CWK: Mormon Testimonies

[Kishkumen]

I suppose churches with a liturgical form of worship or testimony of their beliefs would if they are sincere recite the Apostles or Athanasian Creed, I found a speech by a famous patristics Lutheran scholar give a good explanation of their purpose. The Articles of Faith would be a kind of creedal statement.

https://onbeing.org/programs/jaroslav-p ... or-creeds/ (the unedited version is better)

"My faith life, like that of everyone else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morning, ‘As of 9:20, what do you believe?’ And then you sit down with a three-by-five index card saying, ‘Now let’s see. What do I believe today?’ No, that’s not what they’re asking me. They’re asking me, ‘Are you a member of a community which now, for a millennium and a half, has said, we believe in one God?’"

"See, whereas to be Jewish is to affirm every day, if you’re observant, and with your dying breath, if you can hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one. The Shamah. And that’s really all the creed that Israel needs. So it’s been possible to be Jewish now for these 3000 or whatever years without publishing four volumes of creedal text. There is no God, but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet…"

LDS Articles of Faith: “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in his Son Jesus, and in the Holy Ghost"' "All their creeds were an abomination in his sight"
Jaroslav Pelikan

Thanks for posting that, Noel. Pelikan is one of the important historians.

[Gadianton]

Another great episode, Kish. I watched this last night and I read the paper the day before. That's definitely the most technical thing I've ever read on testimony.

Nevertheless, we too have a definite ritual, as indicated by the pre-determined bound and unbound public expressions, and by our uncomfortableness when someone breaches the commonly understood language style of each form. Hence, within this meeting marked by bound verbal forms, we enter a sacred space where language no longer sounds nor operates as it does in everyday life. The way the language is organized keys us to

I had to chuckle as you hesitated out of the gate with your example of how a testimony goes. I would have done the same. The preamble is the hardest part. There's no good way to start a testimony. Nobody goes up to the cashier at McDonalds and says, "I order my food now:" but it wouldn't have the right feel without some kind of [open]/[close]. The close in easy, just slap on INOJC, but the opening may be the hardest part aside from standing up in front of a lot of people.

A typical start is, "I'd like to stand and bear my testimony, that I know..."

If that's the case, then 50% fewer testimonies have ever been borne, as these people are just telling you they'd like to order food, but aren't ordering yet. "I bear you my testimony" as a start just feels a bit terse. Some avoid it with, "Brothers and Sisters, I stand before you today etc...." and then you can say "I bear you my testimony" after that long preamble. But that sounds so pretentious. There's simply no good way to start. Some who do dumps of their trials just avoid the typical opening because they aren't really going to testify. "The Johnson household has seen it's fair share of trials this week"

How do you get out of the gate?

[Physics Guy]

How do you get out of the gate?

How do you move from the real world into the stylised liturgical world? That's the task.

It's actually a familiar task, I would say. Every manager or executive opening a meeting has to move from the real world of many employees and customers into a stylised world of bar charts and bullet points. Every military commander uttering the sacred word "Orders" moves from the reality of panic and slaughter into a clean space of units and phases.

I do it in lectures, when I say that we are studying electrodynamics and then I just write some equations. Actual electrodynamics is making the light waves from the overhead LEDs bounce off the chalk on the board so that the students can see the equations, and the retinal molecules in their eyes are twisting as they absorb each photon. Enmeshed in the complex reality, we pretend to inhabit the simplified world.

Getting back out again is easy. Just stop pretending. It's getting in that's the trick. Maybe that's why there are so many different famous first lines in literature, but we rarely remember last lines.

It could also just be that nobody else can compete with the last line of Get Shorty.

F-ing endings, man. They weren't as easy as they looked.

[Kishkumen]

Another great episode, Kish. I watched this last night and I read the paper the day before. That's definitely the most technical thing I've ever read on testimony.

