I learned in church today

[wuapinmon]

I know. And for all the bitching I do here I care about the church and don't want it to fail. So it worries me that my efforts to help in the best way I know how may come to naught because I don't believe Martin Harris was a saint.

I got pulled from teaching the youth SS because they wanted me to be EQ1. That ended 14 months later when EQP's marriage disintegrated. I got put in as SS1st. Now, I get to train people how to be better teachers, but I have to use the Teaching No Greater Call manual, even though we're switching to new curricula in the youth program (with others to follow).

[snowcat]

Okay, here's my issue.

If I say so myself, I have magnified the hell out of this calling. I spend hours each week researching, fact checking, framing discussion, playing with stories. I do this because I want to talk about real history and real problems in a way that pushes people but doesn't alarm, that informs but doesn't panic. I am trying to save my friends my last 10 years of pain. I have little hope for me, but I want to give it to others. I present the information, let people decide for themselves, but try to give it a spiritual context. Brodie is in my lessons but in the background; Bushman is in the forefront. So to speak.

SU would almost certainly disapprove. LA Ute would approve, except for the part where he thinks I am a hypocrite because I play the apologist role.

The response has been overwhelming. My class is standing room only. I get all sorts of midweek emails and such asking what I think about x or y. People will ask me on the sly if I am teaching a given week so they can know whether they should come or not.

I am also a beneficiary of this. It keeps me engaged and fulfilled and active.

I am pretty sure that the HC made a full report back to the stake. And my fear is that the stake will put pressure on the bishop to reign me in. Not out of character. And that will destroy everything - I can't teach from a horrible manual, so I won't. Couple that with the TR incident the with my wife the other day and a couple of other things and I'm a bit paranoid perhaps.

I can teach a shitty lesson out of the shitty manual without any trouble. But for any fulfillment of me or my class I need to care. I worry.

I wish I could attend your class.

[Sleeping in EQ]

I know. And for all the bitching I do here I care about the church and don't want it to fail. So it worries me that my efforts to help in the best way I know how may come to naught because I don't believe Martin Harris was a saint.

I am in your corner.

[scottie]

Okay, here's my issue.

If I say so myself, I have magnified the hell out of this calling. I spend hours each week researching, fact checking, framing discussion, playing with stories. I do this because I want to talk about real history and real problems in a way that pushes people but doesn't alarm, that informs but doesn't panic. I am trying to save my friends my last 10 years of pain. I have little hope for me, but I want to give it to others. I present the information, let people decide for themselves, but try to give it a spiritual context. Brodie is in my lessons but in the background; Bushman is in the forefront. So to speak.

SU would almost certainly disapprove. LA Ute would approve, except for the part where he thinks I am a hypocrite because I play the apologist role.

The response has been overwhelming. My class is standing room only. I get all sorts of midweek emails and such asking what I think about x or y. People will ask me on the sly if I am teaching a given week so they can know whether they should come or not.

I am also a beneficiary of this. It keeps me engaged and fulfilled and active.

I am pretty sure that the HC made a full report back to the stake. And my fear is that the stake will put pressure on the bishop to reign me in. Not out of character. And that will destroy everything - I can't teach from a horrible manual, so I won't. Couple that with the TR incident the with my wife the other day and a couple of other things and I'm a bit paranoid perhaps.

I can teach a shitty lesson out of the shitty manual without any trouble. But for any fulfillment of me or my class I need to care. I worry.

Is it GD or GE that you teach? I presume it's GD, but you also recently taught GE, I believe.

[Portland Ute]

I wish I could attend your class.

I, too, wish niku taught in my ward.

The fact that he teaches history and discusses it and has a SRO class is a testament to the fact that members are starving for truth and factual histories.

Not the Disneyized version of LDS history.

The problem that nik has...that we all have when we teach this way...is that the Church doesn't have teaching factual history as a priority. Instead, it has a priority of teaching Church-promoting stories that involve very little thinking on the part of the pupils in the class.

[mtnbiker]

Niku,

Bravo for putting so much time and effort into the lesson. Way too many people just mail it in. Keep up the good work, and everything will work out.

[Jacob]

I am trying to save my friends my last 10 years of pain. I have little hope for me, but I want to give it to others. I present the information, let people decide for themselves, but try to give it a spiritual context. Brodie is in my lessons but in the background; Bushman is in the forefront. So to speak.

