Nov 26, 2010

One of God’s Greatest Gifts

This week’s lesson was on God’s greatest gift mankind, the Gift of the Holy Ghost (Chapter 21 in the Gospel Principles book for those who are following along). To be honest this one was a little tough for me, not a lot of stuff to go over in this chapter. The lesson is pretty straight forward and mundane.

I started out by asking brother EQ 1st Counselor if he had been baptized? He answered “yes”. Have you been given the gift of the Holy Ghost? Again he answered “yes”. I then asked him if he ever desired to do evil? Again he answered “yes, I does from time to time”. But why is that so, because the book here tells us that “The Holy Ghost purifies our hearts so we no longer have the desire to do evil.” There was not really any answer so I just went on. So what came first, holiness or the spirit? Let’s step through this:

1. If I am not Mormon and not doing good, I will not be able to feel the HG

2. If I am not Mormon and doing good, I will be able to feel the HG

3. If I am Mormon and not doing good, I will not be able to feel the HG

4. If I am Mormon and doing good, I will be able to feel the HG

This raises the question, what good is it to be Mormon and have the gift of the HG, because all that it takes for me to feel the influence of the HG is to be doing good things.

I then taught the whole lesson manual except the last section and looked at my watch and saw that I had 30 minutes left to fill. I did have a little skeptical question that I was going to throw out there but didn’t want it to dominate the majority of the time, so I asked if the quorum had anything that they wanted to add. I was amazed at how much these guys like to hear themselves speak.

My skeptical question came to me because of this coming Christmas Season. My wife and I are starting to decide what gifts we are going to give to our children. While preparing for this lesson I came upon the title of the last section “One of God’s Greatest Gifts”. This got me thinking, one of the main reasons I don’t give my children everything that they want is due to cost. I asked one member of the EQ who has a teenager that just got her license what she wanted for Christmas and she wanted a car. I asked another what his kids wanted and he said a large Lego set that costs several hundred dollars. I then asked whether or not they would be giving it to them and they said because of cost. I then asked individuals one of the EQ members the following questions:

Does God love Mormons? yes. Does God love Catholics? yes, …Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Arabs, Muslims, the terrorist plotting to kill you next week, the 14 Pakistanis that the US decided needed to die in air strikes late last month, Baptists, and Pentecostals. Each Elder answered yes to each of the groups. One Elder even blurted out “He even loves Atheists and Agnostics!” That one warmed the cockles of my heart, and I got a little teary eyed (not really my eyes nearly burned up from rolling so hard and fast). I then asked how much does it cost God to give the Gift of the Holy Ghost to all his children and not just to Mormons? Why would God withhold one of his greatest gifts from the entire world, especially if it did what the lesson manuals says and “purifies our hearts so we no longer have the desire to do evil” God could eliminate terrorism with one swift world-wide day of Pentecost as he did in Acts (Note that God is still not removing free will, just as brother 1st councilor stated that he still has his desire). It costs God nothing additional (marginal cost, for those financially minded) to give out an additional unit of Holy Ghost which would do so much good in the world.

Bottom line is, I am having trouble seeing the evidence of HG in my life. I have felt what people claim if the HG. I have pondered and prayed and received genuine answers to questions like “is the BoM true” and “is JS a prophet of God”. But looking back I can see how I can also talk myself into believing in what I am feeling is genuine, because I want it to be true. There is no objective measure for the existence of the HG, just like Mr. Sagan’s invisible dragon in the garage.

-Defiantly wearing a non-white shirt

Big Al

PS, I have a calling update. There is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that with the recent update to the handbook of instructions my job of activities chairperson is being eliminated. The bad news is that they are not going to release me until after the Christmas party.

By Big Al Uncategorized 38 Comments

http://masterdmjgsfreethinking.blogspot.com MichaelG

Great post. I had some of the exact same questions during our lesson last week. I understand that the book cites how a member of the church has the potential to have the spirit with them always and other people can only feel the spirit periodically. My question is: who is audacious enough to say that they constantly have the spirit with them? If most people are honest with themselves I would assume they would admit that they feel the spirit only once in awhile at best. So how is having the gift so much better than someone who because of the ‘light of christ’ feels the spirit occasionally as well? Just a few more questions to throw into the mix.

The next lesson is gifts of the spirit – a lesson ripe for multitudes of questions!!

Big Al

Thanks MG. In my ward there are two teachers and we alternate (I have the third Sunday). I actually mentioned at the top of the lesson to the EQ that this lesson was probably going to be boring compared to ones past but that “I could go to town on the next lesson.”

