What is the Mormon Third Eye General
Conference Spiritual Sound Bite Study? Let’s start from the beginning.
General Conference is two weekends
every year where the Lord instructs his children through his servants, the
General Authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A sound
bite is a “short pithy sentence or striking remark.” So what is a spiritual
sound bite? Mormon Third Eye research reveals that there are memorable phrases,
sentences, or groups of sentences that are delivered over the pulpit with such
spiritual impact that they end up on Instagram, Facebook, or in sacrament
meeting talks and priesthood lessons. They are written on the walls of our
homes, the pages of our journals, or the tablets of our hearts. These are
spiritual sound bites, and General Conference talks are loaded with them.
.
The Mormon Third Eye General
Conference Spiritual Sound Bite Study views the content of General Conference
addresses from a new, unique, and refreshing angle. Our volunteer intern staff consisting of me
and no one else analyzed the content of each talk in excruciatingly deep detail
to identify embedded spiritual sound bites that had the potential of inspiring
readers and listeners over and over and over again to work harder, believe more
deeply, or repent more sincerely. The
study determines, by word count, the percentage of a given General Authority’s
talk delivered via insanely spiritual sound bites. The results are as follows:
Speaker SSR
(Spiritual Sound Bite Ratio)
First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve
- Uchtdorf2 50%
- Christofferson 43%
- Oaks 34%
- Holland 33%
- Uchtdorf 26%
- Nelson 23%
- Eyring 22%
- Bednar 20%
- Monson2 19%
- Cook 16%
- Hales 16%
- Ballard 15%
- Anderson 15%
- Packer 14%
- Monson3 12%
- Scott 12%
- Monson 11%
- Perry 10%
- Eyring2 9%
General
Authorities
- McConkie 26%
- Clausse 19%
- Davies 19%
- Oscarson 15%
- Funk 12%
- Vinson 12%
- Dyches 11%
- Stephens 8%
- Soares 8%
- Ochoa 7%
- Dube 5%
- Hamilton 5%
- Valenzuela 3%
- Neilson 3%
Scientific analysis of the results
reveal some interesting trends. For example, apostles and prophets (21%) are
almost twice as inspirational as members of the Quorum of the Seventies and
other general officers (11%). This makes sense; certainly apostles and
prophets, by virtue of their callings as special witnesses of Jesus Christ, are
more likely to have more inspiration to share.
The most contradictory trend,
however, concerns the SSR of native vs. acquired English speakers. Linguistically, one could assume that
acquired English speakers would produce a much lower SSR than native speakers;
however, Elder Uchtdorf breaks the mold.
The composite SSR for all acquired English speakers, minus Uchtdorf, is
a paltry 10%; Elder Uchtdorf, however, possesses
the highest composite SSR of any speaker, regardless of nationality, coming in at a whopping 36%. Anecdotally, his
SSR completely overwhelms President Monson’s composite SSR of only 14%.
Fortunately, man’s ways are not
God’s ways, and we have an inspired prophet who successfully inspires members
of the church to repent and renovate their lives simply by the example of his
actions and the power of his promises, two qualities that will always escape
scientific scrutiny. Statistical analysis and empirical observation will never
be able to quantify the depth of a testimony and its ability to move us to
closer to our Savior. Only our free agency can do that.
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