Bearing testimony and bearing my testimony

It's been a year and a half since I was baptized into this Church.  It's been an internally tumultuous journey for me to come into this church so late in my life with a lifetime of experiences, spiritual connections.  I think I've examined so much literature dealing with the historicity of the Church, examined the online material of so many of those who are or have become disaffected with their membership in the Church upon learning of historical events, shared with them in their grieving for their loss, and I became convinced it was unlikely I could fully become a part of this Church.  I was content to carve out a space for myself in empathy, support for the many that also must carve out a non-traditional space for themselves in the context of the Church.

Until this past Sunday, when I for the first time conveyed my 'testimony' because I could in great part because of this Sunstone article written and/or contributed by David Knowlton in April 1991.  As I've heard repeatedly throughout the past two decades this business of a testimony is a huge element of the LDS Church faith.  And as I've heard the acts of giving testimony primarily in the Ward where currently attend, it goes something like this:

'I'd like to bear my testimony that I know this Church is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that this is the restored church on the earth -- and sometimes there will be an add on variance that might include atonement (ending with In the name of Jesus Christ)"

These are not words that I can say easily as they are not my core beliefs.  Therefore I have acknowledged aloud repeatedly that I have a non-traditional 'testimony', and so the members know that I am working on gaining a testimony.  I think I already have one, it just won't sound like the words the members at my Ward are used to hearing.  It's one of those elements that I recognize is important to the membership, and yet I do not appreciate in fullness what is meant by having a testimony from their perspectives.  For me what I have to say as my testimony works, and yet I somehow understand that it doesn't work for the membership, who simply politely let me struggle with the concept.

A year and a half later, upon reading the David Knowlton article; 'Belief, Metaphor, and Rhetoric: The Mormon Practice of Bearing Testimony Bearing' it brought light for me in the matter of how Mormons have and share their personal testimony.  I came to understand that the act of it is so much more significant to the person bearing testimony and those hearing it than the words can begin to convey.  My take away was a nodding of my head saying to myself - I understand - and thank you David Knowlton for taking the time to think this through and write the article.

What I understand is that while indeed this is a ritualistic practice which I recognized and wondered how it came to be that the Church teaches they do not practice ritual as a kind of a protest against the other churches that do practice rituals when in fact they do practice a form of ritual - just different than other churches.   In the absence of rituals as for example in the Liturgy of the Episcopal and Catholic Church, or the coming forth to be saved in some of the Protestant churches, the bearing of the testimony is in effect that salvific moment of feeling the Spirit, the presence of God in self, the emotional connection.  That I can and do understand, respect, value, appreciate.  And with that I could finally release myself from being hung up on the words and relate instead to the ritualistic feeling level of how Mormons bear testimony.

Wanting to hold to my own integrity as to my actual beliefs, I have struggled with the words typically used by people in sharing their testimony.   No I do not believe with heart and soul that this is the one true church.  I believe it is a true church inasmuch as many paths up the mountain is a truism and other churches/religions see themselves as just such a path - a path to Divine, to Creator, to God, to Great Spirit, to Heavenly Father.   And for me to the Beloved....that being my word of choice for the deep connection I feel to Jesus born of adversity in my young child years when no one or no religion was there to define for me what my feeling of Jesus was or is now.

I do know that Joseph Smith founded this church, that he was viewed as a prophet in his time, that he viewed himself in that light, that members viewed him in that light then as do many now.  I have read of his history via the non-accepted and accepted literature.  I needed to know who this man was, what was compelling about him, about the church he founded to get a better understanding of why this church prevailed when other churches of the time dissolved.  I can say that I do believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, relative to his era and time period of the 19th century Reformation period of religion.  I can say I value his reasons for coming to the beliefs he had and shared.  I can say I value his personal history growing up and in his early marriage, the losses of death he experienced with his brother, with his children.  I can say that he remains an enigma to me in that no matter who is doing the describing of who he was, what his actions were, he was all of those things and more, making him not a saint or sainted in his contributions or as much a saint as saints were made.

