Notes from an Evening with Terryl and Fiona Givens, authors of "A God who Weeps" March 27, 2014

From Fiona – A word on Paradigms

We are swimming in paradigmatic pathogens that can weaken our spiritual immune systems without us being aware that they are.  It's a good thing to bump up against walls.

God chose to love us and so made himself vulnerable.  A read of Moses 6-7 shows us a God of love and vulnerability.  Old Testament God of wrath and anger was difficult for Fiona to grasp.

Julian of Norwich - 14th century Christian mystic - influential for Fiona.

- show me hell, help me understand sin, show me purgatory

Suggests that we need to wrap our minds around paradigms.

Righteous vs. Unrighteous

So what is sin?   Typically we are told/taught/sin is defined as “Bad choices.”   Except probably there is something important about sin.  What?  Sin is NOT punitive; it is educative.  Necessity of Sin.  Eve’s heroic sacrifice.  [Where was Adam? Found himself a nice place in the garden, set up his computer and really was trying to get to the next level…wink, wink]

Eve’s choice was not an emotional moment.  She was noting three things --- that the fruit:

1. was good/nutritional
2. was beautiful – deep aesthetic sense which says something beautiful about her
3. would give her wisdom

Having to decide btw. 2 goods – which is better and you’re left on your own to choose – must have been a brutal, honorific experience.

Extraordinarily telling: the line from Genesis, the Gods speaking of the new condition of Adam and Eve -- “they have become as one of us”  --- [Moses 5:28]

Fascinatingly revealing language in the Moses account:  Adam uses "I", "my"; Eve uses "we", "our" [Moses 5:10-11]

Moses 5:10 reference – Eve “for our transgression”

1. w/out their eating the fruit, they would not have been able to have children
2. w/out eating the fruit, they would not have “known” [in the biblical sense] sin --- [ie: experiential knowledge]
3. wherefore should I not reward her b/c she fell in her haste….

The Restoration was not an event, it is a process that is still unfolding.

From Terryl:

Consider the first crisis that strikes the early church in Jerusalem – Do all the converts have to go through all the traditional rites of the Judaism?  Takeaway: the disciples realize that there is a problem w/ exporting the “GOSPEL” w/out all the junk/the culture/traditions, etc.

Opinion: we need to extract the pure essence of the gospel --- ie: what kind of a being do we worship?

Two pieces of particular focus

1.  Get the faith right.

Five Principles [fundamental elements] of the Mormon Faith System/Tradition

1. We worship a God who’s heart beats in sympathy with our own
2. We lived with him before
3. Life is not a fall but an ascent
4. His plan is to save us all
5. Heaven consists of an extension of the relationships we treasure here

2.  Make sure we asking the right questions.  

This seems to be where we often go wrong --- looking through the wrong keyhole [what follows are some examples, which are also highlights from new book, “Crucible of Death” which will be released soon]

Paradigms | Questions

1. Use and abuse of reason
2. Life’s incompleteness
3. Role and function of the church.  Is the church like a Swiss army knife?
4. Use and abuse of scriptures
5. The Perils of Hero worship
6. Ring of Pharaoh – role/how/whys of delegation
7. Mormons and Monopolies – what does it mean to say this is the only true church? Does Mother Theresa need to be baptized?  Reed --- scholar in Berkeley who is a good friend of HERS – who is getting his PhD and authorship of “Banishing the Cross – the emergence of the Mormon”…[D&C 10:45  and 52, 53, 54, 55  --- holy men and women who we know not of – given b/f the church was organized].  Another example: Revelation 12 –  gorgeous woman who has just given birth -- we understand her to represent the Church.  Flees into the wilderness [into the apostasy] so he could nourish his church – truths were sustained.  Assemble truth where it was to be found [could explain why so many Masonic “traditions” are incorporated into the temple]
8. Find your own watering place.  Meaning of spiritual self-sufficiency
9. There is no “they” there – you are the church
10. The too tender heart.  Overcome by the world. We reinterpret what we thing what happened in the new testament?
11. Silence and solitude.  What does it mean when God “doesn’t” answer prayers – this links, fundamentally, to how we are expecting the answers which is what affects how we recognize the answers.  He doesn’t want us to confine Him in ways that he answers our prayers.

There will be times when there will be utter darkness and the message is to keep walking.   Could God remove the cup from Jesus’?  Couldn’t.  Everything hung on him drinking it up. When he did that, He empowered God to answer his “where art thou” question in another way – how? God sent him an angel to help strengthen him to help him carry the burden.

If we get our paradigms right, we won’t spend all of our time asking the wrong questions.  Learn to ask questions in the right way.  

Be careful with the question and how we expect the answer.  Don't inadvertently confine His ability to work in our lives.

Christ has a choice to make and walks into the abyss (why hast thou forsaken me?)

Q&A

Re: More on the idea of monopoly.  

Language of certainty tends to creep into language ~ 1960’s.  We tend to forget that one of the gifts of the spirit is doubt – in D&C this gift of the spirit, “doubt” is just not specifically labeled as such; worded differently and not as doubt -- ie: be believing”.  