I may post on that one even though I won’t be teaching.

Fenevad

Al, you wrote “Why would God withhold one of his greatest gifts from the entire world, especially if it did what the lesson manuals says and ‘purifies our hearts so we no longer have the desire to do evil’…?” That’s really just a rephrasing of the general question of theodicy: why does God allow evil to exist?

I realize that the following answer is one with a tremendous number of assumptions, but if God created us and if we are in the sort of world God intended for us to be in (versus taking the classical Christian view that this is *not* the world God intended for us and that we have to deal with sin only thanks to the Adam/Eve/snake/fruit snafu), then the lack of the constant presence of the Spirit and guidance has some overall beneficial role in the grand scheme of things.

The LDS answer here is actually probably as good as you’ll find anywhere (meaning it’s not terribly satisfying if you think that God should prevent all of the bad stuff): it’s that agency trumps everything else and that God won’t force us to feel the Spirit, won’t come in and change us so we feel it. Instead allowing us to experience the good and the bad allows us to grow. (I wonder how being subject to the evil inflicted by others helps this along, but since we are agents in interaction with other agents, it seems we can’t escape that.)

So because the Spirit is conditional but we are faced with alternatives that make us feel good in the short run and because we can be fooled into believing what we want to believe (yes, I’m aware of the question being begged here), we don’t always feel it because there are other seemingly more attractive alternatives at various times.

Now if you want us all to feel the Spirit all the time, without regard to our actions and preparation, in LDS theology, there was such a plan and we chose not to follow it. Indeed we are taught that such a plan would be destructive. I can’t say why entirely, and it is only within the LDS framework that we really get that perspective, so if you don’t buy the framework the answer probably doesn’t make sense.

But the broader question would be why people who seem to genuinely want to do good will get caught up in evil things (e.g., a man who wants to see moral improvement and becomes a Talib) without God providing them a way to avoid it. That is a tough question and any answer one could give (mine included) will probably not be satisfactory. But then neither will no answer satisfy, and I don’t think atheism or agnosticism happen to provide good answers either. It seems to be a fundamental human difficulty to account for why we aren’t perfect, one that is at the center of many religions.

Big Al

Fen, Thanks for the post, I enjoy your thoughtfulness. I realized that this was similar to Theodicy, but thought that it didn’t quite go far as the omnipotent and omniscience God preventing badness. Rather the omniscience God opting to not use his omnipotentency (sort of Mr. Diety turning off his “all knowingness”) to prevent (all or just some?) evil from occurring. Thus allowing us to utilize our agency, and thus growing and becoming like God(s). This would account for why Mormon’s still do evil even thought they are the only ones with the Gift.

I almost brought up in the post about the whole holy-ghost-begging-the-question issue, I am glad you brought it up. I think that is a problem that isn’t answered: are we on a constant upward spiral (did something good, get some spirit, making us want to do more good and getting more spirit) else we are on downward spiral of the opposite ilk.

However, I don’t think that LDS theology of Satan forcing us to be good and Jesus’s plan of letting us choose adequately for the problem of who gets the spirit and who doesn’t. (which, as an aside, I always thought the other major difference was pretty funny that Satan getting the glory and not God the Father. It sort of makes God look like a megalomaniac getting all the glory for all of Jesus’s work and pain.)

Finally, I believe that Atheism is particularly well situated to answer why people who want to do good but backslide and do evil: Self Interest and Enlightened Self Interest. We all do things out of self interest, even those things which on the surface seem to be altruistic, but there rewards to be had in this life or posterity.

Anyway, thanks for the comments, I really do appreciated the educated discussion.

Fenevad

Al, thanks for the interesting response. I realized reading your response that your broader question is distinct from theodicy. It could be entirely independent, but in the portion of your post I quoted it seemed that you were linking the two with the notion that the Spirit would somehow eliminate evil. That may not have been your intention, but I think it was a worthwhile way to approach it.

Regarding atheism and the religious question of why God made us imperfect, I see atheism as actually having a structurally identical answer to the question I had in mind. If, instead of asking why God made us imperfect and capable of evil (Theodicy), you ask why evolution resulted in us, seemingly alone among all animals, being capable of moral evil (distinct from asking why we may carry out evil actions given our condition), you are at the same place, with no answer, in fact with no real possibility of an answer since the question “why” in this case presumes the existence of some sort of final cause (evolution made us that way *because* of X), whereas any atheistic explanation can only give us an efficient cause (evolution made us that way—no because). That’s the sense in which I meant that atheism is no better equipped to give an answer.

