Recently at work I received an e-mail that contained sensitive information that was not appropriate for the network I was using. This created a “security incident”, and a disruption of my work while the offending e-mail was deleted, the hard drive was removed from my computer and destroyed, and the server was purged. Early on, I had a simple solution to clean up the mess that would have put me back to work very quickly. My boss reminded me that when dealing with the people that work in security, “logic does not apply”.
This is the same with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the organization here in the United States that is tasked with keeping our airplanes safe from the bad guys. I wrote about them 4 years ago here, touching on the the show they put on doing screenings. Again, logic does not apply.
This got me to thinking about church, and the places that logic des not apply. We can all find illogical things our leaders do, and I think the Word of Wisdom as practiced is as illogical as you can get. But for today, the area where logic does not apply that I’d like to talk about is with the temples.
When we are talking about the temple, I think most members will assume this is an area were the Lord is very much involved via revelation, so that any changes are “revelation”, which makes it hard to question, or use logic.
One area that jumps out to me is the building of so many temple in areas with just a few members. This makes no logical sense if the purpose of the temple to to provide salvation to the dead. But if we assume it is revelation, then Isaiah 55:8 is the answer [1] . “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.”
So even though the Rome temple will probably only be open once or twice a week, logic does not apply, and the Lord knows what he is doing. Or maybe there are alterative motives not related to the salvation of the dead? Like maybe making a statement to the Catholics?
Another place in the temple where logic does not apply is the endowment ceremony for the dead. Outside of getting ones own endowment, if the purpose is to do the ordinances that our dead posterity cannot, then the ceremony could be shortened to just a few minutes. Take the baptism for the dead. When we do that ordinance, we only do the physical part that the dead cannot do for themselves. We don’t take hours of missionary lessons preparing us for the baptism. We just do the physical part. That is the part the dead person cannot do.
Applying logic, then for the endowment we should only do the physical part that the dead person cannot. We don’t need all the lessons, we only need to do the signs and tokens, and the veil ceremony. This could be done in about five minutes per person, if we drop all the learning that the dead person can do for themselves. But since this is revelation, it cannot be questioned, and logic does not apply. Or maybe this brings to the forefront the the real reason we go to the temple after our own endowment is not for the dead, but for the living. If the Lord is indeed omnipotent, He could just wave the hand shaking requirement, and be done with it. But what would keep the members in line? What would the Church use to measure the worthiness of its members if there was no temples, and no temple recommend interview, and absolutely no visible consequence for not paying tithing?
What other things in the church do you find illogical, or counter intuitive?
[1] See, I did stay awake in early morning seminary almost 50 years ago. This was a scripture mastery verse, and the only one I still remember by verse.
Wheat & Tares 
This issue is remeniscent of the old Buddhist parable of the empty boat:
A young farmer was covered in sweat as he paddled his boat up the river to deliver his produce to the village. As he looked ahead, he saw another vessel heading rapidly downstream. He rowed furiously to get out of the way, but it didn’t seem to help. He shouted to the other vessel to change direction, to no avail. The vessel hit his boat with a violent thud. He cried out, “You idiot! How could you manage to hit my boat in the middle of this wide river?” As he glared into the vessel, he realized that night one was there. He had been screaming at an empty vessel that had broken free of its moorings and floated downstream with the current.
Those who attack the Church for building temples in low-membership areas are screaming at an empty boat. They fail to acknowledge the Faith that is always required for Church or personal growth. The areas are ones that will grow if members have faith, and the temples will make the growth both quicker and long lasting.
So the church is not being guided, but just being pushed by currents? I guess all analogies fall apart if you pull the thread long enough. That didn’t seem to work in my area. We have a temple very close, but membership (especially active attending) is still decreasing.
