Thoughts on President Hinckley, part 3 --
As a sort of memorial I am trying to listen or read all of President Hinckley's conference talks. I guess I am giving him one last chance to try to convert me. So far I would have to admit it's not working terribly well.
I have several years' worth of conference on CD, and while I was grabbing talks for my iPod I also ripped President Faust's talks also, as I always loved his talks and his plain-spoken and gentle way of making his points.
Last night while walking I listened to these talks:
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-1,00.html
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-6,00.html
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-20,00.html
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-22,00.html
It was sort of an interesting view of the gospel. In summary the church is a large and impressive organization that requires a lot of skill and resources to manage. Primarily the gospel seems to be about my behavior. I need to be faithful and obedient and work hard to move the kingdom of God forward. I need to reach out to others and serve. I need to be a moral and spiritual person. I need to work on being perfect, which admittedly I can only completely achieve through the atonement, but there is a long list of things I need to work on.
Additionally, Bishops are caring, capable people and need to be respected and venerated as they carry out their many challenging responsibilities. More than the rest of us they are to be held to an incredibly high standard, serving not only their congregations, but being exemplary in the workplace and not letting their families down either.
By contrast, I also listened to this talk:
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-19-26,00.html
Now, of these people and these talks, which one is the special witness of Jesus Christ?
2 comments:
Yup, that final talk is vintage Sheri Dew. Except she can't be a special witness of Jesus Christ. . . because she is a woman. i'm sure you get my point there. She's nott rying to manage the gospel- she's preaching it. And she holds anearly unique spot as an LDS woman: she's unmarried, and a succesfull businesswoman. it's almost a tokenisim thing, because there aren't many others like her. just "mothers who know". Sorry, this sounds more bitter than I need to. It's a powerful message, unfortunatly blunted by her lack of authority. Parsley again.
WoB
I was quite conscious of all that while listening to it. This is one reason I posted it. Despite all that she is more of a witness of Christ than the other two.
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