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You’re absolutely right, Heber. And I think I’ve been looking at it as a black and white issue as well. Thanks for the link to the thread– it’s very helpful. I love this, too:
Quote:I follow my heart, focus on the purpose of things, don’t try to complicate it, and try to do good things to add to the ward family.
I feel less riled up today. I think that’s a good thing.
DarkJedi wrote:But what if you don’t consider it doctrine, Roy? It could be argued, of course, that we don’t get to pick what is and isn’t doctrine and that’s the prophet’s job (which would fit in the lesson in question). On the other hand, it could be argued we are expected to understand whether something is or isn’t doctrine and gain a testimony of the doctrine.
NonTraditionalMom wrote:Yes. And here is part of my problem with this lesson: I don’t believe that it is doctrine. I don’t believe that Wilford Woodruff was directed by God to say that no prophet could lead the church astray, and I don’t believe that Ezra Taft Benson was directed by God to give his tips on following the prophet.
Perhaps we are defining the term differently and I take total responsibility for that. In this case I am defining COJCLDS doctrine as “what is taught” and as completely seperate from what God may want taught.
Last year I was asked to team teach Pioneer Club on Wednesday nights at the First Christian Church. When I told my bishop he seemed surprised and asked what I do when they ask me to teach something I do not believe in. I responded that for the most part it is just general principles derived from bible stories. They have a manual that lays out the lesson plans and I just follow that. Suppose that they had a lesson on the Trinity. I would consider it inappropriate for me to teach the Mormon Godhead. People send their children to Pioneer Club to be taught mainstream Christian doctrine. I can choose to teach it as outlined in the lesson or somehow avoid it (focus on something else in the lesson, skip to the next lesson, ask to be excused, fake an injury, etc.). I might also teach it in the third person with statements such as “the manual has the following quote” or “Such and such person compared the trinity to XYZ” and not share my personal perspective. I do not think it would be right for me to teach something diametricaly opposed to what I was asked to teach.
I know it is generally much easier to be detached about what is being taught in another church vs. your own.
:think: NonTraditionalMom wrote:My testimony of deity, in fact, relies on prophets being completely fallible.
I need to believe that prophets have misunderstood the Spirit’s promptings or decided to do things their own way because otherwise, it really is true that God doesn’t love me the way he loves my husband and sons. I’ve believed that in the past, but I just can’t do it any more. I’m not trying to turn this into a feminist rant or anything, but this is a very critical issue for me.So then I have a really hard time stomaching, let alone saying out loud to people I am teaching, that prophets always speak for the Lord. But I agree, Ray, that
I agreed to teach the Church’s doctrine, not my own.And truly, I think my mental/emotional/spiritual state is making this into a much bigger deal than it needs to be.
It’s hard to draw the lines, but I do think that women have an extra hurdle to clear. Good luck and tell us how it goes.I just read through the lesson and wow. It’s worse than I thought. I’m not convinced it is a doctrinally sound lesson even for the church. Of course I could think of numerous examples that counter what it was teaching, but that would make for a poor lesson. If I were to use the manual at all for this lesson, I might start by reading the church’s official statement on doctrine, which is that not every word spoken by a prophet past or present is considered doctrine, but rather is well regarded council. Then I might quote Lorenzo Snow as saying: “There were men in those dark ages who could commune with God, and who, by the power of faith, could draw aside the curtain of eternity and gaze upon the invisible world… There were men who could gaze upon the face of God, have the ministering of angels, and unfold the future destinies of the world. If those were dark ages I pray God to give me a little darkness…” Then quote uchtdorf “mistakes were made…”
Then ask: wilford woodruff said that the prophet cannot lead us astray, how would you interpret that?” Then depending on the answers I would dig more: “so do you think he’s implying we be blindly obedient?” Or “in what way specifically can we not be lead astray?” Or “what if I pray about what the prophet says and I don’t get an answer, should I still follow him?” Or “john Taylor seemed to imply that God speaks to other men. If so, how is the prophetic mantle different?” “What does it mean for a prophet to hold keys?” I would try and help the class discern between administration of church affairs, wise council and doctrine. I would really refer to the text minimally. There are plenty of better quotes from other prophets you can use in the lesson. Get away from the ideal and try to bring the lesson into the reality of everyone’s lives. Playing devils advocate during a lesson is a good way to innocently question the primary answers people give.
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I think it is worth noting somewhere that when Pres. Benson said this stuff (14Fs) he was not Pres. Benson, he was Elder Benson. At that time the idea that all of the Q15 were prophets was somewhat less emphasized (at least where I live). You could always refer to this: http://www.wheatandtares.org/215/hawkgrrrls-14-fundamentals/ 
Quote:Hawkgrrrl wrote:
juxtapose quotes from evil dictators that sound a whole lot like the 14F and then ask who said it (that’s sort of a bad idea maybe, but it amuses me). It’s hard not to see the similarities between the standard for following leaders laid out in the 14F and things Kim John Il has said.
That would be TOTALLY awesome.
hawkgrrrl wrote:You could always refer to this:
http://www.wheatandtares.org/215/hawkgrrrls-14-fundamentals/ I LOVE IT!!!! You’d probably have to throw your TR in with the deal though, as well as your calling — it would be considered sacrilege!
I originally deleted my post, I think I should re-add some elements – testify and warn the people and all that. If any of you have the opportunity to teach the lesson I’d plead with you to do your best to give the lesson. It may prevent the type of lesson I ended up sitting in on.
Background: My ward is strange. We’ve lagged one lesson behind the rest of the world in the ETB manual just about all year. I’m not sure how that happened. This past Sunday we didn’t have a combined meeting for 5th Sunday, it was a regular old divide and conquer the sexes (tongue firmly in cheek). EQ taught lesson 11 from the ETB manual, so now we’ve skipped a few lessons and are ahead of the world.
