Comments on: The Hard History–is faith enough to get us through? http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/ A Mormon Blog Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:52:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Tracy Hall Jr http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-139802 Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:28:38 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-139802 I’m late to this thread but hope I can still share my personal approach to inoculating myself against faith-destroying judgments on the fragmentary shadows of truth that we call “history.”

I have struggled all my life with a tendency to judge others and have come to believe that the only way I will ever overcome this fault is to take Jesus literally at his word:

“. . . Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (3 Nephi 14:1-2, Matthew 7:1-2)

I desperately need the Lord to judge me by the most liberal possible standard! Accordingly I want to learn to be reserved, patient, charitable, — or better yet silent — when presented with the temptation to judge others.

When I am tempted to apply “contemporary standards” to say that the prophets before President Kimball were “wrong” about the priesthood ban, I am telling the Lord to judge ME by the short and crooked measuring stick of contemporary society.

It is much safer for me to say “Lord, I know I don’t know the tiniest fraction of what you know about Brother Joseph or Brother Brigham, so I choose to ignore what has been presented to me as ugly and choose to try to love them as I believe you love them. And by the way, please, please, please judge me the same way!”

Someday the Lord will reveal to us not just all the acts of Joseph and Brigham, but also all their thoughts and feelings. And everyone shall also know all of mine. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

I trust that I in that day I shall be overwhelmed to learn how the Lord turned our mortal mistakes to his divine purposes. Every time I begin again at “I Nephi . . . “ I marvel how the Lord held Nephi’s moving late-life holographic memoir in reserve for us, knowing that the weaknesses of Joseph and Martin would cause the translation of Mormon’s abridgment of Nephi’s earlier and more detailed record to be lost.

Had Joseph and Martin not lost the Book of Lehi, we might have known a bit more about the workaday worlds of Lehi and Nephi. But we might never have had such precious treasures as 1 Nephi 1, 1 Nephi 11-14, 2 Nephi 4, and 2 Nephi 33!

This gives me hope that the Lord has also prepared a way to salvage a little good from my own blunders!

hthalljr’gmail’com

]]> By: Seth R. http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-139464 Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:12:07 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-139464 This guy Ethan is a spammer. He left identical word-for-word comments on about three other blogs.

]]> By: ethan http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-139453 Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:21:30 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-139453 Don’t confuse the LDS doctrines of Salvation vs. exaltation.

Actually, Mormons believe all mankind is SAVED by the GRACE of God, even Hitler. Evangelicals believe a person must perform the WORK of physically “accepting Jesus” vocally to be saved.

Therefore, mormons believe in being saved by grace and Evangelicals believe in salvation by works (act of being born again).

]]> By: Pedro http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-139234 Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:33:58 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-139234 Here is one rule I have:

IF SOME ONE ASKS A QUESTION THEN THEY ARE READY FOR THE ANSWER…NO MATTER WHAT IT IS.

]]> By: Clean Cut http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-138867 Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:33:19 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-138867 And while we’re on the angelic theme, I liked your description of the angelic dancers and the temple (in #7), Margaret.

]]> By: BHodges http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-138818 Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:29:32 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-138818 I like the comparison of wrestling angels, Margaret.

]]> By: Margaret Young http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-138764 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:23:41 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-138764 Well, I think we’ve pretty much had our conversation. I won’t close it up, but I think it has ended–with a bit of a whimper. The original post was not about the mall or fundamentalism but about faith and hard history. I think much of my own answer comes from a scripture familiar to us all: James 1:5. But wrestling angels is also involved. We have and have had many angels in the Church–all well-intentioned but sometimes confused in their messages. I keep clinging to that shining core which illuminates the way for me–not just in how I view my own past and the past of my religion, but the pasts of the many flawed but good men and women who lived the history. I wrestle with them (in their angelic state) quite politely.

]]> By: Ardis Parshall http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-138751 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:43:12 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-138751 95: Kari, the church has said ad nauseum through the process of building the mall that no tithing funds are involved, that all funds derive from the commercial/investment arm of the church.

And we can’t really even assume that tithing was the germ of the commercial/investment arm way back at some point. Much of the church’s investments are based on real estate, and vast amounts of real estate, including much of the ground upon which the mall is being built, were acquired by the church in 1847 with the first layout of the city.

Just sayin’.

]]> By: Brock http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-138747 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:26:38 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-138747 I don’t think it would be at all accurate to say that Krakauer was using his book to paint a broad brush picture of Mormonism as a whole. It was largely a portrait of extreme fundamentalism. Extreme fundamentalism is disturbing, and it exists within the church as well as without. It gets disturbing when we have to face facts about our own personal extremism.

]]> By: BHodges http://bycommonconsent.com/2009/06/01/the-hard-history-is-faith-enough-to-get-us-through/#comment-138745 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:50:53 +0000 http://bycommonconsent.com/?p=8197#comment-138745 Cool, B. Jones. I think that lends something into my earlier statements about helping people understand sources, methods, bias, research, etc. as a part of preparing them to face intellectual criticism.

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