๐ด Russell M Nelson¶
Estimated time to read: 10 minutes
UNLEASHED¶
โI have seen him changing in the last ten months,โ said Sister Nelson. โIt is as though heโs been unleashed. Heโs free to finally do what he came to earth to do. โฆ And also, heโs free to follow through with things heโs been concerned about but could never do. Now that heโs president of [the Church], he can do those things.โ
โ Latter-day Saint Prophet, Wife and Apostle Share Insights of Global Ministry, 30 October 2018 (1, 2)
Damn, crazy how Godโs ideals are always perfectly aligned with those ideals of whoever the current prophet is
No joke, this was a really big shelf item for me. This interview was given right when I hit my faith crisis. What I read from this quote is that the president of the LDS church is not acting in God's behalf. Things that President Nelson was quick to enact sound like things he'd been cooking up for years, decades possibly. We already have a precedent of Elder Russell Nelson suggesting we shouldn't call ourselves Mormons back in 1990. Isn't it just wild how God finally agreed with Nelson immediately after he was called to be the church president? God clearly wasn't offended by the word "Mormon" during any prior church presidency.
To me, this calls into question how divinely inspired this man isโdid God reveal things to Nelson twenty years in advance to just keep in his back pocket? And it becomes doctrinal once he outlives Thomas Monson? At the time of writing this note, Dallin Oaks is next in line. Has Oaks been receiving preemptive revelation before he can definitively say "now is the great day of my power. I rule from the rivers to the ends of the earth" and enact them? I'll be real, I kind of hope not.
And, just to make sure that you and I are on the same page—I am not interested in ad hominem smack-talk "this guy sucks and also is old" as an attitude here. At the time of writing, he's still alive at 100 years old. Irrespective of religious affiliation, respect where it's due for someone three times my age. I intend to criticize specific claims or qualities. No, I don't like Nelson, but I'm not here to make libelous allegations or defame him.
Education¶
I intend to tread carefully out of respect for someone's doctorate discipline. I have a bachelor's degree and I work with computers. I don't know jack shit about biology or cardiac surgery. I could talk for a good, long while about database engineering because that's what I studied in school, and it is what I do as part of my career. I do not suggest that Dr. Nelson wasn't an educated surgeon.
What I mean to suggest instead is that Nelson seems to have internalized one of President Benson's Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet, where the acting president of the church doesn't need "any particular earthly training or diplomas to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time." Nelson was, by my understanding, a successful heart surgeon. I believe that he can authoritatively talk to anyone about heart surgery.
Nelson has drawn on experience as a heart surgeon to authoritatively talk about things that are not heart surgery, and that's something that I take issue with. If we take President Benson's counsel at face value, there's no problem here. If we give critical evaluation to either of these men, we have problems.
Genetics¶
Nelson: We believe that God is our creator and that he has created other forms of life. Itโs interesting to me, drawing on my 40 years experience as a medical doctor, how similar those species are. We developed open-heart surgery, for example, experimenting on lower animals simply because the same creator made the human being. We owe a lot to those lower species. But to think that man evolved from one species to another is, to me, incomprehensible.
[Ruby]: Why is that?
Nelson: Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. Itโs just the way genetics works.
โ In Focus: Mormonism in Modern America, Pew Research Center, 16 May 2007
I see a few issues here.
One, I don't think that actually is "the way genetics works."
Two, someone with 40 years experience as a medical doctor should have a better understanding of "the way genetics works," and maybe shouldn't use the word "incomprehensible" to describe the generally accepted understanding of evolution.
Three, "lower animals/species" sounds like a very cavalier way of looking at God's creations. Didn't God charge mankind with stewardship over the Earth? The temple endowment ceremony says, by my recollection, "take good care of it." Nelson doesn't say that this surgical practice was a vivisection, but I have a hard time imagining what else it could be.
Evolution by natural selection is the most important scientific discovery of modern times (I am stoically unapologetic about the lack of equivocation in that statement). The evidences for it are staggeringly abundant, detailed, and scientifically undeniable. Our perspective of an open canon allows us to accept this new revelation from the book of nature without getting stuck in past pre-Darwinian quagmires. Mormons are all about continuing revelation. Itโs what we do best.
