Endowment

[Jamie123]

I've been fascinated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the sisters randomly visited my house 33 years ago, and - though I clearly know less about it than actual members do - I think I'm more knowledgeable than the average nonmember. But I still occasionally learn something new that throws me through a bit of a loop.

I had always taken it for granted that all serious LDS members (I'm not talking here about nominal or non-practicing members) have either been through the Temple endowment ceremony, or else were working towards it. Why would I assume such a thing? Well...I suppose because the Temples are so central to the Church, that you would expect members' lives to be focused towards them - even as an aspiration, if they are not yet ready to partake of what the Temple ordinances offer.

However, I recently watched a video by ****** ******** which made me think. It's enough to know that ****** ******** left the Church after being endowed, serving a mission and being sealed to her husband. (I'm guessing ******** must be her maiden name, because she often appears on her YouTube videos wearing a missionary badge with the name "Sister ********" on it.) I shan't write out her name because that would probably get me suspended from this forum, but I think many people will know who I'm talking about. Anyone who doesn't will not find out much by Googling "****** ********".

Anyway, she said that most people going through the Temple endowment are either preparing for a mission, or else for marriage. Occasionally (she claimed) other people went through the endowment, but this was rare. Now I'm well aware that LDS members are encouraged to marry (in order to have children and thus provide mortal bodies for the premortal spirits waiting to be born) but is it true that a non-prospective-missionary with no prospect of marriage would have nothing significant to gain from receiving the endowment, and should not necessarily aspire to it?

I did a bit more Googling and found an article by a lady (this one a faithful member) that somewhat confirmed this. She had never been a missionary, was not married and had no intention of marrying, who had nevertheless been endowed. She said that both her Bishop and her Stake President had advised her against endowment because (i) the whole process is geared towards married people, and as a single woman she would feel horribly out of place, and (ii) if she ever broke the law of chastity after being endowed it would be a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible (x 100) sin, far worse than if she had not been endowed. Despite this pushback she was eventually given a Temple recommend and went through the ceremony.

Now I know there are "proxy endowments" (just as there are "proxy baptisms" and "proxy confirmations"), so presumably a faithful member who dies without having sought endowment is relying upon an endowed member performing the ceremony on their behalf later. But I have never heard of anyone who is a true believer deliberately delaying baptism until after death.

I don't doubt there is a good reason for this - I'm just curious.

Edited November 29, 2024 by Jamie123
Wrote "member" when I meant "missionary"

[pam]

1 hour ago, Jamie123 said:

But I have never heard of anyone who is a true believer deliberately delaying baptism until after death.

 

My grandfather was one. He would have been baptized in a heartbeat, but to keep peace in his marriage, he didn't. My grandmother was a very devout Seventh-day Adventist.  As I was growing up whenever we would visit you would always find him in a conversation with my dad about our beliefs. 

My dad did his proxy work for him after he passed. My grandfather was not a demonstrative person when it came to showing affection. But my dad said he could feel arms around him like someone was hugging him in the temple that day.  

[zil2]

13 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

Anyway, she said that most people going through the Temple endowment are either preparing for a mission, or else for marriage.

That was the case 3 decades ago and before.  IMO, that's about the time it started to change, but maybe a little earlier or later, perhaps depending on region.

In the past decade, Church leaders have explicitly said this was not the case and encouraged all adult members to prepare for and receive their endowment.

13 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

is it true that a non-prospective-missionary with no prospect of marriage would have nothing significant to gain from receiving the endowment, and should not necessarily aspire to it?

Absolutely not true.  I was endowed a few years before I had any prospect of marriage.  Also, see above.   I don't know how or why it became the norm not to be endowed until you were preparing for a mission or marriage, but those days are long past.

13 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

She said that both her Bishop and her Stake President had advised her against endowment because (i) the whole process is geared towards married people, and as a single woman she would feel horribly out of place, and (ii) if she ever broke the law of chastity after being endowed it would be a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible (x 100) sin, far worse than if she had not been endowed. Despite this pushback she was eventually given a Temple recommend and went through the ceremony.

i. Yeah, OK, but there are plenty of blessings to be had regardless of marital status.  And I don't think I've ever been to an endowment session in my life where there weren't a lot more women present than men - often with the "extra" women sitting on the men's side - in separate rows, at the back (just to separate the women from the men somehow while still allowing all who wished to attend).

ii. Smack those men.  Way to show confidence in a sister's ability to remain faithful.  Way to show confidence in repentance and grace.

I'm gonna go look for that GC talk I remember encouraging everyone to get endowed...

