Part of a series about My Faith Journey.
One of the things that Mormonism is selling is living prophets. Missionaries will sometimes try to "destabilize" (potential) investigators by proposing something along the lines of, "Sure, your church has Jesus, but do you have a living prophet, just like they had in Bible times?"
"Living prophets" is a big deal for Mormons, and a hallmark of the faith. Members are taught that they should follow prophets unquestioningly. Primary children sing a song that repeats the phrase "Follow the prophet" dozens and dozens of times. While I was deconstructing my faith, I had to take a good, hard, look at these "prophets" and see if the product really lives up to the advertising.
We are told that the LDS church is a "restoration" of the church that existed in Jesus' time. Let's take a good look at that.
Here are some things I see in the modern LDS church that I can find no trace of in the New Testament:
There's a big deal made in the church about holding a particular "office". Men starting at age 12 get to "hold" the priesthood, via laying on of hands, but there are certain positions that not all men get to fill.
One of these offices is "Apostle": one of the big twelve (or big fifteen, depending on how you count), who are up close to the top tier. But is "apostle" really a priesthood office, or was it just an adjective? I did some research into this word and it comes from the Greek meaning "one who is set apart". (We see the same root in the word "apostate", meaning "one who has separated".) I have to wonder if this is really an "office" or not.
But there's a thornier question: Did Jesus actually establish a church? I don't really see a lot of evidence for it in the New Testament. I see Peter officiating post-Jesus. I see Paul writing letters to various branches. But I don't actually see any evidence in the NT of Jesus being very organized with his religious movement.
Building on that last point: The church believes in ongoing revelation given to living prophets and apostles. If that really was the case, I would expect Sunday School lessons to become more detailed over time. Year-to-year, week-to-week, as we revisit old topics, I would expect those topics to become elaborated upon and for members to receive greater depth and insights than they ever did before. (We can get weather reports on Earth using only the technologies of man. Why can't we get weather reports of the Celestial Kingdom through God-given revelation?)
But that wasn't the experience I had. Over the course of the 4+ decades that I attended church, I saw gospel topics become more watered-down, more shallow, and less detailed over the years. This is exactly the opposite direction I would expect Sunday School lessons to go in a church that is guided by ongoing revelation. On the other hand, this is exactly the direction I would expect the church to go in if the correlation committee deliberately removed controversial / embarrassing points in order to make the LDS church more palatable to mainstream Christians.
Something I heard growing up in the church is that ongoing revelation is necessary to help guide us through the turbulent seas of our modern age. If that's the case, I would expect to see modern-day prophets predicting the coming of these kinds of disasters, and giving us guidelines on what to do:
Two or three successful predictions right in a row would convince millions of people that the General Authorities truly do possess divine powers of prophecy. If God wanted his church to grow like gangbusters, this would be the way to do it. But apparently, God chooses not to.
If the leaders of the LDS church really did possess amazing powers of prediction, I would expect their phones to be ringing off the hook as tons of economists, meteorologists, and sports bookies called to ask them what was going to happen in the (near) future. I haven't ever heard of this happening, though.
A little more commentary of the theory of evolution: this is a theory that rocked the world. The leaders of the church did not predict its discovery, and their stance has changed over time. Originally, church leaders taught that evolution is false doctrine (Bruce R. McConkie famously described it as a "heresy".)
The modern church however, takes no official position on the theory of evolution. This is a problem: If evolution is real, there was no Creation. If there was no Creation, there was no Fall. If there was no Fall, there is no need for a Redeemer. If there was no Redeemer, then what are all those stories in the Bible about, and what are we all going to church for? The dominos start to fall pretty quickly. If there was any topic we need revelation on, it's the theory of evolution.
What I find remarkable is that as we make greater and greater technological, medical, and social advancements, God becomes increasingly silent. That seems backwards to me. I would expect the amount of revelation to be proportional to our advancements.
A pattern I have noticed: whenever a new technology comes out, if the church has anything to say about it, they say "don't do it" or "stay away from it". This is not revelation, this is just resistance to change (which is what I would expect from an uninspired gerontocracy.)
In contrast to the previous list, here are some things I would not expect to see revelation on, because these things should never change:
And yet this last set of things are the topics that we have received revelation on. Things that I would expect to be eternal and unchanging have... changed.
Regarding that second bullet: If there's one thing I wouldn't expect to change via revelation, it's the history of the preexistence. I was taught growing up that blacks were fence-sitters in the War in Heaven and that's why they can't hold the priesthood. How did this change? Did Marty McFly drive his DeLorean back to the preexistence and say "Hey, you guys! Get off the fence so you can have the priesthood in 1978!"