You hit on my top two illogical practices. WoW prohibitions on tea and coffee make no sense, but the alcohol and tobacco prohibitions are a huge blessing. All the temple announcements have become kind of baffling although my theory is they are trying to spend some of the money that has accumulated on something of long term value. I would add that I think the limits that seem to be put on hours of service missionaries can give is unfortunate and counterproductive. I believe the mental health problems that are so common among missionaries now have a lot to do with lack of meaningful things to do for many. I also think from a missionary perspective it would open up more opportunities due to goodwill generated.
I believe changing the time missionaries are required to get up in the morning from 6 am to 8 am and increasing service to 20 hours per week would result in a big drop in early return missionaries.
I disagree with the premise that the essential part of the endowment is the covenants and the rest is “just instruction.” The indispensable part of the endowment is the ritual enactment of each person’s fall and redemption in parallel with the fall and redemption of Adam and Eve. The covenants and tokens can be thought of as “just” symbolic steps along the path of redemption. If you haven’t been through the ritual fall and redemption, then you haven’t been endowed. Leaving that part out would be like doing a baptism without the prayer and the water.
Talking about the WoW and avoiding Tea reminds me of my visit to Japan many years ago. I was going to be in Japan on Sunday and I wanted to find a church to attend. The only LDS church information I could find was for a church office of some type. So I went there to ask about the location of a church. They asked me to take a seat and wait until someone was ready to talk with me. While I waited they brought me Green Tea. I figured this was an LDS church office, so I drank it. I have since learned about the many benefits of Green Tea, but here in America it is still just considered to be Tea and avoided in accordance with the Word of Wisdom.
I imagine that at some point in time somebody at church HQ noted a correlation between temple attendance and local church participation. Therefore, somebody else eventually concluded, if the church builds more temples, then local participation would increase, as well. Reverse logic, in the church and elsewhere, can be as wrong as original assumptions. And when it’s all overlaid with “divine revelation,” you’ve got a holy mess.
There are so..so..many… these are not criticisms they are observational facts. Many of these were ” huh ?” moments I had.
1. 5:30 AM early morning seminary. Reasearch shows kids need more sleep and their brain does not learn until 9am
2. Rushing investigators to get baptized in a few days to weeks (90% of the tume) then they not return to church
3. The over emphasis of numbers on the mission. Baseball baptisms. The compeition of mission numbers. Rewarding missionaries to ZL and AP for baptising 9 year olds.
4. Telling members the sabbath day should be spent time with your family, then being required to away.from your family with 8 hours of unproductive church meetings, and 8 home teaching families.
5. Stating we believe in the bible, but few members ever read it.
6. Asking members to read the entire book of mormon in 3 weeks, having learned nothing, just to say they followed the prophet by speed reading.
7. Asking members to pay tithing before feeding their own children.
8 Having billions of $$$ in bank and having malnurished kids throughout the church and the Q15 not wanting to support bountiful children foundation becasue a 1 year old child may abuse the nutritional supplimental program.
9. The entire Q15 having 2 homes, and then telling members they have a modest stipend.
10. The nepotism culture and how the decision makers are all related.
11. Standing idling by as hundreds of its own youth commit suicide
12. Hiding the essays and their own web sites for the general membership not to see
13. Prohibiting missionaries from using facebook, and then 10 years later having missionary work only via facebook.
14.having missionaries have 36 hour fasts as they walk around in the heat.
15. Encoraging mwmebers to write in journals and prohibiting the Q15 to have a journal.
16. Having the bishopric read a memo from 1st presidency to encorage mask wearjng, and none of the bishopric is wearing a.mask
17.building a multi million $$ temple in ephriam utah when when a 110,000 square foot temple is is 7 miles away
18. The whole obiedience culture
19. The whole worthiness culture
20. The literal changing of its doctrine. Nothing is same same in the church over.the past 190 years. You look up any topic and will find such.
21. Chaning mind between doctrine and policy, ie POX
22. Stating excommunications are solely a local matter and the Q15 are not involved.
23. The nature of the strengthening members committee.
24. Calling people to higher church positions to get them out of town and then call it revelation. I know the church has called many to be mission presidents under this guise.
