(The Church used to do this: check out O.C. Tanner’s “Christ’s Ideals for Living”.)

For me, studying beforehand can add to the frustration.

+++

I’m all for sticking to the manual. There really is a ton you can do without going outside of its bounds. But honestly the real problem are just people ill equipped to teach these things. And the rule of sticking to the manual is because of those who really go off the deep end.

The result? Each lesson was her “warm fuzzies” about how great it is to have the True Gospel. Fried froth, in other words. She would just tell “heartwarming” stories and couplets.

Teach Charity, compassion, patience, humility, longsuffering, &c. Even that would be better. We have these guides, because people without experience will have at least something to start from. And people like I described will have some guideline to follow instead of talking of the same stuff over and over and over. Not five different rotating subjects. Just one.

What it’s saying — and from what I know from other Church sources about teaching — there are tons of people, who actually need some pre-digesting. We do not all have 20 hours a week to put into SS or RS/EQ lessons.

But if we do have those 20 hours, we would do well to prepare to teach the gospel instead of selling Amway or something. Or getting all carried about some Bible scholar’s book about who and where actually wrote the Torah books. It may be interesting to someone, who knows the scriptures well enough to speculate on stuff like that. But it doesn’t uplift someone, who is struggling. Especially it isn’t helpful to speculate very far with people, whose grasp of scriptures is very poor.

(And those are real-life examples of those lessons that I have experienced.)

http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/58411/Use-proper-sources.html

TYD

I have always thought that, as long as I hedge my ideas by saying that “this is just my personal interpretation” or something to the effect, I can share my “out there” ideas.

That worked for me as a new convert 30 years ago, and it still seems to work. And yes, people have walked out of Sunday School classes because of something I have said, but I don’t mind. I’ve never tried to tell them they’re wrong, just that I think there are other ways of interpreting it.

So, in a word, yes, there is a tendency to take the route of least resistance. But it’s not like it’s dictated to us by anything that is said by GA’s. If anybody, it’s the “middle management” that want to have as few hassles as possible, and therefore encourage everyone to stay well within the boundaries they perceive.

And, anyhow, it is also important to remember that the gospel really is not rocket science in that the principles to be learned are fairly simple. I have no wish to have those discussions about Adam’s navel in SS. Let’s save them in the HPG, where I can say what I think.

All in all, I think that we would do well to make sure the GD teachers understand, that we are not distributing information. If anybody comes away from SS with a new resolve to live in such a way as to be able to have a personal relationship with the Savior, it’s total success for that Sunday.

:-) To abuse a Spinal Tap quote: That’s okay, my sarcasm meter goes up to eleven.

In all seriousness, when I have an insight, I love to participate. The trouble is that frequently the lesson (like the one mentioned in # 106) does not move into territory that would make my thoughts (meager as they are) germane to the discussion. Indeed, sometimes it seems like Gospel Doctrine lessons have an almost preternatural ability to steer clear of those portions of the text that I feel are enlightening. It’s probably––in part––just a taste issue. However, I also suspect it has something to do with our frequently faulty approach to the scriptures in general (as John has pointed out).

In his review of an LDS work of scriptural commentary, Louis Midgley wrote:

The tendency is to divert attention away from the message and meaning in the text under consideration, and back towards what we already know. Such efforts do not enhance our understanding; they tend to make the very teachings they celebrate seem merely sentimental and insubstantial. Such endeavors also tend to close the door on the untapped possibilities within the scriptures. Our tendency is to rely upon presumably authoritative statements on matters that may seem urgent to us, but which may not have been of concern to those responsible for providing us with the [text].
…
They seem to approach the text … already knowing, from sources exterior to the text, both the questions and the answers. Hence there are really no new insights, no discoveries on the teachings found in the text, that are not already accessible from sources already familiar to the Saints.

That really sums it up. For the most part, we go into GD lessons, already knowing the approved questions and their acceptable answers. That’s why lessons tend to fall flat. However, there are always happy exceptions to that tendency, and perhaps today’s lesson will be one… I hope.