Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Doing wrong things (or, perhaps, doing things wrong)

As i read the Bible (and to a lesser extent the Book of Mormon), i sometimes think the entire reason the historical bits were included was to remind us that even God’s chosen can have flaws. I mean, Noah self-medicated with alcohol, Abraham lied when he was scared, David cheated on his wives, Peter doubted…

Interestingly, although you get hints of this even in the book of Doctrine and Covenants,* we don’t talk much about how God’s chosen have flaws these days. I mean, discussion of the personal flaws of, say, Brigham Young or Joseph Fielding Smith is pretty much out of bounds in Sunday school classes in ways that the personal flaws of David and Peter aren’t. I still can’t figure out why.

* I say “even” in that book because it doesn’t really contain much in the way of stories, and so one would naturally expect less of it there.

2 comments:

Heather the Mama Duk said...

That's a good point.

Jeanne said...

11 yr old's description of what they learned in her Primary class yesterday, "We learned that Jesus' apostles didn't have very much faith." She explained that they'd talked about the loaves and the fishes and other miracles where prior to the miracle, the apostles expressed doubts...I'm still trying to figure out what it means for me. Is that lack of faith, or just the inability to consider all the possibilities?