Rob4Hope wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2017 8:16 am
Mad Jax wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2017 7:48 am
I must have selectively interpreted the book because I really liked
Miracle of Forgiveness. I felt it was a book that made me understand the true internal change of repentance.
Congrats MJ, if that was your experience I am happy for you. Many (and I know of many) struggled with the book.
That book is lop-sided in a lot of ways. An example is given by a guy named Romel Mackelprang who wrote a Dialogue article several years ago. Here is the exact quote:
"For example, in The Miracle of Forgiveness, Spencer W. Kimball devotes fifteen pages to the pitfalls of sexual impurity, adds a line briefly condoning a "normal and controlled sex life," but offers no elaboration on what constitutes controlled sex (1969, 74, emphasis added).
This is one example among many of how that book, for some, has backfired and caused more damage than it helped.
I was injured when my own mistakes were likened to the Prodigal Son, and Kimball made it VERY VERY clear that the eternal blessings of the Prodigal were lost forever and could never be regained. What was he saying there?...and then later on saying: "Oh you can be forgiven"?....HUNH?
Which is it? You have lost your blessings or you haven't?
This was my first experience with serious and profound "mental gymnastics". My conclusion was: "You can be saved in the Celestial Kingdom, but the gift of Eternal Life is forever lost".
At the time, that was the ONLY way I could harmonize the book.
Some people considered suicide after reading the book. People just experience it differently. For me, the book was toxic.
This book completely destroyed me. An entire chapter teaching me that I myself was a crime against nature. How can you repent for who you are? It was a complete mind-f@#$. (sorry about the language, but I don't know a better word for this). I carried deep shame with me for at least fifteen years after reading the book, to the point that I became a shell of a person. No other religious writing was as insidious and destructive as this one has been in my life.
Ironically, I find myself really liking Pres. Kimball on a personal level. I get that he and the other church leaders were suddenly faced with the sexual revolution and felt they had to be hard about it.
I hope I'm not threadjacking by sharing the following from the book
Lengthen Your Stride, a biography of Kimball.
The Miracle of Forgiveness grew out of the apostle’s many years counseling thousands of troubled people. He had earlier stated his intention not to write books—“there were books enough”—but he finally concluded that the Church needed “an extensive treatise on repentance” and that it was his responsibility to create one. He spent uncountable hours over ten years, including summer “vacations” from conference assignments, to produce the manuscript.
The book’s tone, tougher than Spencer’s in-person counseling, reflected his belief that people rationalize sin too quickly and consider repentance easy. Indeed, it was a book more on sin and repentance than on forgiveness. Spencer later seemed to wish he had adopted a gentler tone. In 1977 he said to Lyle Ward, his neighbor, “Sometimes I think I might have been a little too strong about some of the things I wrote in this book.”
But he meant to shake people, and the hundreds of letters of thanks let him know that at least for many people the stiff medicine was rightly prescribed. One wrote, “You called me a culprit and a sinner and transgressor and that brought me to my senses.” But when he heard of others who read the book and became discouraged by a standard that seemed to them unattainable, he wished he had communicated more understanding and encouragement.
It is encouraging that he felt some regret for the tone of the book. I hold no ill will toward him, in spite of the fact that his book nearly destroyed my life.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
― Carl Sagan
