As I read your comments is sounds like there is a degree to which you are suggesting that we need to view conference within a narrow context. The ideas of “listening with charity” and “stories that report certain graces that have been given and songs of praise” for example, resonate with me very much. What keeps me uncomfortable though is that there are religious leaders in the world that I don’t need to keep the context narrow with. I saw Desmond Tutu speak during his last tour of the U.S. He talked about big graces, little graces, as well as very real atrocities and horrors. He spoke of justice and fairness, but in the end his discourse and his example is about mercy and forgiveness; the point he made over and over again in his address was that we need to seek the ability to see the divine in ALL people. No limited context necessary, everything he said made sense in terms of small graced, big horrors and all the rest.

I was not trying to raise the problem of evil. Maybe a god who is portrayed as fawning over every need of some people and ignoring others is the problem of evil; but rightly or wrongly I think its something different. I think its an ideological issue or a moment where LDS theology is incomplete. Or maybe the problem is that I just don’t get it. Maybe the point is that institutional mormonism does assert a god that is more attentive to those who hold to the LDS ideas of righteousness than he is to those who do not and I just refuse to accept this notion of privilege. But I have had conversations with friends and family who are not only comfortable with this notion of privilege but who think its the way the gospel works! I am horrified by such an idea.

There are two other things, the first being that I hope what I am talking about is not simply things I personally disagree with. It is also my deepest hope that I am not merely speaking from an ideological discomfort. Its my assertion that religion must transgress ideology, so if my problem is the problem of the liberal in the conservative church then I can’t consider myself to be a religious person in any meaningful sense of the word.

Regarding the problem of evil, that I think is one of the issues Douglas is raising, my own inclination is to simply interpret Pres. Monson as telling stories that report certain graces that have been given, as a kind of song of praise. On this interpretation, then, there is no theological contradiction to also raise laments. But perhaps laments are better done in private.

This, it seems to me, is what I see as one of the themes underlying the Book of Job — that no one is really in a good place to judge what is just or unjust, and that evil should indeed be mourned, and that unanswered prayers should be lamented, but that this lament should be understood as largely a personal matter (since Job’s friends basically kept interrupting Job’s ultimately rather private attempt to call God out…).

By the way, Jim F.’s article here is one of my favorites regarding the problem of evil — he addresses this problem near the end of the essay. I think Jim is suggesting an approach similar to what I’ve said above, though I don’t want to speak for Jim.

I have some other ideas about your original question, “what about those members who would really like to feel this way about conference but can’t because of the very content of conference?” But I will give others a chance to speak first. I’m sure they could give better answers than I could.

My short answer is, I try and feel the spirit of the conference and listen with charity to those things that I disagree with. If I REALLY disagree with something, then I put it aside until later and so it does not distract me from the rest of the conference while it is happening. With that said, I am on bored with 98-99% of conference most of the time, but there are for sure things that irk me.

Again, I think your concern here is very legitimate Douglas. One thing I have learned (and am still learning) is that General Conference is a very different experience for everyone.

O.K. great, but what about those members who would really like to feel this way about conference but can’t because of the very content of conference? Myself, I honestly struggle with the often ideological content of conference talks, and how tautological conference is. Can there be inspired tautology? Is true doctrine directly linked to the economic and social ideology commonly found among conservative upper-middle-class white American males of the post war period?

On another topic, Pres Monson often tells very sweet stories that illustrate the workings of an interventionist God in the small details of the lives of faithful saints; such as God’s answering prayers to make a jumbotron screen function correctly (this story came latter in the talk that opens with the note that this is his 49th years as an apostle.). Sounds great, but regretabilly it begs the question. In a limited context this is really no big deal. If people want to say the outcome was an answer to prayer there does not seem to be any harm in it. Its not like we want to be over confident nay sayers and insist that it wasn’t an answer to prayer. Except that when we look at the bigger context Monson’s stroy becomes more challenging. The world is full of prayers that go unanswered, filled with people who suffered injustice, or abuse, full of violence and heartship that go unabated by God. In that context Monson’s God is a troubling figure, on the one hand this God cares so deeply about the details of the lives of some people that he intervenes on every level telling them who to marry, who to go visit and comfort, making their electronics function correctly and so on; but this same God tolerates all kinds of violence, sufferring, injustice, abuse, etc that occur in other lives, and many times he does not answer the prayers of those turning to him for relief. Monson’s talks often point directly to this problem of an interventionist God but I suspect its unintentional on Monson’s part. His hope seems to be that we will be strengthened to know that if we have enough of the right kind of faith God will be constently at work in our lives. He wants to direct us to the behaviors and beliefs that will bring God closer to us. Nonetheless, Monson’s stories don’t realy give us a way to reconside God’s seeming indifference to some people with God’s deep involvement in the lives of others. What kind of God are we being asked to believe in? At times this God seems very partisian.

Anyway those are just a couple of reasons that some people struggle with conference.