 

Edited November 30, 2024 by zil2

[zil2]

President Nelson, October 2021 GC, "The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation"

Quote

If I could speak to each man or woman who longs for marriage but has not yet found his or her eternal companion, I would urge you not to wait until marriage to be endowed in the house of the Lord. Begin now to learn and experience what it means to be armed with priesthood power.

Sister Bingham repeated this in April 2022, "Covenants with God Strengthen, Protect, and Prepare us for Eternal Glory".

I don't remember it being explicitly said before President Nelson, but I know from my own experience that attitudes were different (no longer "only if going on a mission or getting married") back in the late 90s when I started preparing for my own endowment.

[Ironhold]

1 hour ago, zil2 said:

President Nelson, October 2021 GC, "The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation"

Sister Bingham repeated this in April 2022, "Covenants with God Strengthen, Protect, and Prepare us for Eternal Glory".

I don't remember it being explicitly said before President Nelson, but I know from my own experience that attitudes were different (no longer "only if going on a mission or getting married") back in the late 90s when I started preparing for my own endowment.

Maybe where you were, but where I was it was very much "if you're not going on a mission or getting married, then don't bother" well through the 2000s. 

[SilentOne]

I was going to say something like @zil2 but she beat me to it. Except I expect most probably will continue to receive their endowments shortly before mission or marriage largely because and endowment is required for a mission or temple sealing, and those often happen pretty early in adulthood.

When I was a young woman in the late 90s/early 00s, I got a message something like any adult can go through the temple if they feel prepared, but probably wait a few years unless you're getting married or going on a mission. When I went to get my recommend for my own endowment at around 25, not in preparation for mission or marriage, the stake president asked me how old I was and said it was probably appropriate at that age.

[Carborendum]

9 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

I don't doubt there is a good reason for this - I'm just curious.

All that you said was correct.  But at the same time each claim was completely incorrect.

I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good to clarify.  Sorry.

[Jamie123]

42 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

All that you said was correct.  But at the same time each claim was completely incorrect.

I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good to clarify.  Sorry.

Much as I hate the expression "fair enough".... "Fair enough". 😀

Edited November 29, 2024 by Jamie123

[Vort]

My daughter received her endowment a year or two ago, at about the age of 22. She was not preparing either to marry or to serve a mission. She just became convinced that it was a good thing for her to do. And it seems to have been just that. She continues to date* and remains faithful to her covenants, including her temple covenants. One day she will marry, but she has already received her endowment.

*In LDS parlance, "to date" means "to court", not "to casually hook up with". Faithful Latter-day Saints do not "hook up" with anyone except their spouses, not with girlfriends or boyfriends or even fiancé(e)s.

Edited November 30, 2024 by Vort

[Just_A_Guy]

10 hours ago, Ironhold said:

Maybe where you were, but where I was it was very much "if you're not going on a mission or getting married, then don't bother" well through the 2000s. 

It’s worth pointing out that in those days, we didn’t talk a lot about the possibility that some members (especially women) would remain single for their entire lives.  It was just sort of assumed that women would get to the temple eventually, and that there might not be a need to rush the process.  The endowment is theologically deeply tied to the LDS concept of marriage (and was even more explicitly so, before some stylistic changed made around 2019).

I do remember being taught at BYU (1998) that the endowment is a significant covenant and that those who received it are held to a heightened standard of accountability; and that the Church would have preferred to not even administer it to 19-year-old boys except that it was judged necessary for them to be effective missionaries.

One other historical tidbit that may play into some of the attitudes about single women getting their endowment is that for a long time (possibly as late as the 1970s, IIRC) the Church wouldn’t let women married to non-members receive their endowment, unless those husbands expressly agreed to their wives doing it.

Edited November 30, 2024 by Just_A_Guy

[Jamie123]

22 hours ago, Carborendum said:

All that you said was correct.  But at the same time each claim was completely incorrect.

I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good to clarify.  Sorry.

I wasn't going to respond any more to this, but having thought about it a bit I think I will. (Though it does more-or-less still come down to "fair enough". 😉)

There are basically three kinds of "things": there are things we know, things we don't know, and things we don't know we don't know. For example, we know now that the earth is spherical. Our distant ancestors didn't know this, and hypothesised that the earth was flat like a table. Then Aristotle and Pythagoras and Eratosthenes found that the "flat table" hypothesis didn't fit their astronomical observations, and proposed instead the "sphere" model we now know to be true.

