General Conference is a couple of weeks away. We’ll get to hear a lot about the covenant path and the One True Church and certainly some mentions of the Most Correct of Any Book. But we also might get to hear a few tidbits about GAs’ idiosyncratic preferences. For example, Dallin H. Oaks thinks it’s very important that we take the sacrament with our right hands. And someone (I’m guessing Russell M. Nelson) is running a campaign to get temples rebranded as “houses of the Lord.”
How much time or effort should we spend trying to tease out these sometimes idiosyncratic GA preferences from the core of the gospel, things like the Two Great Commandments, the atonement and so forth? I feel like I’ve spent far too much mental energy in my life on this task. I thought it was worthwhile, though, because I figured, and certainly heard lots of people say, that you could just ignore those tangential personal preferences of individual GAs and just hold to the core of the gospel.
But here’s my problem: It’s often unclear where one ends and the other begins.
Certainly it seems like the right-hand sacrament preference isn’t core, right? Probably the GAs’ suspicion of facial hair that keeps many (most? all?) bishops, stake presidents, and male temple workers clean shaven seems culturally bound and limited in time, especially since 19th century GAs were famous for sporting some immense beards. And Gordon B. Hinckley’s well-remembered commandment for women and girls to have a maximum of one piercing per ear seemed obviously trivial even at the time, and can be handily discarded now that it’s even been removed from FTSoY. But what about bigger issues? Some GAs (Spencer W. Kimball, I think, and perhaps Gordon B. Hinckley) seemed to think caffeine was forbidden by the Word of Wisdom. But the GAs seem to have backed off on that. So was that their individual preference? How about birth control? Lots of GAs up to the turn of the millennium certainly felt it should be condemned in the strongest terms. But the Handbook has been rewritten in the past several iterations to be much more hands-off and leave the decision in the hands of couples (Neil L. Andersen’s preferences notwithstanding). How about the priesthood/temple ban? It seems like lots of GAs in the 1960s and before were pretty sure it would last forever, and that black people were irredeemably lesser. And of course there are hot-button issues today that seem to me to be clearly far afield from the core of the gospel, but that some GAs are deeply concerned about. For example, Dallin H. Oaks is deeply concerned about the existence of LGBTQ people, and he wants them all straightened out so they can be straight and cisgender in the afterlife. This feels utterly tangential to me in relation to Jesus’s message, and clearly just his imbibing of the homophobia of his time and place. So how do you tease apart the preferences from the core?
The answer I’ve come to is that you don’t. GAs themselves clearly have no sense of what’s core and what’s peripheral. The ones who are doctrinaire and controlling are just as happy to pontificate on utterly random topics as they are on anything I’d see as central to the gospel. Witness Bruce R. McConkie being thrilled to expound at length on hundreds of topics in Mormon Doctrine, putting down as God’s Truth all of his random opinions on all kinds of topics, like tattoos and who the Great and Abominable Church was. Or consider that Ezra Taft Benson seemed just as sure that the Civil Rights movement was a tool of Satan as he later was that we should read the Book of Mormon more or that married women were wicked if they were employed. Spencer W. Kimball and others condemned face cards with as much certainty (if not as much vehemence) as they did adultery.
I think teachings of practical infallibility totally feed into this failure to distinguish on GAs’ part. Ezra Taft Benson’s infamous talk “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet” included a number of whoppers, but one in particular is this line:
The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
So the prophet (and the other GAs, who are prophets-in-training and who we already sustain as prophets just to be safe) gets to opine with God’s voice on every topic he thinks of. And this isn’t just a one-off idea. The widely quoted interview with Wendy Watson Nelson from 2019 where she breathlessly describes her husband receiving all these bits of revelation all the time give credence to the idea that when a GA speaks an opinion, it’s actually God speaking it.
My conclusion, given the GAs’ obvious inability to distinguish their individual preferences from core issues is that the Church is GA preferences all the way down. It’s a GA preference that for decades we couldn’t have brass instruments played in sacrament meeting. But it’s also GA preference to refuse to ordain women. And it’s GA preference to assert that the LDS Church is God’s only true one with his only true authority. The covenant path is GA preferences and Jesus as the Savior as GA preferences. By clinging so tightly to all their obviously wrong little opinions, to me GAs make clear that they really have no special inspiration about anything. I’m still willing to listen to them as people who have been through more of life than I have and who have spent a lot of time thinking about how to do good, but I don’t grant them any special authority beyond that.
I have come to the conclusion that one hour spent considering how I feel about important topics is more valuable to me than 10 hours listening to how others feel. Not that those other perspectives don’t have value, but I’d rather think about things myself than be told what to do. If agency is so important to God’s plan, perhaps we should encourage people to use it and then own their decisions. (Maybe we’ll call this part “studying it out in your mind” and “seeking learning from the best books” and “not being commanded in all things”.) I often find more wisdom in a short blog post than from most GAs and their much speaking.
I am weary of prophetic council about things that aren’t important, and inspired instruction that countermands last decades inspired instruction. I am tired of lessons on humility from an organization that exhibits no humility. I’d rather have an honest “I don’t know” than a confident “here’s the answer”.
Well said, DaveW.
