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I have not read the full remarks that Pres. Nelson gave in San Antonio yesterday (if someone has them, I would like to read them). But, the write-up in the Deseret News contained a phrase I heard in a conference talk by Joy Jones a few years ago. “That lineage was chosen to lead out in the great gathering of Israel,” declared President Nelson. “That responsibility is uniquely ours in this dispensation.”
He encouraged parents to teach their children that they too are children of the covenant. They can become “sin-resistent” souls. “And we will be better prepared to cope with all other challenges we encounter in life.”
1. This seems to really feed into the idea of the atonement being an insurance policy that we should never need, but may have to use if we sin (and we should feel horribly guilty if we do);
2. This seems to be setting everyone up for huge disappointments down the road. “My child did what? They were supposed to be sin-resistent because they are a child of the covenant!” The child will think they are a huge disappointment to their parents because they were always told they would be sin-resistent.
3. This seems so contrary to everything Jesus taught in the New Testament, where he radically embraced people in their impurity and imperfection and loved them unconditionally. He also really shot down the idea that people would be better than others because they are of the covenant:
Matthew 3:9
And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
What am I missing?
I’m not sure you’re missing anything. I also haven’t read all that RMN said, but in general he is old school in seeing the fall as a disaster instead of a necessary part of the plan, and the atonement as plan B instead of plan A. There is enough material in the bible that it can be arranged, prioritized, and interpreted in several different ways. One common theme is the longsuffering of God with his errant people. Another common theme is of building a covenant relationship with God.
Depending on how you interpret these two points can lead to contradictory results. A) God will accept and reward you if you make a covenant with him and keep it.
Everyone fails to walk uprightly before God, our best attempts are garbage, and quite possible motivated by the sins of pride, ego, and self-righteousness.The dominant brand of Mormonism that survives today interprets the bible in the covenant relationship way. I believe it is a biblically defensable position to take… and also diametrically opposed by other sections of the bible. Because the bible was written by many men over centuries, it makes sense that it would offer competing and even conflicting opinions on a host of topics.
What Roy said. DJ, I don’t think Pres. Nelson sees the Atonement as “Plan B” or the Fall as a disaster. The Book of Mormon is clear in its statement that the Fall was a necessity and part of the Plan. What I see is someone who sees the Atonement partly or primarily as an enabling power to help people overcome their natural tendencies and stop sinning. That absolutely can be interpreted from the Bible and the rest of our scriptural canon, although it is not the only reasonable interpretation. I think his framing of that concept is nearer the extreme of that concept than the middle.
As an aside, I think his current wife sees it that same way, which probably is one reason they work for each other.
Personally, I believe that most leaders of the Church would justify saying just about anything, if it would get people to act the way they “should”. It doesn’t matter if it’s objectively “true”, if it increases faith in Christ and brings greater Church commitment, God approves it. He told the kids they were special. He placed a strong mandate on parents to teach their kids.
In response to your points:
1. I don’t think he meant that explicitly, but was trying to emphasize the uptmost importance of staying on the “straight and narrow”.
2. Since no parent is perfect, no child is promised to stay on the “straight and narrow”. There’s also a difference between sin-resistant and sin-proof. If a parent tries hard, the odds are more in their favor than if they didn’t. He also told them they were special. Telling people they are special gives them the “feels” and makes them more agreeable. Children (and parents of those children) especially.
3. Every Christian is a cafeteria Christian. That being said, some people need to focus on mercy, while others need to focus on the vileness of sin. “Many paths to heaven”, and all that…
dande48 wrote:
He also told them they were special. Telling people they are special gives them the “feels” and makes them more agreeable. Children (and parents of those children) especially.
We have had this conversation before. At one time I had thought that the teaching of the youth of today being special, saved for the last days, or the elect had fallen out of favor. We disavowed the teaching about people of African descent being less valiant in the pre-existence. To me, it reasonably follows that if there are specials then there are also inferiors. That correlation plus the fact that the idea of the youth of today being special is not backed by scripture (aka not “doctrinal”) made me believe that we as a people would stop teaching it. Yet it persists.
