Comment from me:
I was just thinking on the subject of understanding other's diversity and suffering. I believe we create externally what is first created within. External violence is only internal violence manifested (i.e. riots in news). So MLK said riots are harmful (I agree and should not be encouraged) but I feel there is a message or a call for help. A voice that needs to be heard by those rioting.
Tools and resources for improving their mental health to live happy and productive lives through empowerment and great teachers who see a higher way of living. A leader each must be empowered to become in their communities. These people who are rioting obviously are using a harmful means to find their voice. They are using their ego and really the "situation" is a small dot to what they want heard. It is just a reason to find someone to listen.
I just was so closed for so many years and I am not sure I would say these before in any sense of the word. I see the oneness of all people and religions and races and cultures and genders and...
I feel only that I don't know how to end suffering but if each person seeks personal enlightenment to find the Kingdom of God within, we will find the lamb and lion lie down in each of us in the now. We are all lamb and we are all lion. How can I judge the lion that is in someone else because it looks a little different than my lion. The key is that they lie down together and are transformed through a second coming. I just feel so deep now the suffering of even the enemy, the bad guy, the rebel as we are all that person as well.
http://www.wheatandtares.org/6171/authority-vs-authenticity/
my comment:
Brenlee “I don’t believe it is the one true church or that there is one true church.”
I feel the voice you speak. I sat in therapy yesterday voicing my “one true church” grief. I have a testimony that religion is how man has interpreted God, science/nature, culture, and politics over the centuries. I value the depth of Jesus’s teachings but feel church is so childlike it its teachings- I need depth and not to-do lists.
I feel the voice you speak. I sat in therapy yesterday voicing my “one true church” grief. I have a testimony that religion is how man has interpreted God, science/nature, culture, and politics over the centuries. I value the depth of Jesus’s teachings but feel church is so childlike it its teachings- I need depth and not to-do lists.
I have talked to a few converts who have a much more liberal interpretation of this but i am pioneer stock and feel a “fundamentalist trauma” associated with my religious life and family dynamics.
I have told my mother-in-law who is visiting this week about my decision that it has become to painful for me to go to church and I will not be going for a while. I am not sure the end of my path but feel peace with the decision. Today, we even bore our testimonies to each other. Her testimony was simple and correlated and mine was complicated and deep (at least for me). I respect hers and after some pain (she said “You have hurt me”), today she told me I can respect your new beliefs. I didn’t sleep for 2 days before she came and I worried about being able to “be fake”.
I am grateful my 15 year old told her his mom’s beliefs had changed. It opened a door for me to be authentic. I see how it has blossomed my relationship with my children as well (fear is tough stuff).
It is a much more peaceful way to live and it can be done in non-harming ways. Harming others is not authentic either, that is why I go to therapy (sometimes I can’t see my own harmful ways or where I still need healing). I don’t want to unload my burdens on people who are not ready to bare burdens that are life transforming. Some are ok with simple and some need more depth to life. We must always meet others at their level authentically. So grateful I learned that these last few days.
hawkgrrrl, "In essence, self-knowledge and self-awareness is often an illusion."
I am not sure I agree with this. This is how one puts off the masks we get externally. Awareness of self (knowledge of self) has been key for me to shed the masks. If one looks at a flower and puts words to the description based on books, teachers, or posters, I don't really know the flower. That is the mask. The sitting down and practicing self-awareness (as if I were a flower), would be the only way to get to know the indescribable nature of the flower.
I may not understand what your definition of these terms are either. Mine are based on eastern philosophy.
http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2014/11/when-to-disobey/
my comment:
Wow!!! There seems to bee proof to justify both theories of think for yourself and don't think for yourself but obey. I grew up in the camp of "obey" because they "have lunch with Jesus" (as I have heard people explain it). I think a good dose of "no" is just what every priesthood leader needs. (sarcasm intended).
I just am having a hard time in my faith crisis. My therapist thinks as I face my trauma, it will lead me to testimony and faith but I see my faith changing in a way away from organized religion. I currently feel like I having panic attacks when I go to church. My bishop said over the pulpit on Sunday, "If someone came to me with 100% irrefutable evidence that the church was not true, I would not deny my testimony." I call this blind faith. My ward split and my stake president spoke about leadership in ways that I am no longer comfortable with. I had to leave after sacrament meeting and go home. To hard for me right now. I am taking a break from church for a while. Not sure the end, but ok with the journey.
A comment on this post by Alison Moore Smith:
I think there is a bit of semantic gaming in trying to distinguish between “sustaining” and “obeying” as they are generally used. The George Albert Smith manual has a chapter titled, “Sustaining Those Whom the Lord Sustains.”
The title’s equivocation may be part of the problem. Obviously there is no suggestion that God obeys anyone on earth. But there is every implication (and direct expression) in the lesson that “sustaining” a leader includes obedience to his counsel.
“When we sustain our leaders, we commit to follow their counsel and magnify our own callings.”
“The obligation that we make when we raise our hands under such circumstances, is a most sacred one. It does not mean that we will go quietly on our way and be willing that the prophet of the Lord shall direct this work, but it means,—if I understand the obligation I assumed when I raised my hand—that we will stand behind him; we will pray for him; we will defend his good name, and we will strive to carry out his instructions as the Lord shall direct him to offer them to us while he remains in that position.”
“Our leaders are chosen by the Lord, and He expects us to sustain them in word and action.”
“There is no other organization like this in the world. There are no other people [who are] led as this people are led.”
“He will not permit the men who preside over his Church to lead the people into error, but he will sustain them with his almighty power.”
“Those who oppose and find fault will not find joy in their opposition.”
“Those who criticize and seek to destroy the influence of the leaders of the Church will suffer the result of their wrong-doing.”
“If you will follow the leadership of the Lord, and those whom the Lord sustains, you will not fall away into darkness, lose the light, transgress the laws of God, and forfeit your privileges that he is so anxious that all of us should enjoy.”
“There is only one pathway of safety for me in this day and that is to follow those whom the Lord has appointed to lead. I may have my own ideas and opinions, I may set up my own judgment with reference to things, but I know that when my judgment conflicts with the teachings of those that the Lord has given to us to point the way, I should change my course. If I desire salvation I will follow the leaders that our Heavenly Father has given to us, as long as he sustains them.”
“[They] have prayed for and sustained their leaders … , and during my experience in the Church I have yet to know of one person who has been observing the commandments of the Lord who has raised his or her voice against those who were called to preside over this Church.”
“When we criticize our leaders or disregard their counsel, we allow the adversary to lead us astray.”
Jonathan Cavender:
And there’s the rub.
Church leaders have long conflated obedience to God with obedience to leaders, even local leaders. I can’t think of a time when that obedience was referencing a woman in leadership, but often to bishops and stake presidents and on up the “food chain.”
Marion G. Romney:
Improvement Era, 1945:
Elder Robert C. Oaks:
Reasoning doesn’t matter. God wants you to do as your are told. Right or wrong, obedience is the ultimate criterion.
When the Relief Society has become the defacto Ward Activities Committee — and is dumped with the ward Christmas dinner for the umpteenth year in a row (because, of course, who else could possibly plan/prepare a meal) — it is inspired of God. Complaining about it or suggesting an alternative is seen as “evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed.” Do not ask me how I know this.