Respect for Authority is the True Deciding Factor

[_zeezrom]

I enjoyed reading everyone's posts on this thread. Thank you.

Zee.

[_Cicero]

This focus on obedience as the way to salvation sounds quite a bit like a plan that was rejected a long time ago in a preexistence far away.

That never really bothered me. I always was OK with the stock response, which basically says that the key difference is that Christ's plan involved us having the agency to surrender our will to Heavenly Father whereas Lucifer's plan did not. That made sense to me.

Where I got hung up is when I started thinking about how to discern God's will? The stock answer to that is the Holy Ghost, but only so long as it is in line with existing revelation and subservient at all times to priesthood authority. Obedience to priesthood authority Trump's personal revelation in the Church every time . . . I suspect that if I went out and cut an evil man's head off today that I would be excommunicated for murder even if I fervently believed that God told me to do it (even if the man was somehow miraculously able to keep the blood off his clothers and/or struggle for breath without a head, but I digress).

When I realized how much it all comes down to obedience to Church leaders rather than "God's will," I then saw that the original stock answer doesn't work well and it really is much more like Lucifer's plan.

[_bcspace]

Respect for Authority is the True Deciding Factor

That is the case in every organization or society. Such respect is following the laws, rules, policies, and traditions of the same.

[_Cylon]

Respect for Authority is the True Deciding Factor

That is the case in every organization or society. Such respect is following the laws, rules, policies, and traditions of the same.

I'll quote myself in another thread when I was responding to Why Me:

It's interesting, when defending the church's disciplinary actions, apologists often treat the church as just another organization, no different from the Unitarian church or the YMCA. "Of course if someone is trying to lead others out of the organization, they will get kicked out," they say. But the church does not claim to be just another organization. It claims to be God's Kingdom on earth and possess absolute truth. Thus, if the church is what it says it is, everything that is verifiably true will support the church's narrative and the only things that do not support the church's narrative will be verifiably false.

But, we know that the church is not primarily concerned with truth, and apologetic arguments which point out critics' lack of loyalty to the institution prove this as clearly as anything.

[_moksha]

Respect for Authority is the True Deciding Factor

I wonder if you added the word compliance, so it reads "Respect and Compliance with Authority is the True Deciding Factor", it might furnish a more complete picture of what is being asked here. While one may have respect for many, compliance to any and all utterances is being asked for as well. That would be an unwise deciding factor.