The Mormon God and Conditional Love

[_Roger Morrison]

The world is filled with amazing folks doing all sorts of service, without any sense of duty, obligation, or because they were called.

People also help one another without a care or belief in some otherworldly reward.

I completely do not get the idea that the power of God is somehow held by a few men who happen to believe in Joseph Smith.

Or the idea that without the "priesthood" there would be no service or help or care?

I seriously do not get this line of thinking.

Find any shelter for abused women and you will find a whole team of folks who go out all hours of the night to help abused women... volunteers who work for the pure sake of helping another human being. Nothing about God's power, nothing about becoming Gods and Goddesses, nothing about duty or obligation. Just simple care and compassion for another.

In terms of leaders ... there are some great ones, some horrible ones. Most are somewhere in between. What is true is that the priesthood ( in the LDS church) claims to be the power of God. You can't get away from this.

~dancer~

No you can't! Tie that in with Son-hito's remark and ... Might the best leadership be of one's self??? Roger

[_harmony]

I would like to take a moment to quote Douglas Adams on leadership

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Boy, if that isn't the truth! I see that in business, in education, in sports, in entertainment, in church... everywhere, even in my own agency. We look at the upper tier of leaders, and quite frankly, the most common question is "whose ass did they kiss to get that promotion?" It's very sad, really. It also explains the lack of vision, the dependence on the lower tiers to maintain community connections, the continual starting and then abandoning of ideas.

Often, the best leaders would come from the ranks of those who don't really want to lead, and the worst leaders are the ones in the leadership positions.

[_Sam Harris]

I want to cultivate my faith in a way that I can give more than a testimony when asked questions, and yet still be respectful of those who are not convinced by my words. My only beef is the assumption that all evangelicals are fundies. FUNDIES STINK!

Fundamentalism traverses all philosophical thought, as it is the belief that only YOUR path is the right one, or completely right one. This knocks a whole lot of animals off the ark who should be there, in my opinion.

May I ask you, what percent of evangelicals are fundie types? It seems that they are at least the loudest, most vocal and there more. On message boards, on the radio, writing books, etc.

Perhaps I have been tainted on this because of the contacts I have had, many with the fundie EV that is anti LDS and at various functions that LDS put on.

But I am interested to know what you think about the make up of EVs as a whole.

Thanks

Hey Jason,

I didn't want you think I had avoided your question, it's just that I've been more ill than I had anticipated this past week and few days. With regards to your question, I do not know the exact percentage of fundamentalist evangelicals as compared to more moderate evangelicals. But I do know this: the fundies, no matter what their number are louder, regardless of religion.

I think there are more people out there who see you as a spiritual equal who are not LDS than there are people who don't. It's just that the annoying ones are determined to have their points heard. And how I wish that the moderates would speak out more, but perhaps their moderate stance is why they do not.

Let me give you an example: fundamentalist Islam. They only make up about 15% of the Muslim population, from what I have learned. Now, I saw that on the news one night, with regards to a special on extremist clerics in Britain. Still, that's a large number. 250 million. That's one of them for every one of us in this country. That's frightening.

I highly doubt that the number of fundie evangelicals is high. But I think that the moderates are either unaware of how they're being represented, don't care, or are too afraid to say something. Which is apparently the problem in Islam right now. The moderate clerics are too caught up in their traditions to challenge the extremists. I understand where you are coming from, saying "we're not like that" is not good enough. Proof is needed. I hope that in time my learning can establish such proof. I'm not satisfied with just being a regular apologist, we have enough of those. I want to be an apologist for those who may be Christian, but not ready to damn everyone outside their church. You know what I mean?