Quote:
Originally Posted by UtahDan
I don't think there is a whole lot in the modern church that you are going to find. While I think there are teachings that some people may find jarring, I think there is very little if anything we asked to do that is.
On the other hand, being asked to take a plural wife would have been jarring. Being asked by Joseph whether he could take my wife as his own would have been jarring. There are books full of things in the early church that would have been jarring, but since we don't live in the early church it can't be any more than a theoretical discussion.
The Catholic church was the author of a fair amount of mischief over the centuries. It has evolved into an organization that primarily does good, but that doesn't change the fact that it is the organization of the inquisition, the one that showed Galileo the instruments of torture and invited him to recant, the organization that burned witches at the stake.
So what does the past that a church has departed from have to do with what a church currently asks its members to do? Ask the question in the reverse: what does what a church currently requires have to do with what it historically required?
Your implicit assertion that nothing controversial is currently required is no more of a trump card that someone else's assertion that one hundred controversial things were once required. You know the answer to your question. What is your point?
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The point is I get sick of people on this board engaging in this "Indy would pull his pants down around his ankles and fart in President Bush's face if the prophet told him to do so" hypothetical nonsense.
The point is that we are asked to do things that are neither evil nor controversial by our prophet.
In light of that, I think the leadership of our church, even beyond matters of simple faith, have established enough of a track record that obeying their counsel should neither be called blind, robotic or ignorant, nor predisposed to future debauchery and homicide. Rather, our obedience to the Prophet is a combination of faith and rationale, given their established track record of giving good counsel in the past.
To make the laughable "logical" voyage from obeying counsel on such things as "being nice to the birdies", "voice your opinion to your elected officials", "everyone pays 10% tithing", "obey the laws of the land", "turn your hearts to Christ, not to armies and weapons" to becoming religious hitmen requires a vehicle fueled by one part paranoia and four parts cowdung.