Traditions ≠ Doctrine

I wish I'd known about this woman before she died. She sounds like the kind of person who could make being Mormon tolerable.

Ask yourself some questions about traditions. Are there some traditions in your Relief Society or Elder’s Quorum that perhaps were very functional a few years ago but just aren’t meeting people’s needs now? Are there some things we need to do in our wards because that’s the way we’ve always done them? Do we have stereotypes and attitudes about things that are left over from other days? Could the work move forward more effectively if we rethought some of those traditions?

 Are there traditions of the fathers--and of the mothers--that represented goodness in times past but that may no longer be appropriate? Yes, there certainly are.

 Are there some traditions that are still good ones and to which we should cling even more tightly? Absolutely! 

How then, do we tell them apart? Or will the prophet and our priesthood leaders tell us? I think it is inherent in the wonderful law of agency that God doesn’t do our work for us and he doesn’t expect us to do each other’s work. The prophet’s job is to receive revelation for the Church, not for the individuals. Our job is to receive revelation for ourselves, not for the church. We have a responsibility to take our questions to God and struggle with those questions in the process of receiving revelation. Will my personal direction from God be the same as yours? I don’t think so. We’re individuals. God deals with us as individuals. This is the same God who made not just apples but pears and apricots and persimmons and grapes. He likes diversity. He invented it.

Chieko N. Okazaki, Disciples

I was reading this post from Wheat & Tares earlier today, and it made me think of this quote, which I saved in a draft several weeks ago. I'm coming to the conclusion that most of the Mormon "rules" are tradition, not doctrine. I'm also coming to the conclusion that I don't care if something is doctrine--if it doesn't feel right to me, then I'm not going to do it. I place my own personal relationship with God above that of my relationship with the church.

This comment from that post does an excellent job of summing up the problem we have with knowing what is official doctrine and what is opinion, tradition, or advice:

Entertaining for a moment however that a Prophet can speak both the infallable words of God AND the fallable words of dated grandfatherly opinion, how do we tell the difference? That really is the key, particularly given that when Church leaders speak, they make no effort to distinguish the quality of their commandments, but rather seem to usually speak in straightforward command language. Mormons “should do this”, or “should not do that”.

Robert Millet poses this question in a talk titled “What is our Doctrine” http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/study-and-faith-selections-religious-educator/chapter-6-what-our-doctrine

He talks about a conversation he had with a baptist minister who was politely trying to explain the challenge in understaning what Mormons believe. In the minsters words, according to Millet:

“Bob, many of my fellow Christians have noted how hard it is to figure out what Mormons believe. They say it’s like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall!”

I have noticed, as per Deseret New’s faith section, as well as in other sphere’s of Mormon apologetics, this tendency to insist that when people bring up topics such as Blood Atonement, or racism, etc, that the standard response is something along the lines of: “well, that is taken out context” or “not everything spoken in the past is relevant as doctrine today” or “Define us by who we are and by our central beliefs rather than who we are not or by obscure or irrelevant beliefs.”

So, we have all these messages criticizing people for all of the wrong way’s for interpreting Mormon doctrine, belief, commandments etc. Still, we have very little useful information regarding how to “correctly” interpret it. Then, what we do get is very subjective even still. Millett for example answers the question thus:

“3. In determining whether something is a part of the doctrine of the Church, we might ask, Is it found within the four standard works? Within official declarations or proclamations? Is it discussed in general conference or other official gatherings by general Church leaders today? Is it found in the general handbooks or approved curriculum of the Church today? If it meets at least one of these criteria, we can feel secure and appropriate about teaching it.”

So if it was found in the Standard Works, ie, the selectively assembled literature of “yesterday”, then thumbs up. If it is being talked about in General Conference, or in Church manuals “today” then thumbs up. However, if it is in Church Manuals from yesterday, or from any assortement of Prophetic statements of a former generation, then thumbs down. If it is in the manuals and conferences, quotations, etc, “today”, then…thumbs up today, and thumbs down tomorrow????

So what are the commandments, and what use is it to speak of commandments, performance, worthiness, etc, if we can’t even define these things in clear terms?

