Quote:
Originally Posted by PaloAltoCougar
I’ve been asked to teach Sunday’s lesson in our new ward, providing me with an excellent opportunity to establish a new Church persona. I told the Group Leader he was exercising considerable faith in assigning the lesson to someone he hadn’t vetted, but he said he knew I’d been a bishop, and he was apparently willing to overlook the nonwhite shirts I’d worn during our first two visits to the new ward (regretfully, I yielded to my wife’s demands that I not use the press-on diamond ear stud). I also discussed with him and his assistants my misgivings about Prop. 8 and the Church’s political campaign--didn’t faze him.
And the topic of this week’s lesson from the Joseph Smith manual? Obedience. Despite my occasional reservations about Church pronouncements, I believe in the importance of obedience, and if we only “obeyed” when we fully understood and accepted the commandment, obedience really wouldn’t mean very much—faithful (if occasionally blind) submission may be more important and beneficial than well-reasoned acceptance.
I’m not a sheep, but I don’t want to engage in prick-kicking either. Perhaps a panel discussion involving SU, Tex, ‘Napper, SteelBlue and, what the hell, landpoke would be the right approach this Sunday. I’d spring for airfare. With landpoke’s inclusion I fear the discussion of obedience may veer in the direction of leather, chains and a surly woman named Ilse wearing an SS uniform.
But seriously, folks, thoughts on the principle of obedience would be welcome. If a past thread has been devoted to the topic, I apologize, but I’d appreciate a link.
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Hey! We had this lesson last week! Someone in Salt Lake is falling down on the job, we ain't properly correlated here....
Our lesson started out pretty good. The teacher brought up the "blind obedience" issue, and a fairly lively discussion broke out. Then one elder stated that in some cases, it may be blind obedience, but in many cases, it is a matter of trust. Just as a young child will obey her parents because she trusts them (I wish mine would do that a bit more often), some people have enough trust in God to simply do as they feel he requests.
The tone of the discussions changed after that, and many other comments linked obedience and trust. I thought it was pretty thought provoking.