At the lower level of why we act evil (taking our “defective” nature as a given), I don’t see the atheist answer you posit as different at all from what a believer would say. They might call the answer temptation, but temptation to *what*? To give into short-term self interest. Some religions might add a devil to the mix as a causative agent for planting thoughts in our head, but the reason the devil can succeed at all is the same as the atheist explanation: we see what seems like rational self interest and act upon it in contravention of what we “know” to be right.

So, to make the long story short, this is why I don’t find either option particularly able to explain our defective nature (both are structurally the same) and why I think that the LDS explanation is probably as good as any.

By the way, from the LDS perspective, we are explicitly taught that the Spirit may leave us alone. To take a few central examples: (1) Adam and Eve are taught in the Garden (presumably feeling the Spirit) and then left alone for the serpent to approach; (2) Moses is given his revelation and then left alone for Satan to approach; (3) Jesus is left alone on the cross (the “Why hast thou forsaken me?” moment. So in LDS theology even being good won’t earn you the Spirit at all times, and there is some central utility to leaving us *without* it, even at times of extreme duress.

So it isn’t even enough to say that good = get the Spirit and bad = don’t get the Spirit. In any event, we’re all a mixture of the two, and in the BoM you get figures like Limhi who manage to feel the Spirit despite being murderers, so it seems that there is a disconnect between LDS doctrine (as taught in church meetings) about the Spirit and the notions actually found in LDS scriptures. Of course the scriptures present a much messier and more complex notion that can’t be reduced to the sort of schematic answer that people seem to want. And maybe that’s one answer to your question: our notions are wrong and the reality is more complex (imagine that!)…

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jay bryner

My comment at this lesson:

My brain turns to the contractual nature of the covenant of baptism. Namely we promise to:
always remember christ
Take his name upon us
Keep the commandments

Christ promises:
To get us to heaven

But how do you know if you are doing ‘good enough’?
Answer: when you feel the holy ghost

Its part of my overall campaign at church to get people to chill. Most of us, probably even people struggling with depression can look back and feel something resembling the spirit if they look for it

My comment that I never really got to during the gifts of the spirit lesson was a general spiel about diversity.
jay bryner

Oh, and a subtext to my comment – if you know you are going to heaven because your baptismal covenant is valid, you can lay off he guilt. Stop feeling guilty for, or trying to make othes feel guilty for not going home teaching, or not getting the glitter exactly right on the young women’s banquet invitations, or not sewing all the boy scout merit badges on your stupid 14 year old’s scout uniform or whatever.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Megan-von-Ackermann/100000167835734 Megan von Ackermann

I totally want those lyrics…

http://www.facebook.com/people/Greg-Rockwell/100000882770623 Greg Rockwell

I’m apostate, yes I am
After studying the history
I discovered it’s a sham

Everyone thinks I’m just inclined to disobey
But maybe I don’t believe
The spirit will leave you
Just because you’re gay

I’m apostate yes it’s true
And you may think that I’m deluded but I’m sad to say it’s you
You see now I know the Book of Abraham is just a false translation
I know we stole Masonic rites and tried to say they’re ancient
Maybe you’d like me to tell you about the women that Joseph screwed
Then you can be apostate, too

I’m apostate, through and through
And since I broke all of my covenants
I’m sleeping in the nude

It’s not that I’m lazy or offended in some way
I just don’t buy the excuse apologists use
For Indian DNA

I’m apostate, yes, it’s true
And if that means we can’t be friends
I guess that’s what you’ve got to do
You see now I am aware of troubling things like Joseph’s polyandry
I get upset when Packer talks, I keep Fawn Brodie handy
Maybe you’d like a list of the things that prove the Church isn’t true
Then you can be apostate, too.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Megan-von-Ackermann/100000167835734 Megan von Ackermann

Yay – Thanks!

http://www.facebook.com/Jared1260 Jared Anderson

Two of my favoritest people in the whole wide world. Love them.
Janet Lee

Excellent jam session with a very happy ending. It’s great to know we’re not alone here in “zion”. Loved the song!
Anonymous

I loved the song too.

But I have to take issue with something that Heather said toward the end of the interview. If I remember correctly, she said that religious believers think that their moral beliefs come from their religion, while atheists think that their moral beliefs come from cognitive processes.

