If history serves as any guide, the first weekend of April, 2011 will find the the tulips of Temple Square in Salt Lake City bedecked in snow and bent as if in supplication while nearby, members of the LDS faith will raise their collective right arms to the square in what can only be described as an affirmation of subjugation to fifteen fellow primates whom the rank-and-file Mormons will proudly call 'prophets, seers and revelators'. Such abdication is not uncommon among the faithful, Latter-day Saint or otherwise. Mainline Protestants regularly claim to be slaves to Jesus; Mormons merely have an extra step to the divine by placing mere mortals --all men, not surprisingly-- in positions of power to act for and in behalf and in the name of god.
Peggy Fletcher Stack's article in The Salt Lake Tribune, dated March 25, 2011 gives due justice to such personal secession: taught to the young and innocent and impressionable and codified in Mormon scripture, all Latter-day Saints are commanded to 'follow the prophet'. For example: ask any Mormon about their code of health and they will tell you that abstaining from wine, coffee and tea has less to do with the health benefits of the moderate intake of alcohol and caffeine and more to do with obedience. Granted, being a teetotaller for Jehovah is progress of a kind from the slaughters commanded by the god of Israel to his chosen people, but it still leaves open the invitation to apply similar reasoning to future actions. It would seem that Smerdyakov was wrong and the Bible, in this case is right (Matthew 19:26): if one has a belief that god can command --through mere mortals-- the extirpation of the infidel, the homosexual, the apostate; if god can command the mutilation of genitalia, and the taking of children as wives, what stops such actions from being commanded this weekend? Or the next?
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