What the Church Means to People Like Me

8/3/2019 What the Church Means to People Like Me

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What the Church Means toPeople Like Me*Richard D. Poll

A NATURAL REACTION TO MY TITLEsince this is not a testim ony meeting inwh ich each sp eake r is his ow n subject might be, "Who cares?" For wh oin this congregation, with the possible exception of my brother, Carl, are"people like me"? I have a wife and daughter present who find me insome respects unique. And I am sure there are students at BrighamYoung University w ho hope tha t I am un ique. By the time I hav e finished,there may be some am ong you w ho will share that hope.Yet I have chosen the topic because I believe that in some importantrespects I represent a type of Latter-day Saint which is found in almostevery ward and branch in the church. By characterizing myself and ex-plain ing the n atur e of my com mitme nt to the gospel, I ho pe to contributea little something of value to each of you, whether it turns out that youare "people like me" or not.My thesis is that there are two distinct types of active and dedicatedLatter-day Saints. I am not talking about "good Mormons" and "JackMormons" or about Saints in white hats and pseudo-Saints in black. No,I am talking about two types of involved church members who are heretonigh t, each deeply com mitted to the gospel bu t also pron e toward mis-givings about the legitimacy, adequacy, or serviceability of the commit-ment of the other.The pu rpo se of my in quiry is not to sup po rt either set of misgivings,but to describe each type as dispassionately as I can, to identify myselfwith one of the types, and then to bear witness concerning some of thebles sings wh ich the chu rch offers to the type I identify w ith. My prayer istha t this effort will he lp us all to look bey ond the things wh ich obviouslydifferentiate us toward that "unity of the faith" which Christ set as ourcomm on goal.

*This essay first ap pe are d in Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter 1967): 107-117.


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12 Dialogue: A Journal of M orm on Th ou gh tFor convenience of reference, let me propose symbols for my twotypes of Mormons. They have necessarily to be affirmative images be-cause I am talking only about "good" mem bers. I found them in the Book

of Mormon, a natural place for a Latter-day Saint to find good symbolsas well as good counsel.The figure for the first type comes from Lehi's dreamthe Iron Rod.The figure for the second comes also from Lehi's experiencethe Lia-hon a. So similar they are as manifestations of God 's concern for his chil-dren, yet just different enough to suit my purposes tonight.The Iron Rod, as the hymn reminds us, was the Word of God to theperson with his hand on the rod, each step of the journey to the tree oflife was plainly defined; he had only to hold on as he moved forward. InLehi's dream the way was not easy, but it was clear.The Liahona, in contrast, was a compass. It pointed to the destina-tion but did not fully mark the path; indeed, the clarity of its directionsvaried with the circumstances of the user. For Lehi's family, the sacredinstrum ent w as a reminder of their temp oral an d eternal goa ls, bu t it w asno infallible delineator of their course.Even as the Iron Rod and the Liahona were both approaches to theword of God and to the kingdom of God, so our two types of membersseek the word and the kingdom. The fundamental difference betweenthem lies in their concept of the relation of man to the "word of God."Pu t another way, it is a difference in the m ean ing assign ed to the con cept"the fullness of the gospel." Do the revelations of our Heavenly Fathergive us a hand rail to the kingdom , or a com pass only?The Iron Rod Saint does not look for questions, but for answers, andin the gospelas he understands ithe finds or is confident that he canfind the answer to every important question. The Liahona Saint, on theother hand, is preoccupied with questions and skeptical of answers; hefinds in the gospelas he understands itanswers to enough importantquestions so that he can function purposefully without answers to therest. This last sentence holds the key to the question posed by my title,but before pursuing its implications, let us explore our scheme of classi-fication more fully.

As I suggested at the outset, I find Iron Rods and Liahonas in almostevery LDS congregation, discernible by the kinds of comments theymake in Gospel Doctrine classes and the very language in which theyphrase their testimonies. What gives them their original bent is difficultto identify. The Iron Rods may be somewhat more common among con-verts, but many nowadays are attracted to the church by those reasonsmore appropriate to Liahonas, which I will mention later on. Liahonatestimonies may be more prevalent among born members who have nothad an emotional conversion experience, bu t man y such have deve lopedIron Rod commitments in the home, the Sunday school, the mission


