Temple prep - "Toward the Veil"

The following text is taken from the pamphlet "Preparing to Enter the Holy Temple" (2002) and annotated by me.

We must gain some feeling for why we build temples, and why the ordinances are required of us. Feeling, not knowledge. Feelings are more reliable. Thereafter we are continually instructed and enlightened on matters of spiritual importance. We're only continually enlightened if we continually have the same banal questions. Anything more requires something a little more dialectic than what the temple offers (a set script). Students don't learn from a teacher who gives the exact same lesson every day of the year and never stops the lesson to see if the students have questions. It comes line upon line, precept upon precept, until we gain a fullness of light and knowledge. People, there are no additional lines beyond what is included in the script. You're required to fill in all the gaps but no one will ever check your work to make sure you've filled things in correctly. Your conclusions about the meaning of the temple are likely to be extremely idiosyncratic and significantly different from other members. This becomes a great protection to us—to each of us personally. Personally, yes, because you always feel you're right, but certainly not collectively. Can you imagine the kinds of heated arguments that would ensue if members actually had to discuss their long researched (through feelings only) temple epiphanies? We would eat each other alive in a giant feeding fest of heartfelt disagreement. It is a protection also for the Church. Most definitely! If members actually talked about the temple openly the emperor's nakedness would be plain for all to see.

No work is more of a protection to this Church than temple work and the genealogical research which supports it. What? How does genealogical work protect the Church? By giving it a research organ that actually does credible work unlike the moronic apologists over at BYU and FAIR? No work is more spiritually refining. Whatever that means. I would think that Jesus would argue for exercising charity. No work we do gives us more power. Man, you're power hungry to say the least! You keep going off about all the power the temple gives you. Relax. Accept that you're a mortal like the rest of us. No work requires a higher standard of righteousness. Keep fanning our self-righteous ego! It feels so good!

Our labors in the temple cover us with a shield and a protection, both individually and as a people. You've already explained that the individual shield is a layer of cotton-poly blend, but what's this collective shield? A host of angels? A bubble like force field? A veil of ignorance?

It is in the ordinances of the temple that we are placed under covenant to Him—it is there we become the covenant people. Because baptism by water and the Holy Spirit aren't covenants with God? What about the sacrament? Who is that covenant with?

If we will accept the revelation concerning temple ordinance work, if we will enter into our covenants without reservation or apology, the Lord will protect us. Protect us from what? What the hell are you talking about? We will receive inspiration sufficient for the challenges of life. That sounds like minimal inspiration, which is definitely what I got during my years of activity.

The work relating to the temples is true. Huh? What does that even mean? It was revealed from beyond the veil and revelation continues. Which veil, the temple veil or the veil of forgetfulness? If you mean the temple veil you should know the 5 points of contact and all that came from Freemasons, not God. If you mean the veil of forgetfulness, you're going to have to explain a few things like how the hell Elijah and Elias were different people and why anyone should consider plural marriage a divine and holy practice.

Revelation may come to each member of the Church individually concerning temple work. It has to because the Church won't teach about it anywhere in any depth or detail. May we all take the initiative and do a few Internet searches about the temple in our quest for understanding.

So come to the temple—come and claim your blessings. They're the unspecific blessings we'll work the whole rest of our lives trying to identify. It is a sacred work. It is what you want it to be, I guess. I actually dared to want something otherworldly and beautiful. What I got was human and mundane. I doubted my doubts, but I could only delude myself for so long before letting it go.

Predicting Christ's New World visit

Around 600 BC father Lehi saw a vision of Christ and his apostles. He was even told that Christ would come visit the Lehites in the New World 600 years from their departure for the new promised land.

And yet despite that very explicit prophecy for centuries the following prophets are clueless. Look at how out of touch Alma is.

 

Unless everyone else was as ignorant as Alma, why would anyone be impressed by Samuel the Lamanite's prophecy? 

Why would this be? The answer could be as simple as this: Joseph Smith didn't know how he was going to bring about the advent of Jesus in the Americas during the earlier stages of writing The Book of Mormon, but by the time he finished up Moroni and went back to replace the missing 116 pages of manuscript with what became 1 Nephi through Words of Mormon he had the whole thing figured out and could include all the appropriate prophetic details.

