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Today at Priesthood meeting, on April 22nd, a member of the Stake Presidency showed up in order to release the High Priest’s Group leadership and the Elder’s Quorum Presidency and present the new Elder’s Quorum Presidency for our sustaining vote. After explaining the emphasis on ministering in the new program replacing visiting teaching and home teaching, there was a call for remarks from the quorum. A High Priest was called upon who suggested that fifty years ago home teaching was more like the new program, not having any suggested lessons to give each month. If I had been prepared to respond to that suggestion I would have reminded the quorum that those were the times of fascination with polygamy and theorizing about the reason African blacks were not allowed to hold the priesthood. We had learned to ignore the evidence in the Book of Mormon that polygamy was an abomination and a whoredom and that we are all the same in the sight of God.

I joined the church at the age of eighteen in 1959. Belief in polygamy and racist doctrine made it easy to find answers which filled the heart with pride, and perhaps more difficult to find answers which made our bosoms burn within us. More to the point it may have become easy to mistake the heart filled with pride for the burning in the bosom. We should be ashamed of those days, but then it was hidden from most of us that our racism was a controversial subject among our general authorities. Most of us were unaware of the fact that President David O. McKay did not consider the withholding of the priesthood from blacks of African descent to be sound doctrine. He considered it a mere practice which would change and he was attempting to obtain revelation instructing him to change it. When his biography came out in 2005 we would find out that one of President McKay’s counselors told him that the reason his efforts had not been successful was because the members of the church were not ready to accept the change. We were so proud of our racism that some members were telling their nonmember friends who hated blacks that they ought to become Mormons because we knew how to keep the blacks in their place.

When will we be ready to feel guilty for our past mistakes? Not likely soon if the past century gives any indication. In the 26th chapter of Third Nephi Mormon explains that the Lord instructed him not to transfer all the things from the plates of Nephi to the plates Joseph Smith was to translate because the greater things were to be withheld until He had tested us to see if we believed the lesser things which He would give us first. We failed the test when we found reasons to despise the words of plainness, so the Lord delivered things we could not understand as promised in Jacob 4:14.

When will we set aside our false pride and admit that we have been covering up the sins of our predecessors. Since the earliest days of the Church, until 1978, African blacks were considered to be a fallen race that must remain ineligible for the priesthood during their mortal lives. This fact was covered up in a carefully worded explanation which came in a letter accompanying the revelation announcing the availability of the priesthood to men of all races. There are coverups of some of Brigham Young’s other false doctrine in commentaries by General Authorities. Joseph Smith complained about enemies of the church who lied in order to catch us in a lie. Joseph Fielding Smith decided that turn about was fair play and he covered up most of Brigham Young’s false doctrine. My discovery of those coverups played a significant part in my leaving the church for twenty five years, much of it was time spent in hell on earth as my health continued to fail and I became angry at God.

Now that I am back I have found that the false pride infecting some of our leaders still infects some of my friends. One of them refused to accept my explanation for leaving the Church. His experience tells him that the only reason people leave the church is because they are guilty of serious sin, so he has berated me publically in High Priest’s Group meeting several times. The first time I confronted him in private he denied it. Recently when I tried again he said that he was sorry I was upset, then he gave a long list of all the wonderful things he had accomplished in order to show how inspired he is. It didn’t sound like an apology to me, but rather an attempt at intimidating me into wondering how such an inspired man could be wrong. I love the man and it distresses me greatly to see him so full of false pride and self righteousness. I blame some of our General Authorities for giving him bad examples to follow. This is just one example of friends infected with false pride because of the behavior of some of our past leaders. I am also embarrassed for our current leaders because they have not corrected the problem.

In D&C 112:13 the Lord promises to eventually “feel after them [the quorum of twelve] and if they harden not their hearts and stiffen not their necks against me, they shall be converted, and I will heal them.” Mormon, while condensing the fourth chapter of the Book of Ether mentions that the greater things seen and heard by the brother of Jared would not go forth unto the gentiles until they repent and come clean. This is the same Mormon who in 3rd Nephi chapter 26 was told by the Lord that before we received the greater things we must be tested to see if we believed the lesser things which we would be given first.

So, I ask you brethren, what prevents us from repenting beyond false pride and ignorance?  And this new day of ministering, what will it be beyond more false pride, and self righteousness? Is covering up our past errors and preserving our false pride more important than receiving the greater things which have been withheld from us?