Pants Perdicament

I think most of us have heard about the "Wear Pants to Church Day," and I have been reading a lot of different blogs on the subject, for and against.  For anyone who is doing the same there is a great episode on the Mormon Channel where former Relief Society President Julie B. Beck is interviewed about women's spiritual gifts and connection to the Priesthood.  If you don't have time to listen, here are some excerpts from the transcript.

"The priesthood is the power of God. It is God’s power and that is the power by which He created the worlds, it is the power by which He governs things, it is the power by which He helps us, so it is His power, and in His plan, He has given certain responsibilities to men and to women to utilize that power He has made available to bless His children. Some of that power comes to us through the gifts and blessings of the priesthood that come to us personally as gifts. Some of that power comes to us through ordinances. For instance, when we are baptized and given the gift of the Holy Ghost, everybody gets that power if they’re worthy and that is not gender-specific. That is God’s power speaking to us through the power of revelation that He can give us through the Holy Ghost, that there are authorizations to perform ordinances. Sometimes we say, well, the men have it and the women don’t. I hear that argument a lot. That isn’t even the right question. The question we should be having in our lives is, how can I access every ordinance that’s available to me to walk back to my Heavenly Father? How can I access the gifts and the blessings He has made available to every one of His children? And those blessings and ordinances are not gender-specific, those saving ordinances that will exalt us. Now men haven’t been given the assignment to hold in trust the priesthood. To really understand this, you’d have to do a study of the family of Abraham and go all the way back to Adam and why did the Lord give Adam the priesthood to hold in trust? It was so that every child of Adam’s family would have access to the ordinances that would save them. That was Adam’s assignment, to hold in trust that authority to perform those ordinances to bless his family. Now Eve was his sealed wife. That was a priesthood ordinance that sealed them so the power of that ordinance was effective in her life. She also had assignments in her family to teach her children, to nurture her children, to create the life of that child, and by whose power does that happen? That is God’s power. Women don’t need to be ordained to an office to perform that and oftentimes I think they are confused about that. The Lord can bless us in many, many ways through the gifts of the priesthood, through the blessings of the priesthood and through those privileges that come to us if we are worthy to receive an ordinance and then value that ordinance enough to have it effective in our life." - Sister Julie B. Beck

Question: "We live in an environment that really thrives on asking these polarizing questions and pulling that discussion to the extremes. What would you say to young women who are thinking about these and getting a lot of feedback from this environment and asking a lot of these questions?"

Sister Beck's answer:
"This is Satan’s way of confusing all of us so that the men don’t understand what they have and value it and the women don’t understand what they have and value it and that neither values what the other has. If we can get into a polarizing combative frame of mind, then neither of us values really what the Lord has blessed us with in His priesthood. --> We live in an environment that really thrives on asking these polarizing questions and pulling that discussion to the extremes. What would you say to young women who are thinking about these and getting a lot of feedback from this environment and asking a lot of these questions?" - Sister Julie B. Beck 

"A lot of—in our world, women are saying, I want the power. And the Lord has the power. He has given all His children, male and female, different ways to qualify for His power operating in their lives and so the question we should all be asking is, how can I have the Lord’s power and influence in my life in the most effective ways?" - Sister Julie B. Beck   

"I would hope that the conversations about the priesthood begin to take on less of the conversation of competitiveness of who has what and what don’t I have and start to be asking, become the questions that help us understand through the Lord and His revelatory power to us, what do I have? What do I need to prepare for and receive? How can I more fully be in possession of the privileges and blessings and gifts of the priesthood that have been promised to me? And Heavenly Father doesn’t shortchange a single child of His in those blessings. That’s my testimony."
- Sister Julie B. Beck

"I know that Heavenly Father loves His children. He desires to bless them. And He has provided His priesthood power and authority on the earth in a very orderly, sweet way to lift them and carry them through this mortal experience." - Sister Julie B. Beck