Episode 159: October 2011 General Conference Saturday Sessions

  I was so amused last night talking to my mum who has, at every single conference prior to this one, made a comment about how ‘I think the brethren KNOW something,’ with a deeply significant tone of voice and heavy hinting about The End of Times. I couldn’t resist then mentioning how nice I thought it was that Packer had contradicted that eschatological mind-set and my mum immediately chimed in that, ‘oh, no one ever really knows and the brethren have always had to fight that kind of rumour.’ She’s a delightful woman but now and then I do feel she should come with a whiplash warning for the quick about-faces!  

Great points about Neil Andersen’s talk, which I too found to be wholly duplicitous.  “Be financially responsible, and make your own decisions about when to have kids and how many, but if you have real faith, you will start cranking them out tomorrow (and continue on in spite of everything).”

If you examine birth statistics, more people are born in areas where more people die.  The more of us there are, the less each one of us is worth (practically speaking), and the more useful it is to diversify (rolling the genetic dice as many times as possible), since your fifth kid may prove adaptive where the first four aren’t.  (He might be physically stronger, mentally sharper, environmentally luckier.) Instead of developing the kids they have (teaching them, training them, working with them), poor folk in the Third World just have ten and hope enough of them are competent enough to keep the family alive (at subsistence level).  But many people don’t really want to live this way.  Women don’t want to have 10-14 babies and watch half of them die (of disease, overwork, poor living conditions).  Men don’t want to have 10-14 kids and shove them all into minimum wage employment as soon as possible (while the family lives in a shoebox with no privacy).  And, you know what, there is nothing particularly great or noble about living this way.  (Individuals can make this life noble, but they do that by being noble themselves, not by choosing to hoe a tough row.)

I could force my wife to have more kids.  She is completely run off her feet with two, as it is, and her health suffered a lot from two pregnancies back to back.  But I could invoke the power of the priesthood and make sure that she spends the next six years (at least) tired, fat, and pregnant (or breast-feeding, which is taxing in a lot of the same ways).  I could go into debt, work even later hours, and ignore my two sons even more in the interest of creating and providing (poorly) for an additional five siblings (or so).  But what would I gain from that?  What would my sons gain, aside from an absentee father, a sick mother, and a place in a faceless crowd of siblings (who would fill their rooms, take their toys, wear out their clothes, eat their college funds, etc.)?  Why is it selfish for me to let my wife take time to go to the gym (not so that she can become the next Mrs. America, but so that she has a chance at making it to middle age and beyond with her health intact)?  Why is it selfish for me to look after the kids I have well (which means not having five more, at least not until my salary more than doubles)?

Elder Andersen already avoided all these questions with his chiasmus, of course.  But just about everything he said between those bookends was (infuriating) nonsense.  

its very awkward when a speaker with a very heavy spanish or asian accent speaks.  you get the feeling most of the older white saints are like what is going on here . this isnt the church i used to know especially after leaving that tea party rally where they swore to kick out all the mexicans 

also , if the church is growing around the world at such an amazing rate, why was the primary choir all white kids save for one filipino girl ?

The questions of when to have kids and how many are between you and your husband and the Lord. But let me give a you a hint as the Lord’s apostle: right now, and as many as possible.

Anyone else think Randy and I sound like bitchy teenage girls, or is it just me?