Anyway, I want to say that I wrote my original post at 4 am, hours after both the Spirit and my Inner Thesaurus had gone to bed. That is the only explanation I can give for doing something as foolish as choosing the word “intellectual” to describe something I was trying to defend. There is no more baggaged word in Mormonism than that one, I’d say. So that led to some problems…

In using the word intellectual, as some have pointed out, I did not mean “esoterica” or “deep doctrine.” I was not suggesting that we should spend our Sundays ruminating about the exact location of Kolob or out-scripture-chasing the next guy. I meant, rather, that using our minds (our intellects, which is the root of the horribly baggaged variations of the word)is paramount to living the full gospel and not falling into convention. In other words, I was saying that we need our minds to apply the righteous action of the gospel in all the places those actions need applying. This requires good reading and good thinking, not only to understand the context of certain ideas, but the ambiguities in them and the scope of their application. Particularly, and this is what I wanted to emphasize, it requires that we keep questions and ideas alive enough that they actually move us to transform our lives and examine our obligations outside of the conventionally approved contexts. I will have much more to say about this idea in my next post (which will be an illustration about the real consequences of bad reading and over-simplified teaching), but the reason that I advocate the mind is that it (along with the heart) keeps ideas from collapsing in on and drawing false boundaries around themselves. I think that many times–whether in church, seminary, or wherever–we read with convention goggles on, and the words have very little chance of actually communicating their messages to us. That is why we need what I called “intellectual” conversation, which is another way of saying that we MUST encourage the kinds of conversations that are required by people who consider the gospel to be a live question.

So, in response to the people who argued against making Sunday School into a gospel grad seminar, I will say this: I agree, if you are suggesting that we should avoid tedium and pointless conversation. On the other hand, we NEED it to be like a grad seminar in terms of the ability to ask sincere questions and really discuss (rather than preemptively truncate) their implications, applications, and scope. That is not something that a minority of disgruntled intellectuals do for fun; that should be the responsibility of everyone on the church! If we are not doing that, it is not because there are different church temperaments and ours is not in the majority; it is because the gospel is no longer a live enough question at all and thus nobody needs to ask hard questions about real ideas to know if they are or aren’t true.

Because of these opinions, I disagree very much with the people who have reasserted what I argued against in my post: that using our minds is a hobby for the people who are into that kind of thing, and that asking that of others is a proud imposition on our parts. I am saying that there are lots of ideas that we insist on in the gospel, and that many of them have unfortunately lost their basis in a transformative principles. And yet, we still ask them, regardless of whether they are hard or imposing! Why not, then, ask real things of people for real reasons? Why not suggest that thinking hard–not turning live ideas into doctrinaire answers–is just as vital (literally) to the Church as simply not drinking or smoking? Further, why not use our minds to have a real discussion about the principles behind driking or smoking, rather than letting them exist as rather groundless conventions? Why not use our minds to discover the principles behind the rules and apply them as broadly as charity requires of us?

Almost lastly, I want to respond to those who said that anyone feeling like me need only speak up in church and contribute–i.e., that my experience is no one’s fault but my own. To that idea, I will say that I spent about ten years in the Church feeling bad for being “proud” or “imposing” every time I thought that I should speak up and defend transformative ideas. People constantly told me that I should think of others’ needs before my own, and that asserting my kind of gospel was selfish and inimical to the purpose of church-going. I spent years trying to convince myself of that, until I finally accepted two things: One, that if everyone is truly equal in God’s eyes, then my ideas and needs are just as important than someone else’s and two, that nobody should ever take the proselyting urge away from anyone. Everyone who believes in something (especially someone who sees a problem that threatens the success of something they love) feels compelled to speak about those things. To suggest that everyone in the majority is not proud or imposing in their ideas simply by being in the majority is damaging to the minority–a minority that will bear the brunt of the epithets for doing exactly what the majority is doing. Therefore, it is not enough for me to suffer through a meeting in a church I do not recognize as my own, and then to come home and write a blog post about it. I should be able to go to church and speak about what I love; I should have a community in which to do those things. Church is about creating a community for ALL people. Too often, we try to accomplish this by throwing incredulity on the religious needs of the minority. Lastly, a criticism can never keep to itself, not because it is ugly or gossipy but because it sees real problems in the structures of organizations. Sure, I can sit quiet through church and be the Mormon I want to be, but that isn’t and has never been the point! If it were, I would go to church by myself. The point of church (besides learning to serve and listen to others) is to talk in a community about what you feel is important. If I think that good thinking is vital to Mormonism, I see no efficacy in sitting quietly–content that I am a good reader, and so who cares about the rest–while allowing other people to trivialize and minimize the ideas that I love. This discomfort is not about me, it is about keeping the church true as I see it. Of course, everyone gets the SAME privilege, and I must listen as much as I talk. But it is not correct to say that certain people get this privilege and others are proud or imposing for wanting the same, and it is also not right to act like defending what one sees as good and true is selfish.

Last of lastly, the milk and the meat definition. Since I was trying to write a response post to sayings I commonly hear, I was using the saying colloquially, in the way that people use it when they talk to me. I actually disagree that there is supposed to be a separation; the way I used the terms do not represent how I conceive of the terms. I am glad someone posted the Corinthians scriptures, because those verses defy the way we often use the expression. We use the phrase as if there were two categories–milk and meat–and the basic gospel principles fit in the milk category while esoterica and speculation and intellectualism fit in the meat container. Thus, we can say that we need to focus on certain principles (the atonement, obedience, whatever) before we can move to the meat principles. Besides the fact that our emphasis keeps the latter part from ever happening, the distinction is not even correct. The Corinthians verses suggest that there is only meat, and that meat is righteosness. It says that those who require milk are not truly righteous. There isn’t a milk and meat category, there is a milk and meat method, and the milk method is specifically necessary for people who are carnal and immature. There is absolutely no prohibition here against the mind, the heart, or discussion. There is a prohibition against carnalness and a tacit prohibition against anyone who requires a truth that excuses them from really thinking and living with maturity. What I have been trying to articulate is that using our minds and hearts together keeps ideas live enough that righteousness is always a process of expanding our obligations. And, if we let our interpretations of truth become so smug or self-evident or decided, we will read and not read; we will be, as Corinthians suggests, dull of hearing. We will read, for example, passages about not suffering the laborer in Zion to perish but steamroll right over it, not because it isn’t scripture but because the way we have talked about things over years of Sundays no longer invites us to take that idea seriously–to see what it means about our economies, our business practices, our jobs, our duties (structurally and personally) to the poor–because it is not a live part of our recognized canon-within-the-canon.

I will give further examples of this in my next post. Until then…

How many times have you sat through hostile apostasy masquerading as intellectualism? How many times have you sat through a lesson where the only acceptable response was to take sides against prophets and apostles? Sometimes the meat rots.

Maybe some of the fora or publications changed over time? I know a brother who was involved in Dialogue at the creation, disavowed it in the early 1990s, and has recently warmed to it again. Is it him or the publication?

Unless/Until the Basics are nailed down…Why Bother with details? it’s like Decartes before de horse (again, apologies!!)

*I’m only aware of it myself because Jonathan pointed it out; and because I fact-checked the date, afterwards, at the Source of All Knowledge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

“Milk” – lessons where everyone already knows all the questions and the answers that will be asked. Lessons where everyone plays along and goes through the motions. Lessons that are endured.

“Meat” – lessons where the questions and the answers indicate sincere thought, emotion, testimony, and so forth. Lessons where the Spirit is present. Lessons that change you.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with where you are, but those are my definitions.