The purpose of a church court is not to punish but to redeem. It is God’s way of helping a person apply the atonement in His children’s lives. Unlike our penal codes that restrict truth finding and apply set punishments for specific crimes, a church court is about finding truth and applying the Balm of Gilead to a wounded spirit. I have heard of a Relief Society president that was excommunicated for gossip, and a Bishop’s counselor that was disfellowshipped for adultery. In a mortal economy this would seem totally unfair; however, if you keep the end goal in mind, it is easier to see that an omniscient, loving Heavenly Father was trying to bring both of His children home. Handling a spiritual accident isn’t much different than handling a mortal accident (even if it’s not accidental), some people drive home, others travel by ambulance and still others need Life Flighted. God diagnoses the injury and the appropriate treatment through His servants, but He is definitely in charge of the process.

Next I would like to address trials. So what if one of God’s servants makes a mistake? Keep in mind that our mortal experience is a school where we enroll in specific courses to hopefully become like our Father in Heaven. It is an apprenticeship so to speak. I have a daughter who would do almost anything to get an A. From the sounds of the comments on this blog, I would assume that she is not alone. Would you likewise do whatever it takes to pass your mortality courses? Trials are the tests of life. We have been promised that if we endure them “WELL” God will exalt us on high. Can one really expect to gain sympathy and get the same reward as an A student after only giving a C level performance? Life doesn’t work that way unless you apply the atonement, something that apostates rarely do.

I would also like to caution you from judging the severity of another’s trials. You don’t know what other’s trials are so don’t judge. It could be pride, or money, or intellect for all you know. I learned about this in an unforgettable way. I am terrified of knives because my former husband taught me knife defenses as part of my martial arts training. If I didn’t do a defense right, he would cut me. One night shortly before our divorce, he came up behind me while I was sitting in a chair and put a knife to my throat. He was vicious in his talk and started to cut my throat. I sat through that attack as calm as a summer day. I can’t do that, but the Holy Ghost did. It was not my trial. At that time getting a babysitter was a far greater trial for me. So if you hear some poor soul blubbering away about something that seems trivial to you, give them the benefit of the doubt. It doesn’t matter whose hands our trials come from – a priesthood leader or a wicked man – a trial is a test is a test. Just pass it or God will let you take the test over until you do, or until you quit.

So what if things don’t make sense? That is where faith comes in. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He will direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3: 5-6. Make it your motto. Your life could hang in the balance.

My son’s were kidnapped by their dad. When I finally found them, my lawyer told me to go get them. My Bishop, an FBI agent and attorney, told me to use legal recourse. I called my attorney and asked him about legal remedies. He repeated his counsel to go kidnap them back. I again called my Bishop and told him what my lawyer said. Again he counseled me to use legal recourse adding that my life would be in jeopardy if I didn’t. I used legal recourse and after a years wait, I never got my son’s back. It didn’t make sense. Several years later, I was having dinner with my former husband’s ex-wife. She told me that he was aware of the fact that I had located him and had set several deadly traps for me, expecting that I would try to get my sons. Had I not been obedient to my priesthood counsel, my life would have been taken. My obedience saved my life and later strengthened my faith.

A decade later, I attended a dinner and ran into my former bishop. He asked me, with tears in his eyes, what had happened to my sons. His counsel had gnawed on him for all those years and he doubted in the inspiration that called him to be my bishop. He didn’t understand. I was able to explain not only the correctness of his counsel, but also other reasons that were known only to God at the time the counsel was given as to why things turned out the way they did. So you see the good Bishop’s trial was following the inspiration that he received when acting righteously in his stewardship.

Last, I would like to address the literature, art aspect of this post. I taught a cultural refinement lesson in Relief Society once. The lesson was on literature and art. I was doing just fine until the Holy Ghost sidetracked me so powerfully that I was weak in the knees. I then bore a powerful testimony to the class that inappropriate literature and fine art were inappropriate regardless of age or medium. Pornography was pornography regardless if it was in the form of printed literature, movies, photographs, statues or paintings. It injures our spirits and it displeases God. After the lesson, a woman came up to me and explained that she had been fasting and praying about the topic as it had been a source of contention with her husband during a recent vacation to Rome. I think that we could safely extend the concept to anything that injures our spirits…it’s kind of like saying Jello is bad without having to name all the flavors.

