I worry sometimes that I sound more negative than I am.
Well, I am pretty negative, but that doesn't change my faith. I understand that it is possible to start losing sight of the good and feel like you are drowning in bad.
I don't want to lose faith myself, but I also don't think that is likely. I know what my feelings are and what I do to maintain them and my reasons for staying.
I also don't want to be a harmful influence on anyone else, and I have a lot less knowledge about the possibilities there.
Based on my experience, people who stop going to church generally have many reasons; it isn't necessarily likely that I would tip the balance. It is also very important to me that what I do is good, and that it helps instead of hurts.
This is my long way of saying that I want to spend a few posts on things that I am grateful for and things that I know are true.
I will start with the one that might sound the most negative, and yet it isn't.
We have covered before that I both believe Brigham Young was a prophet and that he was racist.
Also already covered: that God accepts the work and service and attempts of imperfect people, for which we should all be grateful.
At some point after my talk -- where I had brought up a Brigham Young quote, but also where I have been seeing other things he said -- my testimony of him as a prophet grew stronger. It actually required making peace with him being racist, rather than trying to gloss it over or ignore it.
And you know, I am sure he is not racist now, that he has learned. That doesn't take away from real harm being done because of it, but deeply imperfect people can continue to grow, and sometimes that growth might be easier after the perspective that comes with death and getting away from all the things that society does. It's better to get over those things here, but the odds of perfection being achieved during mortality are low, based on everything we know.
With this also being the Old Testament study year, I have been able to think of some other examples of prophets who were imperfect, and yet they were still prophets.
(Let me just add from the New Testament that I believe Paul was a strong and inspired man who was also a chauvinist and a crank.)
So let us remember that Jonah was disobedient, not just refusing to serve as directed but actually trying to run away from it. Then he was irritated and petty that his work was accepted and Nineveh repented, and that his gourd died. He must have preached powerfully given his impact on the Ninevites, but he clearly had some issues. He was clearly still a prophet.
(Obviously all of these examples are going to take the scriptures at face value.)
Balaam was a prophet, yet he still wanted those riches and tried to ignore not only his inner voice but his donkey's actions.Nonetheless, he was still a prophet, and at least at that point he only blessed Israel. Then greed won and he gave Balak a loophole, which caused much damage and makes Balaam our worst example. However, the person who did all that was still capable of receiving revelation.
Often, people in the Old Testament are pretty horrible, which made it easier to think of this, but my thoughts really started with Noah and the story of him getting drunk after the flood.
Now, the footnotes say he was not drunk but overcome by the Spirit. That could be true, but getting drunk would be a very human.
We mainly associate Noah with the ark and the lives saved that way, but he was trying to save more lives with his preaching. He faced rejection for years. Having been a missionary, you can still really care about people who don't accept your message.
They all died.
It is easy to imagine horrible trauma, and wine was not forbidden them. It would be easy to just keep drinking, and that would not make him not a prophet.
I think a mistake we often make is to consider some kinds of sins (especially the sex and drugs ones) as somehow much worse than others, where only really bad people will do them. Lots of very kind people with great integrity will do very human things that they do not happen to believe are sin, or at least very bad sins.
Ultimately, we should all be loving and helping each other.
That does not mean being silent in the face of bad doctrine or accepting bigotry, but it doesn't have to mean that we hate them, either, or don't consider them capable of any other good.
It's a difficult balance, and I am not sure I always handle it right myself, but I will continue to try, in my own manner of imperfect but willing.
No comments:
Post a Comment