Mar 10 2010

Lifeblood Battles: Ronald E. Poelman

Poor Wayfaring Man

As noted in a previous post, Church leaders often struggle to control how the lifeblood of the Church (i.e., personal reassurance that one is on the path to salvation in the Celestial Kingdom–a concept I’ve termed “Hope”) is distributed to, and apportioned among, the members of the Church.  Below are two examples of such battles.

Example 1:  Elder Poelman’s View of Divine Love:

About a month after McConkie’s speech excoriating George Pace for promoting the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Elder Ronald E. Poelman, a fairly new member of the First Quorum of the Seventy (one level below the apostles in the Church hierarchy) gave an address in General Conference which appears to have been carefully worded to imply the existence of a personal relationship with the Lord, without crossing any of the lines that McConkie had drawn.  Elder Poelman’s talk included the following statement: Continue reading


Mar 9 2010

Lifeblood Battles: George Pace

Poor Wayfaring Man

As noted in a previous post, Church leaders often struggle to control how the lifeblood of the Church (i.e., personal reassurance that one is on the path to salvation in the Celestial Kingdom–a concept I’ve termed “Hope”) is distributed to, and apportioned among, the members of the Church. Below is an example of one such battle.

In the early 1980’s, a BYU professor named George Pace had previously given speeches and written a book promoting the idea that people should “center their lives on Christ and…develop their own personal relationship with Him.” Even though Pace was simply echoing ideas recently taught in General Conference by then-apostle (and future First Presidency Counselor) James E. Faust, his “taking out the middle man” approach to interacting with the Savior prompted a humiliating public rebuke from Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, which included the following counsel: Continue reading


Feb 18 2010

Some Things Cannot be Changed

Poor Wayfaring Man

Here is another post inspired, in part, by a reader’s comment.  Deep Throat in the Deep South,1 in a comment rich with interesting Mormon cultural material, wrote the following:

Every blessing we have is predicated upon a law. You break the law, the blessing is gone.

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (D&C 130: 20-21)2

One must be intelligent not to confuse administrative actions with the Gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e. truth) in its purest mode. There is a different between administration of earthly issues, the Truth of the Gospel, and, and what I call the “Doctrine of the Culture,” that some people cling to instead of the doctrine.

As a Mormon, I struggled with the legalistic LDS belief that all blessings a person receives from God are actually dependent upon his or her obedience to a specific Law (or body of Laws) of Heaven.  The reason I struggled is that I could never pin down exactly what the Law was, despite the fact that I was desperate to follow it.  (That seems to be a common theme in the LDS Church.) Continue reading

  1. Yeah, the irony of an apparently straight-laced Mormon naming him or herself Deep Throat hasn’t escaped me.  I assume the name is referring somehow to the Watergate informant, rather than the classic porn movie from which the informant’s pseudonym was derived.  Then again, either reference is kind of random. []
  2. By the way, this section of the Doctrine & Covenants (which is LDS scripture on par with the Bible or the Book of Mormon) is a treasure trove of canonized Mormon oddities, like Joseph Smith’s unfulfilled prediction about growing unrest in the American South (that eventually developed into the Civil War) being a precursor to the second coming of Jesus Christ, his cautiously hedged prediction that Jesus Christ’s second coming would happen prior to his 85th birthday (1890), his explanation for why the Holy Ghost is incorporeal, his insight into the planets that God and the angels live on, his view of what the afterlife is generally like, and other fun stuff.  Definitely worth a read, since these things are part of the “meat” of the Gospel that Mormons don’t share with outsiders very often (the “milk” always comes first). []

Nov 25 2009

Book of Mormon Stories Metaphors

Poor Wayfaring Man

I was browsing the internet the other day and found a really interesting blog that discusses events and hot topics at BYU’s Provo campus. In this post about the conflict between the religious world and the secular world, the liberal-leaning Mormon author seems to support (very tentatively and with ample obligatory qualifications to deflect charges of heresy, since he is a BYU student) the view that the creation account in Genesis (six days, etc.) is just a metaphor, not literally true.

This seems like a neat and tidy way to avoid conflicts between science and religion–just treat the religious view as a divinely-inspired metaphor only.
Continue reading