Warning! This material might be considered irreverent and unholy. Proceed with caution!
Adam-ondi-Ahman
I never knew Adam was a fellow countryman. I learned this information from my home teacher this evening. It piqued my interest, so when I questioned him about it and he didn't know the answer, I decided to investigate. He offered to get back to me, but I decided not to wait.
First, I went to the church's website. I searched for garden of eden, garden of eden missouri, adam-blah blah blah. I'm thinking that this is some pretty serious information. I mean, DAMN!! Adam is real!?!? And he's American?!? This kind of information shouldn't be hidden amongst primary lessons and random conference talks, should it? After glossing over reading many (like 5) boring talks, I finally found something explicit about it in a New Era article from 2003. It confirmed what the Almighty google told me right off the bat (the first and only search). What's funny is that the thing I found so quickly that is straightforward, to the point, annotated, and uncluttered, is from an 'anti' website.
Loaded question alert!!!!!
Why is it so difficult to find information about churchy doctrinal things on their website? Is it just me?
9 comments:
This might answer your (loaded) question. It's from everyone's favorite (homophobe) apostle, Boyd K. Packer, in a 1981 talk:
"There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not.
Some things that are true are not very useful."
The "churchy doctrinal things" you're looking for are likely true things, but not useful enough for us to have access to them from official sources.
You know, milk before meat and all that.
I don't find it irreverant or unholy at all and I do find the church's website hard to navagate...but I learned about that in sunday school jen harper showed us pictures of it....
Yeah, that's something we learned growing up in the church. Although I couldn't really tell you when or where - maybe Primary? Or Seminary? Not sure which. And yeah, it can seem like a bit of a wacky concept. But basically, like with any religion, if you believe the religion's basic principles and tenets, then the wacky stuff that comes along with it is easier to swallow. And if you DON'T believe the basic principles and tenets of the religion, then it's just basically wacky, end of story.
Now, as to your loaded question about why it's so difficult to find information about churchy doctrinal things on their website, as much as I love a conspiracy story, I'm not sure there's one in this case. Have you checked out other religions' websites to see if you can find the intricacies of their doctrine? Don't think you'd find it there either.
I agree. I'm working on an essay about the history of the priesthood. I am able to glean a lot from the scriptures, but it is really hard to find any commentary on the priesthood outside of "these are out priesthood duties" and all the proper authorities discussions.
I think the biggest problem is that they have a poor search engine. Something straight out of the late '80's in terms of ability to find what you are looking for.
In fact it seems that whenever the church does something on a computer, it leaves a lot to be desired.
My general experience has been the opposite -- whenever I've typed in a google search on a controversial/non-useful Mormon topic the first sites that pop up to answer my question are from lds.org and other church sponsored sites. I figured it was part of LDS Inc.'s evil conspiracy to take over the internet.
On a sort of related note, we had a guest speaker when I was in seminary many many moons ago. He was a convert who, while studying to be a Methodist (? I think) minister, wrote his thesis about the location of the Garden of Eden. He concluded that based on the Biblical record it had to be (dun dun dun) in Missouri!!! So yeah, he had to become a Mormon because he had an uncanny knack for proving the truth of Mormon doctrine based on that other book of mythology. Thank god he didn't study Blood Atonement.
I once asked my husband why some of the stranger doctrines/ideas of the church weren't brought up in missionary discussions. I mean, why not lay it all out there--"We used to be polygamists but now we're not. There's this place called Kolob where we think God lives. The Garden of Eden was in Missouri."
None of those things are secret--I mean, we sang "If You could Hie to Kolob" the first Sunday I ever attended church--so why not get them out there from the start?
His answer was along the lines of those things not being important. They weren't necessary for salvation, etc...
Anyway, I think one of the problems is simply bad technology on the church's part. In this particular case, I don't think it's a matter of trying to deliberately make it difficult to find. I'd been taught about Adam-Ohndi-Ahman in lessons over the years, and there's a hymn about it that is sung regularly.
I'm actually a little surprised you'd never heard of it before.
Having said that, there are other topics of church doctrine that are simply not addressed at all on LDS.org, and I've had to go elsewhere to get any information at all. (FAIR and FARMS are both good places to get non "anti" info about broader topics than are covered on LDS.org).
I do remember the hymn. I think I was turned off because of the name(shallow). I'm not a big fan of hymns anyway. Even when I was all about the church, I didn't really care for them.
The search engine does suck. Why don't they hire someone to do a better job? They have enough money.
I prefer the conspiracy theory. TYVM.
I never thought to look at FARMS or FAIR.
What about Moses 3:13-14? It seems like a contradiction.
You know there's always some explanation for the contradictions. In case you haven't noticed, God changes His mind a lot.
Well, what is it then? Any priesthoods out there who could answer?
Lol. Asess is my verification word. Love it!
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