By Rod Johnson

Rodric believes Moroni included special instruction for Modern times and wants to share his unique perspective the same way Moroni shared in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

Getting Personal With Christianity: Overcoming Doubt

I never thought of prophets as perfect. The Book of Mormon even claims prophets are not perfect. I did not believe in Jesus as a God until I read the Book of Mormon since I had lost my faith as a young Christian--if I had faith at all back then. I suppose I had tradition and I accepted the things that were familiar to me.

Over and over, the prophets in the Book of Mormon claim that if there are mistakes in the record, they are errors of men. To me, that is an admission that there would be mistakes--that we should expect some! Joseph Smith, Mormon, Moroni and Nephi were all important men associated with the coming forth of the book to us. If they made mistakes how do they diminish God's role in revealing to them the truth? It does not change the fact, in my case, that I spoke to God about their work/writings and He told me that they are true, a true testament to the divinity of Jesus Christ.

God told me in answer to my prayers certain things. I care, but less what Joseph did before he became a prophet or how many wives he had. And? 

It kills my spiritual high sometimes when people find out that I am a LDS Christian and they say, “Well, you know that they don't like Black people." 

I want to say, "Really? I am so glad you told me that! I've been in this faith for more than twenty years, and I just could not tell! I just assumed they were nice to me because they were Christian, but know YOU let me know that they were pretending! Yeah, and all the Black Mormons had to be pretending a nice also since there are so many of them in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now!"

Umm, yeah! The members of the church come in all the variety of humanity. I wish that I could say it and it be overwhelmingly accurate that because LDS claim to have the restored truth that it makes us better people. 
Who doesn't want to think their faith makes them the best? Humble people don't want to think that I suppose.  If anything, our faith makes us more accountable before God since we claim to have a direct line to God through a prophet, but people are people.  Israel had a direct line to God through prophets and look at what happened to then. They still worshiped false gods! 
People will be good or bad regardless of the religion. I hope that as Christians, we are more inclined to do good deeds rather. It has been my experience at the beginning of my walk with Christ that LDS earnestly endeavor to live the teachings of Christ. 
I have been a LDS Christian too long to assume someone will be nice to me just because we go to the same church. It is not the case. I have met people with racist ideas and notions. I have met rude people. I met these people in church!

So, do I believe that Mormons have been racist in the past and that some are still racist? Yes, I do believe that. Since when did being a disciple of Christ, mean that we are instantly perfect as a person, community or faith? It is not the church I am converted to per se, but the faith, the teachings of God through the imperfect people in the church.

People cannot accept that I asked God on many occasions about the church and His prophets and He tells me they are authorized to act and speak for Him. I trust God, so I accept the prophets as His official reps on the earth.

I still have my doubts and my issues about this or that doctrine or policy, which I speak about appropriately, but my purpose is to promote faith in others and challenge the things that make me doubt. I still have bouts with God about if He is there! I could see myself slip away from Him if I were to stop praying because then He becomes a distant memory and His revelations just the fanciful whimsy of my simple mind.

I choose not to indulge my doubts. I am sure President Thomas S Monson has issues that his family would confirm if they were inclined to do so. That would not change the fact that for me, God has told me Monson is a prophet. He, Monson, will have to repent of his sins just like I do, but he still represents the Lord officially as His spokesman.

Prophets can fall and lose their way just like any person, but they can also repent and be forgiven without losing their calling. They can also be wrong about something all the days of their lives and teach it as if it is right! That is the reason God gave us the Holy Ghost so that we can discern.  That is why we have 15 prophets instead of just one. We as a people have to learn to trust our personal revelation. We must also learn to keep the commandments so that we are not being led astray because the devil can give revelations too!

We are never to trust the prophet in a way that we exclude prayer and due devotion to God ourselves. If we did, it would be Satan’s plan: to follow blindly in obedience.