Monopoly paradigm

D&C 49:8  Holy men that ye know not of

D&C 10:52-55  written in 1829, talking to a church that existed at that time (those people that have me to be their God)

Be careful with "I know these things to be true"

Story:  Brigham Young to Bishop Wooley "Are you going to leave the church?" "I would leave if it were your church, Brother Brigham"

Authentic testimony - Spirit cannot bear witness of anything that is not authentic.  Story of Fionna’s friend who, with her encouragement, bore an authentic testimony in Fast and Testimony meeting, fled immediately afterward, and spent the week receiving a deluge of appreciation for her authenticity.   Instead of endorsing the language of certainty, saying, “I know….” consider instead, phrasing such as “I hope this.  I do not know this but I believe this.  I do not know this.  But when I do X, Y happens.”  Have to take back the culture.

Re: tension btw. top down direction vs. autonomy

“Follow the prophet’ vs. “being anxiously engaged”  Most frustrating thing is the bogging down as caused by the culture.  Shake it out. Divest yourself from hubris.  Love reveals the truth.  Begat cultural change. We are the culture. We need to take responsibility.  Since we ARE the culture, let’s start taking initiative --- take some ownership of the culture and become evangelists of change.  Have to also become comfortable living IN the tension.

Re: we all want someone to be the keeper of our conscience

We sort of WANT someone to tell us what to do.   “ie: Don’t see R rated movies” – so we elevate the prophets to this level of infallibility so that we no longer have to take responsibility for our own choices.   This is fraught w/ pitfalls.  Story of her son got his hands on “Rough Stone Rolling” --- if God could work with someone as fallible as Joseph, then this could be really hopeful.

Re: principle of Pharaoh’s ring

Joseph w/ Pharaoh’s ring. Pharaoh's ring placed on Joseph's finger: authority

Story:  conversation between Elder Bruce R. McConkie, and his son, shortly after he arrived home after organizing a new Stake Presidency, reveals his understanding of  delegation.  His son, "Was the stake president you called God's choice?"

McConkie’s response reflects his understanding of delegation, "He is now."

God stands as surety when we act in His name in good faith. Sustaining means nothing if that is not true.  [Ref:  D&C 21:5  “For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.”]

If delegation means anything at all, it means that God will stand behind me all the time.  Authority has been vested so it behooves us to sustain them in all patience and faith. [b/c the Lord knows that we need both.]  We don’t have to 2nd guess every decision made on High.  This is delegation.  

Much greater tension regarding the fallibility of the decisions these people make while serving in those decisions.  Lord to Joseph Smith “Your bounds are set”

Re: God’s modus operandi

1st six days – God makes order out of chaos.  He loves chaos.   Can turn something chaotic into something more beautiful and sublime.  Can move ugliness into gorgeousness….ie—the path of the planet….

Would be a violation of agency for him to interfere but can exchange oil of mourning for the oil of anointing.  Chaos/pain/fear that’s what he’s good with. God is a master of bringing beauty from chaos.  For example, from this pain/chaos/destruction, as is the pattern of God, [arguably] spreading throughout the church now is a deeper sensitivity and foundational discussion on gays.  

Re: how do we know what the prophet is speaking to us receiving revelation for the church? Or we don’t?

“I don’t think it is to be expected that we would all respond uniformly to a revelation.  Personal opinion --- in the case of the priesthood ban, people responded differently.”  For example – two different responses to same revelation ie: “I’ll swallow this but it doesn’t make sense to me”  AND “This is awful – I cannot accept this”  should be able to co-exist peacefully.  Story:  Elder Oaks “My job as a general authority is to deliver revelation and your job as a member of the church is to receive personal revelation regarding how it applies.” No escaping personal responsibility.

Closing

Fiona’s Backstory – her witness

• Story of woman friend who had everything horrifying happen to her who was awoken by a night vision -- Christ's words to a woman in pain: "I am so sorry for your life"
• Is certain that the sealing keys empowered Christ to go save her son
• George McDonald quote

Terryl’s Backstory:  Why I’m in the church

• Phenols Hodge – “she who no longer answers when I call her know”
• God restored the keys for me to have a relationship with those whom I love

Terryl’s Backstory:  What I expect from the church

What I expect from the church is connected to the word worship used for the 1st time in Old and New Testament

1. Wise men open their treasures and “worship” him
2. Moses when he goes on to “worship” ["I and the lad will go yonder and worship"]

Worship then means to give of ourselves that which costs the most ----

I love the church because it provides the appropriate place where I can provide my offering.

Need to have a certain amount of empathy for those who cannot bear up of the suffering…. Remember – our theology has never come up w /a credible explanation of why 1/3 of the hosts of heaven left…specter of horror that we would be expected to confront – so we should stop trying to find comfort in glib clichés.  Need to learn the wisdom of the friends of Job who sat for 7 days w/ him and no one said a word.