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“You don't think your way to a new way of living. You live your way to a new way of thinking.”
― Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships
― Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships
“Hugh B. Brown, his counselor in the First Presidency, once told McKay of an incident that occurred when he was a young counselor in a bishopric, and a young woman in the congregation confessed to an indiscretion: The Bishop asked her to go in the other room while we talked it over, and when she left he said: “Brethren, what do you think we ought to do?” The first counselor said, “I move we cut her off the Church.” I said, “I second the motion.” The kind old Bishop said, “Brethren, there is one thing for which I am profoundly grateful and that is God is an old man. I am not going to cut her off the church.”… That young woman became the Stake President of the Relief Society up in Canada later on, to our chagrin, for if we had had our way, she would have been cast out of the Church. When I told that to President McKay, he said, “Brother Brown, let that lesson guide your judgment day by day. Remember that God our Father does not judge us until the end, and He gives us a chance to repent and come back.”
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“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
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“Paul H. Dunn, of the First Council of Seventy, spoke of McKay’s attitude toward those who were outside the mainstream—not in action, but in thought. After spending a decade as a teacher in the Institutes of Religion, Dunn was called by McKay to be a General Authority at the unusually young age of thirty-nine:
Here I am a young buck coming into the system, and the circulation is, “Let’s excommunicate the Sterling McMurrins of the Church, and weed out the liberals.” That got thrown around a lot. Even poor Lowell Bennion got thrown into some of that. If it hadn’t been for President McKay, we’d have had a fiasco on Lowell Bennion. There’s one of the sweetest, great Christians of the world. I would be totally surprised if all of heaven isn’t a Lowell Bennion philosophy. There isn’t a kinder, more gentle Christian in the world. And yet there were those in the system who tried to weed him out, because he kept the President McKay kind of vision open…. The George Boyds and the Lowell Bennions kept people in the Church whom nobody else could have. Philosophically, they could go with you on the trip through your frustration in thinking, and bring you back. Not many people could do that. I worked with George for many years down at the University of Southern California. I watched him save kids that nobody else could. And yet there was that element in the Church that tried to get him bumped, because he didn’t teach what they taught. I’ve found in the Church, and this is what gave me great comfort with President McKay, that there is room for all of them, not just a few, not just those here or there, but the whole spectrum. President McKay would say, and two or three times I heard him say privately, and once or twice publicly in meetings where I sat, that “if you would have to take action on that kind of a person thinking that way, you’d better take action on me, too”
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Here I am a young buck coming into the system, and the circulation is, “Let’s excommunicate the Sterling McMurrins of the Church, and weed out the liberals.” That got thrown around a lot. Even poor Lowell Bennion got thrown into some of that. If it hadn’t been for President McKay, we’d have had a fiasco on Lowell Bennion. There’s one of the sweetest, great Christians of the world. I would be totally surprised if all of heaven isn’t a Lowell Bennion philosophy. There isn’t a kinder, more gentle Christian in the world. And yet there were those in the system who tried to weed him out, because he kept the President McKay kind of vision open…. The George Boyds and the Lowell Bennions kept people in the Church whom nobody else could have. Philosophically, they could go with you on the trip through your frustration in thinking, and bring you back. Not many people could do that. I worked with George for many years down at the University of Southern California. I watched him save kids that nobody else could. And yet there was that element in the Church that tried to get him bumped, because he didn’t teach what they taught. I’ve found in the Church, and this is what gave me great comfort with President McKay, that there is room for all of them, not just a few, not just those here or there, but the whole spectrum. President McKay would say, and two or three times I heard him say privately, and once or twice publicly in meetings where I sat, that “if you would have to take action on that kind of a person thinking that way, you’d better take action on me, too”
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Josh’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Josh’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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