Governing Ones
The Governing Ones is one of the more unusual and interesting conference talks I’ve read. Still chewing on it, to be honest.
Brother Bradford starts with the principle that priesthood is a government. The rights of the priesthood are rights to govern.
Self-government
But, he says, the most important form of government is self-government. Can you imagine a ruler who spends 20 hours a week watching TV (other than President Trump, of course). TV and social media in most forms is passive consumption. It is being led, not leading. Leaders lead.
Family Government
Then this:
The Lord expects you to govern a home- and family-centered gospel-living system. The challenge of governing the family is to so love, teach, and motivate its members that their personal decisions will be to unite one with another in the common purpose of following God’s plan.
There is more depth in that quote than meets the eye. I think I am only scratching the surface when I say that contemplating it has led me to conclude that the basic difference between unrighteous and righteous dominion is the goal. Unrighteous dominion has dominion as its goal. Governance is not the means but the end. Righteous dominion has government as the means to a righteous end. The end that is view controls how the means are used. A general principle of life that we ignore at our peril:
The end must shape the means.
This difference between unrighteous dominion and righteous dominion is the same difference between seeing leadership as a form of superiority and leadership as a function. Our world confuses the two, which is why we have demands for every discernible group to get their quota of leadership and why so many of our elites think they are meritocratic and are deeply threatened by the evidence of their own inability. It is bad enough to not be doing real well at your task. That happens to all of us. It is worse if you are claiming to be superior on the basis of fraud and ignorance.
One other point he made family government. The path to righteousness is the path of repentance so governing your family means “You involve yourself in and teach the steps of repentance.”
Church government
We love and need the auxiliaries. They are staffed by great, faithful servants. But the very name by which they are called, auxiliary, which means “helper,” should make it clear to us that the full weight of governing the Church rests squarely upon the priesthood.
If an individual or a family needs help in the process that will bring about their temporal and spiritual salvation, it is the responsibility of the priesthood. As the priesthood needs help in this work, and it will, it will call upon the resources of the auxiliaries.
The time must quickly come when, as the governing ones, we fully shoulder our responsibility as the shepherds of Israel. Our work must not be done by the restrictions of the calendar or as convenient to the schedule of our habits, but on a need basis.
Brethren, in some things there remains a considerable distance between what we are and what we should become.
There is a foretaste of the ministering program there.
Other Posts from the Priesthood Session of the October 1979 General Conference
- The Brethren Say It Best by Jan Tolman
- Impossible unity by Marilyn Nielson
Filed under: Birkenhead Drill,Deseret Review | Tags: General Conference Odyssey, LDS
Bookslinger
April 25, 2018
link:
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1979/10/the-governing-ones
Bookslinger
April 26, 2018
Fortunately, both the wording and the nuts-and-bolts policy of these principles has changed.
It is(/was) too easy to misinterpret or misapply Elder Bradford’s words and end up with unrighteous dominion, bullying, and treating women and male “subordinates” in an intimidating manner.
The media attention given recently to a longstanding accusation against the MTC president back in 1984 brought back some painful memories of my 9 week stint in the MTC in that time period. Not only there, but the whole management/leadership style of the missionary system/program at the time. There was a toxicity in it that confused me at the time, and which I partly picked up and carried myself, in that I thought I was following their pattern.
Though the scriptures and the Brethren clearly say “don’t engage in unrighteous dominion”, if your file leaders engage in bullying and intimidation, even “just” verbal/emotional, then a few in the ranks are going to think “That must not be unrighteous dominion, since our leaders are doing it.”
As a recent convert, I had not seen an example of the Nephite disease until I got to the Provo MTC. The Nephite disease has a tendency to make one oblivious to one’s own faults, and oblivious to false traditions in general if sufficiently wide spread. As in, “everyone is else doing/not-doing it, and the church is true, so it must be okay.”
It’s interesting how official language has changed. Elder McConkie famously said: “We don’t worship Christ; we worship the Father in the name of Christ.” 20-some years later, president Hinckley said he worships Christ.
Personally, I can parse those two things into agreement. Of course the _primacy_ of worship goes to the Father. And I’d say Elder McConkie meant “Worship”, and Pres Hinckley meant “worship.”
President Hinckley gave us both a clearer and more nuanced view.
Just as the newer policies and instructions on “counciling” (and now ward council vs the older PEC) are clearer and bring new light in regards to how the Lord wants local units to be run.
34 years ago, I saw a woman divorce a well-respected bishop (supposedly) for his cruel control of her. I saw the father reflected in the son, and got an idea of what went on.
10 years ago I saw something similar between a bishop and his wife close to my age.
The “traditions of the fathers” take a long time to die out.
This is one of those talks where you have to allow them to speak the vocabulary of their age. They did not “couch” and “qualify” statements the way we do today to avoid misunderstandings; “obvious” things were left unspoken.
I believe that the church’s emphasis and “old-style vocabulary” on the leadership role of the father did allow some men to be blind to their own toxic attempts to “control” their family.
I saw that “toxic emotional control” in the MTC back then. Perhaps I was more sensitive to it than others because I was an adult convert, and for the other missionaries it was merely the water they grew up in. Being from outside Mormon-country, and on the autism spectrum both likely increased my sensitivity to it.
So yeah, this talk’s subject is one where we now have “further light and knowledge.”
Carter Craft
April 26, 2018
Elder McConkie did not mean something other than what he said; he was simply wrong. As he was simply wrong about a number of topics he over-analyzed and over-interpreted and over-defined in his restless pursuit of a comprehensive Mormon theology that his contemporaries did not pursue and did not believe in.
Bookslinger
April 27, 2018
CC: I’m sorry I used BRM’s quote as an example. We need to be careful about criticizing current and past apostles. Apostles and prophets see things we don’t. I think some of their “out-there” statements, even going back to Journal of Discourses, would make better sense if we saw the whole background and behind-the-scenes pictures that they saw. Context/big-picture is everything.
Because of the Internet, allthe church’s teachings are public now. Nothing is internal-only any more. Everything has to be “couched” and “qualified” for public consumption, and juggled/nuanced so it doesn’t offend common assumptions of the general public, including LDS members. So a lot of behind the scenes and future-related things of the gospel have to be left out of public discourse, and learned individually through study, temple attendance, prayer, and personal revelation.
There is a lot of “higher-doctrine” in general conference now, and always has been. But it’s “hidden in plain sight” more so now than before. I kick myself for not seeing it earlier, as I didn’t have the faith to go seek out _how_ it was true, and didn’t “study it out” by searching the scriptures deep enough.
Jacob G.
April 27, 2018
Perhaps it is something like Saul: You want a king?…
You want a creed?…
The Lord condescends, so must those who serve him.
Then again, maybe not.
If it is so, I think the trap for us is to assume that we are sitting on the pinnacle, the generation of saints finally, truly able to receive the fullness.
G.
May 3, 2018
I’m with JG. Personally I found the talk illuminating. I don’t know, but I think we are in the position of falling off the left side of the horse because we are trying to avoid falling off the right side. I would not say overcorrection, however, because I am not sure there is a safe middle ground. It seems there are errors of misinterpretation that can’t be avoided.