Nevertheless, we too have a definite ritual, as indicated by the pre-determined bound and unbound public expressions, and by our uncomfortableness when someone breaches the commonly understood language style of each form. Hence, within this meeting marked by bound verbal forms, we enter a sacred space where language no longer sounds nor operates as it does in everyday life. The way the language is organized keys us to

I had to chuckle as you hesitated out of the gate with your example of how a testimony goes. I would have done the same. The preamble is the hardest part. There's no good way to start a testimony. Nobody goes up to the cashier at McDonalds and says, "I order my food now:" but it wouldn't have the right feel without some kind of [open]/[close]. The close in easy, just slap on INOJC, but the opening may be the hardest part aside from standing up in front of a lot of people.

A typical start is, "I'd like to stand and bear my testimony, that I know..."

If that's the case, then 50% fewer testimonies have ever been borne, as these people are just telling you they'd like to order food, but aren't ordering yet. "I bear you my testimony" as a start just feels a bit terse. Some avoid it with, "Brothers and Sisters, I stand before you today etc...." and then you can say "I bear you my testimony" after that long preamble. But that sounds so pretentious. There's simply no good way to start. Some who do dumps of their trials just avoid the typical opening because they aren't really going to testify. "The Johnson household has seen it's fair share of trials this week"

How do you get out of the gate?

Thanks, Gad! I appreciate it. I hope you liked the Knowlton paper. I found it helpful.

Yes, I didn’t love the start of any testimony at F&T meeting. I had a desire not to sound formulaic when I was actually doing it in real life. In this case, I just wanted to provide the standard formula as much as I could after years of non-attendance. Maybe I should go back to church to brush up on my knowledge.

[Kishkumen]

How do you get out of the gate?

How do you move from the real world into the stylised liturgical world? That's the task.

It's actually a familiar task, I would say. Every manager or executive opening a meeting has to move from the real world of many employees and customers into a stylised world of bar charts and bullet points. Every military commander uttering the sacred word "Orders" moves from the reality of panic and slaughter into a clean space of units and phases.

I do it in lectures, when I say that we are studying electrodynamics and then I just write some equations. Actual electrodynamics is making the light waves from the overhead LEDs bounce off the chalk on the board so that the students can see the equations, and the retinal molecules in their eyes are twisting as they absorb each photon. Enmeshed in the complex reality, we pretend to inhabit the simplified world.

Getting back out again is easy. Just stop pretending. It's getting in that's the trick. Maybe that's why there are so many different famous first lines in literature, but we rarely remember last lines.

It could also just be that nobody else can compete with the last line of Get Shorty.

F-ing endings, man. They weren't as easy as they looked.

Here’s the tricky part for me: As a regular member, I am not the master of ceremonies. I have no authority. I can take the formula for granted if it is part of the authority-bound procedure. For some reason, I struggled with being formulaic as the average Bro. Joe.

[Physics Guy]

That's one thing I like about the openly liturgical churches. It's impersonal. The validity of the Mass does not depend on the virtue of the particular priest. Everyone says the same things, if they're in the same roles. It is not about you.

Non-liturgical churches I've known have their implicit liturgies, but there often seems to be a pretence that everything is authentically overflowing emotion with nothing scripted at all. So you have to conform, but also pretend that you are not conforming. It feels like the opposite, somehow, from having to say the same things that everyone always says, but it's out in the open, so everyone knows that you might mean your personal meanings for everything.

I've always liked liturgical churches better, I think, because they actually make me feel less obliged to pretend to anything. It's kind of like being in the army was. I didn't have to pretend that I was smarter than my subordinates, or less smart than my superiors. We were just doing our various jobs in the best ways we could.

[Gadianton]

It's a good point, PG, maybe it's good start a novel, "It was a dark and stormy night..." to get it out of the way and then change it later.

The other part of the episode I was thinking about is the part about being uncomfortable with the whole thing, disbelievers struggling with it and so on. I watched this right before bed and was out like a light afterward so my memory may be foggy.

I think testimony evolved specifically to be uncomfortable. It's almost like a right of passage that if you can do it, you're part of the in-crowd, even though I hesitate to say that because I doubt the correlation between testimony bearers and social credibility is very tight. Many of the most sociall awkward people are mainstays and the cool crowd might be too cool to do it. Some of the most Mormon people I've known struggle with the whole thing. Even my mom. Definitely other missionaries; had those conversations all the time. Everyone brings up BKP's infamous talk "The Candle of the Lord" fake-til-make-it. You can change the ritual now, but if you could, maybe change it to "believe" instead of "know"? After all, the Articles of Faith just say "believe" -- granted it was written for a third party. The struggle is all about that part where you have to say "I know" and you obviously don't know. You have to lie, or at least tell an extraordinarily nuanced personal truth.

