And they came to pass...the sacrament?

[Scott Lloyd]

On 11/1/2018 at 6:14 AM, SouthernMo said:

Your dodging of @jpv‘s question is too comically painful to ignore!

Your awkwardly timed counter-question seems to be the go-to for fundamentalist Mormons: to put a binary choice in front of  someone to force them to either be obedient and good, or disobedient and apostate.  That characterization is not the reality of our existence!

We are constantly in situations of ‘grey areas’ and have to make tough choices on how we will align ourselves with truth.  The choice where we all began - mother Eve’s alpha choice - is the quintessential example of this. So important is that choice, that it has become a principle narrative of all Judeo-Muslim-Christian history!

Let’s stop with the false idea of binary choices. It’s not a healthy perspective.

And also - answer @jpv‘s question! 😊

 

On 11/1/2018 at 10:15 AM, Scott Lloyd said:

Welcome to my ignore list. 

 

On 11/1/2018 at 10:56 AM, SouthernMo said:

Few things:

First - why ignore me?  Is my shared perspective hurtful or harmful to you?

Second - why reply to me to tell me you’re ignoring me?  Seems paradoxical to me...

I'm taking you off ignore long enough to respond to this post.

Quote

First - why ignore me?  Is my shared perspective hurtful or harmful to you?

It didn't come across to me as merely a "shared perspective," more in the way of overbearing and vexatious lecturing, the sort of thing that puts me off immediately, combined with what amounts to a demand that I interact with a third party in a particular way. As I see it, SouthernMo, I have enough crap to deal with in my life as it is without subjecting myself to more of it from anonymous persons on an internet board. So I can either curtail my participation here altogether, or I can pick and choose whom I interact with. One way I accomplish the latter is by means of the ignore function here.

Quote

Second - why reply to me to tell me you’re ignoring me?  Seems paradoxical to me...

I just saw it as a quick and efficient way to convey to you that I had seen your post and that I don't intend to converse with you further on this or any other matter.

Now, if you choose to respond to this post, be advised I likely won't see your response, because, after all, I have  you on ignore.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Scott Lloyd

[SouthernMo]

4 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I have enough crap to deal with in my life as it is

I’m so sorry you have a difficult life. I wish you the best.

[bluebell]

19 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I am saying that he was either wrong by calling something revelation, inspiration, prompting (whatever) that wasn't, OR he was wrong by misinterpreting what the revelation, inspiration, prompting (whatever) was telling him. This is obvious because he asked which road to take and then he chose the road and attributed it to revelation, inspiration, prompting (whatever) yet was wrong.

Once he realized he was wrong he had to try to understand why he was wrong so he came up with the explanation he did to turn an error into a faith promoting experience.

I understand your opinion on this and I think it's a reasonable one.

But none of us can say that we know more about Elder Holland's experience than Elder Holland does.  We all have opinions but that's different than fact.  You (and all of us) are speaking from positions of ignorance when we talk about Elder Holland's experience.  We definitely are not in any position to make statements of fact about what was revealed to him and what wasn't.  Assigning motives like "he came up with an explanation" for why someone believes something was of God shouldn't be any more acceptable than a believer assigning motives for why someone doesn't believe something was from God.

We can believe someone or not, agree with them or not, but we don't get to pretend we have personal knowledge of another's experience that we don't have.

[HappyJackWagon]

On ‎11‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 10:03 AM, bluebell said:

I understand your opinion on this and I think it's a reasonable one.

But none of us can say that we know more about Elder Holland's experience than Elder Holland does.  We all have opinions but that's different than fact.  You (and all of us) are speaking from positions of ignorance when we talk about Elder Holland's experience.  We definitely are not in any position to make statements of fact about what was revealed to him and what wasn't.  Assigning motives like "he came up with an explanation" for why someone believes something was of God shouldn't be any more acceptable than a believer assigning motives for why someone doesn't believe something was from God.

We can believe someone or not, agree with them or not, but we don't get to pretend we have personal knowledge of another's experience that we don't have.

True. This is opinion. I wasn't intending to state it as fact. It's my interpretation of what he shared in his story. I kind of assume everyone knows that what I say is my opinion.

It would be great if there was some way to ask him about this. This story has raised many issues and all we can do is attempt to interpret the story. But ironically, that's really all he can do as well. All any of us can do it attempt to place events in our lives into a context that makes sense for us, even though we are limited by our own POV, knowledge, access to information. We all interpret the events of our lives, and I see this story as an example of Elder Holland attempting to interpret a specific event. Surely he has more info than I have, but that doesn't mean the info is perfect, his understanding is perfect, or his interpretation is perfect. It's a story meant to convey a faith promoting message and it happens to be a message that I feel fails on many levels.

 

[bluebell]

35 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

True. This is opinion. I wasn't intending to state it as fact. It's my interpretation of what he shared in his story. I kind of assume everyone knows that what I say is my opinion.

It would be great if there was some way to ask him about this. This story has raised many issues and all we can do is attempt to interpret the story. But ironically, that's really all he can do as well. All any of us can do it attempt to place events in our lives into a context that makes sense for us, even though we are limited by our own POV, knowledge, access to information. We all interpret the events of our lives, and I see this story as an example of Elder Holland attempting to interpret a specific event. Surely he has more info than I have, but that doesn't mean the info is perfect, his understanding is perfect, or his interpretation is perfect. It's a story meant to convey a faith promoting message and it happens to be a message that I feel fails on many levels.