25.stating we have the whole gospel and all the truth….. but then everchanging
26. Protecting the good name of the church at all costs.
27. Acting as if all callings are of inspiration
28. Having a policy of not apoligizing when the center of christianity is to do such.
29. Yelling at missionaries who are their as “volunteers”
30. Talking about going after.the.1,.but then shunning members who disagree with the bishop
31. Having a funeral not be about the deceased.but a missionary opportunity
32. Not running the church as Christ would.
I may have part.2. Sorry if this came across as harsh, but i answered the.question. the church does have some positive points, but eventually we graduate and no longer are a part of the group.
So JCS, you’re saying “old ship Zion” in an abandoned, unmoored vessel that’s been swept away by the worldly currents? I guess that makes sense since so many member of the church have been caught up in the deluge of fascist lies and propaganda.
As for the OP questions, I find pressing foreword with in person church despite the delta variant surge to be illogical. We’ve figured out how to do broadcast church, so it would be so easy to do so.
Tying back to my comment to JCS, courting the extreme right wing evangelical community has also been illogical. That path leads to either totalitarianism that turns on the Mormon community, or irrelevance in a liberal democratic society. I do see some course correction there with our increased allyship with the NAACP and the Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. Now if we can only get a majority of our leaders to give up their homophobia….
It’s ironic that a user with the name “Faith” would have such a great list of illogical cultural and doctrinal practices by a church whose answer would be: “just have faith”
Obviously, the most illogical practice is requiring vaccinated members to wear masks in order to attend church meetings. If masks work, then those who want to wear them can do so and be perfectly safe. Two vaccinated people wearing masks are doing nothing to protect each other. And if the unvaccinated don’t want to be protected, then let them experience the consequences of their actions.
The church preaches that this life is but a short time in the eternities. Logic would say the church should focus on that hopefully message and not be pushing fear.
It is absolutely illogical to claim that green tea is against the WOW. It has no mind-altering characteristics and no adverse physical health impacts. Literally billions of potential members in Asia immediately reject even investigating the church because this makes no sense.
The Church needs a course correction. I can’t help but think that an expansion in leadership is needed. It is illogical for a modern, global church to be lead by 15 geriatric white men, with apologies to Elder Gong. Women need to be an equal partner in leadership. Inclusion of the young (non-seniors) and non-whites is critical. Diversity is important.
I had the opportunity to ask an apostle about the temple in Paris, France, and projected attendance rates – the answer was the usual milquetoast…Potemkin villages to dot the earth…
Missionary work…the Steve Martin rumors are funny and possibly wishful thinking but let’s admit that celebrities and business and political moguls will probably never be converted to God’s true and living church. Let’s stop creating ridiculous expectations for young missionaries. My child is working his butt off as a missionary but it’s a pandemic and he has six months left; well done son, close enough, hit the showers and call it a day !!
IMO of the single biggest problems in Church is that we value an idea based on the priesthood rank of its proponent / speaker and not on the merit of the idea itself.
That is illogical and leads to many other illogical ideas and actions.
Asking for a friend, would it make sense now to buy land or property in NW Missouri?
Recently we heard a claim that there are many topics where some Church employees need to do better at defending the faith, though instead of instruction on the wide range of topics we got a diatribe against the single issue of “wokeness” (I.e. acceptance, respect) regarding LGBTQ+ people. That came across to me as illogical.
Sealings have always been a huge issue if I think too hard. The moment a family is more complicated than mom+dad+bio kids it is ceases to work. And the hoops we require people getting re-married to jump through… Throw in the polygamy piece and it’s a mess. When people tell me “it will all work out in heaven” I can’t help but feel if it all gets worked out in heaven, why are we making such a big deal out of it now? Can’t we just acknowledge that you get to be with the people you want to be with in heaven and move on?
Roger is right about the need to expand leadership. Bad decisions are much more likely to be made by groups in which everyone is the same.
If the church wants to make better decisions, it must expand the diversity of leadership. Women absolutely must be included, and must be included soon. They represent more than 50% of the membership, but no decision making ability at the highest level.