To drive the point home, here are the things that the church leaders have taken a rock-solid stance on:
Are these "prophets, seers, and revelators" really in the business of revealing truth, or are they just in the business of controlling people? Mainstream Christians -- as well as most other people outside the church -- find the above points very controlling and culty.
The message I heard from the pulpit was that prophets & apostles were living oracles who received divine revelation directly from the mouth of God and we should unquestioningly obey them. Regarding this strict obedience, mainstream Christians find quotes like this very disturbing:
"If you are told by your leader to do a thing, do it. None of your business whether it is right or wrong." -- Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses 6:32
We are told that church leaders are imperfect men who can (and will) make mistakes, which means there's a risk to following their advice. We are further told that we must follow their edicts unquestioningly, which means we are maximizing that risk. It's a perfect storm.
I heard Jim Bennett (an apologist) claim that 90% of the challenges of the CES Letter "go away" when you acknowledge that. The problem is that 90% of the "divinity" of the church goes away at the same time. If we can expect that prophets will receive bad/wrong/late revelations that will cause injury and harm, how is the LDS church any different than a man-made church with no hotline to God?
I'm right on board with the apologists who believe that prophets are imperfect, flawed, men. Where you lose me is when you make the claim that these men are anything but, imperfect, flawed, men.
I get a little weary of this straw man of "expecting perfection". I have yet to meet someone who said "If Joseph Smith isn't perfect, I'm leaving the church.".
We are told to "follow the prophet". There's a Primary song that repeats that line over and over. At no point are we taught, either in that song or in any Sunday School class, that these prophets are going to get it wrong sometimes. The pitch we are given is "These are men who speak directly with God". Setting the bar pretty high.
However, when their track record clearly reveals that they got something wrong, apologists come in and try to lower the bar with lines like "It was just their opinion", "They were a product of their time", "They were speaking as men", etc. Why weren't these caveats stipulated in the initial sales pitch? The product we've been delivered doesn't match the picture on the packaging.
D&C says that "Joseph Smith has done more than anyone else save Jesus only for the salvation of men". What kind of behavior would _you_ expect from someone who is claimed to be second only to Jesus? Related: What kind of behavior would invalidate that claim?
I also find the "imperfect" label completely meaningless. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Bernie Madoff, Genghis Khan, and Joseph Stalin were all "imperfect", but that tells us very little about the character of those people. Any adjective that could be applied to the entirety of humanity is a useless adjective. What is the difference between "imperfect" and "unethical"? Or "imperfect" and "manipulative"? Or "deceptive"? Or "hurtful"?
Let's follow this "they are imperfect men" line of thinking through to its logical conclusion. If the membership -- and leadership -- of the church really believed that, I would expect General Conferences to begin with "Some of the things you are going to hear today will be inspired words of God, some of the things you are going to hear today are opinions that we will eventually disavow. We're just going to leave it to you to figure out which is which."
Similarly, if members were to internalize the "they are imperfect" rationale, then it follows that we should question prophetic guidance, challenge it, willfully discard it sometimes, and even vote opposed as our conscience demands. These kinds of behaviors are never tolerated though. Try doing that and watch your temple recommend get revoked.
So let's say that we agree that prophets are going to get it wrong sometimes. What price do the leaders pay for leading their members into error? As far as I can tell, they pay no price at all. The price of following bad advice is borne solely by the members themselves. Worse yet, on top of paying that price, the members are blamed for not being close enough to the spirit to properly discern the correct course.
If church leaders are imperfect and can / will make mistakes, then I would expect to hear some apologies once in awhile for some of the more egregious errors. After all, it's one of the steps of repentance. Church leaders should be model citizens when it comes to practicing the steps of repentance. I mean, they teach us that we need to repent, so I would expect them to lead by example.
But this is not what we see. Just the opposite, in fact. Dallin H. Oaks once famously said "I know that the history of the church is not to seek apologies or to give them".
The "imperfect leaders" apologetic is not unique to the LDS church, either. Hasn't stopped any of them from telling their followers to pay, pray, and obey, and do it without questioning.
See: "God's Imperfect Servants"
The influence that a church leader can have is far greater than the influence that an average lay member can have. I can't help but be reminded of the Spider-Man quote "With great power comes great responsibility". Leaders should live up to a higher standard than average members.
If we're supposed to "give brother Joseph a break" for the things he did, then no member should ever be denied a temple recommend who applies for one. I can't reconcile how banging teenage girls behind Emma's back could be okay but drinking a cup of coffee isn't okay for lay members. Where I come from, we call that a "double standard".