However, the discussion could not have reached that point had there not have been a preexisting concept that the earth is an object (something like an enormous stone) and like any other object it must have a shape. Do you think that our most distant ancestors - I'm talking pre-Ice Age here - had such an understanding apriori any more than polar bears or alligators do, or did it emerge over many generations? Until it did, no discussion of the shape of the world would have meant anything to anyone. Not only did they not know the shape of the world, they did not know that they didn't know. They had not yet reached a point where the question was meaningful.

So returning to the matter in hand: the Latter-day Saint religion is either true, or else it is not true. If it is not true then the matters Carborendum is efusing to clarify have about as much importance as the number of arms Ganesha has. (I mean of course to a Christian. I daresay our Hindu friends might find that question very important.)

However, if it is true, then I think we can accept there may be things about it which a nonbeliever (or even a newbie believer) will not only not know, but not know that he/she does not know. I daresay Carborendum feels that trying to clarify his statements to me would be like trying to explain compound interest to a raccoon.

And he may well be right.

Either way, I agree that it "wouldn't do any good to clarify" so it still comes down to "fair enough".

Edited November 30, 2024 by Jamie123

[zil2]

28 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Awwww.  He's so cuuute! 

[zil2]

30 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

However, if it is true, then I think we must accept that there are things about it which a nonbeliever (or even a newbie believer) will not only not know, but not know that he/she does not know. I daresay Carborendum feels that trying to clarify his statements to me would be like trying to explain compound interest to a raccoon.

FWIW, I have no idea what things @Carborendum doesn't feel like trying to clarify, but I disagree that it can't be done or that there's no point in doing it - unless he wants to go beyond the points raised or feels like he can't explain it without things we don't generally talk about publicly.  Anywho, it seems like the other replies have pretty much address the issues raised - unless you still have questions about them, @Jamie123.

[Vort]

2 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

I wasn't going to respond any more to this, but having thought about it a bit I think I will. (Though it does more-or-less still come down to "fair enough". 😉)

It boils down to this: Whence truth? Latter-day Saints claim to "have it", and furthermore that, in the expansive usage of the word, the truth preached by the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Church encompasses all truths, even mundane scientific models. I believe it was Brigham Young that expounded this view. In day-to-day reality, the gospel we adhere to does not hold opinions on scientific theories (except, I suppose, that the earth orbits the sun) or political positions (other than the general idea that freedom and liberty are good things).

Here's a thought: If a gun "aims true", that means it hits what it points at.

And here's a corresponding metaquestion: How can we know whether our knowledge is true? Truth by (scriptural) definition is a knowledge, specifically a knowledge of things as they really are, as they really were, and as they really will be. Yet what we call "knowledge" is based on synaptic chemical patterns occurring between neurons in our brain, itself an almost infinitely fallible organ. When viewed in this manner, all knowledge appears to be a very large house of cards, waiting only for a gust of wind to topple the whole thing.

Yet we can know truth, and we can know that we can know truth by carefully observing how our knowledge corresponds to external reality. In matters of material reality, physics and chemistry and engineering and perhaps biology and supposedly psychology and sociology (if anyone is naive enough to believe that), we can modify our ideas and explanations to conform more closely to observed reality. This process is generally called "science", based appropriately enough on the old Latin word for knowledge. In matters of the Spirit, which we probably agree are even more important, it gets trickier. That is not because we are incapable of spiritual understanding; we were literally created to understand things of the Spirit. The problem is that we need an external reference to guide us, to tell us whether what we think we're seeing is actually what we're seeing.

In our brains, we have an intellectual model of what's true. That model is not perfectly correct—obviously, because we make mistakes all the time. But as long as that intellectual model leads us toward good, desired outcomes, we accept it as "truth". It's perhaps not real, fundamental Truth, because in many instances that foundational Truth is beyond our comprehension in this state of mortal existence. But it's small-t "truth" in that it points us in the right direction.

An example I have used before is to imagine that you are guiding a beloved friend, someone who is utterly ignorant of microbiology, pathogens, infectious diseases, and the like. Your friend is to open and walk through one of two doors. Behind one door is a simple path that leads to freedom. Behind the other door is a sumptuous feast containing deady bacteria, so lethal that even opening the door guarantees doom. In your attempts to explain what to do to your beloved but ignorant friend, you tell him, "Open the door on the right. That door leads to happiness. Don't even touch the door on the left; opening it will release a dragon that will utterly consume you." Another being, pleasant of voice but malevolent, says, "Nonsense. The door on the left leads to a wonderful, delicious feast. There is no dragon. That is a lie, a deception designed to prevent you from getting what is rightfully yours. The door on the right leads nowhere. There is nothing there. Trust me and take the door on the left."