โ Why Mormons Should Embrace Evolution: BYU Biology Professor Steven Peck, Associate Professor of Biology at Brigham Young University, 20 September 2010
We could make the argument that a lowly associate professor's disposition holds less weight than a decorated doctor of heart surgery, who outlived contemporaries and became president of a church. We could also highlight that disparity in the opposite directionโ an associate professor has a more grounded understanding of evolution than Nelson after a 40-year career.
Qualification¶
I've encountered the claim that Nelson "performed nearly 7,000 operations before his surgical career ended with the call to serve as an apostle." (Who is President Russell M. Nelson? A man of heart, compassion and faith, Deseret News, Jan 15, 2021) Sure, I suppose I can take that at face value.
Nelson was called as an apostle in April 1984. (1, 2) At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was 2020 - 1984 = 36 years displaced from practicing medicine. And yet folks will marvel at God's infinite wisdom in calling someone with medical background to lead the church during a pandemic.
Talk to someone who has worked as a Certified Nurse Assistsnt (CNA) about how employable their medical work experience makes them if their certificate has been expired for one week. I'm very interested to know what they'll have to say.
2020 was somehow five years ago (at the time of writing this note,) meaning that Nelson is now forty-one years displaced from practicing medicine, and is still given credence on anything he has to say on the matter. I can't think of any other context where someone is treated as a subject matter expert after not working in an industry for forty goddamned years. What the fuck.
Who do we listen to?¶
Learn to listen, and listen to learn from neighbors. Repeatedly the Lord has said, โThou shalt love thy neighbour.โ Opportunities to listen to those of diverse religious or political persuasion can promote tolerance and learning. And a good listener will listen to a personโs sentiments as well.
โ Listen to Learn, Elder Russell M. Nelson, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, General Conference 1991 April
There is no end to the adversaryโs deceptions. Please be prepared. Never take counsel from those who do not believe. Seek guidance from voices you can trust๏ปฟโfrom prophets, seers, and revelators and from the whisperings of the Holy Ghost, who โwill show unto you all things what ye should do.โ Please do the spiritual work to increase your capacity to receive personal revelation.
โ Think Celestial!, President Russell M. Nelson, General Conference 2023 October
Stop increasing your doubts by rehearsing them with other doubters.
โ Christ Is Risen; Faith in Him Will Move Mountains, President Russell M. Nelson, General Conference 2021 April
๐คทโโ๏ธ Listen to people who have the capacity to challenge your beliefs, but only up to the point that they actually do.
What has he done?¶
What good has Russell Nelson done for the world?
From the perspective of one outside the LDS church, what accomplishment or contribution from Nelson would you point to as an example of his prophetic authority?
From the perspective of an active, temple-recommend-holding LDS member, what makes Nelson meaningfully different from Monson, Hinckley, or Hunter?
From the perspective of a life-long traditional Catholic, what would draw your attention from the centralized theological authority in the Vatican to the one Salt Lake City?
Nelson has announced numerous temples? Cool. Tell me more about that. I'm not trying to suggest that temples are a nonsensical waste of time—I am challenging the idea that we needed Russell Nelson to announce them.
If the "selling point" of having a living prophet, a spokesman for God, alive today in this dispensation, is that he leads and guides us, who are alive, here, today, living in 2025, then what in the jolly-good fuck is he doing announcing temples? Shouldn't he be, I don't know, prophesying? Telling us something meaningful from God? Temples primarily benefit those who have died. What about us who are still alive?
Anyone could announce temples. A delegated apostle or seventy could have done that. President Hinckley announced lots of temples. Did temple announcements somehow become more important since 2008, or 2018? Anyone could announce temples. A delegated apostle or seventy could have done that. President Hinckley announced lots of temples. Did they somehow become more important since 2008, or 2018?
Other pages of notes¶
This page on Nelson generally was getting long and unwieldy. I've opted to split up the notes into smaller pages, so here is some more material:
- Nelson's Plane: Remember that time he was in a plane and the engine exploded and the plane went into a tailspin and crashed in a field and, miraculously, no one died? Crazy, huh? I wonder if there's any external documentation of that event... ๐ค
- Nelson Vs. COVID: I should hope that a prophet would warn and advise us of an upcoming event that throws the world into disarray. Even if the hypothetical prophetic words are just as vague and non-specific as every other Conference address, maybe he should say something meaningful...? What did he say before March 2020?
- Nelson's Social Media Fast: Probably just a coincidence that a close relative of the prophet was involved in some egregious legal accusations mere days before he tells us to avoid all social media for ten days.
Might write more later, but for now, the things which I have written sufficeth me.