Faithful members will sometimes say "we follow the living prophet". The flipside of this is that Every prophet in the LDS church eventually gets thrown under the bus by prophets that follow him. (And sometimes it's very shortly after they die.) There doesn't seem to be a lot of "staying power" to the words they say. Makes me wonder how much I should value the current crop of prophets.
One perfect example is Brigham Young. For examples of why the current leaders of the church wish to distance themselves from him, have a look at this list of Brigham Young quotes.
A common apologetic excuse is to say that "Brigham Young was a product of his time", but think about this for a moment: Jesus lived during the height Roman Empire when slavery, genocide, and subjugation of women were rampant, but he was emphatically not a product of his time. The messages of love and compassion he preached ran directly against the grain of the culture he was born into. His wisdom was both timeless and ahead of his time.
If Brigham Young was inspired by that same Christ, we should be marveling at how his preachings transcended the culture he was born into, and how timeless and universally-applicable his teachings were. But we don't; we try to bury his quotes. When one of his embarrassing quotes surfaces, we make excuses for him. We say he was a "product of his time". Let that sink in.
Here's a prediction from me: Someday, years from now, the church will reverse its anti-gay stance. When members reflect on the anti-gay rhetoric of the current crop of prophets, seers, & revelators, apologists will hand-wavingly say "They were just products of their time." (Aside: If my prediction comes true, you'll know I'm a true prophet.)
We are told that The Lord's Anointed get their words directly from the mouth of God. If so, I would expect the words they say to be 100% truthful / factual / correct and never be contradicted by science or some future prophetic words. However, that hasn't always been they case.
“The decision reached by the First Presidency, and announced to this morning’s assembly, was in answer to a specific question that obviously the doctrine of the existence of races of human beings upon the earth prior to the Fall of Adam was not a doctrine of the Church; and, further, that the conception embodied in the belief of many to the effect that there were no such Pre-Adamite races, and that there was no death upon the Earth prior to Adam’s fall is likewise declared to be no doctrine of the Church.” -- James E. Talmage (who worked with the First Presidency on the 1909 official doctrine statement opposing evolution), 7 April 1930, as quoted in Stephens and Meldrum, 'Evolution and Mormonism,' page 45~
if a prophet speaks for God and says something you disagree with, who is wrong -- you or the prophet? The answer is usually 'You'. Then I ask, what if a future prophet changes the doctrine or policy to match your view, is that future prophet wrong? Is he right and you are still wrong? Are you both right and the old prophet wrong?
Here's a more concrete example: Let's say you had two church members living in the mid 70's: Robert the racist, who fully supports the priesthood/temple ban on blacks; and Paul the progressive, who doesn't like it and disagrees with it. If both of them died the day before the ban was reversed, who would have gone to heaven for following the prophet, and who would've received a lesser degree of glory? If both of them died the day after, what would be their eternal reward? Is it accurate to describe the Mormon God as a god who is "no respecter of persons" and "who is the same yesterday, today, and forever"?
The "he was just speaking as a man" line bothers me too. This explanation is only ever given in retrospect, as expedience demands, when it becomes obvious that some past prophet was wrong. We never get told this in real-time when they're saying something wrong.
We are told that the ancient order (and power!) of the priesthood has been restored and is alive on the earth today. With it, priesthood holders can bless, heal, and govern with the power of God. Pretty big claim.
Similarly I never hear of doctors calling up the GAs and saying "I've got a patient that is just beyond my abilities. I need you guys to take this one. Please, heal him up as only you can." For that matter, whenever GAs need surgery done, they go to a doctor. They might get a priesthood blessing, but they don't exclusively rely on it.
Listen to this Radio Free Mormon episode: Faith Not To Be Healed
And this one: General Conference Death March which catalogs 11 cases of GC talks that describe a General Authority meeting a sick person and not healing them.
I was taught that The Lord's Anointed can see into a person's heart and discern their very thoughts and intentions. That didn't stop Mark Hoffman from pulling a fast one on the GAs in the 80s. It didn't give them the insight that Joseph Bishop would be raping sister missionaries when they set him apart as president of the MTC. It didn't stop them from calling David Moss to be a bishop, who would later be caught for sex trafficking.
I had been taught my whole life that church leaders were people who had a special connection to God and could get revelation directly from Him that would lead us out of error and toward truth. In hindsight, I learned the following:
This blog post gives a listing of the passages in Mosiah describing King Noah and draws an astounding number of parallels to Brigham Young and the modern LDS church: King Brigham
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When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan — it is God's plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy. God works in no other way. To think otherwise, without immediate repentance, may cost one his faith, may destroy his testimony, and leave him a stranger to the kingdom of God. --Improvement Era, June 1945