Every day, thousands of Americans plug their desired destinations into their cars’ Global Positioning System (GPS), and then dutifully follow the commands of a disembodied voice that resembles a cross between your third-grade teacher and your mom.
And they think nothing of it. They do as they’re told. Further, not one of them phones the team in the Pentagon that developed the device and demands to be persuaded why he should trust it.
What blind followers.
Here’s the tasty irony. In a national public opinion survey my firm conducted last year, 45% of the respondents, many of whom undoubtedly have GPS devices, said that the term “blind followers” describes Mormons. And for good measure, about two in five tossed in “narrow minded” and “brainwashed by their leaders” as other apt descriptors of us.
There you have it. We Mormons are an unthinking lot, brainwashed and blinded by our leaders and led around like robots.
Or, should we say, like people following GPS instructions?
What those 45% don’t realize is that we Mormons used the same process in deciding to follow prophets as GPS-owners did with their system: we conducted a test.
We experimented to see if the direction and counsel from prophets “worked.” We tested the system to see if we would successfully arrive at a chosen destination – happiness, knowledge, insights, well-being, peace of mind, wisdom, etc., not to mention the goals that lie beyond the veil – by following the counsels of prophets who, we believe, receive direct revelation from God.
Memo to name callers: the prophet system works. I can trust the counsel of prophets in the same way I can trust a GPS device because I have proven to my satisfaction that both systems work. And we Mormons renew and refresh our trust in this special system each time we choose to follow the counsel of prophets.
In fact, I can trust the prophet system more than the man-made system because it is more accurate and useful in its sphere than the geographic system is in its. The latter gives directions from Point A to Point B with no consideration for whether the trip leads through unsafe neighborhoods, while the prophet system will never send us on dangerous paths unless it’s necessary for our test on earth.
Simple, isn’t it? One system has us following a disembodied, fallible voice giving geographic directions, and the other has us following life-fulfilling counsel confirmed by a still, small – and perfect – voice.
Yes, there will be those who will continue to call us blind followers, and they have that prerogative. But before they do, I only wish they would be willing to test this second GPS – God’s Prophet System.
Gary Lawrence is a California-based pollster and the author of “How Americans View Mormonism; Seven Steps to Improve Our Image” available at howamericansviewmormonism.com.