It is now beyond any excuse to have so many of the top leadership in a worldwide church to come from Utah or surrounding states.
And age is a serious problem. We desperately need to go back to the time when the Q15 included those in their 30’s.
What else do I find illogical in the church? Well, there’s the scriptures—a patchwork anthology of various conflicting cultural values, beliefs, and legends that were never meant to be presented as a single work. Trying to tie together the various conceptions of God and various mores of archaic tribes and 19th century mystics as if they are all truths that form one great whole was the source of a lot of cognitive dissonance for me for a long time. I imagine it is for many others as well.
And then there’s the logic of our metaphysical cosmology. Before my body existed, a spirit body that looks like me supposedly existed first. It looked like me and had the essence of my personality and character even though my appearance, personality, and character are the result of my parents’ choices and their parents’ choices etc etc. If free agency is a thing, then this makes no sense.
Then there’s all the bad logic around couples in the eternities and making spirit babies and who’s sealed for time vs eternity etc. And all the faulty or absent logic used to justify the priesthood ban or the PoX or the church’s homphobia in general.
I think the greatest head-scratcher, though, is that we claim to have prophets that don’t prophesy, seers that don’t “see,” and revelators that don’t reveal anything. Very little in the church actually makes sense. Perhaps our greatest talent as Mormons is tolerating cognitive dissonance.
Left Field, that’s fair. But is it accurate to say that the essential part of a proxy endowment ceremony is for living members to be reminded of the instruction, or for the dead to receive covenants?
If we dig a little deeper, there is a range of paradox in both mathematical and philosophical logic that would huff about oversimplification here.
The logic of building temples in random places is a financial decision: LDS building contractors and real estate developers comprise the Church’s union of millionaires–their stockings will always be stuffed first. Until somebody releases the memo–that Zion is cultivated, not built–we should expect to continue to finance Gadianton’s masons and carpenters.
Signs and tokens have no value except to invoke a sense of privilege and loyalty. The endowment consists of knowledge–the prize is what we learn. Physical movements and gestures are only allusions to some aspect of covenant. All negotiable. There is residue left over from the days when priesthood leaders tried to link masonry with temple work, and it obfuscates what Joseph intended.
I don’t know, I fully realize that to the casual observer (or average W&T reader) my thinking might more resemble rationalization and wishful thinking, with a bit of self-righteousness sprinkled in, but there are few aspects of both the Gospel and the Church that haven’t made logical sense to me to one degree or another after some amount of studying and pondering. A small bit of it does get reduced to “wash yourself in the river” stuff, but less often over time. And even in those few areas where it doesn’t make sense, I’ll admit there are quite a few other things I care about more than to dwell on them.
I suppose one could go point by point and explain why he or she sees logic in a Gospel concept or a practice of the Church. Go layer by layer, however, and I imagine eventually one will end up just explaining the logic of why he or she thinks a witness from the Holy Ghost is real, and less likely of product or byproduct of evolution.
The way callings are issued doesn’t make sense. The executive secretary calls you to come talk to the bishop, but won’t say why. At the interview, the calling just gets sprung on you without time to prepare. Sure, you can ask for time to think about it before accepting/declining, but the idea that God himself wants you to fill a certain role in the ward is high pressure.
I wish they’d just ask who wants to work with the youth, who wants to be in Primary, who wants to plan activities, who wants to be a teacher, who is willing to take a leadership calling. Maybe that would mix up the ‘same ten people’ phenomenon for leadership callings, and also give priesthood leaders more opportunities to serve in nursery (I’m thinking of the priesthood leaders who said they would love to be in the nursery when I mentioned that every single ward I’ve ever been in has put me in the nursery and I don’t really like taking care of toddlers).
Also, people should be able to list callings they absolutely never want.