 

If it's a true message, then there is no way for it to fail.  The only way it can fail is if it's false.  

It seems like, the divide between whether someone sees this story as faith promoting or not is whether or not they've ever experienced something similar.  Those who have, see value in the story because they believe it's true.  Those who haven't, feel it can't be true and therefore has little value.

I wonder if that's all it boils down to--the divide between "If it happened to me, it could happen to someone else" and "if it's never happened to me then it can't happen."  

[HappyJackWagon]

47 minutes ago, bluebell said:

If it's a true message, then there is no way for it to fail.  The only way it can fail is if it's false.  

It seems like, the divide between whether someone sees this story as faith promoting or not is whether or not they've ever experienced something similar.  Those who have, see value in the story because they believe it's true.  Those who haven't, feel it can't be true and therefore has little value.

I wonder if that's all it boils down to--the divide between "If it happened to me, it could happen to someone else" and "if it's never happened to me then it can't happen."  

I don't know if it's quite that simple.

For me, I know how I've justified things to make it fit my faith paradigm so I see signs that others may be doing the same thing. I totally understand what it feels like to pray for an answer and not get an answer, and therefore believe the non-answer is the answer. (Reminds me of the Garth Brooks song- Unanswered Prayers) I also understand what it feels like to get an answer to a prayer that fails even though I am obedient to the prompting or direction the answer gives. And I know what it feels like to try to make sense of that within my faith paradigm. I recognize the mental gymnastics because I've engaged in the gymnastics myself.

So to your point, that is still experiential.

[bluebell]

13 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I don't know if it's quite that simple.

For me, I know how I've justified things to make it fit my faith paradigm so I see signs that others may be doing the same thing. I totally understand what it feels like to pray for an answer and not get an answer, and therefore believe the non-answer is the answer. (Reminds me of the Garth Brooks song- Unanswered Prayers) I also understand what it feels like to get an answer to a prayer that fails even though I am obedient to the prompting or direction the answer gives. And I know what it feels like to try to make sense of that within my faith paradigm. I recognize the mental gymnastics because I've engaged in the gymnastics myself.

So to your point, that is still experiential.

But, also to my point, you are still using your experiences to gauge the veracity of the experiences of others, which is what I said it looks like people's responses to Elder Holland boils down to.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I still think it's important to acknowledge.  

You have experienced 'mental gymnastics' when dealing with answers to prayers so you assume that's what Elder Holland is doing as well.  You have no evidence that Elder Holland did any mental gymnastics, but because that is what you have experienced, that seems like the most likely outcome to you.  

For me, I've had experiences where the explanation of an odd answer to a pray was very clearly from the Holy Ghost and required no mental gymnastics at all but just felt like pure light and information, and I've experienced the mental gymnastics answer as well, so I've learned learned to tell the difference.  I have no evidence that Elder Holland didn't do mental gymnastics, but because of the experiences I've had, it seems to me that him knowing the difference between an explanation to a prayer and mental gymnastics (and therefore not confusing the two) is the most likely outcome.

Both of us are using ourselves as the standard for judging the veracity of Elder Holland's experience.  It's really not based anything more profound than that, for either of us.

 

[Steve-o]

On ‎11‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 8:21 AM, HappyJackWagon said:

IIRC there were some minor inconsistencies between the Matt Holland version and the Elder Holland version, but I agree that they state they received revelation.

But think about this... an apostle and his young son pray to know which way to go. They both receive independent revelation that proves to take them down the wrong road. This would be one of those teaching moments where dad has to explain to young son why he received revelation that was wrong. So to overcome the cognitive dissonance about why God would give them a faulty revelation, they seek to find meaning in the wrong revelation. This is a great example of confirmation bias.  God told me the wrong road so I could know it was wrong. This is so backwards and illustrates the lengths people go to in an attempt to hold on to their preconceived notion, even in the face of evidence they were wrong.

Have you ever asked your father (or some other trusted loved one) an important question only to discover that he told you wrong? Does it really seem like a reasonable conclusion that your father would lie to you and give you an answer he knows is false, simply so you can discover your father was wrong? That is the opposite of building trust. Imagine if Nephi had received revelation about how to build a ship. He builds. He puts it in the water. It immediately sinks. The lesson he learns is...that is NOT how I should build a ship. I'm so lucky I discovered that now before we were out on the ocean. Or God could just tell him a proper way to build a ship that works and therefore builds faith in revelation.

The wrong road story is not faith promoting in the slightest. It calls into question every single instance of "revelation" in ones life. If you think that the revelation you receive could very well be wrong because God is teaching you a lesson, how likely are you to trust in that revelation when it prompts you to do something? What it does is allow a person to avoid responsibility for their own decisions. If the revelation reveals the right road...great. See, revelation is real and it works. If the revelation reveals the wrong road...great. See, revelation is real and it works. Revelation becomes totally unreliable and therefore meaningless.

I'm with you on this one. The wrong roads story leaves me scratching my head.

[Scott Lloyd]

14 hours ago, Steve-o said:

I'm with you on this one. The wrong roads story leaves me scratching my head.

I, on the other hand, believe the reasoning was quite clearly and rationally expressed, both by Matthew Holland in the earlier New Era article, and by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in his talk. It might be beneficial for you to re-examine what they said.