Louis Midgley an hour ago
I will start this hopefully much, much less rambling opining by telling a true story. John Dehlin was once upon a time a student in the Political Science Department at Brigham Young University. After his miserable mission, from which he was sent home by his Mission President, but allowed by the Missionary Department to finish the last couple of months in Mesa, Arizona, before he returned to school. And he immediately told lurid tales of an inept Mission President, who had, among other things, failed make John his assistant. time a student in the Political Science Department at Brigham Young University. After his miserable mission, from which he was sent home by his Mission President, but allowed by the Missionary Department to finish the last couple of months in Mesa, Arizona, before he returned to school. And he immediately told lurid tales of an inept Mission President, who had, among other things, failed make John his assistant.
One of my colleagues to whom Dehlin had told those stories of wo (or is it woe), put him in touch with Elder Oaks, who phoned Dehlin, to get directly the lurid details about how that Mission President had botched his job. Dehlin told me about the blundering Mission President and his conversation with Elder Oaks about this matter. But Dehlin did not,
according to what one very, very close to Dehlin, tell me an important detail about that conversation. And it is not the fact that Dehlin wanted that Mission President excommunicated.
I have been told that the very first question that Elder Oaks asked Dehlin was whether he tithed. In boat racing on the downwind leg, what are called Spinnaker sails are put up. These are huge bags that catch the wind. I know a bit about this because my wife and I were living in New Zealand when the America's cup race took place. And in one preliminary race an Aussie boat, as they tried to drag the Spinnaker at the end of a downwind leg, let it fill with water, and the very amusing Kiwi announced that the Aussies have gone shrimping. I have been told that Elder Oaks's question took the wind out of Dehlin's enormous Spinnaker.
Now to my, by now, obvious point--should one not be just a tad bit skeptical of someone complaining about the behavior of another respected Latter-day Saint, who was a productive scholar at BYU, and who had done his best trying to keep track of missionaries, which I have heard is much like trying to herd cats, who refused to tithe? I must admit that I did not respect or trust a BYU faculty member who told me that tithing was merely "job insurance."
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