Operational Dynamics of “Reasoned Faith”

[I Have Questions]

So instead of thinking someone bearing their testimony is a lie designed to gain converts, there is rather a real—to the bearer—experience that outweighs plausibility. And there is no designed means to test the experience objectively.

I came to realise that open-mic Sundays (Fast & Testimony meetings) were an opportunity for the testimony bearer rather than the congregation. It was an excuse to humble-brag, unburden guilt, gain some attention, virtue signal, signal belonging etc. It's a forum for the extrovert and the opinionated, and the people who think highly of themselves. It's also a form of self conditioning, if they say something out loud often enough it is more likely to be true, etc. Generally, people getting up to bear a testimony are doing so to make themselves feel better about themselves. That's the bottom line.

[Gadianton]

It almost sounds like frontier “tall tales” of Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan. My uncle was Mormon—he used to tell these types of tales to my cousins and me, but I thought it was just for entertainment. In fact, it was my uncle who grabbed a shovel and dug the Grand Canyon all those years ago.

In the context of old Utah, absolutely, frontier tales for sure. Urban legend works also. Perhaps there is a continuity between the propensity of Joe Smith to tell a whopper and aspiring priesthood leaders recognizing their own kind and doing likewise.

You mentioned that a bishop might hear something that requires “action;” would you be willing to describe the types of action you have in mind? I’m not assuming discipline or disbelief, based on your description, but I’m curious where the line is between an experience needing some kind of containment versus one that requires intervention, and what that intervention might look like.

Keep in mind the one-way rule. That's huge. If that guy in my ward would have said he questioned Satan in person on matters of doctrine from his perspective and shared the answers, that would have gotten him in trouble. If he said he went to his basement and called upon Satan to show up for a showdown, even worse. I know of more incidents of members getting into testimony trouble for continuously taking up large chunks of time with nonsense that's borderline inappropriate in other ways. Like the guy who got up and continually described sexual content on TV that he disapproved of. A woman once described demons running across the ceiling and coming after her and her daughters, which the daughters confirmed. Pretty borderline but the one-way rule was obeyed, and the woman was a new convert. I heard the bishop was concerned but that's all. closest incident I can think of happened to my mom when she was younger. A guy found a seer stone and shared about that. He got in major trouble with the bishop and eventually was ex'd.

A dick met Satan. You wrote that?

An important observation. Those prone to telling these stories are either cluster A or cluster B types. The cluster B types are total leadership material. Yes, this guy was a dick. The kind of guy who would buy that book about being less dickish and then give it to other people to read. Kind of like the author thinking everyone else is the problem and writing a book to justify his own behavior.

Think about it though. What kind of an ego does it take to think that you're so important, that you merit a visit from Satan himself? Out of the billions on the planet, or even the couple million active Mormon men, that the Son of the Morning himself is so personally irritated by your righteousness, or good works, or being right about so much doctrine, that he's going to confront you personally to get you to stop?

[Whiskey]

An important observation. Those prone to telling these stories are either cluster A or cluster B types. The cluster B types are total leadership material. Yes, this guy was a dick. The kind of guy who would buy that book about being less dickish and then give it to other people to read. Kind of like the author thinking everyone else is the problem and writing a book to justify his own behavior.

So you read that book? Or, are you judging and evaluating based on what you have imagined the book and the author to be?

[Gadianton]

Haven't read it yet, but I might one day.

[MG 2.0]

One Christian tradition that really is pretty common, if not universal, is to insist that one’s own particular flavor of Christianity is Christianity. People who have come from a community like Mormonism shouldn’t be fooled, though. “Christianity” is not nearly as precisely defined as a brand as the LDS church. There is no one genuinely or authoritatively “Christian” belief about the nature of the soul or the meaning of death.

Among the sects of Christianity that is an obvious truth. Not sure I understand why you think that those who come from the LDS community would think otherwise?

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

One Christian tradition that really is pretty common, if not universal, is to insist that one’s own particular flavor of Christianity is Christianity. People who have come from a community like Mormonism shouldn’t be fooled, though. “Christianity” is not nearly as precisely defined as a brand as the LDS church. There is no one genuinely or authoritatively “Christian” belief about the nature of the soul or the meaning of death.

Among the sects of Christianity that is an obvious truth. Not sure I understand why you think that those who come from the LDS community would think otherwise?

Regards,
MG

I don’t think that’s unique to Christian religions. Every religious stripe thinks they are the only ones with the whole truth. Mormonism is a Freemasonry/Protestant hybrid, operating by choice (now) under the umbrella of the word “Christianity” - meaning that belief in Jesus is in their somewhere. That wasn’t always the case. For many generations Mormonism saw Christianity as corrupted, the “whore of all the earth”. But then they got better at politics and at hiding what they really believe. Mormonism still believes that only Mormons will get to live with God again. Everyone else will be in a lesser eternal location. They just don’t say it out loud anymore.