"I have no use for your kings."
Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 4:08 am
My latest addition to the pithy statements I could respond with should anyone ever ask me why I haven't been to church is this: "I have no use for your kings."
History time.
My family is visiting Scottish historical sites while on vacation. (Some of it is very cool. Yesterday, my wife played the pipe organ in Dunfermline Abbey for her distant ancestor Robert the Bruce, who is interred there under the pulpit.) One thing I've been repeatedly stuck by is how much work old monarchs put into establishing their authority.
Oh, sometimes they earned their authority, by protecting their people, doing good, or being wise and just. But most of the time, they just asserted it. They married the right nobles. They had feasts and parades. They built grand palaces with statues of themselves and royal ancestors and Greek heroes all set on the same level. They buddied up with the church in Rome and chiseled their names on cathedrals.
It was all theater designed to elicit loyalty. Look how French and fashionable I am! Look at my prosperity and might! See how I am like Hercules! Behold my royal forebears! God himself says I'm your king!
Why? Because authority that isn't founded on loyalty is tenuous and weak. A king who hasn't earned loyalty needs great PR and God on his side to get it. The kingdom's stability depends on his people, especially the nobility, buying in.
The church is presided over by 15 kings who protect us from evil, and are good, wise and just. They assure us of these facts! And they well should be good, wise and just, because they and their nobility hold the power to save or destroy us. Oh, that's not enough, you say? How about this, then: God himself says they're our kings.
So much of Mormonism is theater designed to elicit loyalty to her kings. Voting to sustain or oppose? Theater. Singing "Follow the Prophet"? Theater. Priesthood lines of authority? Theater. Denigrating doubters and "the world"? Making Joseph Smith an epic hero? Writing whitewashed Sunday School manuals? Building new temples without filling the old ones? Bearing testimony that the church is true? Licking the president's boots in General Conference talks? Theater, all theater, designed to elicit loyalty, lest the kingdom destabilize and her people succumb to evil.
When life opened my eyes, I saw that I was being protected from nothing supernatural, that members were having evil done to them in the name of good, and that the Mormon kings' claims to God's authority were exactly as strong as King James V of Scotland's. Most of the theater became vanity: actors on a stage, begging and demanding my approval for unsupportable and meaningless reasons.
Have Mormonism's kings ever truly earned my loyalty? Yes, sometimes. Is theater ever necessary? Of course! But so little earning and so much theater tells me that they don't deserve much.
I have no problem being loyal to Mormonism's people, who have been as good to me as they know how to be. But I have no use for her kings.
History time.
My family is visiting Scottish historical sites while on vacation. (Some of it is very cool. Yesterday, my wife played the pipe organ in Dunfermline Abbey for her distant ancestor Robert the Bruce, who is interred there under the pulpit.) One thing I've been repeatedly stuck by is how much work old monarchs put into establishing their authority.
Oh, sometimes they earned their authority, by protecting their people, doing good, or being wise and just. But most of the time, they just asserted it. They married the right nobles. They had feasts and parades. They built grand palaces with statues of themselves and royal ancestors and Greek heroes all set on the same level. They buddied up with the church in Rome and chiseled their names on cathedrals.
It was all theater designed to elicit loyalty. Look how French and fashionable I am! Look at my prosperity and might! See how I am like Hercules! Behold my royal forebears! God himself says I'm your king!
Why? Because authority that isn't founded on loyalty is tenuous and weak. A king who hasn't earned loyalty needs great PR and God on his side to get it. The kingdom's stability depends on his people, especially the nobility, buying in.
The church is presided over by 15 kings who protect us from evil, and are good, wise and just. They assure us of these facts! And they well should be good, wise and just, because they and their nobility hold the power to save or destroy us. Oh, that's not enough, you say? How about this, then: God himself says they're our kings.
So much of Mormonism is theater designed to elicit loyalty to her kings. Voting to sustain or oppose? Theater. Singing "Follow the Prophet"? Theater. Priesthood lines of authority? Theater. Denigrating doubters and "the world"? Making Joseph Smith an epic hero? Writing whitewashed Sunday School manuals? Building new temples without filling the old ones? Bearing testimony that the church is true? Licking the president's boots in General Conference talks? Theater, all theater, designed to elicit loyalty, lest the kingdom destabilize and her people succumb to evil.
When life opened my eyes, I saw that I was being protected from nothing supernatural, that members were having evil done to them in the name of good, and that the Mormon kings' claims to God's authority were exactly as strong as King James V of Scotland's. Most of the theater became vanity: actors on a stage, begging and demanding my approval for unsupportable and meaningless reasons.
Have Mormonism's kings ever truly earned my loyalty? Yes, sometimes. Is theater ever necessary? Of course! But so little earning and so much theater tells me that they don't deserve much.
I have no problem being loyal to Mormonism's people, who have been as good to me as they know how to be. But I have no use for her kings.