He Said/She Said

She Said: Gradations of Sin

2009-10-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

OK, I take your point, and I guess I agree that there are no victimless sins. For one, if ransom or substitution atonement theory holds any water, Christ at least had to suffer for my sins, even when they are as benign as staying up late. And secondly, I guess if I am in a bad mood due to my lack of sleep, others must suffer as well. But perhaps I can use this opportunity to talk about gradation of sins.

Calvin argued that all sin is mortal in the sense that it rightly deserves death. Since God commands perfect obedience to the whole law, the slightest misdeed puts us in opposition, and requires the atonement of Christ in order to be overcome. This is the teaching that we hear so often in the Mormon Church, and what, I think, influences Dr. B.'s discomfort in his previous post.

Most rational thinkers, however, realize that some sins are more destructive than others. In the Dante's The Divine Comedy a variety of sinners representing a gradation of sins and punishments are presented as Dante and the spirit of his guide, the classic poet Virgil, travel through the nine circles of Hell. The progression of sins revealed in the Inferno range from the least to the greatest. The lesser sins, which are really sins of omission rather than commission, belong to those spirits who inhabit Limbo, the first circle of Hell. The levels descend with the seriousness of the sin. Self -indulgent sins come next, followed by malicious sins.

The Roman Catholic church divides sin into the categories "venial" (lesser sins that do not concern a grave matter or are committed without full understanding), and "mortal" (which, unless confessed and absolved condemn a person's soul to Hell after death). Protestantism rejects the distinction between mortal and venial sin but affirms the gradation of sin. Levels of sin are also acknowledged in the Judaic tradition and in Islam. The very fact that we believe in degrees of glory in the afterlife should be an indication that Latter-day saint theology also involves the gradation of sin.

But we don't talk very much about this in the Mormon Church. In fact, many of our youth (and even adults) get the idea that a sin is a sin; and that is why you get some who, following a sip of coffee or an alcoholic beverage, think they are going to hell anyway, so why bother trying to keep any of the other commandments.

According to Rabbeinu Yona in the Jewish tradition, it is important to distinguish between gradations of sin for a number of reasons. First, this is necessary in order that the requisite repentance be commensurate with the misdeed. In Mormon terms, since we must confess the sin of adultery to a bishop, need we do the same when we gossip or get a speeding ticket? Second, determining relative importance of different sins is required so that the sense of guilt and shame be of the proper dimensions. How much pain and anguish need we suffer over staying up late at night when there are other, more important issues which might better merit our attention?

He Said: Situational Religion in Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy

2009-09-05T10:16:00.006-04:00

Today I was talking to a relative who was visiting some friends for the Labor Day weekend. She told me that her LDS friends were planning a big Barbecue for her tomorrow on Sunday where many people she knew from an LDS support group were coming with their families. I didn't say anything to her because she would have taken it as unapproving but in my mind flashed the thought your friends aren't honoring the Sabbath Day and keeping it holy. It is always a knee jerk reaction that I have since joining the LDS Church. I have a sense of guilt whenever a questionable activity is engaged in from partying to watching sports to going to concerts etc.

I got to thinking about the practice and find that the concept of keeping the Sabbath Day holy is not as so cut and dry as leaders and speakers in church claim. In fact I believe it is a situational practice that has to be guided by a person's sense of right or wrong. If we were to examine the situation of my relative we would see that her friends are trying to do a kind deed to help her feel better about her life. She is in a marriage that she considers difficult with a husband she considers to be extreme and takes vacations apart from him to get some type of emotional and intellectual fulfilment with people of like minds. The only reason for doing it on Sunday that I could come up with is that since many of them are professional people they couldn't do it on Saturday since they have their yard work to do and since she is traveling home on Monday evening they didn't want to have it and be rushed. In their minds they probably feel that visiting with family and friends is an acceptable Sunday activity.

LDS general authorities in the name of religion stay in hotels, fly on airplanes, eat at restaurants, and travel in rent a cars. Frankly I don't have a problem since even Christ picked an ear of corn on the Sabbath to demonstrate you need to use your good sense on the matter. LDS leaders justify their practice on the basis of their minimizing their time away from family and to be to work on Monday at the Church Office Building. No matter how justified it sends a mixed signal to me as a member. When I travel on Sunday which I try to avoid I feel justified that my ox is in the mire and it is just necessary. Some people find a church in a strange town but I suspect more don't than do.

Although I understand their logic there is a part of me that feels a sense of guilt in having picnics or parties on the Sabbath. When I was a non-Mormon I lived a non-Sabbath worshipping type of life. I have always had difficulty reconciling whether having parties on Sunday was really breaking the Sabbath. Even the Jews socialize on their Sabbath. My wife and I started on Monday taking a free Biblical Hebrew reading class and the head of the College of Charleston's Jewish Studies Center invited us all Saturday for a free mid-morning brunch where a large repast would be shared after Synagogue.

Being a convert to the Church my family never honored the Sabbath Day nor did my wife's family in the manner of what we are taught in the LDS Church. My family had a dual lifestyle in that for the first half of my childhood I went to church at least once a week. For the first twelve years my parents who went to church about six times a year would make sure all of us children went every week. My mom would get out of bed long enough to make sure we were up getting ready and told us to hit the road. We went to the ten o'clock mass in the Catholic Church. After church our father and mother would take us on occasion out to a local restaurant or we would go get some Italian bread and have a lunch of home-made ravioli or pasta followed by watching baseball or football or an old movie. In the evening we would go to a friend's bar every other week where my father would sit at the bar talking to his friend and my mother and us would go in the back and socialize with his wife and have pizzaburgers. We would play in the back yard with ourselves or his grandchildren until it was dark. Every now and then we could go up front and play the pinball machine that would pay out dimes if we win and have a bag of potato chips, a Peter Paul Mounds or Almond Joy and a glass of Squirt. Around eight o'clock there would be a friendly game for the adults of illegal poker where they played for dimes and we children would watch television. Somewhere between ten and midnight we would go home with our parents carrying us to the car.

On the alternating week we would go twenty miles away to our grandparents home. Our father was not welcome since he was an alcoholic and had gotten in to a few physical fights with our mother. Her parents didn't welcome him since they insisted he change and encouraged my mother to leave him. She loved him and put up with his behavior. We also had large family gatherings like my wife's friends. We would have horseshoe pitching, croquet, board games, sack races to name a few things for kids. The adults stood around or sat at picnic tables and talked for hours about religion but mostly their lives. With eleven children and progeny there were as many as sixty people. My grandmother made her fried chicken with potatoes and other vegetables. Some weeks we only went in the evening when my father would go to visit some friends that ran a restaurant and he always bought us hot fresh piping donuts. I felt sorry for him that he was unwelcome and never understood how he would have to spend five or six hours waiting to take us home in a different town than his home. Our grandmother didn't usually go to an organized church but watched Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, and Kathryn Kuhlman on television. We would listen to the scriptures on her phonograph. After the religion programs we would watch wrestling and Bonanza or the Texaco Theatre with Bob Hope.

My wife's father a Protestant minister would spend the morning in to the early afternoon in church activities. Occasionally the family would go to brunch or out to a restaurant. Once their religious services were over that was the end of the Sabbath Day.

When I joined the church as a missionary and later at BYU I was encouraged to more strictly adhere to keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Some of the activities that I engaged in were scripture reading, attending church and firesides, writing in my journal, reading LDS religious books, home teaching, and taking an occasional nap. When I married my wife she was even more strict having joined the church shortly before graduating from a religious university. She was a Baptist that didn't believe in card playing nor frivolous activities. She considered a few of my activities like watching tv unacceptable Sabbath Day activities. Most of my married life I have had ups and downs when it comes to reading books or watching television on Sunday.

In Faith Precedes the Miracle Spencer W. Kimball says on one hand:

To hunt and fish on the Lord's day is not keeping it holy. To plant or cultivate or harvest crops on the Sabbath is not keeping holy the Lord's day. To go into the canyons for picnics, to attend games or rodeos or races or shows or other amusements on that day is not to keep it in holy remembrance.

Strange as it may seem, some Latter-day Saints, faithful in all other respects, justify themselves in missing their church meetings on occasion for recreational purposes, feeling that the best fishing will be missed if one is not on the stream on opening day or that the vacation will not be long enough if one does not set off on Sunday or that one will miss a movie he wanted to see if he does not go on the Sabbath. And in their breach of the Sabbath they often take their families with them.

And on the other hand:

The Sabbath is not a day for indolent lounging about the house or puttering around in the garden, but is a day for consistent attendance at meetings for the worship of the Lord, drinking at the fountain of knowledge and instruction, enjoying the family, and finding uplift in music and song.

It is a day for reading the scriptures, visiting the sick, visiting relatives and friends, doing home teaching, working on genealogy records, taking a nap, writing letters to missionaries and servicemen or relatives, preparation for the following week's church lessons, games with the small children, fasting for a purpose, writing devotional poetry, and other worthwhile activities of great variety.

Gordon B. Hinckley said:

The Lord wrote concerning the sanctity of the Sabbath when His finger touched the tablets of stone on Sinai: Keep the Sabbath day holy. And that commandment has been reiterated in modern times as set forth in the fifty-ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants. Let us be a Sabbath-keeping people. Now I do not want to be prudish. I do not want you to lock your children in the house and read the Bible all afternoon to them. Be wise. Be careful. But make that day a day when you can sit down with your families and talk about sacred and good things. "Keep the Sabbath holy," saith the Lord to all people and particularly to this people. (Smithfield/Logan Utah Regional Conference, priesthood leadership session, April 20, 1996.)

Ezra Taft Benson gave a few suggestion on what to do on the Sabbath:

a. Activities that contribute to greater spirituality.

b. Essential Church meetings in the house of prayer.

c. Acquisition of spiritual knowledge-reading the scriptures, Church history and biographies, and the inspired words of the Brethren.

d. Resting physically, getting acquainted with family, relating scriptural stories to children, bearing testimony, building family unity.

e. Visiting the sick and aged shut-ins.

f. Singing the songs of Zion and listening to inspiring music.

g. Paying devotions to the Most High-prayer, personal and family; fasting, administrations, father's blessings.

h. Preparing food with singleness of heart-simple meals prepared largely on Saturday.

I think there is plenty of leeway in keeping the Sabbath day holy. Visiting with friends seems to be one that is situational. I am not sure just what really constitutes keeping the sabbath day holy once church is over. Many Latter-day Saints like to knock off home and visiting teaching as an acceptable practice. I think since there are conflicting things that makes keeping the Sabbath Day holy it is rather confusing and a situational matter.

Endlessly: She Said

2009-09-02T09:23:00.001-04:00

He Said: Suicide

2009-08-14T09:52:00.008-04:00

I read a very shocking piece in Time Magazine piece last week by Nancy Gibbs entitled Going Too Far with Assisted Suicide? Nancy Gibbs questioned a growing liberal practice in Switzerland where doctors will assist in the suicide of a person in death on demand saying that it is a person's right to decide the timing of their own death. Gibbs said a prominent British man who had no terminal condition wanted to join his wife who was suffering with cancer in to the next life because he loved her so much and couldn't live without her.

The story of Sir Edward's "death pact" was at first sight an irresistible love story. His wife Joan, 74, a former ballerina, had a diagnosis of terminal liver and pancreatic cancer; because assisted suicide is illegal in Britain, they traveled to a Zurich clinic, where, for a fee of about $7,000 per patient, the group Dignitas arranges for death by barbiturate. "They drank a small quantity of clear liquid and then lay down on the beds next to each other," their son Caractacus said. They fell asleep and died within minutes, he reported, calling it a "very civilized" final act.
Civilized, in this case, is a relative term...

The problem is that Sir Edward, while in failing health at age 85, was not dying. His eyesight was nearly gone, his hearing was weak, and he faced the prospect of life without his soulmate. But sorrow is not grounds for a doctor to assist in a suicide in most places that allow it. Nor is despair. The Netherlands permits euthanasia for those suffering intolerable pain; Oregon requires two doctors to confirm that the patient has less than six months to live.
Some euthanasia activists, including Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli, believe in death on demand. "If you accept the idea of personal autonomy," he argues, "you can't make conditions that only terminally ill people should have this right." Autonomy and dignity are precious values; the phrase sanctity of life can sound sterile and pious in the face of profound pain and suffering. But Minelli is arguing for much more: that autonomy is an overriding right. This view rejects the idea that society might ever value my life more than I do or derive a larger benefit from treating every life as precious, to the point of protecting me from myself.

I had heard of a few older people feeling that way and even more who gave up the will to live and die shortly after a spouse. But this is the first time in the last couple of decades I ever heard of any openly offing themselves because of the loss of a spouse through assisted suicide. There have probably been a few who secretly committed suicide similarly but it wasn't so openly dicussed as though it is the right of any person to just go and be assisted in drinking poison or other instrument of death.

I went to the Handbook of Instructions and thought that surely the LDS Church leaders must condemn suicide in any form since taking one's life would probably be viewed as murder. I was wrong I didn't find one single mention in the 2006 edition not even a discussion under baptisms for the dead about people who have killed themselves. I think the assisted suicide angle merits at least a mention.

This got me thinking so I went to LDS.Org and did a search on suicide in general. To my surprise this is what I discovered was the policy from the Answers to Questions topic suicide :

Although it is wrong to take one's own life, a person who commits suicide may not be responsible for his or her acts. Only God can judge such a matter. Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has said:

"Obviously, we do not know the full circumstances surrounding every suicide. Only the Lord knows all the details, and he it is who will judge our actions here on earth.
"When he does judge us, I feel he will take all things into consideration: our genetic and chemical makeup, our mental state, our intellectual capacity, the teachings we have received, the traditions of our fathers, our health, and so forth" ("Suicide: Some Things We Know, and Some We Do Not," Ensign, Oct. 1987, 8).

I don't think the leaders of the church are by any means supporting suicide they are just saying we shouldn't judge others who do because no one understands what lead to the suicide.

I remember many years ago I read Gary Bergera's Brigham Young University: A House of Faith which tells of the suicide of George Brimhall, who was president of BYU from 1904 until 1921. Brimhall was in a depressed state of mind for many years suffering from chest and adominal pains and finally killed himself with a hunting rifle.

Bergera writes:

A devout Mormon, Brimhall had two wives and fourteen children, although his second wife, Flora Robertson, a former student, lived in seclusion in Spanish Fork after their marriage. Brimhall was afflicted with intense chest and abdominal pain throughout his life, but only his closest associates were aware of the sometimes intense discomfort. Eleven years following his release as president, when the pain had become unbearable, he commited suicide with a hunting rifle. "He did it the hard way, but bless him--he was courageous," commented one colleague following Brimhall's death (Hansen).

I did some further research and read that he used his big toe to pull the trigger. At his funeral one of the general authorities said that we shouldn't judge George Brimhall because only the Lord knew his state of mind and that the Lord would consider Brimhall's life in totality at the judgment bar.

Recently I have been grappling with some serious back pain which rendered me unable to even sit for an extended period of time without having dozens of back spasms which were intense and occurred every time I even moved whether sitting, lying or standing.

I used to think that anyone that wanted to die including terminally ill people didn't have much strength of character and needed to endure to the end. I gained a more empathic feeling and better understanding of their pain when I was in extreme pain. There were a couple times during my ordeal when I couldn't stand the pain and thought who would want to live out their lives with such excruciating agony and maybe death wasn't such a bad option. Having been diagnosed with degenerative arthritis I realize that the quality of my life will diminish over the next twenty to thirty years as my vertebrates fuse together.

Luckily I was able through the use of electrical stimulation to get the muscles in my back to relax and now the pain is bearable although I have a couple of tender spots that will never go away. I told my doctor who is also LDS and a bishop about my recent lapse in feeling. I would never consider it because I saw my father die an agonizing death when they pulled the plug. I learned that we as humans will fight to the end for life.

The doctor said he has a few patients that feel the same way but suicide should never be an option. That is what he is there for to help them improve the quality of their lives and that there were many options short of killing yourself. I told him I personally I would never kill myself but I can now understand better why some would want to end their pain and lives when the quality of their lives was so miserable. It is a sobering thought to consider the ethical and moral implications of suicide and particularly assisted suicide.

He Said: On Turning 50

2009-08-04T11:57:00.004-04:00

Anthony Stewart Head

BiV for the past ten years has been fighting a losing battle with age. I discovered a few years back that in her mind she thought she was still 18. Now as a decade has moved on she has moved up to 29. Twenty-nine is a good age since sex experts maintain that women are at their sexual prime from middle to late 20s. Ten years ago I would have been able to handle such perkiness but now that I have passed fifty my mind and body are pretty close to being the same in age so it has limited benefits.

I hate to kill idealism and so I haven't rained on her parade. If she wants to think she is twenty-nine then who am I to ruin her mental image of herself as Peter Pan at the height of their physical perfection. There are many benefits to thinking you are twenty-nine. Eighteen brought greater problems since not all eighteen years were very mature and until the last year BiV mirrored an eighteen year old in her development. She has been gradually increasing in maturity the last few years and is finally closer to acting like someone's parent. I definitely don't think she can cope with being someones grandmother.

BiV genetically looks younger and has the metabolism of a 25 year old. Her blood pressure is 118/70. She runs three miles a day and can do a mini-triathlon albeit slow. She will probably live to be ninety or a hundred in chronological age with little health problems. She will outlive me by decades. In fact she could remarry and be married longer possibly to the second man.

I have always had a mental picture of BiV as a fresh twenty-three old returned sister missionary. I married her because she was cute and spiritual. After her mission she became more feminist and liberal. They say that many returned missionaries have a crisis after their mission. Her change has lasted for twenty-seven years chronological years maybe her mental age will go up the next decade or two and she can come to a middle ground. Maybe when she is ninety she will act fifty which she is turning this fall.

I unfortunately have been less fortunate than BiV. I have serious health problems including high blood pressure, diabetes, and arthritis. I look and feel my age which today on my birthday is 54. I on the other hand feel 80 and have the aches and pains to prove it.

All my life people have told me that I am an old spirit. Even Wiccans think of me as being thousands of years old. I briefly chatted with a few who told me I had a powerful spirit. I see myself as an old bent over wizard who has faced some serious psychological and physical challenges.

I lost my idealism several years ago. I enjoy living with BiV because you never know what she is capable of. It keeps me young to be around her plus I keep her out of trouble. Most of my adult life has been protecting her like Uther Pendragon in the last episode of Merlin when he slew the Dark Knight with Excalibur. I have to slay a lot of dragons for my eight children and my wife who are all about the same mental age. I hope to last ten or twenty more years, after that they will have to grow up and take care of themselves.

She Said: How to Stay 29 Forever

2009-08-03T16:19:00.002-04:00

Most of you must know by now that I am close to having that BIG birthday. And you also know that I'm really fighting it. An upcoming event that exacerbates the problem is that my first grandchild will be born in that same month. It's not that I don't want a new baby in the family, it's just that--I don't have any desire to be a grandma. I'm not moving gracefully into that stage of life.

That there is a term for "mid-life crisis" shows that I am not alone in this. Like many my age, I'm doing everything I can to stave off old age. I have changed my diet, I exercise faithfully 5 times a week, I moisturize! Dylan Thomas' villanelle has become more and more meaningful to me:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

In Jungian psychology the puer aeternus, or the Peter Pan figure, is an archetype, or a "primordial, structural element of the human psyche".
Luckily, like all archetypes the puer (or puella, for women) has both a positive and an negative aspect. The positive side of the puer is the Divine Child who symbolizes newness, potential for growth, hope for the future. He is open to new beginnings, is imaginative, inspirational, and a dreamer in the positive sense. He also foreshadows the hero that he sometimes becomes. The negative side is the child/adult who refuses to grow up and meet the challenges of life face on. On this side, certain life patterns keep on being repeated again and again without the achievement of any real inner or outer change.

I feel a certain empathy for those who relate to the Peter Pan myth. Michael Jackson is often cited as the most well-known recent example of this phenomenon:

In a 2003 interview, Jackson told interviewer Martin Bashir, "I am Peter Pan". Bashir said, "No, you're Michael Jackson". Jackson then stated, "I'm Peter Pan in my heart".

I am Peter Pan in my heart, too.

I assume that Dr. B., in responding to this post, will tell me to grow up. In overcoming the Peter Pan mentality, Rahima Spottiswood mentions "the themes of abandonment and danger" that one must face, "the trials and ordeals suffered by all child gods and youthful heroes of myth and legend which reflect back to us the human condition of which we are all a part." It is true, I am afraid of abandonment. I am fearful of going forward, of aging, of losing the magic and the faith and the simplicity of childhood.

Some psychologists have said that archetypes cannot be chosen or abandoned. It is not necessary that the archetype be overcome. It needs to be recognized as the gift it is and worked with. Once the psyche understands what kind of archetype it is carrying, the individual can find ways to work with it in order to release its projections and take back the energy. In this way, the archetype can become an ally to the individual.

This sounds intriguing to me. I wonder if this technique is simply an avoidance of real life, a very "Peter-pannish" response, or if it actually holds promise for helping me integrate that foolish soul inside and the maturing container that houses it. Is growing up essential to finding happiness?

He Said: Redeeming Zion

2009-07-31T10:37:00.000-04:00

My wife has been enamored of a bunch of minor attempts at living the United Order. She thinks building a house or two makes them righteous. I know of Habitat for Humanity which built thousands of houses more than these groups. I was in a ward where the High Priest group roofed about five houses in a year. There are lots of groups that share their money and possessions but that does not meet the intent the Lord had when he revealed the principle to Joseph Smith.

Even for the limited success there are lots of problems and discontent among individuals in these groups. Unfortunately due to the mishandling of the property of former members that are thrown out of such groups legal contentions have splintered their assets. The Lord told the Saints in revelation that the Lord would not allow the principle to be lived fully until Zion is redeemed. Personally I think the Lord will reveal a way that if a person puts in their assets they can recover them later. That is the flaw in their current attempts.

They say that timing is everything. The law of consecration which is tied up in the United Order has been put on hold until the Saints redeem Zion. Zion is defined by us as Jackson County, Missouri and particularly the Temple Lot that is owned by the Church of Christ (Temple Lot). Unfortunately this group has never had much success and has about six thousand members so they aren't exactly converting thousands. The LDS Church has its eye on acquiring the site and is waiting in the wings for the day when the Lord opens the way for Zion to be redeemed and then the law of consecration will be established by the Savior who will come in the last days.

There have been communal attempts by all the various groups of Saints. In the days of Brigham Young they made attempts at cooperatives and attempted living the United Order but they quickly learned that due to the nature of men and women that such efforts were not usually successful and we are now living the lesser law.

In the case of the United Order there is a tendency on the part of the leaders of any religious group to misuse their power that is where the breakdown occurs. It has come to my attention that even among fundamentalist groups that who holds and retains property is determined by leaders who frankly grab land and property and wives. The problem occurs when a person is tossed out for supposedly not being worthy. I find it fascinating that they are clueless when the federal government comes in and says wait a minute you violated the former person's rights.

