Blain Nelson's Blog (not!)

This is an excerpt of a comment I made to a friend who is having a tough time with the church she recently left:

No matter what you do, churches are made of people, and people fail. I don’t have much experience with a pastor-based church, but it seems that what you’re alluding to is an unfortunately common experience. Great pastors being followed by inadequate interim pastors who are unwilling to be replaced by more competent pastors, resulting in schism and exodus. I don’t have a solution for that — it seems inherent in the system to me.

But, without churches, there isn’t anybody to teach us about important things. Yeah, I know, we can go directly to God, but our ability to do so on our own isn’t always that good, and it’s very easy to teach ourselves the Gospel according to Me, which includes all our pet doctrines and gospel hobbies, and avoids anything we don’t want to think about very much.

Churches, scriptures, and the witness/testimony of others are windows through which we can perceive things of God. They are helpful, good and useful, but they aren’t God, and worshiping them is a much easier idolatry than worshiping God is. If we accept them in their limitation, and seek to transcend those limitations with God’s help, as we try to transcend our own limitations with that same help, over the long run, we will get what we most need. If we set our sights on them, and succumb to the temptation to worship them at the expense of the God they teach, then we will fail, sooner or later, but badly.

While I was writing this post, I found this tidbit of information on the front page of LDS.org:

Updated Gospel Principles Manual

The Gospel Principles manual contains information on 47 core principles of the gospel for personal study and teaching. In 2010 and 2011, this manual will be used in Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society classes, as well as the Gospel Principles class for investigators and new members. The manual is available online in multiple media formats. 

This excites me quite a bit. One of my biggest concerns in the Church is the problem of doctrine. Mainstream Christianity has a relatively stable, if disputed, and quite elaborate set of doctrines which answer essential theological questions, but Mormonism has a much smaller set of core, essential doctrines and a large and robust set of speculative doctrines. Mainstream Christianity also has a large body of professional clergy who learn these sets of doctrines and the chatecisms, confessions and creeds from which they are derived to carry these doctrines to individuals to strive to keep their belief orthodox. Mormonism, by contrast, has no paid clergy, and is based in revealed truth that extends beyond, and sometimes contrasts with, the chatechisms, confessions and creeds of mainstream Christianity. We believe that many things will yet be revealed pertaining to the Kingdom of God. And we have, and have had, a large group of leaders that we believe can speak, through inspiration, the word of God, just as scriptures hold the word of God.

The profundity, and, from some perspectives, audacity of this claim is hard to overestimate. And it brings some major consequences to Mormonism, as nobody speaks through inspiration all the time. Over time, these leaders have explored doctrinal ideas, and shared those explorations, without always being clear that these explorations were their own personal understanding — what I call speculative doctrines. Speculative doctrines are things which might be true, and are contrasted with essential doctrines which must be true. Speculative doctrines can appeal to people for a variety of reasons, some of which are good, because they are true, and some of which are not so good, because they are false, but they can be handled reasonably well when people understand that they are speculative, and not essential. Think of these as doctrinal urban legends, and you’ll have the right idea.

Occasionally, someone will take a speculative doctrine and, with the best of intentions, extend it far enough that it actually becomes a false doctrine. And it can appeal to other people, and spread. This is a problem. The most striking example I can think of of a false doctrine is the doctrine of Salvation by Works, where the importance of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is minimized in the misguided attempt to point to the requirement that we do work both to live and to accept the influece of the Savior in our lives. There is no scripture of which I am aware that tells us of anything that can save us but the grace and love of God manifest in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But, because we don’t want to be seen as accepting the notion that one can proclaim Jesus with their lips, and do nothing to follow the commandments he gave, and be saved, far too many over-react and over-estimate the importance of our own efforts.

So I am excited to see that this course of study is going to reach all the adults in the Church over the next two years. This course will cover the essential doctrines of the Church in their most basic form. Anything not found in this course, or in the temple ceremonies, is not an essential doctrine. Speculative doctrines are fine, so long as they are understood and spoken of as being speculative. I am hopeful that this will help clarify this distinction.

This is primarily for my Facebook friends, particularly those who have not hidden everything I post there (I post quite a lot of stuff, and can understand if it gets a little overwhelming sometimes). I post quite a few things having to do with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormonism and Mormon life, and I want to add this to make clear why I do this, and, at least importantly, what I don’t expect anybody to do about it.

I am Mormon. I was born in Mesa, Arizona, which was founded by Mormons, and was strongly Mormon when I lived there (and still is, although there has been quite a migration of Mormons to Gilbert and then further east in the Valley). I call Mesa the southern end of the Jello Belt, which extends north through Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and up to Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta. It is made up of the many communities colonized by Mormons under the direction of Brigham Young, and was once known as the territory of Deseret, before it was brutally gerymandered to form the smallest possible area that would be politically controlled by Mormons in the form of the modern state of Utah. Unlike many Mesa Mormons I grew up with, I was a second-generation member, since both my parents joined the Church as adults (Dad wasn’t baptized until after I was married), and I was the first in my family to be blessed as an infant and baptized at age 8 (the usual Mormon childhood ordinances). When we moved from Mesa when I was 13, I left the Jello Belt, and haven’t lived there since.

It was several years after this that I actually read the Book of Mormon and, in the process, was converted to the gospel taught by the Church. Although my life has had ups and downs in pretty much every way possible since then, I have never lost the certitude of the truth in that gospel. I have not been a terribly mainstream Mormon for quite some time, and gave up some time ago the notion that I have a responsibility to persuade anybody to believe anything in particular that I believe. I will discuss things Mormon with anybody who is willing to have a respectful conversation free of attempts to persuade anyone of anything within the constraints of reality. I am quite certain that nothing anybody can say will make me want the Church to not be true any more than I already have wanted it to be, and that wanting has not been able to change my certitude that it is true, so I can’t imagine that’s going to change under any circumstances.

I post things from a Mormon perspective here primarily for my friends who are Mormon or interested in Mormonism to any degree. Facebook does not give me the power to limit my postings to any of the groups of friends I’ve created, and I would be happy to restrict my posting of Mormon things to one if they did. However, I don’t know which of my non-Mormon friends are interested in Mormon things to any degree, so I just post things, and leave it to you to decide if you want to look at it. Some of the things I post are likely to make some of my Mormon friends less than comfortable — as I said, I left the mainstream of the Church a long time ago — but I don’t post things that I don’t find interesting or important. I do not intend to convert anybody through these things, whether it be converting them to join the Church, or to join me outside the mainstream, or, for some, to join me in my place which might be closer to the mainstream than they are. I do not believe I have the power to change anyone’s mind, and I make no effort to do so. As with most of the things in my life, I share what I find interesting and important for the benefit of those who find benefit in it.

So, I apologize to those who might find these things uninteresting or unimportant, and absent any benefit for them. I am not trying to annoy people (it’s a talent I was born with — I don’t even have to try). I appreciate the patience of those who have chosen not to complain at me for having annoyed them with any of this. I remain willing to talk to anybody about any part of this on a respectful and non-persuasive basis, and I return you to your life, already in progress.