These four virtues have held prime real estate in recent generations, and are still considered top virtues by many: duty, conformity, authority, and obedience. But within the 1900s and into our century, these virtues have also come under fire, their downside exposed. These four virtues didn’t originate in scripture but are popular cultural values. For example, if you think duty is a highly moral reason for acting, you haven’t paid attention to the story of Jephthah’s daughter in the Old Testament.
These 4 Victorian virtues were considered to be essential to the health of society through the 1950s, and are still considered essential by some.
Duty
Without duty, there was no patriotism, and who would fight wars? Who would do difficult things without a duty to obligate them? Gender roles were used to domesticate men by giving them a duty to provide and protect (not just to dominate) and to domesticate women by giving them a duty to nurture and attend to moral matters, sometimes in the home, although initially in the community (e.g. the temperance movement, the “Relief Society”). Originally, women were given the mandate to be the moral force in society at large, not just in the home, but as men returned from WW2, the mandate shifted to place women in the home so that their vacancies would create employment opportunities for returning servicemen.
Duty has come under fire over the last century as well, and even before that. The Victorian Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera Pirates of Penzance poked fun at the excessive emphasis the Victorians placed on duty, and how silly duty was when it was over-applied. The central joke revolves around a boy whose hard-of-hearing nurse makes him an apprentice to a pirate instead of a pilot. He refuses to break his promise or fail in his duty of loyalty to the pirates, even though he thinks they should be arrested. He even continues in duty when he discovers that since he was born on leap day, he won’t have a 21st birthday until he’s over 80 years old, so he must serve the pirates for life despite his moral objections!
More seriously, duty came under fire when many felt we were asked to fight an unjust and unwinnable war in Vietnam. The issue divided generations in the US as young people declared a conscientious objection and refused to fight, some were branded cowards for letting others go to war, and even those who went were often reviled when the war was lost. The concept of duty is a common thread through this event. Is duty a sufficient reason to fight when the reasons for war are questionable?
In addition, since the 1960s in particular, the excesses of the 1950s in which individual needs were suborned to duty to family and society, there has been a shift toward personal fulfillment. As with any pendulum, the first swings back were the most extreme with people engaging in key swapping, spiritual retreats, drug experimentation, and sexual freedom – abandoning all sense of duty in the quest for personal fulfillment. While those excesses have become the butt of jokes in subsequent decades, there has not been a return to the stifling, repressive, duty-bound expectations of the 1950s either. People want to be happy and to “find themselves,” but they also want to be bound to others, not out of duty, but in love: loving ties between spouses and loving ties between parent and child. There’s not much joy in a relationship based primarily on duty and guilt.
For those raised on duty, though, it’s hard to let go of the idea that duty plays a critical role in those relationships or that without duty, there is enough to connect people through disagreement and differing trials of life. Many blame the high divorce rate on the ease of obtaining a divorce, forgetting that a marriage in which the spouses feel trapped is hardly a happy one. Instead of barring the exits, maybe we should focus on giving people reasons to want to stay.
Most instances of duty in the scriptures refer to a list of job descriptions for various priesthood offices or requirements for offerings. Duty is a word about societal obligation, misapplied to personal relationships. What did Jesus say about duty? In Luke 17:10 he considers duty to be insufficient: “when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” If we are acting out of duty, particularly within our families, that’s simply not good enough.
On the “good, better, best” scale, “duty” ranks as a “good” at most.
Conformity
Conformity simply means that someone is in accordance with standards, rules or laws. Sounds innocent enough. But conformity goes further; it also means matching one’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors with group norms. It’s why women don’t (usually) wear pants to church even if they never wear dresses anywhere else. It’s why we say “know” in our testimonies rather than “believe.” It’s why we pray for moisture even when we live in a tropical rainforest. It’s why we see a bearded man in the temple and give him the stinkeye before we catch that picture of Jesus looking at us. It’s putting cultural norms, which may be good or bad in and of themselves, above living the gospel and being Christ-like. Conformity tells us if people “look” good or normal, they probably are good or normal, a human misconception Ted Bundy exploited very handily. We are told in scripture that “the Lord looketh on the heart,” and yet most of us humans do a pretty crappy job seeing past the exterior if it doesn’t conform to our notions of “good” or “normal.”
