{"id":46851,"date":"2024-03-28T05:23:16","date_gmt":"2024-03-28T11:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=46851"},"modified":"2024-03-28T19:54:43","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T01:54:43","slug":"a-secular-case-for-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/03\/a-secular-case-for-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"A “Secular” Case for the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little bit more about my own story relating to developing some alternative views of the church and coming to gain a as I said testimony of what I see as an \u201cimperfect\u201d church. The series I\u2019m working on at the JI<\/a> gives come context for ways in which historical research has influenced me, and over time I\u2019ve seen myself becoming increasingly different. Spiritual experiences, however, have \u00a0helped me to be okay with that, though the journey has been a struggle at times. I\u2019ve felt a sense of calling to find ways to make my research helpful to others, but, again, that\u2019s often seemed a little confusing how to do so.<\/p>\n

I felt this confusion much more acutely in my first months as bishop. I felt like I had a lot to sort out, but during the process I did feel like I gained a number of insights helpful to me.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One interesting experience I had while bishop was a prompting I felt a year a two in: \u201cyou need be working on making a secular case for the church,\u201d it said. I took that to mean the good that church membership does IN THIS LIFE. I\u2019d been thinking somewhat along these lines in terms of my historical research, but this seemed framework seemed more sociological, not my training, so I wasn\u2019t really sure where to begin. I was aware of some stuff on health and social benefits of religion<\/a>, but that was not an area of my expertise at all.<\/p>\n

But after feeling that prompting I started thinking of what I was doing as a bishop in those terms. During my first year as bishop, this TED talk<\/a> from David Brooks showed up in my feed and played a big role in how I thought about this topic. Brooks starts with his own feeling of isolation during his divorce and his realization that career success isn\u2019t what had made life meaningful. Human connection was most important, and he lists off many ways in which our society is becoming less connected and the negative impact that is having. To paraphrase, \u201cWe don\u2019t want interpersonal freedom, what we want is commitment.\u201d Covenant <\/em>might be the term we would use in the church and I pointed out to my ward a few times when I showed them this video that we covenant WITH EACH OTHER when baptized.<\/p>\n

I also thought about these issues when working with recent converts and would ask them what they found appealing about our church. Many male converts reported feeling lost, looking for a home, a way to progress, overcome problems, desiring personal growth, and self esteem, and feeling like the church provided what they were looking for. As I reflected on hearing these vital things we humans need, it struck me that it\u2019s churches that do best to provide such things and that our church with its lay ministry does have a particularly good system.<\/p>\n

It was in that context that I found John Dehlin’s statement that I quoted on another post<\/a> particularly helpful: “Is there healing and growth and happiness? [outside of the church] Yes. Is there a system that\u2019s as packaged to provide people with identity, meaning, purpose, spirituality, community, friendships, resolution about the afterlife? Is there a package that you could just drop into, live it, raise your kids in it and have a community and blossom from it? No.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related to my observations on our ward\u2019s converts, there\u2019s a ton of data to suggest<\/a> that men in our society are really struggling<\/a>. There are all kinds of indicators, but a big one is that the US life-expectancy has actually declined<\/a> due to \u201cdeaths of despair\u201d\u2014suicide, cirrhosis due to alcoholism, and opioid overdoses\u2014deaths which disproportionately afflict men. My sense is that struggling men affect women with a recent report that the majority of men no longer see themselves as dating<\/a>, which would make it increasingly difficult for women to find partners.<\/p>\n

Such despair, lots of people point out, are the things that churches (and ours especially) help with: loneliness, lack of structure, and nihilism<\/a>. Dehlin\u2019s statement in itself, of course, isn\u2019t \u201cproof\u201d of such claims, but my observations point in that direction as well. I very much agree with Dehlin that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a wonderful system of living, one that ought to be embraced and shared.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m quite interested in this \u201csystem\u201d that I see as both divine and temporally quite useful. As President Nelson said in his last conference talk<\/a>: “Here is the great news of God\u2019s plan: the very things that will make your\u00a0mortal<\/em>\u00a0life the best\u00a0it<\/em>\u00a0can be are exactly the\u00a0same<\/em>\u00a0things that will make your life throughout all\u00a0eternity<\/em>\u00a0the best\u00a0it<\/em> can be!” I can\u2019t really PROVE these claims, but do believe we have some evidence of a wonderful lifestyle just like Dehlin and President Nelson suggest. And as I said in a previous post<\/a>, I do not see everything we do in the church as PERFECT, but do believe it has quite a bit to offer.<\/p>\n

More thoughts on this \u201csystem\u201d in coming posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little bit more about my own story relating to developing some alternative views of the church and coming to gain a as I said testimony of what I see as an \u201cimperfect\u201d church. The series I\u2019m working on at the JI gives come context for ways in which historical research has influenced me, and over time I\u2019ve seen myself becoming increasingly different. Spiritual experiences, however, have \u00a0helped me to be okay with that, though the journey has been a struggle at times. I\u2019ve felt a sense of calling to find ways to make my research helpful to others, but, again, that\u2019s often seemed a little confusing how to do so. I felt this confusion much more acutely in my first months as bishop. I felt like I had a lot to sort out, but during the process I did feel like I gained a number of insights helpful to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46851","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\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46851"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46871,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46851\/revisions\/46871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}