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I found this recently on lds.org It is a talk by President Hinckley Apr 2008. Titled: The Need for Greater Kindness. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2006/04/the-need-for-greater-kindness?lang=eng&_r=1 He is directing his remarks mostly to the church. He said:
Quote:Throughout my service as a member of the First Presidency, I have recognized and spoken a
number of times on the diversity we see in our society. It is all about us, and we must make an effort to accommodate that diversity.
It is a powerful talk. I don’t remember any time when someone referred to it again.
We tend to forget the stuff that runs counter to our culture. Remember Uchdorfts talk where he mentioned that inactivity is not as simple as someone not willing to live the commandments? That it’s not always the result of sin, and that we have the right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience? That there is room for everyone? In the same talk he said “don’t doubt your faith, doubt your doubts”. THAT was the message all the traditional believers quoted. The other stuff that we drooled about here on StayLDS was not mentioned by anyone else, not quoted in the priesthood and RS meetings that followed on the conference talk, etcetera.
You can also find talks about being kind to the weary (Wirthlin), about the benefits of community service and our need to do it regularly, GBH’s talk on diversity above, and Uchdorfts talk. But these end up being flashes in the pan because the principles don’t get emphasized or picked up by the correlation department don’t appear in the lesson manual, and the existing culture just keeps steamrolling over them.
Where I see their value is in using them as counterpoint in lessons when people steamroll ahead with the flaws in the current culture, or disagree with you. You can quote GBH’s talk from 199X, or Uchdorfts talk from 2XXX and use it as counterpoint. But my guess those talks will be used by a select few.
I liked this post from Steve Evans on the need for more kindness in blog commenting: https://bycommonconsent.com/2016/05/24/a-note-on-comments/ Just want to say that the phenomenon below doesn’t appear to be a problem on StayLDS, in spite of relatively tame moderation: Quote:
’ve been doing this blog thing for over a decade. During that time I’ve seen a lot of heated conversations, a lot of people asked to leave and a lot of misunderstandings. I wish I could say things are getting better, but they’re not. Conversations are more polarized, more hurtful and more difficult than ever. People are talking past each other in record numbers, assuming the worst from each other and taking postures that are increasingly ridiculous. This is not a phenomenon unique to BCC. Except where comments are moderated heavily, this is happening all over in the Bloggernacle and is happening throughout American social discussion as well. We are drifting away from Zion.Kudos to the character of everyone who frequents StayLDS…
Quote:People are talking past each other in record numbers, assuming the worst from each other and taking postures that are increasingly ridiculous.
Haha…ironically…the person making that statement is making lots of assumptions and making ridiculous statements like “in record numbers”.
Quote:We are drifting away from Zion.
I didn’t know Zion was so well established to be drifting away from it.
Maybe I’m just not being kind enough. It just sounds similar to the rhetoric that the world is getting worse and worse…as if it was so much better before and I don’t see that as much as I see some efforts for more openness, more acceptance, more tolerance of adversity…and yet still way too much more that needs to be done in those areas.
Bloggernacle has done a lot of good things for a lot of exchange of ideas and learning, including evidence that the leaders are aware of things that have come through the social media channels on disaffection and faith crisis.
I’m all for a call for kindness. Just not convinced we are not better off then when I started on this website 7 years ago, and other sites have gotten way better in many areas.
I tend to think Zion is our intentions toward one another and our desire to be unified. So when we are drifting away from Zion, to me that means we love our opinions more than we love each other. But maybe that’s just how humans are and always have been.
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