Do I Sustain Dallin H. Oaks?

 

Do I sustain President Dallin H. Oaks as the prophet, seer, and revelator and as the only person on the earth authorized to exercise all priesthood keys?

On my mission, I taught a man named Uju. He was baptized in Africa many years before we met and reconnected with the church after meeting my companion and I on a dusty downtown Omaha street. 

Uju wasn’t one to stay on topic. When we taught him, any number of things could push his attention to something tangential, and usually a bit more mystical than our western sensibilities were prepared for. We didn’t usually know how to respond to his vivid descriptions of sacred dreams, metaphysical theories, and half-christian theological ideas. 

Once we were sitting at his kitchen table and he prophesied. “Elder Chandler,” he said, straightening in his chair and widening his eyes. His voice got deep and serious. “One day, you will become the president of these United States.” 

Finding this unlikely, and yet aligning with some of my interests, I said “do you think, Uju?” 

And he replied without missing a beat: “I do not think. I believe and I know.”

Okay, I thought. It sounds like I need to get into politics. And believe it or not, I did! I take a weird pleasure in letting odd experiences become turning points in my life. Before that day I had no idea what I wanted to do when I “grew up.” When people asked what my career goals were, I changed my mind every week. There were weeks on my mission I insisted I wanted to become a WWE wrestler, a paleontologist, a presidential speech writer, and a librarian–and I was mostly sincere. But after Uju’s prophecy, I stopped changing my mind. After the mission, I was going to go to BYU, get into J. Reuben Clark Law School, clerk for a supreme court justice, get elected to a judgeship and then climb the political ladder from there. I also told myself I was going to empty my mind of all political leanings. I wasn’t a democrat, a republican, or anything in between. I was a man seeking deep understanding, prima facie, withholding opinion formation until all the facts were clearly laid out before me. When I got home, I was rejected from BYU, but that changed nothing about my resolve. My first semester at BYU-Idaho I out-worked everyone. I jumped right into the most advanced classes I could find. I picked professors because they were known for being difficult on ratemyprofessor.com. I got straight A’s—even in classes where no one else did. I majored in political science until I realized that the English department was going to push me harder on reading and writing–essential for LSAT prep. 

Of course, as you might guess, another figure was influential in my unfolding ambition: Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the quorum of the twelve apostles. I remember seeing him at one conference, leaning back in his chair with both arms filling his armrests and maintaining a toothless grin that to me signaled pure and unadulterated priesthood power. He gave a talk while I was on my mission called “protect the children” that really moved me, and when I started thinking about what kind of law I wanted to practice, I came back to it, seeking a career path in child advocacy. He spoke at a devotional at BYU-Idaho on religious freedom while I was there, and it felt like we were getting the inside scoop on his prophetic and legal vision for the world. When people asked me what I wanted to be, for a few years I said “Dallin H. Oaks,” and I felt this deeply and seriously. I wanted to be everything that man was: organized, administrative, sharp, loyal, dignified, holy, judicial, even bald! My favorite hairstyle growing up was a buzz cut and I felt like going all the way was the ultimate power style. I didn’t just think–I believed and I knew that the perfect role model was Dallin Harris Oaks. 

But of course, things do change, don’t they? I hoped to be a good enough freshman at BYU-I that I could transfer to its more prestigious Utah counterpart. I was a good enough freshman, but I realized when it came time to apply for a transfer that I wanted to keep spending hours each week sitting in my professors’ offices (discussing everything from the subjects they teach, to career prep, to dating), and that didn’t seem possible in Provo. I stayed in Rexburg. One political science professor helped me realize that I didn’t actually want to be a lawyer–at least not badly enough to saddle myself with the student debt it would require. And I fell in love with kinds of writing and thinking that are very un-Oaks-like: character-driven storytelling, post-modern fiction, queer poetry, magical realism, stinging rebukes of structural hegemony, raw history spoken through marginalized voices, Marxist literary criticism, poetry slams.

Remember how I said I wanted to enter academia with a completely blank slate, totally void of opinion until I had gathered all the info? I did that, at possibly the most conservative University in America. And I came out a descriptivist, cultural materialist, feminist, anti-racist, post-colonial, art-loving, bleeding-heart liberal (cue all of Turning Point America whispering “I knew it”). 

And by the time I graduated college, I DESPISED Dallin H. Oaks!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually no. That’s not true. Deep down, I still love president Oaks. I still look at him on the stands and have to admit he is cool. His whole image is a vibe. And his talks are *chef’s kiss* logical, organized, straightforward. The debate nerd in me can’t help but gush over them each conference, even when I disagree. 

And I do disagree. I think as a church we should be more quick to apologize and more prone to transparency about our past missteps. I think the church at large has misinterpreted its own scripture regarding lesbian and gay relationships and gender transitions, and Oaks is one of the biggest amplifiers of those misinterpretations. I don’t believe that prophetic authority is as infallible or–and this is a nuanced reading of Oaks’s teachings–that it should be treated as infallible as Oaks teaches it should be. These are not arguments I want to get into with you right now, reader, by the way. It’s just a fact that I disagree with the prophet on some important points–points that he is very adamant on. I’ve even considered (a few years ago) planning to take a break from the church when he becomes prophet. 

And now he is. Dallin H. Oaks is the president of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s not just a prophet, seer, and revelator in the doctrine of the church. He is THE prophet. Do I sustain him? 

I think I do. 

Last night I lit the candle next to my bed and offered a prayer for President Oaks (I’ve gotten a bit more mystical than my western sensibilities previously allowed for). I pray that President Oaks will feel comforted in this time of transition. I pray that he will feel confident in his new position and not overwhelmed. I pray he will receive revelation on behalf of the church and on behalf of the world. I pray he will feel the weight of the keys in his hands and he will know how to use them. I do not pray that he will suddenly become fully affirming of LGBTQ lives, apologize publically for all the times the church has been wrong, and pay reparations for the harms of the past and present. Instead, I pray for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change–the slow progress of truth, line upon line, precept upon precept, the children of God we have already lost because change is never fast enough in human hands. I pray for the courage to change what I can change, to help people feel welcome, loved, cherished by the Lord Jesus Christ whose name I hold clumsily, sometimes doubtfully, in my heart. And I pray for the wisdom to know the difference. 

And I commit to sustain president Oaks. I will accept callings and priesthood responsibilities issued, ultimately, through the keys he holds. I will hear him out–even when I’m not inclined to accept his most persistent declarations. I can’t commit to accept each of his teachings, as if when the prophet speaks the debate is over. I don’t have faith that modern revelation is a word-for-word dictation of the word of God. On the contrary, it is my testimony that we all see through a glass darkly–even seers and revelators. I will try my best not to point fingers at others who are not living up to Oaks’s council, but rather to ask, after every conference address, “Lord, is it I?” And I actually think this final thought is a form of sustaining too: I will give President Oaks the grace to be wrong when he’s wrong. I won’t walk away from the church and all its blessings because its prophet is imperfect.