{"id":22331,"date":"2012-09-12T08:38:15","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T13:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=22331"},"modified":"2012-09-12T08:40:11","modified_gmt":"2012-09-12T13:40:11","slug":"dont-read-that-your-testimony-will-be-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/09\/dont-read-that-your-testimony-will-be-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Read That! Your Testimony Will Be History!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julie Smith opens her excellent T&S\u00a0review<\/a>\u00a0of Turner\u2019s\u00a0Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet\u00a0<\/em>(which I\u2019ve not yet read) with clear reservations about recommending this book to the \u201caverage\u201d church member.<\/p>\n

I suspect that John G. Turner\u2019s\u00a0Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet<\/em><\/a>\u00a0will be the definitive biography of Brigham Young for the next few decades. Overall, this is a good thing.<\/p>\n

But it may also be a troubling thing, at least for some people. I wholeheartedly recommended the recent\u00a0Joseph Smith<\/a>,\u00a0David O. McKay<\/a>, and\u00a0Spencer W. Kimball<\/a>\u00a0biographies to all members of the Church. Sure, they are a little less sanitized than we are used to, but the picture in each one of those works is of a prophet of God who had some flaws, with far more emphasis on the \u201cprophet\u201d part than on the \u201cflawed\u201d part.<\/p>\n

This book? Not so much. I have serious reservations about recommending it to the average church member; if you need your prophet to be larger than life, or even just better than the average bear, this book is not for you. \u00a0I think there is a substantial risk that people raised on hagiographic, presentist images of prophets would have their testimonies rocked, if not shattered, by this book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As far as I can tell, Julie is probably right to harbor these kinds of reservations.<\/p>\n

But what does this say about the kind of thing a \u201ctestimony\u201d is?<\/p>\n

What kind of testimony is capable of being rocked or even shattered by Turner\u2019s brand of honest but unfiltered history?<\/p>\n

Has Julie just conceded that the average member\u2019s testimony is propped up by a misreading of history sufficiently grievous that it can\u2019t bear any real historical weight?<\/p>\n

Is she right?<\/p>\n

If she\u2019s right, does it matter?<\/p>\n

What does it mean about the relationship between our church history and our spiritual work if a testimony can be historically ignorant about basic facts and\u00a0still\u00a0<\/em>be genuinely valid and efficacious?<\/p>\n

What does it mean if an ignorant testimony\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>still be genuinely valid and efficacious?<\/p>\n

How \u201cright\u201d would a testimony have to be (and about what kinds of things?) in order to be legitimate?<\/p>\n

If an ignorant testimony isn\u2019t valid, then does anyone actually have one?<\/p>\n

If my testimony consists primarily of my biased, compromised, ignorant (and often self-serving) versions of both historical events and God\u2019s intentions for me and mine, then does God\u00a0want<\/em>\u00a0me to \u201close\u201d that \u201ctestimony\u201d in order to be, instead, grounded in his inconvenient grace?<\/p>\n

[Note: I’m not interested in discussing here the colorful aspects of church history. Rather, I’m just interested in addressing exactly the questions posed above.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julie Smith opens her excellent T&S\u00a0review\u00a0of Turner\u2019s\u00a0Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet\u00a0(which I\u2019ve not yet read) with clear reservations about recommending this book to the \u201caverage\u201d church member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22331"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22345,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22331\/revisions\/22345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}