Carlfred Broderick on the Question of Abused Children

Anyone who knows me and/or follows this blog will know that I am unequivocally pro-life and opposed to the murder of unborn children (“abortion”). One common (and, frankly, sickening) argument in favour of abortion is the whole “Well, if a child would be born into a dysfunctional and/or poor and/or marginalised family, it would be more humane to abortion them than bring them up in such a lifestyle!” Apart from being reflective of a poor understanding of the intrinsic worth of a human being, it is fallacious to the nth degree, too.

The late Latter-day Saint psychologist Carlfred Broderick, answered this “argument,” as well as addressing its implications for theodicy, too, in a wonderful way:

THE QUESTION OF ABUSED CHILDREN

Q: So many children are abused, offended, and abandoned. If little children are precious to God, what justification can there be for permitting some to be born into such circumstances?

A: As children of God, we have been given the great gift of choice. We may choose to help, or we may choose to hurt. Unfortunately, as the Lord explained to Moses, the iniquities of one generation are often visited upon the heads of following generations (see Exodus 20:5). Anyone can see the truth of that saying by looking at many families in the world today. Often, troubled families seem to pass on their pain and darkness-virtually intact—to their children and grandchildren. The victim of one generation becomes the victimizer of the next.

On the other hand, the Lord told the prophet Ezekiel: “What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The Fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?
“As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.
“Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:2-4)

This scripture suggests that children need not merely replicate the sins of their fathers, but that each generation is held accountable for its own choices.

Indeed, my experience in various Church callings and in my profession as a family therapist has convinced me that God actively intervenes in some destructive lineages, assigning a valiant spirit to break the chain of destructiveness in such families. Although these children may suffer innocently as victims of violence, neglect, and exploitation, through the grace of God some find the strength to “metabolize” the poison within themselves, refusing to pass it on to future generations. Before them were generations of destructive pain; after them the line flows clear and pure. Their children and children’s children will call them blessed.

In suffering innocently that others might not suffer, such persons, in some degree, become as “saviors on Mount Zion” by helping to bring salvation to a lineage.

I have had the privilege of knowing many such individuals—people whose backgrounds are full of incredible pain and humiliation. I think of a young woman who was repeatedly abused sexually by her father. When at last she gained the courage to tell her mother, the girl was angrily beaten and rejected by her.

These experiences made the girl bitter and self-doubting. Yet, despite all odds, she has made peace with God and found a trustworthy husband with whom she is raising a righteous family. Moreover, she has dedicated her energies to helping other women with similar backgrounds eliminate the poison from their own lineages.

I think of a young man whose mother died when he was twelve and whose father responded to that loss by locking his son in his room, then drinking and entertaining women in the house. When he would come to let the boy out, he would beat him senseless, sometimes breaking his bones and causing concussions.

As might be expected, the young man grew up full of confusion, self-hate, and resentment. Yet the Lord did not leave him so, but provided friends and opportunities for growth. Today, through a series of spiritually healing miracles, this young man is preparing for a temple marriage to a good woman. Together they are committed to bringing children up in righteous and gentleness and love.

In a former era, the Lord sent a flood to destroy unworthy lineages. In this generation, it is my faith that he has sent numerous choices individuals to help purify them.

In the days of Jeremiah, the Lord used some of the same language he would later use in speaking to Ezekiel: “In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.
“But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge” (Jeremiah 31:29-30).

Then he went on to say of this new, covenant generation.
“I will put my law in their inwards parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).

Most of us, I believe, are acquainted with one or more of these valiant, struggling spirits. In the latter stages of their progress, they are easy to recognize and appreciate. But sometimes in the early stages they are suffering so much from their terrible wounds that it takes a mature degree of spiritual sensitivity to see past the bitterness and pain to discern the purity of spirit within. It is our duty and our privilege to befriend such individuals and to provide whatever assistance and support we can in helping them to achieve their high destiny.

Others of us may be, ourselves, the suffering messengers of light. Let us be true to our divine commission, for going bitterness and following in our Savior’s footsteps. (Carlfred Broderick, My Parents Married on a Dare and Other Favorite Essays on Life [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996], 118-20)

Carlfred Broderick on Evolution and Homosexuality

Commenting on evolution and homosexuality (two hot button topics!), the late Latter-day Saint psychologist and stake president, Carlfred Broderick offered the following insightful thoughts:

EVOLUTION

From my youth forward, it has been clear to me that a Latter-day Saint is required to believe that Adam and Eve were real people from whom we are all descended. Beyond that I have felt that we know next to nothing about the creation of the earth or its calendar. I think it presumptuous for someone who could not repair his own TV set to think that he understands how the universe was put into operation. As I understand it, the Lord has promised to reveal more about this at time future time (see D&C 121:28-31). In the meantime I am content to have geologists and biologists put together the information available to them according to the best models they can devise. When the full truth is revealed it will encompass all that is real, not merely all that is in the understanding of a particular person or group of persons. If dinosaurs were some cruel hoax, would God have buried so many in Utah?