Apologists have the wrong idea. I used to be one before I came to my senses. I received such a convincing jolt to my misunderstanding of my faith that I rebooted. I found out that I knew only these two things: that God is real and the Book of Mormon is true. This happened post-mission 12 or so years ago.  Apologists rattled me to the core. I alarmed my wife and friends. They had warned me to stay away from it.

See, foolishly, I had stopped reading my scriptures much and praying with faith while I engaged in apologetics. I only wanted to debate with people about the LDS religion and its preeminence over all others. What rattled me was something that ended up being false anyway! I was just so far from my relationship with God my mind was weak. Doubt worked its way into my mind. Apologetics is great if it is tempered by sincere faith.

We do not NEED to prove the faith or make exceptions for it. I find it comforting that there are people willing to give intellectual explanations for things that are not clear. Those exercises on intellect should never replace sincere and abiding faith in Jesus Christ on a foundation of keeping the commandments He has provided.

Faith is to believe in the absence of proof, which comes with revelation after the trial of our faith. I can promise any of you who are struggling with your faith that read this blog that if you keep the commandments prayerfully, God will reveal the truth to you as many times as you need it.

He set it up this way so that we would seek Him. I know I would not pray as often if I had all the answers right now. What need would I have to talk to Him or develop an open communication with Him at all? It is hard! I have to put my remote down and stop entertaining myself to do that!

There is no proof of any religious belief other than personal revelation. God designed life that way so that we can have the freedom to pursue the gospel or reject it without condemnation if we lose sight of the truth.

For example, we know the law gravity exists, so if we jump off a building expecting it to go away, we will suffer the immediate consequences. It is not so with the gospel. If we choose to leave the gospel level of consciousness we espouse, Mormon, Baptist, Muslim, spiritualism, etc., we lose a little bit of our testimony at a time until it is all gone. We are not doomed to outer darkness but only to a lower kingdom which is still a part of heaven if we fail to repent. Atheists, in my estimation, still go to heaven! Devil worshipers still go to heaven!

I find comfort knowing I can still mess up and get a great reward. I have not seen God, so I do not qualify for outer darkness. But, oh boy for those who have seen Him and decided to reject Him afterward. There are few people with that reward. Nephi lets us know that the hell they will endure exists only for them, and the devil.

So, it is okay for you all to have your doubts. Just, doubt your doubts more than you doubt the things you know. Since many of us still have not seen God face to face, we can get away with more. However, since some of us have heard His voice, we need to think hard how we dismiss past spiritual experiences.

Mormonism is a culture, but the gospel is more than a culture, it is the truth, and I would give up all my heritage and cultures for that.
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Educational Ethics: An Educator's Perspective

Educational Ethics
Recently with the changes in society regarding family and sociability, changes also occurred in ethical views. Ethics has been the topic of the day since the introduction and popular acceptance of secularism in Western culture. Of course, ethics existed prior to secularism cloaked in one religion or another; but now, ethics stands alone as its own philosophy and is essentially the making of the consciousness of the giver of the ethic. Instead of focusing on what tenets of a religion teaches or postulates based on some grand philosophy, ethics is the culmination of understanding, morals, and feelings of the individual, which, for many, replaces religion.

Clear Parameter

Education professionals have awareness enough about
what occurs in society to make decisions based on personal understanding and comprehension regarding ethics. They must for the sake of diversity use a different standard to judge other than religion in today's society. There must exist some personal understanding about what requires their attention and what should be best left to others.
People have the privilege to make decisions for themselves—even if in doing so it will cause harm in giving the choice. It is the ethical obligation of an education professional specifically to have accountability—even if others would not know of a particular situation under any circumstance save revelation was given them.
In ethical endeavors, it is important to have the ability to articulate the ideas and understanding that helps to promote individual educators' perspective on varying ethical issues. Enabling others to understand differing perspectives facilitates the opportunity to agree or disagree well informed. Principles of justice that agree across religious and philosophical perspectives help with consensus on appropriate and inappropriate behavior; however, they must be examined and decided upon to create a standard of ethics for a guild or professional league of diverse compatriots.
Applying the ethical perspective is just as important as having one according to Stanovich in a text entitled How to Think Straight About Psychology. The ethical perspective must be something that can fit all circumstances so that there is never a time where wavering is a possibility.

