- Kendall Buchanan on What We Can Learn from Visions of Glory, Part 3: “Appreciate your comments RLD, especially your distinction about what we do with revelation versus how it’s received—we don’t usually talk about it that way, and it’d be interesting if we did. Anna, thanks for engaging. The post, however, was not a promotion of authority as a benchmark for revelation—indeed, I was hoping to demonstrate that revelation often defies expectations. As you point out, women and the priesthood is great example. In the same periodical in which Helen Mar told the story used in the post, she also said: > …and every time the evil spirits were rebuked by the power of the priesthood, which had been conferred upon us in the house of God in connection with our husbands. In this case, Helen explicitly connects her use of priesthood power to temple ordinances. You also mentioned the race ban, and I agree that’s an excellent example of Church leaders wrestling with what constitutes revelation. Jonathan, I agree Nephi doesn’t cite guilt for killing Laban, but if scripture were unidimensional, and not open for interpretation, I don’t believe the story of Abraham and Isaac—or Nephi’s—would be half as powerful, and therefore I wouldn’t shut alternative readings down quickly. By the way, thank you for letting me post these, it’s been fun!” Mar 1, 14:36
- on What We Can Learn from Visions of Glory, Part 3: “Anna, some good news: Abraham did not make a mistake. It says right there in Genesis that he was commanded by God, and we have clarifications in the New Testament that it was a trial of his faith and an example of faith and works acting together. And the command to slay Laban likewise came from God, and there’s no evidence that Nephi was haunted by it afterwards. The scriptures are a lot clearer if you don’t ignore what they actually say.” Mar 1, 13:45
- on What We Can Learn from Visions of Glory, Part 3: “But what are we supposed to do when our personal revolution says the prophet is wrong? I live through the 1978 change in doctrine, so maybe that will work as an example. I felt it was wrong to ban anyone from being sealed as a family because of race. As a woman who didn’t hold the priesthood anyway, I felt it was wrong to not allow blacks the priesthood, but mainly because of the sealing issue. I still feel it is wrong that women do not have priesthood, because all the evidence says that Joseph Smith was giving women the priesthood. The word “ordain” was even used with Emma when she was given priesthood power. But, there were people going around actively speaking out against church doctrine before the change was made. It is just possible that if they had not been agitating the change would not have happened. There are also lots of cases where someone just did what they were inspired to do, and then the church adopted the idea. Primary and young women’s programs are two examples. The Word of Wisdom is another bottom up revelation. Your whole, “the prophet is the only one who can get revelation for the church” is historically untrue. What about the blacks and priesthood doctrine? Was Brigham Young just plain wrong, or does God change his mind between Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and then change his mind again in 1978? Your method of when”inspiration” is from God assumes prophetic infallibility, which is not doctrine. Maybe the prophet is the only one who can “act” on inspiration for the whole church, because of his position and authority. Which is exactly what the Catholic Church has. So, what’s the difference between us and the Catholics? So, I think your key to recognizing “real” revelation as based on position and authority is bogus. I think it should be only based on what is moral and logical and good. Thus Nephi was wrong to commit murder. That didn’t come from God. But came from Nephi and necessity. Nephi just didn’t see any other way, so he convinced himself it was “inspiration from God. Nephi seems to have spent the rest of his life haunted by guilt, so there’s that. And, his nation did dwindle in unbelief. So, his committing murder failed anyway. Show me one good example where God told someone to do something immoral and it turned out all right, because in my book, both Nephi and Abraham made a mistake.” Mar 1, 11:44
- on Will the Community of Christ Die Off?: “Scholars have written about the membership decline and its reasons for years (see Walton, Launius, Jorgensen) but CofC leadership seem to not take scholary work into account, they know better. Nepotism is also a big issue in CofC (the Presiding Bishop’s son, daughter and son-in-law work for the CofC and its seminary).” Mar 1, 10:08