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Poll: W ha t the Ch urch Means to People Like Me 13field, or some other conditioning environment. Social and economic sta-tus appear to have nothing to do with type, and the rather widely heldnotion th at edu cation tend s to prod uce L iahonas has so m any exceptionsthat one may plausibly argue that education only makes Liahonas morearticulate. Parenthetically, some of the most prominent Iron Rods in thechurch are on the BYU faculty.Pre-existence may, I suppose, have something to do with placementin this classification, even as it may account for other life circumstances,but heredity obviously does not. The irritation of the Iron Rod fatherconfronted by an iconoclastic son is abo ut as com monplace as the emba r-rassment of the Liahona parent who discovers that his teenage daughterhas found comfortable a nsw ers in sem inary to some of the questions thathav e perplex ed him all his life.The picture is complicated by the fact that changes of type do occur,often in respon se to profoun dly unsettling perso nal experiences. The Li-ahona member who, in a context of despair or repentance, makes the"leap of faith" to Iron Rod commitment is rather rare, I think, but the in-vestigator of Liahona temperament who becomes an Iron Rod convert isalmost typical. The Iron Rod member who responds to personal tragedyor intellectual shock by becoming a Liahona is known to us all: this tran-sition may be, but is not necessarily, a stage in a migration toward inac-tivity or even apostasy.My present opinion is that one's identification with the Iron Rods orthe Liahonas is more a function of basic temperament and of accidentsthan of pre-mortal accomplishments or mortal choices, but that opin-ionlike man y other vie w s expressed in this sermon has neither scrip-tural nor scientific validation.A po int to und ersco re in term s of our objective of "un ity of the faith"is that Iron Rods and Liahonas have great difficulty understanding eachothernot at the level of intellectual acceptance of the right to peacefulco-existence, but at the level of personal communion, of empathy. To theIron Rod, a questioning attitude suggests an imperfect faith; to the Lia-hona, an unquestioning spirit betokens a closed mind. Neither frequentassociation nor even prior personal involvement with the other groupguarantees empathy. Indeed, the person who has crossed the l ine islikely to be least sympathetic and tolerant toward his erstwhile kindredspirits.

I have suggested that the essential difference between the Liahonasand the Iron Rods is in their approac h to the concept "the word of G od."Let us inve stigate tha t no w a little.The Iron Rod is confiden t that, on any que stion, the mind and will ofthe Lord may be obtained. His sources are threefold: Scripture, PropheticAuthority, and the Holy Spirit.In the Standard Works of the church, the Iron Rod member finds far


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14 Dialogue: A Journal of Mo rmon Th ou ghtmore answers than does his Liahona brother because he accepts them asGod's word in a far more literal sense. In them he finds answers to ques-tions as diverse as the age and origin of the earth, the justification forcapital punishment, the proper diet, the proper role of government, thenature and functions of sex, and the nature of man. To the Liahona, hesometimes seems to be reading things into the print ed w ord s, bu t to him -self the meaning is clear.

In the pronouncements of the general authorities, living and dead,the Iron Rod finds many answers because he accepts and gives compre-hensive application to that language of the Doctrine and Covenantswhich declares: "And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon bythe Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall bethe m ind of the Lord, shall be the w ord of the Lord, shall be the voice ofthe Lord, and the power of God unto salvation" (68:4). This reliance ex-tends to every facet of life. On birth control and family planning, laborrelations and race relations, the meaning of the Constitution andprospects for the United Nations, the laws of health and the signs of thetimes, the counsel of the "living oracles" suffices. Where answers are notfound in the published record, they are soug ht in correspo ndenc e an d in-terviews, and once received, they are accepted as definitive.Third among the sources for the Iron Rod member is the Holy Spirit.As Joseph Smith found answers in the counsel of James, "If any of youlack wisdom, let him ask of God. . .," so any Latter-day Saint may do so.Whether it be the choice of a vocation or the choice of a mate, help on acollege exam ination or in finding "golden pros pe cts " in the mission field,healing the sick or averting a divorceprayer is the answer. The re-sponse m ay not be w hat w as expected, but it will come, and it will be amanifestation of the Holy Spirit.Implicit in all this is the confidence of the Iron Rod Latter-day Saint

that our Heavenly Father is intimately involved in the day-to-day busi-ness of his children. As no sparrow falls without the Father, so nothingbefalls m an withou t his will. God kn ow s the answ ers to all question s andhas the solutions to all problems, and the only thing which denies manaccess to this reservoir is his own stubbornness. Truly, then, the personwho opens his mind and heart to the channels of revelation, past andpresent, has the iron rod which leads unerringly to the kingdom.The Liahona Latter-day Saint lacks this certain confidence. Not thathe rejects the concepts upon which it reststhat God lives, that he loveshis children, that his knowledge and power are efficacious for salvation,and that he doe s reveal his will as the N int h Article of Faith affirms. Nordoes he reserve the right of selective obedience to the will of God as heunderstands it. No, the problem for the Liahona involves the adequacyof the sources on which the Iron Rod testimony depends.The problem is in perceiving the will of God w he n it is m ediated as


