Black men and the Pre-Existence

[_truth dancer]

Some people are just plain dumb. It happens in and out of the Church.

Were they dumb when they fasted, prayed, and received a confirmation of the spirit that this doctrine was of God?

Were the prophets who came up with this doctrine dumb?


~dancer~

[_neworder]

Here is a classic.

Joseph Fielding Smith talks about those with a black skin are from an inferior race.





Then a few years later he says the later-day saints have never described the blacks as belonging to an inferior race.

[_moksha]

Watch this podcast. It describes how the willingness of Joseph's Church to allow openness in the Priesthood was eroded later on by a lie borne out of racism and then crystallized into the racial purity ban.

http://www.mormonstories.org/blacksandtheldspriesthood/

Once members fully understand what transpired, they can view the ban for both the lie and mistake it represented as policy. The best answer to this blemish on the Church is open and honest acknowledgment.

[_ludwigm]

...
Just a note here, we have continuing revelation. So 1978 Trump's 1951.

When I tell You something, it Trump's what I have told You five minutes before. Got it? Got it, stupid?
And ... er ... um ... wait a little ... I have another truth for You which was nowhere five minutes before.

And ... er ... um ... wait a little more: we have a new prophet, look here, We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. - whenever the environment coerces/compels/forces Him, or His actual mouthpiece to do it, but wait until fifteen old man can go home with it.

Nothing wrong with the fluidic nature of doctrine. Doctrine like everything else in life is subject to change. This fluidity is not just a Mormon phenomenon but is universal. Revelation helps shape the direction of that change.

So, be the doctrine of fluidic nature. Be it a subject to change.
But, be it revealed:

"The doctrine IS THIS, HERE AND NOW:
1. xxxx
2. yyyy
....
n. zzzz
You will be notified about the changes
place, date, signed "

There is no such thing today. (Please don't send me the picture of the MD from BMC. That is a private opinion of a dead apostle.

[_Jason Bourne]

Hey Jason,

I'll have to agree to disagree with you. I do not think that BRM's statement admitted the teaching was wrong. I interpret it more as... time to move on, let it go, it is behind us.

He could have come out and clearly stated the teaching was completely wrong, even apologized, but he did not. He said, forget about it. Two very different things in my opinion.

President Hinckley, when asked said he did not think the ban was wrong and that the church "rectified" anything that "may have appeared to be wrong at the time." This is not denying anything was wrong, nor is it denying the doctrine.

A few leaders suggest there is further light and knowledge but so far as I can tell no one has stated unequivocally that blacks were NOT less valiant or less righteous in the pre existence. IF they had, I think members would still not hold to this belief like so many do.

I think the church rather than admit mistakes goes along with Pumba... "let's put the past behind us." ;-)

Here is the crux of the problem...

If the church admitted prophets and apostles were wrong.. prophets and apostles who were speaking in the name of God, in an official capacity, who thought they were inspired and teaching truth, were so completely wrong, then how can anyone trust a leader?

And, if prophets and apostles can be so completely utterly wrong, thinking they were receiving inspiration and perhaps receiving revelation, speaking as the mouthpiece for God, then how in the world can anyone trust their own inspiration?

I have asked this question of apologists but have failed to receive an answer.

I truly do not understand how apologists rationalize this.

~dancer~

I can agree. He did not say anything was wrong. Rather just forget what they had said because they now had new light and knowledge. And of course you have hit on the crux of why LDS leaders will never out right say something like this was wrong. It impairs credibility.

[_huckelberry]

There are a couple of comments back up the thread where people claim to have been in the church before the change and been above that common teaching about fence sitters or some such. (variants such as less valiant, read lazy)

I am curious about how that worked, I was in the church during the 60s. I had the general impression that the proposal was common teaching. Perhaps a few dialogue types had reservations but reservations about the mark of cain idea were not public.

Of course I was a teenager back then and not in the position to make my private intuitions into teachings. I remember being put off by the idea of Black inferiority. It seemed difficult to address directly however. How could one be sure that the teachers were wrong? I do not have a record of the preexistence. We cannot check what Fredrick Douglas or Joseph Smith did in those hazy times. (which one was skipping out to get loaded behind the barn?)

There is a substantial differnce in what common sense prescibes as an answer to the question of Negroe role in society betwen those days and now. A person might suspect then that society was off base but to add religious authority to the bias and it gets harder.

For me it became easier to view the doctrine mark of cain as maliscious nonsense once Mormon authority became questionable in my mind.

I might only want to ask the question I started with because in truth I still hold some resentment to having had the crappy idea stuch in my mind by people older and wiser than me.

[_charity]

Yeah, but I don't know of any apologist that believes Official Statements from the First Presidency should be taken seriously. Any time the First Presidency issues an Official Statement members should take it with a grain of salt. After all, Official Statementd from the First Presidency is a fancy way of saying "something that three old guys in Salt Lake city agree on." The rest of us are free to make our own decisions. I'm sure even Charity would agree with me.

Wrong again.

1. I take what the First Presidency says very seriously. So does every other apologist I know.

2. We believe in continuing revelation. So there is no trouble when a later revelation clarifies, changes, etc.

[_Gazelam]

For an understanding of this we have to go to Noah and his sons.

Abraham 1:21-28 tells the tale of Ham and his family who were cursed as pertaining to the priesthood. This was becuase he had sought to steal the right of the priesthood from his Father by making as false copy of his fathers priesthood garment. His brothers Shem and Japheth were allowed the pristhood. One was the bloodline that led to Abraham (memory fails at the moment) the other the bloodline of the gentiles who lost the priesthood and did not regain it until Peter received a revelation to give it to them.

Hams decendents were the Black race, and they did not receive the right to bear it again until recent times.

The idea concerning an unworthy pre existence no doubt stems from the idea that we were seperated into family groups there as we are here, and if our anestors were unworthy of the priesthood, then we associated with the unworthy in the pre existence.