If in their capricious opinion a man no longer is worthy they just throw him out of his wife and strip him of his wives and children and residences and give it to themselves or friends. Many times it is due to the greed of such men who are controlling and frankly have lost their priesthood due to unrighteous behavior. Only God knows the heart of men and women and I suspect there are several cases where the seizures are frankly unrighteous. God saved wicked cities and people when there were a few righteous.

The Lord was smart enough to know that most men can not handle communal property rights without treading on the rights of others in a unrighteous manner from time to time. Hence in Section 105 the Lord tells Joseph Smith that Zion will have to wait until the Latter-day Saints redeem Jackson County which will be after the Lord comes in the millennium.

I have not seen any group including the fundamentalists redeem Jackson County yet. They have few compounds that come close but unfortunately they do something stupid that brings the state or federal government down on them. Joseph Smith was smart enough to have the Lord tell him the state of the future. The FLDS seem to build Zion in Texas, Arizona and Utah rather than Missouri. In fact no group including our own has redeemed Zion. Let me reiterate the Law of Consecration won't be realized until Zion is redeemed.

For the last several decades all the groups have been marking time. All the players are poised around the area but none has had success in converting the gentiles. The Community of Christ (RLDS Church) has their site. The Church of Christ (Temple Lot) keeps the other groups from getting the temple lot. None of these groups has redeemed Zion in any fashion. The LDS Church has a sizeable group of members and a visitor's center but nothing spectacular has happened in Jackson County. We did pick up the farm next to Adam-ondi-Ahman but alas none of these groups has redeemed Zion. The United Order and the law of consecration as well as Zion are on hold. Only the Lord himself will redeem Zion when he is good and ready which is not now.

Marion G. Romney in April Conference 1966 gave the LDS General Authorities' perspective on how the United Order has been modified today within the Church:

The final words of the Lord in suspending the order were: "And let those commandments which I have given concerning Zion and her law be executed and fulfilled, after her redemption." (D&C 105:34.) Further implementation of the order must therefore await the redemption of Zion. Here Zion means Jackson County, Missouri. When Zion is redeemed, as it most certainly shall be, it will be redeemed under a government and by a people strictly observing those "just and holy principles" of the Constitution that accord to men their God-given moral agency, including the right to private property. If, in the meantime, socialism takes over in America, it will have to be displaced, if need be, by the power of God, because the United Order can never function under socialism or "the welfare state," for the good and sufficient reason that the principles upon which socialism and the United Order are conceived and operated are inimical. In the meantime, while we await the redemption of Zion and the earth and the establishment of the United Order, we as bearers of the priesthood should live strictly by the principles of the United Order insofar as they are embodied in present church practices, such as the fast offering, tithing, and the welfare activities. Through these practices we could as individuals, if we were of a mind to do so, implement in our own lives all the basic principles of the United Order.

As you will recall, the principles underlying the United Order are consecration and stewardships and then the contribution of surpluses into the bishop's storehouse. When the law of tithing was instituted four years after the United Order experiment was suspended, the Lord required the people to put "all their surplus property . . . into the hands of the bishop" (D&C 119:1); thereafter they were to "pay one-tenth of all their interest annually. . . ." (D&C 119:4.) This law, still in force, implements to a degree at least the United Order principle of stewardships, for it leaves in the hands of each person the ownership and management of the property from which he produces the needs of himself and family. Furthermore to use again the words of President Clark: ". . . in lieu of residues and surpluses which were accumulated and built up under the United Order, we, today, have our fast offerings, our Welfare donations, and our tithing all of which may be devoted to the care of the poor, as well as for the carrying on of the activities and business of the Church." What prohibits us from giving as much in fast offerings as we would have given in surpluses under the United Order? Nothing but our own limitations.

Furthermore, we had under the United Order a bishop's storehouse in which were collected the materials from which to supply the needs and the wants of the poor. We have a bishop's storehouse under the Welfare Plan, used for the same purpose. . . . "We have now under the Welfare Plan all over the Church, . . . land projects . . . farmed for the benefit of the poor. . . . "Thus . . . in many of its great essentials, we have, [in] the Welfare Plan . . . the broad essentials of the United Order. Furthermore, having in mind the assistance which is being given from time to time . . . to help set people up in business or in farming, we have a plan which is not essentially unlike that which was in the United Order when the poor were given portions from the common fund."

It is thus apparent that when the principles of tithing and the fast are properly observed and the Welfare Plan gets fully developed and wholly into operation, "we shall not be so very far from carrying out the great fundamentals of the United Order." (Conference Report, October 1942, pp. 51-58.) The only limitation on you and me is within ourselves. A Prayer: And now in line with these remarks for three things I pray:
That the Lord will somehow quicken our understanding of the differences between socialism and the United Order and give us a vivid awareness of the awful portent of those differences.
That we will develop the understanding, the desire, and the courage born of the Spirit, to eschew socialism and to support and sustain, in the manner revealed and as interpreted by the Lord, those just and holy principles embodied in the Constitution of the United States for the protection of all flesh, in the exercise of their God-given agency.
That through faithful observance of the principles of tithing, the fast, and the welfare program, we will prepare ourselves to redeem Zion and ultimately live the United Order, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Marion Romney was smart enough to realize that you can't strip away the agency of those involved in the practice. It takes a righteous group to live the law of consecration. If you want to live the law of consecration in my opinion you need to work within the organization to convert a group of people who are so righteous they would be able to usher in the second coming.

None of the bozos I read about in any of these splinter groups make me want to run off and join them. They would steal my wife and children take my money and property and discard me like a piece of rubbish. They would cloak their supposed treatment as I am unworthy when it is really just their need for power and covetousness which is a sin. Me I will do all in my power to usher in Christ's second coming and stick with the good ship Zion (LDS). If I am to be tossed out let he who knows our heart and deeds make the determination because there is no man on this earth capable of that or the Lord wouldn't have told Joseph what he did in Section 105 and that included Joseph Smith who was not ready to institute consecration. If Joseph Smith wasn't ready why do a bunch of lesser men think they can do it?

The Lord didn't say to redeem Utah, Arizona, Texas, or any other place than Zion which the Prophet Joseph defined as the New Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri. All these groups better get their butts over to Missouri and start building up Zion. The LDS Church has a better shot than any of these other groups because we are working there to position ourselves when the Savior comes again.

Living the United Order Today

2009-07-30T23:11:00.000-04:00

Today I'm going to write about what's on my mind--the United Order; and specifically how it is being lived today by a group of people living out on the Utah/Arizona border. I wrote a post giving the background over at Mormon Matters. Here on this blog I'd like to discuss whether or not the Law of Consecration is a viable alternative in today's world.

As we Mormons know, there were several attempts at living the United Order (a vehicle established to manage the law of consecration) in the early days of Utah. Church rhetoric states that the United Order is no longer necessary. Consecration is understood to mean selfless dedication of time and means to help "build Zion" through spreading the gospel by means of missionary work, temple and family-history work. Faithful members are now asked to tithe and give other donations to support those endeavors, as well as to serve in the church's unpaid ministries.

In the conversation over at Mormon Matters, a lot of attention is being paid to whether polygamy is moral or legal. So I don't want to talk about that here. I want to discuss whether it is possible or advisable to live consecration in this day and age. Is it legally feasible? Do you think there would still be so many problems if the group attempting it were not involved in polygamy? Would it be possible to sustain the desire to live communally if the people were not doing it for religious reasons? Why did the LDS church move away from the United Order as a way of living consecration? Is this just too hard for modern capitalists to do?

Do you ever have a longing to live in a United Order, like I do?

(Here's a house that was built in a day, The FLDS community accomplishes this by donating their time and the materials--and working together for the common good.)

She Said: Is it True? Is it Kind? Does it Improve on the Silence?

2009-07-28T21:10:00.000-04:00

When Dr. B. told me he was going to write on this topic (being honest) and the perspective he was going to take, I replied that I would take the position that "Some things that are true are not very useful!" This was a bit of a joke at the time, since I'm not the hugest fan of how Boyd K. Packer employed that statement.

HOWEVER.

Upon reading Dr. B.'s post I am beginning to believe, for the first time, that Elder Packer had a point!

OK, I admit it. I fudge the truth. One, I had to edit out that part in DH's post where he told my ACTUAL weight. That certainly wasn't very useful. And I'm not so sure the part about the wrinkles and bags under my eyes was useful either.

I think that we all want to make ourselves look good. We want to emphasize the parts of ourselves that are virtuous, lovely, and of good report, and we want to make sure that, if we are discussing our foibles, that our friends will understand our motivations and mitigating circumstances that led us there. In terms of a temple recommend, I'm not really sure that it is necessary to discuss and confess every little piece of unworthiness that exists in our soul. We are all unworthy to enter into a perfectly pure place. But the questions are there to establish basic boundaries, and to help us examine ourselves gently. Our leaders don't probe into exactly how we calculate our tithing, or how we define the Word of Wisdom--and I think there is a reason for that. What Dr. B. calls the "macro view" isn't necessary in passing a temple recommend interview. I learned that the Bishop doesn't want to hear that I told my husband I spent $20.00 at WalMart when I actually spent $50.00. This is something I need to deal with on my own, and is between myself, my husband, and the Lord.

The most eloquent (and attributable) quote on this subject is one from the controversial nineteenth-century guru Sai Baba: "Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?" This is very similar to the story of Socrates' "Triple Filter."

Can these "truth tests" be applied to a temple recommend interview? How detailed are you when you answer the questions? How necessary is it to admit that you took a pen or some paper clips from work, or that you yelled at your children? How best shall we honor the truth in our lives while "improving on the silence?"

He Said: A Perspective on Being Honest in Dealing with Your Fellow Man

2009-07-25T14:30:00.000-04:00

Several years ago my wife broke down and admitted that in her temple recommend she admitted to her bishop that she wasn't always honest in her dealings with her fellow man since she told small lies to me her husband all the time about different things i.e. reporting lower expenses at Walmart etc. She was looking at the question with a macro view. Most of think of the question in the micro view.

This particular question is hard to actually answer and is mostly answered by persons including me once or twice in my life like "I am trying to do that." In terms of the macro view, I am not a usual person since I tend to be brutally honest and say whatever is on my mind. This may actually border on being non-Christian. It is not an enduring quality that many of my fellow Saints particularly enjoy about me.

My wife constantly says to me something to elicit that I think she is drop-dead gorgeous. I always think of her even today as when she was twenty-three and weighed about 110 pounds. I thinks she was cute as a button. I once told her when we were first married that I would love her even when she was old. Lately as she has approached fifty she has been more insecure and I have to tell her constantly that I love her more than anyone else. For the most part I am telling the truth but every now and then I am forced to not say something about some physical feature like a wrinkle or grey hair or bags under her eyes or age spots. I use silence as a way to not discuss them. I still find her attractive but I don't want to add to her insecurities. When I was young I would say I love you but you could learn to lose those extra few pounds and live with the fight that might ensue.

I have a compulsion to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I am not sure that many Mormons including my own children to my spouse to my fellow members want to hear the brutal truth. You smoked some pot so you are not living the word of wisdom and shouldn't go to the temple etc. Some people like to let it all hang out. In PECs which I despised going to I heard every problem of every member for years and years. It just plain depressed me when a well meaning leader discussed their problems with a desire to help them. Sometimes it was way too much information. In my quorums I hear about how we don't measure up by not home teaching, reading scriptures, holding home evening etc. I am tempted to be honest and say how can you, who lie about doing it from time to time, lean on the rest of us?

I am convinced that it is almost impossible if we don't want to traumatize everyone around us to tell the truth and be totally honest. When I was a student at BYU I attended a class by Elmer Knowles about self-disclosure. He said the only difference between a rational and sane person and a irrational and insane person was how and what they disclosed. He said if you want to improve your relationships with others you needed to choose what you self-disclose.

When I am pushed to be honest I will tell the truth. I am not into telling little white lies like my wife and many that I encounter. I think it is more honest to just not say anything when asked and say you refuse to comment. Most of us think of the honesty part as involving money so strictly speaking I would interpret the question as do you steal from others?

I learned a lesson about honesty from Yoshihiko Kikuchi when I left a $.19 ball point pen in his office one day when visiting and he mailed it back. The postage cost more than the pen. I think about how many of us put a pen in our pockets at a store or work and never return it. I think about how many of us blog at work on company time or fudge a little on travel expenses. Or find a package of toilet paper in a shopping cart or find an item on our grocery list the clerk made a mistake in our favor and we don't give them back the money next time we go in. I think about how we round up or down our tithing.

I think we either need to repent or we should realize that the question is asked us to minimize our bad behavior. Many more of us can answer the micro question and be in compliance but even fewer can ask the macro question and be in compliance. I think the number of honest people who can answer 100% are candidates for Enoch's City or could dance on the head of a pin.

He Said: Reverencing Pioneers: I Don't Relate

2009-07-24T16:38:00.002-04:00

I am a convert to the church and don't really have any members of my family that walked across the Plains in 1847 nor in fact associated with it until 1974. The fact is my relatives didn't get off the boat until 1914 at Ellis Island and none of them had anything to do with the LDS Church. I am a first generation Mormon. I am a pioneer by this interesting modern desire to want us all to be pioneers. I don't consider myself a pioneer nor do I consider joining the church as a reason to chronicle my life events.

Even living in Utah and hearing people go on about their Pioneer relatives I just see it as an exercise in self-promotion, as though having a righteous relative makes you righteous. I would just grin and bear it and would feed it by feigning interest. It made a small minority of the ward members happy to think they were from righteous stock.

My heritage is really the antithesis of the Mormon experience. I don't even recognize my Italian Catholic upbringing as being a defining thing nor did my ancestors reverence their Mafia relatives as examples of righteous living. They were glad to get away from one another. Reverencing the early Mormon Pioneers is really a foreign concept to me and my family. We didn't even reverence each other. We hardly talk to one another let alone tell our children much about our family. I don't think that we are that out of the ordinary. I would say we were typical lower working class people.

As the church grows millions of us have nothing in common with the Pioneers since in no way are we related to them nor have we been brought up hearing stories about them unless we work in the Primary. With the correlation of the manuals we only hear a few of the selected stories over and over and not in any detail since most of us don't have a lot in common with pioneers only in the fact they were also members once. The only connection is that they came before us and preserved the church. As I go around the world all of the members can tell stories of how the church developed but none the members in other countries know much other than about the former Church Presidents let alone apostles, seventies, or Utah pioneers.

Even as a member all of adult life I still don't relate with the pioneers. I put up with it in Sunday School but I mostly just tune out the one or two lessons when members go on about how they are the descendant of this polygamous person or general authority.

Even as a history major I never could buy in to the stories of the Pioneers and the Utah experience. I thought they were just telling us the stories so a few people could feel good about their forebears and justify why a small group hold the top spots in leadership positions. It helped me to situate myself in the culture.

I always viewed the stories as a form of instruction and parallel in some way to the Jewish experience of when they were close to God good things happened and when they weren't bad things happened. It was akin to the Jews wandering the the wilderness with all dying off before being allowed in the promised land. The Pioneers died out of hardship. I can't really relate to either group and only in abstract terms understand any similarities to the life we live today.

The only Utah story I could relate to was Orrin Porter Rockwell gunning down the desperadoes on the streets of Salt Lake City. I thought of him as a cold-blooded killer like some of my family members and the westerns I watched as a kid. I had a hard time swallowing the Mountain Meadow Massacre. I felt sorry for Joseph Smith and how he was treated and felt I would have been a better friend than the ones he had in Kirtland and Nauvoo. I know I couldn't have handled Brigham and the life in the Utah territory where men wrestled over polygamous wives and chewed tobacco for teeth problems. I was glad I lived today not then. I did respect Brigham's business acumen but couldn't understand how his kids fought over the estate with the church corporation.

The Pioneer stories were ones that made for revisionist faith-promoting tales where people who would have died meaningless deaths are elevated in to martyrs for the cause who died wending their way to Zion. I don't get goose bumps when I think about the stories of people who did dumb things like walk across the ice and have their toes cut off or were laid in shallow graves and the wolves ate their bodies because they went too late in the year. I see their stories as moral lessons like George Washington cutting down a cherry tree or my father wearing burlap sacks on his feet as shoes during the depression when he went to school in the snow. I wonder every time I heard Pioneer stories why did they go out so late in the year and why would anyone get so choked up about it and try to glamorize something that was well tragic and ill-advised. One consolation was that they didn't eat each other like the Donner party. It served a purpose that thousands of people came to Utah and colonized the west. There were thousands more who came and colonized the West then even us Mormons.

My family conquered the entire world but unfortunately no one glamorizes how they were involved in the conquest of the world. The only story I know is that my family took care of the olive groves for the Mafia. My grandfather was a bag man and collected self-insurance on Saturdays from local businesses.

I don't have any relatives to justify why I am a leader today in the church nor do I ever believe that I will be a leader. My ancestors lived their lives and did nothing extraordinary other than live normal lives. I am not my father nor his father nor his father's father. I am not a gambler, killer, or adulterer. I am not a sinner or a saint. I am just a Joe blow Mormon who joined the church and makes minor contributions. If you want to make me feel good by pretending I am a modern pioneer that is your business but me I don't consider what I did anything but ordinary.

I have to choose to live my life by a certain moral compass. No one that came before really inspires me today. I have always seen history as learning from the lessons or failures of the past. We use pioneer stories as a tool to try to emulate the Saints of the past and get our members to live heroic lives. Unfortunately most of us are just ordinary people. I live in the present not the past. No person is an island but when it comes down to it only living people affect me from general authorities to family. I really can't relate with the Pioneers and see them as being just ordinary people who got in a jam. Once they got to Utah they were no different than any other God-fearing person other than they were members of the Lord's church.

As Latter-day Saints we like to tell stories about why a man or woman rose to be a leader. It is like reading Horatio Alger stories. It is the story of how God had a special mission or they were so righteous or dragged themselves up by their boot straps.

I never met my Grandfather B. I hear all kinds of bad things about him. I am suspect when I hear about past people--people who knew them have filters good and bad. People tend to remember the extremes good or bad. Most of us aren't sinners or saints totally. We are a bunch of people who make decisions based on our experiences some good and some bad. The term pioneer just means one who came before. It renders our lives meaningless when we glamorize and twist events to make them more than they are.

Most of us are just common ordinary people. The majority of Mormons today aren't related to the Pioneers. Our stories are the same oh same oh. We get up, go to work, mow the yard, go to church in a never-ending cycle. Our family ancestors traveled by the same modes of transportation of the Pioneers some died making their way to better opportunities. It is nice they have a monument to them and we can stop off if we want and find out about them.

When my life is over and done with, I doubt people will care one way or the other about my being a modern pioneer. I say if it makes you feel good to think you will be remembered idealistically then fine. The truth is we remember so little about even close relatives like our grandparents as we grow older. The only way we live on is that we had children and they had children. By the time you get to the third generation even those who remember us will know very little about us.

She Said: Should Mormons in the Diaspora Celebrate Pioneer Day?

2009-07-23T22:55:00.006-04:00

It has only been in recent years that I have slowly become aware that not every convert to the Church shares my deep identification with the Mormon pioneers. I have loved the epic story of the trek to the Salt Lake Valley. I appreciate its archetypal connotations. My heart thrills with the stories of the pioneer heroes and heroines, and I consider each of their stories part of my legacy as a Mormon, though my LDS heritage begins with myself.

In the last few years there has been some grumbling by members who don't have Mormon pioneers in their genealogy that it annoys them to celebrate the July 24th holiday, a commemoration of the day the first company of pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. I think partly to appease these voices, there has been an emphasis on "modern-day pioneers"--those who lead the way for others to follow and who blaze trails in other ways than traditionally recognized. There's a new Primary song, "I Can Be a Modern-Day Pioneer," there are more talks given by General Authorities on the subject, and there are articles such as the latest Mormon Times article "Pioneer Journeys of a Different Era."
There is a sudden dearth of Pioneer Day activities in wards outside of Utah, and in our ward last Sunday the only talk which mentioned pioneers emphasized modern-day contributions rather than those who crossed the plains.

I just want to register a caution to those who wish to move away from the traditional veneration of these honorable forebears. I want to remember their devotion to a faith that meant more to them than life itself. Social scientists often point to the Jewish culture and theorize that the reason it survived through so many years and the scattering of the people to so many different places was the very persecution which caused them to band together in small groups, and their longing remembrance of their homeland.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Psalm 137)

This Psalm is a poignant lyrical device for recalling the story of Israel's exodus from Egypt and its arrival in the promised land. It acts as an earnest reminder both to the exiled Israelites and to later biblical readers of the importance of the promised land for the celebration of the Jewish faith.

Now that we Latter-day Saints experience little real persecution, and the importance of our history and sacred places is beginning to wane, are we in danger of losing some valuable aspect of our culture? Are we losing our Psalms, our legends, our traditional customs and stories?

I'd like to hear what our readers think. Do you feel a connection to the Mormon pioneers? Or do you think the holiday is unnecessary, especially to LDS of other cultures living in many different countries of the world? Should we attempt to graft new converts in to the Utah Mormon pioneer heritage, or should we transfer our loyalties to "modern-day pioneers?"

He Said: Judging Righteous Judgment

2009-07-20T13:50:00.000-04:00

As a Latter-day Saint I have seen a dichotomy about this concept of judging one another. I think BiV and her friends have some merit in discussing the term “omniscience mechanism”but I don't think they are totally correct in how operationally judgment works in the Church. We have commandments and standards that tell us that certain sins are an abomination to the Lord. We don't tell gay people they can't be in the church we just say they can't act on those sins. As to a gluttonous person that goes back to the gradations of sin. Our leaders don't consider gluttony on par with sexual transgression. These people talk out of both sides of their mouths. One day BiV tell us there are victimless sin like gluttony then the next day she tell us all sin is of the same value so why should one be treated less than another one.

On the one hand we are told by LDS leaders as every day members not to judge others and to be kinder and gentler in our treatment of others. Jesus told us he who is without sin should not to cast the first stone. Most of the time I don't have a clue if there is a gay person in my ward since it is not something we discuss. It doesn't matter what the sin is we have a series of judgments in this church. God has outlined them throughout the Bible and they have consequences.

On the other hand Joseph Smith in the JST changed the scripture in Matthew 7:2 to read: " Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged: but judge righteous judgment." In the church we have bishops and stake presidents who constantly judge certain sins and mete out disciplinary action. We have wives and husbands who enter in to a covenant relationship with us. We have stewardships in which home teachers and visiting teachers are supposed to help us and encourage us to better gospel living.

I don't know but maybe the gluttonous person needs to be chastened also by our leaders if that is a sin that is holding them back from entering the kingdom of God. In operation how is judgment really conducted in the Church and how does it work. I would be more inclined to trim down if I knew I couldn't get a temple recommend. But the reality is that there are many fat leaders who still have the Spirit. It isn't on the temple recommend questions yet.

As a young missionary serving under M. Russell Ballard he taught us that there is a series of judgments or accountability in which our bishops, stake leaders, general authorities and righteous priesthood fathers would give an accountability to the Lord in his making a final judgment. If if Christ is the final judge we are constantly being judged in the church by those with stewardship over us.