HOMOSEXUALITY

I think that I am as knowledgeable about the condition we call homosexuality as any heterosexual in the Church. My life has brought me into close association with many fine people whom, fortunately, I had the privilege of knowing well before I knew of their sexual orientation. My professional activities have led me to be a student of the research on this condition. As a priesthood leader and as a therapist I have worked with many people over the years as they have struggled with difficulties they face in resolving the tensions between the homosexual lifestyle and the gospel path. No one knows that determines that one individual will be drawn toward members of his own sex and another to the opposite sex. There is beginning to be some evidence that there may be a biochemical factor. Perhaps certain life experiences make the opposite sex seem more dangerous and less attractive to some than to others. Whatever the origins, I have never met a homosexual who remembered choosing to be so orientated. Each experiences it as an unbidden affliction.

Given that premise, it has nevertheless been my observation that those who act on those unbidden feelings lose the Spirit and before they know it are pulled step by step into a world at complete odds with the Kingdom. Those who earnestly seek to conform to the Plan are provided small miracle after small miracle until they are able to experience every blessing of the gospel. I have yet to find an exception to this rule. This puts me at odds with both those who treat men and women with homosexual feelings as though they were voluntary perverts and also with those who insist that there can be no genuine reconciliation between such persons and the highest standards of the Kingdom. (Carlfred Broderick, My Parents Married on a Dare and Other Favorite Essays on Life [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996], 46-47, emphasis in bold added)

Lee Baker Embraces Noahidism and Proves the Truth of 2 Thessalonians 2:11

Lee Baker (who still owes me $1,000) and his wife have recently announced that, based on the same careful “research” and “bible studies” they engaged in to leave “Mormonism,” they are now leaving Christianity in general and converting to a strand of Judaism:

To Whom It May Concern: A Statement of Faith from Lee and Kathy Baker

What is funny is seeing anti-Mormons throw out defences of their beliefs and the integrity of the New Testament which they would never accept from Latter-day Saints for our beliefs and scriptures. It also does show the truth of 2 Thess 2:11—after abandoning the truth of the Restored Gospel, Kathy and Lee Baker have been given over to a spirit of delusion, first embracing all the blasphemies of Protestantism and then, later, modern Judaism (similar to Dave Bartosiewicz who is now Eastern Orthodox and one who prayers to/through Mary and images—an idolater, in other words).

Does Ether 13:2 teach that Noah's Flood Was Global?

In Ether 13:2, we read the following:

For behold, they rejected all the words of Ether; for he truly told them of all things, from the beginning of man; and that after the waters had receded from off the face of this land it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord; wherefore the Lord would have that all men should serve him who dwell upon the face thereof. (Ether 13:2)

Some critics of the theory that the Book of Mormon peoples encountered and incorporated indigenous natives into their numbers use this text as “proof” that there were no “others” in the Book of Mormon as it (purportedly) teaches a global flood. If there was a global flood, ipso facto, the New World would have been a vacuum, they argue.

The text, however, is not referencing Noah’s flood and its scope; instead, it is a reference to the primordial waters of Genesis 1:

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters . . . And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters . . . And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so . . . And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so . . . And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good . . . And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. (Gen 1:2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 20-22)

In the book of Psalms, there is a psalm where the Genesis 1 creation and the waters thereof is said to cover the earth:

Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth. (Psa 104:6-9)

When Moroni writes of the waters receding from the land, it is a reference to the primordial waters of Genesis 1. It does not teach that Noah’s flood was global.

Pope Fiction By Patrick Madrid (EWTN)

While I disagree with him on many issues (*), Patrick Madrid has done a good job at refuting a lot of the more "out there" (or "bogus") arguments against Roman Catholicism, including many of the chapters in his book, Pope Fiction: Answers to 30 Myths and Misconceptions about the Papacy (see this positive review by LDS scholar Barry Bickmore).

A Catholic Youtube page has produced a video putting together all the audio files of an EWTN series Madrid did based on this book. As the papacy is one of the "dividing lines" between Latter-day Saints and Roman Catholics, it behoves Latter-day Saints to know the best the other side has to offer in defence of their beliefs, in this case, the papacy, its primacy, and the nature and criteria and purported instances of papal infallibility being exercised:


Pope Fiction By Patrick Madrid (EWTN)

(*) If anyone could ever set up a debate between myself and Madrid (he has critiqued "Mormonism" a lot over the years, and I would love to debate him on that as well as Mariology [esp. the Immaculate Conception, a topic he also discusses a lot], I am up for such).

