I guess a part of me was trying to think hard about that metaphor and how far you can take it, to see what were and weren’t the appropriate domains of application for arm of flesh.

I guess I’m not satisfied with the idea that this is a general admonition; Nephi’s greatest source of joy was from knowing in whom he had trusted, and ensuring he hadn’t misplaced that trust. I want to identify the mechanism by which we place trust in God, and lower our reliance on other elements (which means first defining and identifying those ‘other elements’).

I do think, Steve, that the last paragraph of your post raises issues that are peripheral to your question. And some of Wendy’s questions are peripheral as well (though they are still interesting).

Aaron B

I like flesh. People are messy and made of meat and make mistakes, but I like trusting in them, and I like using logic and reason to doubt them. If my trust in someone turns out to be misplaced, I like learning from that mistake. “Relying on the arm of flesh” is not necessarily scary to me. Better advice than “don’t rely on the arm of flesh” would be “here are some helpful decision-making tips”. Like “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” — wouldn’t it be great if that popped in the scriptures a couple of times? If so, there might be less Mormon MLM madness.

I believe wholeheartedly that we must put our faith in God, but without works, faith is dead, you know…

On the other hand, there’s the natural- man-is-the-enemy-of-God stuff, and the arm of flesh stuff.

“Don’t trust in the arm of flesh” is not good advice because it is confusing. There are way too many gray areas in the church. The Mormons I was raised by and with believed that strict obedience to church leaders is obedience to God. Is that over-reliance on the arm of flesh? Has a kid who gets baptized at 8 without having received a strong spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness of the church over-relied on the arm of flesh? What about a 10 year old kid who becomes a Scientologist because his parents do? If you decide to do something based on counsel given to you in a father’s blessing, is that over-reliance on the arm of flesh? What about if you take an action based on something you are told in a patriarchal blessing? What about something your priesthood-holding husband tells you to do? What about a missionary who shows manipulative videos and tells weepy stories in order to produce a purely emotional response in an investigator in order to lead him/her to baptism — does the end justify the means, or is that over-reliance on the arm of flesh that is displeasing to God?

Is “don’t trust the arm of flesh” code for don’t trust your own instincts, your ability to reason, your doubts, your hopes, your education, your emotions, observable fact, people that have given you reason to trust them, or learned third parties? If not, how is trusting in the arm of flesh different than trusting in God? Put another way, rather than defining what the “arm of flesh” is, the more interesting question I think is — what does it mean to rely on God as opposed to the arm of flesh?

If I get a good feeling in church, is that God talking? People tell me it is, but I don’t want to trust people, I want to trust God. God hasn’t told me how he wants me to discern his will. If I get a bad feeling in the temple, is that God talking, or the arm of flesh talking? Isn’t a “burning in the bosom” a fleshy feeling — can I really trust it? I was taught that in order to discern God’s will, I should study a question, search it out in my mind, then come up with a tentative answer, then pray, then wait and see if I got a good feeling about the tentative answer. Isn’t there major reliance on the arm of flesh

If we’re truly in the wilderness, the Lord will send manna. But we can’t sit outside of Safeway waiting for manna to start falling in the parking lot.

I guess I brought up the hard sciences as a form of “arm of flesh” because they have been referred to as such by contemporary religion, specifically in the context of evolutionary theory. However, I’m not sure that Church opposition to evolution is what it used to be, and as a whole I think our religion is much more open to science than some.

I like your thought that true science is our attempt to clean the human influence from knowledge. In a way, it represents the secular method of not relying on the arm of flesh. Is there a religious corollary?

“The Science of the Spiritual.” It has a great ring to it.

It only makes sense that mormons, dedicated truth-seekers that we are, would constantly be trying to distinguish between “real” spiritual truth and artifice. So what then is the LDS scientific method? What is our approach to discerning between truth and error, as concerning human affairs? I’d like to say that we have some sort of lock on truth-seeking, but sadly our approach is hardly as disciplined or systematic as real science.

Also, is there a danger that truths divined as absolute spiritual truths would lead to fundamentalism?