Mormons are very familiar with conformity. We have dress codes at BYU and youth activities that align with conservative standards, going so far as to discourage tattoos, multiple ear piercings and facial hair on men. That’s a pretty strict dress code. By contrast, I went to a “clean” comedy show last weekend that was held at a local church. There were plenty of visible tattoos and all sorts of diversity in clothing, haircuts, and racial diversity not usually seen in a Mormon group. The audience was much more rowdy than most Mormon audiences, shouting encouragement to the comics. I suspect it would have been easy to spot us as the Mormons in that crowd. We can all pretty easily identify other Mormons based on dress alone: knee length shorts, tee shirts with sleeves, garmpit. I have never seen anyone who isn’t a Mormon wear a tee shirt under spaghetti straps. It’s a dead giveaway.
Conformity is an even more questionable virtue than duty. Conformity seems pro-social, but is also a shortcut to hypocrisy, judgmentalism, and groupthink. Does receiving God’s image in your countenance mean that we all look the same? Some think so. I’ve heard white shirts for the young men described as “the uniform of the Priesthood,” and while this seems harmless and appropriately symbolic, I’ve also noticed that it can be an exclusionary standard for families with economic struggles.
When we were in Singapore, my son was quickly outgrowing his shirts, and I hadn’t been back to the US recently to buy him a new one, so he was rolling up the sleeves of his shirt to pass the sacrament. He was asked what the Savior would think of rolling up his sleeves, a question intended to shame him into conformity. He wasn’t rolling up his sleeves as a mark of rebellion! Calling attention to his non-conformity may seem like it’s not a big deal, but to an insecure teen who was trying to fit in, it was alarming. When conformity is a higher virtue than empathy and compassion, we’re doing it wrong.
Conformity works well for the army. By stripping soldiers of their identity and their individuality, they become more malleable to suggestion and are more able to complete orders without second guessing or thinking. There is also less personal accountability for actions when conformity is strictly enforced. Reduced personal accountability shouldn’t be our goal at church, though.
In the 1950s, Solomon Asch conducted experiments to understand the effects of conformity (and majority opinions) on decision-making. Individuals were put into a group in which non-participant “confederates” deliberately provided false answers to see if participants would be swayed to conform to the group consensus even when it was obviously wrong. The study revealed that when individuals had to openly flout group consensus, they were very likely to simply conform, even when they knew they were giving wrong (but peer-acceptable) answers. A few other findings from the study worth noting:
- When a partner in the group also gave correct answers rather than conforming to the wrong answers given by the group, the participant was less likely to conform. If that partner left the room halfway through the experiment, the participant quickly began to conform again.
- The smaller the size of the group of confederates (those giving false answers), the less influence they had; however, with at least 3 confederates, the influence was strong and remained strong no matter how many more confederates were added.
- When confederates gave their (wrong) answers verbally, but participants were allowed to answer in writing, their conformity decreased significantly.
Apparently, conformity doesn’t change true feelings or opinions; it just encourages dishonesty.
Authority
“Question authority,” a slogan popularized by Timothy Leary after the Vietnam War and Watergate scandals, is one of the most widely accepted views among Baby Boomers. Generations before them trusted authority to a fault, although it’s possible that authority merited more trust before Richard Nixon. Does mistrust of authority and hierarchy lead to chaos and anarchy or does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Perhaps both are true to some extent.
Scriptures warn us against “trusting in the arm of flesh,” but also encourage us to do what leaders say because “whether by my own voice or the voice of my servants, it is the same.” And yet, we know that church leaders at all levels are tempted by “unrighteous dominion.” From D&C 121: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”
Try to bring up the idea of questioning authority in your average Gospel Doctrine class, though, and you should be prepared to be thought a heretic. It’s more common for people to support the debunked idea that even if you are told to do something wrong, you’ll be blessed for doing it. Refusing to question authority is the foundation of corrupt governments. Are they unchallenged because they are corrupt or corrupt because they are unchallenged?
Obedience
Obedience is another virtue with a serious downside. Although rebelling is hardly a virtue, except in Star Wars (or WW2 Europe) where they were rebelling against evil, unqualified obedience can lead to some very unhealthy behavior.
As Col. Jessup says in A Few Good Men “We follow orders, son. We follow orders or people die. It’s that simple. Are we clear?” And we all know that as a true patriot, he believed that obedience was important enough to kill for. Yikes.
Being rebellious is no virtue in and of itself, but neither is obedience without understanding.
