"room For All Levels Of Belief" Sacrament Meeting Talk

[mfbukowski]

That'd mean, if the scriptures were not, that all texts are of not much worth. But that can't be. We're supposed to read from even the best books, most of which can't be considered canonical scripture. Ah well, I think Gray and I agree, for the most part, on what the scriptures are, though. I haven't seem them as being any more magical than other fine works of literature. As both inspire, which is exactly what God needs--more means to inspire us.

"Best" is a relative term.  And then we have the question of how we know what books ARE the "best"? 

 

So take that literally, ASSUME the scriptures are the "best" of imperfect human creations the the discussion about God and what God wants for us, and go from there.  That's the way I see it.

 

And then pray about the assumption.  If God confirms it, you are on the right track.  But ALWAYS the spirit must be your final guide in all these matters.  The spirit is the only standard each of us has to judge anything.

 

And do we disagree on paths the spirit has told us to take?  Of course, because we all need a different tutor to bring us to Christ.  Not all paths are the best ones for each individual.

 

But as I see it, our church is the best path for all of mankind once they see it.  Could I be wrong?  Of course.

 

Could I be wrong that it is the best path for me, personally?   Not a chance, because the best part of "ME" (the "spirit") has perfect knowledge of what "me" needs, or else I would not be "me".

 

But that is for another day I suppose.

 

Isn't our goal in life to not know where "I" end and "God" begins?  

 

Call that "the spirit" or "God in me" or "Me in God" or whatever you like, human language being the mess that it is.  God is the BEST in me, and I want to be the BEST so that I can be in Him.   I want that blur to disappear.

 

Jesus surrendered his entire will to God and so WAS God.

 

I wanna be like that when I grow up. 

Edited May 11, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Was Joseph speaking as a prophet or a man when he made that statement?  Doesn't everything come down to personal discernment and faith.

How does one separate the two? It cannot be done.

[mfbukowski]

To become the best human we can become is to become like Christ, because Christ is the best human we can imagine.

To become "a christ” as we are encouraged to become in the temple, we need to become the best humans we can imagine- using Christ as our IDEAL

Does this mean that Christ is a human invention?

By no means. It is simply another angle at viewing The Christ from a humanistic perspective

This is simply another set of words to help our interpretation of ways this can be seen.

Is he not our "brother" and our "friend"?

Edited May 11, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

If this was true then we should have authors coming out every other year with great literature that leads people to Christ.  We should all be praying to receive a testimony of the truthfulness of gospel found in Shakespeare, Virgil, ****ens, and Austen.  We should toss out that "chloroform in print" that we study every four years in gospel doctrine and be reading Tom Sawyer instead.  

 

note: apparently the author of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol cannot be mentioned on this board

I am not going to argue- but this is a false analogy. "Literature" is written with the intent to tell a story, not to talk about the nature of God or what we need to do to follow him.

The only similarity is that both are written in ambiguous human language.

Please note that the parables of Christ were in effect "literature"- stories told to teach us about God. In fact virtually ALL we have of Christ's personal words in teaching us how we should act are indeed stories or parables which intellectually are indistinguishable fro "fiction".

Does this mean that Christ is a fantasy or that he himself is "fiction"? Not at all.

On the other hand can we absolutely PROVE that He even existed? Nothing can ever be proven absolutely by "evidence", historical or scientific.

The historical Jesus is a real person we BELIEVE existed as an act of faith. Belief in historicity is itself an act of faith.

Atheists do not need to believe that Jesus even lived in order to be "good people" who have insights into the human condition, and who know what an Ideal Person would be like.

By understanding our faith in an Ideal Person whom we believe was God Personified, embodied in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we can grow closer to creating a view of Christ as the Ideal Person which allows us to communicate with others who do not see Him as God personified.

It can establish common ground. They see him as the Ideal Human, we see him as the Son of God who was also The Ideal Human.

We are at once on the "same page" with the rest of humanity by simply being able to shift between these two perspectives, and can influence the world more effectively in my opinion.

I think this alteration in perspective- or really an additional perspective added to our usual perspective- can prove to be very valuable in making us a worldwide church.

[ksfisher]

I am not going to argue- but this is a false analogy. "Literature" is written with the intent to tell a story, not to talk about the nature of God or what we need to do to follow him.

The only similarity is that both are written in ambiguous human language.

Please note that the parables of Christ were in effect "literature"- stories told to teach us about God. In fact virtually ALL we have of Christ's personal words in teaching us how we should act are indeed stories or parables which intellectually are indistinguishable fro "fiction".

Does this mean that Christ is a fantasy or that he himself is "fiction"? Not at all.

On the other hand can we absolutely PROVE that He even existed? Nothing can ever be proven absolutely by "evidence", historical or scientific.

The historical Jesus is a real person we BELIEVE existed as an act of faith. Belief in historicity is itself an act of faith.

Atheists do not need to believe that Jesus even lived in order to be "good people" who have insights into the human condition, and who know what an Ideal Person would be like.

By understanding our faith in an Ideal Person whom we believe was God Personified, embodied in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we can grow closer to creating a view of Christ as the Ideal Person which allows us to communicate with others who do not see Him as God personified.

It can establish common ground. They see him as the Ideal Human, we see him as the Son of God who was also The Ideal Human.

We are at once on the "same page" with the rest of humanity by simply being able to shift between these two perspectives, and can influence the world more effectively in my opinion.