Sound doubtful? Good. Doubt your heart out!

"You can leave the Church, but..."

You Can Leave the Church, But You Can't Leave it Alone. (Reposted from here.)

I had a conversation with a friend about people who wonder why post-mormons don't all quickly move on. I'm sure you've all heard the saying, "You can leave the Church, but you can't leave it alone." This is my response to that claim:

There's a huge double standard, as evidenced by the following:

1- I don't go knocking on my neighbor's doors to tell them about Agnosticism.

2- I don't text them saying, "I noticed you went to Church today. I sure missed you at not-Church. Hope to see you soon."

3- I don't bribe their kids with treats to stay home from Church.

4- When my Mormon neighbors move, I don't track them down and invite them to leave the Church in their new area.

5- When PBS has a show on about Charles Darwin I don't make fancy invitations and invite them to watch it with me.

6- I don't keep track of who's going to Church and who's not.

7- I don't fly across the country to Philadelphia at my own expense and spend two years trying to get Philadelphia Mormons to leave the Church.

8- I'm not constantly quoting Richard Dawkins or Carl Sagan on Facebook.

9- I don't put on a huge anti-Mormon pageant every year and invite all of my Mormon friends.

10- I don't secretly interrogate their children to find out why their parents are staying in Church.

11- When a Mormon neighbor makes the decision to stay in the Church, I don't write them a letter explaining the eternal consequences of their decision and telling them that before they make such an important decision they must sit down with me to discuss it.

12- I don't drive down to the Church on the night they're having youth activities and say, "Hey kids, we're on our way to the arcade. Do you want a ride?"

13- I never look at a Mormon and try to figure out what type of underwear they're wearing.

14- I never use funerals as an opportunity to teach the plan of natural selection to grieving Mormons.

15- I have never written my testimony inside a copy of No Man Knows My History and given it to a Mormon while explaining what the book means to me and how it has changed my life.

16- I have never bought a Mormon a gift subscription to a Secular Humanist magazine.

17- I have never told a Mormon how they should vote.

18- I have never criticized a Mormon for the clothes they are wearing.

19- I have never chastised a Mormon friend for posting something on Facebook that was too mormony.

20- I do not deny my Mormon friends and family the opportunity to attend weddings, even if they're not Agnostics in good standing.

21- I do not send Birthday cards to my Mormon Neighbor's Children with a note that says, "Darwin loves you and so do I. We sure miss you when you go to Church."

22- I don't tell my Mormon friends that they're going to hell because they don't believe in the Big Bang.

23- When my less-active Mormon neighbors decide to start going to Church more often, I don't visit them at a time when I know their spouse will be at work and tell them, "Now you know you don't have to go to Church just because your spouse wants to go. You're allowed to make up your own mind."

24- I don't disown my child if they decide to be Mormon.

25- I don't counsel anyone to divorce their spouse because they've decided that Atheism isn't true and that Mormonism makes more sense.

26- When I notice that a family in my neighborhood has attended Church for several weeks in a row, I don't leave delicious chocolate cupcakes on their doorstep with a note that I wish they would stop attending.

27- I don't get together with several of my Post-Mormon neighbors and say, "Hey, lets make a list of all the Mormons in the ward boundaries, and let's think about it and pray about it, and we'll narrow that list down to 5 names, and we'll focus all of our energy and attention on these five people or families, and we'll try to get them to leave the church."

When I was Elder's Quorum President, I was instructed to contact all the elders and potential elders every year, even if they had requested not to be contacted, because they could have changed their mind since last year.

So who's not leaving who alone?

What is the Book of Mormon?

Breaking news: some returned missionaries have finally found a way to teach the world HIS TRUTH! With this (hopefully) viral video, every inhabitant of the earth will soon know and accept The Book of Mormon for what it really is!

But didn't Brother Jake already make a viral YouTube video explaining The Book of Mormon? I'm sure the LDS Church has been reaping the bounteous fruits as Gentiles flock to convert after watching it.