What I do know is that everyone is born with the light of Christ, and God doesn’t leave His children unattended. If it’s your trial, if it’s your test, God will give you the answers. You see, the test is open book; your answer for the pass fail grade comes of faith and obedience and your grade is totally up to you.

Concerning scary movies, I think the topic warrants more discussion. :) I’m very interested to see why the other side of the coin, really; I can come up with a few reasons why they could offend the Spirit, but not really any why they wouldn’t, and so I have to wonder if my conclusion is valid. :) “Fear not.” Is inviting fear into our lives something holy and uplifting? Is it light or dark? The answer there is obvious, I’d think.

Back to being exed. It’s possible that priesthood leaders could make the wrong decision, yes. Bishops and stake presidents and even General Authorities aren’t infallible. I wish they were, of course, but we’re all human and there’s no getting around it. (Other than through the Atonement, but even then we’re not made entirely perfect until after this life.) It boggles my mind how God can work through such imperfect creatures, but I also trust Him 100%, and I know He’ll set things right in the end. He knows what He’s doing. What we mustn’t do is let the imperfection of a particular leader disillusion us as to the mantle or office they hold. There’s nothing imperfect about the office of bishop or stake president or Seventy, even though imperfect men fill those offices. I think part of our hesitation to admit that priesthood leaders can make mistakes is that we’re afraid we’ll be thought to be disagreeing with the office itself rather than the man holding that office.

I hasten to add that while priesthood leaders can make mistakes, I don’t at all mean that they’re always wrong whenever we disagree with them. Most of the time they are in fact right (because of the authority from God that they have) and we’re the ones who need to align our lives with the Lord again. Mistakes are very much in the minority.

And yet if they do make a mistake, I think the Lord expects us to follow them until the mistake is corrected by a leader with higher authority. Meaning, of course, that the Lord won’t condemn us if we’re following our leaders, even if the leaders go astray (and if they do, He’ll correct it quickly).

Basically, if someone were to be excommunicated unjustly, I don’t think the Lord would hold it against them unless they held it against Him, so to speak. Like Rikker said, it depends a great deal on how the person reacts. Do they still stand strong in their testimony of Christ and His restored gospel, or do they waver and doubt and try to pull others away from the Church? (Not that they won’t have some doubts attack them — Satan’s good at that — but they won’t let the doubt eat away at them. We can’t stop birds from flying around our heads but we can surely keep them from nesting in our hair.)

Returning to the Golightly quote, it seems almost like he meant that the writer would actually be proud to be excommunicated for it, stubborn and determined to follow his own will and not the Lord’s, but maybe I’m reading too much of my own opinion into it.

As for apostate writers, no, I haven’t finished any. I’m speaking from a general feel which I’ve gotten from reading interviews with and articles about and by said authors, people who seem proud to be on the edge. Just read through the AML archives and you’ll see what I mean. I fully support the search for truth, but it seems like a lot of writers lose their light along the way. It’s remotely possible that my uneasiness with their work and opinions stems from my cultural upbringing instead of a jarring discontinuity between them and the gospel, but in each case I didn’t feel anything at all like the Spirit saying, “This is good, this is right, this is holy.” Quite the contrary. I wish I had more “evidence” to prove my point, and I’ll certainly keep my eyes open from now on, but for now I just have feelings. :)

So, Rikker, maybe you’re right. :P

I think (a) is obviously not the case, and (b) is really just manufactured infallibility, or a rehash of argument (a). If God validated the decisions of leaders regardless of their justice/injustice, then wouldn’t it bind God to uphold potentially evil acts? *AND* wouldn’t it in effect be taking away the agency of the priesthood leader to choose to abuse his position of power and trust (or not)?