I disagree with the conclusion Millet comes to, that "if it meets at least one of these criteria we can feel secure and appropriate about teaching it." I think a lot of the criteria he mentioned are sketchy, like things that are discussed in General Conference and in approved curriculum. There's a lot of stuff in those sources that I absolutely would not accept as doctrine. I keep using this example because it's the only one I can immediately think of, but they've been talking about avoiding sleepovers in GC lately and have now even included it in For the Strength of Youth. I do not believe that this is intended as church doctrine, and if it were, I would ignore it in favor of my husband's and my judgment.

Basically, the moral of the story is that I think 1) the church has an opinion on a lot of things it doesn't need to have an opinion on, and 2) Mormons do a terrible job of differentiating between moral requirements and traditions that are not essential to salvation.

Molly Mormon Memory

I'm actually not a huge fan of the vaguely cheesy alliteration here, but it's an appropriate name for what it is (and I'm probably going to turn it into a label for future posts like this). I have very few memories of my childhood, which is kind of frustrating because I often can't even use my own personal experience as evidence of the things I'm talking about--or specific experiences, at least. I mostly have impressions and feelings left over. So when I do have a specific memory, I want to document it.

I remembered this last night, and it made me sad that such a small event stuck in my memory for so long. One Sunday in Primary, when I was probably eleven (nearing my graduation into Young Women), we were singing "A Child's Prayer." I always loved that song, but liked the second verse so much better and was disappointed that the boys always got to sing it when we did the harmony. That day I was feeling frustrated with it, and mentioned to my class that if they wouldn't let the girls have the second verse, I would just sing with the boys. My teacher turned to me and asked why I wanted to be rebellious.

I was really upset by this, because as the oldest child in my family--the one required to set an example--I prided myself on being obedient, mature, and responsible. I was humiliated and hurt that she would think I wanted to be rebellious. It makes me sad now when I realize that this was just the tiniest baby spark of feminism in me--all I wanted was a chance to sing the other verse once in a while, and it never occurred to the leaders to bother switching up the usual roles--and it was interpreted by my teacher as a desire to cause trouble.

Funny how little has changed in the fifteen years since then. Funny how Mormons like to think that feminists are just people who want to cause trouble, who like to stir up controversy and contention. And by funny I obviously mean sad.

I don't think I believe in sin.

Or maybe I do... but in a way very different from traditional Christian ideas of it.

I don't think I believe that sex outside of marriage is a sin. But I might believe that cheating on your spouse is.

I certainly don't believe that drinking coffee or alcohol is a sin. But I might believe that abusing your body is.

I realized a while ago that I was starting to have a reaction every time I saw the word "righteous"--a snicker or a derisive snort, maybe some eye-rolling, depending on the context. I'm discovering that I kind of hate that word. Which maybe isn't fair, because it has a pretty simple definition; I guess I just can't extricate it (yet?) from the judgmental, self-congratulatory way it's used in Christendom. I think this part of the definition is the most problematic:

b : arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality<righteous indignation>

I don't find it as funny as "righteous", but I do find my eyebrows sneaking upward when I read the word "sin", too.

1

a : an offense against religious or moral lawb : an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible < it's a sin to waste food>
c : an often serious shortcoming : fault

2

a : transgression of the law of Godb : a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God

The last one seems to come closest to something I can work with, except that I get a Garden-of-Eden fallen-state kind of sense from it and that's not what I mean. Sin as any kind of action that puts you at odds with your self--that I could get behind. Heading to this Wikipedia page now to get an idea of where I should start looking for this kind of belief. Do any of you know? What do you think "sin" is, if anything?

Sealings, Polygamy, and Other Things that Make Me Want to Cry

Tonight, based on my current understanding of things, I feel like I have two options: Either accept that God is sexist, or accept that the LDS church is not true.

As of tonight, I do not believe that God is sexist.

I do not believe that anyone will practice polygamy in heaven (whatever that is). I think the concept is sick, and the fact that no one seems to know whether or not it is actual current doctrine is kind of disturbing. Until it is actually refuted by the church, however, I will believe that it is considered doctrine but the church won't admit it (because let's be honest, they'd be stupid to do so).

