Elder Hafen’s talk to U of U institute students

[Anonymous]

The actions of many of the brethren in protecting the members gives me an image of “As a hen gathers her chickens under her wings”. They are doing their best to protect us from the dangers outside – a side effect of overprotection is that the chickens will be weak when inevitably the danger creeps in. Living in a too clean environment leaves you with a very weak immune system.

I think with the now ever present internet, the dangers are creeping in at an alarming rate to many of the brethren. Whether they like it or not many of us chickens will be exposed to danger, and we will have to develop an immune system, and strong wings for ourselves.

I’m a bit mixed in this issue, for one I don’t go around talking about my findings openly myself – don’t want to be the cause of someone losing faith (only part of the reason of course, self perservation is probably a much bigger part), but I definitely wish for more openness from the church. The protectiveness, I feel, gives many members a naive view on information and as Heber says, everything becomes Anti-Mormon and something which should be shun.

All this supposedly faith promoting history, has when you become acquainted with the uncensored facts, the quite opposite effect – it turns sour and is faith demoting instead. Nowadays I never get a warm fuzzy feeling any more when some supposedly faith promoting history is brought up in a talk…

[Anonymous]

After thinking about this for a few days, I kind of wonder if this is a tentative step towards more openness? When you think about it, Hafen stating he doesn’t care about the mechanics of prophetic revelation is an attempt at innoculation of some sort. It’ll be interesting to see if this is a one-off attempt, or the start of something.

[Anonymous]

Steve-hpias wrote:

After thinking about this for a few days, I kind of wonder if this is a tentative step towards more openness?

I do not see this as a one-off attempt. The church will continue to preach to the needs of the members. The church has grown because modern “revelation” allows for continuing interpretations based on changing times. Information will only become more and more accessible to all church members, whether students seek it out or not…it is just too easy to come across things about early church history and church government that make people ask questions, that I think the church leadership will continue to stress the story of the gospel and the value of spiritual guidance, and not try to be defensive or explain details or facts. I think there will be more openness, but not because they feel they must, but it simply is the way things will be in our information age and they will continue to focus on the mission of the church.

Just my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Porter Rockwell, your avatar is creeping me out!

[Anonymous]

hawkgrrrl wrote:

Porter Rockwell, your avatar is creeping me out!

Lol, yep, Rockwell was a scary guy. Supposedly he got a blessing from Joseph Smith once that said no bullet or sword could harm him as long as he remained in the faith, and did not cut his hair – like Samson in OT. Judging by your avatar you should be able to handle a scary guy though

[Anonymous]

Elder Hafen makes an illogical argument. If one is to claim divine revelation then one must detail how they obtained that particular bit of revelation, and the method of obtaining revelation becomes critical. Otherwise how can we accept the validity of the message. This is why the varied stories lend doubt to the claim of being divine. If I were to tell you a story of life I had experienced on another planet you would doubt me until I could show pictures, or show you my spaceship or something. We just have a much lower threshold for spiritual claims in the church because it is more magical and we can believe without evidence.

He also makes the claim that the information Joseph gave us was so monumental that we should ignore the means by which he obtained it. Again it is only monumental by his own standards. IN relation to other beliefs or even works of fiction it could just as easily be termed run of the mill. Mark Twain once claimed the BoM was “chloroform in print” He was coming at it from a literary point of view so to him it was rather ordinary.

We must always be careful when we assume that where we are standing is the center of the universe. It could just as easily be the outer rim.

[Author]

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