One accusation that gets levied at Mormons is that members of the church purportedly face disciplinary trouble if they aren't willing to adhere to "blind obedience."
Nobody in the LDS church preaches blind obedience. Quite the contrary. We emphasize, more than most religions, the need to personally discover whether you believe the core tenets of our faith.
But there *are* certain core tenets of the LDS faith. There are of other faiths, too. If you walk into a Baptist church and preach that Jesus was the anti-Christ, you are going to get uninvited from coming back. The same principle applies to any organization or grouping. If I stop doing the type of work my law firm does, I'll get fired. It's not "blind obedience" -- it's deciding to be a member of an organization/movement/association/etc. that has some defining characteristic or another.
I'm especially sick of "intellectuals" whining about the problems "intellectuals" face in the church if they don't exhibit "blind obedience." You don't get excommunicated for questioning blind obedience; you get excommunicated for deciding and overtly demonstrating that you don't believe in the core tenets of Mormonism. And if you have stopped believing in Mormonism, why complain about being uninvited from the Mormon party? (I put "intellectuals" in quotation marks because if they're not intellectual enough to figure out that they have stopped believing in Mormonism, they don't get to call themselves intellectuals. They're David Brents.)
Nobody in the LDS church preaches blind obedience. Quite the contrary. We emphasize, more than most religions, the need to personally discover whether you believe the core tenets of our faith.
But there *are* certain core tenets of the LDS faith. There are of other faiths, too. If you walk into a Baptist church and preach that Jesus was the anti-Christ, you are going to get uninvited from coming back. The same principle applies to any organization or grouping. If I stop doing the type of work my law firm does, I'll get fired. It's not "blind obedience" -- it's deciding to be a member of an organization/movement/association/etc. that has some defining characteristic or another.
I'm especially sick of "intellectuals" whining about the problems "intellectuals" face in the church if they don't exhibit "blind obedience." You don't get excommunicated for questioning blind obedience; you get excommunicated for deciding and overtly demonstrating that you don't believe in the core tenets of Mormonism. And if you have stopped believing in Mormonism, why complain about being uninvited from the Mormon party? (I put "intellectuals" in quotation marks because if they're not intellectual enough to figure out that they have stopped believing in Mormonism, they don't get to call themselves intellectuals. They're David Brents.)
2 comments:
Whole-hearted agreement.
I agree that one of the most beautiful concepts taught by Latter Day Saints is that we don't claim to have a monopoly on faith, goodness or even righteousness. We teach others to bring their faith and love of the Lord and His plan and let us add unto it. Like the building of a grand edifice we take away from new converts and their witnes as much as we share with them. The The prophet Brigham Young taught us not to take his words at face value but to test his teachings in humble supplication to the Almighty.
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