I’ve tried to accept every calling ever extended to me, even when the thought of it gave me an anxiety attack. I had some really good experiences, and some really bad experiences. I don’t hear the pressure about ‘turning down a calling is like turning down God’ now that BKP isn’t here to give those Gen Conf talks. But wow, that time I realized I absolutely could not handle the thought of going to church and doing my calling to the point where I cried for four hours straight, and then piled on the guilt that I just didn’t have enough faith (after all Jesus has done for me I can’t even go teach nursery for a couple hours so I may as well apostatize now) really soured me on the idea that difficult callings are just growth opportunities.
The next time I got a call to meet with the bishop (new ward), I had several anxiety attacks before the appointment, just because I was so scared of a possible calling.
To be fair, the reason for the Ephraim temple is because of the Minerva Teichert murals, which (perhaps rightly so) is definitely a progmo cause.
So, Dylan, are you a follower of DezNat? because “progmo” is one of their terms.
Dylan (not to argue) please explain why a temple is needed in Ephraim which is 7 miles away for a population base of 27K and 6 stakes which 2 are for YSA? How many people is other parts of the world still have to travel long distances and spend a lot of money to travel to a temple. Not forgetting the sacrificed financial costs to countless families for another temple. It will cost $50M+ to build. How is it a progmo cause? I thought conservatives want to keep things as is, and progressives want change. Explain how wanting to preserve history and murals is a progressive act? It was many of the locals in conservative Sanpete area gathering signatures to save the murals. Where does that leave the Manti temple? It no longer has the pageant. It no longer will have live endowment sessions. Once temples are build in Price and Richfield, it is another vacated building that tourist Mormons want to visit and check off their temple travel visited list. I am looking for enlightenment, but I am unsure of your logic.
I am bewildered how members get excited about numbers (membership, missionaries, temples), but when you want to talk about the individual lives behind the numbers; the conversation is changed and we are told to have more faith. I grew up learning that people are more important than programs, and that is where I see the illogical decision making and the onset of more cognitive dissonance for people who will open their eyes and not follow blindly. People and families are being harmed by the policy and procedures of the LDS church !
I think the entire premise of the Book of Mormon, including its purpose and origin story, is illogical.
The Book of Mormon is supposedly the keystone of our religion. The Book of Mormon is the most correct book on earth.
Yet the Book of Mormon is anti-polygamy. The Book of Mormon is silent on temple rituals and the doctrine of the eternal family. No mention of the word of wisdom health code or tithing or church governance. In the Book of Mormon, prophets are strangers that merely wander in and out of the narratives. The Book of Mormon does an outstanding job answering nineteenth century concerns like infant baptism and church authority but fails to solve any twenty first century questions like the environment or the LGBTQ community or birth control to name a few.
And I wholeheartedly agree with Melinda. I have started telling ward and stake secretaries that for mental health reasons I am unable to meet with anyone unless I know the context of the meeting so I can be prepared. Usually the Bishop or stake President just reach out to me directly now.
Bill. I love the pictire of the intelligent active brain with equations, and the other side silent grey matter.
I was called to be in a sunday school presidency when in a BYU ward over a summer. I told the bishop i was moving the next week and would not be back at that ward. He said he had to make the callings because he had pressure frim the stake of so many unfilled positions.
8 years later I moved into an apartment in a large ward with plenty of talented people to ask. The bishop really wanted to include us and for us to stay permenantly in the ward. Later, A stake high councilor came to our apartment to extend a call as ward executive secretary. I declinded, telling him we were moving in 3 weeks. Shockingly, i was sustained in sacrament meeting the following sunday. Then i never got a calling of any consequnce in 4 years in the next ward, suspecting the new bishop called the prior and probablly relating that i did not fillful the calling.
Where is the logic?
The one I was just thinking about this morning that is illogical is the incessant drum beat of “religious freedom” that the Church has been beating when the Church demonstrably does not value religious freedom for others, just the ability for the Church to do whatever it wants without government restriction. They aren’t pushing for freedoms for non-Christian religions in the US, and if you change your religious affiliation while at BYU they will ruin your life vindictively. But the real logic gap is that the real beneficiaries of this so-called religious freedom are the Evangelicals and other right-wing Christian Nationalist churches who all 1) have no respect for the LDS Church, 2) consider us a cult, and 3) have a long, storied history of using their own “freedom” to curttail ours. So basically, we are shooting off our own foot, carrying water for proven enemies of the Church.