Joseph Fielding Smith in The Way to Perfection describes a prophetic accounting or judgment process:

Not many years hence there shall be another gathering of high priests and righteous souls in this same valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman. At this gathering Adam, the Ancient of Days, will again be present. At this time the vision which Daniel saw will be enacted. The Ancient of Days will sit. There will stand before him those who have held the keys of all dispensations, who shall render up their stewardships to the first Patriarch of the race, who holds the keys of salvation. This shall be a day of judgment and preparation. Joseph, the Prophet, in speaking of this event, said:

Daniel in his seventh chapter speaks of the Ancient of Days; he means the oldest man, our father Adam, Michael; he will call his children together and hold a council with them to prepare them for the coming of the Son of Man. He (Adam) is the father of the human family, and presides over the spirits of all men, and all that have had the keys must stand before him in this grand council. This may take place before some of us leave this stage of action. The Son of Man stands before him (Adam) and there is given him glory and dominion. Adam delivers up his stewardship to Christ, that which was delivered to him as holding the keys of the universe, but retains his standing as head of the human family.-D. H. C. 3:386-7.

Like Russell Ballard says there is a series of judgments up to the person's final reckoning that includes individual accountability and stewardship accountability by leaders responsible for us. If you can't make judgments than how is this possible and why does it happen?

BiV likes to quote trendy people who have interesting ideas like “omniscience mechanism.” She and her philosophical friends tend to place a framework over LDS doctrine and practice that just doesn't mesh with our operational procedures that make priesthood judgments. She doesn't take in to account that in Mormon doctrine we have developed a system in which righteous judgment is made on the basis of having the Spirit and discernment. It is the very thing that LDS leaders use in declaring a person is not in compliance with the standards of the Gospel or is in compliance with Gospel standards and about worthiness to partake of the sacrament or go to the temple or hold membership in the church.

Finite people make decisions that are bound in heaven throughout Old Testament, New Testament, and Latter-day times. If we were to say no one can make a righteous judgment only God than the practices of our religion would be nullified such as sealing people and worthiness issues. Christ and his leaders determine sin and its progressive discipline. Even Joseph Smith understood this when he set up the organization of the Church with a system of stewardship with accountability. Prophets and church leaders are constantly giving us advice and determining our status or worthiness. To me that is making righteous judgments.

I don't disagree that in the end the individual has to stand before Christ. I just disagree that that is the only judgment taking place on the way to the final reckoning.

Harold B. Lee said:

I sat with a youngster yesterday who is in his early twenties, and he is wondering now, worrying, he is fretting for fear he is not in the niche where he can give the best service. And I said, "Son, all you have to worry about is that you are doing your best in the place where you are today. That is all you have to be concerned about. You are not going to be judged by how you measure to someone else who has achieved a high station in the industrial or financial or religious world. The only measure by which you are going to be measured is, How will you compare with what you had the capacity to do? That is the measure the Lord's going to measure you by, to see whether or not you have done, to the best of your ability, whatever came within your hands this day, and if you can answer the same honestly day by day. And the only day you have to worry about is today. There is nothing you can do about yesterday except repent. That means if you made mistakes yesterday, don't be making them today. Don't worry about tomorrow, because you may have no tomorrows. This is the masterpiece you ought to be thinking about today. And if you can always witness honestly that whatever you did, you did to the best of your ability, and next day try improvement on that, when your life's end comes, of you it can be said in truth, his was a successful life because he lived to the best that was in him. That's all the Lord expects of any one of His children. We are all born with different capacities, some to do one thing, some to do the other, and all He asks is that we do our best; and that's the measure by which we'll be judged when that time comes."

As if to point a finger at control as being a bad thing is to miss the whole point of judgment. God controls who gets in the various degrees of glory. No unclean thing can enter in to the kingdom of God. The standard works are replete with scriptures that talk about what happens and there are numerous scriptures that talk about prophets and holy men judging righteous judgment or giving counsel. There is in the LDS church a series of judgments or accounting by everyone from parents to church leaders to the prophets of dispensations to the final judge Christ.

Recently someone attacked me for being overweight. They were absolutely correct in their assessment that I need to lose some weight. In fact an apostle told me the very same thing that I needed to get control of myself. We all know that the body is a temple of God when you feel sick from diabetes or high blood pressure you can't minister as well as when you are healthy. The apostle told me what he said out of love. Sometimes we make judgments even if they are not fully informed and they help a person to be more in tune with the Spirit or help them to fulfill their mission better here on this earth.

As to the example about an overweight person I will use myself adding I am not gay though. My wife is not very accepting of the fact that I am also overweight and constantly encourages me to eat better and exercise more. If she were to just love me by being less judgemental would I all of a sudden become thin? I don't think so. Loving the person has nothing to do with acceptance of them in a less than perfect state. She knows that I would be more effective in terms of my service in the kingdom if I were thinner. People would not be putting down my posts on non-weight related subjects based on who do I a chubby person think I am to discuss retiring to thy bed early. Yadda Yadda Yadda.

Sometimes we have to have the Spirit and render righteous judgment. Some of us are lazy and we need to be called to repentance. Passive love doesn't always conquer all, there has to be action on the part of the person who is not in compliance. The Lord may in the end declare we didn't measure up and we find themselves on the outside looking in after the final judgment.

Harold B. Lee says it in that we need to be better each day that comes from the previous day so we can perfect ourselves. A little righteous judgment from loved ones and leaders might be the nudge we need in overcoming damning behaviors to overcome our carnal natures.

BiV and her friends are correct in that is that Christ is the final judge and the keeper of the gate. He makes the final decision. Harold B. Lee also said:

The only judge who can render a righteous judgment will be the Infinite Judge who knows all things from before the beginning of man upon the earth, even to the end of man. He will take all things into His view, and the judgment that will be rendered, you may be sure, will be a righteous judgment where mercy tempers justice, and yet justice has its part. If that were not so, it would make mockery of the laws that God prepared for us to obey if we are to inherit His glory

But in our journey as church members a series of judgments are made that influence us on the way to the final judgment. Since even church leaders and prophets can make mistakes we have a final reckoning where everything is revealed and made right. Lets hope that those in positions of responsibility over us render righteous judgments that help us prepare for the final one.

He Said: Victimless Sins

2009-07-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

I have heard the term victimless sins used by LDS bloggers this past year as something that is just between the person and God. Victimless sins I have read arguments or comments about include the Word of Wisdom, Sleep Patterns, Pornography, and Masturbation.

In a recent post on Retire to Thy Bed Early BiV and several of her commenters discussed victimless sin. They suggest that counsel given by the Lord in the Book of Commandments or Doctrine and Covenants is merely a guideline without actual implications and if they choose to stay up late at night there aren't any real consequences.

When I worked at BYU I worked for Reed Benson who had a sleeping disorder. He couldn't sleep at night and would get just a few hours of sleep if he was lucky. One day he came in and told me how he fell asleep at the wheel and drove down the hill by the Grant Building. He was lucky he didn't get killed. There are many cases of people who have limited sleep that have slower response times in doing things. My post showed that longevity is affected by those who don't get enough sleep. I admit that sleep is a minor problem but if we are all put on this earth with a mission and we cut that mission short it might have eternal consequences. For example a person is tired and they don't interact with someone that might have been converted to the gospel. If the Lord didn't think there wasn't an affect he wouldn't have given this as a revelation to Joseph Smith.

The concept of victimless sin has been grating at me ever since I wrote a post last year on masturbation. Nick Literski and others criticized me justifying their acceptance of this practice as a victimless sin. I argue that when a person masturbates they visualize some person in their minds many times a real person as the object of their desire. I posted a couple of weeks ago about whether mental adultery is a sin. I thought for sure the proponents of victimless sin would raise up arms but they were pretty tame. BiV didn't even respond saying that no one would refute it.

Today I came across a case study on masturbation and pornography that give us real life consequences of just how such sins are not victimless but can devastate other family members.

One blogger in Addicted to Porn who is very open on her blog tells the sad story of her husband Jack who engaged in such supposedly victimless sins as pornography and masturbation. I don't know if this is a fictious name or not but it is very revealing story of how supposedly victimless actions affect others:

Our sex life continued to struggle, his interest in me was nil, he would literally do anything he could to avoid me. It really hurt. I often thought he was gay but told myself that it’s ok for him to have those tendencies as long as he doesn’t act on them. I really didn’t know what to think. I knew that being around him made me feel dirty, discouraged, and unattractive; it drove me crazy! I knew I never would have thought that marriage to a return missionary priesthood holder would have been so lonely. I loved having my babies and tried very hard to mentally and emotionally block out the mean and negative things that Jack would say and do.
Ten years after we were married, I was pregnant with my fifth baby (finally a boy), Half-way thru the term of that pregnancy for whatever reason, (a conference talk, I guess) he decided to tell me that he was addicted to pornography and that he was on his way that night to repent. I went thru stages of disbelief to horror to depression. I wasn’t even sure what pornography was. I associated it with pedophiles, rapists and perverts. I was very shocked and scared. I went to therapists, we went to therapists, he went to therapists, and all left me more shocked and more discouraged.
One of the hardest things to accept was the habit of masturbation that came with the addiction. “Addiction” I could not understand at all why anyone would call pornography and masturbation “Addiction”! If it was an “addiction”, would he never stop? If he could never stop… how would I stay married? How could he have repentance? I had so many mixed up feelings and emotions. I hated him. He stole ten years of my life, he threw away my righteous desires, he took the love and cherish that I could have had, and wanted with all of my heart, and tricked me. What kind of sick person could hide something so awful, for so long from his wife! When I would cry myself to sleep with loneliness and despair, he never once tried to calm me with the true reasons he didn’t want me? Why did he want so badly for me to hate myself in every way? He let me lose my self esteem, he let me feel dirty, he let me be angry and lonely, he let me hate myself for wanting to be with him.
I still wonder what porn star he was making love to in his mind when I conceived our children. For the last ten years I’d given birth to four of his daughters! During that time I stayed in the house as much as possible; I didn’t want to go anywhere. I loved being home with my babies, I loved holding and playing with them, I loved watching them play with each other and with their friends. I loved planning things for them. When the kids were sick or they would not go to bed, I had a hard time; Otherwise, I loved and cherished every minute with each one of them. I felt so blessed to have them.
When Jack was in town, he was a great dad. I seemed to let that trump all the other negative behaviors he had. Jack was out of town all the time! When he was gearing up to leave, and when he would return, we would always fight! I felt so guilty because I was convinced it was me being controlling. I wanted his help when he was home, but I hated it when he would undo and/or redo everything when he got back. Not once did he hint that the fighting before he left and after his return had to do with the sick double life he had when he was gone.
Church was the worst! That was his Turf. He was the honorable priesthood authority in our home. He was a return missionary! He prayed long prayers every night. He diligently served in his callings. He took the kids to church and I stayed home. I was insecure about what other women thought of me. I was not active enough growing up to always follow their LDS lingo, and I was certainly not pretty enough or worthy enough to be in their circle. For ten years he knew my struggles and my insecurities and never once gave a hint of his own short comings, sins or dirty little secrets. It was very hard to accept that I had married a person who could keep up such a lie.
I wondered what kind of sick thoughts he had. What did he think of our daughters? What did he think when he saw other peoples daughters in porn? If he didn’t respect women, how could he even have a testimony? Or did he? What kind of stupid girl was I, that I did not see this coming? I remembered JG saying “he could not imagine only seeing one naked woman for the rest of his life” I knew my husband felt the same way.
He punished me for not smelling good, not looking good, not taking enough time with the kids, not praying enough, not driving well enough, not making dinner good enough, not wearing the right socks, using the right knife, anything he could think of he would make it a point to make a personal attack on me, I believed that I wasn’t good enough. All that time, he was holding me to a ridiculous standard. He wanted me to be a fantasy! No matter how I tried, he would never be satisfied or pleased because what he wanted was porn. He married me, not because he loved me, but because he thought that being married would cure him. Just as I thought being married to a priesthood holder would make me happy, we both lost.

You can read the rest of her post and see how she lost her self-esteem and how a supposed victimless sin destroyed her trust in her husband.

There are other victimless sins such as the phenomenon of chatting with other men for women or women with men which can sometimes go from supposedly harmless gospel discussions to flirtatious online affairs to possible mental adultery. David Bednar decried this tendency in a recent CES fireside Things As They Really Are. The really is a promise that temple goers make about who are feelings should be toward. Once a person engages in such practices it is hard for them to stop.

Victimless sins are like a pebble thrown in a pond that ripple in ways that a sinner has no idea will affect others. Many times the victimless sinner blames an unintended victim such as a spouse of why they practice a supposed victimless sin in the first place.

He Said: When Gospel Conversations are a Waste of Time

2009-07-16T09:22:00.000-04:00

Having grown up a Roman Catholic I haven't always been as open about listening to other religions as BiV. In fact I told the LDS missionaries to get lost on at least two occasions in my life. Both times I was miffed because they were obnoxious and inconsiderate of my opinions and a drain on my time. I talked with them when I had an interest after reading the Book of Mormon and solicited the missionary discussions all seven in one day because I didn't want to be pressured to join if I didn't want to. Theologically to me the argument wasn't openness but authority. I felt that the Catholic Church at one time held the keys but there was a falling away and the LDS Church and Joseph Smith were a restoration of the same primitive Church.

Even though I served a mission I had the same expectation while a missionary that I was seeking the honest in heart that would let me in only if they wanted and held a similar viewpoint. I never got too upset or depressed when people slammed the door in my face. I was on a mission to find those already prepared and fortunately I never baptized people that had to be persuaded from already established other religion. The thirty-eight people who joined the church just plain didn't believe in the existing religion they had once belonged to and where seeking the truth. I learned early as a missionary that "a man convinced against his own will remains of the same opinion still."

On my mission I saw the competition for finding new people was usually Jehovah's Witnesses. It was unfortunate for us because they sweep in a neighborhood. A group of ten or twenty of them go out together and knock the same houses. People were not inclined to even talk to us if they had been recently swept. I encountered them about a dozen times in my life and on my mission I once went to a couple of discussions with an elder in their church. He was trying to convert my companion and me rather than the other way around. I was very turned off by the depressing belief that our spirits are held in the collective mind of God and that our bodies rot in the ground unless we are one of the 144,000 then our spirits live on. I also considered it the height of arrogance that a non-Jehovah witness could not pray with them. I have caused Jehovah Witness women teachers to get up and leave when I start praying since only they believe they can pray to God in a gathering. Over the years my wife has let them in the door or accepted their literature whenever they come by. She even attended their once a year sacrament meeting. Of course she couldn't take of the sacrament since only one of the 144,000 can. On a couple of occasions I have driven them mad when I insist that I know that I am one of the 144,000 because I have had a couple of experiences where I have walked and talked with Jesus. In fact I would take the sacrament if I attended because I definitely feel I am one of the high priests that is mentioned in the Bible. I read a pamphlet on my mission by Mark E. Petersen that talked about some of these doctrines that he said are mistaken beliefs and I still remember that he said that they were sincere people, sincerely wrong.

I don't agree that we should listen to just anyone who comes along. On the few occasions when I listened to other religious groups it was some pretty whacked out stuff. Once I listened to a New Age guy read to me from the Book of Urantia. It was some heady stuff even Joseph Smith seemed tame compared to its premises which mingled Christian doctrine in. In fact they would accept Joseph Smith as a prophet. I also encountered many Bahai's who thought Joseph Smith and Muhammed great teachers as was Jesus Christ.

My concern isn't just the time you spend listening but when you aid someone that feels you are an unbeliever. When I was going to school at BYU I lived on the west side of Provo. One day I came home from school and my wife had invited six fundamentalist missionaries all who were between sixteen and eighteen to have dinner. When it became about nine o'clock and they hadn't left I started to get concerned. She never asked me if they could sleep there. Finally I was able to get her alone and she said they were going without purse and script and she told them they could stay with us a day or two. It miffed me because not only did I have to listen to them attack my religion I was aiding and abetting those who would destroy other members faith. I didn't feel good that they were using my apartment as a base for their efforts. When I engaged them in a conversation they weren't especially interested in honest discussion and conceded that neither of us was going to feel any different. The funny thing was that a year later one of them supposedly converted to Mormonism and was a student at BYU. Now that I know they infiltrate the church I wonder if this girl was pretending to convert so she could go to the temple eventually.

I unlike my wife don't see what they do as harmless. One time I was assigned to be a home teacher to an infiltrated fundamentalist who was attending medical school in Missouri. She had moved in to our ward and she and her children were attending church like members in full fellowship. On my first visit as I was walking downstairs to give them a home teaching lesson in their family room I looked up at the wall and saw a photograph with an older man surrounded by about four or five women and a couple dozen children. Without missing a beat I said is that your husband and his wives and children. She said how did you know? I said the spirit just revealed it to me. Needless to say when I reported it to the bishop things were slightly different. I did met the husband who told me his convoluted story with which I was totally unimpressed. I felt sorry for the women he caused to lose their membership in the true church, the loss of his first marriage and wife, and it confirmed my attitude that we should be selective in what we listen to. It gave me a sick feeling in my gut to see how devious Satan really can be. The only value I see in listening to everyone is that if you have the Holy Spirit you will be able to cut through the crap.

Today I believe as I am getting older and have less time on this earth that we should have partially open minds and be discerning or selective in what messages we listen to. Even when I go to a job-related conference I get up and walk out if a lecture is boring or not of great value and I go to a different one. I don't have time to hear everything. I figure it is like when I first heard about Mormonism if the Lord wants me to hear it I will eventually hear it. If something resonates with me I listen if not I do other things.

Take the Poll: Gospel Discussions with Those of Other Faiths

2009-07-16T09:21:00.001-04:00

She Said: Letting Missionaries in the Door

2009-07-15T16:11:00.004-04:00

Latter-day Saints have a strong missionary tradition that commenced from the very first days of the Church. We are known in many countries for our proselyting missionaries. For a long time I only knew of one other denomination that sent proselyting missionaries around, and that was the Jehovah's Witnesses. But in the past few years my door has been knocked upon by various Christian missionaries. When we lived in Vernal, there was even an evangelical group who went around specifically to convert Mormons away from their beliefs.

I have always enjoyed my discussions with these proselyting missionaries. Once I met with a set of Jehovah's Witnesses for several weeks. Through studying with them, I gained a greater understanding of the use of the Tetragrammaton in the Old Testament. I was privileged to be invited to their worship service, and I observed with interest their unique procedures in partaking of the Sacrament. Christian missionaries have provided wonderful examples for me in charity and being personally involved in projects to benefit the underprivileged. And Fundamentalist missionaries, while rare today, helped me appreciate our unique restoration heritage when they stayed with us for a few days in the early 1980's.

Since our Church consists of so many converts, myself and Dr. B. among them, it is obvious that if these members hadn't been willing to entertain the missionaries--to let them in the door and listen to them, they would never had had the opportunity to hear the restored gospel and join the Church. But now that they are baptized members, should they shut their doors to missionaries of other faiths?

I am of the opinion that one should always hold an open mind when it comes to matters of religion. If we honestly seek the truth, we must be open to any conclusion. Our scriptures urge us to look for truth and knowledge wherever it may be found. I think that this includes in discussion with and examination of other faith traditions. People are generally afraid of uncertainty. They hesitate to challenge their secure world view, a view which is supported by the other members of their religion. But speaking with others with different paradigms and challenging our own assumptions is important. Religion is a search for truth, not a search for security, pleasure, friendship or approval.

That is why, when members of other religions knock on my door, I invite them in.

She Said: Victimless Sin #1

2009-07-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Hmm, Dr. B's last post sure sounded like a reprimand to me, did it sound like that to you?

He's right -- I do burn the candle at both ends. I used to be a "morning person," retiring at about 10pm and getting up around 6am. It all changed by the time my eighth child had arrived. I found myself so thrilled when they were all in bed that I finally had time to myself to read, do a project, or just have some free time alone, that I took to staying up quite late at night. This habit has continued over the years. I now go to sleep about 12 or 1:00 at night and wake up just before 7. During the school year I have to get up just before 6. This gives me 6 or 7 hours of sleep, which I think is rather reasonable. A few times a month I find myself involved in something to the point that I stay up until 2 or 3.

Every once in a while I will make an effort to get more sleep. But it's not that important to me. What about you? Do you think going to sleep and waking up early is an important commandment, or is it just a suggestion that might be helpful? I think if my body didn't need to sleep, I never would. Since I honor my mother and father and obey the Word of Wisdom, I am already assured of a long and healthy life. I enjoy my hours alone in the darkness, reading or thinking, perusing the blogs, writing poetry. I wouldn't trade them for a few paltry more years in my extreme old age.

BiV's Homage to the Dark Hours

My muses prowl in the dark hours--
They do not waylay the weary,
But bestow their boon on the bright-eyed
And not the bleary.

Those owl-like souls who await them
In a state of solemn wonder
And are wakeful still in the wee hours,
Receive the plunder.

My muses pass by the slumb'rous,
They delay their dance to the dark hours,
And the only souls who perceive them
Rest not 'neath bowers.

I have pined alone in the dark hours,
I have begged without compunction.
I have sought the nine nymphic tokens,
Invoked their unction.

As I write these words after midnight,
I can feel their furtive fingers
Touch my mind and spirit gently--
The night oil lingers.

He Said: Retire to Thy Bed Early

2009-07-13T09:40:00.001-04:00

In Section 88:124 the Lord instructs:

Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated.

As long as I have been a Latter-day Saint I have considered this to be wise counsel. After only a year I went on a mission where we were expected to arise by 6 am and go to bed by 10 pm. Today it is 6:30am for missionaries and 10:30pm. For most of my life I have gone to bed at the latest around midnight but usually before 11pm.

Wikipedia gives a good overview on the amount of sleep we all need:

The National Sleep Foundation in the United States maintains that seven to nine hours of sleep for adult humans is optimal and that sufficient sleep benefits alertness, memory, problem solving, and overall health, as well as reducing the risk of accidents. A widely publicized 2003 study performed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine demonstrated that cognitive performance declines with six or fewer hours of sleep. A University of California, San Diego, psychiatry study of more than one million adults found that people who live the longest self-report sleeping for six to seven hours each night. Another study of sleep duration and mortality risk in women showed similar results. Other studies show that "sleeping more than 7 to 8 hours per day has been consistently associated with increased mortality," though this study suggests the cause is probably other factors such as depression and socioeconomic status, which would correlate statistically. It has been suggested that the correlation between lower sleep hours and reduced morbidity only occurs with those who wake after less sleep naturally, rather than those who use an alarm.

Researchers at the University of Warwick and University College London have found that lack of sleep can more than double the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, but that too much sleep can also double the risk of death. Professor Francesco Cappuccio said, "Short sleep has been shown to be a risk factor for weight gain, hypertension, and Type 2 diabetes, sometimes leading to mortality; but in contrast to the short sleep-mortality association, it appears that no potential mechanisms by which long sleep could be associated with increased mortality have yet been investigated. Some candidate causes for this include depression, low socioeconomic status, and cancer-related fatigue. …In terms of prevention, our findings indicate that consistently sleeping around seven hours per night is optimal for health, and a sustained reduction may predispose to ill health."

