Could God be using the world to correct the church…

Your post is very timely, because I have been thinking about the same thing. The question is really, “How do we perfect the Saints”.

I want to digress and tell a little story. When President George Washington became ill with a fever and a very sore and swollen throat, he sent for his prized “White-House Physicians”. These were the very best and brightest doctors at the time. The followed the procedure of the day and did the best they could. The treatment offered to Washington was blood-letting. They ended up removing about 3-4 pints of blood, all the time hoping that whatever infirmity had possessed

would be drained away. (Blood-letting had very spiritual significant at the time).

A young physician-in-training started to protest the treatment. He argued that a new procedure called a tracheotomy should be performed. He said that President Washington couldn’t breath and that if a tracheotomy were to be performed, the President’s airway would be restored. The older Physicians continued to let blood and ignored this young and inexperienced doctor. The President died.

Hindsight, as always, has a perfect 20/20 vision. We can all look back in dismay. Our first President bleed to death at the hands of his own physicians. He could have been saved, but he was not. The tracheotomy was the right thing to do.

His physicians said that “in the end, they did the very best they could do according to their own knowledge and skill and therefore they were justified”. Yes, yes they were justified, having done their best, believing and enduring in faith . . . . but, they were wrong.

Now to the Church: The Church was brought into existence in the 1830s. Women had virtually NO rights. A woman teacher was paid 30 cents for every dollar a man earned (see Lucretia Mott’s, Founder of the Women’s Equality Movement). Women could not vote and were considered the property of men . . . and yes, a few polygamist wives were actually used to replace slaves. It’s true. It just is. Several woman came forward (hard to do) and accused the Prophet Joseph Smith of suggesting that they enter into plural marriage. One of them was the wife of William Law. Brother Law’s wife refused, and Law condemned the Prophet. Law was excommunicated for apostasy and even this very hour his name is listed on the BYU historical pages as an “apostate”. Same thing with Brother David Whitmer. But, Law and Whitmer were NOT apostates. They weren’t excommunicated because they sinned and committed adultry. No! They were cast out because they bore witness against a man who they claimed propositioned their own wives. These men were righteous, good and truthful men.

One day the world will know it. You can destroy a printing press and keep it from printing the truth, but you can’t destroy the internet.

Ok, so the Church didn’t listen to the men who were right, just as Washington’s Physicians would not listen to the young doctor who explored them to do the only thing that would save the president. If we do not do the right thing, right now, our Church could “bleed to death” and the oxygen could be cut off. We could die as a church.

The only thing is to take the knife, bit the bullet and “cut or own throats”, so to speak. Admit the truth. Open up a serious and honest historical discussion. Joseph Smith (and I love this man) most likely had epilepsy for which there was no treatment at the time. As with all untreated epileptics, Smith probably entered and “end-stage” of the illness where he likely suffered hallucinations and delusions (angels with swords coming to kill him etc.). This is just my stupid opinion, but it is what things are starting to look like right now. He who covereth his sins will not prosper. “Cut your throat, stop the bleeding”. You’ll live, you will recover. Only the truth can save you.

As Bob Dylan would say, “the times, they are a changing”.

I used to read Leviticus in the OT and ponder about how Lepers were diagnosed and treated. Actually, it was the very best they had. There were no microbiologists, no laboratories, no modern antibiotics, no civil rights for lepers. If you were diagnosed by a Priest, you went into a leper colony and waited to die. Then a man by the name of Jesus Christ came along and revolutionized the world. He healed lepers!!

That’s right Christ totally ignored the laws that said one could not approach and touch a leper. He placed his own hands upon them, blessed them, healed them and enjoined them to “go, show yourselves unto the Priests”. Christ changed everything. Physicians began to aspire to treat and cure those with leprosy and one day, they did.

Just as Leviticus assigned those with leprosy to a “colony of death”, so were those with “same sex attraction” disposed of. What good were they to society? What good is a leper to society? We just find a way to get rid of those we don’t want. Then came Christ. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. Suddenly, it is about identifying sin within our own selves and not within others. “Judge not, that you be not judged”, where does that leave us? We live in a day and an age where anyone with a computer can look up John C. Bennett and just read about him on Wikipedia. We are going to have a very hard time justifying our persecution of homosexuals until we come to terms with our own church history.

I have considered that line of thinking too. For me, it is an important, personal reconciliation strategy to see the Church as evolving towards an end. This gives it room in my mind and heart for mistakes in the past to be corrected over time.

Something that shocks and surprises a lot of us who go through this process is when we see how much the Church and our doctrines have changed over time. Many of us were brought up thinking the Church and the prophets were perfect, and the “eternal” things never change. I can still buy that, but the list of truly “eternal truths” is much smaller than I thought before. That’s ok with me. This is how I can still reconcile and stay in the Church. I let go of my expectations for a long list of things that will never change. Now, I wait with amusement to see what the Lord will surprise me with next.

The “world” changes the church or the church changes the “world”??

I think, over time, we may recognize that it’s all part of the same body. The church does come from the “world” and the church is part of the “world”. No matter how much it tries to say otherwise…

Just like politics, it’s easy to say, so and so party is this, or so and so politician says this… In reality, that is all a reflection of us. They came from somewhere. The somewhere is us.

I heartily endorse Brian and Ray. We have often heard the phrase the God answers prayers through other people. It’s hard for Mormons to grasp that the world can answer our prayers (after all, they don’t have the Gift of the Holy Ghost), but God uses many methods to teach us–whether it be the scourge of the Lamanites, or the scourge of the Civil War or anti-polygamy legislation–God uses all of these tools. He also allows things like the Holocaust and genocide in Rwanda to happen, which are much harder lessons to figure out.

Perhaps God is not pushing buttons and pulling levers to control our destiny as much as we want to believe. Maybe he just got the ball rolling and is sitting back and watching to see how we sort it out.

Re: George Washington story. Although the young physician in training had a good idea to get the president to breathe, and although he might have understood that the blood letting was killing him faster, no one at the time really had much idea of how to really heal him. A tracheotomy would not have fixed the fever or destroyed whatever bug was killing him. He likely would have died even with the tracheotomy, which might have delayed the acceptance of that new life-saving technique for many more decades. A tracheotomy was better, but not best. Bottom line, the real cure for his ailment was unknown to mankind at that time.

Good things, truths, are revealed or discovered a little at a time. Lots of mistakes occur in the early stages of any system, of any business, of any venture, of any church. It doesn’t mean the early efforts were not sincere or genuine. It doesn’t mean that God wasn’t part of the early equation.

BUT… Will a system as large as this church adapt and change with evidence that there are better or more effective ways of doing things or viewing things? In a large measure, the LDS church has dramatically changed their ways of doing business. I think what we’ve focused on has also changed and adapted. Will the church change basic core values and ideals? Change their stance on homosexuality? I don’t know. What if a mutation “gay gene” is found that “proves” a fraction of individuals are wired with a biological press toward homosexuality? What if this leads to same-sex marriages legalized throughout the world? Will the church ever knowingly allow such people to be baptised? I could conceive that happening. Would this mean the world influenced the church, or that the church adapted and developed normally in the face of increased knowledge and information? I don’t know.

Would there ever be a gay general authority? wow, that stretches the mind!

I like the story of the Dalai Lama (and I might not be remembering this exactly right) when as a child observing the moon concluded that some of the long-held Buddhist beliefs about the universe did not fit with observable data. Therefore, he changed or adapted his beliefs to fit the data. I think that is a good example for all religious leaders. The Dalai Lama did not give up Buddhism or conclude that his religion was wrong, just that some ideas needed updating.