April 19th, 2025
By Michael D
(These thoughts, ideas, and conclusion has been in my mind for well over a year but I received a stroke of inspiration this morning and decided to finally type it out.)
Imagine if you will that your best friend is Janice. You have known Janice for ten years and have shared intimate details of your life with her. You trust her. But Janice has a close friendship with Denise. You are OK with this but it does make you wary.
Denise is your acquaintance but hardly a preferred one.
Denise and Janice have a unique "friendship" because Janice will do and believe whatever Denise tells her. In your mind it's not really a friendship, hardly a relationship, but more like a faux-benevolent dictatorship.
Sure, Denise will praise Janice's friendship, claim to love and care for her, promise to always be there for her, including assurances that Janice will reap many future rewards by sacrificing for this friendship. But it all reeks of insincerity. If Janice does anything that Denise doesn't agree with, Denise will quickly reprimand and remind her that the friendship is contingent on Janice doing and believing exactly what Denise desires her to.
You've seen the extent of Denise's "love" for her friends by the ostracization and rejection of Janice's former friend, Carla.
Carla and Janice were once as close as you and she are now. But Carla chose a life-path that Denise rejected full-stop and demanded that Janice cut her off or she would no longer benefit from Denise's friendship and future rewards of the same. Denise was also ruthless toward Carla and told many lies and obfuscated details and facts about Carla's life and motivations, all in an attempt to poison her image to Janice. It was a sad commentary to witness.
While you and Janice remain best friends you know that the ties that bind are made of thread instead of iron. All it will take is something about you that triggers Denise and Janice will abandon you as fast as she did Carla.
You might be thinking that Denise is a representation of the Mormon God but she's actually symbolic of the Mormon prophet. Because, you see, Mormons that maintain an allegiance and promise to sustain and uphold their prophet will never have their own morals; they will only ever hold the morals of their prophet.
So your Mormon friend Alice from the 1990s? Her morals were the Mormon prophet Howard Hunter's morals.
Your Mormon friend Ted from the late 1990s? His morals were the Mormon prophet Gordon Hinkley's morals.
Your Mormon friend Lisa from the 2010s? Her morals were the Mormon prophet Thomas Monson's morals.
Your Mormon friend Jerry from today? His morals are the Mormon prophet Russell Nelson's morals.
Let's look at two simple examples to further illustrate my argument:
1)
When Thomas Monson was the Mormon prophet he "revealed" God's will concerning the status of gay parents and any children they might have that desired baptism. According to God this was not allowed until the child reached the age of eighteen and disavowed the relationship of their parents. Only when these conditions were met was the eighteen year old child of gay parents allowed to be baptized into the Lord's church.
Depending on which Mormon you spoke with this revelation of God's will (for it was deemed as such by the testimony of current prophet Russell Nelson) caused either a minor or major disruption to a significant number of Mormons while many others debated if it was policy or new doctrine.
But regardless of what factions of Mormons debated among themselves on doctrine or policy, do you know what the faithful Mormons that covenanted to sustain and obey Thomas Monson did? They adopted his morals as their own.
This November policy (as it came to be called) was Monson's morals, camouflaged in the guise of God. And these faithful Mormons justified it, defended it, and it became a demarcation for the truly faithful because they do not have their own morals; they have their prophet's morals.
Other Mormons (less faithful ones to be sure) faced a breaking-point: do they accept or reject this "revelation" from Monson? The November policy, clearly Monson's morals but disguised as God's will, actually revealed the morals of the Mormons that disagreed with it. They rejected Denise/Thomas and made their own way.
And so it seems that this disaffected group, many of which resigned their Mormon membership, made the right choice after all as the infamous November policy was rescinded by the Mormon church less than four years later. Apparently the unchanging God reconsidered and was now OK with children of gay parents being baptized before the age of eighteen after all. This flip-flopping of morals by the Mormon prophet and the faithful Mormons that defended it quickly adopted new morals again to argue the rescission was as divine as the prohibition. And why?
Because faithful Mormons who follow prophets do not have their own morals. They only have their prophet's morals.
2)
For almost two hundred years Mormons were proud to be Mormons. A multi-million dollar marketing campaign was launched by the Mormon church to advertise to their neighbors and the world that they were Mormon. Gordon Hinkley taught that Mormon meant "more-good" because those were his morals and Thomas Monson perpetuated those personal morals when he became the Mormon prophet.
But then something changed in 2018 when current Mormon prophet Russell Nelson's head-canon about the word Mormon became offensive to God. Yes that's right: the word Mormon that had been used by Mormon prophets in a favorable view for almost two hundred years now offended the sensibilities of the Most High. And with that, Russell Nelson's morals about the word "Mormon", passed to us as God's own view on the matter, became a victory for Satan when spoken.
It should come as no surprise by now how the faithful Mormons received Nelson's morals: they were adopted as their own. And why?
Because faithful Mormons who follow prophets do not have their own morals. They only have their prophet's morals.
You might be thinking, "Aren't these rather trite examples? Certainly they are silly enough to overlook and we should grant a measure of grace to Mormons and their idiosyncratic beliefs?"
That is certainly up to your own personal will and discretion. But what about the morals of the next prophet? Most likely Oaks is next. What if he decides God's morals are that gay people should never set foot in a Mormon chapel and if they dare enter they are to be forcibly thrown out? What if Oak's morals demand that apostate family members are to be financially destroyed as the wages for sin and a stern warning to those considering abandoning God's "true" church? What if a future prophet's morals demand that it is time to bring back physical polygamy and not just the spiritual kind that remains active in today's Mormon temples? What if the next prophet decides it's time to hunker down and reject all non-Mormon friendships because God demands an isolated people? What if future prophet Bednar's morals dictate that, a la Nelson and the word Mormon, all prophets since Spencer Kimball in 1978 got it terribly wrong and that God really is against men of African descent receiving the priesthood? None of these eventualities or lesser instantiations of them are outside the realm of possibility when men believe their own praise and take their shower thoughts as channeling God's will.
Maybe some Mormons will finally awaken to their own latent morals when their geriatric prophet's dreams and visions are revealed to be in conflict of their own personal decency? Certainly that will happen, but most faithful Mormons will adopt the new morals as their own and lament the "loss of the elect" in the latter-days and take the awakening of their former Mormons' new morals as proof-positive that those that remain are on the righteous side and truly in God's fold. And why?
Because faithful Mormons who follow prophets do not have their own morals. They only have adopted their current prophet's morals.
In the end, there is nothing "wrong" with remaining an acquaintance, or even a friend, of Janice. But know that her friendship with Denise will always preempt you. Because when push comes to shove, the faithful Mormon will choose the morals of their senior-age prophets over their friends and family.
I decided that I will not even put the choice before them.