The following is a letter to my son who is currently serving a mission. We've been having a discussion on whether or not setting goals is part of the gospel and here is my somewhat lengthy but considered response:
Dennis, I have to say more regarding whether or not settings
goals is a gospel principle. I think I ought to go over it in greater depth
because I think it's important to know the difference between a gospel
principle and a church policy.A gospel principle is a value which we hold dear. They are eternal and by their nature, always lead man to do good. As you know, the most important one, if there is only one, is to treat other people well. As Jesus said, on this does hang all the law and prophets. So Faith and Charity are both gospel principles. It's easy to lose sight of your principles so, people invent practices and rules for certain situations so they don't have to rethink things over and over. That's what I call policy.
Let's take the 10 Commandments - are they principles or policy? Well they're policy based on the principles of Faith and Charity. One of the ways you can tell the difference is that policies can conflict with each other whereas principles don't. What if your parents forbade you from attending your sacrament meeting? You're supposed to obey them but if you do, you'll be defiling the Sabbath. One of the 10 commandments goes on and on about not worshipping idols. I know there are modern day equivalents but no one is worshipping idols anymore. So that's another feature of policy, it's not eternal, it's to address a specific problem at a specific time.
Making policy is very difficult and usually the less you have of it the better. It's always better to let people figure out how to solve their own problems on their own. But when they can't, or if they persist or turn hostile, it's good to have a clearly defined set of rules. An example of this is the reserved parking here where we live. For many years we didn't have any reserved parking spaces and everybody was okay with that. A few inconsiderate jerks basically spoilt it for everyone. Now everybody has one parking spot of their own. It does nothing to address the people who have three or four cars or people who don't have any. It's a policy that supersedes any other arrangements private parties may have worked out previously. The general rule is that the more unruly a people are, the more rules they need. For this, I quote Edmund Burke:
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
Judging by the number of rules there are for missionaries, I would have to assume you guys are a fairly unruly lot. It's basically the same story as the reserved parking though, mission life is highly regimented not so much because of the requirements of missionary work but because so many missionaries are not prepared for it or it’s hard and difficult to back out of once committed. So there are a lot of elders still serving who would much rather be doing something else. That plus their youth and inexperience makes commandments spread like kudzu.
So what I am saying is that you are given a very generous helping of being-told-what-to-do served alongside heaps of admonitions of obedience but take a moment and consider the principles of what you are being told. Are they gospel principles? Not all of them will be. Much of it will be good advice and some of it might even be applicable to your entire life in general. But not all of it.
Okay, I wrote that Saturday morning. It's Saturday afternoon, half an hour before the Stake Priesthood meeting.
You know, in thinking it over perhaps Principles isn't such a good word. Perhaps I should say truths. You know, a gospel truth as revealed in the scriptures. For example, shortly after Eve was created in the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam a brief description of the man and woman together. An eternal truth regarding both their natures. And from this, the law of chastity is derived. In math and science you discover truth and once you discover the truth of—I don't know, say gravity—you can make deductions and predictions based on that discovered truth. In math, there's a clear distinction between basic law and deductions based on that law. Once Newton came up with the basic laws of motion, calculation and predicting motion became possible. The deductions are based on the true principle and reflect it and even can look a lot like a separate basic truth. But they're not because they are dependent. It's also why revelation is such a big deal.
The church has changed over the years. They have changed their practices and programs and will continue to do so. There hasn't always been home teachers but the charge to look after your brother has never been lifted. The word of wisdom didn't used to be a commandment but the charge to be sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Ghost has never been lifted. They used to send out married men as missionaries and missionary work has changed a lot but the basic charge is always with us and it's always based on charity and persuasion. Heck, when I was a punk missionary, we had to memorize all the discussions, word for word! The R A I N B O W discussions.
