Posted by:
Wally Prince
(
)
Date: October 21, 2019 10:55PM
all I heard about non-stop, as an impressionable child, was miracle after miracle. Prophecies and inspiration. Angelic visitations.
But by the time I finished my mission I realized that in 21 years I had never actually seen or witnessed anything happen in (or in relation to) the church that could clearly be attributed to divine, supernatural intervention.
No visions. No amazing revelations. No miraculous inspiration. No church-wide fast followed by the desired (and otherwise unlikely) result.
As missionaries, we were encouraged to believe the mission president was basically the equivalent of the prophet and apostle for the mission. He was supposedly getting revelations and inspiration just like the big GAs.
But all I ever witnessed was an ordinary guy making ordinary decisions for the organization he was in charge of and getting an ordinary mix of results. I couldn't see any difference in the essence of what the MP did and the essence of what a regional Pizza Hut manager would do for his/her organization.
What's worse, I saw signs of corruption and cronyism. The MP was from Utah (SLC) and several of the missionaries were from his home stake and one or two from his home ward. He was always chummy with them and promoting them quickly to all the prestigious "leader" positions that would give them something to write home about and, in turn, give their parents back home something to brag about.
It wouldn't have been so bad if they were all the best qualified anyway. But several of them were actually sub-par in key areas (language, discussion memorization, conscientiousness, people skills, etc.). Their main "leadership" attribute was often only the fact that everyone knew that they were tight with the MP.
Then, after my mission, I continued looking around and observing, and soon realized that the MP I served under wasn't unusual in terms of demonstrably lacking anything that could be reasonably characterized as revelation and divine inspiration. The whole leadership hierarchy exhibited all of the same ordinary, mundane, flawed human approaches to leadership. Cronyism, nepotism, cliques within cliques. Self-aggrandizement. Nothing inspired or inspiring.
That's why Spencer W. Kimball's personal physician gets promoted to apostle. That's why Spence's nephew gets promoted to apostle. That's why Hinckley's son gets a GA slot and GA retirement plan. That's why Joseph Fielding Smith's son-in-law is set up to take Joseph Fielding Smith's apostle position when Joseph Fielding Smith kicks the bucket. And on and on and on...
The reality of Mormon leadership and decision making is so mundane and pathetic.
It's poorly managed microfilm collections.
It's poorly constructed McTemples needing major repair work after just a couple years.
It's the major revising and deleting of elements of the temple ceremony, even though it was supposedly ALL "revealed" by God to his prophet as a complete package.
It's Heber J. Grant obsessing over the political prohibitionist movement and turning the "Word of Wisdom" into a commandment and partial monument to insanity (i.e. the rigid and absolute prohibition against coffee and tea, while making no mention of dozens of more harmful and health-destroying dietary practices).
It's Hinckley, Oaks, Tanner and Kimball all being fully bamboozled by a document forger....
But next Sunday, you can be sure that a hundred-thousand children in Mormon churches around the world will be force fed lies about miracles and visions and angelic visitations and so on.
The stories are often quite interesting, especially the stories told about the amazing feats and miracles surrounding the great prophets and apostles. Too bad nothing like that ever happens in reality in the church.