Apostasy's A Bummer

[_Darth J]

"We're not a weird people!"

[_Droopy]

I would just like to remind everyone browsing this thread that we're not a cult.

Well, its as I've long understood from Smith's postings at the MDDB board. He's all over the map doctrinally and philosophically as to the teachings and doctrines of the church, and has become beholden to a host of contemporary intellectual vogues and fashions which for him have become the frame of reference within which to critique the church, and not the other way around.

He'll make a nice addition to the MDDB neo-orthodox Addams Family, although I rather doubt he will have the same quantity of sycophants pressing forward to touch the hem of his academic garment as is the case with David Bokovoy.

I could, of course, be wrong about that.

[_Darth J]

I would just like to remind everyone browsing this thread that Droopy and bcspace are not deliberately trying to make us embarrassed that we were ever believing Mormons, or currently believing Mormons embarrassed that they are.

[_Drifting]

What are the main downsides in this life from apostasy?

You see, the plan of salvation is seriously flawed.
If you sign up to it from an early age it costs you a shed load of cash, serious mental and social difficulties, impinges on your social life and leisure time, gives you a full time job on top of your full time job, gives you a plethora of opportunities to screw up and not make it back to heaven and means that you have to leave your God given gifts of thought, reasoning, common sense and logic at the door.

On the other hand, avoid Mormonism your whole life and sign up after you're dead.

How on earth can the Plan of Salvation be viable when the easiest way to gain exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom is to only sign up for it after you are dead?

Bonkers.

[_Shulem]

The New York Times reported that the church was in apostasy.


http://revealingerrors.com/apostates

Paul O

[_Buffalo]

DCP's no longer a conservative? Ohhhhh Nooooo!

He's not doctrinally pure. He's a universalist.

[_Buffalo]

Don't you just love the way people who have never experienced apostasy, presume to know precisely what that experience is like?

Apostasy is a tough process to swallow for many folks. For others it is quite easy. It all depends on just how deep their social roots go into the Church. For me I was lucky. I was the only member in my family. For others, by leaving the Church they are literally sacrificing their life as they know it, socially, economically, familially, etc.

That;s one of the things we discusses today during lunch. Don Bradley is one LDS member who actually gets it. Most "apostates" are folks who are genuine in their gripes. Many of them still want the Church to be true. I know I do.

But it isn't, and it is that sadness that some folks have to learn to live with.

It always amuses me when those like Droopy and bcspace who have flunked the test of reason, and for whom reason has not worked, think they understand reason better than those who continue to pass the tests of reason and for whom reason has worked.

Up is down, and down is up--speaking of what doesn't work.

[_Buffalo]

Someday they'll kick all the liberals and the heterodox cafeteria Mormons out of the church. Joanna Brooks will be out, along with DCP and Marlin K. Jensen and Richard Bushman and Terryl L. Givens and everyone else who doesn't meet purity standards.

I think our interests are aligned, Droopy. We both want it to happen. Maybe if Packer becomes the president of the COB we'll get our wish. :)

No one is ever going to be excommunicated unless they commit a clearly excommunicable offense, and even then, the Spirit decides on a case by case basis, what conditions will be. In my own experience with Church disciplinary counsels, the bias is against excommunication except as a last resort.

I have not called for the excommunication of anyone, so I'm confused by the constant haranguing by critics here about it.

All I've ever said is that, at the wedding feast, unless these people repent and determine to "live by every word the proceedeth forth from the mouth of God," and conform themselves and their personal philosophy to the standards, principles, and requirements of the gospel, and follow the living oracles, and place their own ideological/personal beliefs in a position of distinct secondary status to the teachings of the Lord's church, and indeed, be willing to modify and/or abandon them when they fall outside gospel perimeters, the door will be closed, and the foolish virgins will have no time to fill their lamps, neither on campus, nor at Dialogue, or at Sunstone, nor in any room, hall, or attic of the Great and Spacious Building. Yea, even FAIR will be no place to go for a hasty rehabilitation. The wedding feast will have already begun, and there will be no party crashing at this get together.

My hope is that each and every one of such people will be at that feast (and I hope I will manage that feat as well). My real problem is more with those, particularly in the church, who aid and abet the process and psychology of apostasy, than with those from without who's criticisms come without experience within the Church.

So the tares, like Joanna Brooks, DCP, Marlin K. Jensen, Richard Bushman and Terryl L. Givens will be allowed to grow up with the wheat, and then will be thrown in the fire in the last day?

[_Albion]

I think that in its essence something has to be true in order for apostasy to be an issue. I think it is the cultic nature of Mormonism that it among all "churches" employs this device so often. Many years ago it was assumed that the only positive way to get your name removed from Mormon records was to submit to the farce of an excommunication court...something I did since I had become a Christian and wanted no further connection. However, as I told the "court", it was wrong if they thought they were excommunicating me. It was my process and I was the one doing the excommunicating since they only thought they had authority over me. Mormonism is all about control...deny the control and they are powerless so their edicts have no meaning outside their own little world and its thinking.

[_EAllusion]

Since when is DCP a universalist? I'd like to see some evidence of that. The Book of Mormon condemns universalism - a serious problem I hear for ancient Mayans and 19th century protestants alike. Later developments in LDS eschatology provide for a limited kind of universalism that precludes universalism proper.