Education

Faith and Intellectual Integrity

| briansabey

I hope this essay will be helpful for dealing with honest questions and for helping others who are dealing with honest questions related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many of the things I write will apply equally or almost equally to faith journeys within other religions as well.

When people leave the Church, I would suspect that their questions about doctrine and history are not usually the main issue, but in many and probably most cases, they are one of the issues. And I think such questions can be more productively dealt with in a Church culture where there is, perhaps appropriately, certain pressures to express certainty and to stand united behind all the teachings of the prophets, and where our manuals and lesson plans tend—again, perhaps appropriately—to focus on reaffirming core doctrine rather than exploring the limits of what we know. Continue reading →

Why we must resist demonization, Even of the worst fascists

| briansabey

As I begin to write about the worst Fascists (i.e., the Nazis), it occurs to me that humanity is altogether more wonderful and more terrible than we commonly imagine it, more angelic and more diabolical. The mundanity and the moral and intellectual mediocrity of most lives is not the native and inevitable condition of the average human soul, but rather an impasse between vast forces of good and evil and immense impulses towards life and towards death. From this conflict we seek refuge in numbing routine and stultifying dogma, content for the most part to experience the battle at a safe remove, transmuted into art. Our impulse towards life and effort, fierce as the Sun, is satiated, because we are thinking and acting; and our impulse towards rest and stillness, inexorable as outer space, is mollified because our thoughts and actions rotate, like the Earth itself, in the same circuit every day. Continue reading →

In Defense OF DEVILS

| briansabey

How’s this for a lighthearted proof of the devil’s existence: there is no reason that a person cannot at one and the same time have a robust moral code and charity towards those who fail to satisfy its rigors. That is in fact what Christianity has always demanded. Likewise, there is no reason one cannot have both a commitment to systematic foundational doctrines and openness to other perspectives and even to revising one’s own most basic beliefs in response to new evidence or insights. Yet for some mysterious reason, despite numerous individuals and even small sub-cultures demonstrating that these ideals can be achieved, they have never been realized by any society in recent recorded history, nor have any of the ancient societies that have claimed to have achieved some utopic vision at some point in their history been able to maintain the achievement.

Western society before the Enlightenment had a comparatively exacting moral code and a strong commitment to certain doctrines, including but not limited to those of Christianity, yet it was decidedly unchristian in its responses to moral infractions and religious dissent. There is no reason it could not have progressed towards tolerance and openness while keeping its faith. That is exactly what Christianity’s law of love required, and I think it was desire for power far more than for truth or for God that caused intolerance and dogmatism to be so dominant for so long. Martin Luther King Junior’s message, though not all aspects of his life, perfectly demonstrated the possibility of remaining fully Christian while moving away from dogmatism and intolerance, and he is only one prominent figure within a multitude of whom the same could be said. Their stories are the leaven within the story of civilization. “I have seen the promised land,” he claimed–and for my part, I believe him. 

But we have not followed Martin Luther King’s message of brotherhood. Continue reading →

Ambiguity and [Un]healthy Sexuality in the World and in the Church [4]

| briansabey

PART 4: UNHEALTHY SEXUALITY IN THE CHURCH

http://blogs.hebronacademy.org/americanlitc/2017/05/24/sin-guilt-dimmesdale-essay/

While the World’s sexuality belongs properly to hell, the Church is too often caused to lift up its eyes in torment because of sexual guilt. If sexuality’s main effect in one’s consciousness is to cause guilt, it is not healthy, albeit still preferable to the drunken sexuality that is past feeling the tug of morality.

I have previously defined the Church broadly enough to encompass any religion that recognizes that God rightfully regulates human sexuality, and I assume that the experience of the practitioners of other religions is comparable. But I do not actually know that, and for the remainder of this essay, the Church will refer more specifically to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where I know from personal experience and by report that the problems I identify are not uncommon. I will designate this as the (lower case “c”) church.

The prevalence of excessive sexual guilt is understandable, especially given the toxic cultural environment in which the church operates, where sexual desire is intentionally and incessantly stimulated by advertisers, media, and peers alike. Lucretius once theorized that the male sexual response to the visual stimulus of female bodies is a strictly automatic, glandular event. While I can positively affirm that this oversimplifies the matter, I see where he was coming from. It is perhaps strictly impossible for most men to avoid being attuned to the sexual. It is interesting as well as fraught—an object of curiosity as well as desire. While a man may be enabled to choose a chaste response to a beautiful woman immodestly advertising her availability, he cannot choose indifference. And yet those who align with the church are taught that they must not intentionally stimulate or condone the intentional stimulation of sexual feelings in their own bodies or those of anyone else except within marriage—and even then only when it edifies. Anything outside this context violates the law of chastity. Continue reading →

Is It Possible To Transition Genders?

| briansabey

There are two competing claims in the debate on transgender issues. The first is the historical norm of Western culture: one’s gender should be considered the same as one’s objective biological sex. The second is the core assertion of the transgender movement: a person’s gender should be viewed by others and by the law as a matter of subjective identity. Both claims are defensible, but both cannot be right. I will refer to these two views as the objective and subjective views even though I admit these terms are problematic. My conclusion (spoiler alert) is that both views should be respected, since (among other reasons) there is no possibility of any public proof that either is right or wrong.

The clearest thinkers on both sides of the debate acknowledge a valid distinction between (1) the mere fact of biological differences between males and females and (2) the things that culture and psychology do with the concepts of “male” and “female.” This culturally and psychologically generated construct has come to be distinguished from biological sex and called “gender,” though the terms are still often used synonymously. Acknowledging this theoretical distinction, the practical issue of what to do about the possibility that an individual’s gender identity may differ from the individual’s biological sex remains entirely unresolved.

Continue reading →

Amy Barrett’s Confirmation And The State Of The Union

| briansabey

I am personally thrilled with Amy Barrett as the newest Supreme Court Justice, though far from thrilled by the process by which she became such (including the Republican-controlled Senate’s procedural hypocrisy in deferring Garland’s hearing but rushing Barrett’s). But amid the discouraging signs of the politicization of the Supreme Court confirmation process, the decline of political discourse in general, and the nation’s increasing polarization, I read one article that I found very encouraging: a self-proclaimed liberal writer who personally knew Justice Barrett back in her days as a clerk for Scalia and who, though anticipating that he will disagree with many of her opinions, is glad that the court is getting a brilliant legal thinker who is also a good person. The nation deeply needs this kind of capacity to recognize goodness and merit in people who are on “the other side,” and I want to recognize and honor that when I see it. Continue reading →