In my mind, we can disregard both possibilities (a) and (b) on a combination of logical and doctrinal grounds, without even delving into the instances of LDS bishops committing child molestation or adultery while serving in that calling, which of course has happened.

So, I have a different idea. My idea is that God deals with this issue the same way he deals with all issues of moral agency (so far as I know): he lets you do what you will while in your mortal probation, and judges you at Judgment Day.

Sometimes people get their due while in this life, but often not. If there are unrighteous priesthood leaders out there who are willing to excommunicate someone unjustly for their own reasons, and are able to spin it so as to make it appear just, I don’t believe God will strike that person down the moment he conceives the idea. That’s really contrary to how we see God working, especially since he allows many things to happen which just seem much more evil and terrible than that.

It makes more sense to me that God would let things run their course on this earth, and then judge the persons involved with his perfect knowledge of the events involved.

If the unjustly excommunicated person became bitter and turned away from the Church, well, maybe he will be judged guilty, maybe not. There were clearly mitigating circumstances. If the unjustly excommunicated person accepted his fate, and tried his best to obey counsel, but died in some freak accident and was never baptized, I don’t think he would lose his opportunity for exaltation. Wouldn’t really be fair if he did, methinks.

ALL OF THAT SAID, I agree with what Ben and sixline have said if, in fact, Golightly meant something other than my interpretation. There’s obviously no inherent reason why this first great Mormon writier *must* get excommunicated. Barring an unjust excommunication, it’s a strange comment to make, unless he has some other interesting definition of “great” he’s using. Maybe to him all great writers must be alcoholics who cheat on their wives. Who knows! :P

Is it so unreasonable to imagine a world where one single mortal man making the decision to excommunicate could make a biased decision?

There’s the rub. How *does* one view the leaders? Can mistakes happen? How often are mistakes? Never? 10%? 90% Are we to focus on the exception (when mistakes are made), instead of the rule? (when they’re not)

It’s my opinion that these are areas where the Lord doesn’t make mistakes. This is the Lord’s work, not ours. To quasi-quote Rikker, there’s far too much possibility for the Spirit to direct when another’s soul is at stake. The Lord’s not going to let the wrong decision be made, especially when the consequences are eternal. Nowhere else in the Chruch does one sit in judgement upon another. Not in Temple marriages, not in Temple recommend interviews, not anywhere else. When judgement’s at stake, I feel strongly that the Lord doesn’t let anything go amiss.

As far as excommunication goes, I have very limited information here, seeing as how I’ve never been directly involved with excommunication. I’ve only seen it happen first hand to ward members, friends, and family. Lucky me, each time it was obviously warranted. So I can only speak from what I feel, and not from experience.

I guess what we’d need to know is why the great author will be excommunicated (assuming it’ll happen). For writing about things contrary to the Church? For literary works that glorify sin? What else can you be excommunicated for except for working against Zion and for embracing sin? Does it then become a struggle between whether or not the author feels that his/her works qualify as such? I can certainly envision this far easier than I can a Stake President who makes a wrong judgement call when excommunicating someone. Surely someone who has a testimony and WANTS to remain a member of the Church can ‘come now and reason together,’ and make their scarlet sins white as snow.

What comes first, your place in the Kingdom of God on earth, with all its flaws and mistakes, or your pride? I see no other reason why someone is excommunicated.

I strongly agree with Ben. Writing definitely isn’t a channel that drives away the Spirit. There’s no mutual exclusion between membership in the Church and art. When Satan attempts to interject his counterfeit, which he invariably does, then we start to blend the line between art (be it writing, painting, or music) and sin.

Now, some things have been confirmed. It’s amusing to read the preemptive expressions of remorse over his assumed apostasy, especially the peculiar idea that if Dutcher were to produce a “bad” movie (which I’m sure most would-be boycotters would equate to being rated R, since they wouldn’t bother to see it to judge for themselves if it were so rated) then necessarily his entire body of work is invalidated and we must stop supporting him as an artist. It sounds a bit ridiculous when I put it like that, and it *is* ridiculous, but I can’t help but think that there are people who would no longer watch his other (earlier and later) films because they don’t want to support what they perceive as evil (or, perhaps more likely, don’t want to be seen by others as supporting evil).

