Religion and Community

This is mostly a rant about the operation of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints.  

In general  our church focuses on doctrinal teachings and how we're different from protestants or catholics,  etc etc. In practice, based on my own observations of people I know who join the church and nonmembers I know who have had some degree of exposure to the church,  the community and general loving atmosphere created by members within the church  is just as important as any actual doctrine.

This is completely contrary to what the church teaches even though meeting friends and common believers gets mentioned but not focused on when we teach about the sabbath. The whole idea of a church being a community is mentioned in the scriptures in a few places, yet its not something that we really focus on teaching.  The church teaches doctrine and belief and faith, and that is always what has kept me in the church; I could care less about community and making friends in the church, blah, blah, blah. Then again I am strange and actually enjoy being alone.

It does makes sense that community is such a big part of the church; all religions throughout history ultimately  have been a set of communal practices to one degree or another. The essential nature of community within the church is the only way to explain YSA(young single adult) wards. Spanish and other foreign language wards make sense to some degree because the service is actually in a different language,  but YSA wards only make sense if the church cares more about young people being part of a community of their peers than the actual doctrines of the church.

This juxtaposition simply really annoys me because I care about the theology of the church and don't think the presence of a community should be any part of why someone joins the church or even participates in the church. It irks me so!!!

Practical Religion

I just finished reading A Guide to Jewish Knowledge by Chaim Pearl and Reuben Brookes. In it the concept that Judaism is really a collection of practices, taboos, and accepted behavior and not a religion with a clearly defined theology, is discussed to a limited extent. I think that idea applies to most religions. Religion is more about the practice than belief; granted, people perform religious practices because they believe. Throughout most of history people practiced the religious rituals of their parents and community and so a belief in the efficacy of those rituals was built up at the same time. The people's belief was invested in the rituals handed down by their ancestors, not in specific dogma or doctrine. Belief about the divine was directly related to religious practices.

So, what's my point? Well, first off, Judaism is not unique in that practice takes precedence over theology. And second, related to D&D/RPGs, too often the religion of a country or setting is defined by the gods or pantheon worshiped and what they believe, and too little focus is given to how religion affects the lives of the people, particularly the PCs. When talking about religion in D&D too much focus is given to belief and not enough is given to practice. There were some good blog posts I read recently about how to build a religion based around rituals and taboos first, before even looking at belief, but I don't remember where I read it exactly. My takeaway is that we should develop a system of laws and taboos, and ritual and festival, etc when developing new religions for D&D instead of focusing so much on the gods and their dogma.

The Lord's Prayer

So I was reading 3rd Nephi this morning and read the chapters that are essentially the same as the sermon on the mount. And while reading the Lords Prayer in chapter 13 I noticed a pattern that doesn't exactly match up with the pattern of prayer often taught among the LDS church.

In the church we are taught to start are prayers by addressing God, then thank him for things we are grateful for and then petition for our needs/wants and close in the name of Jesus Christ. There are variations of course, and everyone learns to pray in their own way, but this is the basic pattern taught to people new to the church.

I'm going to go through the Lord's Prayer line by line and try to suss out how it can be generally applied:

"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."
We see Christ start the prayer pretty much in the same way the church teaches, by adressing our Father in heaven. However, Chirst doesn't just address his father, he also praises him at the same time.

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
This can be seen as a sort of continuation of the praises to God begun in the first sentence. By putting God's will above all others, including our own, we glorify his nature. We are saying that He is greater than all other things, so it is His will that should be fulfilled and no one else's. By doing this we are setting ourselves as subservient of God and willing to accept his judgments.

"And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
Here we ask for forgiveness of our sins, and pledge to extend the same mercy to those we encounter in life.

"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Here is where we ask god for something as is taught by the church, but not for whatever we want. By setting ourselves subservient to God previously, what we ask for must be help in following Him and not turning away to sin.

"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."
And close by Praising God again, repeating the sentiment at the beginning.

So, in summary the Lord's Prayer teaches us to start our prayers by praising God, followed by putting His will above ours, then ask for forgiveness of our sins and help in not falling prey to those sins again, and finally finish by praising God again.