- ideasnstuff on Weekly Calls as a Safeguard Against Mission Abuses: “I served in the early 70’s, a period when number-chasing by mission leaders was rampant throughout the world. I was blessed beyond measure to have, for most of my mission, a president with a background in the humanities (BYU Spanish professor), who had served in Mexico in an era when they were required to teach people for 6 months before they could be baptized. When I worked in the mission office, this president (and his wife and children) became a second family to me and I had talks with him that were that were comparable to that of a warm, caring father with his son. He even helped guide me into my future career (translation and language services). Yes, we had rules and were expected to follow them. We had numerical goals and had to report on them every week. This was not an “anything goes” warm-and-fuzzy mission. But our baptism levels were not “up there” with other missions, and my mission president was dressed down afterwards by the authority who gave him his exit interview. His wife was bitter about it for years afterwards. Some of the countries that had spectacular baptism rates during that era later had to have Elder Oaks or Elder Holland come and administer the work there to try to clean up the chaotic situation created by tens or even hundreds of thousands of members of record who had essentially no connection with the Church. By the time my own sons served, also in Latin America, some 20 to 25 years ago, the situation had already greatly improved. Due to the sheer number of mission leaders now being called, there will still be an occasional abusive or fanatical leader, but overall I think we are doing much, much better.” Jan 12, 16:26
- on Dirt, Divinity, and DNA: Avram Shannon on the Two Creation Stories of Genesis: “Seems to me that Joseph Smith mostly dealt with that in the 2nd Article of Faith: we need to be saved from our own sins, not Adam’s transgression. I see the garden as a type story, if not a straight-up parable (with real historical figures cast as characters–something that’s familiar from the temple). The garden represents our premortal existence with God, Adam and Eve represent all of us, and the choice to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents the choice we made to enter mortality and learn about good and evil from our own experience. “The fall” is thus being born into a mortal body on a flawed world. Adam and Eve eating the fruit and being cast out of the garden is a type of the real fall. It seems to me that God is happy to let us try to figure out “why” and “how” questions on our own—and sometimes get them wrong, and sometimes disagree with each other—as long as we accept the fundamentals and are willing to act on them. He wants us to learn to think for ourselves. That everyone sins and everyone dies is an obvious empirical fact, and our need to be saved from them does not depend on why we think that is. Rest assured I feel the need for a Savior very strongly even though I don’t think it was Adam and Eve who put me in that state.” Jan 12, 12:52
- on Weekly Calls as a Safeguard Against Mission Abuses: “A few years ago a young man in my ward was a missionary called to a very poor nation. He father told me that his son could not share with the family at this time all the various privations that went with living in that nation, and the father understood this. We can’t have missionaries sending e-mails weekly detailing the ways Haiti doesn’t measure up to Norway, documenting that the missionaries look down on their hosts.” Jan 12, 07:34
- on Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 1/11: “Here are my reactions to my Church meetings yesterday (1/11): In Elders Quorum, in a discussion about new beginnings, one brother said that his new beginning didn’t start with a sickness (like in an example given), but with thinking wrong. The beginning was when he started thinking differently. Another brother suggested “God never counts the cost of providing comfort.” While I get the idea behind this, I think the intention was about God counting the cost to Him. I suspect he does count the cost to each of us, so that any damage or cost isn’t more than what we can bear. At the end of the class, the teacher thanked the class for “also teaching the lesson.” I agree completely. We learn in the conversation, and contributing to the conversation makes the lesson. I wish more members understood this. ” Jan 11, 18:23
- on Weekly Calls as a Safeguard Against Mission Abuses: ““*(And it was quite silly; the missionaries simply started saying ‘y’all’ instead of ‘guys.’)” You’re kidding! You mean, the apostasy actually deepened?!! What? Oh. Sorry. Never mind, don’t mind me. Yes, I had to be the one to do it. (Not to trivialize a serious issue, but if my three choices are: (1) laugh, (2) cry, and (3) scream, whenever possible, I try to do the first over the other two …)” Jan 11, 15:14
- on Spiritual Experiences Going off the Rails: “Yes, thanks for those additional insights, Ross and BJ. Blessings on you, BJ, for all that you’ve gone through. To me, though, your child’s condition sounds different that Daybell and Hildebrandt who were able to function a long time and attract followers.” Jan 11, 13:49
- on Dirt, Divinity, and DNA: Avram Shannon on the Two Creation Stories of Genesis: “I would say that a lot of the dependence on the literal Fall to explain the Atonement of Jesus Christ is more of a mainline western Christianity problem than an LDS problem due to the doctrine of Original Guilt that was articulated by figures like Augustine after the Great Apostasy had already set in. When Latter-day Saints have said similar things about the Fall and Atonement (the Three Pillars and similar thoughts), to me, it’s been the result of exposure to and borrowing from Protestantism rather than a critical analysis of our theology, including our belief in a fortunate Fall. In many ways, the Plan of Salvation in Latter-day Saint theology as a progression of spirits from a premortal state on into the eternities makes it so that we’re less dependent on a literal Fall than most other Christians. (I don’t think I’ll be able to adequately explain the thought in a comment, but it’s something Terryl Givens has discussed before in Wrestling the Angel and possibly the God Who Weeps (which he coauthored with Fiona).) I recognize that there is a lot that Latter-day Saints have said (including Church presidents) that assumes a literal Adam amd Eve that complicates the situation (I shared some thoughts on that here a long time ago: https://archive.timesandseasons.org/2021/10/adam-shall-come-to-visit/). You probably hit on how I view the issue when you said, “our Plan of Salvation is a ‘good enough’ explanation for the ‘low velocity’ at which we operate in this life” or it is a “19-20th century attempt at an explanation that we shouldn’t judge too harshly just like we shouldn’t judge their Bible-writing forebears too harshly.” Ultimately, the further we get from our immediate experiences, the more I treat things with a grain of salt. So, whatever happened at the dawn of the human species is a bit too far removed from current experiences for me to treat stories about it with certainty, even if I enjoy exploring that type of thing intellectually.” Jan 11, 13:18
- on Dirt, Divinity, and DNA: Avram Shannon on the Two Creation Stories of Genesis: “Chad, maybe “begging the question” isn’t the right term, but you seem to butting up against the question of how important the historicity of Genesis is to LDS theology. Whether Adam and Eve are historical or not, they seem to be fundamental to LDS understanding of exactly why we need Jesus as a Savior. If this is all just allegory or a primitive explanation of how things were created, how much of what we call the Plan of Salvation is an inaccurate attempt to help us understand our relationship to God? Is this something akin to Newtonian vs. the theory of relativity where our Plan of Salvation is a “good enough” explanation for the “low velocity” at which we operate in this life or is it really just a 19-20th century attempt at an explanation that we shouldn’t judge too harshly just like we shouldn’t judge their Bible-writing forebears too harshly?” Jan 11, 12:27
- on Spiritual Experiences Going off the Rails: “BJ I really appreciate your courage in sharing such a raw experience, I think it is valuable for so many to better understand the challenges in attribution we all struggle with in relation to psychosis.” Jan 11, 05:49
- on Weekly Calls as a Safeguard Against Mission Abuses: “Why do we have missionaries who can’t tell their parents bad stuff and get help with that from their parents or others? This is shocking in so many ways. Parents need to be working towards being their kids ‘go to’ people especially in cases of danger, and the church should be promoting this. I know that kids get confused and a lot of us don’t measure up to this standard as families but it should be our earnest aspiration both as a church and as individuals.” Jan 11, 05:38
