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This kind of goes along with the recent thread from Brian Johnston, the ‘Informal mental log of Church experience lately’ post. I had a thought the other day that I’ve been turning over in my mind. In a lot of ways, the church is like Communist China. No, wait! I’m not crazy! Here’s my thought process – in university I studied a lot of 20th century Chinese history. I was thinking about how one of the fascinating things about their past is that Chairman Mao is often painted as a maniacal tyrant who made ridiculous demands on his people (because he was). However, while Mao had some really wacky ideas and caused a great deal of suffering, he did not instigate a lot of the horrible things that happened during the Cultural Revolution. What would happen is that he would issue a general directive to his subordinates, and then THEY would be the ones to take it to the extreme in order to get quick results and please the Chairman. This is obvioulsy a generalization, but it’s documented that this was often the case. Contrast to the LDS church. Very rarely do I hear something from a GA (at least in my lifetime) that I really disagree with (we’re going to ignore gender role issues for now
🙄 ). Messages at General Conference are pretty good counsel whatever your faith: love your neighbor, pray often, forgive others etc. The things that rile me up are usually when local leaders take things to the extreme and make wild statements in Stake Conferences (or even in Sacrament meeting, geez) that become folklore. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people, they just take a good thing too far and it sometimes has detrimental effects. I think this is tied into the unspoken ascetic idea that permeates our culture of ‘more sacrifice = better Mormon’. eg) “If the prophet says, ‘read the BOM by the end of the year’, then our ward will read it by the end of the month; more blessings for us!”I guess what I’m saying is that I’m finding a new way to look at the church that allows me to further detach from things that annoy me so I will continue to attend and help others with a smile.
I don’t know much about China, but I think I get your idea and think that is part of my experience at church as well. Leaders provide a vision (love your neighbor, reach out to those who are in need of friendship, obedience brings blessings, etc), and then those ideas need to be taken and executed in real life…and it is in the execution on the local levels that you often see the imperfections practiced (while people are trying to apply what they heard). Martine wrote:“If the prophet says, ‘read the BOM by the end of the year’, then our ward will read it by the end of the month; more blessings for us!”
Our ward did this a few years ago, and there was a testimony meeting where one person after another got up to say how blessed their family was for completing this. I stood and bore my testimony that our family was NOT able to finish reading the whole Book of Mormon that year, but we tried and we still benefited from working towards the goal as a family, even if we failed to meet our goal.
I had dozens of people after the meeting want to give me a hug because they said the more people were talking about how they finished the book like the Bishop challenged us to, the more guilty they felt they had failed. So they appreciated hearing my testimony that it was less important if the goal was achieved than what was learned along the way. It gave them some relief.
I have quoted Pres.Uchtdorf many times on the site already, but I will quote it again because I love it so much:
Quote:there are so many “shoulds” and “should nots” that merely keeping track of them can be a challenge. Sometimes, well-meaning amplifications of divine principles—many coming from uninspired sources—complicate matters further, diluting the purity of divine truth with man-made addenda. One person’s good idea—something that may work for him or her—takes root and becomes an expectation. And gradually, eternal principles can get lost within the labyrinth of “good ideas.”-Pres Uchtdorf
Some years ago I was in a meeting and heard Elder Pinnock say “we have to be careful what we ask people to do becuase they’ll do it.” I’ve heard the expression, more catholic than the pope but I guess it can apply to Mormons as well.
There was another thread back in February where Brian gave a great classic story of how leaders say one thing…and then the monkey chain passes it on until you find the result at the end may not be what the leader intended… http://www.staylds.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1194&start=20 ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.staylds.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1194&start=20 Quote:This reminds me of a classic story that illustrates a point:
The prophet is concerned about members leaning over the edge of a cliff nearby. They like to get a good view. It’s dangerous and some people have fallen and gotten hurt. He tells the Q12 to warn members to just be a little more careful when they are out for a hike.
The apostles hear this revelation, and wanting to be diligent and careful, they warn the Q70 in a leadership meeting to teach members not to get near the cliff at all.
The Q70 take this message out to the stake presidents. In order to be extra vigilant and go the extra mile, they teach the stake presidents that the prophet wants the members of their stakes to never go more than half-way up the mountain.
The stake presidents take this message to their local ward leadership meetings. In order to be magnify their callings, they are even more faithful and instruct Bishops to teach the ward leaders to spread the word — nobody goes near the mountain. Period!
A little boy asks his father what that big thing is on the horizon. His father is shocked and quickly scolds the boy “Never look at that. It’s a mountain. We are never to go near it or even speak of it. The Bishop let us know these are the words of the prophet.”
I’m going to steal one of my posts… ( http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1525&p=17550 Quote:Since Pres. McKay (and excluding TSM for obvious reasons), only three presidents have been in the job more than three years. Pres.s. Smith, Lee and Hunter were all in for brief spells. I don’t think that they were bad presidents, only that their reign was brief. GBH, ETB and SWK were all quite frail towards the end, as far as I can tell. Pres Benson held some very old fashioned views, and got himself mixed up with the John Birchers. I think while he held strong views, he didn’t understand what was happening to youth in the 70s, 80s and 90s at all. He was really a politician of the later 40s and 50s – post-war, start of Cold War, pre-rock and roll…
The irony is despite Benson’s hatred of Communism, there is a parallel. East Germany and the Soviet Union had a similar problem – an aging leadership. They had other issues of course, but the fall of East Germany was partly down to the fact that the leaders came from the pre-war generation, and couldn’t stem the tide of western pop culture filtering through. Likewise, the focus on the older generation for the Soviet Leadership led to the USSR being run by Leonid Brezhnev from 1964-82, which was fine to begin with (from a practical point of view), but again, he lacked understanding of the massive global changes happening. And towards the end of his reign, he was incapacitated by a stroke, which made him more or less a vegetable (sorry to use this word), while others did the real job of leadership. His successor, Yuri Andropov, was the Soviet equivalent of Howard Hunter, lasting a mere fifteen months. Now I’m not trying to justify Communism here, but there is a similar problem with an aged leadership.
Thanks for reminding me of E. Uchtdorf’s quote – I love that. And I aslo love the quote from E. Pinnock – so true! Not a bad argument for keeping the CHI under wraps, in some ways. 
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