Let me first say that what you are doing is precisely the way I would do it if I had your calling, except that you are probably putting forth a bit more prep time than I would. I empathize with your entire plight.

However, I question whether you can pull this off. Most teachers (and active LDS members) are biased against presenting the historical facts accurately, such that they will avoid a description of "just the fact." OTOH, you and I are biased the other way and, given what you said in the bolded sentence above, it must be very difficult for you (or me) to not let your (and my) bias come through in the way that we teach. How will you prevent your friends from going down the path you went down by giving them the information that led you down that path? Are you merely trying to provide a gentle landing, and if so, I can see how that could cause concern to an ecclesiastical leader. I can see how you would like to help people learn what you learned without losing faith, but how is that possible if it is already too late for you? If you believe yourself too far gone, then I can't understand how your motivation can be to keep people faithful WITH the truth, rather than merely providing them the truth as you see it. (I shouldn't say "merely" in that last sentence because you and I both think that a truthful, or fair, representation of the fact is of utmost importance.

Again, I empathize with your plight. I think you are trying to fight the good fight. But it seems like you are walking a tightrope of your own making.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Hang in there, niku. I would kill for a teacher like you.

[Jacob]

Our SS lesson was regarding Oliver Cowdery's inability to translate the BOM and the Lord's instruction to him that he had to do more thinking before expecting anything from the Lord. I was never in love with this expectation, but has always been good excuse for why I was not receiving an answer to prayer. It is one of those "too convenient" excuses. But it has always been an effective one, and perhaps a good one.

Anyway, as the class discussed the story, it struck me as a pretty bad excuse in the circumstances that it was first given to Oliver Cowdery. Here was Oliver, hopeful to translate by the power of god, and in a prior revelation, he was promised the gift of revelation to translate. When he couldn't do it, he was no doubt discouraged. then Section 9. You should have worked it out in your mind first. "Should have tried a little harder." How was he supposed to work it out in his mind? we are dealing with a lost language. There is nothing to work out. Either your translate by the gift of God, or you don't translate. There was no Rosetta stone. So, Oliver didn't try hard enough and doesn't get to work on the BOM anymore, but he is promised there are more records that he will translate. Which leads to another almost too convenient excuse: the people are not righteous enough to deserve the other records, so nobody has found them or translated them.

During the third hour I went to Smith's. Cant believe Smiths is out of bananas, red vine tomatoes, and basil leaves. I know its superbowl, but who is stocking up on basil leaves and bananas?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Our SS lesson was regarding Oliver Cowdery's inability to translate the BOM and the Lord's instruction to him that he had to do more thinking before expecting anything from the Lord. I was never in love with this expectation, but has always been good excuse for why I was not receiving an answer to prayer. It is one of those "too convenient" excuses. But it has always been an effective one, and perhaps a good one.

Anyway, as the class discussed the story, it struck me as a pretty bad excuse in the circumstances that it was first given to Oliver Cowdery. Here was Oliver, hopeful to translate by the power of god, and in a prior revelation, he was promised the gift of revelation to translate. When he couldn't do it, he was no doubt discouraged. then Section 9. You should have worked it out in your mind first. "Should have tried a little harder." How was he supposed to work it out in his mind? we are dealing with a lost language. There is nothing to work out. Either your translate by the gift of God, or you don't translate. There was no Rosetta stone. So, Oliver didn't try hard enough and doesn't get to work on the BOM anymore, but he is promised there are more records that he will translate. Which leads to another almost too convenient excuse: the people are not righteous enough to deserve the other records, so nobody has found them or translated them.

During the third hour I went to Smith's. Cant believe Smiths is out of bananas, red vine tomatoes, and basil leaves. I know its superbowl, but who is stocking up on basil leaves and bananas?

We had the same lesson and I had the same thoughts.

That being said, I like the overall concept of working things out in your mind first as outlined in D&C 9.

[Goatnapper'96]

I, too, wish niku taught in my ward.

The fact that he teaches history and discusses it and has a SRO class is a testament to the fact that members are starving for truth and factual histories.

Not the Disneyized version of LDS history.

The problem that nik has...that we all have when we teach this way...is that the Church doesn't have teaching factual history as a priority. Instead, it has a priority of teaching Church-promoting stories that involve very little thinking on the part of the pupils in the class.