Conclusion
While they all have pro-social intentions, these 4 virtues also create psychological distance from personal morality and responsibility for bad behavior. That justification usually manifests in one of the following arguments:
- The ends justify the means. Do we justify our harmful actions because we think they will lead to an eventual better outcome?
- Hiding one’s actions through euphemistic language. Do we use tribal language to hide the negative aspects of our actions?
- Advantageous comparisons. Do we compare our behavior to others’ to make our behavior look better than it is? “At least we’re not out doing x,y,z like those people!”
- Victim blaming. Do we assume others, those in the out-group, deserve the bad things that happen to them, deserve to be judged or ostracized or gossiped about? Do we say they are reaping what they sow?
Discuss.
“He was the man that cannot steer, that cannot splice, that dodges the work on dark nights; that, aloft, holds on frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind, the sleet, the darkness; the man who curses the sea while others work. The man who is the last out and the first in when all hands are called. The man who can’t do most things and won’t do the rest. The pet of philanthropists and self-seeking landlubbers. The sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship’s company.”
Very thought-provoking. Well-written. Thanks for the cerebral stimulation.
One of my long-nursed pet topics is the conundrum caused by the seemingly irrefutable fact (if we believe what the scriptures say, and what our supposedly God-led General Authorities say, or choose to hide) that God firmly believes that the ends (helping us become righteous, like Him) justify the means–even if the means require misapplication of obedience, duty, and authority; murder and lying and variations of falsehood that are far short of the Truth.
This was an excellent post, but these 2 paragraphs are my absolute favorite. It is my contention that John Dehlin, Kate Kelly, and Rock Waterman were not excommunicated because of apostasy, but rather excommunicated for lack of obedience to church leaders. I wish the official records were changed to reflect that these were the true “sins” of these 3 people.
Nice post, and definitely food for thought. I’m a fan of all these virtues. I’d take issue with the idea they don’t originate in scripture. We have Adam bowing to authority responding, when asked why he obeys, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.” This phrase is held up as an exemplary response, and an example to the rebellious Eve, who disobeyed the Lord, using her brain to listen to Satan and find rational arguments as to why she should disobey.
At different times we take Adam’s approach (blind obedience), and Eve’s approach (rational disobedience). Rational disobedience can be good, but it will always be technically wrong, and something the church, as an authority, must condemn. We must sometimes disobey, but the church must discourage us from disobeying. It’s a tension that must always be observed.
Duty I think is also scriptural, in that it is related to covenant making. We keep covenants out of a sense of duty, not necessarily a sense of understanding or desire. Thanks for adding “duty is used to domesticate men.” That’s my line!!
“We have Adam bowing to authority responding, when asked why he obeys, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.” This phrase is held up as an exemplary response, and an example to the rebellious Eve, who disobeyed the Lord, using her brain to listen to Satan and find rational arguments as to why she should disobey.” Well, I’m not sure THAT’s an interpretation I’ve ever heard in Relief Society!
I think “excessive emphasis” on any virtue is the real problem, not the virtues themselves. Everything in moderation, as the saying goes.
Ho hum, another home run blog post by hawkgrrl (I think she is taking some sort of mental steroids – nobody is THAT good every time up to bat).
In priesthood meeting this week I think we are going over the Pres Benson “14 fundamentals of following the prophet”. I really wish we could read and discuss this post instead.
This reminds me of a good friend that was released from being a bishop (and he had been in bishopric’s for about 10+ previous years). He went to High Priests meeting and he confided in me, “The only time they are not so boring they could be described as living hell is when one of the 2 mental nuts say some crazy statement. I hate going to High Priests!!”
Haha, not RS, the temple! Where Eve is strongly encouraged by the men in her life from that time forth to hearken to her husband, whose example of blind obedience is held up as exemplary.
I’m with Nate on these. Is it obedience if you understand and have decided it’s best to do it? Or is that just happening to agree? What’s the point in having leaders or authority if we’re not giving them more credence than the average Joe?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the post gives a lot to think about. But are there any virtues that couldn’t get the same treatment? Courage? Great virtue, until it gets you killed. Longsuffering? Great virtue unless your husband is unlikely to grow out of beating you. Patience? Great virtue, unless you just end up never acting on anything.
Duty, conformity, authority and obedience all sound like great things for the haves to instill in the have nots.
Those who have power trumpet these 4 thing as virtues, those not in power see them as chains.
Story as old as time.