Who is telling the truth? In the example above, I argue that you (the dragon guy) are telling the truth. Your "dragon" does indeed exist in literal reality, though not as a rapacious, fire-breathing lizard; you call it a "dragon" only because you have no better words to describe what the evil threat is. The malevolent voice, which many would claim is giving a much more accurate picture of "reality", is the liar, because he is attempting to deceive in the important fundamentals of the situation.

The voice of God pronounces truth, only and ever truth. The voice of the world seeks to sate its own lusts, and in almost every case is untrue in the deep and meaningful sense. The world's voice speaks truth only when the world thinks that truth will lead people to do what the world wants them to do.

Our duty as children of God and living mortal beings is to detect the truth and cling to it. This is challenging because, so often, deception and falsehood are made to look true, and truth itself is ridiculed and mocked so as to make it seem false and foolish.

Edited November 30, 2024 by Vort

[Carborendum]

On 11/30/2024 at 12:49 PM, Jamie123 said:

...and proposed instead the "sphere" model we now know to be true.

• Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
• Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
• Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
• Dr. Aragon: They had them.  But they were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
• Dr. Melik: Incredible.

Edited December 4, 2024 by Carborendum

[Jamie123]

4 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

• Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
• Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
• Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
• Dr. Aragon: They had them.  But they were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
• Dr. Melik: Incredible.

Well we could be on the brink of some great paradigm shift whereby our "knowledge" that the earth is round will be exposed as a misconception. Like the miasma theory or the effectiveness of leeches in medicine. But that doesn’t really alter what I was saying. My point was that no dialogue on the shape of the world could have preceded the concept that the earth has shape.

But for what its worth I think we can "know" the world is a sphere as much as we can know anything. (Unless we are really in The Matrix!) Pictures of the earth from space show clearly that it is a sphere. And even if you think NASA is a conspiracy theory you can see ships disappearing over the horizon, or the earth's rounded shadow on the moon during an eclipse, or the different altitudes of the sun at different latitudes.

Yes I know some crazies on YouTube think otherwise but they are so easy to debunk that I'm surprised people bother.

[Carborendum]

2 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Well we could be on the brink of some great paradigm shift whereby our "knowledge" that the earth is round will be exposed as a misconception. Like the miasma theory ...

I was just trying to be funny.  Apparently, I failed.

[Jamie123]

4 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I was just trying to be funny.  Apparently, I failed.

Sorry. Perhaps it's the kebab...

P.S. Or Starmer...

Edited December 4, 2024 by Jamie123

[Vort]

3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I was just trying to be funny.  Apparently, I failed.

With Woody Allen? Impossible!

[Jamie123]

3 minutes ago, Vort said:

With Woody Allen? Impossible!

Ok I found the reference. Sleeper. My bad. I've watched some Woody Allen movies, but never that one.

[Carborendum]

9 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Ok I found the reference. Sleeper. My bad. I've watched some Woody Allen movies, but never that one.

It really wasn't worth watching. 

In my early years, he was considered funny.  As I look back, I realize that I never really laughed through his movies.  Except for a maybe a grand total of 7 or 8 funny lines or scenes, most of his movies were pretty boring.

Edited December 4, 2024 by Carborendum

[Jamie123]

10 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Except for a maybe a grand total of 7 or 8 funny lines or scenes, most of his movies were pretty boring.

It's a long time since i saw him, but if I remember rightly, he comes over as the sad little nobody/loser that everyone is afraid that they are. Like: "I asked for a dog for Christmas, but my parents gave me an ant. They told me he was a dog, and I thought he was a dog. Until I set him on a gang of kids who were bullying me, and then he got squashed."

Edited December 4, 2024 by Jamie123

[Vort]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

In my early years, he was considered funny.  As I look back, I realize that I never really laughed through his movies.  Except for a maybe a grand total of 7 or 8 funny lines or scenes, most of his movies were pretty boring.

Dorky Nebbish Faces Existential Dread

-Summary of every Woody Allen movie

[Jamie123]

2 hours ago, Vort said:

Dorky Nebbish Faces Existential Dread

Nebbish. I don't remember ever hearing that word before. Dictionary.com gives: "a man...who is so mild and submissive that other people tend to feel sorry for him".

Perhaps I'm a bit of a nebbish myself. I've certainly always lived in existential dread.

Edited December 4, 2024 by Jamie123

[Ironhold]

5 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

Ok I found the reference. Sleeper. My bad. I've watched some Woody Allen movies, but never that one.

I remember seeing it on TV back in the 1990s when our cable provider gave us a week-long "free trial" of some premium movie channel. I wasn't entirely impressed by it, and even back then had some questions about the finale.