05-10-2007, 05:10 PM | #21 | |
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The point is, there are people who think this way ... that God just kind of allowed his prophets to do whatever they wanted until Kimball came along. I don't find that thought to be consistent with the rest of what we know about Him. |
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05-10-2007, 05:13 PM | #22 | |
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05-10-2007, 05:18 PM | #23 | |
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05-10-2007, 05:20 PM | #24 | |
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Is it possible that God is passionately interested in the affairs of men and still leaves many of them in the hands of His children?
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05-10-2007, 05:32 PM | #25 | |
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I understand some people take the position you just gave. What I disagreed with was your statement/assumption/belief that that position MUST be taken if you think the prophets were blinded by racist tendencies. |
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05-10-2007, 05:36 PM | #26 | |
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We're having a human experience and it's wrought with all kinds of hard stuff. Competition for resources, scarcity, struggle to connect with God and faith, sickness disease heartache, struggling to learn how to love and obey, learning to teach children or serve over a stewardship, learning how to be taught and be served. Why should the church escape these imperfections? If I trip on the sidewalk on the way to go to my car for lunch does it mean I was lacking God's guidance in my life at that moment? LDS a-holes love Bednar's talk because it gives them a license to offend. But what they should read was a talk Bednar referenced in the talk. Maxwell's "Jesus Our Perfect Mentor", especially the section "Our Clinical Material". Our marriages, friendships, families, neighbors, and coworkers, and church are clinical material, where we learn how to love and serve. This whole life is a training ground. The church is a great training ground and it's not impossible to think the Lord, while being ever attentive, allows bishops and higher even the prophet to make mistakes even large mistakes that will create a training environment that will only enhance our experience. |
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05-10-2007, 05:37 PM | #27 | |
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As I see it, I don't see Christ personally standing up before us, I don't see him performing ordinances and rarely do any leaders state they've even seen Christ. So in a traditional sense, Christ is not actively involved. That doesn't mean I disbelieve his role, I just understand it differently, despite Indy and Tex being willing to throw a bunch of "proof texts" which could be argued serve to legitimize the authority of those seeking to assert their authority. We understand enough scripture and GA talks to think through this ourselves. Why is it hard for members to accept the premise God is passionately interested in our affairs but willing to allow us to exercise almost unfettered agency, even in the management of an organization to which he lends his name? I'm not asking for a proof text, or a quote. Give me theological or philosophical why that must be so? Isn't it more marvelous that he will allow us to work out our own way, with small course adjustments here and there? To me, He's showing greater faith in us than we are in him, by requiring him to do everything and by requiring word for word dictates. In fact, it seems more marvelous that God works through fallible men and doesn't require their conduct of his affairs to be perfect, even allowing them to espouse and to conduct heresy. Why is your faith challenged if God is not personally micromanaging the affairs of the Church?
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05-10-2007, 05:41 PM | #28 | |||
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I give you just a couple of examples from modern-day apostles (paraphrased, because they're from memory) that illustrate my thinking. Neal Maxwell used to have a presentation he'd use with mission and stake presidents where he'd start with a "photo" of the Milky Way galaxy on an overhead and explain that God is God over all those creations. Then he'd put up an image of a DNA molecule and explain that God created it too, and he'd say, "God is in the details of that molecule." Then he'd quote C.S. Lewis' "living house" metaphor and say "God loves you too much to leave you the way you are, so he provides for you 'defining moments' that are highly customized." And then I once heard Boyd Packer (sorry, Arch) say once (again, paraphrased): "When the veil is lifted and we can see our lives in the grand scope of history, we will be stunned and amazed at how intimately a role God played in our lives on a daily basis and we never knew it." Now I find it very difficult to believe that we believe in a God who is in the details of our lives, so much so that he provides "customized defining moments" to shape us; that we believe in a God who we pray to about every little thing: from what job to take, to how to handle a church calling, to which door to knock on as a missionary; that we believe in a God who is aware of the hairs of our heads, who clothes the lillies of the fields--and yet when it comes to his church and his prophet, he sits back and just kinda allows things to run their course. I may be wrong, but that's not how I see it working. Quote:
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As to your second, as I said ... I wasn't the one to draw that conclusion. I was just repeating it, although I do agree that such is the inevitable conclusion. But either way, somehow I'm not surprised you chose to take issue with something almost entirely peripheral to the topic. Last edited by Tex; 05-10-2007 at 05:44 PM. Reason: Punctuation, grammar. |
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05-10-2007, 05:45 PM | #29 | |
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05-10-2007, 05:52 PM | #30 | |
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Let's move on. |
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