At least one scriptural example of someone being pretty honest about their personal struggles springs to mind: 2nd Nephi 4 ( http://scriptures.lds.org/en/2_ne/4/17#17 ) in which Nephi describes himself as a “wretched man” whose soul “droops in sin.”

For me the question of whether people really change has always been a compelling one. I think American art and culture tends to believe in unrealistically drastic and easy transformations, (reality shows like the Biggest Loser are one pop culture example of this,) whereas other cultures take a different approach–Western Europeans, for example, currently seem to be much more cynical about the possibility for real change, at least if you go by the evidence that their movies tend not to have happy endings. I prefer and relate to the American redemptive view, but, besides substituting all kinds of alternate atoning agents in place of the Savior, Americans also tend, as I said above, to greatly oversimplify and overstate the easiness of the transformation, which cheapens and falsifies it.

So do I believe that people really get anywhere in this life? My short answer is yes; my longer answer is that sometimes I do think I’m moving a lot more slowly than I’d like to, or not at all, or going backwards. It’s frustrating. But I do like to frame my personal narrative in terms of spiritual (and other) achievements and remind myself of all the times I’ve felt my prayers answered or been saved from peril. I think the chapter of Nephi that I cited expresses that approach very eloquently. “I know in whom I have trusted. My God hath been my asupport,” etc.We need to remember and give validity to the times when we’ve been carried by the Spirit and have been helped. I think the principle of opposition in all things means we can’t expect to always be in the high places of our spiritual lives; peaks are meaningless without intermittent valleys. And I think another way to frame your question is: Which is real; which should you give credibility to, the peaks or the valleys? And if you’re really going to end up in the same valley over and over again, were you really ever up on that peak or were you just kidding yourself? My only answer to this (for you and for me) is that that’s exactly where faith comes into play. Faith is many things and a whole huge topic unto itself, but I think that at least one aspect of it is choosing to believe that our past times of spiritual enlightenment–of being carried by the Spirit–were real, and will come again.

In the particular case you described, maybe you could accept that you feel like you haven’t gotten anywhere with specific questions or concerns you had back in the day, but also remind yourself of all the progress you’ve made with other spiritual gifts or in developing skills, or of times you’ve felt the Spirit, etc., and exercise faith that those things count, even if one big hurdle remains unpassed and even seems impassable. Maybe this is a facile/naive/American approach to the problem, but I guess I’m at heart an optimist–at least where it comes to our ability to be saved and helped by Christ.

I have one other side-observation. You said:

“You remind me of that old social-science joke about how God’s experiment upon humanity wouldn’t have a prayer (as it were) of getting past the human-subjects committee (no informed consent for us, that’s for sure!)” Funny joke–but contradicted by the teaching that we indeed chose to come here during the spirit war in the premortal existence. (Maybe you were acknowledging that when you said “Too late.”)

For most of my life, I’ve handled my revulsion at stasis by breaking things. As I’ve come to see that damage that my walking away, running away, etc. has caused other people, I’ve tried to stop breaking things and acquiesce to the reality that some things about me and others are not likely to change quickly and that I may as well stick it out.

I do, however, let things that can break break. I give up labels that I’ve put on myself. I quit jobs. I move. I withdraw from some people’s company. I quit posting to blogs. I come to the conclusion that on many things it’s me that is full of horse pucky. Whatever. Goodness. ~

Yes. ~

One of the thing i think can frustrate us with the scriptures is the way that we have to deal with the changing expectation of how stories are told.

For example the modern standard of realism in characterization in a novel was basically invented by jJane Austin 200 years ago and was still not required in a novel as late as The Lord of the Rings. In ancient times it was standard practice that if you new X person had given a rousing speech to whip up the troops for Y battle, as no one had usually bothered to wright it down you just wrote your own. And this happened as late as Shakespeare.

There is a lot of clues to the gaps in the emotional narrative (Paul’s letters are full of them) showing that things used to be there but I would bet “corrupt Priests, and careless transcribers” left the open acknowledgment of them out because they made pushing their agendas a lot more complicated.

Regarding the cyclical nature of our trials, here are three statements by the Savior, some current research on learning, and a thought.

Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.

The fundimental principle on which everything else that the curch teaches is based is that the purpose of this existence is to make us in to beings like our Father in Hevean and his son Jesus Christ. This means tht we are going to hve to develop the same qualityies of love, mercy, patience, endurance and forgivnes that they have.

The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

In developing the atributes of Goddliness we will have to go through the struggles nessasary to get them.

Just like Christ did.

Here is the bit of reasearch

“The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

Basicly getting good at some thing takes practice.

Now the doctrinren of the church is that we are here on Earth to learn things that we didn’t learn in the Pre-existance and can’t learn any other way.

Now for the last scripture.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

One of the things that Heavanly Father and Jesus
have to put up with is that no mater how often the reveal the Gospel and Plan of Salvation, put our hand on the Iron Rod, lift us when we fall and call call to us with both blessing and chastisment, we still go running off through the mist toward the great and spacious building every chance we get.

one of the things I get from reading the scriptures is that God experinces trials and heartache if any thing MORE than we do.

Consider the tone of the Loard of the vinyard as he prunes and digs and grafts all day long and still can’t get his trees to grow good fruit consistantly. Or consider the Lord weeping in Moses 7 because of the wickedness of his children.

He has to put up with us making the same mistakes day after day year after year 6 billion + people at a time.

From all this it follows that one of the skills that we will need to develop in this life is how to handel comming up against the same trials over, and over, and over, and over……

Eternaty, after all, is one eternal round and etrnal things are there for cyclical and repeating.

Even trials.

