I recently started reading Life’s Lessons Learned by Elder Dallin H. Oaks. In chapter 8 he uses a letter he wrote to his brother more than 50 years ago to highlight a challenge that is persistent today. A portion of the letter to his brother reads: “The open conflict against the Church [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] has largely disappeared. Indeed, we live in an era of good feeling toward the Church. But therein lies the great challenge of this day. We are now in a period of conflict with indifference, in many ways a much more dangerous enemy than open hostility. One might say we are now in a cold war with Satan, a time in which he has called off the active opposition to the gospel and substituted in its place indifference, indifference to the necessity for the one true church.”
“But beware” Elder Oaks continued “also of indifference among our own people. In this time of good feeling toward our church, we are not often called to its defense. We tend to become complacent and smug–to take pride alone in the esteem in which we are held by those around us. Our spiritual muscles weaken and we forget that our most priceless possession, our testimony, is neither obtained nor retained by inactivity. The indifferent among us soon lose it…The conflict with Satan goes on, but it is a cold war, where the opponent is indifferent rather than hostile.”
Without question we live an era of indifference toward God and true religion. Some argue everyone is right while other argue everyone is wrong. We are indifferent to our divine heritage and our divine potential. We have become in large measure unresponsive to the dictates of Heavenly Father’s divine laws.
Reports last week confirmed that we are indifferent to marriage, a law ordained in heaven. In the 1960’s, almost 75 percent of adults were married. Today, just above 50 percent are married. We are indifferent to virtue and morality. We are impassive to the drug (street and pharmaceutical) and pornography plague permeating society. We are uninterested in the Sabbath and worshipping. Churches are losing members attending services. We are blasé with wickedness in high places and dishonesty in every realm of human interaction.
What is even more startling is that we are indifferent to the consequences and judgments upon us as a nation for being indifferent to God’s divine laws! During the Constitutional Convention George Mason was appalled at the compromises made with the pro-slavery delegates. In no way was Mason in indifferent. To those who insisted slavery be perpetuated he said: “They bring the judgment of heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.” History has proven Mason right.
Great Britain never conquered us, nor did Russia, nor will Iran. Our great threat right now is indifference to the laws of God. We need national leaders, ministers, educators, and countless parents to admit and then correct that fact that we are violating God’s laws. The ancient prophet Ezekiel saw the indifference of his day: “They have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the clean and the unclean” – a sad, yet perfect description of our day (See Ezekiel 22:26).
It is time to strengthen and flex our spiritual muscles and put an end to this cold war and expose the enemy to all righteousness.
Good article.
I can only go off my own experience. I know what is right and wrong but how I express it is not always as strong as suggested in the article. Anyone who has read the Old and New Testament knows there’s a diverse approach to furthering the cause of truth. We see the example of humility in Job. Then there’s David’s approach brazen and overt. In Christ, He shows us both gentle reprimand and outright sarcastic disgust.
I guess in all cases, it’s standing for Truth. There are times when I feel withheld from standing. There are times when I’m called to testify when I’m scared but as I’ve done it in love, it’s usually received.
In today’s world, we are facing tough issues. I guess the real key is for each of us to continually face God so we are ready and willing and properly equipped when the time is right to stand for Truth.
The letter Oaks sent to his brother made the case that the problems today for Mormons are not open conflict, but indifference. The very hypothesis is faulty, 50 years ago or today.
The church is still regarded as a non-Christian cult by many Christians and ostracized from most nondenominational Christian groups or projects.
If you are a Mormon artist, your art WILL be boycotted by the Christian community, even if it has no whiff of Mormon-specific doctrine in it and promotes values common to all Christians.
Within the past couple of years, mostly thanks to Romney, Mormon teachings have been described as weird or downright crazy. And don’t forget the Broadway musical.
None of this is the violent persecution of the past, but can hardly be classified as “indifference.”
Oaks equates the indifference the world feels toward the church with indifference toward the necessity for a one true church. This is arrogance. The world just doesn’t think the LDS Church is the one true church (duh!) The indifference toward the church has no correlation to whether anyone thinks there is a need for a one true church or not.