From what I have seen and read, most people’s moral beliefs are rooted in the group of thoughts and feelings that are typically called the conscience. In turn, the conscience appears to be conditioned by an intuitive or instinctive understanding of fairness and empathy; a lifetime of learned social responses; and ideas that are inculcated by family and society. So the atheists are generally correct when it comes to the psychological dimension of morality.

Where believers and atheists seem to differ is in the philosophical dimension of morality. Believers generally hold that their moral beliefs are ultimately grounded in their religious faith, i.e., that morality represents the will of God. Atheists usually hold that their moral beliefs are ultimately grounded in human intuition or evolutionary psychology.

For believers, the need to stay true to the perceived will of God can enable them to engage in acts of individual moral heroism that run counter to cultural norms, though this can also work the other way — for example, when an intended act of moral heroism creates death and suffering, as in a terrorist attack. Atheists seem less prone to these extremes. This appears to be partly due to the fact that atheists often view morality as being ultimately rooted in the culture or species, which means that morality is more of a group characteristic rather than an intensely individual and personal responsibility.

Anonymous

I’m sorry…. but I don’t see any difference in what you said and what I said. Can you explain what you mean a little more? (I can be daft sometimes.)

Anonymous

You’re certainly not daft. I can be a little obscure, for which I apologize.

What I heard you say is that religious believers do not think that their moral beliefs are derived from cognitive processes. I don’t think this is true. All the believers I know acknowledge that moral beliefs have cognitive influences, and are processed cognitively.

In other words, nobody has to refer to the Bible to see whether it’s okay to knock over a convenience store. Believers will conclude that it’s not okay in the same way that atheists will conclude that it’s not okay.

Both atheists and believers can live a moral life. Both atheists and believers look to their consciences to make moral decisions. Many cognitive, social, and biological factors influence conscience. None of this is in dispute. Where atheists and believers usually disagree is on what is the ultimate foundation of conscience.

Most believers say that God is the ultimate foundation. Most atheists say that it’s something else — for example, evolutionary psychology, cultural expectations, early childhood influences, or perhaps even something as ill-defined as intuition.

This can be an important difference when a person’s belief in what God wants him to do comes into conflict with what society wants him to do. If moral behavior can be plotted on a normal curve, I think that believers are relatively likely to fall into the upper or lower tails of the curve. Atheists seem to be more likely to gravitate toward the mean. While atheists are less likely to commit acts of evil in the name of God, they are also less likely to perform acts of moral heroism.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Greg-Rockwell/100000882770623 Greg Rockwell

I think your comments are intriguing C&B. I think your acts of moral heroism probably need to be parsed out a bit. I would be willing to bet (and would need to find something to back me up) that both believers and atheists would respond to high stress, in-the-moment opportunities for heroism in pretty much exactly the same way, in a nearly autonomic response.

In a pre-meditated act, I’m willing to believe (for a variety of reasons that I am working on explaining in a blog post) that believers are likely to edge out the atheists. I.e. believers are more likely to give unselfishly. This is in dispute by philosophers and behavioral scientists.

I agree with most of the rest of what you said, although believers (and especially Mormons) don’t necessarily believe morality flows from God. Philosphically, morality that flows from God is meaningless in terms of real virtue. This, I discovered, is a platonic argument to Euthyphro.

Anonymous

I agree that not all believers hold that morality flows from God. In the Euthyphro, Plato makes the obvious point that the gods’ behavior is often offensive to the conscience. This is also true of God in the Old Testament.

The fact that the Mormon conception of God is more oriented toward the Old Testament than that of mainstream Christianity (and that it has also been compared, by D. Michael Quinn and others, to the Greco-Roman conception of godhood), I can see how Mormons may be reluctant to believe that morality is rooted in something supernatural or metaphysical.

But I don’t agree that belief in a supernatural or metaphysical foundation for morality renders it meaningless in terms of real virtue. Virtue is, after all, a metaphysical concept, unless you wish to describe it as nothing more than social convention, conditioned response, or biological drive. This seems to be why metaphysical beliefs can serve to anchor or strengthen personal morality, amplifying it to the point at which an individual can more readily do great good or great evil.
Joseph Miller

I do agree that morality flowing from God is meaningless in terms of real virtue. Real virtue exists only in limited contexts. As an abstract noun, the word “bravery” has little meaning; it becomes truly significant only when it describes behavior in a particular context (e.g. when a gang of bullies corners a little girl and she fights back).