(over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over……)

So when we “liken the scriptures unto ourselves” are we supposed to imagine the narrative gaps even though the inevitable complicated negative emotions of the characters in these gaps have not been acknowledged or even validated in the conventions of scriptural discourse, the very discourse that is supposed to shape the horizons of our spirituality and document God’s relationship with His children?

I really like this suggestion, Fideline.

“I also really like your point about how our religious crisis stories are narrated from the point of resolution. This is such a pernicious bias, because as you’re getting at with your questions, it can lead us to expect, while we’re struggling in the middle of crises, that we will see what lies ahead. Because of course it’s always possible after the fact to construct a compelling narrative into which all the twists and turns fit neatly. But that doesn’t mean that this is at all clear when we’re in the midst of it. That’s my experience, anyway.”

Maybe we only tell linear narratives about spiritual crises because that is the scriptural model. I have been feeling frustrated with the scriptures because they almost never narrate the in-between anguish of a spiritual crisis. Alma the Elder must have (sometimes) felt bitter, angry, and guilty in the years that he prayed for his son’s welfare. So many parents in the scriptures wait lifetimes for children, yet the stories begin at the child’s birth or at the miraculous portent heralding the birth and all the years of personal pain and social ostracization disappear. Or, what was Abraham feeling on his journey up Mount Moriah (Kierkegaard barely scratches the surface of possible scenarios)? The few stories in which the characters express negative emotions generally have become “bad” or “problematic” examples of a “faithful” person. Is Sariah really a “murmurer” because she is a mother panicking in the desert? I don’t need to loose my children, my livelihood, my health, and have all my former friends be convinced that I committed a serious sin as Job suffered before I ask God “why me?”

So when we “liken the scriptures unto ourselves” are we supposed to imagine the narrative gaps even though the inevitable complicated negative emotions of the characters in these gaps have not been acknowledged or even validated in the conventions of scriptural discourse, the very discourse that is supposed to shape the horizons of our spirituality and document God’s relationship with His children?

I need to make peace with the fact that in this life I will not be able to make peace.

I think that it is making peace and nurturing patience and love that leads us closer to resolutions than any other thing.

To the extent what we are doing takes us away from that, we are headed in directions that don’t resolve us in the long run.

My thoughts.

Mark N., no doubt it won’t be possible to keep my laptop by my child much longer, but at the moment her range is still quite limited. Food and other items generally go straight over the tray’s edge to the floor.

I really liked what Mark said:

I’ve concluded that most of the new problems I face are just old ones, repackaged, and most of them are at least partly a function of my own personality and character. I have certain gifts as well as certain limitations and the combination of these characteristics produces some interesting results, again and again and again.

That’s what I keep finding as well.

Sybil, thanks–and good point about Joseph Smith. I think your model of acceptable/traditional stories versus unacceptable/non-traditional ones also applies to church history, for example. (I’m thinking here of someone in my life who is really upset over Rough Stone Rolling and feels that that dicey stuff about Joseph Smith shouldn’t have been included, especially not by an active faithful believing member. One way to look at this is that Bushman didn’t tell the right kind of story.)

Ziff’, very good points about bias and the expectations that these stories set us up for. That’s part of what I’m struggling with here–to what extent can I expect to achieve the resolution of peace and happiness (it sounds so good!), and to what extent do I need to make peace with my lack of peace? I’m inclining more and more toward the latter.

Angie, thanks for stopping by. Your explanation is certainly flattering, although I don’t feel particularly talented at most things! I guess where I’m stymied, though, is at the point of accessing the divine calculus. God gave me these goods, and so had to give me these evils to balance it out? We often talk that way in church, but I’m just not sure how we can ever know that’s the case. I confess ‘m particularly reluctant to think in terms of balance given the overwhelming evils that some face.

But in any case, I appreciate your comments and hope you’ll stop by again.

Too late. You should have asked that question prior to your arrival.

Mike, indeed I should have. You remind me of that old social-science joke about how God’s experiment upon humanity wouldn’t have a prayer (as it were) of getting past the human-subjects committee (no informed consent for us, that’s for sure!)

Stephen/Ethesis puts his finger on the part of this that bothers me the most. All of this cycling and struggle may indeed be inevitable–that’s the view I’m leaning toward at the moment–but I don’t want to be arrogant and cynical and disengaged. To some extent it seems an inevitable result of bringing up in issues in church that I’ve thought about for years, only to have them dismissed with platitudes by people who, in some cases, don’t seem to have thought about them for five minutes.

Being a Christian in a Christian community is an ongoing challenge for me.

I too like JNS’s suggestion that spiritual gifts can be a productive way to understand this kind of pattern, and I also like his point about the limitations of personal emotional (or perhaps spiritual?) experience in confronting these issues. (And seven is precocious! I didn’t have my first spiritual crisis until I was at least nine.)

CS Eric puts his finger on the role that community interactions play in my personal spiritual life (and, I suspect, in the spiritual lives of others as well). Personally I find that when I feel a sense of connection and belonging to the community, when I have a contribution to make and friends there, my religious life is simply easier. When I feel on the margins, I’m cast back on my own resources, and I find it harder to believe in a loving God when I’m finding church painful and difficult. This may be an inevitability of belonging to a church that claims divine authority.

And to go back to something JNS said:

By the time I was 14, I had become deeply concerned about questions regarding women’s place in the church — which fit nicely with my older, and very persistent, concerns about whether God as described in our scriptures and our theology is actually morally good.

If I had to articulate my single most significant point of religious crisis, the issue that in some ways underlies all other issues, this would be it.

Lynnette, thanks especially for your observations about the tendency to blame yourself when the resolution or spiritual experience fades and you’re back to struggling with the same issues. To pick up on Sybil’s fine observation about making space for other kinds of stories, I agree that we’re well served by a greater variety of experiences for precisely this reason–then I don’t find myself wondering why everyone else seems to have such a linear narrative, and mine is so circular.