Modernity is the Great Apostasy

I am compelled to agree with you. But the question in my mind is, why? And my answer to that question is, the old answers to life, that we have grown up with, are not satisfying people. And a large part of that is simply not understanding either the Scriptures or the Gospel.

But at some point, we all need that spiritual rebirth (Ye must be born again). And if we do not get it, is apostasy inevitable?

Regarding the membership of the church, have we sufficiently understood the Gospel? Is this a symptom of not fully understanding?

Or am I in left field here? (not to steal the thunder from G’s excellent post)

I sure agree that we are in the midst of an general apostasy. I think a huge part of it is simply that parents stopped teaching their children about God and Jesus Christ, determining that the children should decide for themselves as adults whether they wanted to believe or not. How can they believe when they don’t know what to believe in? How can they choose if they don’t have options to choose from? The analogy I think of is wanting your child to go to college but never exposing them to college or the benefits thereof, determined to let them discover and choose for themselves when they graduate from high school whether or not they want to go. What? How would they know about it? How would they be prepared? How would they understand any benefits? Religious education doesn’t happen through osmosis; children must be taught in order to have something to choose from. Even in righteous LDS families children need to be carefully taught and immunized against the wiles of Satan, or they can easily be sucked in. And yes, Zen, part of that immunization is a sound understanding of The Plan, the commandments, doctrines, and principles, as well as how to apply them to our every day lives. Big responsibility!

“Regarding the membership of the church, have we sufficiently understood the Gospel? Is this a symptom of not fully understanding”

I think our shortcoming in this regard is not about intellectual understanding.

Our shortcoming is gut-level / heart-level.

We’re just doing dance-steps. We need to also hear the music. But more importantly, we need to _feel_ the music.

We need to catch fire. We have the light. But we also need to have the heat.

What Gen Conf was it that had the visual of someone striking a wooden match? I think that talk was on this topic. It was pre-covid, in the past 7 years, iirc.

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Something is afoot with the Brethren. They are slowly doing a course-adjustment. Elder Cook spilled the beans, giving two hints, in his introduction in this video, 0:55 to 1:35.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/how-to-share/introducing-love-share-and-invite?lang=eng

He said “think and do things from a fresh perspective”. IE, we’ve been thinking wrong.

Then…. “will require a change in our culture.”

They’re slowly changing church culture.

“How so, you say, when we still have prophets and priesthood and the Church still stands?”

The persistence of institutional forms is no proof that there has not been an apostasy. Think about the original Great Apostasy. Was there ever a time when the Church ceased to exist? When there were no ordained priests tracing their authority back to the original Apostles? The Christian church never “lost the priesthood” in the straightforward sense in which the Jewish religion has lost its priesthood. There continued to be priests, there continued to be a church, but they became corrupt.

Isn’t that what the Personage told Joseph Smith at the First Vision? He didn’t say, “The original priesthood died out, and people made up a new pseudo-priesthood. The original church disappeared, and people founded a new pseudo-church discontinuous with the original.” He said, that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

“Having a form of godliness” — the institutional structures of church and priesthood — is in no way incompatible with apostasy.

I don’t think the end of the priesthood in the original Great Apostasy meant that all the legitimate priests died without ordaining successors. I think of it more in terms of D&C 121:36-37.

“That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.

“That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.”

Good points, and I agree all around.
I really enjoyed this quote from Fiona & Terryl Givens:

This “falling away” does not represent some minor corruptions of sacramental liturgy or ritual forms. It is not about wicked priests whom God punished by removing their priesthood. It is about a fundamental misapprehension of the background and purpose and extent of the covenant (premortal origins, mortal incarnation, and eventual theosis and sealing into the eternal family). It is the loss of the mode by which that covenant is executed (through temple covenants that create those chains of infinite belonging, completing our journey from intelligence to joint heirship with Christ).