Not to get too cynical about it but I think a lot of times it’s just a leader trying to motivate the members and they come up with a phrase they think sounds really cool and it gets repeated because they have to give five talks per week. If the phrase does prove catchy it gets repeated a lot in local circles. Every member a missionary
Hasten the work
Covenant path
Sin resistant
Unbroken chain
Lengthen your stride
Ponderize (short circuited right out of the gate)
felixfabulous wrote:
2. This seems to be setting everyone up for huge disappointments down the road. “My child did what? They were supposed to be sin-resistent because they are a child of the covenant!” The child will think they are a huge disappointment to their parents because they were always told they would be sin-resistent.I think there is a great deal of anxiety in the church about whether family will fall away from the church. One mistake we make is in believing falling away from the
churchmeans becoming a bad person, but that’s a different subject entirely. But… what did the prophet Lehi do wrong to raise two sons that were so rebellious and one son that was so arrogant? What did god do wrong to cause a third part of all organized intelligence to fall from heaven? But we’ll beat ourselves up wondering what more we could have done if someone “falls.” I think it just comes with the territory. Roy wrote:
We have had this conversation before. At one time I had thought that the teaching of the youth of today being special, saved for the last days, or the elect had fallen out of favor. We disavowed the teaching about people of African descent being less valiant in the pre-existence. To me, it reasonably follows that if there are specials then there are also inferiors. That correlation plus the fact that the idea of the youth of today being special is not backed by scripture (aka not “doctrinal”) made me believe that we as a people would stop teaching it. Yet it persists.
I think it’s not too dissimilar to the conversation we’ve had about millennials. It’s less the case that each generation has their defining characteristics that they take with them as they age and more the case that people in a particular age range having defining characteristics and those characteristics change as they age into other groups.
That’s not too clear, but in this context it’s less about a particular group of people, say children born in the 1960s, being the special generation that was reserved for the last days… and wait a minute, you said that to the children born in the 70s, 80s, 90s, too! …and more about whoever happens to be between the ages of 12 and 18 at the time being “the chosen generation” because they are the ones that need to hear/believe it.
Roy wrote:
The dominant brand of Mormonism that survives today interprets the bible in the covenant relationship way. I believe it is a biblically defensable position to take… and also diametrically opposed by other sections of the bible. Because the bible was written by many men over centuries, it makes sense that it would offer competing and even conflicting opinions on a host of topics.
I am not taking an opposing opinion to anything Roy said. I am simply pointing out that as soon as we talk about a perspective that has survived time, it throws out the absolute truth of the gospel. It means that just like any other church, the whole belief in religion is passed through human intellect and out comes a version of it that is considered consensus, or at least, dominant among many intepretations. There may have been no absolute version in the first place.
So why to subscribe to any one philosophy? Why not just focus on living on the best life you can, maximizing personal happiness through wholesome living, service to others, etcetera?
SilentDawning wrote:
So why to subscribe to any one philosophy? Why not just focus on living on the best life you can, maximizing personal happiness through wholesome living, service to others, etcetera?
If you subscribe to the 2 stages of life theory (Richard Rohr) – this is 1st stage of life. It provides an anchor post that you can pivot off of into maximizing personal happiness/meaning during 2nd stage of life.
In my own life, I thought I was “maximizing my personal happiness” and “living the best life I thought I could” through church service and keeping the commandments religiously as I understood them. However, at the end of the day, my path needed to take me through those previous experiences to get me to where I am today. The older I get, the more I experience the paradox of wanting to pass wisdom onto the next generations to short-circuit the pain of my experiences contrasted with the increasing understanding that (as painful as it is), they absolutely need to have some of those experiences. It is a part of the spiritual developmental progress the way that fall follows summer in the seasons.
SilentDawning wrote:
So why to subscribe to any one philosophy? Why not just focus on living on the best life you can, maximizing personal happiness through wholesome living, service to others, etcetera?
When we’re talking orthodoxy you eventually run into the “…but you need the ordinances” wall.
AmyJ wrote:
If you subscribe to the 2 stages of life theory (Richard Rohr) – this is 1st stage of life. It provides an anchor post that you can pivot off of into maximizing personal happiness/meaning during 2nd stage of life.
To springboard off of what Amy said – the Mormon focus on families, communities, and specific standards of chastity and WoW tends to do a better than average job of producing healthy well rounded adults. In short, it takes a village to raise a child.I don’t love or hate the phrase, and I agree with Curt that it’s not necessarily that he misunderstands or dismisses the atonement. It’s more of a motivational / creating a community we want approach, not a “you too can live a sin-free life and not need the atonement” approach. There’s a real millenial strain to RMN’s leadership, and I don’t mean the kids with man-buns gushing over the latest vegan food truck. I mean he’s a millenarian, or someone who believes and preaches that the Second Coming is imminent and that we have to prepare for it with urgency. That’s something that Christian groups have been doing since Paul’s day, so it’s not new. Likewise, early church members believed that “last dispensation,” and many Patriarchal blessings of those who have since died said they would live to see the Second Coming.
Aside from that, the idea of being sin-resistant sounds like “stain-resistant,” a phrase you hear in commercials, so it’s designed to be catchy and stick in the mind. Do good Mormon kids try to avoid sin? Sure. Do good Mormon parents want their kids to avoid the pitfalls of temptation–the lower self-esteem, the teen pregnancies, the substance addictions, the drunken regrets? Obviously.
RMN and WWN are just a little more obsessed with purity (and less with compassion for mistakes). That just means they are politically conservative.
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