That said, I realize this post wasn’t really about that. But your question about scary movies offending the spirit in the last post was. I think the answer to the question as you phrased it is “no.”

So, now on to Max Golightly’s comment.

I’m going to risk being radical, but follow me along for the ride. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an inherently flawed organization. Whoa. Uh-oh. He’s gone off the deep end. No, really, though, it is. What I mean is, as long as there are humans running the show, the organization is flawed, because those humans are flawed. Without the humans there really is no organization, so it doesn’t quite work to say that the organization is perfect, but the humans who run the organization aren’t. Their imperfection necessarily means that the Church will at least sometimes and on some level (though admittedly less likely so on the high levels) be run with inefficiency, ineptitude, prejudice, bigotry, closed-mindedness, stubornness, and with the sheer momentum of cultural habit.

What does that have to do with Golightly’s quote? I don’t know Golightly or his work, but based on the quote alone, maybe it means that that writer Golightly speaks of will be excommunicated unjustly.

If I were to guess at what Golightly meant by “great writer,” I’d say he means someone who will be acknowledged universally at some future date as such, that he will be taught in high schools of the future, or at least, have a piece of his work included in some nice leatherbound set of “World’s Greatest Literature” or something. We’re talking Mormondom’s Tolstoi or Camus or Achebe or Steinbeck or Dickens or who have you.

But what will make that person a great writer?

Once again, I’ll take a stab and say: He or she will push the envelope of CULTURAL acceptance, challenge CULTURAL ideas, and make us examine or SOCIETY and CULTURE in a new way.

I can easily imagine a world where this hypothetical writer is excommunicated by people who will mistake dissension for disloyalty, and who will confuse the cultural with the doctrinal. Excommunication can occur for many reasons, but the only one that I know of which seems totally open to interpretation of mere mortals is the charge of apostasy, and in this hypothetical situation, it seems obvious to me that this is what the writer would be exed for.

I might be way off, because I have never been part of a disciplinary council or otherwise been involved in disciplinary proceedings, but I find it hard to believe that there has never been an unjustified excommunication.

As per the Church Handbook of Instructions, the purposes of Church discipline are (1) to save the souls of transgressors, (2) to protect the innocent, and (3) to safeguard the purity, integrity, and good name of the Church. [via Wikipedia]

But excommunication takes place on the ward level for women and non-Melchizidek Priesthood-holding men, and on the stake level for Melchizidek Priesthood holders. It is possible to appeal to General Authorities, but from what I understand about the process, they are not involved in the excommunication process itself.

The bishop counselor’s or stake high council serve as consultants and sit on the disciplinary committees, but ultimately, the decision is made by one person. Is it so unreasonable to imagine a world where one single mortal man making the decision to excommunicate could make a biased decision? Or even a wrong decision? I can think of many reasons why it might happen. Feeling bound to protect the good name of the Church, not wanting go against public opinion, personal prejudice against the individual, or even hidden transgressions on the part of the deciding priesthood leader which limit his access to the inspiration of the Spirit.

There is far too much possibility for human error to assume that the correct decision is *always* made. God must know that, and God must have provisions for that, but God alone knows he he plans to handle those situations. I’m simply pointing out that they more than likely exist.

Let me hedge my statements one more time by saying that I can’t and don’t know exactly what Golightly meant when he said it. He may have a totally different take. But when I hear it, I think that even if he turns out not to be very good at predicting the future (and some have argued that Card is that writer, and has yet to be excommunicated), his point is worth wondering about.

There’s a lot more I can comment on in your post here, Ben, but I don’t want to make this too long. I will ask you, sincerely and frankly, how many books have you read by apostate authors or excommunicated writers? From what I know, you don’t finish books which don’t edify you. I’d like references if you can provide them, so I can go check them out myself and see.