This weeks topic was judging. For stuff like the pictures you post to Facebook and surfing the web while watching your kids at the park. And taking it to the next level: shunning. (And someone finally asked the question about BYU that I’ve always wondered about!)
Who’s not pat of the fold is the ever-present question. Sadly, while the CoCJoL-dS can excommunicate people for apostasy (however arbitrarily), they can’t seem to define it. Maybe Rock’s book will help. Or this week’s Old Testament Lesson:
However, if I went around saying that Mormons were like prostitutes, not only would I evoke howls of protest from Mormons, I’d probably have ex-Mormons telling me I was going a bit far. Yet here we have the reverse situation, posted not by some weirdo on Facebook, but proclaimed openly in every Mormon Sunday School class this week, using the church’s official teaching materials.
One thing the church has always done very poorly is understanding the motivations of those who leave. Over and over again, we have lessons about the Dangers of Personal Apostasy, and it seems to be beyond their comprehension that people might have good reasons for leaving.
A new blogger posted some good reasons, and Jen listed some of the church-approved reasons for apostasy that she used to believe:
Inactive, struggling with faith, lost testimony, fell away, gave in to temptation, led away, allowed Satan to have influence, lost the spirit, not truly committed, not truly converted, not obedient enough, having a crisis of faith, didn’t endure to the end, didn’t keep covenants, relied too much in the understanding of man, proud, offended, wandered off the path, focusing on the wrong priorities, complacent, selfish, not worthy, chose to sin, blinded by arrogance.
In the department of introspection fail, Jeff Spector explained to Mormon women why they need to shut up about their relatively trivial problems. Also, a reader pointed out that on this post the commenters sympathize with the author’s difficulty getting to church while ignoring her statements regarding the inhumane treatment of the Palestine people by the Israelis.
In church fun, we have the joy of Sunday. And is “soaking” a real thing or what? (This other parody article OTOH is only too believable.) Also, the CoCJoL-dS wants to improve their Search Engine Optimisation with this instructional video, but leave it to the redditors to identify the fatal flaw:
This video is self defeating, the part at 1:42 about choosing a restaurant is a SPOT ON analogy for the LDS church.
They church says they are awesome, but there are a TON of bad reviews online. 😀
In further church stuff, one of the Mormon prophets just died. Also, we have a new review of Happiest Misery: My Life As A Mormon, and a tale of being on the receiving end of missionary tactics.
And in random life stuff, Andrew Hackman’s son turned 13, Heather wrote about her big move, Uomo Nuovo is still taking beautiful pictures in France!
Well, I’m off to play with my kids! I hope you’re having a lovely Sunday as well!
The Palestinian woman’s (a returned missionary) cuts across many things that Americans seem to think are true components of the true church (which they also think is synonymous with “gospel”). I recommend reading the Exponent’s series of LDS Americans living abroad. A theme seems to be that much of what they hear in General Conference is culturally bound, and quite irrelevant to the daily lives of church members living abroad.
@1 Yes, I’ve been following it — it’s pretty interesting.
But… isn’t noticing the irrelevance of General Conference one of the steps towards apostasy? 😉
A friend asked me if I had watched the tv broadcasts of conference. I told him that I had already heard all of the talks before. He was pretty sure I had taken all of the steps. I guess he was right.
Maybe the church as an institution has noticed the irrelevance of Conference. Perhaps that’s why GAs now have the option of delivering their talks in their native language: because honestly, the talks are usually so repetitive and samey that the only way to make them seem diverse is to have some in different languages.
And think what a difference it might have made if BKP were, say, Swedish, and had delivered his 2010 talk in Swedish. They could attribute anything people found offensive to a language difference, and few would know what the original had contained anyway.