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Poll: W ha t the Ch urch Means to People Like Me 15it is for almost all mortalsby "the arm of flesh." The Liahona is con-vinced by logic and experience that no human instrument , even aprophet, is capable of transmitting the word of God so clearly and com-prehensively that it can be universally understood and easily appropri-ated by man.Because the Liaho na finds it impossible to accept the literal verbal in-spiration of the Standard Works, the sufficiency of scriptural answers toquestions automatically comes into question. If Eve was not made fromAdam's rib, how much of the Bible is historic truth? If geology and an-thropology hav e un der m ined Bishop Uss her's chronology, which placescreation at 4000 B.C., how m uc h of the Bible is scientific truth ? And if ourlatter-day scriptures have been significantly revised since their originalpub lication, can it be ass um ed that they are now infallibly authoritative?To the Liahon a, these volum es are sources of inspiration an d m oral tru th,but they leave many specific questions unanswered, or uncertainly an-swered.As for the authority of the latter-day prophets, the Liahona Saintfinds consensus among them on gospel fundamentals but far-ranging di-versity on m an y im po rtan t issues. The record show s error, as in BrighamYoung's statements about the continuation of slavery, and it showschange of counsel, as in the matter of gathering to Zion. It shows differ-ences of opinionHeber J. Grant and Reed Smoot on the League of Na-tions, and Da vid O. McKay and Joseph Fielding Sm ith on the process ofcreation. To the Liahonas, the "living oracles" are God's special wit-nes ses of the g osp el of Chr ist and his age nts in directing the affairs of thechurch, but l ike the scriptures, they leave many important questionsunan swe red, or uncertainly answered.The Iron Rod proposition that the Spirit will supply what thepr op he ts have no t gives difficulty on both philosophical and experimen-tal grounds. Claims that prayer is an infallible, almost contractual, linkbetween God and man through the Holy Spirit f ind Liahona Mormonsperplexed by the nature of the evidence. As a method of confirmingtruth, the witness of the Spirit demonstrably has not produced unifor-mity of gospel interpretation even among Iron Rod Saints, and it is al-legedly by the witness of that same Spiritby the burning withinthatmany apostates pronounce the whole church in error. As a method of in-fluencing the course of events, it seems unpredictable and some of themiracles claimed for it seem almost whimsical. By the prayer of faith,one man recovers his lost eyeglasses; in spite of such prayer, anotherman goes blind.

All of which leaves the Liahona Mormon with a somewhat tenuousconnection with the Holy Spirit. He may take comfort in his imperfectkn ow ledg e from that po rtion of the Article of Faith which says that "G odwill yet reveal m an y g reat and imp ortan t things. . . ." And h e may recon-


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16 Dialogue: A Journal of Mo rmon Th oug htcile his conviction of God's love and his observation of the uncertainearthly outcomes of faith by emphasizing the divine commitment to theprinciple of free agency, as I shall presently do. In any case, it seems tothe Liahona Mormon that God's involvement in day-to-day affairs mustbe less active and intimate than the Iron Rod Mormon believes becausethere are so m any unsolved problems an d una nsw ered pray ers.Is the Iron Rod member unaware of these considerations, whichloom so large in the Liahona member's definition of his relationship tothe word of God? In some instances, I believe, the answer is yes. For inour activity-centered church, it is quite possib le to be dee ply an d satisfy-ingly involved without looking seriously at the philosophical implica-tions of some gospel propositions which are professed.In many instances, how ever, the Iron Rod Saint ha s found sufficientanswers to the Liahona questions. He sees so much basic consistency inthe scriptures and the teachings of the latter-day prophets that the ap-parent errors and incongruities can be handled by interpretation. Hefinds so much evidence of the immanence of God in human affairs thatthe apparently pointless evil and injustice in the world can be handledby the valid assertion that G od's w ays are not m an 's w ay s. He is likely tocredit his Liahona contemporaries with becoming so preoccupied withcertain problems that they cannot see the gospel forest for the trees, andhe may even attribute that preoccupation to an insufficiency of faith.

