John and Carah discuss Mormon Temples, the prosperity gospel, and the Mormon church’s use of social media influencers to promote its temple work. Feel free to post your comments, experiences, and questions below!
Show Notes:
- Graph showing temple growth under Russell M. Nelson
- Racially insensitive murals inside the Mesa, Arizona, temple
- Mormon Stories’ interview with Laura Schnell
- Jenny Komenda’s Instagram
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There is a fine line between Capitalism and mainstream Christianity, but on the whole, although they are not congruent, you cannot have one without the other. In Christianity one aspires a life of immortality, by contrast, Capitalism seeks to maximize utility b/c consumers are mortal. For example, your tired and you want to sleep? Buy a nice bed that gives you a great nights rest rather than sleeping on hard soil. However, immortality does not require sleeping or eating for that matter. Jesus lived a life like a gipsy wearing cheap clothe, maybe had poor hygiene, and ate honey and bugs (not vegetarian). But, he had to endure all things to rise above and be our king. So must we as we work towards our immortality. You have to go through mortality to gain your immortality and not surviving is like suicide. You can’t have one without the other.
I always struggled in my thoughts with the idea of being a business man versus a Christian. I couldn’t see the two being congruent b/c often times in business it’s about taking profits any way you can and not seeing your operations as a charity. So many folks say, “We are not a charity” or “We are a for profit enterprise”. So negotiations are not selfish when there are two parties agreeing to a job for a wage. It is just that one negotiates better than the other and profits greater. Think about it for a minute. If you knew someone who could sell you peaches at cost, and you love peaches and eat them all the time, wouldn’t you go to the best price offering? Of course you would. You are a utility maximizer. In Christianity, you might look like you are selfish and a miser.?
My 83 year old mother, who is in an assisted care facility, was denied a temple recommend because she had not paid a full tithe. She can’t go to the temple because of her health, but it means something to her to have a temple recommend.
While I have been out today the church for a while and thought I was beyond being hurt by the church, this has really upset me because it hurt my mom. Where is the grace? Where is Christ-like compassion?
I was thinking about it and am trying to understand why we need temples? Why can’t we do all of the ordinances in like a wing of the chapels? Do baptisms in the font, etc. Why do we need massive and super expensive buildings to do all of this? It’s not about the buildings, it’s supposed to be about the ordinances for the living and the dead, right?
Is it Christ like ? Does it require everything you own ? Can you leave with your integrity? Can you come back and be a contributor? Are the lives of those who follow the teachings more full and somehow more purposeful ?
Unless you become as a little child you cannot enter into my kingdom. Let the dead bury the dead. I did not come to save the perfect, I came to redeem sinners. Peter , you will deny me three times and yet I will build my kingdom around you. Tomorrow you will be with me in paradise.
They call it the Holy Spirit of promise it is by that spirit that the doctrine and covenants was written most of the people, referred to in that book left the church or fell hard from king Joseph’s alluring order of things.
For many of us leaving is not an option our spider web of a life is way to caught up in the spider webs of every one and every thing around us ,that even the thought of trying to pull away ,brings on fear and anxiety similar to a little child lost at a circus, or the desperate mother trying to find that same child before he finds the clowns and decides they are his new family.
I have listened to hundreds of podcasts but I have attended thousands of meetings in the I d s church I used to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing what truth was and I felt loved and validated, within my family and community. Hell it seems would be a better place . And yet life goes on.
I would venture to guess that suffering will continue , until the mass insists upon clarity. Watching the current leadership both local and in in salt lake I sense that a major change is coming not unlike the change of 1880-1910 in those thirty years Mormonism morphed into something that is now much bigger and more unruly than it ever was in its days of polygamy and it’s new and everlasting covenant. That only lasted in the church as we know it 50 odd years . Warren jeffs has much more in common with Joseph smith than Russ Nelson and yet neither have much in common with today’s Bishops and even stake presidents. The grace of Mormonism truly is in the hearts and actions of its basic practitioners. Personally I’ve witnessed and been a part of many unexplainable things in my near 60 year sojourn in Mormon land. And I hate to admit but I believe there is a godly reason for its existence. But these grandiose buildings are a distraction to the real work a God worth worshiping would have us all do in this day and age. The judgement is in our hearts the execution is yet to come . And yet we would trade the here and now for some outrageous , pie in the sky unexplainable existence that has very little semblance to the paradise described by Christ in the New Testament or the Book of Mormon for that matter. The bill of goods is not worth its value. And the more they talk the emptiness of their messages becomes more apparent. Good work be mindful that our day care workers and our elementary teachers really are crafting the ideas and ideals that will make up our future and outcomes .
John, can you provide links to studies showing that more temples equate to an increase in tithing revenue? I think you said “the reason they build these temples is because they’ve done studies that show that they get more tithing money wherever they build a temple”. That very question has crossed my mind in the past.
Joseph Smith Sr. and Jr. were both Freemasons whose temple rites and rituals Smith, Jr. ripped off, stole, borrowed (whatever you want to call it) and implemented into his contrived temple endowment ceremony which was one of the reasons a mob was after him while incarcerated in Carthage jail… he had broken the oaths and promises he made as a Mason and created his own ceremony with them where one is required to make the same types of promises Smith broke to make it all up in the first place. None of what goes on inside an LDS temple has any relation to the activities that went on inside Solomon’s temple… all the ‘ordinances’ are contrived with nothing having anything to do with what Christ taught or revealed. Joseph Smith Jr. was perhaps the greatest charlatan and con-man of the 19th century, with other iniquities that defile his own ‘word of wisdom’, ‘plagiarized, bogus scriptures and articles of faith… it’s all nauseating fraud on the grandest of scales and ‘church’ leaders (aka corporate execs running the wealthiest real estate corporation on the planet) still require 10% of your income to enter a temple to practice freemasonry when they know it’s all a big ruse… incredible.
Amen! Very well said.
Cara! You and your generation so inspire me. I am thrilled that you young people are rejecting the military industrial complex, vulture capitalism, imperialism, and the wreckage that has been wrought in the lives of generations by these systems. Keep yelling. You are so smart.
Guess those who feed the hungry, gives their lives for others, look after the widows and orphans, cannot ignore the cries of the needy..they are the real children of God (if God there be). Most of them don’t attend churches …they don’t need to.