Recovery Version on 1 Corinthians 4:6

Now these things, brothers, I have transferred in figure to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us the matter of not going beyond what has been written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one, against the other. (1 Cor 4:6 Recovery Version)

1 Cor 4:6 is a text that some (not all) apologists for Sola Scriptura use to support the doctrine (e.g., Matt Slick). I have an exegesis countering such a claim in my lengthy work, Not by Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura.

I recently received the Recovery Version of the New Testament from Living Stream Ministry in Anaheim, California (disturbed by “Bibles for Europe”). While being very pro-Evangelical Protestant in their footnotes, they do not argue, as Slick and others do, that “what has been written” supports the formal sufficiency of the Bible; instead, it refers to what had been written previously in 1 Corinthians, something similar to the exegesis I offered in my essay:

This must refer to what had been written in the preceding chapters, such as “Was Paul crucified for you” (1:13) and “What then is Apollos? And what is Paul?” (3:5). They were simply ministers of Christ, a planter and a waterer (3:5-7). They were not Christ, who was crucified for the believers. They were not God, who causes the believers to grow. They should not be appraised beyond what they were. Otherwise, their appraisers, like the fleshly Corinthian believers, might be puffed up on behalf of one, against the other.

R. C. H. Lenski on 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and baptismal Regeneration

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:9-11 NASB)

Commenting on the verbs used in 1 Cor 6:11 and how they teach baptismal regeneration (not a merely symbolic understanding of water baptism), the Lutheran scholar Lenski wrote:

All three verbs are aorists and not perfects. It has been said that there are sermons in tenses, and there is a sermon in these. Perfects would mean that the activity expressed by these three verbs as definite past acts still continues into the present as an unchanged condition, and that it remains unchanged. The three aorists state only what occurred in the past (historical aorists) and stop there. These aorists thus leave open the question as to whether the present still fully agrees with what took place so blessedly in the past. Yes, there is a sermon in these tenses.

While all three verbs are aorists, only the last two are passives, and the first is most significantly a middle. This middle ἀπελούσασθε does not mean: “you were washed” (passive), R. V.; nor: “you are washed” (perfect), A. V.; nor: “you washed yourselves” (ordinary reflexive middle) R. V. margin and R. 807; but: “you let yourselves be washed” (causative or permissive middle), R. 809, “you had yourselves washed,” as we translate. Paul is, of course, speaking about baptism, but when he uses ἀπολούειν he at once names the effect of baptism, the spiritual washing away of all sin and guilt, the cleansing by pardon and justification. This causative or permissive middle, which is exactly like the same middle ἐβαπτίσαντο used in 10:2, adds what the passive would omit, namely that with their own hearts the Corinthians themselves desired and accepted this washing and cleansing. In their case baptism was not a mere outward, formal, or only symbolical act. And what they desired they obtained: they were cleansed of sin and guilt.

The two passives that follow: “but you were sanctified, but you were justified,” are different as far as their voice is concerned. Considered by themselves, both state only what God, the agent behind these passives, did and no more. And yet the force of this first middle in this series of three acts affects also the two passives. This does not mean that the passives are changed and now receive a middle tinge; they remain what they are. But the Corinthians could not also be sanctified and justified by God (passive) if they had not in their own hearts desired and accepted the true cleansing of baptism. The moment they accepted that in true faith they were also at that moment sanctified and justified. Thus, not only in tenses but also in voices there are real sermons.

“You were sanctified,” separated from sin unto God, and were thus made holy. “That he (Christ) might sanctify it (the church), having cleansed it by the washing of water with the Word,” Eph. 5:26. This is total sanctification, the removal of all sin and guilt; it makes us ἅγιοι, “saints,” and ἡγιασμένοι, “people sanctified,” two of the standard terms employed in the New Testament to designate Christians. This sanctification is not total in the sense that we shall not and cannot sin, are perfect in this respect, need no more forgiveness of sins, need no longer pray the Fifth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer. 1 John 1:8. But this sanctification drives out sin more and more, we grow in grace, 2 Pet. 3:18, and by daily contrition and faith continue constantly and totally cleansed, 1 John 1:9.

Paul might have stopped after mentioning the verb in the middle voice or after the first verb in the passive. Paul adds another passive; so important is all that occurred when the Corinthians were made Christians: “you were justified.” The word δικαιοῦν and its passive δικαιωθῆναι always have a forensic force: “ye were declared just” by God, the Judge, by a verdict pronounced from his judgment seat. See C.-K. regarding this vital term and regarding its derivatives. God justifies the sinner for Christ’s sake the instant that God brings that sinner to contrition and faith: “My son, thy sins are forgiven thee!”

In these three verbs there lies much more than the verbs themselves express, namely this that these Corinthians, who were once thus washed, made holy, and declared righteous in God’s sight, ought to remain so and be so still. It would be monstrous if by open pollution they should now revert to their former state, to what they once “were,” and again become ἄδικοι, “unrighteous.” (R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians [Minneapolis, Minn: Augsburg Publishing House, 1963], 250–252, emphasis added