As a Liahona, I m ust resist the attribution, th ou gh I canno t den y thepreoccupation.Both kinds of Mormons have problems. Not just the ordinary per-sonal problem s to which all flesh is heir, bu t prob lem s gro w ing out of thenatu re of their church com mitm ent.The Iron Rod has a natural tendency to develop answers where nonemay, in fact, have been revealed. He may find arguments against socialsecurity in the Book of Mormon; he may discover in esoteric propheticutterances a timetable for that Second Coming of which "that day andhou r kno weth n o man. . . ." His dog m atism m ay becom e offensive to hispeers in the church and a barrier to com m unication w ith his own family;his confidence in his own insights may make him impatient with thosewhom he publicly sustains. He may also cling to cherished answers inthe face of new revelation or be so shaken by innovation that he formsnew "fundamentalist" sects. The Iron Rod concept holds many firm inthe church, but it leads some out.The Liahona, on the other hand, has the temptation to broaden thescope of his questioning until even the most clearly defined church doc-trines and policies are included. His resistance to statistics on principlemay deteriorate into a carping criticism of pro gra m s an d le aders . His tiesto the church may become so nebulous that he cannot communicatethem to his children. His testimony may become so selective as to ex-


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Poll: W ha t the Chu rch Means to People Like Me 17elud e him from som e forms of church activity or to make him a hypocritein his own eyes as he participates in them. His persistence in doubtingmay alienate his brethren and eventually destroy the substance of hisgospel commitment. Then he, too, is outwithout fireworks, but notwithout pain.Both kinds of Latter-day Saints serve the church. They talk differ-ently and apparently think and feel differently about the gospel, but aslong as they avoid the extremes just me ntioned, they share a love for andcommitment to the church. They cannot therefore be distinguished onthe basis of attendance at meetings, or participation on welfare projects,or con tribu tion s, or faithfulness in the performance of callings. They m ayor may not be hundred-percenters, but the degree of their activity is nota function of typ e insofar as I hav e been able to observe. (It may be tha tIron Rods are a little more faithful in genealogical work, but even this isnot certain.)Both kinds of members are found at every level of church responsi-bilityin bishoprics and Relief Society presidencies, in stake presiden-cies and high councils, and even among the general authorit ies. Butwhatever their private orientation, the public deportment of the generalauthorities seems to me to represent a compromise, which would be nat-ura l in the circum stances. They satisfy the Iron Rods by empha sizing thesolid core of revealed truth and discouraging speculative inquiry intomatters of faith and morals, and they comfort the Liahonas by resistingthe pressure to make pronouncements on all subjects and by remindingthe Saints that G od h as not revealed the an swer to every question or de-fined the response to every prayer.

As I ha ve sug gested , the Iron Rods and the Liahonas have some dif-ficulty u nd er sta nd ing each other. Lacking the patience, wisd om , bread thof experience, or depth of insti tutional commitment of the generalauthorities, we sometimes criticize and judge each other. But usuallywe live and let liveeach finding in the church what meets his needsand all sharing the gospel blessings which do not depend on identity oftestimony.Which brings me to the second part of my remarksthe part whichgives my talk its title: What the Church Means to People Like Me.Although I have tried to characterize two types of Latter-day Saintswith objectivity, I can speak with conviction only about one examplefrom one group. In suggestingbrieflywhat the church offers to a Lia-hona like me, I hope to provoke all of us to reexamine the nature of ourown commitments and to grow in understanding and love for thosewhose testimonies are defined in different terms.By my initial characterization of types, I am the kind of Mormonw ho is preo ccup ied w ith questions a nd skeptical of answers. I find in thegospelas I understand itanswers to enough important questions so


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18 Dialogue: A Journal of Mo rmon Th oug htthat I can function purposefully, and I hope effectively, without presentanswers to the rest.The prim ary question of this generation, it seems to m e, is the q ues-tion of mean ing. Does life really add u p to a ny thing at all? At least at thepopular level, the philosophy of existentialism asks, and tries to answer,the question of how to function significantly in a world which appar-ently has no m eaning. When the philo soph y is given a religious context,it becomes an effort to salvage some of the values of traditional religionfor suppo rt in this mean ingless w orld.

