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jkwilliams

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Everything posted by jkwilliams

  1. Right. Someone said the difference between Catholics and Mormons is that Catholics believe the pope is infallible but act like he isn’t; Mormons don’t believe the prophet is infallible but act like he is.
  2. I’m thinking of the line running from the Nancy Rigdon letter to “the prophet will never lead the church astray” to the repeated counsel that if the prophet tells you to do something you think is wrong, do it anyway, and you’ll be be blessed. As I said, no one in the history of the church has ever been praised for disobeying leaders’ instructions.
  3. In short, you trust the church/gospel enough to make its teachings and policies yours by default. I’m certainly not going to argue with that, but my point was precisely that: for different reasons, people choose to outsource their moral judgment to an organization or an ideology. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least not until you reach the point when your moral arbiters ask you to do something you think is fundamentally immoral. Granted, I don’t imagine you will find yourself at that point, but others have and more will (and I’m not talking about the LDS church in particular). But, speaking of Mormonism, Church leaders have been consistent for almost 200 years that, generally speaking, members should subordinate their judgment to that of the church. I have never heard of a member being praised at all for standing on principle and refusing a line authority’s instructions or counsel—quite the opposite, in fact. Your analogy of cardinal directions is a good one: if I have a compass, should I follow my priesthood leader who says west is east and north is south? As I said before, I don’t know why I’m bothering here, as you’ve made it clear that anyone who thinks the church isn’t “wonderful” is wrong, period, and probably guilty of a bad attitude at the least.
  4. I don't get your point, since I wasn't talking about infallibility. You asserted that it is better to rely on an external framework of morality (right and wrong) rather than relying our own conscience and moral judgment. To do the latter, you suggested, would be to invite moral relativism based on Korihor's principle that "whatsoever a man did was no crime." There isn't much difference between that and outsourcing our moral judgment to an institution that teaches "whatever God requires is right." Sure, you can say that the church doesn't claim infallibility, in which case we are supposed to ponder and pray over whether we should obey counsel from leadership that we find morally problematic. But then that just returns the moral judgment back to ourselves, as we are the ultimate deciders of what is right and moral. Of course, church leaders over generations have taught that we are to set aside our objections, moral or otherwise, and follow our leaders, who will not lead us astray. It's a bit of a pickle.
  5. But what if the external moral framework is "Whatever God [or the institution] requires is right, no matter what it is"? How is that in any way better than making our own moral judgments?
  6. I don’t think you need a particular ideology to want to better the lives of other people.
  7. I agree. It’s ideology (among other things) that drives people to do evil things. Religion is an ideology. ETA: Ideology also can motivate good behavior, obviously.
  8. I’m just saying there’s no way to know whether there has been any scandalous behavior or not until someone gets caught.
  9. Certainly that’s the potential when you abdicate your moral judgment to an organization. It explains things like the Mountain Meadows massacre.
  10. There is definitely a danger in ceding your moral judgment to a human institution, even if that institution is led by God. Everything humans touch is messy, even supposed direction from the divine. When we decide that every action of a human institution is beyond question, we can be led into some terrible actions. It’s quite telling that those who express any discomfort or opposition to morally or ethically questionable behavior are usually castigated for being judgmental or speaking evil of the Lord’s anointed. Our conscience is usually a reliable guide to determine what is right or wrong, and we ignore our conscience at our own peril. We should be wary of those who tell us to set aside our conscience.
  11. What I mean is that I don’t think they set out to be deceptive or dishonest. But I do agree that’s how it ended up. Somehow you can’t say that without being accused of bad faith and evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed. But wrong is wrong.
  12. I doubt this was done with evil intent, but it seems pretty clear they violated SEC regulations in an effort to conceal the extent of their financial holdings. I haven’t paid tithing in several years, so I don’t much care. I just find it interesting that I know people in the church who feel so strongly that they’ve stopped paying tithing. Whatever the intent, the secrecy—ahem, confidentiality—seems to have backfired.
  13. “I often wonder if we realize that paying our tithing does not represent giving gifts to the Lord and the Church. Paying tithing is discharging a debt to the Lord.” N. Eldon Tanner “Some years ago one of our brethren spoke of the payment of tithing as ‘fire insurance’; that statement evoked laughter. Nonetheless, the word of the Lord is clear that those who do not keep the commandments and observe the laws of God shall be burned at the time of his coming.” Gordon B. Hinckley
  14. Nonetheless some people want us to believe that an organization that was fined $5 million for very specific reasons didn’t do anything amiss—in fact, it was the SEC that was in the wrong. 🙄🙄🙄
  15. It’s always possible that the Lord has nothing to do with it.
  16. To be fair, a lot of church leaders have taught it as a transaction, a debt, fire insurance, and so on.
  17. That’s the nice thing about feelings and conscience: they don’t depend on a linear, point-by-point legalistic rebuttal. An awful lot of people believe, based on the evidence as well as their conscience, that the church did wrong. You can wave them off as over-emotional or whatever, but conscience (that pesky light of Christ) is a powerful thing.
  18. It’s interesting that I know at least half a dozen otherwise active LDS who tell me they have stopped paying tithing over this, feeling like the church expects honesty from them but doesn’t practice it. Of course, not everyone can contort themselves to say the SEC, not the church, is “in the wrong.”
  19. Funny how no one ever questioned our motivation back when we were both amateur apologists. But you change your mind about the church, and suddenly you’re a hateful bully spewing invective. Go figure.
  20. That is the issue: is a charitable account that spends no money on charity actually a charitable account?
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