Generic Conference

 This showed up in my inbox a few days before LDS General Conference earlier this month.      

A few random observations for my own record.   

The virus will not stop the Lord from embracing us the announcement says. The proposition that a virus is somehow keeping God socially distanced is pretty lame.  Really lame in fact.  Not sure who thought God was having to obey social distancing rules. 

I get that the statement is trying to be reassuring.  But there's something else troubling about that statement. Some things DO keep people form coming to Christ and receiving Him.  So why are those things ignored, and rarely taught?  Instead, we are constantly fed a diet of emotionally reassuring messages.  These statements in the message presume our own alignment with God.  They presume we are righteous and pleasing God with our every thought and deed.  That seems like a pretty big assumption on our part. 

I like the assurance those scriptures provide, but what I don't like is passing them off as guarantees that completely bypass the fact that we may be VERY VERY misaligned with God.  But we do enjoy our warm fuzzies or comforting sentiment we feel when speakers say things that we like or say things which make us feel special. 

Yet, at the same time, doctrine such as actually coming to Christ is not only not taught, it's warned about! (See  this piece on the "Boise Rescue").  

After this last conference and looking back at the message from the Church in my inbox, I'm left concluding that these reassuring messages are in reality, not reassuring at all.  They don't prepare you for anything, nor tell you a great deal of substance about our current situation in 2020.  It tastes a bit like cotton candy.  It's more like feel good nothingness. The message are often a religious recap of what you read in the news or whatever the flavor or social issue of the month is.  And for the time being, that's definitely the virus.   

As the pandemic alarm was getting started in the US last April, The Church called for and held a worldwide fast. The fast's stated purpose included a petition for life to normalize and the economy to be strengthened. Below are some worldwide numbers around the same time as this fast. Hopefully the below stats are not considered normal.    

Really?  We fast for the world to return to normal?   Seems we are straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

It's an interesting question to ask if the fast worked. Such a thing is difficult to measure.  Did anyone repent of anything like what scriptures speak of?  We were even asked to repent of anything?  Or was this worldwide Covid fast more of a superficial petition for resumed economic prosperity and to go back to the same stuff we were doing before the pandemic?  Food for thought. 

What I do know is that when we do what God asks, promises follow.  But when we don't, we don't have the same assurance.  

At least the satire news keeps hope up that we'll repent.  

Back to the recent LDS generic general conference. The invitation said to prepare to hear the words of the Lord spoken through His servants.  The servants referred to are of course the leaders of the Church who would speak.  That's a really inspiring thought, hearing the words of the Lord. If it doesn't pan out, it must be the members who didn't prepare or are deaf. Or at least that's what I'm told. 

Now going back to the e-mail I got inviting me to conference. The D&C 84:88 scripture quoted on the e-mail caught my attention. I'm starting to be less surprised at the frequency with which leaders use scriptures completely out of context. Doing that was bad practice as a missionary, but when the example continues to be set by the leaders I'm left with diminishing hope of the course reversing.  Out of context scriptures appear to mostly just mislead people.     

Ok, so, referring to the worldwide church message that showed up in my inbox, they cite D&C 84:88 

88 And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.

The Lord did promise to be on the right and left and angels to surround. But who did he promise that to?  Is this promise applicable to anyone who tunes into LDS general conference? That seems to be what was implied by the Church announcement. It seemed to suggest that we (the audience of the e-mail) are the ongoing recipients of this D&C promise. But who was that scripture speaking to, and on what grounds? 

D&C 84:88 is talking to the messengers/apostles the Lord himself sent out. They were to carry neither purse nor script for their ministry (hardly applicable to today's leaders). They were to be taken care of and dependent on the people they ministered to. They were in fact true messengers with a message from God. Rather than their own message, they preached God's message. As a result, God made these quoted promises to THEM. That's pretty specific. Don't get me wrong, I think we should apply all scriptures to ourselves, but I don't think that means you simply inherit promises made to other people at another time, simply by reading about them.  

Part of the promise found in verse 88 was situational.  These messengers were going out to preach without means for their own support. Is that how our leaders go out into the world? Without purse or script?  What proper comparisons ought we to make or not make between our day and these scriptures? Can we claim the same promises apply to our day simply because leaders have titles that sound the same as leaders in that day? Can we as members turn around also and feel warm fuzzies that these same reassuring promises apply to us when we don't even know the context of the promises? 

Also from D&C 88:  

Behold, I send you out to reprove the world of all their unrighteous deeds, and to teach them of a judgment which is to come.

So how do we prepare for the coming judgement? One conference talk put forward the great import of possessing a temple recommend. I questioned whether that would ultimately prove helpful in the face of the judgement scriptures speak of.  Temple reccomends give the members a nice bit of reassurance, but is it the right kind of reassurance? 

So you might ask, if a temple recommend isn't a solid bit of assurance, then what would help prepare for the coming judgement D&C 88 speaks of? We hopefully all know the answer to that.  It's to repent, turn from all the garbage that surrounds us, and follow Christ. Who I believe is actively speaking to mankind today. 

One of the biggest concerns that crossed my mind as I read this church-wide e-mail is that religion is reassuring us with soothing out of context words that may well leave us totally empty and unprepared for God's judgements. That's the concern here. Is that cliché phrases and feel good talks that mention Jesus a lot sooth, and lull people to sleep. They do nothing to show our actual state before God. Which the scriptures say is "awful". They stop short of preparing us for how to actually come to Christ. The scriptures said our collective situation was awful before the pandemic, but we seem to want to return to it as quickly as possible.  

Anyway, that email message at the beginning of this post said we have special opportunity to feel the Lord's love during the upcoming General Conference. "Feel" they say. It's all about feelings. We seem to mistake feeling for doctrine, facts for sentiment, emotional stories for truth. It's a crazy day we live in when we cannot tell the difference between emotion and truth.    

What ever happened to learning something? If all we ever want is to "feel" the feelings produced by listening to men (only 2 women spoke during all of the General Sessions) in suits talk from atop a multi billion dollar religious empire.... well we already have that. And it's not producing Zion.     

"Invite others" they said.... to listen to these messages. So they too can "feel" this apparently amazing feeling.  

We've become saturated by feelings and don't seem to notice anymore how we know less and less about Christ's gospel. Less and less substance seems to be the new norm.  I mean apparently there was so little said in conference that was noteworthy that the Church's own Deseret News turned to the talk's footnotes for something interesting to report about conference, see here.     

General Conference has become disappointingly generic. The Latter-day famine continues. It may give you a warm fuzzy though!

On another note, there's a great new video series over at LearnofChrist.org. And maybe Joseph Smith did not practice polygamy.  But don't count on that being taught in generic conference anytime soon.