put together to form more than one puzzle, much like a jigsaw puzzle with a different picture on each side. My puzzle may be different from yours, and it's intended that way.

Of late I am much less tortured by having to figure this out than I was before. I am much less hurt and disillusioned by the deceptions of LDS church leaders than I was before. They're only human and doing the best they can to keep a leaky ship afloat, and if I had given my heart and soul to an organization for as long as they have I would probably feel compelled to maintain the illusion also.

The spirit seems to be leading me out of "shock and betrayal mode" and into just living life to the fullest. For me that involves prayer and scripture study, seeking out ways to serve others and Jesus did, learning to love others as Jesus did, and seeking to worship my creator in every way possible.

I bought a motorcycle last month, and I feel blessed by God every day I get to ride it. It's an incredible privilege to just live life on this earth at the time I have been placed here. I don't want to miss a thing. Not one opportunity to revel in God's glory or to reflect that glory to others as best I can.

As far as "which church is true", none of them are and all of them are. Ultimately I'll be judged on my relationship with Jesus rather than what pew I chose to sit in on Sunday. Keeping the commandments or performing charitable acts are merely a reflection of that relationship rather than a substitute for it and are strictly secondary. Churches just enable us to gather together for worship, instruction, and service, and are strictly secondary also. Churches are inevitably repackaging of the source material by fallible human beings, and as such can only be trusted so far and no further. Churches are run by people with normal fears and ambitions and imperfections, and as such can only be trusted so far and no further.

Joseph Smith presented some truly amazing and revolutionary doctrine. Is it completely true? I have no idea. The apostle Paul presented some truly amazing and revolutionary doctrine. Is it completely true? I have no idea. In a way, each was inspired by God in ways normal people don't understand, and they did their best to communicate what they thought God was trying to tell them. Did either get it completely right? Probably unlikely, yet the basics of what they were trying to get across are probably pretty reliable, so the trick is to identify those things that are central and what things are just peripheral details and focus on the central things. To me Jesus said it best. Love God first, and then love thy neighbor. The rest is just commentary.

As Joshua said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord". I expect to spend the rest of my life figuring out exactly what that means.

Whose Church is it, Anyway? -

Wife of Bath and I spent pretty much all day cutting the grass and edging the grounds at our Episcopal church yesterday. "About two hours", the guy said. Well, if you've used a riding mower before, and you don't do the edging, and if you don't mow half the grassy parking lot, and get out a blower to clean up the clippings in the street . . .

While doing this we were basically the only members of the parish around, so we were running in and out of the building. Rather than a key lock they have a combination lock, because it's expected that most members of the parish will have access to the building. This was my chance to explore. Not a single room or office was locked, other than the AV room in the balcony. Not even the office or the rector's office was locked. The library was unlocked. I had access to all of it.

I couldn't help but contrast that to my experience in the LDS church. I'm in the presidency of a stake-level auxiliary, and I haven't had a key to the building in years. Even when I had to teach a weekly class I had to wait for someone to let me in. Even as ward clerk I didn't have access to the library. It was easier to get into Ft Knox than our ward library.

One way we know who has "the power" in the LDS church is by who has keys to the building. There are some things in our current building only the stake presidency has keys to. Heaven help us if we need to get to some of the lights and nobody from the stake presidency is there. Yet another thing that reinforces the authority of the leaders. I've begun to notice how much of what we do in the LDS church is designed to reinforce the authority of the leaders, but that's a tangent for another time.

So, whose church is it, anyway? Obviously not mine. I can only get into the building when somebody in authority grants me permission. Even then I'm restricted by whether the person has the right authority for the library, the kitchen, etc. So it's not really my church. It's the leadership's church. I only have the access privileges they give me.

By contrast our Episcopal church is my church. I can get in the building any time I want to. They trust me to use good judgment in what I do with my access.

It feels weird to be trusted, but in the end it's a good feeling.

Progress Report –-
It’s been awhile since I posted anything here, because we’ve been sending our youngest child off to college and taking some extended vacations.

What I initially conceived was a detailed description of the last few weeks, but I’m not sure I have the time to write it or you have the patience to read it. Details available on request, but I’ll provide the Readers Digest condensed version under the impression this is a better fit for both of us.

I haven’t attended my own ward sacrament meeting for four weeks now, and we’ve been away from church for three, due to visiting other churches and traveling. Frankly I haven’t missed it much. The local Episcopal church we have joined has provided spirit-filled worship experiences, and the church we visited in Indianapolis preached an inspirational sermon. His subject was basically throwing ourselves into the arms of Christ as children throw themselves into the arms of their fathers when they come home from work. The scriptures teach us that we are secure in our salvation once we make the leap of faith, so we don’t need to doubt our worthiness or our status continually. We don’t need to live in a state of fear about the state of our relationship with Christ. We just need to throw ourselves into it and look forward and up rather than inward and back.