Polygamy - empty explanations

In addition to God needing believing babies, the early saint's apparently needed learn some shit the hard way.

Church leaders taught that participants in plural marriages should seek to develop a generous spirit of unselfishness and the pure love of Christ for everyone involved. (See here.)

Why was polygamy the preferred didactic method for teaching "the pure love of Christ"? I have no clue. Back in Jesus' day his approach was telling people to give all they had to the poor and not judging and stuff like that. The Church seems to be suggesting that God doesn't really care or want us to understand his motives.

Like the participants, we “see through a glass, darkly” and are asked to walk by faith. (See here.)

The only real important thing is that we believe God will give us something for our efforts:

They believed it was a commandment of God at that time and that obedience would bring great blessings to them and their posterity. (See here.)

We view our current polygamous practices the same way.

[T]he Church permits a man whose wife has died to be sealed to another woman when he remarries. Moreover, members are permitted to perform ordinances on behalf of deceased men and women who married more than once on earth, sealing them to all of the spouses to whom they were legally married. The precise nature of these relationships in the next life is not known, and many family relationships will be sorted out in the life to come. (See here.)

In other words, we don't know what the fuck we're doing or why exactly we're doing it, but we trust it's from God and we trust that he'll sort all this shit out even though it's absolutely absurd. Considering all the sealing combinations we've tried out (and the probability that many of those sealed souls won't even make it to Celestial glory), it's safe to say the tapestry of eternal families we've woven will look something like this:

Keeping sealing, dear Saints, but whatever you do do not stop to consider the idea that Joseph Smith made this all up so he could take advantage of several women (and girls).

Dallin Oaks criticized

Dallin Oaks is your typical authority-touting type. He was a Utah Supreme Court justice which for his fans means he's smart and level headed, but for the rest of us means he's used to being "right" and having the final say on everything. I suppose I wouldn't be too bothered by that if he didn't say such horrible things all the time. I cannot have faith in such a man.

HE'S ALL ABOUT CENSORSHIP:

“Some things that are true are not edifying or appropriate to communicate. Readers of history and biography should ponder that moral reality as part of their effort to understand the significance of what they read.”

HE USES SATAN TO SCARE PEOPLE FROM FACTS:

“Satan can even use truth to promote his purposes. Facts, severed from their context, can convey an erroneous impression.”

HE WANTS US TO BE BLIND FOLLOWERS OF THE BLIND:

"When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan - it is God's Plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give directions, it should mark the end of controversy, God works in no other way. To think otherwise, without immediate repentance, may cost on e his faith, may destroy his testimony, and leave him a stranger to the kingdom of God."

HE HAS NO REGARD FOR OTHER CULTURES. Seriously, who thinks Africa has one unifying culture? It's bad enough we think Mormonism has only one culture, but Africa, the continent? Holy shit.

HE'S A TOTAL HOMOPHOBE. Some of the most horrible things he's had to say recently have to do with homosexuality and the gay rights movement.

AND HE'S A HYPOCRITE. The man runs around yapping about how marriage is between one man and one woman and yet he's got two spiritual wives.

What ever happened to honesty and unconditional love?

Virtue of abstaining

In the LDS Church we grow up admiring Joseph Smith for his unwavering courage and astonishing moral strength because at the age of seven he declined to drink alcohol as an anesthetic before undergoing bone surgery.

But we also grow up failing to address his willingness to imbibe alcohol as and adult, including the day he was killed.

Rather than consider what this might mean about Joseph's character, let's reflect instead on what this says about LDS culture. Why can't we be honest with ourselves about Joseph Smith's behavior? Do we think that his drinking in adulthood shows a fallen man, someone who was stronger as a seven year old? Does Joseph's drinking undermine our faith in the World of Wisdom? Will admitting that he liked alcohol somehow give members the green light to start drinking? Why can't we be honest?