He tries to define negative attitudes toward the church from its members as indifference. This is just silly. He decided to make indifference the theme of his letter, so he tries to force all sorts of negative things into this pigeonhole that don’t belong there.
He suggests indifference is a major cause of losing one’s testimony. Nonsense! Deciding the claims of the church are not what they are is the major cause of losing one’s testimony. This is hardly born of indifference.
On the contrary, I was extremely “different” (what WOULD one call the opposite of indifferent?) about my testimony of the church. So involved that I decided I would research the critical things said about the church and find out once and for all their validity.
It was a passionate investment in the church that brought me to the point of learning that the claims of the church are not valid. It was caring very much about being a part of the church that drove me away from it, when I discovered that if I didn’t think like everyone else, I was not welcome. Indifference had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.
Oaks tries to claim that Satan is indifferent to the church now. Ha! Does that even need to be rebutted? If the church really is the one true church, does anyone seriously believe Satan has become indifferent to that? I mean, besides Oaks.
Then he goes into the standard issue Mormon tirade against those who don’t agree with the Mormon moral code. He makes the same aggravating assumption that many other Mormons make, that if someone disagrees with the Mormon moral code, that person has no moral code. This is quite insulting.
Whether the Mormon code really is God’s code or not, disagreeing with it does not mean indifference to morality. It only means disagreement with Mormons over what morality is.
This includes marriage. Oaks justifies including marriage as a significant point of indifference because marriage is “a law ordained in heaven.” Well, that’s Mormon doctrine. And not everyone in the world believes it. Even if slightly above 50% of the adult population are married, this is still the majority and can hardly be called an indifference to marriage.
And let’s not forget the fight for gay marriage. Certainly gays are not indifferent to marriage.
His claim that we are indifferent to drugs and pornography is simply out of touch with reality. Has he never heard of the war on drugs? Did he not notice the silly backlash against Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, along with all the other manifestations of the extreme and idiotic aversion Americans have to the sight of a human body? Our society, both in and out of the church, has gone cuckoo over pornography, even labeling artistic masterpieces like Michelangelo’s David as pornography. Indifference this is not!
He winds up accusing us of being indifferent toward the “consequences and judgments upon us as a nation for being indifferent to God’s divine laws!” He even throws the word “startling” in and ends the statement with an exclamation mark to drive his point home.
More of the patented Mormon arrogance. Those people who believe differently than Momrons about what those divine laws are, Oaks classifies as indifferent to divine laws. It can’t be simply because they believe the divine laws are different than Mormons believe. Or it can’t be because there are people who don’t believe God exists. No, it has to be people belligerently and willfully ignoring God’s laws, because Oaks has to demonize those who disagree with Mormons to maintain this battle mentality. Demonize the enemy–classic warfare mentality.
Oaks assumes that those who have other beliefs than Mormons are just evil people who know better but deliberately choose to be rebellious or indifferent to God. He, like too many other Mormons, can’t conceive that there are people who simply and honestly believe differently from Mormons, or by extension, common Christian beliefs, when those intersect with Mormon beliefs.
The letter is lame because Oaks tries too hard to categorize everything as indifference, when precious little of the examples he gives are motivated by indifference, and because Oaks can’t see past his own Mormon arrogance and desire to demonize those who aren’t believing Mormons.
I agree with you Michael. I sense a frustration among the LDS, a type of passive aggressiveness towards the fact the there is no satisfaction in the fulfillment of so many prophesies that it would come down to the LDS vs. the world, at the end. I think that people DO understand what they believe, people CAN tell them apart from fundamentalists, people DO actually know the real history and still choose not to participate (or simply leave, as is the case with many LDS) makes them angry. This anger often comes is diatribes about how bad things are in the world, while refusing to look inwardly at what is wrong with the organization, such as indifference among its members.
The LDS religion in my opinion is beginning do flounder in doctrinal missteps (too many to list) that make it evident that they are grasping for an enemy to unite the troops.
Oaks, the turkey who said it was understandable that Joseph Smith would be attacked by a white Salamander? That an Angel appearing as a Salamander was a normal thing?
Is that the guy you read for inspiration?
Mental illness passing as intellectual brilliance.