two thoughts

I'm 100% over the news from this past week. I'm sure everyone is, especially my friends here in DC that haven't been able to go to work in over a week. I've been trying to avoid Facebook because I have read some ignorant and hurtful statements about the shutdown but I find myself going back again and again to comment or shake my head in disbelief. It's like watching a car wreck. It's ridiculous and pointless so I'm trying not to do that anymore because that's not how I roll. But I still think it's important to articulate these thoughts when I am trying to work through them, so here I am. Blog readers are much more forgiving than Facebook friends. (And I can delete your comments here if I don't like them but not on Facebook [jk (or am I?)].)

The other thing that I've been a little bummed out by is the reaction to a very inspiring General Conference this past weekend—thanks, social media! As usual, some talks spoke much more to me than others (some, among others, include Elder Soares' talk on meekness, Elder Dube's talk about the value of looking ahead, the crowd favorite on inclusion by President Uchtdorf, and Elder Holland's talk on mental illness), but much of the reaction that I read about conference a few days later was something along the lines of "I couldn't believe what I heard in Elder/Sister So-and-So's talk just after hearing that other one that I liked much better." While I feel like these kinds of statements are a bit contradictory to the sentiments expressed by President Uchtdorf—that there's room for all of us at the table—I do think it's perfectly fine and normal to have those reactions, but posting them in a public forum and opening it up to an argument seems counterproductive and self-serving. (*Guiltily raises hand after taking the bait and leaving a comment*) 

Maybe writing a blog post about it after I've shared that opinion is hypocritical and maybe I'll decide to delete it later, but my goal here is not to single out anyone or a specific point of view—I'm just trying to work through my thoughts. Even when I do agree with a certain point of view posted online, sometimes it makes me feel bad that the sentiment is phrased in such a way that it might make anyone who disagrees feel stupid. You know? Though as my mom would probably say, "No one's aiming to please here. More, really, to edify, to instruct."

Anyway, I read two quotes recently that I really liked that dovetailed nicely with these two topics so I thought I'd share them with you.

From Hugh Nibley:

"Nothing is easier than to identify one's own favorite political, economic, historical, and moral convictions with the gospel. That gives one a neat, convenient, but altogether too easy advantage over one’s fellows. If my ideas are the true ones—and I certainly will not entertain them if I suspect for a moment that they are false!—then, all truth being one, they are also the gospel, and to oppose them is to play the role of Satan. This is simply insisting that our way is God's way, and therefore the only way. It is the height of impertinence."

From C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, talking about what a society run by Christ might be like:

"If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, 'advanced,' but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fashioned—perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further: and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity."

Now back to our scheduled blog programming.