“If the Lord is indeed omnipotent, He could just wave” ______ (insert anything here). Any commandment, any ordinance, etc. We could all be brought home and exalted at the snap of His finger. Missionary work, heck, mortality’s test itself, would be unnecessary, since He knows how every one of us will respond to every test here and in the afterlife.
So, you’re right, there may be no logic to saving the dead, especially considering the time and resources involved in genealogy and temple work. Add the fact that we’re making a only a tiny dent in vicariously saving humanity — a task that will presumably be much easier in the Millennium.
Maybe there are other reasons for attending temples, (many of which don’t require multi-million dollar buildings) mostly (or solely?) for our own edification:
1. renewing our own endowment; repetition may enrich knowledge we already have;
2. making a stronger connection between generations through the veil;
3. most important, satisfying the requirement to serve — charity, pure love — doing something we don’t understand for people we’ll never meet;
4. separatng us from the world; to meditate; send positive energy out to the world (prayer circles);
5. preparing us for education in “sacred school” once all the vicarious work is done;
6. satisfying a primal need for ritual that is not present in other meetings or settings.
I’m definitely not a follower of DezNat, and I’ve heard “progmo” used by all sorts of people, including those who fit the description. I don’t mind saying “progressive Mormon” if it makes a difference. While I don’t support increased temple building, I am grateful that the murals aren’t going anywhere. I certainly would have preferred a compromise, and I think our tithing money is much better spent elsewhere.
The only people I know who supported preserving the murals are well-educated, wealthy, and (at the very least) moderate Mormons, both those with Church membership and those without. The folks at BCC, for example, were VERY supporting of preserving the murals, and I wouldn’t consider them (for the most part) conservative.
I’m not sure of my point in commenting (lol), other to say that that item seemed out of place, especially because (from my perspective) conservatives were the ones supporting the murals being removed because that was the directive from church leadership.
*supportive*
Here are more logical issues …
In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve are commanded to have children, but not to partake of the fruit from the tree of good and evil. Yet after they do partake Eve justifies it by saying it was necessary so they could have children.
There must be opposition in all things. Agency requires both a Christ and a Satan – good and evil – and agency is a necessary part of the plan of salvation. So somebody has to be Satan, in God’s plan, and Lucifer was the one. Yet everybody hates Satan and he is the worst person ever, although he’s just doing what has to be done – unless the plan of salvation was plan B all along, which raises a bunch of other issues.
But here’s the best one:
I know the Church is true.
How?
The Holy Ghost has confirmed it to me.
How?
Through my thoughts and feelings.
How do you know those thoughts and feelings are from the Holy Ghost?
That’s what the Church teaches me.
How do you know the Church is right?
Because I know the Church is true.
Would love to have a W&T regular tackle some of these.
The myth of Satan. I suspected it was a growing game of telephone over the centuries and millenia, which was confirmed by a podcast series, Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, episodes 8.12 through 8.24. It covers the history Satan. The whole idea of a one adversarial king demon seemed to get its jumpstart when the Jews absorbed Persian beliefs after Cyrus and release from the Babylonian exile. At this stage of my life, the idea of Satan as a master tempter with an army of tempting minions seems to me just a bogeyman and a scapegoat. It’s illogical for a couple of reasons. First, there is no way to have a created Satan without responsibility for it belonging to omniscient God. And second, if it really was essential for human agency to be activated by good and evil, then in the pre-existence when Satan rebelled, who tempted Him? Another Satan? If so, who let Satan Prime in for a visit, and what were they thinking?
^ It’s turtles all the way down, man.