The more we try to talk about morality as something absolute, independent of any context, the more meaningless it becomes. Virtue is reduced to words; instruction to platitudes. (Consider God as the universal basketball coach, whose advice to all teams everywhere at every moment in time is “Win the game!” No kidding, Sherlock. How to do that is question, and the answers are infinite, depending on context.)
Greg Rockwell

Joseph Miller,

Completely agree that context is the driving factor!

The influence of context, in fact, is one of the blow-up factors in my idea of divine morality. (Thank you Malcolm Gladwell for starting me down that path to enlightenment.)

I wrote somewhere recently that I have given up the idea of correct moral choices (which imply incorrect ones), and am really focusing on the idea of acceptable moral choices.

Great comment.

I’ll throw this out there as kind of a general statement on morality (probably in response to C&B, sort of), I am highly sympathetic to the Michael Shermer definition of morality from The Science of Good & Evil. I am less concerned at this point in figuring out philosophically WHY morality is real or important than observing THAT morality is consistently acknowledged and is important in all human relationships. (That general trend informs most of my thinking… more interested in what is than what ought to be.)The lack of morality (in humanist terms) is diagnosed as sociopathy, right?

I think it is interesting/distressing when religion thumps the morality bully pulpit with the silly idea that if we didn’t have theologians to rely on to tell us how to behave we would all “just do whatever we want” and become depraved sociopaths.

I submit that (although the concept is manifestly stupid) this is not hyperbole on my part. I have heard many intonations of that (from Dr. Laura down to my sister).

Bruce Spaulding

Greg, could you please cite the book you and Letti read that was something like an insider’s view of Mormonism. Thanks.

Sean Leavitt

“Insider’s View of Mormon Origins” by Grant Palmer

http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-View-Mormon-Origins/dp/1560851570/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327002269&sr=8-1

Highly recommended.

http://argeiphontes.blogspot.com/ Hermes

Thanks for this delightful interview. I enjoyed learning more about the Rockwells, who are both very insightful, and the song at the end was hilarious.
Anonymous

Great podcast all. I didn’t realize that Greg was ‘Greg the host’ from other podcasts til the audio started. A pleasant surprise for sure. Yer a funny man, Greg and your lovely wife is equally charming.

I envy you both— or at least the fact that for the most part you exited together. I have been in disaffection limbo since at least 2004 or so— and my wife is believing and still attends— as do my kids. I attend SM a couple times a year at most. We mostly manage an uneasy detente punctuated by episodes of friction over how to raise kids when we don’t agree on belief. Try not to be too jealous.

I related a lot to Greg’s comments— not only about issues with Mormonism but about also about the good things the larger world has to offer— music, art, literature. I was a teenager in Northern CA in the 80s and had the same experience with music and art. After my mission though I found myself feeling like I had to choose between so-called worldly things and friends— and being a good Mormon. Wish I knew then what I do now.

I also loved what Letti said about the whole beautiful world opening up once moving beyond the limited thinking that is Mormonism. I’ve felt that exact thing and have told my wife that Mormonism, despite what good it may have, is just too small to be limited to.

Thank you all. Rockwells, my best to you both and your family.

Greg, if you band ever plays gigs let me/others know. I’d love come out.
Elisabeth Oppelt

Greg, thanks for your description of having kids and how parents of small kids generally look unhappy. I often say that, and people get mad at me. But that’s what it looks like to me. I’ve never wanted kids, and have make the choice not to have them. People keep saying it will make me happy, but it seems like all the evidence is to the contrary. That’s not to say that having kids is a bad thing, but for a women like me who really doesn’t want them, I have major doubts that it will make me happy, because it is hard for women who do want kids. So if it’s hard for people who really want kids, why would it magically make me, a person who does not want kids, happy? So thanks for saying that.
Anonymous

“GQ-ing”: Haha, I haven’t heard that phrase since my mission! Awesome.
Anonymous

I really liked David’s comments about the church’s attacks on gay marriage rights. He’s right. There are many other things that threaten the traditional family. But you wouldn’t know it to listen to the church. Instead, you’d think gay marriage and watching porn were the only “threats” to the family.
http://www.facebook.com/Jared1260 Jared Anderson

“I wish she could have left with me, instead of leaving me.”

