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This is a new video that I ran across on Youtube. I wish it was longer. I always like Bro Givens insights regarding gospel topics.
It’s short. Don’t walk out of your room.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx6mnxSAB0U Here is another video that I am currently watching.
It is longer & deeper.
This is an eye opening description of JS. JS was not afraid to get things wrong. JS was a “speculative thinker.” He was “pushing boundaries, asking new questions trying often by a process of trial to test new ideas and insights and challenge conventional religious thinking.”
I note that Brother Givens did not say “process of trial and error.” However, I think that trial and error is implied in that JS was not afraid to get things wrong and adjust, improve upon, or even discard previous revelations if they didn’t work.
This, to me, brings new meaning to the idea of JS as a rough stone rolling. He is moving fast and breaking things and he is also rough and jagged and unrefined but willing to change as those jagged edges break off when they come into contact with truths. Some people speculate that JS was ready to stop polygamy and that if he wasn’t martyred he would have done so. He experimented with it, maybe checked the box for the “restoration of all things,” and then it was causing increasing levels of hardship for JS and the saints and maybe it could be halted.
If JS as described by Brother Givens meets the definition of a prophet, then it seems that our general understanding of the role of a prophet (as being a mouthpiece/transcription device for God) is woefully inadequate.
Minyan Man wrote:
Here is another video that I am currently watching.It is longer & deeper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hkIip4qoKo
At 47 minutes into this interview, Brother Givens shares about a volunteer that put his life in danger to deliver first aid to the Ukrainian defenders on the front lines. This volunteer no longer considers himself LDS. Brother Givens goes on a thought experiment about the “covenant path” and whether this individual has left the path or perhaps found an amazing and beautiful way live the virtues of the covenant path in following Jesus (the goal and aim of the covenant path). It is powerful to think that people that follow Jesus in ways that are different than our formula are not inferior to us.
I am imagining the vision of the tree of life. Some come to the tree of life by the iron rod. Perhaps some others come by the liahona. If they are at the tree and partaking joyfully of the fruit then what right do we have to cast suspicion on their process to get there?
Brother Givens also talks about how we seem to be in a time of emphasis of belief in the gospel, to the expense of living the gospel.
Great, great stuff.
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