The Dilemma of the CES

Wow, pregnancy has really made me have opinions on everything lately! My latest opinions are thanks to the recent article in which Randy Bott said some . . . interesting things. His remarks reminded me of a great feeling of frustration I felt with seminary and religion teachers late last year.

Don't get me wrong. The CES is a wonderful system and has really changed the lives of many many young people in the church. And most everything I learned in seminary and religion classes was good and true and appropriate.

But of course, the things that weren't good or true or appropriate are unfortunately what stick.
What is my main classification for things that fit into those categories? Things that aren't official Church doctrine.

There was the time where we were learning about the Plan of Salvation and had the promise of being able to create any kind of planet we wanted if we were good ("I'm going for a snowboarding planet," our teacher said.) There was the teacher who handed out a paper with various statements and asked us to guess if those were things the prophet had said. Turned out all of the items on the list were things prophets had said . . . some of them incredibly dated or said before they were even the prophet. (For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure BYU would not have birth control available at the Health Center if it were blatantly against church policy.) There was the time when I went straight from AP Biology where I learned about evolution and it seemed reasonable and fascinating and true to a seminary class where evolution was set up to be a dirty, horrible lie. And then there were the Mormon rumor mill stories such as sightings of Moroni.

And the problem didn't go away when I went to BYU. It was there I learned that the last appropriate Disney movie was Pinocchio, that UFOs visited Earth to visit the place where Christ lived, and . . . well, I won't go into everything Brother Robinson said (though I still like his book). Furthermore, there was a kind of confidence many professors exuded that seemed to imply "I am a smart professor so I know all the answers to every hard question in the gospel."

So, I've been a little bugged about CES since I remembered all of those grievances. Is it entirely possible that when we go to heaven we get to have a snowboarding planet? Yes! Is it probably a good motivation for bored teenagers to pay a little bit more attention in seminary? Yes! But does that mean it should be taught? I'm not so sure about that. It seems like the media attaches itself to our more "obscure" doctrines, the ones that sound weird without context. To spend a lot of time teaching them only aggravates the problem. The reason this bothers me is because there are good people who would want to hear more about the Church but are turned off by the "weird" things they hear about us out of context.

I think what bothers me the most is that the CES has such an influence on what members believe. Teenagers just don't pay attention in Sunday School, so the only time you can catch them is in seminary. Once you get to college, Sunday School is full of comments such as, "My teacher in New Testament said . . . " Once you get to a family ward and go to normal adult Sunday School, well, there are so many out there things that people say that you have to have a good understanding of the gospel to not get wrapped around the axle. Essentially, a lot of people's understanding of the gospel comes from seminary, institute, and religion teachers.

In addition to this huge responsibility, there's also the added requirement that seminary and religion teachers answer the "hard questions." General Authorities have said that they only answer the general questions, but for young people that's often not enough. So, they turn to their seminary teachers or to Brother Bott to get the specific answers and explanations.

And therein lies the root of the problem which was made manifest this week. When you are expected to answer a lot of hard questions and you answer a lot of them quite well, you may not notice when you are completely wrong about something.

Take blacks and the priesthood, for instance. I recognized what Brother Bott said about race because it was based on what Bruce R. McConkie said in "Mormon Doctrine." I remember pulling that old cream book off the shelf when I was 14 or so and happening to open up to that page. "That's really weird," I remember thinking. Then I checked the copyright page where it said "This is not an official publication of the Church" and life made sense again. My suspicion is that Elder McConkie was trying to explain why blacks couldn't have the priesthood based purely on scripture rather than looking at the history and seeing how the policy crept into the Church. And then Brother Bott used his ideas and let them become his own opinion, and then made the mistake of sharing them with the press, especially without approval. (Now for my unauthorized opinion: I personally have met so many valiant black people that I have trouble believing that they were somehow less faithful during the premortal existence. I think race is a function of how close to the equator people lived, not a punishment or reward, and definitely not a punishment for something Ham did way back when.)

What am I getting at? I think I'll end with a plea. Please, current and future seminary, institute, and religion teachers, please don't delve into speculation. The Church has spent so much effort trying to bring us back into the core doctrines (think 2 years of "Gospel Principles" in RS/EQ) and I don't want it to be in vain. Please realize that you have a huge responsibility and that the youth of the church will remember and believe what you say. Please teach by the Spirit rather than teaching what sounds cool. Above all, please remember this quote by Joseph Smith:
The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.