Are children molested as 'a trial' to endure?

[_guy sajer]

Jason, I have been told that callings are based on revelation. I have been told that a calling should be treated as if it came directly from God.

I suspect, also, that many others have shared my experience.

Ok

I will grant you that it has been taught that God inspires callings. But I think it is more a cultural thing than doctrinal. So what? Does that rob a person of their agency? By the way personally I always have felt that this idea that God is involved in the details of callings is rather quaint, colloquial and goofy even. I never have liked it. More often it is who does it make sense to call and who could do a good job.

If a calling IS revealed, and God CAN see what's in the hearts of man/woman and reasonably predict their actions, or have reason to suspect them, why then would God call a pedophile or sex abuser to a position in which they have opportunity to hurt others?

There are a number of possibilities. First is moral agency. Next, I am not sure it is doctrinal in the LDS Church to say God knows every little dirty act we wil do before we do it. There is a range of opinions on this off course. I personally do not believe in simple and perfect omniscience.

With all due respect, Jason, you are dismissing my experience and that of many others who have been told precisely what you deny we have been told, and more, told this repeatedly. I would go as far as to argue that this is precisely what the Church teaches, and the message that the Brethren want communicated.

Can you tie this teaching to quotes from LDS leadership?

I am highly confident they are there, but I don't have time to look them up, unless someone wants to help me out. Short of that, we are at an impasse here.

by the way, if callings are based on revelation, then presumably God has a reason for wanting someone in a calling, implying he knows something about that person. It does not require omniscience to expect God, at the very least, when he calls someone to a calling, based on what he knows of that person, that God has at least some clue that he's a pedophile or a sexual predator.

[_Loquacious Lurker]

Also, there are long statutes of limitations for these offenses if you are under 25; consider going to law enforcement.

It's too late I think; it was more than twenty years ago.

He told me never to tell. He said no one would believe me. He was right, in a way. I was just this dumb little girl, and he was popular and well-liked by everyone in the ward. No one would have wanted to believe it.

But it's not the fault of little children when someone hurts them. I don't know what would possess Richard G. Scott and Kimball and others to say the things they have.