Heartbreaking. Ugggghhh.
Anonymous

I’m not Greg but am definitely interested in the black keys show info. They played a free show in SLC in 2010 but the crowds were so insane I didn’t bother going. With the bands popularity now can you really swing a small, secret venue? It’d be awesome if you can.
Anonymous

While Dave is the one who mentioned “getting sick” I’ll step in. He and I both know people who were sent home. I remember one guy getting home and everyone was just talking about how sick he was… though he appeared totally fine. This went on for months before one of his friends clarified for me. I think there were 2 or 3 in my ward when I was a teenager. I know Dave had a couple from his mission that were sent home for getting girls preggo. At least in that situation someone did get sick
brandt

We only had 2 people go home, and they were for legitimate “sickness” reasons. One guy put his arm in one of those “heart rate” monitors, and it read his heart rate at 150+ BPM. Or something crazy like that.

However, one of the problems with the missionary program is this fact of the unwritten standard. While the church will say “the bar has been raised,” you also have the negative stigma of someone who doesn’t go, for whatever reason. Even people going home with legitimate sicknesses, there are documented cases of these RM’s who go into depression because they feel they weren’t strong/worthy/spiritual enough to last their entire mission, or have people in the ward saying things like “He went home because of “sickness”…I wonder what he did..”
Anonymous

Oh, no doubt at all some people are actually sick. My brother in law went home for a while because he was in a biking accident, but he was able to return. And some people go home because they make mistakes.
brandt

Thanks. I’d like to say it’s part of an over-arching conspiracy to bring you all back to church, but in all honesty, it’s just an avenue for me to get my intellectual Mormonism on without boring my wife
Greg Rockwell

I think my concern is not so much the personal stories people tell but the institutional messages that supposedly come from God. When God’s university (i.e. the endowment ceremony) tells you repeatedly that joy and happiness will come from popping out rugrats, the (inevitable) lack of fulfillment of that prediction will ultimately either cause you to conclude that God was lying or that you are broken/doing it wrong/sinful/etc. It took me about 7 years of parenting to conclude that I wasn’t broken and that God was, indeed, lying.

That said, I do LIKE (and love) my kids, and they occasionally provide me with blissful moments of happiness, and I am glad that they exist. I firmly (probably irrationally) believe that my happiness factor will continue to increase with them as they get older (and especially as I feel no compulsion to require that they become Mormon robots in order for me to be satisfied with their human progress)
I was, nevertheless, sold a lie. Many of them, in fact.
Greg Rockwell

AA,

Yes, I agree with your assessment. The incompleteness (as well as the strait and narrowness) of the teaching makes it a lie. It is also a lie because it is demonstrably, manifestly untrue. Happiness and marital satisfaction levels (measured in controlled studies) plummet with the arrival of children and really only go back up after the children leave the home (Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness is a great resource for this).

Ultimately, it seems the justification invoked is the pious lie: people need to be given misrepresentations in order to get them to act “virtuously”, i.e. it is assumed that left to a doctrine somewhat more resembling reality, people would never choose to have children.

This is religious lying at its finest.
http://apronappeal.com/ Apron Appeal

Teaching something that you know is not true or believe is not true, is a lie.

If you teach something that may or may not be true under but present it in a way that you know is not truthful or complete, that is also a lie.

However, if you believe in something that may be based on poor evidence and you teach that to someone else, Ii don’t think that’s a lie. Ignorance? naivety? sure, but not a lie.

Now out of curiosity, if it’s a lie to tell people to have kids to feel the measure of their creation, and someone doesn’t subscribe to that thinking, then why do they have children? I’m not asking to interrogate the reasons, I just really want to know. (it seems we’ve been here before, haven’t we?)
Greg Rockwell

AA,

“If it’s a lie to tell people to have kids to [fill] the measure of their creation, and someone doesn’t subscribe to that thinking, then why do they have children?”

Well, this describes the vast, vast majority of the earth’s historical population. People choose to have kids for all kinds of reasons. People DO think that children will make them happier. That trope is not confined in any way to Mormonism.

Mormonism (along with some other intrusive, abusive, fundamentalist religions) ups the ante by a) insisting that God wants you to have as many children as possible as soon as possible and b) teaching in the temple that this is THE WAY to experience joy and rejoicing. The consequences of these teachings are disastrous. The happiness and well-being of parents and children are incalculably impacted, and the church creates a spiraling culture of dependence as people feel their lives spinning out of control.

I can’t think of any reason people SHOULD have children other than that they really want them.
Greg Rockwell

Thanks, Marney. It’s nice to be identified with.

Your patriarchal blessing nugget is delightful. Financial problems cause divorce, so you shouldn’t work, which will increase the likelihood that at some point you will have serious financial struggles. Love it. Yes, Letti has been the SAHP, and I don’t envy her. She is in school right now full time for nursing pre-reqs. I’m working full time. We juggle. It’s a good thing we like each other.

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