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After having my faith reconstruction, my understanding in receiving personal revelation in regards to personal interpretation has changed so much. Realizing that members of the church, especially the prophets and apostles, can and do misinterpret revelation when they receive it has caused me to wonder how can we interpret revelation correctly when are own interpretations of anything can be so flawed. I know what the church teaches about faith and following the Spirit, but how can we know even if we receive revelation from God that correct interpretations for it? Even stories in the scriptures and church history is often very messy with this. Your thoughts? Great question. I could have written this myself using your exact words. I don’t know the answer. We “see through a glass darkly” works to explain the why for me, but it doesn’t help me to know what’s really revelation/inspiration or how to properly interpret it. I look forward to other comments. Honestly, I don’t try to analyze it much, since it is so very subjective. I try to live by the idea in Moroni 7 that anything that invites to do good is of God. I try to follow and do any good thing that comes to my mind or hits my heart.
I figure if I’m wrong in trying to do something that seems good to me, that is better than over-analyzing everything and ending up not doing good things as a result – that God will understand and accept my best effort to do what I can with my limited light and understanding. I’d rather be wrong occasionally in order to make sure I’m right whenever possible than to be right occasionally in order to avoid never being wrong.
I’m not trying to do everything only after I think I understand it all; I’m trying to become someone who is good and does good.
One Bishop had a very balanced view of revelation. He said that if he calls someone to a position, and they accept it, it was probablyinspired. Ultimately, you don’t know if it’s inspired. I think a free person recognizes that you can’t always tell whether something is inspired. There are times when you get overcome with spiritual feelings that increase the confidence that an idea was inspired, but you can’t always tell.
For me, life is much more peaceful when you do your best to think and meditate and consider all angles, and THEN act based on what feels right. If God directs you, then great.
As leaders responsible for doctrine — I personally would not act unless I had something unmistakeable to guide me. There is too much riding on statements of doctrine, and we do claim to be directed by God. If HE placed me in that position (such as a prophet), I’d have to know for sure that the doctrine he wanted me to share was from Him and not an expression of my own opinion or life experiences.
I like Ray and SD’s advice here. Just to offer a contrary point, you can only “know” (and even that is tricky, so maybe I should say “strongly suspect”) that something was revelation if it contradictswhat your own natural inclination would be or your own assumptions. Otherwise, it could just be your normal way of doing things. The problem is that if we are becoming more unified with God in our approach, then we are going to be less likely to have revelation than contradicts our thinking. I blogged about it here: http://www.wheatandtares.org/8519/if-ye-are-not-provocative-ye-are-not-mine/ Some of what I say in that post is controversial. For example, there are church leaders who have recently said (which seems a change to me) that gaining a testimony can be just gradual, not a big change of heart, but conversion does mean change. Repentance means turning away from one thing to another. So if it’s that gradual, is it a change really or just what is comfortable? So is that kind of “comfortable testimony” just weak sauce? In other words, I posit that the strongest testimonies are those that make the person uncomfortable or make life difficult, not those that feel natural.
As to the interpretation question, that’s exactly the sort of thinking that we should be engaged with. If we doubt our spiritual experiences (which I think we must), we likewise have to doubt ourselves for doubting them. If we doubt others’ interpretations, we likewise have to doubt our own. I am using “doubt” to mean “examine” or “question.”
Sorry I didn’t respond much sooner. All of you made some great points. I normally try not to over analyze over my personal revelation in regards to my personal interpretation. DarkJedi, I really agree with seeing through a glass darkly and Hawkgirl, thanks for sharing your post from that site. It helped me to put things in better perspective. I have this quote from a blog I read, but it didn’t have the reference. I have it on my list to lookup.
Quote:E. Oaks cautioned against this mistake in his talk about the two lines of communication or revelation (the need for both personal revelation and priesthood revelation):
If personal religious practice relies too much on the personal line, individualism erases the importance of divine authority. If personal religious practice relies too much on the priesthood line, individual growth suffers.
I think interpretations of revelations are supposedto be different for everyone. If we are truly unique people with unique needs I think we are meant to come up with unique interpretations that are tailored to our needs. I’ve read scriptures that were meaningful to me in a certain way only to come back years later and discover that they were meaningful to me in a completely different way. In my opinion the original meaning I extracted wasn’t wrong and the later meaning right. Both meanings were right for me at the time.
I think we start running into trouble when we make claims that everyone else should share our personal interpretation of a revelation. Tricky business when you’re running an organization and where people in the organization have some form of stewardship, but that’s how I see it in the realm of personal revelations.
LookingHard wrote:I have this quote from a blog I read, but it didn’t have the reference. I have it on my list to lookup.
Quote:E. Oaks cautioned against this mistake in his talk about the two lines of communication or revelation (the need for both personal revelation and priesthood revelation):
If personal religious practice relies too much on the personal line, individualism erases the importance of divine authority. If personal religious practice relies too much on the priesthood line, individual growth suffers.
This quote is from Oct. 2010 GC. The talk is about personal revelation and priesthood revelation. The quote is from next to the last paragraph, summing up his talk.
Because interpretations are not 100% accurate 100% of the time does not mean it is worthless to try to interpret best you can, or that being wrong doesn’t have it’s lessons in it as well. That includes prophets. Nibbler, I agree different interpretations of our own personal revelations serve our different needs at different times. Heber13, I also agree that just because you can always interpret personal revelation correctly it doesn’t mean you can try to interpret it.
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