Can “Knowing” Be Dangerous And Cloud Your Personal Judgment?

[Craig Paxton]

It always scares me when any believer suspends rational thinking and allows some higher authority …be it human or from some presumed voice in their head that they believe to be God….to dictate some action that the believer must take…an action that they would never do were they left to their own personal moral self.

I’ll offer four examples:

1. The Lafferty Brothers…motivated by what they interpreted as the voice of God commanding them to murder their sister in law and her infant daughter.
   
2. Nephi who at first resisted but finally succumbed to the voice in his head and killed Laban…a man who was fallen down drunk and could have been completely subdued without the need to murder him. see1 Nephi 4:18
   

18 Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.

1. The 9/11 Hijackers who followed the commands of a higher authority to do what they interpreted as the will of God.
   
2. And finally the participants in Mountain Meadows…who went against their own moral compass and heeded to the will of their church authorities and murdered over 120 men, women and children.
   

The root cause of the suspension of their individual moral compass…in each of these situations was a fundamentalist zealotry and desire to please what they believed was God’s will.

So my question is this…Would you suspend your reason and moral compass if you heard God tell you to do something that conflicted with your own personal morals? Would you do so if the directive came from the Prophet? Is there danger in “belief” if it reaches the point of “knowing” so that “knowing” clouds your personal judgment?

Edited June 19, 2012 by Craig Paxton

[Deborah]

I do think it interesting in Nephi's case that God actually reasoned with him why it was necessary to slay Laban. He gave him several logical reasons, so Nephi did not follow blindly.

There are other scriptures in which the Lord says "Let us reason together" such as in Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." and then the Lord goes into more detail.

As D&C 8:2 tells us "Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart." So I would say reason need not be suspended and in fact the Lord seems willing to reason with us.

[Craig Paxton]

I do think it interesting in Nephi's case that God actually reasoned with him why it was necessary to slay Laban. He gave him several logical reasons, so Nephi did not follow blindly.

There are other scriptures in which the Lord says "Let us reason together" such as in Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." and then the Lord goes into more detail.

As D&C 8:2 tells us "Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart." So I would say reason need not be suspended and in fact the Lord seems willing to reason with us.

I would tend to agree with you here that in the Book of Mormon...Nephi does resist at first...but then eventually succombs to the will of the voice in his head...but it also seems that revenge also played into Nephi's motivations...

see 11 And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the ^aLord hath ^bdelivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had ^ctaken away our property.

[stemelbow]

It always scares me when any believer suspends rational thinking and allows some higher authority …be it human or from some presumed voice in their head that they believe to be God….to dictate some action that the believer must take…an action that they would never do were they left to their own personal moral self.

I’ll offer four examples.

To paint any believer as the couple of examples you gave seems pretty unfair. Perhaps it isn't so irrational for a believer to trust what he perceives as God over the bounded rational thinking that you aspire to?

[Minos]

Do not compare anyone to Hitler, Satan or random criminals. Thread closed.