This post is a continuation of my previous attempt to walk my way through general conference. Each talk will be filtered through my own theology that overlaps but is not perfectly aligned with that of the religion I belong to.
The second talk in general conference was delivered by President Emily Belle Freeman entitled Live Up to Your Privileges. Her talk covers much of the same ground that Elder Anderson covers, one that I went through in my first post. She begins her talk with an experience taking the sacrament sitting beside her husband hospitalized for a diagnosis requiring “extensive surgery and months of chemotherapy”. She finds strength through God’s power in that ordinance and in the associated covenant promises. She conditions access to God’s power on the authority of those who deliver the ordinance and on the participant’s record of living up to their covenant promises. As a vehicle for her thoughts, President Freeman walks through Doctrine and Covenants 25, a revelation through Joseph Smith given to his 26 year old wife, Emma. In that revelation, Emma is promised great blessings as she supports her husband’s work and in that work she’s told she has an important role to play. Next, President Freeman recollects a baby blessing her granddaughter receives that she would understand the blessings of the priesthood in her life. Her message is that women just like men can receive power and strength through keeping God’s covenants made through priesthood ordinances.
There’s a lot to like in this talk but I struggle with the constraints she places on God’s power, conditioning it within the church’s official boundaries. Again, I have felt the God’s love and grace when I have participated in church ordinances. I also struggle to understand what she means by keeping covenants and why she can’t allow the word covenant to stand on its own. Rather, multiple times she used the phrase “covenant promises”. I believe marriage is the right way to think about covenant. I’ve often heard people question the point of marriage, shouldn’t love be sufficient? Why do we need ritual and the legal certificate? I think there’s power in coming together in sacred ritual, kneeling or standing together with your spouse in the presence of family and friends, making public promises with each other to stand with each other, thick and thin. To devote our lives to the happiness for the other. There’s something that elevates and sanctifies the relationship not just through the marriage ritual but in the living up to the covenant of devoted love and sacrifice within a marriage relationship.
If that is what President Freeman means when she describes keeping covenants with God than I’m on board. When I participate in sacred religious ordinances and make sacred covenants, its as if I’m entering a deep and abiding relationship with God. I promise to stand within God’s love and then to emanate that love and grace to others as best as I can. As I do, I can count on God’s love and grace to abide with me. These are the conditions but they are not check box conditions. It’s not simply transactional. I believe everyone has access to God’s love and grace but there is a power to dedicate one’s life to God’s love and grace through participating in ordinances and then living up to the covenant associated with that ordinance.
My appreciation and struggle with this talk is also contingent on what is being implied and how its being absorbed. Keeping covenants cannot just be another name for keeping commandments. I also struggle with the implication that its only through our church’s authoritative frameworks that these experiences are possible. I struggle with the idea that its only through the patriarchal nature of the priesthood that women gain access to God’s power. So I both love and struggle with this talk. I’m guessing this will be a continued theme.
scottintempe 