im becoming disenchanted with the church....

[Dan]

[/quote]
That is a completely indefensible position. As soon as you get in the business of "directing what truth gets out" you are no longer dealing in truth; you are dealing in obfuscation and propaganda. How arrogant is it for people who supposedly know the whole truth to decide which portions of that truth others should have access to? I realize at times you have to market the Church and you have to be concerned with public relations, but not at the expense of simple honesty.[/quote]

Not at all. Once you start looking into history under the surface, you see that the Church is always doing this very thing. Joseph clearly did it all the time. Like I said, the main purpose of the church is to help spiritual children become adults. The men directing the church are allowedto use their minds to determine the best way to teach the members. I do not blame people for disagreeing with their method, but I cannot say that I would do things differently if I were in their position and had greater access to information than I now have. Didn't Jesus himself withhold truths from people who weren't ready for them? The church is primarily worried oabout giving people a foundation in the first principles and ordinances of the gospel.

[Dan]

Official Declaration is cannonized, but it never pronounced itself as a revelation. Others, after the fact have claimed that it was, and most assume it was, but it never was and on its face never purports to be such (in the sense of requiring the end of polygamy). You have to put it into the context of the tremendous pressure placed on them by the government. All property was being confiscatd. Men placed in jail. It was a tough time. The manifesto was an attempt to relieve some of that pressure by allowing the govt to believe we were complying with them, but at the same time quietly claim we were following the letter of the law (the manifesto) and still practicing polygamy, though it had to be kept secret again, like in Joseph's day. But even if the law was broken, God's law was viewed as being higher.

Currently section 132 is cannonized, fusnik. But we do not follow it. Before Section 132 was cannonized, the D&C had a section on marriage that claimed monogamy was the will of the Lord. That section on monogamy was cannonized in the D&C for decades before Section 132 was placed in there, even during years and years of open polygamous practice. IOW, current cannonization does not necesarily dictate current practice by those of whom more is required by the Lord.

The members of the church did not like polygamy, and they voted to go along with the manifesto. That did put the members in a predicament, but they did the same think Joseph did before them, which was keep doing what they knew they were commanded to do. The policies that were created through the manifesto created some unfortunate contradictions like this, but do not fret too much. What else do you expect when the Lord allows imperfect people to have a hand in governing the church. Things like this are bound to happen during episodes of high stress.

[MikeWaters]

Reminds me of what my mission president told us:

"The church must be true or the missionaries would have destroyed it by now."

[fusnik11]

[quote="Dan"]Official Declaration is cannonized, but it never pronounced itself as a revelation. Others, after the fact have claimed that it was, and most assume it was, but it never was and on its face never purports to be such (in the sense of requiring the end of polygamy). You have to put it into the context of the tremendous pressure placed on them by the government. All property was being confiscatd. Men placed in jail. It was a tough time. The manifesto was an attempt to relieve some of that pressure by allowing the govt to believe we were complying with them, but at the same time quietly claim we were following the letter of the law (the manifesto) and still practicing polygamy, though it had to be kept secret again, like in Joseph's day. But even if the law was broken, God's law was viewed as being higher.[quote]

becoming spiritual adults is making sense to me dan.....

i guess in my recent scholarship regarding the beginnings of the church ieed to forget some of the elementary things taught to me in church....

a. we follow the laws of the land....
b. everything is cut and dry, black and white....
c. the church is perfect and its the same church today as it was 100 years ago....

these things have been driven into my brain since primary, and the new stuff ive learned, coupled with some of my old beliefs is not jiving, so to speak, basically i need to see things with a clean slate, and in doing so, i understand a little more about the situation these saints found themselves in....

did not john taylor say he met with jesus and joseph and that they told him polygamy would never be taken off the earth again? what situation the saints must have been in to reconcile gods and mans law.....

spiritual growth from child to adult.....keep thinking that fusnik...

[non sequitur]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I have a friend, college graduate with advanced degree and lifelong member, whose testimony was rocked by Krakauer's book for heaven's sake!

The winds and tides will come. You have to have a very basic understanding of what your bedrock is, how you came to it, or even the realization that you don't have one and may want one.

Maybe your friend's testimony wouldn't have been rocked if he had been exposed to some of the information in the Krakauer book earlier on in his life. I understand the whole "milk before meat" rationale, but that only goes so far. I'd be pretty pissed if I went through my whole life only drinking milk and didn't find out about prime rib until I was on my deathbed.

[non sequitur]

Originally Posted by Dan

Once you start looking into history under the surface, you see that the Church is always doing this very thing. Joseph clearly did it all the time.

So, what you're saying is that since the Church has always obfuscated the truth and since Joseph did likewise, that that somehow makes it alright? If a testimony can't survive a full exploration of the truth, then it is not worth preserving. As a lawyer, I would think you would be a proponent of full disclosure. :wink:

[creekster]

The idea of milk before meat is not that they are alternatives (e.g. not that they are hoarding all the 'prime rib' stories about polygamy) , but that one has milk when one is an infant becasue it is all one is capable of digesting. Once you have reached the stage of development that allows your system to digest meat, you are then fed meat.

Here, the milk is the basic principles of salvation and the necessary information to allow them (the seed of faith, if you will) to take root and grow. Then, according to each person's propensities and interests and, perhaps, spiritual needs, he or she can delve into the 'meatier' subjects.

We all have reached different stages of spiritual developemtn and possess different spiritual gifts so that what might be intriguing and ultimately faith promoting to Dan might be faith shattering to me. So the Brethern don't put it all out there. If you want to find it, however, you proabbyl can. Hoepfully, by the time you are looking for it, you will have the good sense to rely on the spirit's direction as to wheterh it is something you are spipritually prepared for and which is helpful to your development.

[non sequitur]

Originally Posted by creekster

Once you have reached the stage of development that allows your system to digest meat, you are then fed meat.

The only problem with that assertion is that you are never fed the meat. When Boyd K. Packer admonishes scholars that, "Some things that are true are not very useful" he is not suggesting that we wait until people are ready before they are fed the meat; he is saying that people don't need the meat. When Church historians are excommunicated because their research embarrasses the Church, that tells me the Church has no interest in the "meat". I just don't see the value of a testimony that is built on ignorance.

[Archaea]

Aren't you being a little harsh?

Ignorance of what? Some historical details. Of the machinations used to arrived at a political compromise?

I too shudder when I see some of the treatment which men, be the leaders or not, give to other members.

Nonetheless, information, of good quality and bad quality, exists for those who wish to investigate it.

I don't have a testimony of the Church; I have a testimony of the doctrines of salvation. The Church is a vehicle to learn stuff.

Some stuff is true but not very useful. If we learned that Joseph pooped in the woods on the northside of trees, instead of the left, because that's how his mother taught him, how is that useful even if true?

[non sequitur]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Aren't you being a little harsh?

Some stuff is true but not very useful. If we learned that Joseph pooped in the woods on the northside of trees, instead of the left, because that's how his mother taught him, how is that useful even if true?

You're being disingenuos. You know exactly what Boyd K. Packer was talking about when he admonished ("warned" is probably a more appropriate word) Church scholars about what they should and shouldn't teach, and it had nothing to do with where one chooses to poop in the woods. He was telling scholars to not teach things that portray the Church in a bad light. While he was at it, why didn't he just tell them to go ahead and make up stuff that would make the Church look good? Ethically, it's pretty much the same thing.