I hate to use the analogy, but Vance is a great partner for Trump because we know what he really thinks about Trump, and we know he's lying just to get into power. Loyalty can only exist in spite of truth. If you support the church or any person because of the great things they do, then they must keep up with expectations and keep doing great things. You're not a loyal customer just because your favorite restaurant keeps making good food. Cults are all about loyalty for the obvious reason that they're selling a pipe dream they can never make good on. And so it makes sense for the Church to have this barrier that even devoted members struggle with, where they don't know, they really want to know, they believe, they don't want to trick themselves, they want to take a step forward in the dark if it will work, will it work? There are true mental gymnastics that members go through when they think about their testimony -- at least for those who aren't gullible or baldly seeking social credibility. Kish also brought up that, we did the same thing, making fun of the testimonies those gunning for AP would give that ring fake.

But it's not just saying the words, it's that struggle. The struggle that ends with, "yes" you're going to devote your life to something you're prepared to assert as infallible and true, when you know you aren't sure about it. Whether you ever stand and pull it off or not.

[Res Ipsa]

How do you get out of the gate?

How do you move from the real world into the stylised liturgical world? That's the task.

It's actually a familiar task, I would say. Every manager or executive opening a meeting has to move from the real world of many employees and customers into a stylised world of bar charts and bullet points. Every military commander uttering the sacred word "Orders" moves from the reality of panic and slaughter into a clean space of units and phases.

I do it in lectures, when I say that we are studying electrodynamics and then I just write some equations. Actual electrodynamics is making the light waves from the overhead LEDs bounce off the chalk on the board so that the students can see the equations, and the retinal molecules in their eyes are twisting as they absorb each photon. Enmeshed in the complex reality, we pretend to inhabit the simplified world.

Getting back out again is easy. Just stop pretending. It's getting in that's the trick. Maybe that's why there are so many different famous first lines in literature, but we rarely remember last lines.

It could also just be that nobody else can compete with the last line of Get Shorty.

F-ing endings, man. They weren't as easy as they looked.

Great observation.

[Kishkumen]

I hate to use the analogy, but Vance is a great partner for Trump because we know what he really thinks about Trump, and we know he's lying just to get into power. Loyalty can only exist in spite of truth. If you support the church or any person because of the great things they do, then they must keep up with expectations and keep doing great things. You're not a loyal customer just because your favorite restaurant keeps making good food. Cults are all about loyalty for the obvious reason that they're selling a pipe dream they can never make good on. And so it makes sense for the Church to have this barrier that even devoted members struggle with, where they don't know, they really want to know, they believe, they don't want to trick themselves, they want to take a step forward in the dark if it will work, will it work? There are true mental gymnastics that members go through when they think about their testimony -- at least for those who aren't gullible or baldly seeking social credibility. Kish also brought up that, we did the same thing, making fun of the testimonies those gunning for AP would give that ring fake.

But it's not just saying the words, it's that struggle. The struggle that ends with, "yes" you're going to devote your life to something you're prepared to assert as infallible and true, when you know you aren't sure about it. Whether you ever stand and pull it off or not.

Lots of great observations and insights, Gad. But, don’t we keep moving through life committing to things that are never going to meet our expectations/hopes? To me, this is just part of life. In a sense, everyone wants to be fooled because they keep believing, against the evidence, that next time they will find what they were looking for. Those who keep buying things, those who keep looking for love, they are all just people who imagine satisfaction is out there somewhere. Of course, there are some who soldier through convinced that, no matter how bad something gets, it is exactly what they were looking for. In either case, however, one’s ability to maintain some kind of faith in an illusion is part of the deal.

[Gadianton]

Yes, but we aren't always coerced to have the expectations and go through all this torment to the final end of maintaining loyalty to a power broker.