This semester I am taking a writing class to progress to my degree in information technology. In this class we had to write a paper to compare two talks that we given by Elder David A. Bednar, who is a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or otherwise known as the Mormons. These talks were given on the topic of new media. I have included my paper below.
- The IT Dude
Comparing
Two Talks
In
this paper I will be Comparing and contrasting two wonderful talks that were
given by Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The first
was given in May of 2009 and is titled “Things as They Really Are”. The second
was given in August on 2014 and is titled “To Sweep the Earth as with a Flood”.
The first was addressed at a Church Educational System fireside at Brigham
Young University-Idaho. This means that the audience would have been relatively
young, in their mid-twenties. The second was given during Education week at
Brigham Young University in Provo, meaning that the audience in attendance
would have most likely been older in age than the audience of the first.
Now
that we have identified the settings and designated audience of these two talks
By Elder Bednar I will describe the topics, similarities, and differences of
them. Both talks were given on the topic of modern technologies,
entertainments, social media and how we, as Latter Day Saints, should utilize
our time while using them. As well as what we should be aware of and ultimately
avoid all together. As I was reading these talks the main point that stood out
to me over all the rest was how the talk “Things as They Really Are” seemed to
resemble Elder Bednar’s apostolic calling as a watchman on a tower giving
warning words to those of us below. An example of this in his talk I would be
when he said the following speech on virtual reality: “If the adversary cannot entice us to misuse our physical
bodies, then one of his most potent tactics is to beguile you and me as
embodied spirits to disconnect gradually and physically from things as they
really are.” In His Second talk “To Sweep the Earth as with a Flood” Elder
Bednar speaks more on things that we should do when we use social media versus
things we shouldn't as he did in the first. Similarly an example of this in his
later talk would be when he quoted Elder L. Tom Perry saying: “…We invite the
young and the old, the adults, the young adults, the youth, and the children
everywhere to join with us in this exciting new work by becoming Facebook
friends with the missionaries in your area on your own computers and sharing
their gospel messages online and by becoming involved in missionary work
yourselves.”
Finally
I would like to state that although both of these talks were given at different
times, to different audiences, and with different focus points; I felt that
they were not so different. Both of these talks were based on similar, if not
the same, topics: social media. Both addresses were given to inform the members
of the church of the positive and negative uses of social media as both talks mention
positive and negative individually. I feel that the reasons for the opposing
focuses between the first and the second were due to the timing and the
intended audiences.