It is fascinating that Wikipedia agrees with both parts of the revelation that we shouldn't sleep longer than is needful nor that we should not get enough sleep which is usually considered seven to eight hours for an adult, nine to ten hours for those 5-18.

Outside of the missionary culture I discovered during my seven years at BYU that most members didn't really put a great deal of stock in adhering to this principle of going to bed early and sleeping that much. The majority of roommates and friends burned the midnight oil. They were just warming up by about 10 pm. Most of them were lucky they got about five or six hours sleep every night. I knew many that slept right through 8am classes and even more that worked as student janitors at 4am who either stayed up all night or missed shifts.

The reality is that many Latter-day Saints go on less than eight hours of sleep since we are such busy people. I don't know too many people that go to bed at nine oclock at night. It can be argued that at the time of Joseph Smith they didn't have electric lights nor did people work at different times of the day and night. My father who worked the night shift had to sleep during the day. He never really got his sleep clock in tune with the amount of time he needed to sleep. As he got older he said he slept less because he knew his time was limited.

I know that is a struggle for many Latter-day Saints to get up early in the morning. I remember as a student at BYU that Hugh Nibley told me "I am a late person. I go to bed late at night and get up late in the morning. I don't operate well early in the morning." My own wife seems to go to bed between 1-3am despite getting up around 6:30am every day. She usually cries when I wake her up and says she is tired. I think lack of sleep contributes to her crankiness.

I had a roommate when I first went to BYU who went on about two or three hours of sleep. He was always dragging his behind. After two or three weeks he would crash and sleep an entire day on Saturdays in to Sunday.

Even David O. McKay admits in his book Man May Know for Himself he had difficulty as a teenager with the principle:

I am reminded of the passage from the Doctrine and Covenants, "Retire to thy bed early . . . arise early." Sometimes as boys Thomas E. and I did not retire early. The next morning father would stand at the door upstairs and say, "Come boys, it's time to get up," and we would turn over, hoping for a few more winks; but he would stand there, and say, "Come boys, those who dance must pay the fiddler." Oh, those happy days of youth!

Joseph B. Wirthlin in his book Finding Peace in Our Lives tells us why he considers getting up early of value:

Heed the advice found in the Doctrine and Covenants: "Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated." (D&C 88:124.) The early hours of the morning give us a freshness and a time when we are unencumbered with the cares of the world. It can be a quiet time, a time to become organized and "prepare every needful thing." (D&C 88:119.)

Russell M. Nelson also agreed in Conference October 1986 that morning is a good time to put our lives in order:

To those who feel defeated and downtrodden, look to the early hours of the day for your rescue. The Lord tells us, “Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated” (D&C 88:124). The dawning of a brighter day heralds a time of forgiveness. Shadows of yesterday’s grief melt in the rays of early morn’s opportunity.

I guess early morning is a good time for repentance because wives, children and siblings are still cutting a few z's. You can pour out your soul without worrying anyone hears you if you feel like praying quietly out loud. I come up with my best posts right when I wake up around 5 or 6am.

Neal A. Maxwell in his book Notwithstanding My Weaknesses suggests we should get up early so we don't make mistakes due to weariness:

President Spencer W. Kimball has had those telling moments when he has felt as if he simply could not meet certain challenges. Yet he did and he does. Given our weaknesses, however, paced progress is essential, much as God used six measured and orderly creative periods (followed by respite) in preparing man and this earth. There is a difference, therefore, between being steadily and effectively or "anxiously " engaged, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, being frantically engaged one moment and being passive and detached the next. Lest we wrongly assume that traveling on the straight and narrow path requires hectic pace, let us remember that the Lord does not want us to weary by the way and for very good reasons. Thoughtless haste and spurts of service are not what is desired, for such naivete is like the businessman who confuses volume with profit. The Lord has clearly indicated His concern for us if we are weary; He has even given us counsel on sleep to avoid that weariness and in order to be vigorous: "cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated." (D&C 88:124)

Heber J. Grant mentioning the death of Anthony W. Ivins in Conference October 1934 said he would have lived longer had he gone to bed earlier:

One of the greatest, most devoted and splendid members of the General Authorities of the Church has been taken from us at the ripe age of eighty-two. From his childhood until his death he has been a very studious man, gathering information on many subjects, and he was successful in all the walks of life in which he engaged. He was successful in more things than any other man I ever knew, and all his life fulfilled the requirements made in the D&C, Section 88, verses 124, 125, 126:

Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated;

And above all things, clothe yourselves with the bonds of charity, as with a mantle, which is the bond of perfectness and peace;

Pray always, that ye may not faint until I come; behold, and lo, I will come quickly, and receive you unto myself.

Each and every requirement therein made Brother Ivins fulfilled, except the one "retire to thy bed early." I believe that he would have lived longer had he fulfilled that requirement, but he generally studied until midnight.

I guess he would have lived to 90 had he heeded the advice of the Lord. I am sure most of us would like to last until 82 even. If you really aren't too concerned about how long you live and want to cut off a few years of life then you should continue a reduced sleep cycle.

She Said: In a Good Mormon Marriage, Who Holds the Trump Card?

2009-07-10T12:30:00.001-04:00

These days, I don't know of anyone who DOESN'T believe that husbands and wives should be equal partners in a marriage. Optimally, a married couple should work together to solve problems. But we all know that sometimes an impasse will be reached. A consensus cannot be attained, and a decision must be made. What does a good Mormon couple do in such a situation?

We often hear that patriarchy is a good system because of just such occurrences. If there is one clear leader, the argument goes, then the course to follow will be decided in advance, and it will cause less contention in the long run. In homes where one partner holds the priesthood, it seems obvious that the priesthood holder will make all final decisions when a tie-breaker is needed. In an address titled "Marriage and the Patriarchal Order," Elder Dean L. Larson expresses his opinion that male priesthood holders should be sensitive to their wives' feelings and desires when making decisions, and that compulsion should not prevail. However,

"In the Lord’s system of government, every organizational unit must have a presiding officer. He has decreed that in the family organization the father assumes this role. He bears the priesthood ordination. He is accountable before the Lord for this leadership...A wide range of individual responsibilities must be carried by the leaders and by good counselors in every successful organization, including the family organization. These responsibilities should be agreed upon and then honored as a sacred trust. The particulars may vary in each marriage unit by agreement of the husband and wife, but the ultimate responsibility for leadership cannot be successfully delegated."

The majority of Elder Larson's talk illustrates the problem I have with this principle. Over and over he speaks of unity in the making of decisions. He talks about how unanimity is important in the councils of the Church. He even expresses the idea that different areas of responsibility for family life may be divided among the spouses if agreed upon in advance. But in the end, the "trump card" is left with the husband.

"If, ultimately, a husband must propose a course of action in the absence of complete agreement, he must sense the great responsibility in taking this role and should do so with great care. It should never be done precipitously, whimsically, or egotistically, but always thoughtfully and with the welfare of those involved uppermost in mind. The powers of inspiration can more easily and readily be brought to bear in this way. When a decision is reached in any matter, the two marriage partners must be as one in pursuing the objective, whatever it may be. A wise couple will learn to sustain and support each other in their proper roles in leadership and partnership. There will never be lobbying with family or friends for support against a decision made in the proper way. To do so would be to invite contention and competition which will surely be destructive to the happiness and harmony of the marriage."

The wife is expected to submit to the husband's priesthood leadership in these cases. In my opinion, a woman can never feel like an equal partner in a marriage which is contracted under these terms. In the better marriages, she may feel that her opinion is valued, that her husband respects her judgment and so forth, but underlying all of the best efforts for unity is the crocodile of priesthood that lies beneath murky waters, ready to raise his fearful head if there comes a day that two human beings cannot see eye to eye.

Our Church leaders strive incessantly to allege that our LDS marriages are equal as well as patriarchal. This is simply not true when one partner is given a trump card. No matter how sensitively, how lovingly, how meekly he makes the decision, it is his to make, and the woman's to submit.

He Said: In a Good Mormon Marriage, Who Holds the Trump Card?

2009-07-10T12:29:00.001-04:00

I read with great interest BiV's post on who holds the trump card. In a world where relationships really are patriarchal I would see better her position and respond that men actually have a decision-making power and are ultimately responsible in the Mormon system of accountability. However in the United States and Canada most Mormon males would tell you that their wives have for the most part usurped that power. No man with any sense would think that he is in charge of the family. The reality is that the wife is usually in charge and calls on us for decisions when children don't comply.

The business about women are more spiritual than men is because it is the woman who usually presses the spiritual things like lets pray or hold family home evening or go to the temple. Recently my daughter was able to get in to all three BYUs. I have a preference for BYU in Provo having gone there for seven years. I worked at BYU-Hawaii for two years and had a daughter attend BYU-Idaho. I tried to get my wife and daughter to see the logic of my daughter going to BYU. In the end my wife convinced my daughter it was better for her to go to a school I considered inferior at BYU-Hawaii to BYU at Provo. I admit her rationale of being smaller might mean better attention but knowing the arrogance of professors at both places up close and personal I feel it is the luck of the draw.

I can't think of single incidence where I said something and my wife or children did what I suggested. As a result I don't see what has her knicker's in a bunch other than the fact that the leaders suggest the man make the final decision.

In my opinion it is because if the wife is so prone to being in charge than it might equalize it if she were to consider the opinion of her husband from time to time. This is a cultural specific thing in the U.S. and Canada and matriarchal places like the Phillipines. My argument wouldn't probably hold up in truly partriarchal cultures in the world like the Middle East or Europe but for this culture I believe the disparity is on the other side unless a woman truly is a wallflower. Having seven daughters I haven't seen one yet including in my twelve years of living in Utah. I find this outrage over a fundamentalist doctrine hard to fanthom.

It would actually be refreshing in terms of intimacy if more mainstream Mormons women actually thought we trumped them since many of the men I talk to are just trying to keep their wives happy. I learned in Family Relationship classes at the Y that women control the intimacy. It might balance things out if men actually had a say in other areas.

She Said: Mormon Date Night

2009-07-06T15:30:00.001-04:00

I'm not so sure this is counsel we hear from GAs or over the pulpit at General Conference (I'll let Dr. B. search around for it), but I know that local leaders often counsel married couples that they should set aside time once a week for a "Date Night." I think this is actually some of the best advice I've heard for strengthening a marriage. When Dr. B. and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple back in 1983 our sealer, Elder Yoshihiko Kikuchi, advised us to go out often together, even if it was only to McDonald's. I think this was standard advice that he gave to many couples. It is often difficult once two people are married to spend quality time together. Unless there is a time set apart in the week, it usually just doesn't happen. Work schedules, children, TV, or even a good book can get in the way of conversation between couples, and over the years the lack of communication makes a difference.

I remember at a stake conference when all of our children were quite young, the SP told the parents in the stake that they should establish a bedtime for their children. At the time, we were into attachment parenting, and that combined with nursing on demand which meant that bedtimes were haphazard around our place. In fact, we ususally let the children spend the night wherever they happened to fall asleep (most often, our bed). I resisted the Stake President's advice at first, but after we discussed it we decided to try it for a while. I did notice that when we had bedtimes in our home, DH and I spent more time conversing together in the evenings.

I would have to say that in my opinion, Mormon Date Night is more effective than almost anything else for keeping marriages strong and families together. A "date" doesn't have to be expensive, or even take you out of the home. The best dates are those that get you talking and enjoying each other's company. Here are some of my favorite "dates" that we've done as a couple:

Road trips (sometimes these have been road trips to the temple, when we've lived a distance from the temple. I don't think going to the temple is always the best date night, but it can be great when you combine it with dinner before or after, a road trip, or even a weekend getaway.)

Canoeing/Tubing (I love water sports. I'd like to do more of this--kayaking, sailing, windsurfing, etc.)

Just going to the beach and walking along the shore (trite, I know! but for a reason, people!)

Studying Isaiah together

Going to the museum (I love art museums, and I'm still hoping to get to Italy to see the art there.)

Attending concerts (most of the ones we've done lately have been our kids' band concerts, but those are fun, too.)

These are dates I don't particularly care for:

Going to a movie

Going out to eat (exception: upscale dinner theater. Don't know if we've ever done that together, though.)

Going to a church fireside or high priests' activity

What are your favorites, readers? Has Mormon Date Night helped your marriage?

He Said: Mormon Date Night

2009-07-06T15:29:00.000-04:00

I have tried date night on a few occasions in my married life but not consistently. Part of my problem has been I am constantly broke and I am lazy. My wife likes to do different things like go for a walk or paddle a canoe. Neither activities that I am interested in. My idea of a good time is going out to eat or watching a movie. Neither activity which engages in much conversation.

Historically my wife tasked me to try to track down the concept of "date night." I can't seem to track the concept of an LDS date night prior to the 1980s in Church Publications for general members but I believe it was probably a practice since the 1940s or 1950s for church leaders. Among General Authorities I believe it existed before the 1980s because in “Elder Bruce R. McConkie: ‘Preacher of Righteousness’,” Ensign, Jun 1985, 15 it says that the McConkie's had been doing it for years:

Mark remembers that Thursday nights were reserved as his parents’ date night. “Their courtship continued until today.” They enjoyed shows, went out for ice cream or popcorn, or just went for walks. They once went through a bird-watching phase together, and later enjoyed collecting and polishing rocks, making beautiful jewelry for friends. They studied the scriptures together, and she listened as he prepared his manuscripts and sermons.

It became a wide-spread term in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Elder Dean L. Larsen used the idea of a Friday date night during a husbands’ and wives’ fireside broadcast from Temple Square 29 January 1984 in which said:

A wise bishop told me recently that every Friday night is date night for him and his wife. The older children in the family know that they have a babysitting assignment every Friday evening. It is a tradition that they enjoy with their parents.

The earliest time I saw it used in the Church News was on 22 August 1987 in response to a Mormon Forum when people were asked to respond to how to be a more effective father, husband. Leo Weider of Provo, Utah responded:

On our date night, every Friday, I normally ask my sweetheart, "How I can serve you and the children better? How can I be a better person, husband and father?" Then I listen without a defensive rebuff. I may think I'm doing great but it's how I am perceived by my family and others that is important. I don't like to hear that I am lacking, but if I don't find out I will never know how to change. When I ask my children these questions, I often get startling answers. What they think, not what I perceive, is most important.

In the 1990s it was reported on a few times in the Church News. In How to be a Hard Worker While Finding the Time to Rest Body and Mind on 30 July 1994 we read:

Reserve at least one day or night per week for activities. We have a date night, which is most often Saturday. We ride our motorcycles, see historic sites, visit friends, do family history research, etc....
Because my husband is a busy bishop and provider, we have found that having family home evening is a way for our family to slow down, especially after Sunday meetings and schedules. On Monday nights, as a family, we make sure that we plan a fun activity either outside the home, which gets us away from our normal stress level, or we just stay home. We have a simple gospel lesson with singing of Primary songs. We laugh together, which always seems to rejuvenate all of us.

There is always a date night once a week for my husband and me. There are times we sit around the piano and sing, which releases a lot of tension, or we listen to music, whether it be the Tabernacle Choir or soothing classical music. Music has been one of the biggest influences of my life and my family's life. By it has come a lot of stress, as I am a music teacher and my husband sings. But also, by it has come much peace, as we always seem to turn to it when we need tensions released and our spirits calmed.-Anne Woolley, Kenosha, Wis.

On 3 Feb. 1996 in How to remain in love with your spouse despite the ongoing rigors of life

Have a weekly date night. This does not necessarily have to be a spend-a-lot-of-money night. In our case, we make time for each other, even if that only means that we go for a walk together and have ice cream. Do it with the idea that it's your time together, not time to discuss kids, bills, household things. The idea is to spend time together and to stay acquainted with each other.

Most of the LDS marriage counseling books suggested it as a practice now for general members. Brent Barlow in What Wives Expect of Husbands (1982) wrote:

While some husbands spend adequate time with their wives, many do not. One wife wrote, 'I would like him to sense my moods and respond with some time especially for me when I am tired, frustrated, or burdened. I would like this time without him complaining and without having to ask for it."

Another young woman said, "In the future, I would appreciate more planning for time together. Specifically, setting aside time for just us. Time to share experiences, develop interests we can share, become better acquainted, and just be good friends."

An older woman wished her husband would just "offer to go out in the evening for a walk or bike ride."

Wives do expect an occasional night out with their husbands. One happy wife said, "I enjoy going on little trips with him or just a date to dinner or a show. But it doesn't have to cost anything to make me happy. All he has to do is let me know he's glad I'm there." And another satisfied housewife simply wrote, "We have a regular date night. He tries very hard to follow the advice of our church leaders, who say we should go out alone as husband and wife."

Some wives don't want to go out on the spur of the moment. One wife admonished husbands, "Plan ahead for dates. Spur of the moment planning is difficult, and by planning you can get more in. Or, it can just make you happier in looking forward to the time together."

Tamra A. Fackrell in the Sane Mother's Guide to Raising Small Children agrees with Biv:

My husband and I often have a weekly date. Many couples complain that getting a babysitter is too expensive, but time alone with each other is important. I live for it. I love the romance, and I love my husband. Every marriage needs an element of fun, and a babysitter is much cheaper than marriage counseling. Don't just keep your marriage alive; instead, make it thrive!

I have found some creative solutions about babysitting. For example, you might go out two nights a month and stay in two nights a month. On your nights in, put the kids to bed promptly and establish the rules of date night: No interruptions! Then you can watch a movie in a homemade tent, go on a scavenger hunt, eat a crazy theme dinner, or watch the sunset from your balcony. As I write this, my husband and I are on a date of sorts. He bought burritos for our dinner, and he is playing computer games while I am writing. As I finish a section, he reads it and offers suggestions. Not exactly pure romance, but he shows his love by his support. You can also trade babysitting with a friend. And if you are lucky enough to have Grandma or an aunt who loves to babysit and lives nearby, you have even more options! A weekly date keeps marriages thriving.

I remember before I had kids my wife came and got me and took me on a romantic canoe trip with Dick and Julia Lowe on Utah Lake. Even though I can't swim I braved it. I can't seem to get a real consensus on the Friday night bit but I have heard that over the years.

I am not sure you need to institutionalize the practice but I am sure that in the busy world we live in that couples don't seem to spend enough quality time together. Formalizing it can make it harder to be spontaneous but on the other hand a half a loaf is better than none. Even if you only go out on occasion it is better than not going out at all.

She Said: Symonds Ryder and a Crisis of Faith

2009-07-02T15:04:00.006-04:00

On Wednesday, John Hamer at BCC put up a post about the Thomas B. Marsh strippings of milk story. This is one with which most members of the Church are familiar, as it is often used to illustrate the folly of apostatizing from the Church over a trifle. John cautions:

"Thus, while the moral the Thomas B. Marsh fable, i.e., that faith can be shattered over something inconsequential, is true enough, it would probably make sense to tell a different, more appropriate fable to illustrate that moral."

There is a different fable oft told in the Church to illustrate that moral--but I would like to show that its use is just as inappropriate, and perhaps the moral itself should be reexamined.

Symonds Ryder was a convert to the Church from the same Disciples of Christ congregation in Mantua, Ohio as Sidney Rigdon, Ezra Booth, and Eliza R. Snow and her family. He was made an Elder and called to serve a mission in a revelation that is now D&C 52. However, in the revelation, his name was spelled wrong. The misspelling of his name is often the only reason cited as the cause of his decision to then leave the church. (see B. H. Roberts in HC 1:260–61; Fawn M. Brodie in No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, 118; Donna Hill in Joseph Smith: The First Mormon, 143; Cannon and Cook in Far West Record, 286; Dean C. Jessee in Papers of Joseph Smith, Volume 1: Autobiographical and Historical Writings, 511.) Probably the origin of this story is his funeral sermon preached in Hiram, Ohio, August 3, 1870, by B.A. Hinsdale.

"Ryder was informed, that by special revelation he had been appointed and commissioned an elder of the Mormon church. His commission came, and he found his name misspelled. Was the Holy Spirit so fallible as to fail even in orthography? Beginning with this challenge, his strong, incisive mind and honest heart were brought to the task of re-examining the ground on which he stood. His friend Booth had been passing through a similar experience, on his pilgrimage to Missouri, and, when they met about the 1st of September, 1831, the first question which sprang from the lips of each was--"How is your faith?" and the first look into each other's faces, gave answer that the spell of enchantment was broken, and the delusion was ended. They turned from the dreams they had followed for a few months, and found more than ever before, that the religion of the New Testament was "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." (A. S. Hayden, Early History of the Disciples (1875), p. 251.)

Perhaps the misspelling was a bother to Ryder, but this one incident was hardly the sole reason for Ryder's departure. For one thing, spelling was more fluid in the 19th century and earlier. An attempt at standardized spelling in the U.S. did not begin until the appearance of Webster's “American Dictionary of the English Language” in 1828, and for at least a half century many words continued to be vociferously debated. American census-takers varied quite a bit in their reporting of people's names, showing that they were not asking people "How is that spelled?" but rather writing the name as they thought it should appear. Ryder's name appears as following in the U.S. census:

1830 census Hiram, Portage, OH: Simonds Rider
1840 census Hiram, Portage, OH: Symonds Rider
1850 census Hiram, Portage, OH: Simonds Rider, wife Mahitabel
1860 census Hiram, Portage, OH: Symonds Rider, wife Mehitable
1870 census Hiram, Portage, OH: Symands Rider, wife Mahitable

Ryder's commission with the misspelling of his name took place in June 1831 and may account for his not going to Missouri, but as noted he did not leave the church until Ezra Booth's return in September. In the meantime, Ryder became concerned about other developments. In a letter to A.S. Hayden he wrote:

"But when they [Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon] went to Missouri to lay the foundation of the splendid city of Zion, and also of the temple, they left their papers behind. This gave their new converts an opportunity to become acquainted with the internal arrangement of their church, which revealed to them the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Joseph Smith the prophet. This was too much for the Hiramites, and they left the Mormonites faster than they had ever joined them, and by fall the Mormon church in Hiram was a very lean concern." (Symonds Ryder, "Letter to A. S. Hayden," February 1, 1868, cited in Hayden, op. cit., pp. 220, 221.)

It seems that the coming threat of enforced consecration might have been more of a problem for Ryder than the misspelling of his name. The influence of his disaffected friend Ezra Booth must have also had an effect upon Symonds.

The Religion 341 Church History manual states:

"From the outset the Church had an unpopular public image that was added to by apostates and nurtured by the circulation of negative stories and articles in the press. People gave many reasons for apostatizing. For example, Norman Brown left the Church because his horse died on the trip to Zion. Joseph Wakefield withdrew after he saw Joseph Smith playing with children upon coming down from his translating room. Symonds Ryder lost faith in Joseph’s inspiration when Ryder’s name was misspelled in his commission to preach. Others left the Church because they experienced economic difficulties."

Such a view boils the disaffection of these individuals down to a single, easily dismissed anecdote rather than acknowledging the difficult and complex issues they faced. This practice encourages members today to dismiss the very real concerns confronted by members who question aspects of the Church. "If you have questions, you must be sinning," the party line goes. In reality, there are multiple tangled and tortuous reasons why someone may develop a crisis of faith. Not only should we look deeper into the available documents to discover the motivations of historical figures, we should listen, and listen, and listen some more to come to a greater understanding of our friends and associates who question.

