Getting Personal With Christianity: Spiritual Apostasy # 8

One of the most depressing things that I recently learned is that one of the youths that I watched grow up and get married in the temple no longer believes in God.

Many people I know over the years that have left the church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for one reason or another. Most of them have left due to transgression--the ones that I know, which includes family members.

Leaving the church is one thing; but denying God...

It is different with this couple that I mention--it is different knowing that one if not both deny God. I did not grow up with these people. It is worse than that; I watched them mature and become beautiful young adults. I participated in ordinances with them and received edification from their testimonies.

It feels like I just discovered that my own child rejected God!

How does that affect me?

The Explanation

At one time, a brief time, I did not believe there was a god. I could not fathom there being one because of the lack of understanding I had of the Plan of Salvation at the time, but I did not know that I lacked knowledge then.

I thought of how cruel it would be for some supreme being, who could be some malevolent beast that watched in amusement while humanity suffered. I was afraid most of the time because I could not come to grips on what to think! I thought or believed many things depending on the mood or book I was reading.

I believed that there were intelligent beings who planted humanity here as a colony and forgot about us through some great cataclysm or maybe they monitored our progress for some unknown purpose for the future.  I later saw an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation where that was the origin of all the humanoid species. I really am a Star Trek Geek! I loved that episode.

I then thought that there was nothing. Evolution happened on this planet and through natural selection, the Homo sapiens beat out all of the other humanoids believed to have inhabited this sphere. I read books and snippets on the web about how the different races evolved, first the Negro, then the Caucasoid and then the Mongoloid.

I trusted the sources of my information and believed that the Asian races were the best of humanity being the youngest form of human evolution. I thought of my own race as the legacy group that evolved from the apes. I am not going to go into the therapy that I had to have after that.

I was confused and believed almost anything, except in a god. That made no sense that some magical being existed. I would prefer a Superman or a Batman to that!

I know how I felt without God in my life. I felt free! I felt free to do anything and be anything! I was the master of my own life and I answered to no person, until...

...until I realized that there were other people out there who controlled my life and that I was the master of nothing

...until I started truly being affected by the racist human origins teachings I had read.

...until I started feeling alone and lost in a sea of philosophies!

Without God in my life, I was my own source of strength or lack thereof.

The Weird Jealousy

I capitulated and began to believe in a supreme manifestation. I sought out spiritualism. I finally settled on Islam, because, I NEEDED to worship something!  I could not live without a god.

After a string of events and manifestations, I was converted back to Christianity and received an undeniable witness that God is alive and well and very much in control of this tiny planet.

One of my issues, my nagging problem was I could not make it without God. It became an issue with me needing God! I would feel like I am cheating life when I prayed to God and received answers to my prayers and divine help in a hard situation. I would dismiss many blessings as coincidence when I was without God in my life, but now, I could not.

I felt ashamed when I prayed over a test or to overcome a hard problem. I was ashamed because when I found God, He answered all, and I mean ALL of my prayers immediately!

Anything I prayed about, I received! I am not talking about getting answers that I can see the Hand of God in if I worked backwards. I would ask for money and I would get money. I asked for my car to start working once, and it started working.

I was ashamed! Other people did not need God like I did, I thought. They could excel with no prayers, which fortified in me that I was the weak legacy chain in human evolution. My ancestors were slaves because of a divine curse I was taught in my Protestant church. I thought little of that until I joined my current church and the priesthood ban was added to that teaching--along with the false teachings that we hedge around it to justify it having happened.

Presently...

The weird jealousy I had when I first converted to God came back! I actually started think again about how I could not live without a god. 

I did not think that I was less of a person for that truth, but I did have familiar feelings of mourning. I felt betrayed by the missionaries who taught me for telling me to speak to God for the first time. I could not go back. 

I know there is God and I could not un-know it! I could deny it. I could ignore it; but I know it. 

I recall once wanting to go back to my without-God-in-my-life days and feeling angry that God was there answering my prayers! I tried, but I could not ignore the fact that He revealed Himself to me and an unmistakable way!

I was jealous of people who did not believe in God. They were in ignorant bliss. I longed for that! Life is some much simpler when there is no purpose to it.

I accept that this life is not all that there is, but sometimes it is so easy to wish that it was. I think of that couple that I saw married in the temple making those promises... I wonder if they ever believed in God.

I wonder that because I tried not to believe in Him. Now that I know He is there I need Him. He is the only One who can help me to continue living my life in a productive way following this life.

I still think sometimes, "What if it is all a great big lie!"

I then remember that no one forced me to talk to God. I went to Him seeking and He revealed Himself to me. I know that I can do things where I can make it so that I cannot feel His Holy Spirit. I can make it so that I cannot hear the answers to my prayers. Heck, if I stop praying I can make it so that I doubt ever having an intimate experience with Him.

I like myself with God in my life though. I hurt that my young friends are no longer believers. They seem happy though. They seem settled. They seem good. I can only pray that they may find Him some way. 

I am confident that I will not let go of my faith in Jesus Christ and ever deny my Heavenly Father. I am confident!

I know that it is possible. Cain did it. Judas Iscariot did it. Millions do it. I pray that I will endure to the end. I expect to.

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Getting Personal With Christianity: Listen to Wisdom. Seek Understanding and be Wise # 7

I recently spoke to a friend about living my life in a way that would bring me closer to the Lord by using the scriptures as often as possible. Reading for 15 minutes or so a day just so I can say that I have read my scriptures does not fortify me from the spiritual storms of life. In fact, it is like eating a snack instead of a full meal each day and then only one time in the day.

No. It is not enough for me to feed my spirit rations above physical starvation! What is more important than feeding my soul? I mean, I can think of the good I can do for others, but that good can only come if I am doing it with a pure heart.

My intentions were not pure going into this. At first, I thought to humor my friend as we spoke and let him think that he was teaching me something; that is, until I started to actually learn something from him. I reflected on my life and how I draw closer to God by how much I think about Him and His commandments.

If I am not thinking about Him or His commandments, I notice that I am more likely to commit sin. In an effort to follow the sacred counsel I received from the Lord many years ago, and the new counsel from my friend I decided to read one of the books that I despise because it is unlike other scripture, The Book of Proverbs. All it is is the wisdom of one man on temporal and spiritual things.

It is inspired wisdom though. At least that is what I tell myself to encourage myself to read. I don't want to read it. I will admit to that. But I owe it to myself to try and do better than I have in the past with the book. I plan to do the same with the Psalms.

What I hope to gain from reading these books
is a way to put aside my selfish desires to be entertained by everything I do and seek understanding and wisdom from the journey through the scriptures.

So, I don't have a neat bow to wrap around this post. I have faith to go forward and hope that God will direct my path for Good.
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I drank the Kool-aid

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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