The zealot defenders of blacks and the priesthood
 

http://www.cougarboard.com/noframes/...tml?id=2681361

I feel bad for these types. I know where they are coming from. You are trying to wrap your mind around the idea, with no direction or guidance from the prophet and apostles.

I think this is a case where common members of the church have stepped up and inserted an answer THAT MAKES SENSE, when no answer was forthcoming from the church.

This isn't about attacking the church, this is about helping that member that is really struggling with the issue and can't reconcile Jesus being a racist.

It's comforting to accept that view that Jesus is not in fact a racist. Fallible men, however, can be racists.

Woman can't hold the priesthood. Is God sexist?

Lamanites were cursed with a dark skin because of their wickedness and some of them had the cursing removed when they repented. Is God racist?

God didn't want the Gospel preached to the Gentiles for a long period of time. Is God racist?

First off, race is a man-made construct. It would be odd if God adopted this man-made construct as an eternal principle.

Men and women aren't equal. Women can have babies, men cannot, for starters.

But I doubt you would argue that a black man is unequal to a white man. In fact, you would have a hard time even defining what a black man is. Which is part of what made the ban so ridiculous. Who is black? The one drop rule? What happens when you do your geneaology and discover that 4 generations back there was a black ancestor?

My personal belief is that no person in the BoM magically had their skin color change. It was metaphor, or represented a natural process--like intermarrying with indigenous peoples with darker skin.

The whole preaching to the gentiles thing--it's interesting that it did not even take one generation after Christ to start preaching to the gentiles. Do we have any record of a prophet praying to include blacks, but being denied?

I think we have some record of DOM approaching the subject but feeling it was not time. The reason being, in my mind, disharmony in the quorum.

If we are to believe this policy was of God, how do we say that, but at the same time argue that all the statements made by the prophets that justified it were wrong? This is ludicrous.

I'm saying that on the surface, given our 21st century morality, there are certain things God has done or said that would be construed as <xxx>-ist by people who don't possess His divine perspective.

How can you argue with his logic? Just so I won't be misunderstood, let me say that Waters' intelligence and moral discernment is in the stratosphere compared to this poster he quotes. But Waters is a voice in the wilderness, and the poster's diabolical logic really is irrefutable.

The church's current position as far as I can tell, is that there is not one iota of doctrinal evidence for the ban.

They have instructed us to ignore all justification in the past.

That is a refutation of prophets and apostles.

But they don't take that next step, which is to say "it was a mistake."

How do you know that was God's intent and not a product of an Israelite sense of superiority over their Gentile neighbors? God intervened with Peter to take the message beyond Israel. Were Gentiles any less worth saving before the revelation?

I think it's more tortured to accept that God had his whims and feels no need to explain than to accept that man is imperfect and that imperfection can stand in the way of God's designs on a temporary basis.

The opposing view would be "God doesn't run the church nearly as closely as some people think he does."

We believe that God will provide course correction to prevent a catastrophe....but the church is run by fallible men (can I argue that it is run by some women too? Do those women GA-types do anything?).

How could a just God allow the Bishops of his true church to molest children? How could a Stake President, inspired by God, call that person to that position? Simply, because we are a lot more human that we like to admit.

The Jews lost the ability to hold the Melchizidek Priesthood for over 1,000 years because of a few bad apples out in the wilderness that had a bad smelting accident whilst Moses was off on a business trip.

They didn't receive any of the temple blessings as we currently understand them, at least in part because they didn't have the priesthood keys to administer in the ordinances thereof.

I'm glad that God doesn't punish men for other's transgressions anymore. It would have sucked to live back then.