H
HonoraDominum
Guest
My (EF-FSSP) parish recently started a bible study class every other week revolving around the Jeff Cavins “Great Adventure” Catholic bible study videos. I found the first week fantastic, but the second and third classes made my head spin.
Have you ever learned the wrong lyrics to a song? Then every time you hear the song, in your head you hear both the wrong and right lyrics? That’s how it feels when I’m in this bible study class. Cavins and the Father were talking about creationism and I kept having flashbacks of the “Creation” videos in the temple, which I saw over and over as an active LDS temple-goer. I knew in my head that there wasn’t two people standing next to each other creating everything, but I couldn’t get that image out of my head. Then we got to a line in Genesis 11:7 - “Come, let us go down.” It totally threw me - that was the line from the LDS temple ceremony, and “us” was referring to God and Christ as two separate beings, and yet here it was in the Douay-Rheims Bible! I wracked my brain for a few minutes and finally gave in and looked up Abraham on my iPhone to make sure my brain was on straight.
I think I’ve figured out the problem. I’ve loved learning about the devotion to the Sacred Heart, and have gained great spiritual fruit from Eucharistic adoration and praying the Rosary daily and daily mass and reading the lives of the Saints. Carmelite spirituality in particular, that unique contemplative relationship with God, has transformed my life. But none of this overlapped with my Mormon upbringing, and Primary songs, and Seminary in high school, and Institute in college and as a young adult, and years and years of Sunday School. Oddly enough, even studying the New Testament has brought very little overlap into my personal studies because - and can I get a “Oh My Heck, Yeah!” from the ExMos? - we rarely studied Christ in the New Testament (“as far as it is translated correctly”). I always studied Christ in the Book of Mormon, when I studied Christ at all. We did a lot of learning of the stories in the Book of Mormon, homemaking, journaling, food storage, genealogy, Visiting Teaching, etc. instead of, you know, learning about God. But reading Genesis has a TON of overlap with the disordered ceremonies in the LDS temples from Abraham, and the flawed teaching of the nature of Christ and God in the LDS church.
And just hearing “Let Us Go Down” in my beautiful, Christ filled parish made me queasy. It felt like looking at my husband and, just for a faint moment, seeing that skeevy ex-boyfriend from college. I have absolutely no desire to associate the two in my mind in any way whatsoever.
So here are my struggles: Should I give my marked up Quad to my priest, to get the temptations away from my home? I find when I even look at the book, not even opening it to read, I lose my peace and feel guilty for trying to get the “old” stuff and the new stuff straight in my head. I fear that the doubts in God that I had when I left the LDS church will seep into my Catholic teachings. Should I quit the bible study and find something slower-paced on my own? Should I take my priest up on his offer to give me special healing blessings to help heal the damage done by my LDS past?
And most importantly, have any of you other ExMos struggled with formal scripture study since joining the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church?
Have you ever learned the wrong lyrics to a song? Then every time you hear the song, in your head you hear both the wrong and right lyrics? That’s how it feels when I’m in this bible study class. Cavins and the Father were talking about creationism and I kept having flashbacks of the “Creation” videos in the temple, which I saw over and over as an active LDS temple-goer. I knew in my head that there wasn’t two people standing next to each other creating everything, but I couldn’t get that image out of my head. Then we got to a line in Genesis 11:7 - “Come, let us go down.” It totally threw me - that was the line from the LDS temple ceremony, and “us” was referring to God and Christ as two separate beings, and yet here it was in the Douay-Rheims Bible! I wracked my brain for a few minutes and finally gave in and looked up Abraham on my iPhone to make sure my brain was on straight.
I think I’ve figured out the problem. I’ve loved learning about the devotion to the Sacred Heart, and have gained great spiritual fruit from Eucharistic adoration and praying the Rosary daily and daily mass and reading the lives of the Saints. Carmelite spirituality in particular, that unique contemplative relationship with God, has transformed my life. But none of this overlapped with my Mormon upbringing, and Primary songs, and Seminary in high school, and Institute in college and as a young adult, and years and years of Sunday School. Oddly enough, even studying the New Testament has brought very little overlap into my personal studies because - and can I get a “Oh My Heck, Yeah!” from the ExMos? - we rarely studied Christ in the New Testament (“as far as it is translated correctly”). I always studied Christ in the Book of Mormon, when I studied Christ at all. We did a lot of learning of the stories in the Book of Mormon, homemaking, journaling, food storage, genealogy, Visiting Teaching, etc. instead of, you know, learning about God. But reading Genesis has a TON of overlap with the disordered ceremonies in the LDS temples from Abraham, and the flawed teaching of the nature of Christ and God in the LDS church.
And just hearing “Let Us Go Down” in my beautiful, Christ filled parish made me queasy. It felt like looking at my husband and, just for a faint moment, seeing that skeevy ex-boyfriend from college. I have absolutely no desire to associate the two in my mind in any way whatsoever.
So here are my struggles: Should I give my marked up Quad to my priest, to get the temptations away from my home? I find when I even look at the book, not even opening it to read, I lose my peace and feel guilty for trying to get the “old” stuff and the new stuff straight in my head. I fear that the doubts in God that I had when I left the LDS church will seep into my Catholic teachings. Should I quit the bible study and find something slower-paced on my own? Should I take my priest up on his offer to give me special healing blessings to help heal the damage done by my LDS past?
And most importantly, have any of you other ExMos struggled with formal scripture study since joining the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church?
) will move on to the other 13 books included in the study. I don’t remember how many of the lessons are in Genesis and I don’t know how much of the rest of the books will have such strong connections to your past but I would recommend continuing with the study. It is a great overview of Catholic understanding of scripture and that is an important foundation in furthering your faith. As to the quad and the blessings, I would definitely remove the quad since it disrupts your peace and blessings are always welcome.
. That is the advise I gave to a friend who had the same struggle, with a different subject. ( Probably will offend half the Catholcs and all the Mormns, but I think you know what I mean.) it is the same advise that was given to me, by a friend who was with me the first time I walked into a Catholic Church, when I was afraid to walk through the doors…at that point I had been an atheist for over 20years.