For the record, when both fiancé and fiancée have been endowed, but the fiancé needs the fiancée’s new name before they are married, a temple worker has them do a “short veil ceremony” at a hidden veil prior to getting married. For living people, it is very short. I think maybe 3 words before, and 3 words after she says the name.
Apparently we are happy to keep temple rituals short for living people.
We’re all familiar with the gap between what we *ought* to do and what we *want* to do. We ought to put that extra money in the bank, but we end up buying a new car. We ought to eat a salad but somehow end up eating a donut and a bag of chips.
I think there’s a similar gap in our beliefs, between what we *ought* to believe (science and history) and what we *want* to believe. The Church leadership seems to have figured out it is better off focusing on making LDS of all ages *want* to believe rather than trying to do successful apologetics, trying to meet and overcome science and history on a level playing field. Mormon apologetics has proven to be a dismal failure. But religious indoctrination is alive and well and living in SLC.
If we take a step back, we see a really interesting characteristic about the Church. Some other religious groups have their share of illogical or a-logical beliefs, but they don’t get bogged down in trying to explain logically. Example: in a lot of Orthodox Christian traditions, the things that the Restoration movement calls “ordinances” are called “mysteries,” because mortal humans will never completely understand the way God makes those rituals work. It’s a-logical (not supposed to make sense in the first place), and that’s okay.
On the Restored Church side, we have much less tolerance for the mysterious and the mystical. We’re less content with not knowing.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this observation, or why it means beyond the observation itself. It’s where my mind went with the OP, though.
“Some other religious groups have their share of illogical or a-logical beliefs, but they don’t get bogged down in trying to explain logically”
Interesting thought. I think it might help if we stopped policing people’s beliefs. I don’t think other churches do this nearly to the extent that ours does. Requiring members to believe things that are in some cases demonstrably untrue drives people away. It makes church a hostile place for many. Allowing metaphorical belief and discussion would go a long way in increasing inclusion and in helping us work toward becoming a stronger people. We have some beautiful metaphors but requiring a literal interpretation of many of them can be deeply problematic and ultimately holds us back both individually and collectively.
MW, yeah, I think you’re onto something. There’s an argument to be made that for much of human history, religion wasn’t supposed to be literal or logical. There are theories with some historical support that say that the people who told the stories that turned into the first half(ish) of the Old Testament saw the stories as mythology—they treated them like fiction (or didn’t bother with truth value) that had many layers of meaning and morality. Logic mattered less than sense of community and pride in your tribe’s god.
Sometimes I wish we 21st century LDS were better at leaving room for the ineffable and the sublime.
Chet – it sounds like your son will have served his entire mission during a pandemic. That could be rough. How’s he doing?
A lot of logical problems, whether real or perceived, are best evaluated by spelling out the argument. Often there are bad assumption made in one or more premises.
I think there is a general guiding logic behind the church leaders’ actions and policies, which is that tradition is the bedrock of the church and the glue that holds the membership together. Do and say things to reinforce adherence to tradition, whatever the tradition is. Trim the hedges of tradition only, don’t go anywhere the roots. Reward those who maintain the traditions. Criticize those who challenge them. Occasionally situations may arise where tradition is too burdensome to maintain. Polygamy and discrimination against blacks come to mind. Pivot slowly away from those traditions, attributing changes to God’s will.
How about those who wear a white shirt or dress to Church because a Prophet asked them to but refuse to wear a mask when a prophet asks them to.
@john w makes a good point.
Most decisions are logical from the perspective of the person making the decision. So if you truly put yourself in RMN’s position with his goals and beliefs, a lot of what we identified as illogical is actually quite logical. The issue is that we don’t have the same goals and beliefs.
I thought of an additional item this morning:
President Nelson urged us all to get vaccinated and to wear masks when we cannot be socially distant. Yet BYU is the only Utah University without a vaccine mandate. This SEEMS illogical, but I’m guessing that President Nelson is aware of the huge pushback his comments generated and therefore isn’t willing to move forward with them on a vaccine mandate at the Lord’s university. This seems to prove the point John W makes in his comment.