To the extent that existence is seen as meaninglesseven absurdhu m an experiences have only imm ediate significance. A psyched elic tripstan ds on a par w ith a visit to the Sistine Chape l or a concert of the Taber-nacle Choir. What the individual does with himselfor other "freelyconsenting adults"is nobody's business, whether it involves pot, per-version, or "making love, not war."For me, the gospel answ ers this question of m ean ing , and the answ eris grandly challenging. It lies in three revealed propositions: (1) Man iseternal. (2) Man is free. (3) God's work and glory is to exalt this eternalfree agentman.The central conception is freedom. With a belief in the doctrine offree agency, I can cope with some of the riddles and tragedies which arecited in support of the philosophy of the absurd. In the nature of humanfreedom as I un de rsta nd it is to be found the reconciliation of the con-cept of a loving God and the facts of an unlovely world.The restored gospel teaches that the essential stuff of man is eternal,that man is a child of God, and that it is man's destiny to become like hisFather. But this destiny can only be achieved as man voluntarily gainsthe knowledge, the experience, and the discipline which godhood re-quires and represents. This wa s the crucial question resolved in the coun-cil in heavenwhether man should come into an environment of gen-uine risk wh ere he w ould walk by faith.To me, this prerequisite for exaltation e xplains the app aren t rem ote-ness of God from man y aspects of the hu m an p redicam ent m y predica-ment. My rang e of freedom is left large, an d a rbitr ary div ine interferencewith that freedom is kept m inimal in order tha t I m ay grow. Were G od 'shand always upon my shoulder or his Iron Rod always in my grasp, myrange of free choice would be constricted, and my growth as well.

This view does not rule out miraculous interventions by our Heav-enly Father, but it does not permit their being commonplace. What isseen as miracle by the Iron Rod Saints, my type tends to interpret as co-incidence or psychosomatic manifestation or inaccurately rememberedor reported event. The same attitude is even more likely with regard tothe satanic role in human affairs. The conflict between good and evilwith its happy and unhappy outcomesis seen more often as a deriva-


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Poll: W ha t the Ch urch Means to People Like Me 19tive of man's nature and environment than as a contest between titanicpowers for the capture of human pawns. If God cannot, in the ultimatesense, coerce the eternal intelligences which are embodied in his chil-dren, then how much less is Lucifer able to do so. We may yield to thepromptings of good or evil, but we are not puppets .There is another aspect of the matter. If, with or without prayer, manis arbitrarily spared the consequences of his own fallibility and the nat-ura l consequ ences of the kind of ha zar do us w orld in which he lives, thenfreedom becomes meaningless and God capricious. If the law that fireburns, that bullets kill, that age deteriorates, and that the rain falls on thejust and the unjust is sporadically suspended upon petit ion of faith,what happens to that rel iable connect ion between cause and conse-quen ce w hich is a condition of know ledge. And w ha t a peril to faith liesin the idea that God can break the causal chain, that he frequently doesbreak it, bu t tha t in my individual case he may not choose to do so. This isthe dilemma of theodicy, reconciling God's omnipotence with evil andsuffering, which is so dramatically phrased: "If God is good, he is notGod; if God is God, he is not good."

From what has been said, i t must be apparent that Liahonas likeme do not see prayer as a form of spiritual mechanics, in spite of suchscriptural language as "Prove me herewith. . . ," and "I, the Lord, ambound. .." Prayer is rarely for miracles or even for new answers. It isorought to bean intensely personal exercise in sorting out and weighingthe relevant factors in our problems, and looking to God as we considerthe alternative s olutions. (Many of our problem s wo uld solve themselvesif we would consider only options on which we could honestly askGod's benediction.) We might pray for a miracle, especially in time ofdeep pe rsona l frustration or tragedy, bu t we wo uld think it pres um ptu-ous to comm and God an d w ould not suspend the future on the outcomeof the petition.This is not to say that Liahonas cannot verbalize prayer as profi-ciently as their Iron Rod contemporaries. One cannot be significantly in-volved in the church without mastering the conventional prayer formsand learning to fit the petition to the proportions of the occasion. Buteven in the p ub lic p raye rs , it is poss ible, I believe, for the attentive ear todetect tho se d ifferences wh ich I hav e tried to desc ribe. To opp ose evil asw e can, to bea r a dve rsity as we mu st, and to do ou r jobs well these arethe petitions in Liahona prayers. They invoke God's blessings, but theyrequire man's answering.To this Liahona Latter-day Saint, God is powerful to save. He ispled ged to kee p the way of salvation open to ma n and to do , throu gh theexample and sacrifice of his son and the ordinances and teachings of hischurch, what man cannot do for himself. But beyond this, he has leftthings pretty much up to mea free agent, a god in embryo, who must


