{"id":12947,"date":"2010-07-09T21:06:26","date_gmt":"2010-07-10T02:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=12947"},"modified":"2010-07-15T08:58:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-15T13:58:55","slug":"wanted-greener-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2010\/07\/wanted-greener-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanted: Greener Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"800px-Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851\"People leave the church because\u2026well, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve had a few acquaintances who\u2019ve decided to be done with it, but I\u2019ve never sat down and talked with them about why. If I were to guess, it\u2019s because they discovered things they didn\u2019t like about the church and decided to head out to where things are better. That\u2019s why this article on gender stereotypes and science<\/a> caught my eye\u2014it\u2019s easy to think that the cultural difficulties we try to navigate in<\/em> the church are specific to<\/em> the church. I wonder how many people leave the church thinking, \u201cI\u2019m done with these folks\u2014I\u2019m heading out there where [gays\/women\/intellectuals\/artists] are treated with respect!\u201d only to discover that our cultural biases within the church are largely just reflections of the cultural biases of the world at large.<\/p>\n

In the \u201880s, China performed an \u201cAnti\u2013Spiritual-Pollution Campaign<\/a>\u201d. The nation\u2019s leaders were concerned that the world outside of China was having too much influence on the people inside of China. \u00a0The campaign used the term \u201cspiritual pollution\u201d as a catch-all term for a variety of media and beliefs that were feared to be harmful, including modern views on sexuality, philosophy, modern art, and individualism. As is often the case in these sorts of hysterical cultural retrenchments, accusations were leveled, deviants were executed, and then, after the hysteria had passed, the campaign became a taboo topic, not to be discussed inside China and quickly forgotten outside of China.<\/p>\n

What I found interesting in this Anti\u2013Spiritual-Pollution Campaign is how closely the cultural concerns of the conservative atheist Chinese government match the cultural concerns of the conservative religious Mormon populace. It surprised me to see that science fiction literature was on the list of \u201cspiritual pollutions\u201d\u2014I had always thought that our evangelical anti-fantasy sentiment was a weird anomaly, specific to conservative American Christians.<\/p>\n

My point is that the intellectuals, artists, and libertines who feel chafed by cultural strictures in the church may discover that intellectuals, artists, and libertines aren\u2019t necessarily highly appreciated outside of the church either. By the way, what is it with stereotypical associations between sexuality, philosophy, and art? The three are really pretty unrelated, but somehow they all get lumped together as a sort of three-fold path to apostasy\u2014things that right-minded, feet-on-the-ground sorts of people would do better to ignore or avoid, and certainly never discuss. Oh, and haircuts & fashion — that’s a fourth one for the list. But it’s okay, Iran has that one covered<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n

I still don\u2019t feel that I\u2019m expressing myself very well here, so let me try another example. In high school, I listened to a debate between a fellow student and a teacher over the sinlessness of Jesus. The student (a devout Christian) said that Jesus couldn\u2019t have been sinless, since when He was a baby, He would have cried for milk\u2014and selfish desires (even for milk) are sinful. I remember thinking, \u201cThat\u2019s the dumbest definition of sin I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d My point with this story is that, while I sometimes get frustrated with official doctrinal expositions that I feel are unenlightened or even harmful, when I get into doctrinal discussions with people of other faiths, I come realize that the problem isn\u2019t so much with how the church approaches doctrine and religion\u2014it\u2019s with how humanity today approaches doctrine and religion.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to write any of this as a way for us to excuse ourselves for our failings. To say that we\u2019re not any more oppressive or reactionary than China and Iran certainly isn\u2019t high praise for us. We have plenty of work to do if we plan to build the kingdom of God in a way that is truly representative of God\u2019s love, intelligence, and joy, and of His expansive, inclusive, compassionate approach to His children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People leave the church because\u2026well, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve had a few acquaintances who\u2019ve decided to be done with it, but I\u2019ve never sat down and talked with them about why. If I were to guess, it\u2019s because they discovered things they didn\u2019t like about the church and decided to head out to where things are better. That\u2019s why this article on gender stereotypes and science caught my eye\u2014it\u2019s easy to think that the cultural difficulties we try to navigate in the church are specific to the church. I wonder how many people leave the church thinking, \u201cI\u2019m done with these folks\u2014I\u2019m heading out there where [gays\/women\/intellectuals\/artists] are treated with respect!\u201d only to discover that our cultural biases within the church are largely just reflections of the cultural biases of the world at large. In the \u201880s, China performed an \u201cAnti\u2013Spiritual-Pollution Campaign\u201d. The nation\u2019s leaders were concerned that the world outside of China was having too much influence on the people inside of China. \u00a0The campaign used the term \u201cspiritual pollution\u201d as a catch-all term for a variety of media and beliefs that were feared to be harmful, including modern views on sexuality, philosophy, modern art, and individualism. As is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":12948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/300px-Baker_Beach_2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12947"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12955,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12947\/revisions\/12955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}