UPDATE: I've added this picture of Ryder's gravestone, with the name of the "Desciples" church spelled wrong!

He Said: Symonds Ryder An Orthographically Challenged ExMo

2009-07-02T15:00:00.003-04:00

During the Ohio years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Symonds Ryder was one of several converts made in Hiram, Ohio in 1831. He was the presiding elder or overseer of the Disciples of Christ Church (Campbellite) in that area before and after his membership in the church. He along with one of his closest friends Ezra Booth and their families were baptized and remained members of the church for a few short months in 1831. Latter-day Saints say he left the church because of a misspelling in his name Simonds Ryder [sic] (See D&C 52:37). As BiV points out in her blog many LDS church historians and scholars attribute this to his leaving the church.

Guy L. Dorius citing the History of the Church says of his leaving the church:

He was baptized that same month, but his enthusiasm was short-lived. He soon received a ministerial call signed by the Prophet Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon that stated that it had been given them by the Spirit and that it was the Lord’s will he be called to preach the gospel. In both the informal letter he received and in the official commission to preach, his last name was misspelled Rider, instead of Ryder. He left the Church, claiming that if the “ ‘Spirit’ through which he had been called to preach could err in the matter of spelling his name, it might have erred in calling him to the ministry as well; or, in other words, he was led to doubt if he were called at all by the Spirit of God, because of the [scribal] error in the spelling of his name!” 8

It is interesting to note that at his funeral A.S. Hayden spelled his name Symonds Ryder. In the 1833 Book of Commandments his name is spelled Simonds only with no last name. In the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants it is spelled Simonds Rider. In the 1981 (current edition) his name is spelled Simonds Ryder.

What is even more fascinating is that I am sure his family knew how to spell the man's name as did his parishioners over whom he ministered for fifty years. At no point in the various editions of the scriptures have the Mormon scholars or leaders felt to correct the name if that indeed was the reason he left the church.

It would be about as ridiculous as when I first joined the church and was assigned to home teach a man that joined the church and went inactive over the stake president calling him to bear his testimony during stake conference. When I first went to the man's home I asked him why he no longer attended church. He said that he was offended by the stake president to whom he told that he was shy and never wanted to speak in a large public gathering on at least a few occasions. The stake president laughed whenever he said that and told him not to worry he would get over it. One day he called him impromptu out of the audience and asked him to share his testimony which the man did. The man said he walked out of the stake conference and never returned to church since the stake president disrespected him. I knew the stake president to be a very kind man so I went to see him and told him the story. I asked him to go apologize to the man who said if he did he would return to church. To my surprise the stake president said that wasn't a good enough reason to leave the church and he was prompted by the spirit to call on the man. The man was just using that as an excuse and he should just get over it and come back. He told me to go to the man and tell him he should come back. Needless to say I was between a rock and a hard place since neither man felt that what they had done was morally wrong. The man remained inactive.

I find it incredulous that a man would leave the church over something as stupid as a misspelling of his name but I have seen people leave for dumber reasons than that. You would think after all the printings of the scriptures that we could get Symonds Ryder's name spelled correctly. You would also think that he would suck it up and stay with the church since it was just that a small inconsequential matter.

In Ryder's mind he joined the church on the basis of modern day revelation or that the Spirit speaks to man today. He really didn't realize that the Spirit just puts impressions in the mind of the prophet. The prophet just related the revelation which was recorded. If they had over a hundred years of record keeping like today the recorder or scribe might have checked with the recipient of the blessing like they do today and ask if everything is spelled right. It is easy to add an i where a y is since they both sound the same in English. If you are a hard liner like Ryder was you might doubt the power of the revelation if it is recorded incorrectly.

Speaking to patriarchs in the LDS Church I can understand this as many people even today question the lineage when they declare something like you are the seed of Abraham through Joseph. Since Joseph had two sons Ephraim and Manassah and Ephraim is the royal line he needs to be very precise. A couple of patriarchs told me that they forgot to say Ephraim a few times and went back later and fixed it or they misspelled the person's name on the patriarchal blessing even though the form had the correct spelling that is why the person is given a copy before it is submitted and asked to check it. It is later sent in to the church in Salt Lake City in case you lose it.

I think Symonds Ryder had a bigger problem. His downfall was pride and rationalization. He used the misspelling as a reason not to take a mission that was assigned. If he had gone on his mission he might have had a different trajectory in his life. His buddy Ezra Booth went on a mission but he thought it was a tough mission and got his buddy back home to begin persecuting the Saints particularly the Prophet whom Ryder was mad at.

Without naming names we tell of Ryder's turning on the prophet over his doubting his revelatory power to our children. In the Primary 5 lesson manual on the Doctrine and Covenants (1997) we read about both Booth and Ryder:

Ezra Booth joined the Church in 1831 after seeing the Prophet heal Elsa Johnson’s arm (see lesson 19). Several months later he was called on a mission to Missouri. He was angry because he had to walk the entire journey and because missionary life was not what he had expected. He was disappointed because he did not see any more miracles like the healing of Elsa Johnson. He began to think and say bad things about the leaders of the Church. Because of his improper behavior during his mission, Ezra Booth was excommunicated when he returned to Ohio. This meant that he was no longer a member of the Church. Instead of repenting, Booth began writing letters to a local newspaper, telling lies about Joseph Smith and the Church. These letters influenced many people in Ohio to become suspicious of Church members and to persecute them.

One winter night a group of men who believed Ezra Booth’s letters got drunk and attacked the homes of Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon in Hiram, Ohio. Joseph had been up late caring for his adopted son, who had the measles, and had just fallen asleep when the angry mob broke into the house. The men dragged Joseph outside, swearing and threatening to kill him. They choked him, tore off his clothes, and tried to push a paddle of hot tar and a bottle of acid into his mouth. The bottle of acid broke, chipping one of Joseph’s teeth and causing him to speak with a whistle for the rest of his life. The men in the mob also dragged Sidney Rigdon from his home. When Joseph saw Sidney lying on the ground, he thought Sidney was dead. The mob decided not to kill Joseph, but they scratched him severely, spread hot tar all over his body, and covered him with feathers.

The ring leader of the group was according to Joseph Smith none other than Symonds Ryder. A supposedly religious man who certainly didn't turn the other cheek over a supposed slight. It just proved that if a guy is on the road to apostasy he will rationalize his bad behaviors.

Is Mental Adultery A Sin?

2009-06-30T15:00:00.001-04:00

He Said:
I think that mental adultery is a sin. In fact I believe it usually leads to the loss of trust among married couples when a spouse engages even in something consider harmless like mental adultery. I am sure that many LDS would disagree thinking it a harmless action.

I remember years ago when Jimmy Carter, a devote Christian said in an interview published in the November 1976 issue of Playboy magazine, then-Governor Carter talked about the role of religion in his life. In one part he said:

" I try not to commit a deliberate sin. I recognize that I'm going to do it anyhow, because I'm human and I'm tempted. And Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, 'I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery.' I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do--and I have done it--and God forgives me for it."

Even though people made fun of him he was serious that as a good Christian he considered it a sin.

If you talk to most woman they admit to fantasizing about various men sometimes specific men and other times generalized men like a sheik, a movie star, a policeman etc. Many men also indulge in this kind of fantasy thinking about a co-worker or someone they do business with or go to church with.

Jesus Christ was very specific when he said:

Behold, it is written by them of old time, that thou shalt not commit adultery;

But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman, to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart.

Behold, I give unto you a commandment, that ye suffer none of these things to enter into your heart;

For it is better that ye should deny yourselves of these things, wherein ye will take up your cross, than that ye should be cast into hell. (3 Nephi 12:27-30.)

Just like masturbation many Mormons and Christians justify mental adultery as a victimless sin. No one is harmed so no harm no foul they say. It is just harmless.

Neal A. Maxwell in his book Flood of Wonderful Light denounces such an attitude:

Lest we rationalize the indulging of ourselves, holding on to ungodly things because these seem so private, we have only to look at Sodom and Gomorrah to see what cumulative misery consenting adults caused through their so-called victimless crimes!

He said in his book We Talk of Christ We Rejoice in Christ: "Those who are filled with lust will not only commit mental adultery but may commit actual adultery, fornication, or other things just as bad that are "like unto it." (D&C 59:6.)

On the few occasions when I have let my mind wander and imagine a specific person I know it is demeaning and debasing for me to think of some woman I am not married to as an object for my sexual gratification. I am not sure I would ever have sex with anyone other than my wife.

Some people would say of come on just because you think about having sex with someone doesn't mean it will ever happen. In cognitive studies they find that the mind cannot distinguish between a mental action and a physical action. When we engage in fantasying the mind imprints it on our brain just like we really did it.

I think it weakens our will to remain faithful to a spouse when we are having marital problems if they are fantasying about someone else. Pretty soon they begin to act on those images. It might be a subtle progression like email or chatting with the person on the internet or flirting with them in the workplace or at church.

Even the Lord tells us that our very thoughts will condemn us:

For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; we shall not be found spotless; and our thoughts will also condemn us; and in this awful state we shall not dare to look up to our God; and we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us to hide us from his presence. (Alma 12:14.)

I feel that the Church is clear that we should learn to control our thoughts. Personally I believe that even fantasizing can be a destructive thing in that it erodes trust when you spouse is thinking about others. In the LDS Church we promise to have our desire for our spouse alone. I think the Prophet Joseph Smith was wise when he put us under a covenant to do this.

She Said:
I don't think many Mormons would disagree with you on this one.
BUT... let me see if I can say this in a discreet manner... it seems like you are saying that you are against role playing activities within marriage. Should I get rid of that little French Maid costume? Or are you just saying a person shouldn't fantasize about another person who is real?

He Said: Active Members Interacting with Anti-Mormons

2009-06-29T21:46:00.000-04:00

Anti-Mormons have always served a inculcating function in the LDS doctrinal and history arena. There has to be an opposition in all things and their desire to disseminate materials has contributed to the LDS research community at BYU. I have had mixed feelings about them. I have not agreed with their purposes or intentions but I would be a hypocrite to say I haven't benefitted from their desire to share material. It was a two-edged sword to associate with them since you had to be firm in the faith but even the institutional church or archives has had dealings with them over the years as manuscripts and other items have come from them. Even my bosses at BYU visited them from time to time when I worked there for seven years.

When I was a graduate assistant at the BYU religion department I worked in an office with four other graduate assistants. One of the assistants was a young man that was excommunicated prior to his coming to BYU. He told me his story as a cautionary warning or tale. He said on his mission he got a hold of Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Mormonism Shadow or Reality. I remember also on my own mission seeing it but I just laughed at it because it employed underlining as a way of pointing out what they considered ridiculous or false Mormon teachings. I never took it too seriously. My desk mate said he also felt the same way and that his intention when he started was to refute all their doctrines which he spent a great deal of mission doing.

When he came home he became obsessed with collecting any and all anti-Mormon writings and had hundreds of them that was why he was such a good researcher and was hired to work later with us in the BYU religion department. He said that he subtly began to lose his faith little by little as he couldn't answer all the objections he began to find. Eventually he lost his faith and began to doubt the church was true and apostatized. He was eventually called in and was excommunicated. Then after he was out of the church he realized what had happened to him and he repented and was able to come back and be reinstated. His most important point that he shared with me was being critical of the church doctrines and leaders leads to personal apostasy.

His story really had an impact on me and sobered me up to the fact that it is easy to lose your way when you begin questioning the doctrines of the church. I vowed in my life in light of his personal example and listening to Elder Boyd K. Packer's talk the Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect to not be one of the critical historian types.

I don't go out of my way to associate with anti-Mormon types but I have encountered them anyway. My treatment of them is similar to what I read while on a mission in an address by Mark E. Peterson about Jehovah Witnesses. He said that they are sincere people but sincerely wrong. I have respect for people including anti-Mormons for their sincere desire to enlighten me to the doctrines that they feel are wrong and I have taken their literature and looked at it but for the most part I either see through the distortions or I say it isn't essential to my salvation.

Even when I worked at the BYU religion department I had access to all the papers that Russell Rich had his graduate students do such as visiting every fundamentalist or splinter group and doing an advanced religion or history paper on them. At the Mormon History Association Meetings I listened as an enamored Scott Faulring and Mark Grandstaff had Lawrence Foster in our room for hours telling them about the Millenarian connection of Mormons with Shakers in Ohio or had them force me to befriend Earnest Strack. I never went beyond talking to Earnest but I recognized his sincere desire to unveil what he thought were hidden doctrines of Mormonism. He would stop me on the street as I walked by his shop and say do you want a copy of L. John Nuttall's diary or the Second Anointing compilation or John Taylor's Robes of the Priesthood. I would say thanks Earnest but I don't want to waste my money on it. I don't really want it. He would then said don't worry about money I will give you one free. Me I took whatever I could get free. I even collected hundreds of books every Friday off the Harold B. Lee Library cart when they wouldn't sell and the sign said free. I got a 1790 book and dozens of LDS books off that cart. Sometimes I took Earnest's offering and other times I said no thanks. I always felt a tad uncomfortable with Earnest pushing his stuff on me but most of the other history majors couldn't wait to trade with Earnest. I never once gave him anything but many of my fellow students would do research and feed him their latest finds. I know for a fact even history and religion professors did it by feeding it to their students who feed it to Earnest.

I ended up with them many times later from Faulring or some other history major would manipulate my bosses in the history or religion department to give them copies of legitimate stuff like Wilford Woodruff's potteries diaries and as repayment they would give me to give my boss some other document. I didn't really even look at the stuff for years until I sold my copy collection years later to a book dealer. My wife on the other hand thought it was fascinating and interesting stuff.

I have always seen the anti-Mormons from Ogden Kraut to Jerald and Sandra Tanner to Michael Marquart as being the enemies of the Church. I met the Tanner's once through one of my bosses in the religion department who stopped one time to talk to them and another time on the way to the MHA the guys I was staying with made me stop by and see Sour Kraut and later hooked up with Marquart. I wasn't impressed by either since they brushed off the people I was with. They considered themselves to busy to answer their inquiries. Marquart was fixated on sharing the surreptious temple transcript he made using a recorder.

The interesting thing was that many so-called faithful Mormon students were enamored of these people and others like Gary Bergera and Elbert Peck. From time to time I would run across them since they were contemporaries. I personally didn't get on the worship train or the folk hero syndrome. I recognized that they served a useful purpose in getting out the hidden sources. When Lyndon Cook and Andy Ehat lost their Joseph Smith material right out of an office in the religion department at BYU I had a good clue who took it since one of the underground admitted he got it from the person or church leader who used the office and had taken it. My acquaintance didn't want Ehat to know there were more involved than the one guy. I had nothing to do with it. I tried to tell Ehat about the Kabal but he was in denial at the time and the guy who told me he was involved denied he had taken it to Ehat which was technically correct but also a subtle lie since he had copies of his stuff. It was like the Giadianton robbers as documents in the BYU special collections, the religion department, and the history department were slippery and made their way to the anti-Mormons and scholarly Mormons whose purpose was to blow the lid on sensitive materials and open up the sources or own them secretly.

I have always felt we should limit our interactions with the Anti-Mormons and dissidents. But Russell Rich and other BYU professors have been of a mind that we should get to know them. Reed Benson would say it was better to know the "enemy." When I worked for Lamar Berrett he had copies of all of Rich's students papers. His graduate students went out to every major offshoot or fundamentalist group in the 1960s and 1970s and did graduate religion papers on them. I made copies of them but most of the people are now deceased. My wife threw them and about a ton of paper I had in the landfill in California when I lived there in 2000. The rest of my stuff I sold later to a Utah book dealer. My wife has become enamored with the fundamentalists and wants to know all their secrets. I on the other hand don't think it is worth bothering with.

In the 1970s and 1980s with the excommunication of the September 6 group and others of their ilk. Elder Packer seem to suggest through his hard disciplinarian approach that if we valued our membership we should avoid the critical school. In the 2000s the church developed a kinder and gentler approach as more and more people who weren't around in the Arrington years began to attend conferences like Sunstone etc. Now a days there are more conservatives who have no clue about the the previous decades and attend them. I on the other hand still have a reluctance since I remember my desk mate's warning and have never once attended any of the Anti-Mormon attended conferences or meetings like Counter-point or Sunstone. I just don't feel uplifted by examining a bunch of old chestnuts like Adam-God, Polygamy etc.

She Said: Opening, or Closing Your Mind?

2009-06-29T21:45:00.001-04:00

What you're saying in your post sounds dangerously close to closing your mind to new ideas. Neither one of us would have joined the Church in the first place if we had not been willing to listen to and consider new philosophies. That's why I hate to see you mentioning specific religious traditions (such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Fundamentalist Mormons) and saying you would never listen to their ideas. I have talked personally to friends from both of these particular religions and I find they have some interesting ideas that are lacking in my current religious training. For example, many Fundamentalist Mormons have a good understanding of early Mormon history. JW's have some neat insights on the name of God and certain aspects of the Old Testament. I am always willing to listen to people's ideas, no matter where on the religious spectrum they hail. If we are secure about our religion and our beliefs, we ought not to fear considering others' viewpoints.

A scripture in the Book of Mormon advises:

For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him. (Moroni 7:16-17)

It seems to me that if we have such a simple way of judging good from evil, we need not be afraid of considering ideas that come from other religious traditions.

I do understand your hesitation to spend a lot of time with anti-Mormons or their writings. I have found that many of those who are actively working against the Church have become just as closed-minded and dogmatic as ex-Mormons as they were as true-blue, faithful members of the Church. They are unwilling to consider that ANYTHING at all in the Church is good or might lead someone closer to the Divine. It is unfortunate when this happens. However, many of those who have left the Mormon Church continue to have marvelous insights that I can learn and benefit from.

In one of our Conferences, a General Authority suggested to non-members:

"For those who are not yet members of the Church, I suggest you read the testimony of Joseph Smith with an open mind and real intent." (Carlos H. Amado, Some Basic Teachings from the History of Joseph Smith, CR April 2002)

If we are going to ask others to do this, does it not behoove us to do the same when others come to us with ideas they have found valuable?

Hosea Stout recorded a vision that Brigham Young had at Winter Quarters in 1847. He said that he had been to the world of spirits and seen Joseph Smith in vision. Joseph told Brigham the following. I wonder what it means.

Joseph said; do you be sure and tell the people one thing.

Do you be sure and tell the brethren that it is all important for them to keep the spirit of the Lord, To keep the quiet spirit of Jesus, and he explained how the spirit of the Lord reflected on the spirit of man and set him to pondering on any subject, and also explained how to know the spirit of the Lord from the spirit of the enemy.

He said the mind of man must be open to receive all spirits, in order to be prepared, to receive the spirit of the Lord; otherwise it might be barred so as not to receive the spirit of the Lord, which always brings peace and makes one happy and takes away every other spirit.

I'm not sure that we can have peace if we are continually letting things into our minds that are confusing, or negative, or mean-spirited. I know we must guard against certain things. But let's not go overboard. I hope Mormons will not be known as a people who close themselves off from others.

Get Your Teeth Into the Niblets

2009-06-28T10:55:00.001-04:00

Bloggernacle Niblets awards for 2008 are going on right now at Mormon Matters! Of course, He Said/She Said didn't start until last month, so we'll have to wait till next time around to get any awards :). But you can nominate BiV at Hieing to Kolob or Dr. B. at Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord if you are so inclined. Go and join the fun!

She Said: A Soul Mate for the South Carolinian

2009-06-27T15:17:00.001-04:00

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's affair with an Argentinian woman is only the most recent to hit the news lately. But his story is just a bit different than the usual. Unlike other cheating politicians, Sanford actually admits to having feelings for "the other woman." Clinton, Edwards, Spitzer, Vittner, and others all averred that the dalliance meant nothing, but Sanford had deep feelings for his paramour, María Belén Chapur. Is it worse to cheat because you are in love, or because you succumbed to the desire for physical gratification?

How embarrassing for Sanford that the emails to his Latin lover have been splashed all over the media. Robert Browning he is not, but it is titillating to read his passionate words. He calls her his "soul-mate" and laments transgressing a code of honor he has lived by all his life. But "despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul. I love you..." Sanford describes searching for answers in the scriptures (1 Corinthians 13) and retains a curious prudish reticence despite his passion:

“I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details ...”

Other situations of this caliber have filled me with righteous indignation -- especially John Edwards' betrayal of his wife who was valiantly battling cancer. So I'm surprised to find that I have a teeny bit of sympathy for this Lothario. Am I too susceptible to a tragic love story?

Guy Murray and Kaimi had an interesting conversation about the affair on Facebook. Compare the two viewpoints on the political implications of this. Guy is of the opinion that "one can judge a man's character by the way he keeps vows and commitments to his wife and children. One who cannot be faithful to his own wife and children has serious character flaws that should be examined before assuming the national stage." He is also concerned that Sanford is "not the caliber of man I want leading a country designated as a land of promise, where if we keep the commandments we will prosper, but if we do not, will be swept from off its face."

On the other hand, Kaimi makes the point that personal issues are not as important as a political leader who has intelligence and skill. The qualities of intelligence, charisma, understanding of economics and geopolitics are not always correlated with moral value. "I mean, Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever, despite his personal issues. Victor Hugo wrote enduring works (oft quoted by church leaders for their moral lessons), regardless of his own many affairs. I'd rather watch a game with Jordan than with a non-cheating but non-skilled player; and I'd rather read Les Mis than many other works which may have been written by folks who didn't cheat."

In reporting Sanford's infidelity, the Wall Street Journal notes:

For the Europeans, especially those of a Latin provenance, the sexual antics of politicians are of no more consideration in the judgment of their suitability for office than is what they eat for breakfast.

Examples include Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister; and the president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo. Neither has found his political career to suffer due to his indiscretions.

So what do you think? Would you vote for or support a political leader who had an affair?

He Said: Can Sanford Recognize His True Soul-mate?

2009-06-27T15:15:00.004-04:00

When Jesus told us that no person should put away their spouse except for adultery he didn't say that a man or woman should put away their spouse even if they met their perceived soul mate. In Matthew couples are told in the earthly marriage vow: “Therefore what God hath joined together, let no MAN put asunder [ apart ]” (Matthew 19:6). In the case of Governor Mark Sanford he was plain and simply gratifying his self in sleeping with María Belén Chapur.

Declaring Ms. Chapur his soul mate does not exculpate Mr. Sanford. Mr Sanford entered in to a binding agreement with his current wife by who he had four sons. Perhaps he told her somewhere in their two decades of marriage that she he loved her and she was the only one for him. Just because a man uses a few lines like you are my soul mate should we all of a sudden feel sympathy for his adulterous and dishonorable behavior.

Not only did Sanford dishonor his wedding vows but he dishonored his political trust as a public official when he used $8,000 of the state's money to have sex with his girlfriend. People forget that he did not come forward willingly to make a confession. He was caught in the act and only did so because he was forced to. He is no better than Bill Clinton. At least President Clinton wasn't seen in a bar making out with Monica Lewinsky. Adultery is adultery and those who engage in it are weak human beings not romantic heroes. Mark Sanford is a hypocrite in that he condemned Clinton on moral grounds then succumbed to the same behavior.

