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The following will post on my personal blog tomorrow morning, but I want to share it here first: As I listened to General Conference, and as I read various responses around the Bloggernacle to the talks given in General Conference, something struck me that had never crossed my mind previously. I want to share it as my own personal epiphany from General Conference.
Elder Bednar gave a beautiful talk on the need to express AND show love in our homes. In at least four talks, love was emphasized as the foundation of our Christian discipleship. One of the reasons Elder Wirthlin’s death was hard for me is that he spoke powerfully and regularly about accepting others and loving them no matter what they believe or do or say. (His talk “Concern for the One” is my personal all-time favorite.) As I listened to Elder Andersen this weekend, it struck me that I believe he will become my “replacement” for Elder Wirthlin – someone who speaks of tolerance and acceptance and grace and love on a regular basis. I am drawn to and inspired deeply by messages that focus on love and acceptance and grace and mercy.
Saturday afternoon, Elder Oaks spoke about the balance between love and law – and I have read multiple expressions of concern online over his talk. Especially when viewed by those who were uplifted by the messages focusing on love, it was a difficult talk to understand and accept. For some, it seemed to be a step away from the “pure love of Christ” within the other talks that moved them so deeply. Personally, I believe it was a masterful discourse and another one of my favorites – and my epiphany yesterday morning as I was preparing to watch the Sunday morning session is that there is a reason (even a deep and abiding need) for BOTH Elder Oaks AND Elder Andersen – Elder McConkie AND Elder Wirthlin – the Apostle Paul AND John, the Revelator – Brigham Young AND Joseph Smith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the church that is called a restoration of ALL things.
I will try to explain by focusing on Paul and John:
1) Paul was a leader in the Jewish system at the time of his conversion. In summary, he was legally-minded – interpreting laws and customs, and enforcing them among the Jews. After his conversion, this background and intellectual inclination remained as a great influence in his writing. His epistles are FULL of legalistic justifications and explanations – I Corinthians 15:1-29 being a wonderful example of this as he explained and justified the early Christian focus on the resurrection, and Hebrews 11 doing the same things when explaining faith. He didn’t “just” bear testimony of the resurrection and faith; he couched both discourses in legalistic terms – “court arguments”, if you will.
2) John, the Revelator, on the other hand, is the apostle most associated with focusing on love. His own “gospel” and epistles are full of incredible messages of love and unity. “God so loved the world” – “If ye love me” – “By this shall men know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” – “God is love” – and SO many other statements permeate his record and his letters.
Those who compiled the New Testament hundreds of years later chose disproportionately to include Paul’s writings, but they also included John’s very different focus – and James’ classic exploration of faith vs. works – and Mark’s quite disjointed and grammatically difficult account – and Matthew’s kingship treatise. If I were in a snitty mood, I might argue with what specifically they chose, but I am grateful that they chose to include writings that focused on Jesus and His teachings in different ways – that they compiled a record that can appeal to different people with different personalities and different experiences. Those with a more legalistic bent can appreciate Paul and Oaks, while those who care more for the touchy-feely “warm fuzzies” of the Gospel can gravitate to and be inspired by John and Andersen. Those who like both (as I do) also can enjoy Bednar and Holland, who move from one approach to the other quite regularly.
In summary, I am thankful that we have the opportunity to listen to BOTH Elder Oaks (a judge, by the way) AND Elder Andersen – since this allows ALL to hear someone with whom they can connect emotionally and/or intellectually. The key, in my opinion, is to find one’s own “favorites” – while accepting that other people are doing the same with the words of apostles to whom you personally cannot connect quite as well.
I thank God for a Quorum of Twelve Apostles – and I am grateful that they don’t all say the same things in the same way.
Thanks Ray, I really appreciate your perspective and tend to agree. I think the justice and mercy sermon in the BofM support what you say. I hear too much about ‘grace’ only from the Evangelicals and too much of ‘works’ from the lds. Like everything else in our lives, there has to be a balance. I tend to be a ‘spirit of the law’ type of person and my husband tends to be more a ‘letter of the law.’ This still is a difficult balance for me. For example, that man who was trying to keep the ‘arch of the covenant’ from falling was struck dead because he disobeyed the law (‘it is better to obey than sacrifice’ commandment.) On the other hand Jesus disobeys half of the Jews laws by healing on the Sabbath and teaching to love your enemies instead of an eye for an eye. One scripture teaches that Christ taught about love and peace and another teaches that he did not bring peace but a sword between mother and father. So, sometimes the scriptures confuse me as do general conference talks. That’s why the only thing I have come to a conclusion on is based on the thing Christ taught that all the laws and commandments stand on; ‘the principle of love’. So, when the choir ended with the song “have I done any good in the world today….etc.” I felt conflicted as “was prop. 8 a loving thing to do to our homosexual brother and sisters? All the beautiful talks about being loving is great, but the true test of being loving is how members speak about or treat ‘the least of these’ (homosexuals, mentally challenged, or disfigured, etc). and it has not been too loving from what I have seen at times. At least it is a worthy goal to strive for. Nice post Ray. Thanks for sharing those thoughts. Thanks Ray a great post and now probably my favorite post on the entire forum. 
It strikes me that you can add to the Paul and John comparison that Paul was also very Greek in his thinking, he emphasized the abstracts, the overarching ideas whereas John was still Hebrew, very emotional and concrete and we can see that set of differences in our current Quorum of 12 so well.
Thanks.
Yes, great post Ray. My wife loves Richard G Scott, but he really bothers me, because he seems like he’s just too simple and touchy-feely in his talks. I prefer Oaks, Nelson, and Holland, who seem to appeal more to my intellect than my feelings. It’s good to have variety, because each apostle touches different people.
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