Covenant Keeping

For the discussion of spirituality -- from LDS and non-LDS sources
Roy
Posts: 7183
Joined: 07 Oct 2010, 14:16
Location: Pacific Northwest

Re: Covenant Keeping

Post by Roy »

DancingCarrot wrote: 27 May 2018, 16:02 My questions would be:
-What if I don’t think God wanted me to ever get baptized or go through the temple? In the scripture you reference it mentions “as a witness to him”, but I’m curious as to why God would need a witness. It makes more sense that we, ourselves and our communities, need witnesses more than God would.
-In the first scripture it also mentions being of God’s people. My question is when did I ever stop?
Great questions. I echo DJ in saying that the covenants and ordinances can mean different things to different people.

I do not know if God exists or if He does exist that He cares that 8 year old me was baptized. However, it did matter to me.

My dad baptized me and my best friend was sitting in the front row when I came up out of the water. My father ordained me to the priesthood, his name is on my priesthood line of authority. I knelt in the sealing room of the Salt Lake temple and covenanted to receive the woman that is the great love of my life.

These ordinances and covenants have meaning to me because they ritually tie me to people that I care about. Because of that, I find them to be worth keeping, repurposing, and honoring. For me, they are part of the metaphorical "baby" to be retained while discarding the "bathwater". I am able to keep my baptism as a meaningful experience without associating it with guilt and duty to do whatever my church leaders are trying to twist my arm to do. There is no, "You were baptized so clean the church building this Saturday" for me. There are other ordinances/covenants that I am more ambivalent about (Gift of HG, initiatory, endowment, etc.). I do not dislike them and I am not throwing them out but they are not pivotal in my narrative journey.

When it comes down to it, I get to be the author of my own story. Which parts of my story should I highlight as being important for my trajectory? Was there a fork in the road where I took the path less traveled? What were the important mile posts, mile markers, and landmarks? Were there any rites of passage in my coming of age years? I can order them and prioritize them with the perspective of hindsight to tell the "Hero's journey" of my own life.
"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood

“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223

"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13
User avatar
dande48
Posts: 1443
Joined: 24 Jan 2016, 16:35
Location: Wherever there is danger

Re: Covenant Keeping

Post by dande48 »

AmyJ wrote: 29 May 2018, 05:57 So am I showing great disrespect by taking the sacrament even though I don't traditionally believe right now, and does it even matter?
I still take the sacrament, despite not believing in most of the "truth" claims of the Church, or many of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. I do this for a few reasons. To me, it means:
1. I fully admit that I am a broken and failed individual.
2. I really, desperately want to do better.
3. Despite being failed and broken, I am OK. God still loves me.
4. I want to be more like Jesus Christ.

I honestly don't care much how anyone else views the sacrament or its intent. The covenants associated are between me and God. Even if I didn't have the priesthood, or belonged to the Church, I would still partake of the sacrament, even if that meant blessing it on my own. Is that heretical? Maybe. But it is worshiping God according to my own conscience, and there is nothing within the LDS sacrament prayers or practice I disagree with (unlike the Endowment). What does the sacrament mean to you?
"The whole world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." - Horace Walpole

"Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure, there are ways of knowing for pretty sure."
-Lemony Snicket
Old-Timer
Site Admin
Posts: 17243
Joined: 21 Oct 2008, 20:24

Re: Covenant Keeping

Post by Old-Timer »

The following is a good thread about the right-hand sacrament thing. It has 69 comments.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6639
I see through my glass, darkly - as I play my saxophone in harmony with the other instruments in God's orchestra. (h/t Elder Joseph Wirthlin)

Even if people view many things differently, the core Gospel principles (LOVE; belief in the unseen but hoped; self-reflective change; symbolic cleansing; striving to recognize the will of the divine; never giving up) are universal.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken
Post Reply