Nobody in our ward seems to have noticed our absence, although I think people are aware we have been traveling. No phone calls telling us we are missed, nobody asking about how our trip was, etc.. E-mail about submitting my home teaching reporting, and somebody wanted a recipe from Wife of Bath. We haven’t heard from home or visiting teachers in months, although our leadership knows we have a “testimony” situation.

I have been playing “garment roulette” over the last few weeks. Sometimes I wear them. Sometimes I don’t. I can’t tell the difference. I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine with Wife of Bath, and I can’t tell the difference in my spirituality there either, other than a suspicious mild headache the next morning sometimes.

Today I wore my garments for the first time in a few days and read the latest Ensign. Surely I should have been filled with the spirit and inspired to return to a life of orthodoxy.

Basically it was the worst morning I have had in awhile. President Faust quoted a collection of men who have been dead for thirty years about how the father should be returned to a position of authority in the home. Elder Perry talked about what I’m sure must have been a truly inspiring family activity where he took them on a tour of Logan UT. At every stop he quoted a scripture and related a moral lesson from his upbringing, thus teaching that the most important role of fathers and grandfathers is to reinforce their own authority by imposing rigid programs and lecturing their family members. Much as we do in the church. One wonders if senior church leaders run their personal lives like a series of conferences and meetings, where family members are gathered to listen to them preach from the scriptures and personal time is scheduled like a temple recommend interview, as we are counseled to schedule personal interviews with our kids, schedule Family Home Evening every Monday, and “date night” every Friday, except when we can get a “twofer” by taking our wives to the temple on ward temple night as a date, thus freeing up a Friday night for preparing a talk or lesson.

A divorced woman talked about how she got through the divorce by relying on the programs of the church and the temple and applying a series of practical steps, similar to what might be found in Ladies Home Journal. I believe Christ was mentioned somewhere near the end of the article, but I’m not sure.

I find myself drifting out of an interest in activity in the church. It just doesn’t seem that relevant any more. What I find I need is to be brought into a close and personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and then patiently led back into that relationship when my human tendencies cause me to drift away. I need to be brought into an awareness of who Jesus was and how he lived, taught, and served, and I need opportunities to be connected with other people with whom I can share those experiences and learn to serve. I need to be led to people different from me so I can practice loving as Jesus did, aware of their faults yet offering unconditional love and personal acceptance. Jesus had a way of accepting and supporting people who were failing, without necessarily condoning their behavior. He could tell a woman taken in adultery that he didn’t condemn or judge her, while at the same time encouraging her to turn away from her sins.

Basically what I see the church doing is striving primarily to reinforce its own authority, involving us in programs and teaching experiences where we don’t have to think or rely on the spirit, and then talking about Jesus as the wellspring of where the authority of all these people telling us what to do comes from. He’s out there somewhere, and during our free time from all these other things we’re encouraged to find him.

I remember reading somewhere that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. What I generally feel towards the LDS church right now is not hostility. With some exceptions everybody is doing the best they can to magnify what they have been taught. They have been taught the church is the Kingdom of God. The general authorities need to cover up the history to keep the weak in the fold, and the stake and ward leaders need to keep people anxiously engaged and busy in the church to keep them connected to it, so they don’t wander off on their own and drift away. Basically the earth is flat, and people who wander away from the mainstream of the church fall off the edge and are eaten by horrible sea monsters and dragons. They have to prevent that at all costs, and the “truth” will work itself out later in the millennium.

No, I’m just indifferent. Good people doing their best, but it doesn’t lead me to Jesus. It leads me to a closer relationship to the church and its leaders. I guess that works for most people. It doesn’t work for me.

Aren’t you glad this was the condensed version?

Tender mercies --
I met with the stake president Saturday, and it proved to be a lot different than I expected.

Rewind to Friday. After going to a potluck dinner for a returned missionary we're related to, I headed home with the idea of going for a long walk. Typically I listen to music, but I felt kind of a dark spirit about listening to music.

"A talk", I thought. "How about an interview with a Catholic nun, Joan Chittister, that I read about on the internet".

So I downloaded it to my mp3 player and went out on my walk. She brought up a number of very interesting points in her interview. The ones that caught my attention related more to the commonalities of religious experience she has encountered among the world's religions in her travels. An interesting question was raised in her interview. When one begins to appreciate the elements of truth in other faiths, is that infidelity or the beginning of spiritual maturity?