I do not know that Jesus died and was resurrected and gave us atonement or entry to cleanse ourselves of a supposed sin of the falling of Adam and Eve.  I do not know even that Jesus as described in the New Testament gospel lived and walked among mankind.  I do however, know of Jesus, as Jesus came to me in my young years and have spent a lifetime looking at religion to try to fill in the definitions of what it means for Jesus to be Jesus.  Sometimes it was satisfying, sometimes I harnessed those definitions as my own, sometimes I was heartbroken to learn that perhaps none of it was true and was part of a mythology (the overarching story of a culture's attempt to explain to itself).   I will never know in a true sense of the word know, and I'm content with not knowing as much as I yearn for the beauty in my internal imaging of Jesus to be a truism.  And if not, it is an internal imaging of beauty for me, by which I can hang my star, guide my ship, walk my walk.

I do not know that there needs to be a true church as much as in the 19th century period, many Protestant religions formed in opposition to the Catholic Church of that period, desiring that they were the true church, had a truth no other churches had, uncovered truths not yet known or exposed, walked the path of early Christianity, the primitive church, had personal access directly and without intercessory intervention.   Had my young child self required intercessory intervention to know Jesus, I would not have had the friend I so needed and had to have in Jesus to withstand the adversity in which I found myself within my earthly family.

In deep respect then for what a testimony means to Mormons, and the heartfelt emotion they feel in bearing testimony, I can say in truthfulness and honesty that I have a testimony of this church.  And I can do that in great thanks to the elucidation that David Knowlton provided for me in wrapping up a lot of my own thoughts into a reflective format that says what I lacked the words to say yet felt at my intuitive level to be truths.  

Baptisms for the dead - an early Christian practice?

It remains on my mind that the Bishop said to me with a degree of emphasis on it being in the bible (he knows I have a strong leaning towards biblical text which I consider to be the gospel, having not yet fully embraced the BoM, D & C, PoGP as 'gospel') so much so, that I wanted to do my own follow up and see what I think the bible verse, chapter and context is trying to say.  Verse; 1 Corinthians 15:29  ²⁹Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead? 


Given that I am not taken to use of one verse as a methodology to create an entire concept or doctrine based on that verse, I was curious about the entire chapter and what was being said, to whom, by whom, along with some sense of the era or period of time in which it was being said as well as some of the customs/practices of that time.  It is a given that I cannot possible know what were customs/practices of an era of antiquity and must rely on scholarly studies, which of themselves are seldom in agreement.  More sorting, more puzzle pieces and I've long since abandoned an idea that with enough puzzle pieces I would be able to piece together an entire picture, rather a composite of fragments of customs/cultures and belief sets that have been shared, borrowed, confiscated, supplanting and/or augmenting the existing cultural belief sets.

It is my belief that it is impossible to gather enough information or ideas or concepts to glue together an overarching belief set thus having at last driven down to the 'truth' as a singular foundational underlaying of the many years of layers upon layers.  I think my mental approach wants to be a bit like an archaeological dig, getting down beneath the surface to find out what was buried over the eons.  And even then knowing whatever is found will still be subject to interpretation based on the finder's perspectives given his/her period in history. 


excerpt at ORB    (more closely matches my understanding of the Christian narrative, and I appreciated  as well as recommend reading the entire article)

Early Christian doctrines developed and were shaped over time; they were neither fixed nor stable. Once a doctrine was established it often necessitated a subsequent doctrine to define more precisely what was meant and to clarify the subtle nuances. Lived experience and understanding was the basis for the emergence of forming and re-forming doctrine. In other words, the need to develop doctrine about Jesus Christ emerged from the need to sort out what was truly Christian experience and life. In the words of the early church historian, Joseph Kelly:

The story of the Church begins at Pentecost with a frightened group of disciples wondering what will happen to them; it progresses through an almost frenetic attempt to win over the outside world before the Second Coming; it focuses on an epic struggle with the most powerful empire of the ancient world; it reaches its high point with the conversion of that empire to the new faith; it closes with the gradual decline of a great civilization and the emergence of a new world. It has a large canvas and broad brush strokes. While we must pay meticulous attention to the particulars, we must never forget the generalŠ(Kelly, "Why Study Early Church History?" 5)

I read the entire chapter of Corinthians for context, and continued to be nagged by the sense that this one particular verse pointed to something I had not yet explored for myself.  Further that it is not of substantive value to be mentioned in the Protestant narratives to which I had been exposed, nor the Episcopal narrative, meaning to me that it has been discounted as not relevant to the Protestant or Episcopal narratives.  If I bypass Protestant and Episcopal narratives, what do the religious studies have to say about this verse, being that it does point to some kind of custom being practiced in that time.  What practice, why, and from where does that practice stem? 

