One of the worst yet telling Ensign articles I ever read

[_ludwigm]

.

Apparently, You have forgotten to show my picture...

[_Droopy]

From the Oct 2012 Sunday School Answers section:

http://www.LDS.org/ensign/2012/10/sunday-school-answers?lang=eng

The conclusion is not to look too deep, but to abide. Just a quick lesson on the definition of the word abide. It basically means to put up with, to continue a particular way, to act in accordance with, or submit.

So, are you a deep looker, Racer?

This is telling. The author basically says forget the complicated questions you may have and just abide. Just forget about the high level questions and just accept it. You will be happy if you just abide. The article ends with a big fat reminder to only used approved material for preparing lessons.

In the gospel, one begins with a personal witness of the truth of the church and gospel; that is not the end one seeks. True, an internal testimony of the gospel grows and matures over time, and becomes deeper and more intense, but that personal spiritual witness is at the center of one's personal knowledge of the truth of the gospel as a system, and the Church as the divinely authorized organization and society tasked with the perfecting of the saints. It is at the center and comes at the beginning of any search for answers to the deep, "high level" questions, not something one obtains by so seeking, if by "seeking" one means seeking strictly through ratiocination and logical argument.

In my opinion, this article is a nuanced way of telling the members that the thinking has been done, so shut up, believe it, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Am I the only one who sees the article this way? Am I overreacting?

You're not only overreacting, its appears that you have very little grasp of the core doctrines of the gospel, which contain the keys to the proper approach to and negotiation of the "high level" questions, and the manner in which they may be comprehended.

Its not telling anyone to shut up (and the old "the thinking has been done trope...please), its a light warning about how to avoid personal apostasy-by searching for answers to things that one may not be able to understand even if one had the intellectual, philosophical, and psycholgical maturity and temparament to do the heavy lifting required to "study it out in your mind" (and most people, in my experience, are not willing to do that heavy lifting, much of which is as spiritual in nature as intellectual) and come to some tentative conclusions.

People looking for a pretext to distance themselves from the church and its standards are frequently very exercised over the "high level" questions, usually to the point of focusing on them to the exclusion of what is and can be known - the foundational doctrines of the Church - and the standards and manner of life they require.

Many of these same people, in my experience, when pressed, do not, in fact, have the requisite intellectual depth and stamina necessary to tackle the big questions, though in their own idealized view of themselves, they may, and when pressed further on the nature of what is required to develop that kind of intellectual acuity, they balk.

Faith precedes the miracle, and a personal testimony through the power of the Holy Spirit is the genesis - the initial step - in acquiring knowledge of the deeper things and the hard questions.

[_RockSlider]

Droopy,

In simple terms, the Church (outward/Aaronic level ordinances) was intended to lead one to the Temple (inner/Melchizedek level ordinances). The problem is that the Temple has become so sanitized and locked down that it is not setup or intended for teaching.

Thus outside of the simple Outward Church's official source material, one is left only to personal revelation as a source to the higher level questions you suggest.

This seems to be a cart before the horse problem where personal revelation (at the level to be presented new source material) requires a very high level to start with.

Don't you think that some form of the "School of the Prophets" should/would be made available. There was a time that I had hoped that the High Priest Group would at least approach that. But no, in the church there is no school, no mentoring available to help one progress to those higher levels.

[_consiglieri]

Everything I need to know I learned in Primary.

[_RockSlider]

Everything I need to know I learned in Primary. Anything beyond that is not pertinent to my Salvation.

fixed

[_consiglieri]

That statement always hacks me off so much, I think I will start a thread about it.

[_Tarski]

an internal testimony of the gospel grows and matures over time, and becomes deeper and more intense,

Does it ever get so intense that you can't stand it? Do you feel like screaming or moaning?

[_Fiannan]

"Why," she asked, "are you trying to boil down information? An inspired Church-writing committee has already done that for you."

b***s***. No-one has ever spoken that line of dialogue. Ever.

Yes they did...Hal on "2001."