She says the latter. She co-chairs a peace organization with women from several major world religions. Although, for her, the path for her is the one marked by Jesus Christ, she sees God drawing people to himself through many religions. Thus they have essential truths that should be appreciated.

Interesting stuff to be listening to the night before the big interview with the stake president.

Then my mp3 player went to the next recording, and it was one of my favorite songs by MercyMe, with the lyrics "where you lead me, I will follow". This was extremely surprising, because this is not the next song on my mp3 player. For some reason it reset itself and started at the beginning of the song list.

I took this to be one of the "tender mercies" referred to by Elder Bednar in one of his previous conference talks, those small things sent to us to strengthen us in times of trial.

I could have felt prompted to listen to a conference talk and some contemporary LDS music, which I also have recordings of, things that might have inclined me back to orthodoxy. But instead I got things encouraging me on the path I am on.

My actual interview was Saturday morning at 9:00am, and I was sweating it. My stake president comes across as being rather stern at times, and he's a scriptorian. Virtually every time we have any kind of stake meeting in the chapel he rearranges everyone to fill the front rows and the middle sections, under the theory that people sitting in front are more engaged in the meeting.

I was expecting to be challenged, admonished, and corrected.

I would really like to include some verbatim remarks, but I've given enough details in this so that my stake is not that hard to figure out, and I want to respect his confidentiality.

In summary he was aware of basically all the historical information I brought up, including some of the theories about the translation of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. He has reached his own accomodation with it, and his counsel to me was to help me do the same.

I mentioned my concerns about the leaders of the church covering up information. As evidence of trying to pursue this in good faith, I also mentioned that I had given three talks from the pulpit since starting to learn about these things and hadn't said anything about my issues. He made the point that what I was doing was no different from what the general authorities were doing, trying to uplift people without unduly upsetting people with details that many would find confusing.

He counseled me to do the following: 1) Consider the sources of the information I'm coming across. Are they conveying actual historical information or wild speculation? 2) Pray about Joseph Smith and his calling. Seek to understand his motivations and his imperfections in light of what God was calling him to do and in light of the revelations he produced. 3) Stay grounded in the Standard Works rather than other books. Make them the center of my reading. 4) Stay balanced. Don't read things from only one point of view. 5) Stay close to the spirit and remain worthy of spiritual promptings and inspiration. Don't let my doubts lead me into behaviors that will push the spirit away. 6) If/when called upon to preach and teach, bear testimony of those things I know to be true that will uplift others. He told me that these internal struggles would eventually make me stronger, and that the testimony of those things I knew to be true would eventually grow to push out those things I was unsure about.

I was expecting to be released from my stake calling, but he felt confident in my ability to continue to serving if I wanted to. He trusted me not to try to lead the youth astray with my "issues", and I trusted him not to put me in a position where I was forced to teach things I didn't believe in.

We spent over an hour, and I had a lot to think about. I walked out of his office, and right behind me walked in a prospective missionary waiting to be interviewed. I tried to imagine being in the stake president's shoes, dealing with one member after another with difficult problems to work out, and my respect for him grew.

I walked across the parking lot to the temple that shares parking with our stake center. There was a wedding party coming out, and I wandered around to the street side and sat down, looking up at the angel Moroni and the words, "Holiness to the Lord". I sang as much of "The Spirit of God" as I could remember, and my mind went back to the early days of the church and the Kirtland temple. I thought about my own daughter's wedding in this same temple just a year ago. I felt a very strong spiritual confirmation of the validity of this path for some people, while at the same time feeling confirmed in the diverging path I'm on.

After awhile I realized that I was actually having a spiritual experience in front of the air conditioning unit rather than the front door, but I guess they have to put it somewhere.

What I had really hoped to get out of this meeting was an opportunity to choose one way or the other. In a way being rebuked and driven out of the mainstream of the LDs church would have made the choice for me. It would have pushed me in a certain direction without me having to continue to work this out. I was not so lucky in this respect.

I continue to feel very lucky in the ward and stake leaders I have. It looks like there's not going to be an ugly scene or confrontation. We will not be marginalized against our will. We will be given the freedom to work this out however it works out without being labelled as "bad people", "apostates", "ungrateful", "unworthy", etc..

I drove out of the parking lot feeling liberated, free. It looks like we will be able to make our own choices without having them made for us. We can pick our own balance point for right now.