Nate, I just mean that I’ve noticed a big divide between men’s and women’s interpretations of the endowment. At least in my ward women see Adam as essentially dumb as a post, only redeemed by Eve’s superior courage and reasoning. The men tend to see Adam as a much needed steadying influence on the easily duped Eve, as you seem to see it.
Nate,
i find it interesting that you and so many who prefer obedience to thoughtful questioning, cherry pick the verse depicting ignorant obedience, while ignoring the interchange between God and Adam wherein, when told by God to believe, repent and be baptized, and then he is promised the Holy Ghost.
Adam’s response to God?
Why must a man be baptized with water?
A
Dallin Oaks:
“Some Christians condemn Eve for her act, concluding that she and her daughters are somehow flawed by it. Not the Latter-day Saints! Informed by revelation, we celebrate Eve’s act and honor her wisdom and courage in the great episode called the Fall”
Sean, yes I’d forgotten that interchange. Adam was apparently curious enough, after having demonstrated blind obedience to explore the “why” of things. But I do think its important to recognise that the “why” doesn’t ever come as skepticism and doubt, but in an effort to enter more completely into the mind and will of God.
Hawkgrrrl, I think my comments are sometimes misunderstood as advocacy of the conservative perspective. This is not the case. I see people having different roles to play. It’s not that Adam was right and Eve was wrong, it’s that they were both playing archetypal roles in an allegory that represent the paradoxical forces at play in all our lives. And it’s not that men always play the Adam role, or women always play the Eve role. Rather these are competing forces within every person. The church’s role in this drama is to represent God: authoritative, commandment-oriented, uncompromising with justice, offering forgiveness only to penitent souls. But our role is sometimes to rebel against that, to exercise free-will, and to listen to our reason and our heart, as Eve did when hearkening to Satan. We play the role of the prodigal, not because we were commanded to, but because it is our nature. God made us “natural men” and then made our nature His enemy. He set in play the competing forces, and we deal with them.
This is why I believe obedience is not an eternal principle, but a preparatory (or teaching) principle. When we tell our kids not to engage in a certain behavior (for example, touching a hot stove, or running with scissors) often we either don’t have time to explain the “why”, or the child lacks maturity to understand the consequences. So, with certain behaviors, we as parents demand compliance for immediate health and safety, and hope that with time, experience and maturity they will eventually understand the higher law, and can then make their own informed choices. And when they reach that level, compliance will no longer be a matter of obedience to authority (“because I said so”), but one of common sense, and even love for the higher law.
Now, while I think it is important to teach children to respect authority, it is equally important to empower them to stand up against misuses/abuses of authority. Members of the military, for example, are only obligated to obey lawful orders, and are also encouraged to challenge orders that are unlawful or unethical. Many an honorable man throughout history has fallen on the sword of “I was just following orders”, just like the young Marines in A Few Good Men. Obedience and authority, I believe, are earthly principles that will not carry over eternally.
I believe that obedience is an eternal principle, but not necessarily obedience to earthly authority. Obedience to correct principles is the way that children of God progress eternally. I believe it is how we become one with the Father and the Son (John 17). The correlation of the eternal nature of correction principles (laws) and blessings is outlined in D&C 130:
20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—
21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.
I am always a bit puzzled when obedience by itself is trumpeted as a virtue or a gospel principle, because obedience alone is neither good nor bad, it only becomes good or bad in context. That is, it depends on what or who you are obeying. We are all obeying something, whether that is church leaders, other authority figures, our own instincts, the influence of the Holy Ghost, or the temptations of sin. Obedience alone doesn’t seem like much of a virtue to me. It isn’t hard to obey. It’s hard to figure out who or what to obey. Discernment is the real virtue. Obedience can be a virtue when we know it is right to obey someone or something, but we don’t want to, and we recognize that our wants are wrong. But that could just as easily be called humility and obedience.
Oh, and the story of Adam and the angel has always seemed to me to stand for the opposite of unthinking, unquestioning obedience. The angel does not commend Adam for obeying just because the Lord told him to. He doesn’t comment on it at all. He simply responds by providing the reasoning that Adam apparently did not think he needed to obey, by explaining that sacrifice was a symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus. Maybe that was a blessing that came to Adam because of his unquestioning obedience. Or maybe it was a rebuke to Adam for assuming that it was enough to obey without thinking about the reasoning. Maybe the angel was sent to ask Adam the question that he had failed to ask himself in order to get Adam to understand the purpose behind what he was doing. You can read it either way, and the way you read it probably says more about you than it does about the text.