The loss of the larger cosmic context was compounded by failing to see the Fall as a necessary and premeditated immersion of humankind into the crucible of experience, suffering, and schooling in the practice of love. The loss was not about baptizing at the wrong age or in the wrong medium. It was about not knowing that baptism makes us — all of us eventually — literally members of Christ’s family and co-heirs with him as planned in premortal councils. What is at stake is not simple difference in standards of sexual practice or marriage’s purpose per se. It is about failing to see the family structure as a divine mode of eternal association that is at the very heart of heaven itself. In sum, the “Restoration” is not about correcting particular doctrines or practices as much as it is about restoring their cosmic context. (14-15)

I also really enjoyed

Apostasy and the rise of the elite in the first centuries of Christianity

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/01/apostasy-and-the-rise-of-the-elite-in-the-first-centuries-of-christianity.html

Likewise, I pulled the Given’s quote from here
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2022/01/profound-and-big.html

Zen, yes, that quote from the Givens explains The Great Apostasy of the 2nd century.

What I think G’s original post is about are these two things:

1. the minor-apostasy that has been happening among rank-and-file LDS members for the last 70 to 110 years, at an accelerating pace.

2. Recursive deterioration, ie. sinking into ever deeper apostasy, by already apostate mainstream Christianity over the past 60 years (ie, the Sexual Revolution.

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I think G is right in that “Modernity” might be the major factor in both 1 and 2. Throw in a little Nephite disease too, for both.

In think the solution for both groups, 1 and 2, is to catch on Fire and spread the Fire horizontally. Evidence for this is, again IMO, found among the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, who are unique among non-Restored Christians in that they are mainly still “zealous for the Lord.”

Young people need the on-fire zealousness to maintain faithfulness in the face of the deadly onslaught from Babylon. Factually correct but sleep-inducing monotonous talks and sermons can’t stir people to action.

And the Fire itself has to come from peers and/or parents. Ward/Stake leaders can’t _sustain_ Fire/zealousness throughout a whole congregation. There needs to be a critical mass which can sustain horizontal transmission and sustain the chain-reaction.

*** Intellectual understanding is insufficient! ***

Parents (or anyone) cannot transmit that Fire if they don’t have it themselves. We have been surviving off of momentum, tradition, and social capital to fight off Babylon. But NONE of that stuff is sufficient anymore – Babylon has grown bigger and stronger.

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The Gospel is a __feeling__, not mainly an intellectual understanding. That is what intellectual apologists usually leave out. See “The Challenging and Testifying Missionary” by Alvin Dyer. (And to the intellectuals: don’t discount his main points just because he got into the weeds on some minor points and some mission presidents went in the wrong direction because of it. His over-all thesis is still spot on.)

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By the way, G and his family have the Fire. That “always Christmas, never winter” bon mot by one of his kids showed that.

Books, that feeling and fire you refer to (to the degree it is good) is neither more nor less than the Holy Ghost. And it is withdrawing from the Gentiles.

Zen, Yes, but that’s not my point. Among the rank-and-file, too many Latter-day Saints are either ignoring or quenching the Holy Ghost, or throttling/resisting Him to some degree.

Too many of us are using Him merely as a comfy sweater, fending off the chill, when what He wants is to set us on fire. That is what I mean by zeal.

Many, maybe even the majority of righteous members, even testimony-bearing members who legitimately hold temple recommends, are throttling Him down to the level of a hand-warmer, when/where there should be, or could be, a bonfire.

People clasp their upper chest, close their eyes, and say “Ahhh, I feel the Spirit.” That’s all well and good. And then… they stop there… at Square One.

Our current culture and practices, at the grass roots level, have “dumbed down” the Holy Ghost, compared to what the scriptures and early Restoration history show.

Human tendency is to fit in with the crowd, even in the church. Hardly anyone wants to stand out, be an outlier, or trail-blazer. This can lead to dismissing the whisperings of the Spirit, so we tend to follow each other instead, like that “ant mill,” becoming robot-slaves to the local group’s habits.

Note the times where G has mentioned that his family’s zeal gets pooh-poohed by his fellow ward members.

Note how Ammon, Aaron, Omner, and Himni were mocked by their fellow church members.

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Elder Cook hit the nail on the head: Members and missionaries need to re-conceptualize and re-imagine things — even so far as to _think differently_. And _church culture_ needs to _change_.

To borrow a phrase from the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, the Restored Church, true as it is, needs a “revival.” I believe that word fits with what
Elder Cook said.

