Re: Terryl Givens steps into the BoA ring
Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2019 7:53 am
I guess it's just where we're both at, NBI. I have nothing but apathy for his overall apologist message, but it simply doesn't bother me that he's getting a slice of the pie. Givens guilty of priestcraft? Of course he is. The whole church is set up as one big priestcraft operation, one big MLM, one huge real estate conglomerate, with Mormons ripping each other off right, left and centre. It's always been that way, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. I'm just glad I'm not the one getting ripped off anymore. So I'm not annoyed that Givens is doing the same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. John Dehlin makes way more money than I do off his operation, and that doesn't bother me either. But when Givens says he's uncomfortable with the level of coercion that JS used during the Nauvoo years of polygamy during a Mormon Stories interview? This I can use to say to other people, I'm not the only one who thinks this way. That's useful to me, what both Givens and Dehlin are doing. If I can be a more angry version of Givens, and that saves my marriage and relationships with my children, he's useful to people like me. Clearly you have no use for him, NBI, and that's cool.Not Buying It wrote: ↑Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:11 am Terryl Givens didn’t travel far and wide through the Church giving firesides for free. I don’t know who was financing that, but someone was. And while he probably doesn’t get rich off of his books, if his motivation is solely to help people, why sell a book? He could provide all his information for free in a blog if he’s really just out to help people.
In my estimation, Terryl Givens is guilty of priestcraft, he is one of those men who “preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the Welfare of Zion. But the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish.” (2 Nephi 26). If you look at that definition, he preaches, he sets himself up as a light unto the world, and he labors for money. Terryl Givens is just a much less successful Joel Osteen with less charisma, less ambition, a pseudo-academic approach and a much weirder denomination to work with. He hawks a kinder, gentler version of Mormonism that doesn’t really exist and does nothing to change the reality of what the Church is really like. But what he does do is provide intellectually dishonest rationalizations that keep some members in it, and for that he is useful to the Church.
That he, Bushman and Prince come to different conclusions than me is something I'm not losing sleep over.