Prophetic Imperfection

There's a group of LDS bloggers called The Practical Dreamers, and they share their comments and questions about our Come, Follow Me lessons. This week, they shared some thoughts, including a comment on something they called "Prophetic Imperfection." The idea of prophetic imperfection is that, even though prophets are called of God and do great and good things, they're still human, and they still have imperfections.

Joseph Smith wasn't perfect when he allowed Martin Harris to borrow and lose the 116 pages. Jonah wasn't perfect when he rejected the call to preach to Nineveh and ended up inside a whale. Aaron wasn't perfect when he made a golden calf for the children of Israel to worship. And Captain Moroni wasn't perfect when he condemned Pahoran for something that was completely outside of Pahoran's control. Those good, prophetic men were not perfect. And neither are we.

But that's okay. The prophets are and were living proof that we don't have to be perfect, at least, not yet. We don't have to be perfect to still be good people, and we don't have to be perfect to do good and important things. Those prophets all did things that were very good and very important, even though they also did some things that weren't so good. And that, hopefully, describes just about all of us. 

We all do things that aren't so good. My hope is that we do plenty of things that are so good as well. We are not perfect, just as the prophets aren't and weren't. My hope is that, even though we are likewise imperfect, we are also likewise good.