I was trying to remember the talk from President Nelson but it was slipping my mind.
Truth—And More!
What a strange title.
As if one could have something more than truth.
Well he all but admitted he has the truth of testimony, but not of scholarship. He can testify, but he damn sure can't figure out reality... and we are supposed to elevate him as one of the higher ups in knowledge.
Really loving the last part of this talk where Elder Nelson says if BYU professors start using truth unrighteously, other profs need to step in to help.
He says at the outset that it means not only knowing the truth, but acting on it is the “more.”
But by the time you get to the end of the talk, we discover the action he is really talking about is the steps to silence those who are telling the whole truth...which by definition is “unrighteously.”
I will be doing a podcast Wednesday with Bill Reel on a recent church video featuring Elder Oaks admonishing Mormons to be cautious in their search for truth.
This reminds me of when Elder Oaks spoke to a Chicago stake a couple of years back advising research was not the answer when confronted with a doubting spouse.
And of course who can ever forget Elder Oaks from 1985(?) addressing the CES folks that the church has no responsibility to tell both sides of the story? (I have no audio for this though.)
My question is if you have any other favorite quotes along these lines from Oaks or others I could add to the list?
All the Best!
—RFM
Not a quote, but...Oaks' involvement with the September Six is interesting with regards to his relationship with the truth. Members were excommunicated for telling the truth and the Church tried to hide the truth of Oaks' direct involvement in those excommunications.
Here is a link to a PDF download of Oaks' talk to the J. Reuben Clark Law Society in 1994 titled "Gospel Teachings About Lying" which may contain some quotes of interest. https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/clarkmemorandum/15/
As a yard stick with which to measure Oaks relationship with truth, may I suggest the Church's own definition of lying...
Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying. The Lord gave this commandment to the children of Israel: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). Jesus also taught this when He was on earth (see Matthew 19:18). There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.
The Lord is not pleased with such dishonesty, and we will have to account for our lies. Satan would have us believe it is all right to lie. He says, “Yea, lie a little; … there is no harm in this” (2 Nephi 28:8). Satan encourages us to justify our lies to ourselves. Honest people will recognize Satan’s temptations and will speak the whole truth, even if it seems to be to their disadvantage.
Oaks talk "Gospel Teachings About Lying" contains a few examples where Oaks explains that it's okay to lie a little when to tell the truth would be a disadvantage.
An interesting talk by Oaks. I didn’t see him say that even a little bit of lying was okay. I did see him acknowledge that there had been some Mormon lying over polygamy.
What I found iffy was his contention that it can sometimes be okay not to tell the whole truth. He did say clearly that you have to tell the whole truth if you have explicitly claimed to be telling the whole truth. And he acknowledged that quoting someone in an article counts, under today’s standards for quotation, as claiming to present the whole quote without omission.
As an example where it is okay not to tell the whole truth Oaks mentioned attorney-client privilege. Indeed the only issue he seemed to recognize, as being involved in whether omission counts as lying, was whether or not one has a positive duty to tell the whole truth.
That seems a bit weasely and legalistic to me, I’m afraid. What about keeping mum about things that you know your audience would expect you to mention if you knew them? What about keeping silent about things that you know your audience would really like to know? What about omitting things that you know would change how your audience thinks about things you have previously said? Don’t any of these questions have any bearing on whether silence might count as a lie?
Maybe there’s still some kind of case to be made for not having to tell the whole truth all the time, but it seems to me that all those issues ought at least to be mentioned in a discussion like Oaks’s. Leaving it at the legalistic issue of whether or not you are specifically charged with the duty to tell the whole truth seems a little too wise-as-serpents to me, not enough harmless-as-doves.
