Working as Designed?

I'm staying up to write this late at night because I know a lot of people are stunned and confused about what the reversal on The Policy means for them as members of the Church. They want to know how to navigate this space where the ones chosen to lead them are capable of making mistakes. Big mistakes at that.

First let's talk about this notion of "the prophet will never lead you astray." That makes it sound like presidents of the Church are capable of perfection. Surprise: They're not. All we're promised is that he knows the way to salvation and exaltation: From Point A to Point Z, the ordinances in between, and should warn us of dangers along the way. We are not to expect hand-holding for the entire journey, nor blindly accept each and every direction given to us (see also).

But I get it, having The Policy rescinded is on the one hand a huge relief; on the other hand it casts a lot of doubt on the trustworthiness of what's coming from the pulpit. I too was feeling the weight of this today. I said a little prayer asking to understand this conundrum and shortly after that my phone rang.

There's a problem with the computer interface my colleague and I designed. He called to tell me what the tech support staff had to say about that.

"They said it was 'working as designed.'"

Ah, the ol' "working as designed." This is a common refrain from people who build computer programs and subsequently get feedback saying their products are broken in some way. It's a nice way of saying, "I did everything right, it was YOUR instructions that were flawed." So my buddy and I checked our work, looked at how that translated to the computer program, and we found that the error was actually on their end. It was a problem with the build.

I felt like my prayer for understanding had been answered.

Working as Designed and Working as Built is an age-old problem that best represents modern revelation. God is perfect. He is the master architect. The Church Christ established and restored was designed by Him to bring imperfect people back to their heavenly home. When that master design is built up and run by error-prone mortals we get things like The Policy.

There will be many who tell you that this is it, they can't go on being a member of the Church because The Policy and its reversal is a "sign" that our religion isn't "true." I'd say that this is a sign we need to trust God before men, and remain steadfast about waiting for true messages from the appropriate messengers.

I hope and pray that as General Conference is upon us we seek for understanding, patience, hope, and most especially the gift of discernment.