Jack Naneek discusses contagions. Ideas are contagious, which is great if the ideas are great, but terrible if the ideas are terrible. We compare two essays. In the end, we shouldn’t fear new ideas, as long as we handle them carefully. Otherwise, they just might blow up in our faces!
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Ideas, ideas, ideas…
Enjoyed this episode Jack. I only vaguely remember the Larry King interview of Gordon Hinckley but what stands out most in my memory is that there really wasn’t anything newsworthy from that interview. Just a lot of softball questions and General Conference type answers. When I heard this podcast episode where you claimed that he walked back from the King Follett doctrine during that interview, I thought, “how did I miss that??” so I went back and watched the entire interview again. That question did not come up and the answer that you referred to was not given. Not during the 1998 interview anyways. Is there another interview or perhaps a different occasion/forum all together where that exchange took place between Hinckley and an interviewer? I would definitely like to hear/watch it. Could you please point me towards the correct source?
You’re right. I may have confused the Larry King interview with the Time Magazine article:
Note that the question directly involved whether God was once a man. The topic also came up in a 2001 TIME article. The interview transcript and article itself makes it clear that Pres. Hinckley’s stumbling response was in regards to God’s past, not humanity’s future:
Q: Just another related question that comes up is the statements in the King Follet discourse by the Prophet.
A: Yeah.
Q: … about that, God the Father was once a man as we were. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing. Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?
A: I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it. I haven’t heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don’t know. I don’t know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don’t know a lot about it and I don’t know that others know a lot about it.2
This was taken directly from a Common Consent article. Sorry for confusion.
Jack, do you have a reference for the facebook post you discuss about the church leadership reaching down the line to better understand why youth and young adult’s are leaving the church in such large numbers? I think it’s pretty clear that this is happening based on what the church is trying to do (changes to youth sunday school, lowering the missionary age, all the youth and YSA firesides, etc), but I haven’t ever heard real numbers or actual action from the church.
And I agree completely that because of the church hierarchy, it’s very unlikely that the upper echelon will hear anything that challenges what they might be doing. My perspective is that we always talk about how we can help the youth stay strong but never address the fact that they might be leaving because they don’t see value in the church and maybe, just maybe, we have to look at the church and see what changes we could make. It’s always from the perspective of, “Gee, we’re so great, I don’t understand why more people don’t see that”. Until we are willing to mature to the point where self-examination is routine and expected, we will continue to lose members, IMO.