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The following is my New Year’s Resolution post for this weekend from my personal blog. It was not a result of recent disucssions here, since I chose this topic for this month at the end of last year:Pride has nothing fundamentally to do with one’s strengths, weaknesses, material possessions, social status, or any other “objective”, measurable criterion. Pride is an attitude – an internal outlook. The weak, poor, uneducated, lowly, incapable, etc. person can be just as proud as the strong, wealthy, educated, prominent, capable person.
Pride is not a recognition of one’s strengths. Rather, it is a valuing of one’s self over the value placed on another – a view that I am better than someone else intrinsically. (“vaunting” one’s self above others) It is not understanding that I am better “at” something than someone else; it is a belief that I, as a person, am better “than” someone else – that my strengths make me a more valuable person than someone who is not as strong as I am in those areas. It is a focus on elevating myself over others – and it is every bit as prevalent in the religious as in the irreligious, unfortunately.
My biggest concern in this regard is that members of the Church too often accept the natural tendency to adopt the philosophy of “the Prosperity Gospel” at the individual level and too often make value judgments based on financial success, career paths, callings in the Church, etc. Most members I know don’t do so consciously, but there is a current coursing through much of the Chosen People rhetoric that carries a constant temptation to succumb to the notion that God chose us for a reason – and that reason must be because of some inherent “betterness”.
Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the way that too many members assume that those who are born in the covenant or who convert at some point from another religion or denomination were foreordained in the pre-existence to do so – the extrapolation of passages in Alma and Abraham, for example, to all within the Church. The flip side of this coin is the unstated assumption that those who are not born in the covenant or who do not convert are not foreordained to that – that they are not deserving of it for some reason.I don’t know for sure about such things, but I am concerned about the subtle, pride-inducing justifications underlying such extrapolations.
Those same justifications were used to explain the Priesthood ban before it was lifted, and Elder McConkie’s admonition to “forget everything we have ever said about it” with regard to the judtifications for the ban has a place, I believe, for consideration when we view how close our statements about special valiancy in the pre-existence are to those justifications we have been told to forget with regard to race and the Priesthood.
I’m NOT rejecting the concept of foreordination – not at all. I do believe in it – to some degree and for some people. However, it’s a fine line between foreordination and predestination, and it’s a fine line between foreordination and arrogance – but it’s not a fine line between a theology that offers salvation and the opportunity of exaltation to all and one that posits special status for some based on pre-existent “betterness” that elevates them above others in an important way.
That is pride, plain and simple, and it’s something of which we need to be aware and which we need to fight in all its manifestations.
Forgive me for quoting so heavily from a previous thread. Roy wrote:SilentDawning wrote:
“Someone said that our time is one of the grandest in human history and that people will “bow at our feet when they find out we lived in the time of Gordon B. Hinckley” or something like that.”
I believe that “the brethren” have also been trying to quietly downplay the idea of degrees of worthiness among the spirit children of our Heavenly Father. This has been used to explain why some persons are born into such difficult situations while others are born into such privilege (both materially and access to the gospel). Even now the idea that black persons were less valiant in the pre-mortal life remains a stubborn part of our collective church culture. This idea is offensive to many and some have been working towards getting an official repudiation of the idea from church HQ (even though they now have a second opportunity/estate in which improve their eternal situation). Elder Oaks interview on the Priesthood Ban is a great example of the damage control on this issue.
Elder Oaks wrote:
“If you read the scriptures with this question in mind, “Why did the Lord Command this or why did the Lord command that?” you find that in less than one in a hundred commands was any reason given. It’s not the pattern of the Lord to give reasons. We can put reason to revelation. We can put reasons to commandments. When we do we are on our own. Some people put reasons to the one we’re talking about here, and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There is a lesson in that. The lesson I’ve drawn is that I decided a long time ago that I had faith in the command and I had no faith in the reasons that had been suggested for it.”
When asked if the reasons he was talking about include reasons given by GA’s, Elder Oaks responded in part, “The reasons turn out to be man-made to a great extent.”
The story you are referring to takes the same concept, just from the other angle. Instead of some being “less valiant,” we must have been super valiant. Instead of some periods of time being depositories for persons of limited potential, we are so great that we live in the dispensation of the fullness of times. We are apparently so awesome that Nephi and Abraham will “bow at our feet.” I think the repudiation of varying degrees of worthiness among the pre-mortal host of heaven is difficult (there are scripture references that can be used to buttress this idea), but this “faith promoting rumor” took it to a level that was scary.
I continue to speculate that the collective brethren (both the leadership and the general membership) are trending away from the “less valiant in the pre-existence” idea. In addition to the pride issue that Ray has described very well, it has PR problems as well.
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