Mr. Sanford does not understand the American public very well. We are willing to forgive public celebrities their indiscretions but not their hypocrisy. Right-wing politicians who trumpet their family values and then betray their families are never trusted. Jenny Sanford is willing to forgive her husband if he genuinely wishes to stay in their marriage and work on fixing it -- but will his constituents?

Today in Sex Americana in the Wall Street Journal Gerard Baker hit the nail on the head about Sanford when he said:

The evidence of recent years in fact appears seems to be that straight (in every sense of the term) adultery is no longer a political disqualification for office, not even in Bible Belt states, and not even for Bible-wielding Republican politicians.

Instead the role that sex plays in politics is more nuanced.

The common view is that hypocrisy is a bigger career-killer than actual sexual misconduct; that if you’re a finger-wagging, family-preserving conservative, you’re going to have a harder time sustaining a career after revelations that you strayed than if you’re a permissive liberal.

There’s clearly something to this. Certainly part of the secret of Bill Clinton’s survival, one assumes, was that no one ever imagined that the former president was trying to tell people how to be a good married man. When Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for governor of California, highly plausible claims that he had made unwelcome advances towards a number of women scarcely dinted his election prospects. And Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor whose career was cut short by an expensive prostitute habit, seems to be on course for an improbable comeback....

But it ought to be clear that even among supposedly character-obsessed Anglo-Saxons there is an asymmetry to this relationship. Voters have shown a marked willingness to forgive a politically effective rogue. They can never be expected to extend the same forbearance to a morally perfect fool.

Sanford is not making much of an effort to save his marriage. In reading of his supposed breakup with Ms. Chapur in the Wall Street Journal this week he was seen in a bar canoodling with her. I guess he was letting her down gentle being he is such a great guy. He also failed to tell his wife he was breaking up in person as she had no clue where he was.

Jenny Sanford was in my opinion on the moral high ground when she said showing her strong belief in her commitment to God and her husband despite the humiliation:

Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him. I will continue to pour my energy into raising our sons to be honorable young men. I remain willing to forgive Mark completely for his indiscretions and to welcome him back, in time, if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance.

This is a very painful time for us and I would humbly request now that members of the media respect the privacy of my boys and me as we struggle together to continue on with our lives and as I seek the wisdom of Solomon, the strength and patience of Job and the grace of God in helping to heal my family.

Mark Sanford on the other hand was not very penitent when he said:

And in this regard, let me throw one more apology out there, and that is to people of faith across South Carolina, or for that matter, across the nation, because I think that one of the big disappointments when, believe it or not, I've been a person of faith all my life, if somebody falls within the -- the fellowship of believers or the walk of faith, I think it makes it that much harder for believers to say, "Well, where was that person coming from?" Or folks that weren't believers to say, "Where, indeed, was that person coming from?" So one more apology in there.

I personally think that where Mr. Sanford was coming from is that he was one randy dude that like every other adulterer was just justifying his bad behavior. His foolishness is not just that he carried on an illicit affair but that his real soul mate Jenny was standing ready to welcome him back with open arms. In my mind Jenny to whom he is legally and lawfully married is his real soulmate.

He Said: A Menace To Society

2009-06-26T20:32:00.000-04:00

In the LDS church which places a great deal of focus on getting married and having a family there are many single adults who never marry. Why they do not marry can be varied from they never had the opportunity to just being too picky.

One of my own daughters has been grappling with this phenomenon since she got home from her mission. She is a very attractive but very college-focused business student who is hardly a wallflower. She speaks her mind very openly and freely. She has gone on very few dates in her four years at BYU despite the fact she is a gorgeous girl with a superior mind and intellect. She is also beginning to get frustrated with her lack of dating and puts a great deal of pressure on herself due to her perceived lack of success to find an eternal mate. Her sister who is a year older came home from a mission and was engaged in less than five months and married at six months.

I personally did not marry until I was 28 years old so I understand the frustration of not getting married. When I came home from a mission at 22 I was eager to get married. I dated a considerable amount of young women at BYU. I dated a freshman girl who I was very serious with my entire first year. She had a missionary. Unfortunately for me she dumped me six weeks before he returned home and married him within two months of coming home. After that I didn't have any real opportunities until the age of 27.

My mission president encouraged us to get married within a few years after our missions. He told us that Brigham Young said that anyone over 24 was a menace to society. The blog Faith Promoting Rumors refutes this Mormon chestnut saying the closest anyone can come to a general authority statement is by George Q. Cannon. "a church apostle, [who] said in 1878: “I am firmly of the opinion that a large number of unmarried men, over the age of 24 years, is a dangerous element in any community.…”

The general LDS population does place credence in this statement I heard this told to me on numerous occasions. Until I was twenty-four I didn't feel a great deal of pressure to get married but after that age my roommates and friends began to pressure me. I was made to feel that I had some kind of deficit or flaw because I wasn't getting engaged. The more they pressured me the greater I began to get anxious. I made a lot of mistakes in my dating as a result of that constant nagging until about a year before I got married. First I dated the wrong demographic. I tended to date freshmen or sophomore women because they were young and pert and very attractive. I actually was too old for most of them and quite frankly most of what they wanted was flashiness which I did not have. They tended to like much better looking guys not guys with a hooked nose and a brash personality like mine.

I actually went out with many girls that were beauty pageant winners. It was like a game or competition between my roommates and me. This also caused me problems because many of them were pursued by guys that seemed on the surface to have more resources and there was no consistency in their availability. I didn't have a car until I was a senior when I was 25 years old so it was awkward in the winter to ask them to walk in the bitter cold to the Wilk. I remember I dated a young woman who graduated in accounting one summer. I had a 1959 Ford Fairlane with a 393 police interceptor engine that had a leak in the radiator and the seats had hard springs that poked you in the behind. The only attraction to the car was a drove and could squeal rubber which attracted more adventurous women but not an MBA type. She of course preferred a British fellow who was blond haired and blue eyed and drove an MG from our ward and dumped me. The only good thing was that many of these women intimated guys at BYU but the upper crusty. To my advantage many times I could call them 30 minutes before a BYU Cougars game and invite them out and they would go because many other guys made a bad assumption they already must have a date.

I was never very handsome nor sophisticated although I did have a very good self-image. In addition there were a few girls that were interested in me but I followed the unwritten rule of not poaching on women that my friends were interested in. The funny thing with these women was that I usually had a very good relationship because I wasn't trying that hard to impress them. However the guilt kept me from moving toward intimacy with them.

When I was twenty-seven I was working on a graduate degree and had a very unusual dream where I saw seven children with dark hair and features who I knew would be my children. That dream shook me up. I told a friend about the dream. My friend told me after sharing the dream that he tells his children that since I was single that Uncle F (me) would could come over and rock in a rocking chair and tell them stories since I was never going to have children of my own. I determined after the dream and the conversation to do something different in my dating life.

On further analysis I determined that from that point forward I would date women closer to my own age who were returned missionaries. I dated three women within a year all who were very determined in their approaches to life. The first woman was desperate to get married since she was about 24. She had appeared on my doorstep one night with another RM friend and had baked me a Zucchini bread in a can. I decided I would still proceed slowly in dating her. Some guy in our ward sensed her desire and invited her after a first date to go home with him for the weekend. Needless to say she came back engaged. I scratched my head because she came over to explain how she was now engaged. Not being one to hold back another I just smiled. I wasn't too broken hearted having suffered rejection for five years what was one more. I dated my wife and another woman simultaneously as we all chummed around together. I liked my wife's spunk and actually had a mini-vision to marry her despite the fact I knew the other woman wanted to marry me.

Since I grappled with the possibility of being a menace to society I have heard all of the arguments. It really is taught in the LDS church that if a male has the opportunity to get married and doesn't take it he will be a ministering angel in the celestial kingdom of Heaven.
For some reason LDS leaders are kinder to women since they suggest a woman doesn't do the asking.

In 2003 President Gordon B. Hinckley said to the unmarried sisters:

Some of you, unfortunately, will never marry in this life. That turns out to be the case sometimes. If that happens, do not spend your life grieving over it. The world still needs your talents. It needs your contribution. The Church needs your faith. It needs your strong, helping hand. Life is never a failure until we call it such. There are so many who need your helping hands, your loving smile, your tender thoughtfulness. I see so many capable, attractive, wonderful women whom romance has passed by. I do not understand it, but I know that in the plan of the Almighty, the eternal plan which we call God’s plan of happiness, there will be opportunity and reward for all who seek them.

I don't really understand the difference since it wasn't through not trying that no one married me until I was 28. I had a little green book that my wife looked through and counted every woman I dated from 22 to 28 at BYU. It totalled 113. Out of that number I feel there were five that I would have married had they really been interested in me. It is a miracle that I married my wife and a great miracle that I have been married 26 years later. If my wife had not married me would I have been confined to being a ministering angel in the life to come?

Recently I had a conversation with my wife about her possibly remarrying should I die since I have a few serious health problems. I suggested that there were many men out there who had not married or stayed married and she find one that had some money. I have had employees who have gotten divorced and met men on the Internet in chat rooms. One of them told me many men are high level professionals like accountants, book publishers, or techie types who work 70 or 80 hours a week and don't have time to socialize so I thought they would consider a woman even with four children at home. She referred to them as losers and said she didn't want to marry someone who had problems. Are men who can't marry or stay married really losers and menaces to society? Or is it just no one has given them a chance? There would be less menaces if people would give each other a chance and the Mormon culture put less pressure on the subject.

She Said: Solutions to the Menace of Unmarried Men

2009-06-26T20:30:00.000-04:00

You have to wonder what makes these unmarried men an undesirable element, even a menace. I'm glad I saved Dr. B. from that fate.

Unmarried men represent 19 percent of all adults – some 37.6 million Americans -- and about 40 percent of all adult men in the nation. Among unmarried men, 67 percent have never been married, 23 percent are divorced, 6 percent are widowed, and 4 percent are separated. Only 5 percent of unmarried men have children under 18 living at home. Unmarried men are not as economically advantaged as their married counterparts. They have less health insurance, they are less likely to own their home, and they are not as likely to vote. They suffer from higher rates of loneliness and depression than unmarried women. They also have fewer ties to organized religion.

But we're going to have to get used to more unmarried men. In my research on this subject, I read an article called The China Syndrome, describing the upcoming social crisis faced by the Chinese due to their "one child only" limitation, the culture's traditional preference for boys, and legal abortion up to the ninth month.

"The one-child policy is 25 years old, so the first generation is just now reaching marriage age, and for China that's a big problem because it is estimated that as many as 40 million of its young men could spend their lives as bachelors."

In the U.S., one cause of the woman shortage is the declining birthrate. Because men tend to marry younger, a declining birthrate means there's a smaller pool of younger women than if the birthrate were steady. Other factors include 105 boy babies being born for every 100 girl babies, and older divorced men re-marrying younger never-married women.

Before we did this post, I didn't realize there were such decreasing opportunities for marriage among men. Mormons have traditionally interpreted Brigham's purported remark as meaning that men who would not marry were lessening the poor females' chances of finding connubial bliss. But not so in the 21st century!

More men than ever before want to get married and are unable to do so. As Dr. B. asks, should these men be penalized in the eternities when they did all they could but were unsuccessful in forming families in this life? Perhaps now is the time to reexamine Joseph Smith's views on polyandry. Joseph contracted polygamous marriage to nine women who were already married. Is this an answer to the marriage crunch of today?

She Said: Unintended Consequences of Church Correlation

2009-06-25T12:30:00.003-04:00

Formal organization of a Correlation Committee in the LDS Church occurred in 1908. At this time, the auxiliary organizations which had been independent and operated on a local level, were elevated to a general church level, under the direction of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Further reorganization occurred during the early 1960s, and in 1972 the Correlation Department was extended to the planning, preparation, translation, printing, and distribution of church materials. The intent of correlation in the Church is as follows:

Maintaining purity of doctrine.

Emphasizing the importance of the family and the home.

Placing all the work of the Church under priesthood direction.

Establishing proper relationships among the organizations of the Church.

Achieving unity and order in the Church.

Ensuring simplicity of Church programs and materials.

Unfortunately, there were some perhaps unintended consequences of Church correlation which have occurred since the early '70's. Here are some of the things that I see as regrettable:

Curricula and policies which impose a mountain-states U.S. framework on the entire world and is not attuned to actual local circumstances.

Decreased autonomy in auxiliaries, especially for women. [1]

Gradual decline in creative endeavors in wards and stakes (musical performances, three act plays, hand work projects, welfare farm work, speech contests, instructional and recreational dances, road shows)

Suspicion and hostility toward publications not known to be "approved." (women's and auxiliary publications [2], private publications like Dialogue, Sunstone, and most of the books not published by Deseret; extending even to the Journal of Mormon History and BYU Studies).

Limiting of approved music to be performed in Church meetings, excluding classical sacred music as well as cultural and traditional pieces.

Loss of creativity, immediacy and interest in lessons and talks, art, architecture and music. [3]

It is comfortable for members in the continental U.S. to be able to visit anywhere in the world and be able to find their way around the church building. I have no doubt I could find the Relief Society room in any chapel in the world. Perhaps it is soothing for some to know that wherever they go, Mormons are hearing the same Sunday School lesson. But, as Claudia Bushman has said concerning correlation,

"I am not convinced that unity is as desirable as some seem to be. Unity requires much squelching of initiative."

Are the advantages of a correlated Church worth having chapels which look like Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises? Are they worth being served a "Big Mac" Sunday School lesson?

____________________________________________

[1] "...curriculum reform paled in significance next to [Harold B. Lee's other goals of reining in the auxiliary organizations and placing day-to-day control of the church in the hands of the Twelve."

"[We] could see the auxiliaries running the Church, as it were. We had no Priesthood board but they had large and talented and powerful Mutual boards and Sunday School boards and Relief Society boards and Primary boards. And they scattered throughout the Church teaching their message, and they were talented people and taught so well that the auxiliaries of the Church were far more effective and powerful in the members idea and view than were the Priesthood quorums. So I would say, to characterize the Church prior to Correlation, that the auxiliaries ran it and everything took second place to them." (A. Theodore Tuttle from an interview of 1977 quoted in David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, by Gregory A Prince, Wm Robert Wright (2005) pp. 155, 143)

[2] see Empowerment and Mormon Women’s Publications by Vella Neil Evans, summarized in a post at FMH.

[3]

LDS Chapel in Orem, Utah

LDS Chapel in Bangnaa, Thailand

LDS Chapel in Mexico City, Mexico

LDS Chapel in Holdenhurst, U.K.

He Said: Church Correlation

2009-06-25T12:29:00.001-04:00

When everything is said and done church correlation comes down to two things: doctrinal orthodoxy and money. In dealing with doctrinal orthodoxy a committee of the church made up of very conservative people usually Church Educational System employees that are trusted by the General Authorities approve and/or edit material that is disseminated to the various organizations or printed officially by the church under its publishing arms such as Deseret Book, BYU Press etc. Money is involved because the manuals are printed and so there is a factor involved in how many pages they are and how much does it cost to print them. I once overheard the conservation of a general authority while visiting the Church Administration Building with another general authority concerning the printing of a church manual, he was telling the vendor he was eating lunch with that by limiting the pages to under 200 that the church saves millions of dollars in cost.

For much of my lifetime Daniel Ludlow was in charge of the correlation department of the church. Back in the 1990s I submitted my manuscript of Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord: LDS General Authorities Speak on Missionary Work. The committee read over my manuscript and felt that doctrinally it was acceptable. However Sheri Dew at Deseret Book didn't want to go to the trouble of getting special approval to publish my work. At that time they discouraged any non-general authority from compiling a teachings book. The irony was that Clyde J. Williams a member of the BYU Religion department was able to publish several books without much trouble. So I have personal acquaintance with this department. I spoke to Dan Ludlow about my manuscript when he came to a Know Your Religion talk in El Centro, California where I was living. He suggested to me that I get a general authority to co-compile but I could never interest one in doing that. I finally got Intellectual Reserve to let me put it up on my blog since it was not for sale and a private compilation just for research purposes.

I frankly did not have a problem with this group and found Dan Ludlow to be helpful and honest in his comments. I don't have any trouble with correlation looking over material and suggesting possible inclusions and exclusions. I have worked with editors for many years in publishing in the Multicultural Review. Although I think the committee is a bit narrow in who is on it and could use a few more progressive scholars it does make sure to protect the church. However when you select people including CES types there is the problem of bias. What one considers to be sensational or questionable doctrine is very subjective.

I personally feel they should use the faculty at their church universities and go beyond more traditional CES people. Even though many of these professors might have one time been CES they are a little more connected to the research since many of their former students bring the stuff to their attention or generate it. I am not questioning that a few CES types occasionally are on the scholarly side I am just saying that in comparison most aren't cut out of the same cloth as the Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, the Bruce Van Ordens, or even the David Seeley. Although many of them get graduate degrees they aren't as rigorous as the ones who end up at the universities. I don't want to name the names of the ones I am thinking since kindness is better than blunt honesty. In addition they tend to be more insular in their approaches and more easily controllable. However their scholarship or lack of exposure to all the new stuff coming out actually is a detriment to their making informed decisions on content or eliminating new content. They didn't get to work in SLC in the CES by not being politically correct.

My best example is the new Joseph Smith Papers. I don't doubt that some of the CES types might peruse such works but it takes a person with a certain mentality to really analyze the implications and debunking of earlier stories. Correlation tends to whitewash and give a faith-promoting spin to history and doctrine. They look at different things like the perceived level that the general member is at.

It is kind of like when I was a school teacher in Tennessee. One day the assistant superintendent came to talk to me since my lowest level 5th graders had passed the highest class in reading. He told me that my fellow teachers were not happy that my students were doing as well as their students and that I was to slow them down and give them one day of writing out the definitions of the spelling words. The superintendent told me that I was to teach to the middle not to the top. Correlation assumes it knows what a member can handle that they need milk before the meat. Just like my students needed to not excell beyond the top group since they had been tested and assigned the lowest level members should not be given the mysteries of the kingdom. They need to stick to the basic principles of the gospel and correlation's job is to insure that.

Another important function that correlation provides is to make sure that the church is not embarrassed by any doctrines or stories that could hurt our advances in getting along with people in the outside world. They check to make sure that we don't cover negative aspects such as Mountain Meadows Massacre history or polygamy or blacks in the priesthood etc. Correlated history is more apologetic or revisionist in nature. A guy like Will Bagley writes an uncorrelated version while a guy like Richard Thorley writes a correlated version. Most authors who publish through Deseret Book have their material looked at by the correlation committee.

Personally I think correlation is a good process and anything they look at is closer to the what we as members should believe. I don't like the sensational stuff that a lot of times is subjective. Orson Scott Card said "history is a creative reconstruction of the past." In terms of history and some doctrine not everything said or written is totally accurate so correlation sanitizes it by getting a committee of trusted people together who can communicate with the general authorities and get their arbitration on what can be problemmatic.

It keeps imperfect authors from making mistakes that could hurt the church by revealing things that may or may not be true. I think writers don't always consider the implications of ripples that can be made if they clash with viewpoints, practices and doctrines that inspired men of God have already officially said or written. Correlation doesn't hide the truth it just disseminates it in the right time and the right setting.

He Said: Eating Meat Sparingly

2009-06-22T11:45:00.002-04:00

I don't get too excited when I think about the topic of eating meat sparingly. I have always eaten great portions of meat my whole life. I figure you should enjoy yourself while on this earth. I have not really dieted at all any time in my life. However I have paid a price for my attitude. I don't have the will power or the self discipline to lose weight nor even the inclination. As far as the Word of Wisdom goes the only things I have done are not drink hot drinks nor used alcohol so I can get a temple recommend. I believe that there are a great many people like me in the church.

When the Word of Wisdom was given they had different food handling processes and meat was not kept for as long as today due to inferior refrigeration methods. I am sure that there might be some benefit to eating less meat since it tends to put on the pounds and causes many of the health problems that I experience today. Also eating undercooked meat can cause a variety of problems including death.

Worldwatch Institute reports that meat consumption is expected to grow 2 percent each year until 2015.

Meat production has increased by 500 percent since 1950. Today, most animals are raised on industrial “factory farms” that are displacing sustainable family farms. Thousands of animals are crowded in unsanitary conditions, spending their entire lives indoors without sunlight or pasture. To prevent disease from these inhumane practices, antibiotics are added to feed, contributing to the worldwide growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Time Magazine reported 29 March 2009 in the growing case against red meat:

In more news that has steak lovers feeling deflated, a study published in this week's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that people who indulge in high amounts of red meat and processed meats, including steak, bacon, sausage and cold cuts, have an increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease. The findings add power to the growing push — by health officials, environmentalists and even some chefs — to cool America's love affair with meat.

The analysis of more than half a million Americans between the ages of 50 and 71 found that men in the highest quintile of red-meat consumption — those who ate about 5 oz. of red meat a day, roughly the equivalent of a small steak, according to lead author Rashmi Sinha — had a 31% higher risk of death over a 10-year period than men in the lowest-consumption quintile, who ate less than 1 oz. of red meat per day, or approximately three slices of corned beef. Men in the top fifth also had a 22% higher risk of dying of cancer and a 27% higher risk of dying of heart disease.

The number of overweight children has more than tripled over the past three decades also. It might have something to do with meat consumption. In 2008 on the subject of obesity the U.S. Surgeon General reported: "Today, more than 12.5 million children -- 17.1% of children and adolescents 2 to 19 years of age -- are overweight in the U.S., up from 13 % in 1999. Overweight children are at far greater risk for numerous health consequences, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases. The most immediate consequence of overweight as perceived by the children themselves is social discrimination sometimes resulting in poor self-esteem and depression."

I have noticed this overweight tendency in my own children--many of them are pudgy if not downright fat. Our food consumption has contained a great deal of Burger King and McDonald's double cheeseburgers with the already meat-filled dinners we eat at home. Unfortunately by genetic predisposition we are all prone to diabetes with every person in my father's family suffering from it.

I wonder if it has anything to do with how they fatten up the animals. It is actually very inhuman how feedlots are in to packing in more and more animals and bulking them up with steroids and other growth hormones. I think that due to the chemicals young women are maturing earlier today. My seven daughters started menarche around the age of eleven or twelve. They exhibited other signs of puberty at an even earlier age. I believe the growth hormones in meat are contributing to this early maturation.

I think that Joseph Smith was on to something when he told us to eat meat sparingly. I like to eat it is one of the most enjoyable things I do above all other things. By the definition above I would be considered obese. I eat more meat than anything else in my meals which consists of spaghetti with meatballs, tacos, chili, fajitas to name a few.

In fact I have diverticulitis (perforation in bowel) due to my lack of eating high fiber. If I had eaten more green leafy vegetables I would have slowed down the problem which usually occurs after the age of 70 instead of getting it by 38. In addition due to my overweight condition I have high blood pressure and diabetes the very things that could also have been put off until later in life.