We started the lesson off by doing the typical thing, taking turns reading paragraph by paragraph from the beginning. The discussion didn’t start until the section on
The most important prophet for us is the living prophet.Points made by the instructor (my notes in parenthesis): When I was a kid
was the prophet, I considered him to be my prophet, my favorite. Today the prophet is TSM. We should exclusively listen to what he says over what older prophets have said. (Funny, seeing how the lesson is coming from a manual on teachings from ETB. We all know that as a community we are very selective about when to apply this principle.) - Race and the priesthood falls into this category. We have to listen to the current prophets on this point. (I do like this point on many levels. I won’t get into it here though.)
- What revelations has TSM had? (My bad boy side thought, well this ought to be good
- TSM probably never imagined that he’d have to fight the same sex marriage battle, that the world would be such a wicked place, but that’s why we have to listen to the modern prophet,
never thought that same sex marriage would become as big a deal as it has become so it’s up to the modern guy to be the standard bearer. (A prophet didn’t see that coming? extremelyopinionated about that subject). - The Family: A Proclamation to the World was prophetic, it drew a line in the sand before same sex attraction was even an issue. (
:crazy: )- The rest of the lesson, probably half of the lesson, was spent talking about same sex marriage and how no member should support it. A few other points of the political right were briefly brought up, not made a focus but mentioned, then we ran out of time.
I had some comments at the ready for the lesson (despite the sneak attack nature of the timing of the lesson
As a class participant I’d select one quote or one message that I wanted to get across, the thing that was the most important to me. You don’t want to be the person that’s raising their hand every 5 minutes, especially when it’s to point out some flaw or other in the lesson’s reasoning. People will tune you out. Mine was the quote from BY recently shared by D. Todd Christofferson in his talk Free Forever, to Act for Themselves in the October 2014 GC.
Brigham Young wrote:I do not wish any Latter Day Saint in this world, nor in heaven, to be satisfied with anything I do, unless the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ,—the spirit of revelation, makes them satisfied. I wish them to know for themselves and understand for themselves.
I was going to read this if I felt like the discussion ventured too far into blind obedience territory. That never came up so I didn’t share the quote. The one thing I was worried about didn’t come to fruition, so I sat there in (stunned) silence.
DarkJedi wrote:I think it is worth noting somewhere that when Pres. Benson said this stuff (14Fs) he was not Pres. Benson, he was Elder Benson. At that time the idea that all of the Q15 were prophets was somewhat less emphasized (at least where I live).
Probably a good thing too, giving the 14 fundamentals address as a prophet is a good way to get yourself labeled a megalomaniac.
nibbler wrote:DarkJedi wrote:I think it is worth noting somewhere that when Pres. Benson said this stuff (14Fs) he was not Pres. Benson, he was Elder Benson. At that time the idea that all of the Q15 were prophets was somewhat less emphasized (at least where I live).
Probably a good thing too, giving the 14 fundamentals address as a prophet is a good way to get yourself labeled a megalomaniac.
😆 True! For some, that title might fit, however. Actually both JS and BY come to mind immediately. I’m not saying they were, but the case could be made.It could also be pointed out that the 14Fs were not delivered in a GC talk (it was a talk at BYU) and that they were not repeated (although some elements have fallen into popular LDS culture).
We had a interesting leadership meeting a few days ago where this article by Elder Cook was referenced:
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/03/looking-beyond-the-mark?lang=eng ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/03/looking-beyond-the-mark?lang=eng Quote:The discussion didn’t start until the section on The most important prophet for us is the living prophet. Points made by the instructor (my notes in parenthesis):
When I was a kid
was the prophet, I considered him to be my prophet, my favorite. Today the prophet is TSM. We should exclusively listen to what he says over what older prophets have said. (Funny, seeing how the lesson is coming from a manual on teachings from ETB. We all know that as a community we are very selective about when to apply this principle.) Well then, lesson over. Obviously this manual can be tossed out since he’s dead. Next!
nibbler wrote:What revelations has TSM had? (My bad boy side thought, well this ought to be good . Silence. Granted it wasn’t a I can’t think of anything silence, it was one of those no one wants to volunteer a comment silences.) The teacher broke the silence with mentioning lowering the age to serve a mission and also mentioned what would come to take over the discussion, the church’s position against same sex marriage.
What about the revelation to not ask God about ordaining women? Or the revelation for the I’m a Mormon and Meet the Mormons campaigns? What about the revelation to produce the essays on lds.org? Or the revelation that sexual orientation is not a choice and that Gay individuals generally should not marry members of the opposite gender as this and 100’s of other reparative techniques are ineffective at best and harmful at worst? Or the revelations on who to call to fill vacancies in the quorum? Revelations abound!
hawkgrrrl wrote:Quote:The discussion didn’t start until the section on The most important prophet for us is the living prophet. Points made by the instructor (my notes in parenthesis):
When I was a kid
was the prophet, I considered him to be my prophet, my favorite. Today the prophet is TSM. We should exclusively listen to what he says over what older prophets have said. (Funny, seeing how the lesson is coming from a manual on teachings from ETB. We all know that as a community we are very selective about when to apply this principle.) Well then, lesson over. Obviously this manual can be tossed out since he’s dead. Next!
:thumbup: Sounds perfectly reasonable and doctrinal to me!I’d love to do Robin Williams’s character in Dead Poets Society and tell everyone to rip those pages out!
DarkJedi wrote:I’d love to do Robin Williams’s character in Dead Poets Society and tell everyone to rip those pages out!
And that is a lesson that cannot be improved onSent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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