Dr. Shades wrote:Holding or not holding a current temple recommend has no bearing whatsoever on one's salvation, just so long as one has had one's endowments at some time in the past, right?
That's correct. If one is keeping the covenants one made, all is well.
There's a wonderful passage in T. S. Eliot's play
Murder in the Cathedral where the archbishop, Thomas Becket, speaks of the authority of a Catholic bishop to open or close the gates of heaven and hell. Mormon bishops -- Mormon leaders generally -- claim no such authority. (I doubt that Catholic leaders do any more, either.)
If an LDS bishop judges incorrectly, God will overturn his judgment.
harmony wrote:You don't know me!
A fact that I've acknowledged many times, in such straightforward words (on this very thread) as "I don't know you."
harmony wrote:Yet, based on what you've read on your screen you feel qualified to judge me.
I think, having already said it numerous times, that I'll say it just one more time: I do not judge you. If I were your bishop, though, I would
have to judge you, at least to the extent that it would be my duty either to grant you a temple recommend or not to do so. That's a bishop's
job. But I am not your bishop. Were I your bishop, I would know you. And there may be factors of which I would become aware, knowing you, that would incline me to grant you a temple recommend. Based solely on what I've read on line of your views of the Church, of its leaders, and of Joseph Smith, however, I would have real reservations that I would have to resolve, if I resolved them, by direct conversation with you.
harmony wrote:You flail against me judging you, based on what I've read on my screen, then you turn around and do exactly as you accuse me of doing... and you don't even realize it.
No, I don't. You have repeatedly said that I don't live the gospel. I have objected to that on the grounds that you don't know me. You have literally no idea about my daily life. You have no idea about my interactions with my family, my neighbors, my friends, my colleagues, my ward members. You don't know anything about what I might do or not do with regard to charity. You don't know whether I'm kind, whether I give service, whether I'm caring, or not. You are not in a position to declare moral judgment on me.
And
I am not in a position to declare moral judgment on
you. (I've said that perhaps two dozen times or more.) Nor do I do so. For all I know, you may be the saint of your region, the most caring, service-oriented, loving, kind person in several counties. You may be the model wife and mother. You may lead a life of Christian discipleship that puts me deeply in the shadows. That's entirely possible.
harmony wrote:There is nothing in the TRI that I can be accused of violating. Nothing! There is nothing that says I must honor, revere, worship, or sustain Joseph Smith as a prophet. Nothing. Do I need to post the questions, so everyone can see? I am required to have a testimony of the restoration, which I have. I am not required to keep quiet about Joseph's actions, behaviors, or quirks, or anything he did after 1833.
I find quirky and dubious your notion that you can reject what Joseph Smith did after 1833 (which, among other things, includes the revelation of the temple ordinances, of eternal marriage, and of the priesthood keys by which those ordinances are performed) and hold him in contempt and yet still affirm faith in the restoration in any sense that would be recognizable to the overwhelming majority of communicant, believing Latter-day Saints.
That is the focal point of our disagreement.
Nobody demands that you "worship" Joseph Smith. Stop playing that silly game. But to dishonor him, despise him, and refuse to sustain him as a prophet while claiming to affirm the restoration effected through him (and not merely prior to 1833) suggests a very idiosyncratic (and, to my mind, deeply problematic) redefinition of that restoration.
If I had to judge based solely on what you've written on line, and were I responsible for determining whether or not you should receive a temple recommend, I would be inclined to say No.
Not because I hate you -- I don't -- but because I've been called to judge the members of my ward in certain regards, and one of the most central of those regards is determining who should enter the temple and who should not. I take that as a sacred trust, with the deepest possible seriousness, and I try as hard and as prayerfully as I can to make the right decision in each case.
In our case, this is just a message board hypothetical. I'm not called to decide whether you enter the temple or not. That's your bishop's responsibility, and I leave it entirely to him. But when, quite some time ago, the question arose whether, based upon what I know about your views, I would grant you a recommend, I had to answer honestly. If I feared man (or woman) rather than God, I would be an unfaithful steward and a renegade bishop.
That said, I think you would find, were you to talk with the people with whom I've counseled in my capacity as a bishop, that I've been charitable with them. I've gone to the mat on more than one occasion with other bishops to get a couple into the temple for a marriage when there were legitimate grounds for concern. I've felt that it is better to err on the side of charity than to be too harsh. I'm not really interested in trumpeting any superior Christian love on my part, or anything of that sort, but attempts to portray me as a harsh ecclesiastical tyrant simply aren't true or fair.
harmony wrote:The rest of your post is just excuses. Were you to deny me a temple recommend for which I qualify, based on your inability to get past the animosity in your heart (and please don't deny something that is so easily seen in your posts), you would indeed be exercising unrighteous dominion and your priesthood would be null and void.
I feel no animosity toward you.
But, were you sitting before me in my capacity as the judge of who goes to the temple and who does not, I would have serious reservations about whether you qualified for a recommend or not. I can't lie on that point just to look politically correct here, or to pretend, by ignoring what I believe to be my responsibility and duty, to be as indifferent to a serious doctrinal deviation as you demand that I be.
harmony wrote:You carry a heavy burden, and regarding the members of your ward, you have to be right for the right reasons or you lose the keys you hold.
I don't believe that a bishop needs to be inerrant in order to retain his keys. No bishop is inerrant. I'm surely not.
Yet I do carry a heavy burden, and I know it. And I try as hard as I'm capable of trying to be right, and to be helpful to the people whom I've been called to shepherd.
harmony wrote:You would be wrong about me.
Possibly.
harmony wrote:Count your blessings that I am not in your ward.
I suspect, if you knew me, that you would not find me the monster you so much want me to be.
Yet it is a relief to me, frankly, that you're not in my ward. I won't dissemble on that point.
.