Tonight the Church Education System sponsored a satellite broadcast from Temple Square, featuring Elder Boyd K. Packer. As an early morning seminary teacher, I was invited to attend. Elder Packer and Elder Eyring, who introduced him, both made comments to the following effect (paraphrasing): “the world has never been more wicked, and it will not get any better.” I have no reason to dispute this, but why are General Authorities (and, by way of imitation, members) so fond of saying such things?
\n
\nI can think of a few possibilities:<\/p>\n
* This is a warning that we need to be vigilant in keeping the commandments. Sort of a wolf-at-the-door motif. Or, “while it may take a village to raise a child, don’t trust the other villagers.”<\/p>\n
* It may be a subtle means of patting ourselves on the back. Like when I complain during a hilly bicycle ride. We might, in a backhanded way, be congratulating ourselves on our righteousness.<\/p>\n
* We might be affirming the truth of the scriptures, which foretell all sorts of nasty events for the last days.<\/p>\n
All of these seem like possibilities, and, no doubt, we may make such statements for more than one reason. Nevertheless, I find these sentiments depressing. We know that, no matter what we do, the world is going to hell in a handbasket (so to speak). Does anyone act more righteously because they are walking around with that message in their head?<\/p>\n
All of this seems particularly strange in a Church that is generally so forward looking and optimistic. The message of the Gospel is a message of hope. We celebrate the progress of the Church partly because we have the sense that we are making a difference. We are making the world a better place! (Aren’t we?)<\/p>\n
One potentially salutary effect of hearing these dismal forecasts might be the following: when I reflect on the wicked state of affairs in which we find ourselves, I am inclined to seek comfort closer to home. If I can’t change the world, at least I can change myself, my marriage, my family, or my ward. That<\/i> must be good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tonight the Church Education System sponsored a satellite broadcast from Temple Square, featuring Elder Boyd K. Packer. As an early morning seminary teacher, I was invited to attend. Elder Packer and Elder Eyring, who introduced him, both made comments to the following effect (paraphrasing): “the world has never been more wicked, and it will not get any better.” I have no reason to dispute this, but why are General Authorities (and, by way of imitation, members) so fond of saying such things?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon-life"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6505,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}