Resigning from the church

[Calm]

11 hours ago, Navidad said:

Whenever I have spoken with a Saint about this issue and whenever I have posted about it here, I have tried to emphasize that I am speaking or asking in the context of the "just as I am." I am not a big fan of the belief that there will be missionaries in the spirit world, or that if there are, there will be only LDS missionaries there.

But you are asking us to judge you by our rules and we are big fans of there being missionaries in the spirit world, not just Latter-day Saints who are only a subset of the Church of the Firstborn if righteous, but anyone God chooses as his messengers. So you not allowing us to keep that as part of the judgment process is like asking an American to imagine they are under Canadian law and then expect the answer to still be applicable to American law.  You are requiring two different applications.  I am not surprised you have not received a direct answer because the requirements of your request are confusing. 
 

No one if judged as “just as I am” in the Latter-day Saint paradigm is yet prepared/worthy for the Celestial Kingdom.  You are asking us to pluck you halfway out of the course and stick you at the finish line (or from most likely a couple of rungs up the ladder to climbing off at the top to use Joseph Smith’s description of how long it takes postdeath).  How would that be either a just or merciful judgment?  How could anything but an arbitrary judgment be made?

If you are given real chances to learn and refuse those chances, yes, you are destined for a lower kingdom of glory. (The nuance that gets debated is “what is a real chance?” If someone is so abused by their father they lose the ability to trust any man and God the Father gets included in that, do they have a real chance to trust God before that wound gets healed, which may not be in this lifetime? Extend that to any other belief or spiritual skill that can get twisted or crippled)

But realistically speaking, do you believe if an angel appeared before you and you knew they were an angel and they told you that you needed to do something to be obedient to God, to seek to align your will with God’s Will, you would refuse?

What a Latter-day Saint most likely would be thinking of your question is ‘knowing that Navidad is seeking to align his will to God’s, I believe when he is given the chance (whatever that means for him as an individual) to do exactly that, he will choose to do so; therefore he will be obedient when he realizes, once he can wrap his head around the fact that participating in the ordinances are actual commandments of God and therefore he likely is destined for the Celestial Kingdom’.

Now some may say ‘Navidad has shown he has chosen to stay blinded by the craftiness of men now since we have taught him and invited him to be baptized, so he is destined to go to the Terrestrial Kingdom; he has had his chance to accept God’s blessings and refused and that is that’, but most Saints I know believe opportunity for full repentance continues after death and any mistaken ideas you have will be purged just like all the mistaken beliefs we as individuals and as Latter-day Saints have will be purged.  We won’t be condemned by God because of our ignorance.

 

11 hours ago, Navidad said:

I also can't get my head around the idea that Christ on that great judgment day is going to have a list, or ask us each about our relationship with the LDS church and/or its ordinances as part of our accounting for our lives.

I think from the way you are phrasing things you misunderstand how Latter-day Saints understand judgment, which is understandable because of all the different analogies that get used with it and because we tend to be practically oriented and talk in concrete behaviours more than internal states…like focusing on numbers of baptisms even when we know they don’t really measure the true results of missionary work of opening hearts and minds to the Spirit and taking others into our community, baptism numbers are only a shadow or a hint of those.  Also the ordinances being able to be performed as proxy can be confusing as it is hard to perceive how a proxy ceremony can be a learning experience for the person it is being performed for.  It is something that has to be taken on faith.

In spite of any appearance having ordinances available through proxy might give them, ordinances are not a checklist of to do’s that God makes sure everyone has on their list of required mortal experiences at the end of the day like a college transcript with its GE courses all students have to take. They are ritual preparations that help us become like Christ. For some reason we need them just like we needed to come to earth and get a body as part of the process.  They don’t have GE courses because college transcripts are defined as including GE courses; GE courses are required to ensure that those graduating college have a standard set of knowledge along with a more specialized set.  If you can show you have the required knowledge and skills, you are usually allowed to skip the GE course. GEs are made for the student, not the student for GEs.

Ordinances are made for man, not man for ordinances.
 

Hopefully an analogy that translates better for you.  We can look at judgement as the end of a driving course. Your view appears to be that God looks at our grade and makes sure we have taken all the required tests with passing grades and he issues us a graduation certificate and we then get to go off and drive as he judges.

I look on judgement and I believe Latter-day Saint doctrine is in total expressing this process as us coming to God at the end of the driving class and presenting ourselves as ready to drive and God looks at us and knows exactly how well or not we can drive, not only the basic cars, but also if we are prepared to handle motorcycles and all sorts of trucks and on that basis gives us a license to drive….in other words he looks at who we are (driving…will we stay in control under regular and difficult circumstances or be prone to road rage or rear ending someone because our attention wanders), our capabilities (can we actually drive and know the laws of the road), and our desires (do we want to be good drivers, do we want to just drive for pleasure or to compete or do we want to be useful), not if we have sat in a class or at test scores.  And he knows if we are destined to be stick driving to and from work and shopping, going for long road trips for fun, or being chosen by him to drive in the Grand Prix or perhaps even be an ambulance driver (a much more important career).

But if we had never gotten behind the wheel and actually turned the key, put the car in the correct gear, and then driven the car, how would we have been prepared to become a driver?  

Ordinances are those experiences of adjusting the mirror, putting on seatbelts, shifting into different gears. Refusing to participate in them is like expecting to drive without ever going in reverse or using a turn signal or a brake. It is possible if you limit where and how you drive (choose only open, empty, flat spaces with no obstacles and be willing to drift until you slow enough to stop rather than choosing where you will stop by braking or drive in a half circle rather than backing up).  Your experience of driving will be limited by your choices of what you are willing to learn through experiencing.  And to qualify as a driver for a Grand Prix, that isn’t going to be enough experience. 
 

It is the final product of our mortal and post mortality experience that God is judging, not if we did the birth, baptism, marriage, struggles, aging, loneliness, etc till death and whatever typical experiences of post mortality checklist.  But the final product isn’t produced without those experiences.  A stone isn’t a polished stone that shines in light if it hasn’t gone through a polishing process.  Whatever unique changes occur through experiencing ordinances can’t occur if ordinances aren’t experienced.

Our acceptance of ordinances expand our capabilities and inform our desires as we are educated through them. Our proxy temple ceremonies are not just done because someone needs them, but we repeat the ritual for ourselves because we learn by experiencing it, just as we weekly repeat the Sacrament because by doing so we can learn more of what God wants us to understand about being part of his family and aligning our wills to his as well as being able to repeat the ritual of repentance and witnessing our willingness to take his name upon us.

This talk by Dallin Oaks is one of my favorite on discipleship in our faith:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2000/10/the-challenge-to-become?lang=eng
 

Willingness to accept and then the experiencing of ordinances are part of the conversion process, just as repentance and loving our neighbors and having faith are.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Calm

[Orthodox Christian]

On 1/27/2022 at 2:30 PM, Navidad said:

Well said! I am not 100% certain you would agree, but when you say "He built His Church" I interpret that to mean the world-wide community of Christ known as "the church." Various denominations and groups, different nuances and emphases, but one in Christ and His atonement. Is that "His Church" you were thinking of, or were you referring specifically to the Orthodox Church

I believe there are untold numbers of people who profess Christ, and who walk with Him as they understand Him. But for me the Orthodox Church is the most authentic and ancient and apostolic. I also believe that the authority that Christ gave to the Apostles has been faithfully passed on through the Bishops of the Church, and the clergy, and that authority has always been there and has never been lost.