Obedience –
After mostly writing the previous entry last night I listened to a talk from a non-LDS church on the way to work this morning. When I heard his subject was “obedience” I almost turned off my mp3 player. I had had enough of obedience in the last 24 hours. Here comes the to-do list and the guilt trip, I thought.

His take on obedience was quite interesting. He quoted from 1 John and pointed out that obedience can be summed up by 1) love God and 2) love your neighbor, and spent about thirty minutes on #2. He didn’t say a thing about personal morality, standards, or serving within the church as directed by the pastor. What he talked about was reaching out to others with whom we come in contact and simply loving them as Jesus did. He used the example of a man who spent three months serving the poor in India and then came home and began taking in the homeless, in his own house.

What a breath of fresh air. It was a blessing to finally hear some true Christianity.

Here’s a link to the sermon:

Obedience

The Five Hour Block –
I have had many good Sundays in church lately. Today wasn’t one of them. It started off with the youth speaker in Sacrament and went downhill. His first sentence somehow related to having to perfect ourselves in order to feel the spirit, and I was glad Wife of Bath was not there, because I believe she would have headed for the door. The next speaker presented an eight point program for achieving something. I couldn’t figure out what, other than it was a lot of work to get there, involving scripture study, prayer, and the usual “do”s, other than actual contemplation. The concluding speaker talked about how the family was the foundation for our nation. I basically consider the extreme emphasis on the family in many conservative Christian churches today to be a modern idolatry, merely because we seem to place our focus on the family ahead of our focus on God. We try to lure new people in by talking about families instead of God and put them up on the pedestal that properly belongs to Christ. Our families are not the ultimate source of happiness or salvation. That would be our relationship with Christ. But I digress.

Sunday School was on Elijah and Elisha and covered the healing of Namaan the Syrian from leprosy. Through the lens of correlation this became a lesson on “follow the prophet”, no matter what small thing he says. Somebody in the class protested against blind obedience, and the class agreed that blind obedience is bad, and we should do everything the prophet says with our eyes open. Okay . . . and this differs from blind obedience how?

Priesthood was a pioneer day lesson from the Wilford Woodruff manual on the pioneers, including familiar stories of Joseph Smith raising people from the near-dead.

After the three hour block I had to wonder if we had talked about God at all, let alone Christ.

Later on I attended stake priesthood meeting, where we talked about the importance of performing our duties and obligations, returning and reporting, and the evils of pornography (which was quite appropriate, FWIW). The lone substantial reference to Christ was from a 16 year-old who talked about how serving in the church brought him closer to Christ and helped him feel the savior’s love. The rest of it was duty, obligation, and the importance of worthiness.

By and large it was a draining day. I found myself wondering if there was a morning worship service during the week at any local church, just so I could feel a spirit of group worship rather than being instructed on more things to do, while being reminded of the importance of doing them in order to remain “worthy” of the spirit, my eternal reward, etc..

I found myself wondering just how much more of this I can take. My main reason for staying in the LDS church is that most churches just don’t teach morality and commitment anymore, and I think that’s important. Even Baptists teach about sin and morality without the guilt load the LDS church imposes. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is quite simply not one long to-do list, however well intentioned this might be. Even if we load ourselves down with this to-do list for fully altruistic reasons, I don’t think this is what Christ really intends.

My impression from the scriptures is that Christ did not over-program himself. We don’t see Jesus racing from place to place trying to heal everyone, trying to convert everyone, trying to pack just one more thing into a crowded day like we do. Christ focused on relationships, both with his Father and with his people, and relationships take time. True relationships and being excessively schedule-driven and task-driven are at odds with each other. I knew a stake president once who bragged about planning his family home evenings a year in advance. In what way does this allow for the still small voice to suggest a particular message needed right now? Likewise our packed schedules. A day full of work commitments, family commitments, and church commitments does not lend itself to being interrupted by someone who either needs our help or needs us to listen. Jesus paced himself and focused on the people in front of him, and maybe we can learn something from this. He balanced rest, service, prayer, and worship. So should we.

I’m coming to believe our concept of worthiness in the LDS church is very destructive. It’s like a cartoon where the dog has a stick tied to his head with a bone on the end, just out of reach. As he moves towards the bone it moves away, because it’s attached to the stick which is attached to his head. No matter how hard he tries the dog will never reach the bone.

Likewise worthiness. It’s always “lengthen your stride”, “stand a little taller”, “do a little more”, “be a little better”. Based on what we hear from the pulpit we will never be good enough. We will never be “done”. We will never be able to satisfy all the obligations laid on us from the pulpit, thus we will never feel “worthy” of the companionship of the Holy Spirit.