Neil Andersen criticized

For any of you who have ever doubted Joseph Smith because of something you've read online or from uncorrelated material, please read or listen to Neil Andersen's recent Conference talk. His strategy of quoting Joseph Smith about himself, reading a crazy-ass quote from John Taylor and offering up brainwashy methods of "gaining a testimony" should be enough to make you wonder if he's sincerely illogical or carefully hiding something. I can't help but think that his talk will ultimately do more harm to members' testimonies than he could possibly imagine. (And he's showing much love when he categorizes dissenters as Judases.)

Why will it harm members' testimonies? Because, as in the case of the Church's anti-science stance, Neil's argument requires that you reject study (as least anything you study that the Church won't like) and favor ignorance instead. In this case instead of repeating "I don't know" to ourselves we're supposed to repeat Joseph's false history to ourselves until we believe it. A testimony like that can only be protected by plugging your ears and shutting off your critical thinking.

It's not hero worship, Fiona!

It seems Henry had some words for the Fiona Givens this past Sunday.

Our white knights serving and protecting.

Don’t take lightly the feeling you get of love for the prophet of God. Wherever I go in the Church, whoever the prophet is at the time, members will ask, “When you get back to Church headquarters, will you please tell the prophet how much we love him?” That is far more than hero worship or the feelings we sometimes have of admiring heroic figures. It is a gift from God.

I don't understand what Henry's saying here. I don't. What I think is happening hear is Henry's trying to correct the Church's best selling authors Terryl and Fiona Givens. He doesn't explain at all how he understands hero worship, what he thinks it means, what examples of it might be, whether or not it has a place in the LDS Church, etc., but, as you may know, Fiona is very concerned about the way Mormons revere their leaders. It doesn't seem Henry has any idea what she means by the term "hero worship". But who cares? Since when did prophets and apostles have to understand the lowly member? All they have to understand are the ways of God and all we have to understand is that love for the them is a gift from God (probably because the vast majority of Church members have never met them and never heard them speak outside of the context of the Church and they have no basis for their affection of these leaders), which must be good because God only gives really awesome gifts. 

Tom Monson criticized

The first teachings that come to mind when I reflect on the messages of the current LDS prophet, Thomas Monson, have to do with being present in others' times of need and carefully attending to the duties of service. I don't find much fault in any of that. I think it would be wonderful if we all tried to pay more attention to others and offer whatever assistance we are capable of.

But Tommy's also said plenty of bullshit. Here's an example that fits nicely within the general scope of this blog:

Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other.

Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts: “I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people. I know that happiness and contentment are there, and I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts, to destroy the house of my faith. I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. I grant that I cannot explain the miracles of the Bible, and I do not attempt to do so, but I accept God’s word. I wasn’t with Joseph, but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it.”

May you ever frame your life with faith.

Did you catch all of that? The appeal to tribalism? The denigration of agnosticism? The plea to stop thinking critically about natural history, scripture and Church history? The encouraged distrust in science? This is God's message to us today? This is what he wants to tell the world? Not a fucking chance.

Take the time to doubt brother Tommy, dear brothers and sisters, if only for a day or two.

10 Bible Facts by Robert Price

Here's a fairly decent podcast featuring Bible scholar Robert Price debunking ten common misunderstandings about the Bible. Enjoy.

Heavenly fatherliness #16 - Alone with his wife

According to popular wisdom, a good father spends quality time alone with his wife.

It's the wife thing again. Does God have a wife to spend quality time with? Mormons want to think he does, but have to admit that they have no idea. Most Christian folks will say he doesn't because he'd not married. So where does that leave us? Square one. What our Sky Parents do together is only speculation. 

So much for setting a good example for us when it comes to nurturing a loving marriage! Thanks, Dad.

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father. 

Shinehah, Olea, and Kokaubeam

We learn in The Book of Abraham God's name for the Sun, the moon, and the stars: Shinehah, Olea, Kokaubeam. Jah-oh-eh turns out to be God's word for the earth. Good to know, right? One might think that knowing these divinely appointed names would result in their adoption into the common Mormon lexicon. I mean, once it was revealed that God's name is Elohim and that Jesus is Jehovah, the LDS Church really latched onto that and takes care to reenforce this knowledge, and yet when you go to church and listen to your lessons or to the temple and watch the Creation film you won't hear the Sun, the moon, the stars, or the earth referred to by their true names even once! Why is that? 

