huckelberry wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2023 2:23 am
Kishkumen,
Is the CES letter like the God Makers? I read that book a long time ago and remember it is located on an out of the way back shelf. I pulled it out to remind myself what is in there. There is extensive effort to tie Mormon things to what Hunt understands as Satanic occult power. Author Hunt sort of specializes in that sort of thing. I would approach with serious caution or perhaps better not approach.
I am not really familiar with CES letter in any detail but I have not heard it connected with that late 20th century witch scare (or enthusiasm for fear of Satanic control
Hello, huckelberry! So, as I tried to say above, both are caricatures of what they portray. One is a Christian caricature to make Mormonism look Satanic or pagan, while the other is a secular caricature that makes Mormonism look woefully factually wrong. They just use different lenses to do the same thing: distort the target.
I hope the book, I gather it has expanded into a book, inspires people to think rather than panic. I guess it does not try to present in a balanced manner both sides of the issues but leans hard negative. Well that can call forth thought.
It can and does not infrequently make people implode emotionally as they wonder why they wasted their lives on something that is so factually blinkered and full of “lies.”
Recently my sister, long active in the church, spoke to me about her recent distancing from participation which she noted was influenced by this letter. She did ask if I had uncertainties, or see possiblities of the Book of Mormon being real history. I am afraid I do not. My perception of its nonhistorical nature has not changed from that time way back when when in terror I realized I really could no longer believe it.
We agreed that there are things about or in the church which deserve respect. I would not wish to push her in a direction. I do not think she is panicing but is visiting other churches. I think that can be a good thing.
Does it bother you that Genesis, Job, Daniel, and Revelation are not history? Does it bother you to know that while Jesus most likely lived, and that Pilate most definitely did, we really don’t know how much of what Mark wrote actually happened? How do you prove that the Resurrection of Christ happened? Do you trust it because some old book says 500 people witnessed him or some such? What were their names? What did they “see,” exactly?
I don’t consider the Gospels to be “real history” in the sense that Thucydides’
Peloponnesian War is. We don’t even know who the authors of the Gospels are. Not really. At least I can say I know that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. The genius of the New Testament partly is that we have no idea who actually wrote the books, nor can we know much about the authors. If we knew the authors, people would use them as a means of invalidating everything they wrote.
In any case, if your sister was
unhappy in the LDS Church, she found a way of extricating herself. And, honestly, I blame the Church a lot more than I blame Jeremy Runnells. The LDS Church failed him too. I wish both your sister and Jeremy all the best. The current model for the LDS Church’s way for dealing with this crisis of faith is still, unfortunately, to ask the disaffected member what
they did wrong. Not explicitly, but that is the implicit assumption that every relatively satisfied member carries around: if you wander from the one true church, then Satan got you.
I say that most people who leave are unhappy with the LDS Church before they find Jeremy Runnells or John Dehlin. I don’t think most people actually like going to the LDS Church, and what they really need to hang on is the big payoff the LDS Church promises: keeping your eternal family in a blissful future. It is no wonder that so many parents, especially mothers, drag themselves to boring meetings and do tedious tasks in an aesthetically and sensory deprived environment for decades. They have the hope that in the end they will all be happy together, and every problem will be solved.
So, as soon as someone tells them how many things Joseph Smith may have gotten wrong or lied about, it is almost a huge relief until they remember that they could lose or may have already lost that fond dream of an eternal family. That is when the panic
may set in. I know I am not covering every possibility here, but I do not think I am far off when it comes to a fair chunk of the people who leave with the “help” of the CES letter and John Dehlin.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”