Educators Should Promote Diversity in Religious Beliefs and Philosophies

Source: robertjrgraham.com
The ability to ascertain things and apply ethical limits to them is essential in understanding societal roles. A standing principle the author holds to with religious candor is to honor the religious diversity and culture of students and associates.
Why such a position in education? Education is barren and utterly impossible to achieve without some moral code and cultural tradition for students to identify with in order to give some perspective to the things students learn. Some creed, some purpose of life must exist outside of education that drives the wills of students and teachers to help motivate research.
Religion is good, which is a psychological fact--as long as the practices fall within acceptable social norms. Education could possibly be the context of a religion! Ethics change as society changes. Morals need basis in something higher than the individual, even if the deity is merely the constitution of a nation.
Educators having centrist positions on all views, which, in such a democratic republican culture as the United States, seems to be the most ethical stance to take. Instructors, purveyors of education in any form have an obligation to peers and students to maintain a consistent level of behavior so that their judgment can be trusted.
The importance of trust regarding a professional instructor-learner based relationship should never be overestimated. Without trust, education in any form will not progress. Yet, “a trusted researcher can use” his or her “research to justify the continuation of morally reprehensible practices to disguise and thus entrench oppression, to get people fired, to get schools and colleges closed down, to justify inequalities, to deflect attention from much required action or intervention,” (quoted from Pendlebury and Enslin's article on page 364 from the August 2001 edition of theJournal of Philosophy of Education--article entitled Representation, Identification and Trust: Towards an Ethics of Educational Research) as did one educator entrusted with the learning career of the author.

Supporting Another's Stance is Not Acceptance of His or Her Views

Source: www.flickr.com
Rodric A. Johnson, the author, experienced an incident as a young elementary student being the crux of the cruel moral opinion of a teacher attempting to impose her world-view of racial separation without segregation. To emphasise her disdain for interracial relationships, the teacher stood Johnson and another student in front of the class and categorically protested interracial association to the audience of eight and nine-year-olds. Ethics acts just as much an anchor for religion in a free society as religion behaves as a lodestar for ethics.
As much as Johnson disagrees with racial prejudice, it is his ethical obligation to allow others the right to behave and believe in such positions without fear of retribution as long as those positions do not disenfranchise fellow human beings of freedom, which he personally ascribes to divinity, God. Pendlebury and Enslin in their article suggest that educators should allow others to express their view or “lights” as they call it and let those lights stand without the purveyors having to kowtow to others. Education is about the diversity of ideas more than it is about conformity to popular views.
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The Science of Religion

Alternative View

All people view things from a self-centered point of view. It is customary for all people to view the world from within the cultural context from which he or she comes. It is not a crime; it is the way humans evolves from the tiny germ in the womb to a fully functioning adult. It is not sin to learn and progress.
Imagine stepping outside of the ease of self-perspective and into a macro-perspective--thinking from other people's point of view. See things how others might see them. Even then those things are seen how the person trying the experiment thinks that another person would see those things--but it is a start.
Step further away from the familiar and start to explore the seemingly knowable and ordinary things. They become new and hardly understood things at all. How does the body really move? Is there some scientific explanation for a spirit?

Perspective of Sol

The perspective from which this article is written is that of an observer of the greater mysteries of the universe though that perspective is shrouded in the psycho-religious perspective of the author. The purpose of the author, me, is to introduce the idea that science and religion are one in the same in perfection and modern science and religion are far from perfect.
The things revealed currently are sufficient to have a great understanding of the relationship between science and religion if there are factors that persuade personal investigation and open minds.
First must be understood the perspective of Sol. Earth is in what is called the Sol Solar System of the Milky way. Without delving explicitly into the astronomical aspects of the universe, it is understood that Earth is not the center of the universe or even the center of the galaxy. Earth is located on the inner rim of a region of space called the Orion Arm in the Milky Way Galaxy.
With this bit of knowledge reason dictates that there are other places in the galaxy with planets and stars that are suns in far flung regions and approaching the center, not to mention the other galaxies! Logic also considers the possibility of life on other planets.