According to the CHI via the only source I know of (a friend on Facebook; since, of course, the church thinks it's okay to keep its policies secret from members): "The current policy is that a sister may only be sealed to one husband during her life. Should she be married more than once, she may be sealed to all her husbands, but only after she and all the husbands have died. This is an improvement from the past where even after death we would only seal a woman to her first husband." While men are, of course, allowed to be sealed to whomever the eff they please, even if their former wives are still alive. I cannot think of anything that would make me okay with this disparity.

Though I don't know the actual words, I know that temple sealings involve women covenanting to obey their husbands. Unless husbands also covenant to obey their wives, I think that is bull. I also know that there's crap about women telling their husbands their new names, but never being allowed to know their husbands' names themselves. I've tried for eight years now, and I still cannot think of anything that makes this acceptable to me.

I think I could handle it if we were just talking about Mormon culture. The patriarchal system, women being denied the priesthood, the constant denigration and suppression. It's horrible and painful and humiliating, but I could live with it knowing that it's because of mortal, fallible men who were born in the freaking 30s and 40s for crying out loud. Yeah, it kind of makes sense that they still believe a woman's "place" is at home. I can ignore that, just like I ignore the emails forwarded from my beloved grandmother in which she talks about how much she loves learning things from Glenn Beck.

But at this moment I am finding it impossible to believe that God is directing a church that places so much emphasis on ordinances and denies women equal access to them.

I have not been feeling fantastic tonight, so this is probably not the best time to be thinking about these things. I was already really tired when I got online a couple hours ago, and then I found out that I accidentally offended the crap out of someone I don't even know, and I was feeling so bad I just sort of crumbled. I cried for about fifteen minutes, feeling terrible and like I'd embarrassed myself in front of the new community I already depend on so much. Then I actually felt kind of indignant, for reasons that I won't go into because I don't feel like writing out the whole story. And then I started reading an ongoing conversation about polygamy.

Not much later I ended up here, writing this. Maybe I'll feel better in the morning, or in a couple days, I don't know. Right now I am feeling utterly betrayed and totally lost. I read a woman's experience with the temple sealing and just felt nauseated the entire time. My entire family on my dad's side is LDS, and has been for generations going back to Emma Smith. How is it possible that they've all gone through that same thing? How can they all be a part of this? I feel so weird thinking about all the people I love who've done it--my parents, my best friends from college, aunts and uncles I love dearly, countless cousins, my little sister...

The worst thing is that I really don't want to be having these thoughts. I really, really don't want to finally decide that I don't believe it. This is all I've known my entire life. I don't want to be one of the people I always heard about growing up. I don't want this, I don't, I don't.

It's probably time to go to sleep and stop thinking about this for a while. I'm hoping desperately that things will look better tomorrow.

You're Killin' Me, Maxwell.

I just want to know if this really did happen. Was this actually said?

Finally, remember: When we return to our real home, it will be with the “mutual approbation” of those who reign in the “royal courts on high." ... Could such a regal homecoming be possible without the anticipatory arrangements of a Heavenly Mother?—Neal A. Maxwell, April 1978

 ...Anticipatory arrangements. 


Anticipatory. Arrangements.


So let me get this straight. Are you really telling me, Neal Maxwell (yeah that's right, I took out that A), are you saying that we know we have a Heavenly Mother because the scriptures tell us there's going to be a party in heaven when we get back--and everyone knows you can't have a party without a woman to make all the plans?

I'm feeling like yes, that IS what you're saying, given the unbelievably condescending nature of the entire talk that is the source of this quote, and especially since these are the lines that were taken out by that little ellipsis up there:

"There we will find beauty such as mortal 'eye hath not seen'; we will hear sounds of surpassing music which mortal 'ear hath not heard.'"

Ah, yes. Naturally, Heavenly Mother would have been the one to hire the band.

Maybe I'm overreacting here. I don't know. But I find this so, so demeaning and incredibly offensive. How could he honestly have just insinuated that when we return to heaven we are going to find our Heavenly Mother heading up the Party-Planning Committee?