Mormon Stories #101-103: Dr. Ted Lyon on LDS Church Change, Latin American Missions, LDS Membership Statistics, and Thoughtful Faith
2007 December 1
Dr. Ted Lyon has served as a BYU Professor, LDS Mission President, LDS MTC President, and is currently serving as the LDS temple president in Santiago, Chile. His is both a believing Mormon, and an intellectual.
- In part 1, he discusses changes in the LDS church during his lifetime.
- In part 2, he discusses tough lessons learned by the LDS church in Latin America dealing with low quality of baptisms, and retention. He also discusses the importance of reconciling thought with faith.
- In part 3, he answers questions from the audience, and concludes with his testimony of the truthfulness of the LDS church.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
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Mr. Lyon,
I went to an LDS sacrament meeting only once.
It was a testimony meeting.
All the women were crying their eyes out like you were when you heard Gordon “Believe me!” Hinckley bearing his testimony.
Actually, that testimony meeting scared me out of the church.
While John Dehlin claims you are an intellectual, I would rather say that you are an overly emotional person. When people fall for such testimonies, it is not their rational thought but simply their feelings which guides their behavior.
When somebody else gives a strong testimony that something is true, that does not make it true one little bit.
If you want to read a really strong testimony, try “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler. Very strong testimony indeed. And many people also fell for his speeches. Still, it is not true that Judaism is the root of all evil.
Adolf Hitler knew how to manipulate the feeling of people. Likewise, Gordon Hinckley does, likewise testimony meetings are arranged in such a way to arouse these strong emotions. Bearing testimony is a means to arouse emotions, emotions which then guide a person’s behavior.
Still, feeling such emotions does not make the church true.
The truthfulness of something cannot be found in the emotions one feels towards it.
Therefore, I think that people basing their behavior on such emotions should not be called “intellectuals” but rather “emotionals”.
Do you base your testimony solely on emotions, or is there an intellectual side too?
I would rather be interested in that, knowing that emotions can be manipulated easily.
Terrence Malick
In response to Terrence Malick’s post, I don’t think we can get a real sense about the anatomy of Dr. Lyon’s testimony from this one interview. I agree that emotions probably play too large a role in some people’s testimonies, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume that about Dr. Lyon. I suspect that he could have cited many aspects of his belief which are intellectually based, had that been the point of the interview.
I totally adore The Thin Red Line by the way.
I guess we know which side Terrence Malick plays for.
“I guess we know which side Terrence Malick plays for”
I don’t know if I agree with that. As a young missionary in Tennessee, I attended my first Assembly of God Revival. I pondered over it for days after that, marveling how everything that was done at it – from the rock-oriented gospel music to the tragic stories shared by the traveling evangelist – were designed to intensify emotion in order to bring people to the altar. It was very effective; and since that day I have sought to carefully separate spiritual experiences derived from the still, small voice from those aroused by emotional sources. It’s not always easy to do.
I certainly disagree with Mr. Malick in his appraisal of President Hinckley. I have always felt he and other general authorities try to speak calmly and with little verbosity to allow the Spirit to speak. When emotion is shown, such as with President Eyring when he spoke of the Savior in the Christmas devotion, it is obviously non-premeditated and very sincere.
John,
I would be interested in hearing more about the mission experience of the “Brad Wilcox” that Ted Lyon mentions. Apparently, as Ted Lyon explained, Wilcox was not a numbers focused mission president instead focusing on more intangibles … spirituality ???
Perhaps an upcoming MS podcast ???