“Or maybe it was a rebuke to Adam for assuming that it was enough to obey without thinking about the reasoning. Maybe the angel was sent to ask Adam the question that he had failed to ask himself in order to get Adam to understand the purpose behind what he was doing”
That’s the way I read it.
What benefit the sacrifice, if he doesn’t understand what it represents?
I think these 4 virtues are all still important virtues (except conformity, I don’t see how that’s really a virtue in and of itself), they just rank lower on my “virtue priority list” than others. Every decision we make comes from a value judgment between two or more virtues. For example, I follow the Word of Wisdom not because I think it is a perfect code of health, but because I rank the virtue of obedience (to authority I have deemed to be mostly correct) over the virtue of pleasure. This same value judgment is the same reason my husband goes on Elder’s Quorum visits every single week instead of watching basketball games (he values duty over pleasure). On the other hand, since I value love thy neighbor as thyself over obedience or duty or authority, I just can’t bring myself to “defend the family” in the way that is implied by that “commandment.”
These four virtues are extremely useful in organizations so that the leaders and followers do not have to constantly renegotiate every new directive or request. They help everyone do more doing and less discussing. That is why leaders love them so much. Whenever a follower balks at an order, the instinctive response is not to explain the reasonableness of the request or negotiate a compromise. No, it is to propound the virtues of duty, confirmity, authority, and obedience. Ordain Women’s unpardonable sin was not holding apostate views on priesthood but rather refusing to conform/obey/submit and do their duty.
Yes, “because I said so” is a deeply unsatisfying response, but it is extremely useful if people are willing to go along with it. There are two ways to get people to buy into it. One is to demonstrate over time that your orders/directives/policies are moral and reasonable, providing explanations and discussions and results in enough cases to build up trust for when you don’t have time or inclination to hold the debate. The other is to convince people that duty, obedience, and submission to you and your organization are virtuous in and of themselves because you and your organization are virtuous. This is usually accomplished by changing the answer to “because God said so.”
#12 – I’ve never liked the part in the temple ordinance where the wives ‘submit’ to their husbands. Now, I realize that said ‘submission’ is supposed to be in similitude to what the husband, presumably being righteous (and don’t that THAT as a given!), does likewise with the Savior. It’s supposedly intended as a recognition of Priesthood. Still, methinks it conveys a poor message…and never mind what would the SINGLE sisters do, not being ‘blessed’ with a husband to ‘submit’ to? If someday, not soon enough for yours truly, the wording gets changed to something more ‘female-friendly’, like, “you sisters likewise submit unto the Lord…”. Well, (voice ala the late Ronald Reagan), there I go again, steadying the Ark…
It comes back from mine own military experience, which is that the best exercise of ‘rank’ is when you don’t have to ‘pull’ it. Ergo, you realize that your men (and wherein I was at the time, that’s all it could have been) respect the position b/c it’s what they’re trained to do, but if you want their personal respect, it most certainly has to be EARNED. Heavy is the head that weareth the crown…
#18,19 – Adam made at the time in the Garden of Eden a “command decision” to himself partake of the fruit rather than risk separation from his wife (somehow methinks that Eve was a lot brighter and prescient than any rendering of the incident in every temple film that I’ve seen). He knew that he was risking ‘death’ (whether Adam thought that the ‘execution of sentence would be immediate or deferred, ending up some 930 years hence as it turned out, IDK…).
A great example of the concept of ‘disobeying’ a ‘lesser law’ in order to ‘obey’ the ‘greater law’ can be found in Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny”. LT Maryk was quite correct to relieve LTC Queeg, his skipper, of command in order to save the Caine from Queeg’s indecision and poor seamanship. However, he had to risk the mutiny charge, but such was the bravery of the character. Now, methinks in the REAL Navy that the matter never would have gone to court-martial, with Queeg being quietly transferred to a stateside desk job and the other officers likewise being dispersed.
Only in the male mind can one naked dude wearing foliage in a community of two people and a snake make a “command decision.”
I would not put all four of those in the same basket, nor do I find the effects to be the same.