It's also a little strange that God hasn't been very consistent or insistent with these names when speaking to his prophets. The scriptures are full of references to the heavens and their various features and yet they contain God's preferred names only once, in Abraham 3! The closest you get to seeing these names in other scripture is in the Old Testament where the ancient Hebrew שֶׁמֶשׁ (she-mesh) at least starts with the same consonant as Shi-ne-hah and is followed by a similar vowel,  יָרֵחַ (ya-rey-ahh) sounds quite a bit like O-le-a, and the Hebrew for star כּוֹכָב (ko-khav) is almost identical to the pluralized Ko-bau-beam (-im is a Hebrew plural noun ending). I guess Hebrew really is closest to Adamic after all! God must have been revealing bits and pieces of his native tongue to Joseph, like the whole "Pay-lay-ale!" thing. 

But I still have a nagging doubt about these divine names found in Abraham 3. Didn't Joseph start learning Hebrew just after he purchased The Book of Abraham? Oh, really? Less than a year later? And when was the translation finally finished? Not before 1838? Hm... When was the translation finally published? 1842! So Joseph had about six years to dapple in Hebrew before going public with this thing. Do you think it might be possible that he was trying to show off his newly acquired Hebrew translating skills?

Not a smart move for an abecedarian. He's left too obvious a trail.

Of course, if Joseph's freestyling Hebrew isn't goofball enough, you can still relish in the other blunderful names found in the papyri translations (Elkenah, Enish-go-on-dosh, Kolob, Korash, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Oliblish, Olimlah, Raukeeyang, Shaumau, Shulem). Hebrew rip offs, pseudo-Egyptian, and a touch of fantasy make having faith in The Book of Abraham very problematic.

LDS artistic interpretations

The LDS Church has done a wonderful job of controlling the popular imagery of the translation process of The Book of Mormon. Searching the Church website will get you pictures like this:

Plates present but no hat.

Or this:

The plates again but there's no hat here either.

Notice that there is a huge discrepancy in the LDS version of the story:

It doesn't feel very good when the accuracy of a South Park episode surpasses all the prophet talks and prophetically endorsed pictures you've encountered as a highly active and fully believing member of the Church. How are we not supposed to wonder why the hat thing's not been very popular in Mormon art? What else is the average Mormon ignorant of?

The Latter-day Book of Levitcus

The Book of Leviticus is an interesting bit of scripture because the majority of it is dedicated to the laying out of very specific rules for the worship of Jehovah and the governance of Israel. (There are a lot more rules in Deuteronomy.) God likes to get into the nittygritty. He has a lot of demands and there are a lot of things that make him, the Ruler of the Universe, very angry.

In the Latter-days, God's given us a new set of nittygritty rules. Let's call it a modern-day Book of Leviticus! While the vast majority of members do not have this book in their house and are not allowed to buy it anywhere, you can study up on the ins and outs of God's demands and preferred governance right here, or here.

There's really no need to be left in the dark when it comes to official and inspired Church policies.

WoW - mental health

Remember how the Lord finally addressed depression only six months ago? Of course, there are a number of disorders that God could have mentioned long long ago, way before last October, and yet he didn't bother. Mental and emotional disorders are nothing new, nor are they confined to human beings alone, and yet God never bothered bringing our various issues. It's almost as if our psycho-emotional well being had previously been of no interest to the Almighty otherwise he might have included a little something in his holy books and revelations. The Word of Wisdom would have been a wonderful place to address mental health. Not only did he not mention any of the common disorders people suffer from, he didn't bother mentioning the need for a loving family and trustworthy friends.

The Lord's law of health is an interesting law indeed. It makes me wonder what good prophesy and revelation are when they fail to effectively address such an important source of human suffering or warn us of things to come. When it comes to issues of mental health, God has left us entirely in the hands of modern science, medicine, and therapies.