In addition meat can cause problems when improperly prepared. The two times in my life that I have almost died involved meat--both times I was food poisoned. On my mission I made chili and left it on the stove for a couple of hours before putting it away. I later ate it without heating it up enough. I ended up in the hospital with a fever over 105 which nearly fried my brain. A few years ago I went to a Rotary Club meeting where I gave a talk and ate some roast beef that was on the pink side. I again contracted food poisoning and had a blood pressure that was 180/123 with the high temperature again. I had to take Cipro in the end to kill it off. Many people have died during the past two decades due to E Coli, Salmonella and other bacterial infestations of meat.

There is another angle in eating meat that has not been explored much. That is carnivorism. It really is barbaric that we eat the flesh of other animals including in some cultures other humans. In the afterlife we are told that the lion will lie down with the lamb. Once when talking to Hugh Nibley he told me that he died on the table during an operation. He told me that when you die you are offered spiritual food. If you partake you must remain in the spirit world. I doubt that we will be offered meat in the next life. Nibley described it as delicious and very desirable this food. It seemed symbolic to me of the fruit that Adam and Eve partook of but in a spiritual form. The sense I got from Nibley was that it was like nectar. I sometimes lament if they will have a good steak in heaven. After all, Melvin J. Ballard tells us how hard it is to get over physical addictions in this world without our bodies. The majority of us will be craving hamburgers and hot dogs in the next life. Maybe Joseph Smith was right about the sparing eating of meat since there won't be as big of a craving in the world to come. But on the other hand Joseph Smith didn't completely abolish eating meat so maybe there will be appetizers in the next life too.

She Said: Seeking to be Great and Good and Wise

2009-06-22T11:44:00.004-04:00

So.... with all of the health risks Dr. B. mentioned above, WHY is the "eating meat sparingly" portion of the Word of Wisdom ignored in the modern Church? It continues to be taught in our lessons and manuals, but there isn't much of an effort made to cut meat out of our diets. When we go to our temple recommend interview and are asked if we obey the Word of Wisdom, if we have taken as much as one sip of wine, we would feel constrained to answer in the negative. But the amounts of meat we have eaten does not even cross our minds. Is this because the word "sparingly" is not defined? Is it because, with modern refrigeration methods we don't think the meat restriction applies any more? Or is it just inconvenient in our fast-food world to structure a diet around grains and fresh fruits and vegetables?

I really find it so odd that today's Mormons have taken the Word of Wisdom so strictly with regards to "hot drinks" (redefined as coffee and tea), that they will often rid their diets of any trace of caffeine, including soft drinks, aspirin, etc. Yet when it comes to eating meat, there is little effort to follow the guidelines.

Two Sundays ago we had an investigator sitting with our family during Church and the congregation sang the song: "In Our Lovely Deseret:"

That the children may live long, and be beautiful and strong
Tea and Coffee and Tobacco they despise:
Drink no liquor, and they eat but a very little meat,
They are seeking to be good and great and wise.

I wondered, uncomfortably, what our investigator was thinking as we sang this hymn. I knew it was very different than what is sung in the worship services in other churches. Our health code is very important to us, but perhaps we don't want to seem TOO peculiar or different. How much does this have to do with how we interpret the Word of Wisdom? How strange would Mormons be if we didn't frequent McDonald's?

Dr. B. and I have been talking about this subject this week and in our menu plans we've cut down the amount of meat we'll be eating in the next 7 days. But we find that we still have difficulty not planning meals, especially dinner, around a meat dish.

Yesterday's stuffed mushrooms didn't go over very well.

Take the Poll: Meat and the Word of Wisdom

2009-06-22T11:39:00.002-04:00

Shortening the Three Hour Meeting Block

2009-06-19T11:15:00.008-04:00

She Said:

I grew up a PK (preacher's kid) which is similar to being the child of a Mormon Bishop, but for your whole life. I learned early what it was like to hang around the church for hours. Both Dr. B. and I love church meetings, and in our early years we thought nothing of going to two wards' full 3-hour schedule of meetings. But these days, the long hours are starting to wear on me. Am I getting a little ADHD in my old age? Or is it that I've heard it all before, and there is nothing new under the sun?

For many years rumors have circulated that church meetings were to be pared down to 2 hours. Usually the rumors have it that Sunday School would be the meeting to go, with members expected to provide scripture study in the home. I don't think these rumors will ever come to fruition, but I want to explore whether it would be a good thing to cut down on our Sunday services.

In today's fast-paced world, 2 hours is a long time to sit still and listen to a lecture-type format. It is especially difficult for families with children. Small children might be better served with a shorter, more varied program during the Primary time. A 30-minute classroom lesson, 15-20 minutes of singing, and a 5 or 10 minute Sharing Time message sounds like a perfect schedule for ages 3 to 11. This would also be less of a burden on all of the many members that it takes to keep a Primary fully staffed.

Adults might appreciate the format, too. One thing I miss about my Protestant upbringing was the coffee hour that followed our meetings. While I wouldn't necessarily suggest something similar for Mormons, I think that if our meetings were shorter, we might be chipper enough to socialize for a while afterwards, instead of rushing everyone home. For me, a big part of going to church is the fellowship, and even with our 3-hour blocks, we don't experience much of that, unless we're skipping our classes.

The biggest disadvantage I see to cutting out Sunday School would be less gospel study. But as it stands now, I think our Sunday School time is ineffective and boring. Any scriptural learning that takes place could easily be replaced by more emphasis in Sacrament Meetings on centering talks around scriptural topics, and a few additions to PH/RS. Perhaps special manuals could be prepared to assist families in setting up a Sunday School hour in their home. Many families would do a fine job at this, although I realize that for some it might take too much effort and fall by the wayside. I'd love to see small group scripture study classes during the week for those who are interested in coming together for discussion.

Do you see any other disadvantages to cutting our Sunday services by an hour?

He Said:

From time to time I hear that the Church is considering doing away with Sunday School so we as parents can better teach our kids the gospel. If it is anything like FHE that means we may or may not have more time for sleeping since FHE is a hit and miss proposition at my home. I think it will be sporadic for parents to actually use a manual and teach their kids as BiV suggests. I would probably try it out for a year or two or even five but it would probably be a very uneven treatment for my various kids. Over the course of several years the manual would get boring. I guess they could throw in the Preach My Gospel or some other manual to liven it up but for all intents and purposes they would need more than one manual because parents and kids would get bored. I suspect they would have us use the priesthood manuals which is way over kids heads just to save on correlation.

My oldest three children born during my youth experienced more concentrated gospel study which included three attempts at reading the Book of Mormon with one successful completion in an eighteen year period. I think a Sunday School manual might work for one or two cycles but for my eight children there would be gaps in their religious education. At least in a formal Sunday School class there is a week after week attempt to get them to engage with the gospel. Sometimes even when they are being obtuse the gospel seems to sink in. Between primary or young men or young women and sunday school with seminary my children have learned the gospel. I personally would hate to see it go for their sakes.

In my case the gospel doctrine class is a big snooze. I have to shut my mouth to keep from monopolizing the class. Nine times out of ten I know more than the teacher who many times preaches false doctrine or the gospel according to them. I have read most of the statements of the general authorities and can quote them til I'm blue in the face. Students and the teachers don't appreciate a know it all. I wish there were a beginner, intermediate, and advanced gospel doctrine class since one class doesn't fit all. I humble myself by sitting through these classes week after week. I always remember J. Rebuen Clark Jr. on his death bed saying he wants to remain faithful. To me getting through a gospel doctrine class for the fifth cycle is enduring to the end.

An interesting thing about the consolidated three hour block was it was supposed to free people up to do more Christian acts and do more gospel related things. However the only thing I noticed was that home teaching shifted in to the slot. Prior to that it was done mostly on week nights. Eventually it became an expectation that on the last Sunday of the month home teachers would want to come over. I resent my home teachers coming over on Sunday because it cuts in to my rest time and my occasional hymn singing. Every few months I like to sing out of pitch from the hymnbook and subject any child I don't see singing to having to sing with me.

I have visited a lot of LDS over the years and most of them seem to enjoy Sunday as a time for socializing with members. A few of the more stalwart invited us over for dinner a few times a year. Youth like to go to each others houses and hang out and end up eating with them occasionally so there is a lot of interaction during the primary and mutual years. In the last ten years I probably remember having a whole family over to our house for dinner or parties less than five or six times a year that leaves forty-five weeks for resting, remember on the seventh day even the Lord rested.

I personally like the earliest morning block so it can free me up to either do genealogy when I am in a quasi-righteous mood or to watch the Big Love, the Chicago Cubs game or the World Series of Poker when I am in a who cares mood. If there were a two hour block I might do the same amount of genealogy which runs in cycles. When my wife is in to it I am more gungho when she isn't I have a hard time now that my eyesight is diminishing. It is a back breaking tedious process to crank a microfilm reel or to even search on Ancestry or Family Search.

Mostly I just spend the time sleeping around eating lunch/dinner so I can be rejuvenated for the coming work week. Unfortunately I spend a lot of time taking my eight children to different firesides, bishop youth discussions or over to friends homes. The latter I try to not do and make the other kids in the ward come to our house. Once in a blue moon my son and I go home teaching to one of the three families. An extra hour means we could go earlier home teaching since we could get our nap in sooner or on the other three weeks I could watch more gospel movies or the Big Love which is tangentially LDS related. Don't worry, I change the channel if I think there is any sex happening to keep the Sabbath Day holy.

Take the Poll:

He Said: Surgical Sterilization

2009-06-18T13:50:00.003-04:00

A controversial subject that comes up for LDS is birth control and even more specifically the method of birth control. Today I thought it would be interesting to explore surgical sterilization. I don't have any person in mind including the case I cite. Since I have eight children people tend to talk to me very openly about birth control. It comes up in a variety ways usually just general conversation like how many children have you had. When I say I have eight children they look at me funny and make a joke or seriously talk to me about why did I have so many.

Since 1987 the LDS generally authorities have had a policy of staying out of a couple's bedroom I usually don't go in to the subject in any great detail and try to ignore it. But from time to time I still hear about it with members telling me to use some form of birth control and on occasional telling me specifically I can take care of it in fifteen minutes surgically.

I did a search on birth control and found out that the official position is:

Children are one of the greatest blessings in life, and their birth into loving and nurturing families is central to God’s purposes for humanity. When husband and wife are physically able, they have the privilege and responsibility to bring children into the world and to nurture them. The decision of how many children to have and when to have them is a private matter for the husband and wife.

In addition Church members are told not to judge one another. Even though birth control is a private matter it doesn't stop people from discussing it with me. Some people, on finding out I have eight children, question whether I can support them or send them to college or whether it is an environmentally or emotionally good. I assure most that none of them starve nor have they not gotten a college education nor even are in debt for school and that somehow we manage to get by and my children are no more screwed up than anyone else's. The majority make a joke including Mormons like didn't your parents ever teach you about birth control. Even LDS members wonder why I had so many children and make sure to tell me that less is better.

I have never practiced birth control other than abstinence (which should be obvious). Plus birth control in any form goes against my beliefs even if I weren't LDS. Even though I have my doubts about my worthiness for godhood somewhere in the back my mind the concept that God populates worlds without end and my wife's recent fundamentalist kick about plural marriage would suggest I can't populate worlds without the ability to have multiple kids in some fashion in the next life.

Over the years I have encountered a handful of people who have taken exception to the number of children that I have. Some have suggested that I should get a vasectomy since it is a minor outpatient procedure that is less invasive for a man than for a woman and only takes fifteen minutes. They even point out to me that should I remarry and have a younger wife that there is a good chance I could have it reversed.

A few years ago the subject of vasectomy came up with a close friend in a high priest Sunday meeting where he made a joke about being sterilized later we talked about it in greater detail. In He Said/She Said I wrote:

I think LDS bishops do a poor job disseminating information from the handbook. I once had a conversation with a friend who had been a counselor in a bishopric in one of my ward who had a vasectomy in which he had no clue what the church's position was. The man considered himself an ultraconservative Mormon. It came up when he jokingly told me when I mentioned my wife and I were having my sixth child that he wouldn't be worrying about that with his wife ever again since he now shot blanks. I looked at him and said you know that the LDS Church discourages that and it is in the Handbook of Instruction. He said he didn't have a copy and never read it even when he was in the bishopric.

I can't judge my friend too harshly since he did it out of consideration for his wife. He had no clue that he should even consult with his leaders nor that it was discouraged. I really do feel that it is between him and his wife and the Lord.

If I had to make that decision for myself I have wondered about the practice of surgical sterilization and whether I engaged in it would I put my eternal life in jeopardy. One of the core principals of Mormonism is to be a God or Goddess in the afterlife. We are told that if we are worthy that we will have sealed upon us the blessings of kingdoms, thrones, principalities, powers, dominions and exaltations, with all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and that we should be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth so that we may have joy and rejoicing in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. A person who is surgically sterilized chooses consciously not to have any progeny which is a part of Godhood.

Spencer W. Kimball in the October 1974 General Conference was a little harder than me:

We marry for eternity. We are serious about this. We become parents and bring wanted children into the world and rear and train them to righteousness.

We are aghast at the reports of young people going to surgery to limit their families and the reputed number of parents who encourage this vasectomy. Remember that the coming of the Lord approaches, and some difficult-to-answer questions will be asked by a divine Judge who will be hard to satisfy with silly explanations and rationalizations. He will judge justly, you may be sure.

To find out the church's official statement I look at the Encylopedia on Mormonism that listed the 1998 Handbook on Instructions statement on surgical sterilization and saw that there is more of an option than I thought. Also the 2006 Handbook also reiterated it word for word:

Surgical Sterilization (Including Vasectomy). "Surgical sterilization should only be considered (1) where medical conditions seriously jeopardize life or health, or (2) where birth defects or serious trauma have rendered a person mentally incompetent and not responsible for his or her actions. Such conditions must be determined by competent medical judgment and in accordance with law. Even then, the person or persons responsible for this decision should consult with each other and with their bishop (or branch president) and receive divine confirmation through prayer" (11-5).

So the policy has not changed in over twenty-five years. It appears that you can gain permission to do it if there are extenuating circumstances.

I am sure there are a some legitimate reasons to have surgical sterilization for women and men who have physical problems. I think for a man or a woman consciously choosing sterilization other than for medical conditions can be a dangerous practice in view of the Mormon concept of eternal procreation. I understand it is less invasive for men but the thing that bothers me about it is that it seems hypocritical to think you can be a God creating worlds when you choose in this world to fix the procreative power to circumvent having children. What will change your desire in the next life to all of a sudden decide to have millions of them like the sands of the sea and populate worlds without end.

She Said: Surgical Sterilization

2009-06-18T13:49:00.002-04:00

Well, let's see.

If speculation is the order of the day, I will venture into this subject. If we are restored to our perfect form in the afterlife, surely any surgeries of this type will be negated. However, it makes sense to me that someone who has decided so strongly that they don't want any more children that they are willing to undergo such an invasive procedure to stop them from coming may find that they have made an eternal decision. Because I have many moments when I fear this may be so, I wouldn't consider such an option for myself or for DH.

If we are getting personal, I will agree that for the first 14 years of our married life I was content to let children arrive when they might. But after 8 children and when I reached my 40th birthday, it was time to reconsider. Though the birth control we use now is not a surgical, chemical, or barrier form, it is birth control nonetheless. It is calculated to stop children from coming into our family. What makes this so very different on an eternal level than some of the other types?

One more admission: I think I burned myself out here in this earth life with my paltry 8 children. I can't imagine having millions of spirit children in the eternal realms, no matter how perfect my body is or how easy pregnancy and childbirth might be then. I loved bearing my children, nursing them and raising them. But an eternity as a mother of spirit children doesn't fill me with longing bliss--it rather makes me tired. I don't think I'd be very good at it, and as a motivator for living worthy to gain an exaltation, it isn't quite up to snuff. I've said before, give me a harp and a cloud and just put me in the choir.

She Said: Adoption

2009-06-16T13:00:00.001-04:00

The LDS Church believes that every effort should be made to assist young women who conceive out of wedlock to first try to establish an eternal family relationship. If the unwed parents are unable or unwilling to marry, they are then encouraged to place the child for adoption, preferably through LDS Family Services.

The Church stresses that unwed parents who do not marry should not be urged to keep the infant as a condition of repentance or out of some desire to care for one's own. They consider that the best interests of the child in this situation is to be placed for adoption. The Proclamation on the Family states:

Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.

The wording of this sentence makes me uneasy and raises a few doctrinal questions. If children are "entitled" to birth within just such a traditional family, then why does God permit them to come to earth in such varied circumstances as they do? I presume he has control over where the spirits are sent, over men's and women's fertility, and such. I am tempted to believe that when a child is sent to a certain mother that she is "entitled" to raise it as her own.

Since I now have 6 girls who could potentially bear children, this is a topic of concern to me. I would be devastated if a child who was born into our family was given up for adoption. I would be willing to provide any support needed for such a child to remain in the family. I am also concerned that because of the Church's policy, LDS Social Services is not providing much needed information and support so that young women can make informed decisions. Michelle Renaud provides one example involving Don Staheli, who worked for LDS Family Services and now is Regional Representative of the Twelve.

The LDS Family Services site "It's About Love" shows how heavily slanted this organization is toward convincing a young woman to give her child up for adoption. The many options are explored with a purpose of convincing the pregnant woman that the best and most moral choice is adoption.

I have seen a great change in this policy just in the course of my lifetime. When I first joined the Church, the counsel to young women was that they should keep and raise their children. It often was suggested to them that this would be part of the repentance process. I don't feel that this policy, any more than the current one, is perfect for every situation. I feel that the families involved should be counseled on their options and encouraged to pray and make their own decisions based on their desires and family resources. Since the preferred counsel has changed so much over the years, I feel satisfied in declaring that giving up children for adoption is merely a policy currently preferred by Church agencies which may change and is not doctrinal. I don't think that anyone can make a blanket statement that certain types of families or individuals are any less able to successfully raise children than the traditional, two-parent, husband and wife pair.

What do you think?

He Said: Adoption

2009-06-16T12:59:00.001-04:00

I first became of LDS Social Services and their work of adoption when I worked for Reed Benson, the son of Erza Taft Benson, back in 1985. He and his wife May were not able to have children and adopted nine children through them. They were able to get brand new babies from unwed LDS mothers right at birth. I was very impressed with the family life that he provided for his children which included FHEs at Utah Jazz games and snazzy family accommodations which included workout rooms. He spent around $5,000 a year on FHE alone. He was a great dad who took care of his kids.

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism says that the priorities of the LDS Social Services are:

1. Placement of children for adoption with couples who meet legal requirements and the Church's personal worthiness standards.
2. Counseling and support for unwed parents, to help them with issues and decisions pertaining to marriage, adoption, and single parenthood.

3. Placement of children in foster homes that will promote healthy individual development and positive family relationships.

4. Therapy and referrals for members having personal or family problems, to allow them to receive help from resources that are respectful of LDS values.

I think it is a wonderful thing that the church does in providing placement of LDS babies by unwed mothers in LDS homes. I know of many LDS couples who for various reasons were not able to have children and were able to adopt through our own agency.

Monte J. Brough of the Seventy back in 1994 explains the Church's position clearly:

The Church has put people and programs in place to help unwed parents repent of their sin and build futures for themselves and their baby.

When a couple conceives a child outside of marriage, the consequence of that sexual relationship affects many people. These consequences can be very difficult and, in many cases, become a lifelong impairment to happiness and freedom.

I shall never forget the experience of sitting at the side of a hospital bed with a young member of my ward. This young unmarried woman had just given birth to a baby boy, and she faced some very difficult questions. As her bishop, I had been asked to visit with the family.

Well-meaning but mostly uninformed friends and family members were showering her with conflicting and confusing advice. They used implications of guilt and responsibility to support unwise and impractical solutions to the young woman’s situation. It seemed that each adviser was able to recall specific examples to support his or her advice. Most, it seemed to me, had motives of their own which were not properly focused on the two most important questions: What was best for the baby, and what was best for the young woman?

The young woman wept as she faced the decisions which she must make, and then, as never before, she wanted the advice and assistance of her bishop. She had no desire to seek her own self-interest as she contemplated the magnitude of her problems. Over the next two days, we talked a great deal about these questions, during which time I provided her with as much information as I could. We both knew that in this case, as with everything else, the best information would come from those we sustain as prophets of the Lord.

On 1 February 1994 the First Presidency wrote a general letter on this very important subject. The letter reads, in part, as follows: “Priesthood and auxiliary leaders are again encouraged to renew their efforts to teach ward and stake members the importance of living chaste and virtuous lives. We note with alarm the continued decline of moral values in society and the resultant number of children being reared by unwed parents. … Every effort should be made in helping those who conceive out of wedlock to establish an eternal family relationship. When the unwed parents are unable or unwilling to marry, they should be encouraged to place the child for adoption, preferably through LDS Social Services. … Unwed parents who do not marry should not be counseled to keep the infant as a condition of repentance or out of an obligation to care for one’s own. … When deciding to place the baby for adoption, the best interests of the child should be the paramount consideration.”

I have often thought about what I would do if one of my seven daughters became pregnant out of wedlock. Initially I have thought that I would raise it as my own child but at 54 with high blood pressure and diabetes I wonder how long of the child's life I would be there for. Both my parent died by the time they were 74. My father's father died at 54 and his mother at 66. The question I have is how long will I be around to raise a baby.

I came across an interesting article For What is Best for the Baby in the July 1999 Ensign where one parent faced the same thing and was torn feeling like they should also raise the baby but in the end left it up to their thirteen year old daughter to decide. In the end she choose the parents for her own baby and the family gave the baby up for adoption.

Even though the church supports giving up the baby for adoption I know of a few families that raised the baby as one of their own children. In one case that my daughter is familiar with and told me privately the boy didn't know that he was adopted until high school when he became suspicious that the gap between him and another sibling was very close.

I think if a parent is going to raise their child's baby they should be upfront and honest with the child. It is difficult enough to find out about it but it causes a great deal of psychological baggage when in a culture where you have to say you are honest in your dealings with your fellow man that you are lying to a child that you are raising up to follow similar standards.

In my own family even though we were Catholics my sister was married at fifteen to a seventeen year old boy after she became pregnant. My father tried to force her to have an abortion. Instead she ran off with the boy and today she is still married to him thirty-six years later. I never thought she would stay married all these years but she did. In the case where marriage is a possibility I am in favor of marriage. But when a boy won't take responsibility I feel that adoption is the best option.

He Said: Helen Radkey the Baptism for the Dead Nark

2009-06-15T19:00:00.000-04:00

Helen Radkey questions the practice of LDS members doing vicarious baptisms for the dead for nonfamily members. She holds the LDS Church responsible for its members doing the work for whoever they feel like and likes to stir the pot. Radkey was briefly a Mormon and a former Catholic but today is a spiritualist minister who works in a bookstore and has read tarot cards for a living. She also is a professional genealogist who checks the IGI for what she considers breaches of genealogical etiquette. She is very good at what she does so I personally would use her if I needed some IGI work done and could afford her $18 per hour rate.

The Church's spokesperson Scott Trotter says that it is not the policy of the church to do work for people who are not direct descendants and work done is not encouraged by the Church Leaders. The LDS Church official policy is that "Church members are specifically instructed not to submit the names of persons not related to them. Before performing temple baptisms for a deceased family member born within the last 95 years, members are instructed to get permission from the person's closest living relative."

