Elder Oaks Priesthood Talk

So, while listening to/watching this talk, I was getting pretty excited. When he said that women are not ordained to offices of the priesthood, I turned to my husband and shouted "offices!" He had no idea what I was talking about and I'm sure felt set upon, but here is how I understood it:

The church does not currently have the keys to all types of priesthood power/authority. They have not all been restored yet. Under the keys which we currently hold, women are endowed in the temple with priesthood power.(Elder Ballard)  They are given priesthood authority, under the direction of the priesthood holders, to carry out certain tasks and duties in the church. They are not ordained to offices in the priesthoods which we currently have. All of this was very validating to me to have so publicly affirmed.

The highest offices of the priesthood that are available are king and queen, priest and priestess. We are anointed to these offices in the temple, but not ordained to them in this life, because the keys to the exercise of these priesthood offices are not part of the mortal experience. 

The important implication of all of this to me was that while women may not be ordained to the offices in the priesthood which are available in mortality, they (endowed women) certainly have priesthood power and authority in this life and I felt that his words implied that there are keys to priesthoods that are only to be exercised in the next life, in which there are offices available to be held by women.

He then went on to talk about the Family Proclamation. I'm just gonna go ahead and state that for a long time, I just felt that the idea that husbands preside in the home was sexist human error. And depending on how one interprets it, I still believe that. However, I do believe there is room for interpretation in a priesthood context.

There's a lot of "returning and reporting" in priesthood structure. If the family is the unit of structure in the kingdom of God, it must be organized by His power, which is by definition, priesthood. So I suppose it could be possible that a husband, holding the organizational and structural priesthoods which we see in this life, is held accountable for that aspect of his family unit. His wife, as his counselor, has equal voice and standing, just as Presidents Eyring and Uchtdorf are in no way inferior to President Monson, even though he nominally presides over them. This presiding really just boils down to accountability and responsibility. Similarly, in a presidency, as in a godlike marriage, decisions are made only unanimously, with perfect unity of thought and mind and only after all parties have fully expressed their opinions.

All of that being said, do I like how it sounds when we say husbands preside over their families? No. On the surface, it sounds very sexist. There are a lot of things like that in the temple as well, that at face value seem to be very out of balance with the idea of a just and loving God. I wish these things would be worded differently and clarified. I wish the pain and confusion that come from the way these things are phrased would be validated instead of looked down upon and judged.

My last comment on Elder Oaks talk would have to be that the social media response has been extremely disappointing and unchristlike. I was very excited about this talk and its implications when I first saw it, but most of the commentary I've seen about it has been along the lines of, "See! You stupid feminists! So there! Ha! Told you! Just shut up already!"

I find it heartbreaking that members of the church would use the words of the prophet to take people who are already in pain down another notch, especially since most of those people are in a position of privilege and authority over women. All I can say to men who make those kinds of comments is amen to the priesthood which they hold.

Addendum:
I thought it was fascinating that Elder Oaks specifically said that one of the Keys of Priesthood which has not yet been restored is that of creation. He later stated that women are involved in the creation of bodies of humankind. I felt that this could imply a premortal ordination of women to offices within this priesthood of creation. Perhaps Mother is an office under the priesthood of creators.

Another amazing thing is the public statement that all members of the church who are called and set apart into any calling in the church have priesthood authority in that calling. I don't think that has ever been so clearly stated before.