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20 Dialogue: A Journal of M ormon Th oug htlearn by experience as well as direction how to be like God.In this circumstance, the Church of Jesus C hrist perform s three sp e-cial functions for me. W ithout them , m y freedom m igh t well become un-bearable:In the first place, the church reminds mealmost incessantlythatw hat I do makes a difference. It matters to m y fellow m en becau se m ostof what I do or fail to do affects their progress toward salvation. And itmatters to m e, even if it has no discernible influence u po n o the rs. I rejectthe "hippie" stance, not because there is something intrinsically wrongwith beards and sandals, but with estrangement and aimlessness. Eventhough life is eternal, time is short and I have none to waste.In the second place, the church suggests and sometimes prescribesguidelines for the use of freedom. The deportment standards of the TenCom mand men ts and the Sermon on the Mou nt, the rules for mental a ndphysical well-being in the Doctrine and Covenants, the reminders andchallenges in the temple ceremonythese are examples, and they har-monize with free agency because even those wh ich are prescribed are notcoerced.There is a difference here , I think, betw een the w ay Iron Rods an d Li-ahonas look at the guidelines. Answer-oriented, the Iron Rods tend tospell things out: Sabbath observance becomes no TV or movies, or TVbut no m ovies, or uplifting TV and no other, or no stud yin g, or stud yin gfor religion classes bu t no oth ers. For Liaho nas like m e, the Sabba th com -m andm ent is a rem inder of the kinship of free m en an d a concerned andloving Father. What is fitting, not what is conventional, becomes thequestion. On a lovely autumn evening, I may even, with quiet con-science, pass up an M.I.A. fireside for a drive in the canyon. But thethankfulness for guidelines is nonetheless strong.

In final place comes the contribution of the church in giving mesom ething to relate to to belon g toto feel a par t of.Contemporary psychology has much to say about the awful predica-me nt of alienation. "The Lonely Cro w d" is the wa y on e expert describesit. Ex-Mormons often feel it; a good friend who somehow migrated outof the church put it this way the other day: "I don't belong anywhere."For the active Latter-day Saint, such alienation is impossible. Thechurch is an association of kindred spirits, a sub-culture, a "folk"andthis is the tie which bin ds Iron Rods and Liahonas togeth er as strongly asthe shared te stimo ny of Joseph Smith. It is as funda m ental to the solida r-ity of LDS families almost as the doc trine of eterna l m arria ge itself. Itmakes brothers and sisters of the convert and the Daughter of the UtahPioneers, of the Hong Kong branch president and the missionary fromCedar City. It unites this congregationthe genealogists and the pro-crastinators, the old-fashioned patriarchs and the family planners, theeggheads and the doubters of "the wisdom of men."


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Poll: W hat the Ch urch Means to People Like Me 21This sense of belonging is what makes me feel at home in the PaloAlto Ward. Liahonas and Iron Rods together, we are products of a greathistoric experience, laborers in a great enterprise, and sharers of a com-m itmen t to the pro pos ition that life is imp ortan t because God is real an dwe are his childrenfree agents with the opp ortu nity to become heirs ofhis kingdom.This is the witness of the Spirit to this Liahona Latter-day Saint.W hen the returning missionary warm s his homecom ing with a narrativeof a remarkable conversion, I may note the inconsistency or naivete ofsome of his analysis, but I am moved nevertheless by the picture of livestransformedmade meaningfulby the gospel. When the Home Teach-ers call, I am sometimes self-conscious about the "role playing" in which

we all seem to be enga ged, yet I ask my wife oftenin our times of dee p-est concern and warmest parental satisfactionwhat might our daugh-ters have become without the church. When a dear friend passes on, anaccident victim, I may recoil from the well-meant suggestion that God'sneed for him w as grea ter than his family's, but m y lamentation is sweet-ened by the realization of what the temporal support of the Saints andthe eternal promises of the Lord mean to those who mourn.For this testimony, the church which inspires and feeds it, and fel-low ship in the church with the Iron Rods and Liahonas wh o share it, I ex-press my thanks to my Heavenly Father in the name of his son, JesusChrist. Ame n.


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Being BothI was carefully explaining to the children at dinner last night aboutRichard Poll's Iron Rod vs. Liahona Mormons. I had just gotten them tounderstand the distinction and was about to launch into a lengthy per-oration on the subject, w he n Lisa (age six) said simply, "W e're both ."That was of course exactly the point. The value of Poll's exercise liesnot in labeling ourselves o ne or the other, bu t in poin ting out both n eces-sary aspects of our gospel life. If we aren't both, something is wrong .Douglass F. TaberNewark, Delawarefrom Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 1984)

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What the Church Means to People Like Me