First off, I do not consider conformity a virtue in the least. To me, conformity is always a negative. It is turning your back on the gifts you were given, and trying to pass as something else–some idealized “normal” that may or may not exist. It is settling for a melting pot which is going to end up blah grey as everyone is thrown in and mixed down to a single color. Whereas we could have used our various unique attributes to have a brightly colored mosaic instead! Everything I understand about the gospel and church promotes the mosaic, not the melting pot. I am proud to wave my colors and hold up my corner of the mosaic! And of course not every part of the vineyard has the same unwritten rules and guilt trips–my husband likes blue shirts for church.
As for duty, I do see some value there. Just as marriage is what keeps you together until you fall back in love, duty can provide opportunities for personal growth when we subsume our desires to that of sacrificing for a greater cause. As well as making sure things get done in the church. I absolutely do think it is enough in many cases, and acts as a schoolmaster to eventually teach love or whatever. A missionary may come to truly love people that she has served, even though the initial interactions were from duty.
Obedience is interesting. At what point do we admit that maybe a prophet or whatever really might know better than we do? In Elder Maxwell’s last conference talk before he died (April 2004), he told about judging his bishop for delaying his missionary paperwork. Years later, he found out that the bishop felt that Elder Maxwell’s family needed to spend more time with him, since at that point he had been away at war for more than 10% of his life. Which duh, actually turned out to be true, considering that he would be leaving for 3 more years away.
So I generally agree with IDIAT about moderation in all things. Once you take conformity off the table entirely.
I’m not going near anywhere Naismith is driving, since there seems to be an unwillingness to conform to driving on the right side of the road with everyone else. 😉
No worries, I OBEY traffic laws.
I agree with Naismith and IDIAT about needing moderation in all things – even our virtues.
Talking about duty and obedience Reminds me of reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Louie Z survived a plane wreck in WWII. The plane had several life boats a few survivors used but nobody in the military buildup there’s to make sure the first aid and survival kits that were supposed to be in the boats were actually there. The past few generations have been raised with more media coverage and access to the internet that has uncovered corruption at almost every single level of power. Church, government, business, schools, etc.
Falling in line out of duty? Not likely. Earn our allegiance and trust.
This is something I have been thinking about recently too.
There is no Gospel principle called obedience, or for that matter faith. Faith in God yes. Recently Uchtdoef said we love God and we want to follow his teachings, this is as close as I’d go to obedience. Christ does say if you love me keep my commandments, but he had just been talking about Love of God and fellow men.
As for obedience being the the first commandment, absolutely not.
“Falling in line out of duty? Not likely. Earn our allegiance and trust.”
Perhaps I have misunderstood, but the catch with this is that it sounds as if each of us is the ultimate expert and able to accurately judge for ourselves about the performance of leaders. That there is no chance that the bishop or prophet or whoever we are being asked to trust might actually have more information or be privy to inspiration that is outside of our stewardship.
I admire your confidence, but it may sound like arrogance to some.
I know that I am not that smart. Back in the 1980s, I was embarrassed that the church insisted on pushing forward with construction of the BYU Jerusalem Center, despite protests from locals and requests to stop. I was dubious when then-BYU President Holland said that if construction ever stopped, the building would not be finished. So they kept building despite all the protests and hearings and debate. And I was wrong, a humbling lesson that I have thought about various times since.
Last year one of my Jewish friends complimented us on what a lovely concert venue that building is, and how it was one of the highlights of their visit to the Holy Land.
I was thinking less along the lines of perhaps our personal interactions with bishops, wards, and the church and referring to religion in general.
The worldwide catholic sex abuse scandal proved to everyone the darkest sons happen when power is allowed to remain unchecked and unquestioned for long. — what Pope Francis is doing is cleaning house, earning trust, etc. I see some of what Uchtdorf does the same way.
what will engender trust in my religious leaders? Absolute demands for unquestioning obedience out of duty or a transparent approach that acknowledges shortcomings
“@NatePyle79: People don’t want perfect pastors, they do want humble and honest pastors.”
“accurately judge for ourselves about the performance of leaders”
I’m pretty sure Jesus told his disciples to judge others’ “fruits.”
With regard to information asymmetry (“maybe they know something you don’t”), “Just trust me!” only works if they already feel they have reason to trust you. It’s a phrase that most people associate with affinity fraud. And con artists are another kind of person known to withhold information and claim to have superior judgment, in order to get someone to do something against theirs.
We had a lesson on D&C 1:38 this week, and I so bad wanted to quote this article, but I didn’t want to be thought a heretic at church, so I refrained.