The Sol System

True Religion and True Science are the same

Religions is a manifestation of science that is based on the powerof faith rather than proof. Science and religion are not two different things. Humankind has not yet learned to see the connection between the true institution of heaven and the tangible realities of the five senses of man.
Random chance did not organize the universe and leave it to its on devices. Chaos does not create order in any degree, on any planet and in any experiment.
Modern science is a faith-based religion that preys on those who seek understanding without a divine source. Exclude a deity, but believe science until the next fact becomes outdated with new knowledge.
Modern religion has evolved to accept many of the realizations of the society of science, such as carbon dating and other tools used to measure the age of the earth.
Source: www.unb.ca

Faith of Science

"Miracles are commonly regarded as occurrences in opposition to the laws of nature. Such a conception is plainly erroneous, for the laws of nature are inviolable. However, as human understanding of these laws is at best but imperfect, events strictly in accordance with natural law may appear contrary thereto. The entire constitution of nature is founded on system and order." (quote by James E. Talmage from DAVID H BAILEY)
Modern science as it stands cannot explain most things and creates more questions than it does answers. Scientist expects society to take theories as facts rather than beliefs based on assumptions that can be proven by experimentation.
The Theory of Evolution for one is a possibility, but it cannot be proven and there is no evidence that it occurred anywhere on this planet. The assumption is that a mutation changed some of the animals but not all of the same kind of animal.
This example of the faith of science does not diminish the teaching of evolution as a possible factor. Evolution could have occurred on a different planet, but there is no evidence it occurred on Earth. Yet, most non-religious and religious people accept it as a fact.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Interesting Perspective

The senses are not what they appear to be if thought of deeply. There is only one sense, that of touch for all things touch the body to work.
  1. Sound waves touch the canals of the ears that translate into differing vibrations of the ear drum.
  2. Light waves touch the eyes to produce bio-electrical energy to stimulate the brain to produce images.
  3. Molecules float through the air and enter the nose touching follicles connected to taste as well to send the brain information of how certain ingested materials relate to our anatomy.
When perspectives change to encounter the familiar an entirely new thought process ensues.

Religious Limits

Religion limits the truths that can be shared with humanity because of the intolerance that has crept into it over years of abuse and lack of inspiration. Any religious teaching that defies the natural order of the cycles of nature that are in place is false.
It is a bold statement, but it is true. Religion that does not accept proven scientific developments has failed its disciples and corrupted their spiritual paths to divinity.
Most religions teach of a divine being or universal presence to some degree; however, these same religions limit what this being or presence can and will do based on tradition, culture, and prejudice.
It is easier for humanity to accept a deity that does not concern itself with the daily activities of men and women. This way, no matter what activity pursued, people are free to indulge unabated.
Religion only supports the ideas that conform to its many creeds and acceptance of a deity through the process of those creeds. However, true faith does not shackle its God with preconceptions, but accepts information that flows as it is needed called revelation.
The Prophet of True Science
Hundreds of years ago, scientific information was given to a great man who sought to learn wisdom. He was taught about the planets and stars and their rotations. He was also shown many planets called earth which were peopled with humans, but only the earth upon which he stood was he given specific information.
But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.... And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words. Moses 1:35, 38
The above words are the words Jehovah spake to Moses. Moses sought the Lord and found Him. As a reward, Jehovah revealed the truths about the universe and the number of worlds that have passed, currently exist, and yet to be!
We are not alone in the universe according to the testimony of Moses. The stars in the heavens potentially have planets called earth near them with people just like those found on this Earth. The people on those planets are children of God also. God continues to produce earths and people them and His works do not end.
That is the great scientific mystery answered. Man is not alone in the universe. God has spaced His children far enough apart that each do not have the technology to contact each other, but He knows where they are and how to reach them and reveal truths to them as they are needed.
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