So have I flogged that horse to death enough? Is it still moving? Okay, then it's time to get down to the dirty business of discussing church government and priesthood leadership. I'll skip to the end here and say that so far as I know, and in all my experience, the church is led by good men who are capable and always mean well. They don't make all the people happy all the time and as men have strengths and weakness. Currently you are serving as a District Leader so you know full well all the faults, weakness and limitations of at least one church leader. And your brothers likewise you know and have seen them as district and zone leaders. You have probably found yourself at a loss at times and have not seen an angel appear to point you the way. Perhaps, not even the Holy Ghost at times and so you are left to decide things yourself (I'm talking about your current calling as a district leader.)
The reason I mention the rainbow discussions is that I wanted to use that as an example. They were called the rainbow discussions because each discussion was printed on a different color of paper and bound in a folder. They made a little rainbow in the folder. I don't know how long the entire set of discussions were but pretty dang long, thousands of words per discussion and there was at least eight of them. I have a pretty good memory so I made it through all of them at the MTC but after awhile in the mission field, no one knows any of them except maybe the first two.
Oh boy, they just announced the topic of the meeting—Seven Habits of Highly Effective Home Teachers. My favorite! Wheeee! I'm glad I brought the laptop, looks like I will finish this letter tonight.
Okay, back to the rainbow. One of the cool features of these discussions was that when the missionaries spoke to people they were teaching, they would go into a sort of a trance and rattle off a discussion as if possessed. It brought a weird sort of solemnity too though. The main advantage is that the young missionary explains things clearly and has a somewhat orderly and well thought out presentation. If he could remember them and if the person he was teaching was responsive to the way the discussion was laid out.
Mission presidents went to all sorts of lengths to beat their young missionaries into memorizing the rainbow. Driving privilege and Senior Companion status were usually withheld from elders who couldn't or wouldn't "pass off" their discussions. So many anxious nights and much grief was felt over the rainbow for many years. It seems kind of weird that the church would demand this I know but back in those days, a lot of learning (especially in the schools) included tons and tons of memorization. We've moved past that as a society now, we've realized that memorization isn't that helpful in learning.
As a former victim of the rainbow discussions, I have to ask you this question: How many elders thought the rainbow discussions were a gospel principle? I personally did not have a hard time with the rainbow but I did feel for some of my companions who did especially because it was widely known they're just a hoop to jump through and of very limited use when meeting with actual investigators. If we could see the future where they would be cast aside, it would have been ...uh... interesting, especially because of all the efforts that were made to make them work. Believe me, nobody shed a tear when the rainbow faded from view.
Okay, so somebody thought it was a good idea. And it wasn't without merit. It was probably a general authority that implemented the rainbow. Was he not inspired? Was it the right thing at the right time and its time came and went? Or was it just a man doing the best that he could? I suspect the latter but I do not really concern myself. The decision wasn't mine and I wasn't there and don't know what was considered at the time. But I do consider that such a thing could happen again and is probably happening now. Not out of any malice. Let me repeat: regular men, occasionally inspired, well meaning, honorable and noble but still just men doing the best they can.
Ha, ha, I've wandered pretty far from my original topic, eh? Setting goals. Maybe my overall ponderings have made me a lot more sensitive to what I hear. I just can't take everything I hear over the pulpit as a commandment because there's way too much to do and to keep up with. I don't want to feel like I must be perfect in order to enjoy association with the saints. And I know everybody else struggles too. So I've had to prioritize and decide what's important to me. I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater (so to speak) so I am trying very hard to distinguish between the commandments of (well meaning inspired) men and gospel truths.
I'm going beyond my original subject but the only time I heard my BS detector going off when listening to my leaders (as a missionary) was when they were talking like salesmen, adopting the language and philosophy of Dale Carnegie and other pop-business gurus: positive thinking and the power of setting goals. My particular mission president was very much into that and even gave talks based on these subjects to business audiences in his former life. For this I forgave him because he did it out of conviction and sincerely believed it would be helpful. If you were alive back then, you would see more clearly that this was a very popular school of thought and was widely promoted in corporate America. On the other hand, he was very good at giving talks in missionary meetings. A lot of Mormons bought into it (just like Amway sales) and I try to keep it in perspective. Missionary work is very similar to sales though so a little borrowing is alright, just don't get the helpful philosophies of man confused with a gospel truth.
