With 30,000. Bishops, thousands of Stake presidents, mission presidents, and other similar callings that revolve and change constantly, statistics alone claims that some of them will make bad decisions or fall from grace so to speak. I’ve heard stories of leaders that make me shake my head and wonder if we are reading the same books. I’ve heard stories like this one that make me extremely sad that a leader didn’t step up and do more, do the right thing. These stories are still in the vast minority compared to the great people I’ve seen and met in person, and the positive experiences I’ve seen, heard, and read about. Once is still too many.
There will always be wolves in sheeps clothing when there are wolves and sheep in the world. We should trust our leaders but only as much as we prove their counsel as we go and keep our own eyes open. No leader is perfect, and many of the mistakes are innocent. We all need to pitch in and watch to stop the wolves and think of measures to stop them to protect the innocent and vulnerable.
Don’t just assume every decision or calling is inspired. Gain your own testimony of it. Also know good people put in positions of authority can fall for any of a variety of reasons. Opportunity can at times be the thing that breaks someone that’s been fighting off sin and temptations. I personally know for myself there is an adversary to the Lords work and name. Those who do His work, I have seen, receive more of he adversary’s attention and things get harder, with more pressure to break commandments. It’s not an excuse, just a fact in my mind.
Having a call be inspired doesn’t mean that person is perfect or won’t do something wrong. I have seen inspired calls go any direction. People are just given an opportunity, and many times the person extending the call does not know why, and many times there are other people that are more experienced around that are not called for some reason. The bottom line is that there are so many imperfect and flawed people trying to do their best that in my opinion you shouldn’t lose faith over people being people. God only has us imperfect weak people to work with.
People do stupid things. There will be more stupid things that happen probably. My question is, what will you do about it. Will you volunteer to stand up, take a leadership role, and do it right? Make a positive difference for people. Stand up for better decisions. Show people how from the front. I’m not even saying as bishop... just as whatever role is there, it could be anything.
It’s too easy for us to point out where someone messed up. Instead of this, let’s show them how to do it right.
Yes, I changed it from about leaders to us. I can’t change them, but I can change me and do it in a good way.
/talk
I do not assume every calling is inspired. There is no way that every second assistant teacher to the deacon's quorum is a calling by heavenly messenger. And of course every human being makes mistakes. Any given calling in a ward, I feel that God really probably doesn't really care who fills it, as I believe it falls in the "any good thing is a good thing" category of answers to prayers (such as a lot of the things we pray just simply aren't earth-shattering, and I believer that often God expects us just to simply use our free agency and choose something).
I feel that the church would have you believe, however, that the higher the calling, the more directly divine intervention had something to do with it. If you found out that a newly appointed apostle was a sexual predator, how would that make you feel? I don't think that the President of the MTC (or even a Bishop or Stake President for that matter) is really that far down this scale. I would hope that a good amount of inspiration went into these callings. Of course there will be Stake Presidents who don't get or don't follow their inspiration, and so you will have Bishops and the like called who probably shouldn't have been. We know that any organization run by men will be subject to the foibles of men, as JS points out in the outset in the D&C. However, when it gets into things like Mission Presidents, General Authorities, and the like, I would hope that an organization that is supposed to represent the eternal Father of Heaven and Earth would have more direct intervention from the one whose name the church bears.
I have seen this a few times in my life, in both my personal experience (as in people I directly know) and second-hand.
My BIL is a bishop, as I think I have mentioned here before, and he and I have had this conversation. He was part of an Elder's quorum when a Stake President was accused of rape and sexual misconduct. The local authorities were notified, by the accuser, not by the church. He eventually copped to a plea and did something like time served and probation, or whatever. And the church did...nothing. Literally nothing. He continued taking the sacrament (the man was in my BIL's ward), attending the temple, etc. No repercussions, to this day as far as we have heard (honestly I haven't asked my BIL lately, I think I will text him about it), and this event was nearly a decade ago. (I think I actually wrote about this one on here before, not sure)
What message does that send? Does that mean that God has withdrawn His support of the church when He allows that kind of blatant disregard of His laws among the leaders of His church? If not, how is it explained? As others have pointed out, these are not isolated instances.
I still cautiously hope that everything will turn out as it should, as I do believe that God has a higher knowledge than we do, he can see the whole puzzle while we are trying to make sense of a few disjointed pieces, so to speak. But how these will fit together is definitely beyond me at this point.
