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Features: Boyd Petersen, Fiona Givens, and Terryl Givens http://mormonmatters.org/2014/04/29/225-wrestling-with-prophets-and-scripture/ A couple of my favourite bits:
Quote:Terryl Givens:
“It’s ok to shift who is authoritative in your life to yourself.
We want a standard that is infallible because it relieves us of the burden of continually exerting ourself to use discernment. The way Dostoevsky put it so beautifully was, ‘We want some person to be a keeper of our conscience.’
The hard lesson is that there is never a moment where you can delegate your volition to another person — leader or lay.”
TG talks about leaders who left the church in his youth so he never set the bar very high for leaders anyway.
Fiona Givens: “Brigham Young… I don’t think we’d have got on very well.” But quotes the famous line “I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inqure for themselves of God whether they are led by him…”
She says “Of course you’ll hear voices saying contradictory things. If the scriptures can then the leaders will too. If you’re going to hear contradictory voices then you need to choose which to listen to.
There’s a tendency to ignore the invite to listen to Jesus when he says “take my yoke upon you” and instead want to ride in the cart. We tend to be lazy with our responsibility vis a vis the leaders of the church.
Sounds excellent. I’ll definitely have to give that episode a listen. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Excellent! I highly recommend this one! This was a good listen. I really enjoyed their perspectives and insights. However, I also still ended it with this general feeling of everyone trying to uphold the role of the prophet, while basically making the point that the prophet isn’t really in a position different than the rest of us. Basically, that he is a wise, experienced president of an organization. That we should show him respect for his role and listen to his wisdom. I would apply that same advice to any individual who is loving, wise, and has a lot of life experience.
Yet, for all the wisdom, history has shown many LDS prophets and apostles to be more traditionalists than wise people. Sometimes I feel like more is taught about preserving the ‘good ole’ days’ and upholding ‘righteousness’ with a closed mind than using actual wisdom. Granted, it is not one sided. There have been many wise things that have been taught, as well. But my main point, is that many people in the world offer lots of wisdom and occasional bad or prejudiced advice. What makes the prophet the prophet? Is he just an administrator and CEO?
Perhaps he is meant to fill exactly that role, and wait for those rare moments when God does have something specific to reveal. Perhaps God just needs a person in that position to lead and to be ready, in case a genuine revelation is needed. The problem with this perspective, however, is that the church doesn’t teach this. The church teaches that the prophet is being a prophet all of the time. The primary song, ‘Follow the prophet” and the hymn, ‘We thank thee of God for a prophet” both are examples of this expectation. Yes, they say that a prophet is only being a prophet when the speak for the Lord, but they have a very wide definition of when these occasions occur: Ensign, official church publications, General Conference, etc. The church is just starting to admit when prophets have claimed to be speaking for God and been dead wrong, but there is no discussion about modifying or clarifying our view of what a prophet is. “Keep following the prophet and never mind that they have actually led people down paths of prejudice and bigotry in the past.”
So, in essence, I think the church needs a new definition of what it means to follow the prophet. We don’t need a patriarchal figure for us to abandon our agency toward in the name of obedience and thoughtless trust.
Now that being said, the role of a prophet that is most inspiring to me is their examples of love and service. I don’t know that I will ever be able to show the degree of dedication and Christian service that most prophets seem to embody.
thalmar wrote:This was a good listen. I really enjoyed their perspectives and insights.
However, I also still ended it with this general feeling of everyone trying to uphold the role of the prophet, while basically making the point that the prophet isn’t really in a position different than the rest of us. Basically, that he is a wise, experienced president of an organization. That we should show him respect for his role and listen to his wisdom. I would apply that same advice to any individual who is loving, wise, and has a lot of life experience.
Yet, for all the wisdom, history has shown many LDS prophets and apostles to be more traditionalists than wise people. Sometimes I feel like more is taught about preserving the ‘good ole’ days’ and upholding ‘righteousness’ with a closed mind than using actual wisdom. Granted, it is not one sided. There have been many wise things that have been taught, as well. But my main point, is that many people in the world offer lots of wisdom and occasional bad or prejudiced advice. What makes the prophet the prophet? Is he just an administrator and CEO?
Perhaps he is meant to fill exactly that role, and wait for those rare moments when God does have something specific to reveal. Perhaps God just needs a person in that position to lead and to be ready, in case a genuine revelation is needed. The problem with this perspective, however, is that the church doesn’t teach this. The church teaches that the prophet is being a prophet all of the time. The primary song, ‘Follow the prophet” and the hymn, ‘We thank thee of God for a prophet” both are examples of this expectation. Yes, they say that a prophet is only being a prophet when the speak for the Lord, but they have a very wide definition of when these occasions occur: Ensign, official church publications, General Conference, etc. The church is just starting to admit when prophets have claimed to be speaking for God and been dead wrong, but there is no discussion about modifying or clarifying our view of what a prophet is. “Keep following the prophet and never mind that they have actually led people down paths of prejudice and bigotry in the past.”
So, in essence, I think the church needs a new definition of what it means to follow the prophet. We don’t need a patriarchal figure for us to abandon our agency toward in the name of obedience and thoughtless trust.
Now that being said, the role of a prophet that is most inspiring to me is their examples of love and service. I don’t know that I will ever be able to show the degree of dedication and Christian service that most prophets seem to embody.
I agree that it is confusing. At the “front door” it’s the same message. Follow the prophet because when he speaks it’s as if God is speaking.” This is what we teach our children and our new members. It’s in Gospel Principles.
But that’s apparently not the case. I’m glad for people like the Givenses and Bushman. People who can see the problems and try to find a middle way. At the moment they’re not able to teach that message at the front door, only round the back quietly, to those who will listen. Maybe one day the message will be taught that way by everyone.
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