I don't think the church doesn't present it in a way to discourage thinking. I think that is an unfair criticism. I think the goal of the Church is to provide the members with an uplifting experience. Common church culture and perspectives eschew anything that could be promoted as not uplifting so the correlated church materials highlight historical events that will meet the intent of being uplifting. To be honest I am not so convinced that isn't the right plan. I do think it would be healthy if those less uplifting historical events could be brought up in the discussions without potentially offending anyone or making others uncomfortable, I think it is getting closer to that. I also think if those events are brought up in the natural discourse less people take offense than many think. Now if they are brought up with the clear intent to shock or demonstrate one's knowledge, that tends to get people catankerous. Even mormon simpletons can identify and usually dislike an asshole. I have never felt correlated materials lie as much as they are focussed on only being uplifting and thus are prevented from telling the whole picture.

[Pheidippides]

Jacob, you are exactly right. It is a tightrope act. The fact of the matter is that I was blindsided at 25 and that is what drives me. I was a zealot, I thought I knew it all, I thought my faith and testimony was unshakable. I was black and white, 100 percent in. I accepted arguments about fence sitters in heaven, and thought polygamy was about having more babies.

I hate that me, but I have to live with who I was. The process to getting to who I am now nearly cost me marriage and my sanity, although not in the ways you'd expect. I went deeper inside into a
shell, embracing my zealotry as a defense mechanism against my crumbling fortress. But when the weakened and corrupted fortress fell, it was spectacular and terrible.

I am always going to be a skeptic and I am okay with that now. The man who was climbing up the ranks of leadership is gone now, and good riddance. I value different things from church, small things: community, friendship, a history of questioning, acts of service and friendship. But there is a burden of seeing the naked emperor in his bloated bureaucratic filth as well, unwilling to move, lacking the flexibility that change requires.

This is what I mean when I say I have no hope for myself. Truth, as a religious matter, is irrelevant. True agnosticism, the absence of knowledge, is my friend and enemy.

But if I can reach out to the others I know exist in my ward and say, "Brother, you are not alone. Sister, let's talk openly. I know what you do and more, and I'm still here," then I am fulfilled. Let's talk about Oliver Cowdery and his divining rod. Let's discuss autumnal equinoxes as significant and a reason why Joseph would expect something. Let's be honest about Martin Harris' nagging doubt, for a lot of us have nagging doubts too. There's so much to make us feel a human kinship in these stories. Why should we discard a beautiful but flawed tapestry for our usual paint-by-number?

And maybe if we view our doctrine as something still unsure with lots of room for freedom, maybe if we view our prophets not as such but as men with opinions and occasional flashes of the divine (that are clearly identified as such) we'll stop judging and instead welcome the new brother with the tattoos or the woman with thrice-pierced ears. So many people in the church have the heart and soul for this already, and many more would if their benevolent tendencies hadn't been conditioned out of them through years of studying the minutiae of priesthood keys.

Now I'm waxing silly. I expect too much, and I am far from this kind of ideal myself, as you all know. But as long as I have an audience I'll keep trying. One honest lesson at a time.

/soliloquy

[Goatnapper'96]

We had the same lesson and I had the same thoughts.

That being said, I like the overall concept of working things out in your mind first as outlined in D&C 9.

So do I. I think answers to prayer are very pragmatic and deliberate. There are a lot of things I don't think God wants to give an answer to. If pinned down I think it probably most things. I think He wants to see how we will think it out utilizing the principles we believe came from Him.

[Uncle Ted]

Anyway, as the class discussed the story, it struck me as a pretty bad excuse in the circumstances that it was first given to Oliver Cowdery. Here was Oliver, hopeful to translate by the power of god, and in a prior revelation, he was promised the gift of revelation to translate. When he couldn't do it, he was no doubt discouraged. then Section 9. You should have worked it out in your mind first. "Should have tried a little harder." How was he supposed to work it out in his mind? we are dealing with a lost language. There is nothing to work out. Either your translate by the gift of God, or you don't translate. There was no Rosetta stone. So, Oliver didn't try hard enough and doesn't get to work on the BOM anymore, but he is promised there are more records that he will translate. Which leads to another almost too convenient excuse: the people are not righteous enough to deserve the other records, so nobody has found them or translated them.

I am guessing the Lord was expecting him to figure out that he needed to "put [a] seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; [so] in the darkness the spiritual light would shine."

[Indy Coug]

I am guessing the Lord was expecting him to figure out that he needed to "put [a] seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; [so] in the darkness the spiritual light would shine." doh.

Hell, he got off easy compared to the Brother of Jared.