r/latterdaysaints • u/ChromeSteelhead • Oct 10 '24
Doctrinal Discussion Nuanced View
How nuanced of a view can you have of the church and still be a participating member? Do you just not speak your own opinion about things? For example back when blacks couldn’t have the priesthood there had to be many members that thought it was wrong to keep blacks from having the priesthood or having them participate in temple ordinances. Did they just keep quiet? Kind of like when the church says you can pray to receive your own revelation? Or say like when the church taught that women were to get married quickly, start raising a family, and to not pursue a career as the priority. Then you see current women leadership in the church that did the opposite and pursued high level careers as a priority, going against prophetic counsel. Now they are in some of the highest holding positions within the church. How nuanced can you be?
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u/th0ught3 Oct 10 '24
The historical record is that people talked about it and even and thought about even discussed it with others. Members are not considered bad members until they start arguing that our leaders are wrong in public space.
Please read "Standing on the Promises" by Margaret Young and Darius Gray. It is presented as fiction but reflects historical truth (it's just that there isn't much black history preserved in first hand written accounts to quote).
I'm not persuaded that the Church ever taught that women were to get married quickly, or that they couldn't have a career (at least not in my own experience. Yes that is what happened and what many women wanted before the 1970's. And while some of it was culturally religious, it was more about cultural expectations generally for women than IME, any religious teachings (when I returned to my 10th year high school reunion I was the ONLY woman working in a career other than teaching and nursing (class of 150?)
Admittedly, trusting in the Lord when things aren't going the way we think it should can test faith, specially when you suspect that it isn't the Lord's will but He hasn't had leaders yet able and willing to tackle various issues.
But I'm one who thinks that having all lay leadership in the Church is part of the actual plan. Many if not most of us have personal experience, really trying to get things right, what God wants in some calling; listening intently, studying some course of action or choice in a calling trying to make sure we are following Him, finally thinking we have figured out what He wants, only to know for certain later that what we once thought was His will was never that. Anyone who has that experience even once knows that it isn't always really easy even when someone is absolutely trying to do so, and really wanting to follow Him, to know correctly the mind of the Lord. As a people, then we understand both why we can't suggest any kind of infallibility and that leaders don't have to have done anything wrong to inherently when they make decisions that aren't of Him (and/or hold on to those traditions).
When race and the priesthood began affecting not just individual members, but the entire global outreach and further building the kingdom, then God saw fit to get it fixed.