And by revival, I don’t mean a frenzied church service with theatrical speakers. I mean, as do some of the more sincere and sober Evangelicals and Pentecostals, the kind of personal and cultural transformation that Elder Cook spoke of.

Books,
Your description of fire and renewal is far more in line with how I would describe the Holy Spirit. You are quite correct that it is far more than warm fuzzies and divine aspirin.

When I said ‘understanding’, I mean, yes, intellectually, but also spiritually. Do we comprehend the doctrine of the Family, and indeed, the rest of the Gospel? The Holy Spirit will teach us in our hearts and in our minds, and it becomes increasingly clear to me that need both. Not just us individually, but us as a church.

Do we need to apply Moroni’s promise to the Family Proclamation?

We do understand this, but we need to understand it better, with fire in our minds and in our hearts. We need to explain the glories of the doctrine, not so well that people understand, but so well that they can not misunderstand.

Belief in the false pericope adulterae led to apostacy. The KJV translators making the mistake of including this false pasage that is inauthentic led to it. Women growing up with it became whores and men “white knights” who defend the women’s right to whore around unpunished because a fanfiction atory about a feminist epheminate gay Jesus who says “let him who is without sin cast the first stone” was unwisely included in the main English Bible. Only rolling back this passage can change the tide of apostacy. Because acceptance of that passage turned all of Christendom into feminism.

I have believed that passage without, noticeably, giving way to feminism.

@ Blackpilled Bob,
Read the Joseph Smith translation of that passage. Forgiving sins and showing mercy is certainly Christlike; that doesn’t mean that He condones us continuing in our sins, as, indeed, she did not.

The problem he was addressing was not only the woman’s sin, which was never in question; it was that the Pharisees believed themselves to be perfect because they kept His law without seeing Who it pointed to. There was no room in their hearts for their Savior.
People who think that Christ was ‘nice’ and effeminate are simple not reading what was written about Him by those who knew Him best. While He certainly did respect and honor women, He also did not give us a free pass to sin as we wish. He wants us all to come to Him and repent – black and white, male and female, bond and free.

As previous commenters have noted, it’s when we lose context for why we do the things we do that apostasy happens, because that’s when we stop doing them with our heart, might, mind, and strength and start simply going through the motions, which will never lead us to the only One who gives us salvation.

To be fair to Bob, though, I’m aware of a number of Christians who take the story to mean that if the woman repents her husband should take her back and/or some guy owes it to her to cheerfully wife her up. Which is false and destructive.

@ G,
I totally agree that such an interpretation is false and destructive.

@ Books,
I think there is more than one young person who is on fire with the Holy Ghost in our YSA stake. They’re calling them to stake callings – the first counselor in the stake RS, the high council, etc., and putting them in positions where they can help others catch the vision. Seriously, the first counselor in our stake RS is practically a conflagration on her own, and she’s trying her best to spread the fire of her testimony of Christ abroad. It’s inspiring to watch.

Modernity has been described as “liquid modernity” by several thinkers, most notably Rod Dreher, who was probably quoting a more obscure academic. The concept is closely wedded to the Moral Therapeutic Deism theory of how we moderns view God. It tends to get reduced down to something like, “God just wants me to be happy.” The usual effect of this happens to justify a host of behaviors that until the day before yesterday were considered sins if not extremely negative character flaws. If God just wants me to “be happy,” then leaving my shrewish wife after twenty years of marriage and marrying that cute secretary isn’t so bad, after all.

Or, God just wants me to “be happy” so I won’t accept that annoying Primary calling, or a calling to teach early morning seminary, etc. I see all positions on the spectrum.

What we’re missing is sacramental sacrifice, coupled with an appreciation of sacramental suffering. We’re not carrying our crosses. We refuse to even consider carrying them.

Liquid modernity means that most of us are not really founded on a rock, but on the most squishy of quicksand. Entire books have been written on this subject, so our little discussion here is rather meager. But I’ll just say that contemporary society has rejected, by and large, the very concept of truth. Now it’s just nihilistic power struggles, all the way down. It won’t end well. But we all know where that is going.

Being religiously devout, married with kids, with a homemaker wife and being *happy* to boot — that is now the most subversive countercultural lifestyle you can come up with here at the tail end of 2022.