Chasing it down, I gain some knowledge of what is believed among some scholars to be the custom pointed to in the verse (along with a lot of sifting through the usual and typical finger pointing to the Mormon belief as heretical, false, misguided, etc.).  That is not what I'm after, I'm after some concrete sense of what custom, what practice, for what reason, why is Paul pointing it out at all unless it was being practiced and he knew of it.  And if so, is he finding a commonality he can point to in preaching the Christ resurrection or is he admonishing against something suggesting a replacement of belief sets, what he is preaching instead of the practice of what they are doing?   

It would be presumptuous for me to write that I found answers to what I was looking for as if that is the explanation.  Rather I would state that I did find thoughts about what I was looking for that cause me to pause a bit and let that information percolate a while.  Nonetheless, it becomes evident to me that somewhere in the Mormon history, the meanings attached to this verse, whether from Gnostic or otherwise belief sets, this verse brought the Mormon practice of baptisms for the dead alive as a ritual practice imbued with sacred meanings for those who teach it as well as those who believe it as well as those who practice it.  Iconography has sprung up with it to further imbue sacred meaning to the practice.  It is therefore real enough as it is practiced in the LDS church among the membership.

 I'm not having a problem with approaching it from that perspective.  I'm still stuck though on the a,b,c  element that ties tithing to temple, therefore ties tithing to the Mormon sacred ritual practice of performing baptisms for the dead, as it is performed only in the temple, not in the chapels and access to the temple requires a temple recommend which requires approval from a bishop which means responding with an honest degree of integrity to the questions posited by the bishop in which the question of 'do you pay a full tithing' requires an answer of yes or no.  The matter of defining what is a full tithing, as in one tenth of your personal increase has considerable wiggle room, and were we agreeable to paying some part of a tithing, could easily respond to the question with a yes with a personal degree of honest integrity.  The church has not been unclear in restating repetitiously it's requirements of members to pay tithing at a rate of ten percent or 1/10th of their income/increase.

It seems that I do not yet have a testimony of tithing, which is in fact prohibiting and impeding gaining a testimony of the temple, a testimony of baptism for the dead, a testimony of sealing, and as yet unknown to me other testimonies that involve temple, ie, personal endowments, ordinances and in truth because it is absent in my experience, I really don't yet know what else will be kept from me for the lack of temple experience.

It's an odd thing, because I have a belief in sharing, compassion, generosity of spirit, empathy for humankind, community, communion, and belonging.  While I recognize there is usually some sort of price to be paid for admittance to the tribe, be it initiation rituals, practices, customs as shared among the tribe, I have not yet encountered a must pay cash contribution situation.  Appreciating that it does take funding for most organizations, religious or otherwise, to function well, I'm not opposed to contributing for the sake of well being of the organizations ability to function.  I am not sold on a specific contribution amount being set as the price of admittance though - that concept troubles me.  

LDS taking a New Look at the New Testament in 2011. I'm relieved.

2011 agenda for the LDS church seems to be a focus on the New Testament scriptures  (video at LDS.org), and the scaffolding of how the NT was organized.  I'm Very Relieved, and perhaps in this element, I can make a small contribution.  At the lesson with the missionaries earlier this week, I explained that the reading of Jesus words per the BOM considerably flattened out the personage of Jesus as is unfolded in the NT scriptures.  It would have been greatly disappointed to think that Jesus reframed in the perspective of the BOM is the definitive Jesus that many among LDS point to when referencing Jesus.  

I look forward with anticipation and hope that emphasis this year among the LDS endeavors will bring Jesus into sharper focus, perhaps move Joseph Smith more into the background and not the forefront centrality of the story, the gospel, the good news.  And I truly say these things in the name of Jesus Christ...Amen.

On a quieter note, what I am learning via grace and via our experience with the people of this Ward, is the mentoring (intentional or not) to gentle my voice while telling my story (my testimony)