I think this alteration in perspective- or really an additional perspective added to our usual perspective- can prove to be very valuable in making us a worldwide church.

 

Perhaps the analogy is false, but are there any works of literature that have the power to bring man to Christ the way that those found within the standard works do?  There are many good books that inspire us to be better people or to see the beauty around us, but what book has the same spirit about it as say the Book of Mormon?  There are no magic words in the book, and the book cannot prove that God exists, but millions have come to know Christ through the doctrines and teachings that are contained in the scriptures.

[hope_for_things]

How does one separate the two? It cannot be done.

Agreed, therefore you can't take any one statement as the pure mind and will of God.  We cannot fully comprehend God in this mortal state, and are left to our individual powers of discernment.  We will continually fall short of the divine will, but I believe we can get ever closer and more enlightened as we challenge ourselves to think differently and engage in honest evaluation.   

[mfbukowski]

Perhaps the analogy is false, but are there any works of literature that have the power to bring man to Christ the way that those found within the standard works do?  There are many good books that inspire us to be better people or to see the beauty around us, but what book has the same spirit about it as say the Book of Mormon?  There are no magic words in the book, and the book cannot prove that God exists, but millions have come to know Christ through the doctrines and teachings that are contained in the scriptures.

You will not get universal agreement on the answer to that one.

I think atheists see no value whatsoever in the scriptures as far as making them want to become "better people".

I think one has to have a testimony for that to happen. On the other hand, they CAN understand the desire to be "the best you can be". I mean even the Army uses that as a slogan to get recruits. Clearly it the idea communicates effectively. So if you want to improve humanity and get them to be more interested in keeping the "ten commandments" do you package them as commandments from a being in the sky from whom they probably rebelled as a child, or do you show them that Human values are indeed the way to become better humans?

Do you talk about a man who lived (or not) 2000 years ago and some stories we inherited about him, or do you talk about becoming the Ideal Human?

Yes I believe as you do- but my point is that I would rather live in a world where the majority of people see a reason to become "Ideal" than where everyone attends sacrament every week.

I mean yes, having everyone be LDS AND attending sacrament meeting is the recipe to becoming the City of Enoch- it is THE absolute IDEAL.

But if you communicate that in terms of the City of Enoch, no one will listen.

I am reminded of a similar situation where John Lennon said "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, nobody's gonna listen to you anyhow", and that has worked. Look at us- we are as close as ever to becoming a socialist state, and no one ever carried around a picture of Chairman Mao, and got followers.

We need to be wise as serpents in getting the message out there, and the way to do it is to first start with the Man of Holiness and Human values in that sense. The family is the basis for human values- it has survival value and society cannot exist continuing in the direction it is going. No family, no society.

People need to see that "family values" are essential just for civilization to exist, or we are back to the stone age in a few generations.

So we need to use Humanistic vocabulary to speak to humanists, or we will become the fossils of days long gone.

We need a "preparatory gospel" so that people can see what we are talking about and THEN they can get a testimony that the "Ideal Man" is indeed the Man of Holiness, and that "christ consciousness points directly to Christ, the Redeemer of the World.

It's all one step at a time. THEN we can become the "stone cut without hands" that truly CAN "fill the earth".

And THIS is what I think Bokovoy and Givens, and I think ultimately Uchtdorf and others in the 12, and others intuitively see without perhaps putting it into words. On the other hand, clearly there are others to have no clue about the importance of this direction. So it goes.

Edited May 11, 2015 by mfbukowski

[Gray]

Look,  I don't know why, but it seems to me that when we get into this we abandon our common sense.

 

Is God the author of confusion?  Yes or no?

 

Are there ambiguities in the scriptures which cause confusion?  Yes or no?

 

Did God take a pen in his hands, and someone see it floating around writing words on a page with no visible hand guiding it?   Yes or no?

 

Did human fingers write those words?   Did they pass through a human brain?

 

Are they written in a human language, or worse, several human languages, and are they translated by humans from those several languages in which they were written?

 

Is each step in that process fraught with peril of losing some of the "original meaning" assuming that the "original meaning" was actually written by God himself??

 

Were the scriptures in fact written by human beings who were "inspired" (what does that mean?  definition please....) by God to write what they thought God was telling them to write?  Could those humans have been wrong, or by using the imperfect human language they were taught, maybe have gotten some of the finer points confused by the ambiguity of human language itself?

 

These are just a FEW of the questions anyone with common sense would ask, in my most humble opinion.

 

And FINALLY- WHO is it exactly who has to personally answer these questions for themselves to even read the scriptures and figure out how to apply them in our lives?

 

WHO is the final judge in each person's life about whether or not the path they have chosen was indeed inspired by GOD?

 

Is that person fallible?

 

So to me it is clear that one has a perfect God speaking in human mush language and using human mush brains to get out his word in an imperfect world with imperfect translations all to be interpreted by each of our own human mush brains which are full of prejudice, and preconceived "knowledge of the truth" which may or may not be anywhere close to "THE TRUTH".

 

And worse, I think that anyone who believes the "scriptures are God breathed" needs to answer all these questions before making that assertion, or the assertion is on its face totally unreasonable.

 

Does that kind of sum it up?

 

All of true, but this is not how fundamentalists of any stripe look at the world. Hence the need for a Marcus Borg