I have come to the conclusion that one hour spent considering how I feel about important topics is more valuable to me than 10 hours listening to how others feel.
It seems that RFK Jr. (among others) agrees with that approach.
Last Lemming: I’m not sure I understand your point. You’ll have to be more blunt.
RFK Jr is mostly in the news this year for his views on fluoridated water, vaccine safety and, this week, Tylenol causing autism. As in other areas, I’m not swayed by his position, and retain the right to distinguish for myself the right side to each of these debates. This isn’t an exercise in hubris. In each of these examples, scientists come armed with facts, which overwhelmingly reject Kenney’s claims. If he has compelling arguments for his positions, I’ve yet to see them. This is what I mean when I say that I get to choose my position. I’m not outsourcing my cognitive functions to him simply because he is the HHS Secretary.
In the same way, I’ll decide for myself if beards make someone unfit for church leadership, whether caffeine on God’s bad list, and whether it matters which hand I use to take the sacrament. And I’ll do it for the weightier issues of temple/priesthood bans and LGBTQ policies. If I am to learn anything from this life, I’d prefer to do it by making my own decisions on issues and then trying to live my life by those morals and values. Choosing someone else as the smartest kid in the class and then thoughtlessly copying off their paper just doesn’t appeal to me.
The problem with RFK Jr and the idea that Dave W expressed that he would rather spend 1 hour thinking about how he feels than 10 thinking about how someone else feels is that RFK jr spends no time researching facts, he just spends those 10 hours on how others feel, not what they know. Then he thinks about how he feels after only listening to others who feel afraid, and duh, of course he is still afraid. He only listened to others who feel exactly how he does.. The difference is, I would love to hear Russel Nelson talk about heart surgery, but am bored silly with him talking about how he feels about religion. He knows heart surgery because he studied it from a factual perspective, not how other doctors felt, but what they knew. I am pretty sure that Dave does spend time listening to what people know. Then he takes his one hour thinking about how he feels about the facts and knowledge. RFK Jr is not paying any attention to proven facts. He is just spouting a lot of emotional garbage. OK, so he doesn’t feel vaccines are safe. Now I know what he feels, but I don’t know any facts about how safe vaccines really are. So, I look at the studies that show they are much much safer than the diseases they prevent me from getting. Then I think about how I feel about how safe vaccines really are and go get vaccinated. I really am not helped by listening to feelings when I really need facts.
Sure, religion is more about feelings than it is facts. But it should not conflict with facts. So, same thing applies. First I lear a little about how the world works. So, fact, science say that Gay people are born that way. Now when the church tried to tell me years ago that they felt it was learned behavior and a choice, they were not talking facts at all, but how they felt. So, when facts conflict with how the world works, then listening to how all those religious people feel doesn’t help me. I need to spend my time thinking about how I feel. I also need some religious background, say by reading the Bible and listening at church. Been there done that. Now, I find it much more valuable to spend one hour thinking about how I feel than listening over and over to how others feel.
And about GA preferences, if it isn’t supported by the teachings of Jesus, I am currently rejecting it all as GA preferences. Temples, GA preference. Tithing, GA preferences. God’s love for us is conditioned on our obedience as taught by RMN, conflicts with the teachings of Jesus, so incorrect GA preference. So, I base good worthwhile religion on what Jesus taught and don’t worry about the rest. It is all GA preferences unless it is backed up by Jesus and loving others.
My point is simply that RFK Jr. is listening only to his own feelings. Because he has a lot of followers, it may seem like he is listening to them, but I don’t think so. He knows what he knows and if others agree, that is just a happy coincidence.
So I am wary of overrating my own feelings. Listening to others’ feelings is critical (not to mention listening to facts).
If you believe that same-sex coupling is something that is wrong to do,whether or not a desire to do it is inborn is irrelevant.And claiming that all desires are equally worthy or all decisions equally wise makes no sense.
I am not a religious person and this is not a religious issue…wanting to believe GA-doctrine or Gay-doctrine may each have their aspects of “faith” over fact.
Louis, that’s a sad attitude for you to have. I don’t agree with religious people opposing gay marriage or relationships, but at least they’re pointing to something as their reason, like God said so. For you to say you’re irreligious but still opposed seems like you’re just saying you’re wanting to control other people’s sex and relationship lives, but for no reason other than what, it gives you the ick?
As I see it it’s a matter of secular common sense that if one sex were good enough we wouldn’t have two,the two sexes exist for each other,and any sexual attraction toward one’s own sex makes no sense.Any attempt to defend same-sex coupling boils down to “they wanna”,which is not enough to justify anything.(Having a willing co-conspirator does not make the object of a conspiracy blameless).
It is certainly clear that (regardless of the reproductive intent or capacity of any individual instance) the opposite-sex relationship is of greater importance to humanity as a whole than the same-sex sexual relationship…treating the choice as a matter of indifference is irrational,and preferential social treatment for the opposite-sex bond is appropriate.
I am not saying mistakes should be criminalized (we all make mistakes and would all be in prison!) but acknowledging they ARE mistaken choices is better than denying it.
Louis, “they wanna” is an awfully dismissive description of someone’s sexual orientation. I don’t think we should force gay people to honor your wishes because you don’t wanna them to do it. But I’m not going to continue this conversation any further.