A sincere question

About eight months into my mission I baptized a young man who had just turned eighteen. He was getting baptized against his parents wishes and had a few concerns. He was worried about maintaining a good report with his family and friends, he was worried about the logistical details of living a Mormon lifestyle with so little moral support and no cohesive Mormon community nearby, he was worried about his acceptance in the Church, but most of all he just wanted to make sure he was making the right choice. He wanted to know - really know - if the Mormon Church was THE ONE TRUE CHURCH.

This young man had been reading and praying for nearly a year. I don't recall if he had prayed specifically about whether the Book of Mormon was true or if they were more general prayers, but he seemed a little unsure about the whole "God will answer your prayers" thing. He had been praying but had yet to feel the promised assurance in response, so we asked him to pray specifically about being baptized telling him God would answer his prayer. That's when he asked me and my companion a question:

"Will God really answer me?"

Both my companion and I responded somewhat automatically but earnestly that he would, but our investigator insisted.

"Really? Are you sure?"

I felt I had received answers to a few prayers, but his questions made me nervous. They didn't make me nervous for him, they made me nervous because I felt like I was about to be exposed. I wanted to believe that God had blessed me with his Spirit in a handful of troubling moments of decision, but they were extremely difficult experiences to analyze. The "answers" I had felt were horribly ambiguous and had come to me when I was in a highly emotional state. I felt like I had had to guess my way through the answers I was given because they lacked the kind of clarity I had been promised. But I didn't want to tell him that. I wanted his experience with prayer to be the real deal. He could have the real experience of total clarity and I wasn't about to lower his expectations.

The next time we met he said he wanted to be baptized and he was shortly after his eighteenth birthday. He was the hope of the branch. He wanted to serve a mission when he came and visited me in my last area. About eight months after I returned home he wrote me a letter explaining how he had left Mormonism and returned to activity in his previous faith. He even served a brief mission in Brazil for that church.

As I look back on the experience I can't help but think of how young we were. What did either of us know about anything? The thought of the two of us finding the mysteries of the Universe in Mormonism pains me. Our sincerity and ignorance would have pained any thoughtful adult. Why did my investigator doubt that God would truly answer his prayers? Why did I doubt I should full disclose my experiences with answers to prayer? Did I even know for sure that God had answered me?

Where is Heaven?

Learning a second language opens up your eyes and gives you a fresh perspective on the world. It also gives you an older, even ancient perspective, a glimpse into the past.

I was a bit startled to learn that in my new language I would literally be praying to "our father who is in the sky" or "our sky dad". Mormons don't believe Heavenly Father's in sky! Where does the word "heaven" come from anyway? Oh, it means the clouds? Shit. So "heavenly father" means "cloud dad" or "dad obscured by clouds"? No shit? That makes it sound like we're part of some ancient tribe who worships the sun or something...

I remember as a child wondering about all the depictions of angels living in clouds and Jesus coming down from the clouds and God laying across the clouds and stuff like that and wondering what it would be like to hang out on top of clouds, but to my recollection I always had the presence of mind to not let my thoughts wander too far down that path. We Mormons knew God was in Outer-space on a planet in the Kolob system! We weren't delusionally looking to the sky for God!

The people at the Tower of Babel were naive enough to try to get to heaven by building a tower, though. And our dad in the sky was mad enough he changed all their languages (and apparently no one was insistent enough to get back together to sit down and learn each other's new language). Not like that's the only time the Scriptures indicate that God's in the sky or clouds somewhere. The references are many and often strictly literal.

I couldn't help but doubt. For all I could tell human beings once believed the gods lived in the clouds beyond our vision, but as science and logic expanded our understanding of the universe God has continually been pushed to the edges of human vision and understanding. We've chased God out of the sky with telescopes, airplanes, and satellites; we've chased him from our solar system; now God hides out in a galaxy far far away where we can never find him. He's an alien and space traveler with a taste for Earth clouds. Or is he? I mean Abraham 3 sounds pretty authentic, doesn't it? Nothing about it sounds like 19th century bullshit, right? 

I'm no fan of this movie but it gets some things right.