In the current unhappy state of online Mormon discourse, stating the obvious is sometimes controversial, and for that reason all the more necessary.<\/p>\n
For example: it is not uncommon for online Mormons to lament other Mormons\u2019 use of \u201cthe world\u201d as a catch-all phrase for all that is in opposition to God, his kingdom, his commandments, and everything else of good report. Doesn\u2019t such divisive rhetoric represent an obstacle<\/em>, they ask, to better relations with right-thinking people? And doesn\u2019t it represent a failure to grasp how the world is becoming a better place? Can\u2019t we just stop talking like this? Maybe that\u2019s how they talk back in Utah, but in our city that\u2019s not how it\u2019s done<\/em>.<\/p>\n The obvious answer is, No, this isn\u2019t just Mormon usage; it\u2019s part of the basic rhetorical toolkit of Christianity, and hard-coded via the scriptures into many basic teachings. If you need a dozen examples, keep reading; if not, you can jump past the bullet points.<\/p>\n It is true that as Mormons we are not entirely dependent on scripture or tradition, and it\u2019s quite possible for modern prophets and apostles to provide new guidance and create new space for interpretation. I think that contrasting righteousness with \u201cthe world\u201d has some decent apostolic<\/a> and prophetic<\/a> precedent, however.<\/p>\n I am skeptical that deleting the parts of scripture we don\u2019t like is a productive approach to religious practice, and taking that approach with the rhetoric of \u201cthe world\u201d distorts both Christianity and Mormonism. We are the people whose key historical act, after all, was to take the commandment to go out of the world entirely literally.<\/p>\n It\u2019s necessary, however, to state a few more obvious things.<\/p>\n The scriptures and Mormon usage have multiple discourses about the world, including positive and optimistic ones. The idea of building Zion is one highly optimistic view. It\u2019s reasonable to look for the right balance between these discourses.<\/p>\n In actual practice, the Church has always engaged with the world in many different ways, even while taking rejectionist approaches in others. We were supplying forces to the U.S. Army at the same time we were leaving U.S. borders.<\/p>\n The world is a wonderful place. And it\u2019s a horrible place. If you do not recognize its horrors, then you have closed your eyes to the kind of wanton genocide that crops up around the world periodically, among many other things. Your local world has its own beauty and its own horrors.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t get rid of pessimistic discourse about the world without rejecting important parts of Christ\u2019s message and Church teachings, but it is up to us to figure out how it applies and what to do with it. Ignoring it is both lazy and hazardous.<\/p>\n The concept of a wicked world can be cognitively and morally useful. It\u2019s often easier to observe behavioral norms than to determine the right choice in a murky situation. When everyone else in the office or at school or on the Internet does something, it can be useful to have a cognitive model to avoid the overhasty conclusion that whatever everyone else is doing must be right. That in itself makes \u201cthe world\u201d worth hanging onto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the current unhappy state of online Mormon discourse, stating the obvious is sometimes controversial, and for that reason all the more necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37736","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\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37742,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37736\/revisions\/37742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n