- on What We Can Learn from Visions of Glory, Part 3: “The Lord communicates with us in ways that will make sense to us, so it fits that he might send a glittering tow truck to a modern member where he would have sent a chariot of fire to an ancient Israelite. On the other hand, I suspect the reason we hear of fewer incidents like that today is that so many of us are comfortable with statements like my previous sentence. What makes sense to us is abstractions, and the Lord communicates with us accordingly. I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing. “…formulaic reasoning promotes homogenous ideas of who can receive revelation, how it arrives, and what questions it answers.” True, but unnecessarily. There are rules for personal revelation, but they proscribe certain things (mostly what we do with it) rather than limiting the scope of it. We fall short of what we could be receiving by personal revelation–and that was an authoritative message from President Nelson. I like your solution of focusing less on trying to authenticate personal revelation and more on making sure it changes us in good ways. That fits with Moroni 7. “Finally, revelation must be weighed against right and wrong.” Yes. I came away from my reading this week firmly convinced that the story of Abraham and Isaac is NOT telling us to ignore right and wrong when we think we have received revelation. (See my comment on the Akedah post if you really want to know my reasoning.) The story of Nephi and Laban can still be abused, but note that the Lord took the time to convince Nephi that what he was being asked to do was right and did not expect him to act until he was.” Mar 1, 08:55
- on New Program Fatigue in the Church: “Artimes: Just from random members who are repeating what someone told them. The LDS grapevine. No details, sorry. E: Amen” Feb 28, 17:22
- on New Program Fatigue in the Church: “I think it’s natural to get fatigued and less engaged when program changes are too frequent, especially when they seem hasty or half-baked, which they sometimes do. I wonder if the church is over-correlated, with too much decision-making by one person and not enough buy in by others, which leads to abrupt and major swings in policies/practices depending on who the President of the Church is. I’m thinking of things like the temple announcing spree that occurred during the entire Nelson presidency, that seems to have immediately halted when he died.” Feb 28, 16:18
- on New Program Fatigue in the Church: “REC911 – you mentioned hearing about 1 hour church. Can you share more? Are their plans to reduce our services to solely a one hour sacrament meeting at some point in the future?” Feb 28, 16:16
- on New Program Fatigue in the Church: “Different things work for different people, and the one advantage I see of having a succession of new programs that are soon mostly forgotten is that people can latch onto the ones that work for them. But overall I agree that fewer programs with more sustained attention will bring (somewhat) better results. The example that comes to my mind is the way the Church as an institution responded to President Benson’s call to focus on the Book of Mormon. It was relentless, and it made a difference.” Feb 28, 00:44
- on Unbinding Isaac: Aaron Koller on the Trauma and Theology of Genesis 22: “The Akedah starts with God’s command that Abraham sacrifice “thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest” and ends with God commending Abraham because “thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.” It’s all about the potential loss of Isaac. There’s not a word about Abraham suspending his ethics or being willing to kill just because the Lord said so. How can this not be about ethics or killing? In the culture of Abraham’s day, children were the property of their father (as was their mother) to be disposed of as the father saw fit. If he wants to send them out into the wilderness to die (i.e. Hagar and Ishmael), he can do that. If he wants to sacrifice them to his God, that’s his choice. It’s a waste of valuable resources, but it’s not particularly “wrong.” We can and should find this abhorrent, but that shouldn’t prevent us from heeding the intended message of the Akedah, which is that we must be prepared to sacrifice even what is most precious to us if the Lord so commands. We also shouldn’t read into it a message that wasn’t intended just because what Abraham was asked to do is completely unethical in our culture (and rightly so). If anyone thinks the Lord is asking them to do something that’s wrong, the relevant Abraham story is his conversation with the Lord about Sodom and Gomorrah, not the Akedah. In that story the Lord has absolutely no objection to Abraham insisting on his own ethical judgement, or to his claim that God himself must “do right.” Similarly, we can and should be appalled that Lot was willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect the angels who were under his roof, but that should not prevent us from heeding the intended message: that we have a duty to protect strangers and foreigners even if our society turns on them. We also learn that dire consequences follow when a society turns on the foreigners among them. (Yes, the duty to guests is part of the story of Lot, but the angels are not Lot’s guests when he pleads with them to shelter under his roof, perhaps hoping that giving them the status of guests would protect them.)” Feb 28, 00:29