This last few weeks I have learned about several infractions that Helen Radkey claims she exposed about unauthorized baptisms during the past several years. About a month ago the news had several stories about the Obama's mother being baptized. Barak Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham was baptized by a zealous church member who felt like doing her work but wasn't a direct relation. I also heard about a buzz on the Fundamentalist listservs a few weeks ago that is frequented by my wife about the baptisms of Ervil LeBaron, Rulon Jeffs and a bunch of other independent and FLDS polygamous leaders. Also in April 2008 the Catholic Church came up with a directive that LDS were not to access parish records nor microfilm them. Supposedly they baptized Pope John Paul II. Also fourteen years ago in 1995 Jewish leaders questioned the Church's practice of baptizing Holocaust victims.

According to Helen Radkey she was behind all of these other churches and groups finding out about LDS members baptizing these people for the dead. One of her main mission's in life is to nark out the church and its members when she finds such infractions. Radkey has become the ultimate IGI identifier of people she doesn't feel should be baptized. Even tries to make a buck or two on her findings.

Religion News Net confirmed that the fundamentalists being baptized was outed by Radkey:

Prominent fundamentalist Mormons, most of whom were excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for practicing polygamy while they were alive, have been posthumously re-baptized in LDS temples, a Salt Lake City researcher says.

Helen Radkey said in a new report that she obtained church records on 20 fundamentalists — from murderer Ervil LeBaron to Joseph Musser to Rulon Jeffs — showing that they’ve been baptized and have had their plural marriages “sealed” for time and eternity by proxy LDS members, one as recently as this year.

In Forward in 2002 we read about Radkey's efforts:

Helen Radkey, an Australian-born genealogical researcher, minister in the independent Universal Life Church and tarot card reader, has been a Catholic and a Mormon — but what she really wants to be is a Jew.

"If I was going to be part of an organized religion, it would be Judaism, but the rabbis here don't want me," she said in an interview with the Forward from her home in Salt Lake City.

This may be an overstatement, but the 60-year-old Radkey has acquired something of a reputation for being a thorn in the side of religious institutions. She is perhaps best known for prodding The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — known less formally as the Mormon Church or LDS — to stop church members from using the Mormons' extensive genealogical records to baptize posthumously thousands of Jews, including Holocaust survivors.

According to the Pensito Review Radkey is concerned that other famous or infamous people having their vicarious temple work done including: Ted Bundy, Adolph Hitler, Eva Braun, Martin Bormann, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who was also Jewish to name a few who had their work done.

The Ancestry Insider finds that Radkey likes to rile up religions against each other and is no respector of religions even though she likes to pick on the Mormons.

Radkey has pitted the Church against Jewish groups. In September of 2002 Radkey asked the Church to pay $30,000 plus continued payments if she would give them a list of Jewish names she had uncovered in the IGI. The Church declined. (Forward) Later that year, Ernest Michel met with the Church armed with a report prepared for him by Radkey. (CNN)

Throughout the contradictions, Radkey's self description remains true: "provocative and controversial."

I don't see what the big deal is for Radkey. She is just trying to incite other religions to be angry about doing work for their dead. She certainly doesn't understand much about our directive to do the work for everyone that has ever lived on the earth.

On 6 May 2009 Scott Taylor in the The Deseret News reported:

The LDS Church has counseled its members to request temple baptism and other temple ordinance work only on behalf of their relatives, but it recognizes that sometimes well-meaning members bypass the instruction and submit the names of non-relatives.

The church also recognizes that due to pranks or carelessness, names of famous or infamous individuals or even fictitious names are sometimes submitted for temple work -- all contrary to policy and often resulting in pain and embarrassment.

With millions of members providing names for proxy work worldwide, the church acknowledges the difficulty in preventing such incidents and often learns of them after the fact.

On LDS.org we read the Church's statement about such baptisms:

Some people have misunderstood that when baptisms for the dead are performed, deceased persons are baptized into the Church against their will. This is not the case. Each individual has agency, or the right to choose. The validity of a baptism for the dead depends on the deceased person accepting it and choosing to accept and follow the Savior while residing in the spirit world. The names of deceased persons are not added to the membership records of the Church.

In the Encyclopedia of Mormonism H. David Burton gives us a different slant on how baptisms for the dead are conducted today:

In the early years of the Church, proxy baptisms were performed only for direct blood ancestors, usually no more than four generations back. Today, Latter-day Saints are baptized not only for their own forebears but also for other persons, unrelated to them, identified through the name extraction program. The practice reflects the yearning of children for their parents and of parents for their children, and charitable feelings for others as well, that they receive the fulness of the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In LDS perspective, whatever else one may do to mourn, give honorable burial to, cherish, or memorialize the dead, this divinely authorized ordinance of baptism is a demonstration of love and has eternal implications.

In my opinion there isn't much that the church can do about members who decide to do work for those otherside their families. In 1983 I encountered this situation as a student of Hugh Nibley. One of Nibley's heroes was Julius Cesar Scalinger. Nibley told me that he was interested in doing the temple work for Scalinger who was a contemporary of Erastus of Rotterdam. Scalinger apparently mastered every known language in the world and Nibley said he and Erastus were his own inspirations for learning languages. He asked me to go to the Harold B. Lee Library and find Scalinger's genealogical information so he could do his work. The only complete entry I could find that I gave Nibley was from a French Encyclopedia that gave his birth, marriage and death. I never followed up on whether or not Nibley did the work but I suspect he and others did work for people not related.

I never questioned Nibley nor his desire to do work for noble people who lived on the earth. I personally have never done work for someone that isn't related to my family in some way. But even Wilford Woodruff did the work for the signers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. A person who is vicariously baptized can accept or reject their baptism. Since it is a concept of the LDS Church that everyone needs baptism I don't understand what the problem is with Radkey or others.

She Said: Baptism for the Dead

2009-06-15T18:59:00.004-04:00

FYI, Dr. B.--I looked on the IGI and the temple work for Julius Scaliger was done in Provo in 1993--so Hugh Nibley could very well have done these ordinances for his hero.

I enjoyed reading Dr. B.'s article on Helen Radke and the LDS practice of Baptism for the Dead. Because I am LDS, I see quite clearly the rationale behind the desire of members of the Church not only to provide ordinances for their own deceased relatives, but for everyone who has lived on the earth. I do sympathize with non-members who have requested that we refrain from associating their family members with our Church, but I have to confess that I have no strong feelings on this issue. It seems to me that if someone does not believe in the Mormon Church, these actions might easily be dismissed. If someone baptized my grandmother into the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I would scarcely take notice, other than to laugh. But I have no wish to offend. If the following joke makes you cringe, then you will probably be able to appreciate, better than I, the affront that non-members take at our practice of vicarious baptism:

"I cannot condemn the Mormons’ posthumous baptisms, because I myself have been tasked by God Herself to baptize dead Mormons into my church and then bless them with posthumous plural interracial gay marriages. In fact, here comes another marriage right now…

*blink*

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to Mr. Joseph Smith, Mr. Brigham Young, Mr. Idi Amin, and Mr. Pol Pot. What God has joined together let no man put asunder!"

The Church's current policy attempts to straddle that fine line between avoiding offense to others and following religious dictates of our own. Publicly the Church tells members to submit only their own family names to the temple, but because there is no formal restriction on names that are submitted, in practice anyone can submit any name they would like.[1] With the new family search program, a member can clear names for temple work on their own home computer. Though the program warns the member to check for duplicates, or to have certain names cleared, members can choose to override these cautions and submit the name nonetheless. The names are printed out on a sheet of paper and taken to a desk at the temple, where it is a mere formality to prepare the pink or blue name slips which will allow the ordinances to be completed.[2]

Even with the attention that Helen Radke and others have brought to this practice, I see no change contemplated for the procedure of submitting names to the temple. And other religions are becoming increasingly aware of this. In response, the Catholic Church has instructed parish priests to discontinue the microfilming of parish registers by the LDS. This was freely allowed in the past. And Jewish leaders have issued statements protesting the "wrongful practice of baptizing the Jewish dead," noting their reasons that they believe it is disrespectful and harmful.

There will likely be continued tension between those who feel that the receipt of LDS ordinances is vital to the salvation of all mankind, and those who are offended by the suggestion that their family members' chosen religion or lack of religion was not good enough.

_____________________________________________
[1] Church policy states: "Please do not submit the names of deceased celebrities and historical personalities, including those of royal or noble lineage or early LDS Church leaders and their families, or of persons born in European countries prior to A.D. 1500, regardless of your relationship to them. Though the names may not yet appear on the Ordinance Index, temple work for most of the people in these categories has already been done. Sometimes when we study about such people, we feel a spiritual affinity to them, but we should not submit their names for temple work. If names are sent in counter to this policy, they must be cleared by the Temple Department. The Medieval Family Unit (1-800-346-6044) can help you avoid duplicating ordinances for those born before A.D. 1500."

[2] Because the formal "clearance" by higher Church authorities is not always sought before the name is presented at the temple, individuals such as Adolph Hitler and Ervil LeBaron have been baptized posthumously. It does not follow that a General Authority approved of the ordinance.

Take the Poll: Baptisms for the Dead

2009-06-15T18:58:00.002-04:00

Follow Up: Supporting Evidence for the King James Version

2009-06-13T20:22:00.000-04:00

King James Version Bible Song

The Horrible Dangers of Using the NIV

Follow Up: The KJV vs. the NIV

2009-06-13T20:21:00.000-04:00

She Said: Excommunication

2009-06-12T11:00:00.000-04:00

I'm going to make this short and sweet.

In the scriptures the Lord has said that he will cut off those who do not keep the commandments. He has also said that He is our judge and our lawgiver. When humankind are given the ability to judge, it is for the purpose of knowing good from evil (see Moroni 7). We are told:

...seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye do not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged.

If our leaders want to hold "courts of love," they should be places where the concerns of both parties are laid on the table. Discussions can be held, compromises can be made, help can be extended, I'd say even warnings could be given. I like to think of a Bishop as a judge in Israel in the sense that Moses put it in Exodus 18:

When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.

But as for excommunication--as for punishment--cutting someone off from God and the fellowship of believers--

I say we leave that to the Lord and to the individual themselves.

He Said: Excommunication

2009-06-12T10:59:00.001-04:00

The most dread word that any Latter-day Saint fears is excommunication. Most Latter-day Saints hope that they will one day dwell in the celestial kingdom with Christ and our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother so being excommunicated is tantamount to a Mormon as the ultimate punishment since an excommunicated person will no longer be considered part of the church or body of believers and will be cut off from God. Damnation means not being in the presence of God and excommunication is the church's way of saying that you are cut out of the Lamb's Book of Life.

The Church says that the process is a court of love. I questioned that for many years until I was involved at the stake level in receiving a person back in to the fold in 2005. Some members believe that it is only between the Lord and the person and that the church should not get involved. I feel that the church can exert an influence in helping a person to repent and return to the fold. Ultimately it requires inspired judgment in order to determine the status of a person. In LDS belief there is a series of judgments which lead up to the final judgment and that the Lord will consider in making his final determination. I also think that the church does need to protect itself from unscrupulous members who could bring about damage and lead others away from the church for apostasy.

Acccording to Wikipedia excommunication is a penalty "for those who commit serious sins or for those that significantly impair the name or moral influence of the church."

According to the Church Handbook of Instructions, The purposes of church discipline are (1) to save the souls of transgressors, (2) to protect the innocent, and (3) to safeguard the purity, integrity, and good name of the church. Excommunication is generally reserved for what are seen as the most serious sins, including committing serious crimes; committing adultery, polygamy, or homosexual conduct; apostasy, teaching false doctrines, or openly criticizing LDS leaders. A 2006 revision to the Church Handbook of Instructions states that joining another church is also an excommunicable offense, however merely attending another church does not constitute apostasy.

Excommunication for a Melchizedek Priesthood holder (all adult males over eighteen who are living LDS standards are usually ordained to the priesthood) must be done at the stake level. The stake presidency (made up of a stake president, two counselors, a stake clerk, and an executive secretary) and High Council act as a disciplinary council like a court. The High Council is made up of twelve members who act as the defense and prosecution. Six speak for the person and six speak against the person. The person committing the offense is excused to the hallway to await the decision. After hearing all the testimony the stake presidency then return to his office and consult in private. The stake president then invited the smaller group to pray and then comes to a decision on what discipline to impose. He then tells the small group his decision and they return to the high council room where the stake president announces the decision to the combined group. The person being disciplined is asked to come back in and told the final outcome and a few words of counsel on the appeals process and the conditions of their discipline and a some words on how to return to full fellowship later. If the person is not present a letter is sent to them informing him of the decision of the stake president. A person can appeal to the First Presidency in Salt Lake City.

Females and adolescent males or adult Aaronic priesthood males are disciplined by the bishop and his two counselors with the bishop making the final determination. The decision can be appealed to the stake president and the First Presidency.

When a person is excommunicated they can still attend church but they can't partake of the sacrament, hold a calling, pay tithing nor attend the LDS temple. An endowed member needs clearance from the leaders in Salt Lake City before they are allowed to have their blessings restored. The matter is kept private today without other members being told so not to embarrass the person nor his/her family. When I first joined the church it was announced publicly. An excommunicated person can ask for reinstatement after one year. Depending on the severity of the sin it may take several years and requires them to follow a plan for correcting their behavior.

I attended a disciplinary council when I was an executive secretary in a stake. The man had committed some grievous sexual sin which included adultery. He had been excommunicated. He worked with his bishop in overcoming his sexual addictions which included pornography. After about a year and a half with the recommendation of his bishop the First Presidency agreed he could be reconsidered for reinstatement. The stake president told us the decision to reinstate was approved by Salt Lake City and we could proceed if everyone was in agreement. We meet as a stake presidency with the High Council and heard the person's statement and the bishop's statement that he had counseled with him and felt him ready to be reinstated to full fellowship. A few High Council members spoke for the man and a one or two spoke about what had caused the problem in the first place but not too adamantly. We as a stake presidency then left the room and had a short discussion on whether the person was ready to be received in full fellowship again. All five members of the stake presidency gave their views. We prayed as a group. The stake president then pronounced that he felt the Holy Spirit and felt we should accept the person in full fellowship. We returned to the room and the stake president told the high council that he felt the person should be welcomed back in full fellowship.

The person was invited in to the room again. The stake president told him how proud he was of the person and their desire to live the gospel and correct his behavior and that the group felt that the person should be received in full fellowship. Every person in the room shook the person's hand and a few embraced the person warmly welcoming the person back in to the full fellowship of the church. I wasn't involved in the restoration of blessings or any of those details since the stake president handled that part personally between him, the person and Salt Lake City. We were only involved in the process of welcoming him back.

I can't to this day remember who the person is but I do know that the person involved felt dignity and compassion and love in the process. It was a very moving experience for me to welcome the person back in to full fellowship and to see his joy in coming back. On that day I discovered that when handled the way the church outlines that it was indeed a council of love.

Take the Poll: Excommunication

2009-06-12T10:58:00.003-04:00

He Said: Retreats and Symposia

2009-06-11T15:28:00.004-04:00

During the course of the past ten years I have grappled with the fact that despite my discouragement my wife Bored in Vernal has chosen to associate herself with some pretty ultra-liberal symposia which includes Counterpoint, Rosewood Retreat, and Sunstone Symposium. It isn't that I am anti-intellectual that I don't like her going it is because in terms of faithfulness they have had a decided affect on her formerly orthodox beliefs in the teachings of the Church.

When I first courted and married BiV I had recruited her as a fresh returned sister missionary in my BYU student ward to help me extract quotes voluntarily from talks by Spencer W. Kimball in to a compilation by Yoshihiko Kikuchi on Proclaiming the Gospel: Spencer W. Kimball Speaks on Missionary Work. When I first met her she was far from the bleeding-heart liberal she is today. Then she was an ultraconservative who didn't believe in worldly music, television, or doctrinal theories. Her idea of a great time was going to the Sperry Symposium and she looked forward to attending BYU Education Week.

During this time early in my married life I was working for Richard O. Cowan in the BYU Religion Department. I attended many Church-supported seminars including the Mormon History Association, the Sperry Symposium, and the CES firesides. Brother Cowan was personally involved in all the accepted LDS symposium, forums, and associations and I went to help him whenever he gave a presentation. A couple of times later in my life I was a respondent to his papers.

I personally met Elder Boyd K. Packer a couple of times while working for Brother Cowan who encouraged me to emulate my boss who he said was "a trusted historian" and that he heard good things about me and that I was also trusted. Being as Elder Packer was one of my heroes I wanted to follow his advice since I know there is safety in staying close to the leaders' guidance. Elder Packer during the time I was a student at BYU for seven years discouraged members of the religion department and the CES from associating with the Seventh East Press types and specifically the Sunstone Symposium. Being as my desire was to work in the institute of the Church and eventually become a BYU religion professor I aligned myself to him.

His talk the Mantle is Far, Far Greater had a very decided influence on me particularly in relation to LDS history and influenced my desire not to associate with those who demeaned or tried to put down church leaders:

That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith--A destroyer of faith--particularly one within the Church, and more particularly one who is employed specifically to build faith--places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities.

I personally knew all of the members of the September 6 group that ended up being excommunicated. After their leaving the church they began attending the more liberal symposia to raise the awareness of others to their mistreatment by Elder Packer and other church leaders. I particularly did not want to put myself in proximity to people who questioned the church nor its leaders. I vowed to never attend such conferences while my leaders discouraged it.

Over the years including in 1993 Elder Packer has consistently come out reaffirming his stand on liberals and their forums:

three areas where members of the Church, influenced by social and political unrest, are being caught up and led away. . . . In each [area], the temptation is for us to turn about and face the wrong way, and it is hard to resist, for doing seems so reasonably right.

The dangers I speak of come from the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement (both of which are relatively new), and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals. Our local leaders must deal with all three of them with ever-increasing frequency. In each case, the members who are hurting have the conviction that the Church is somehow doing something wrong to members or that the Church is not doing enough for them.

In our married student ward I was asked to talk about Mother in Heaven and had BiV help me to collect statements. At first she was satisfied with the concepts that we found particularly the one by Lorenzo Snow that said women who gave birth would be saved in the kingdom of heaven. Little by little over the years she began to lose her fervor and to become bored hence her name Bored in Vernal. When she heard about the September 6 group particularly Janice Allred and Margaret Toscano she felt it was unfair that they were excommunicated. She didn't press the issue for many years until about nine years ago.

One of her close friends who was married and had four children decided she would leave her husband of twenty-five years and become a lesbian. The two had known each other as young mothers in La Leche League and networked together. I recognized her propensity for becoming gay right from the beginning when one of her friends or relatives was receiving shock therapy for being gay and she spoke out harshly against the Church psychologists who were helping him. I also saw a note once lying on a dresser in her parents' home where we were visiting where she apologized for kissing another woman after that I was not comfortable being around her. In addition she never treated her husband with much respect and constantly badmouthed him as being weak and less active. I knew that her marriage was in trouble and I didn't want her to influence BiV in those ways.

In about 2002 after the friend left her husband she convinced BiV to go with her as a roommate to the Rosewood Retreat. BiV wasn't very forthright about her attending this conference nor going and staying with the friend later. She actually lied to me since she knew I was opposed to liberal conferences and symposiums and just said she was going to visit. I didn't know where she was going until after the fact. I also felt very uncomfortable with her friendship with the woman at first because I didn't know if she would put a move on my wife. My fears later proved unfounded as BiV wasn't her type. I am not totally homophobic having had several gay employees but I watched the woman talk for hours to my wife calling her sweetie and professing her love.

When BiV returned from the her first Rosewood conference and began attending on a regular basis I was concerned. At one of the Rosewood Retreat they all dance under the stars and talk about Mormon feminist issues. They had a native American female shaman who taught them about practices and how they could apply to the church. My wife really became involved in the conference and tried to keep it going. Rosewood Retreat started out with some connections to the Exponent Retreat and even the LDS Relief Society but later became more liberal. Although it filled a need in my wife I wasn't totally sad to see it end.

When we moved up to Utah in 2005 and after she met a few people like Janice Allred, Carol Lynn Pearson, and Margaret Toscano she decided to get involved by writing a chapter in Pearson's book on how homophobic I was, and she represented the conservative element on a panel at the Counterpoint Conference about what it is like to have eight children and being a temple going Mormon. I began to fight less over her attendance and dropped her off at the University of Utah and went down to the LDS Family History Library to do genealogical research.

Eventually she started going to Sunstone Symposiums about this same time. Compared to the other two conferences Sunstone was pretty tame. At least at Sunstone you get all kinds from conservatives to liberals to ultra-liberals. My daughter who attended with my wife told me that even though some of the speakers have ax to grind with the church and depresses her when they are so negative that at least there is a mix of different talks. BiV began presenting there after being on a Counterpoint panel and has become a presenter, panelist and now even edits their "Touchstone" column.

I don't know why there needs to be liberal conferences with so many new sponsored conferences like the Society for Mormon Philosophy & Theology Conference. I would prefer she or I attended places that are sanctioned by our leaders. Since the main concern of belonging to groups like Sunstone are intellectual stimulation I feel such conference should meet their needs.

I recently counseled with Elder M. Russell Ballard about my uncomfortableness with my wife being at Sunstone and he told me he doubted she was an apostate and would ever leave the Church. Even though neither he nor I might like the liberal philosophies or negative talks given there that I should be encouraging of her intellectual pursuits. I was recently asked by her to be a respondent at the Sunstone Symposium since I am so conservative. I actually thought for a few minutes about going and might have gone had I had any vacation nor the money to afford the Sheraton Hotel. With a kid on a mission I even had to tell BiV she had to sleep on a couch at my daughter's apartment at BYU. Now that Elder Ballard tells me to support BiV I am blogging on this blog which is as close as I really want to get to liberals.

She Said: Retreats and Symposia

2009-06-11T15:25:00.001-04:00

Well! I didn't realize this subject would get quite so personal. But I'm a seeker, I'm a questioner, I have been all my life, even in those early days of marriage described by Dr. B. Had I not been, I wouldn't have investigated the Mormon Church as a 19-year-old college student. And I wouldn't have been open to depart so far from my liberal Protestant roots as to marry in the temple, bear eight children, and forego a career to raise them.

In the past several years, now that my children are a bit older and more self-sufficient, I have enjoyed attending a few unofficial Mormon retreats and symposia. The ones I attend are not encouraged by the Church nor by Dr. B. I wonder why there has been so much controversy over them. Dallin H. Oaks has attempted to explain the reasoning in a talk given in 1989 titled Alternate Voices. Elder Oaks explains:

My remarks will refer to those voices that speak of God, of his commandments, and of the doctrines, ordinances, and practices of his church. Some of those who speak on these subjects have been called and given divine authority to do so. Others, whom I choose to call alternate voices, speak on these subjects without calling or authority.

Elder Oaks distinguishes between the two by saying that both official voices from the Church and "alternate voices" use similar means to promulgate their messages. The Church, he says, has magazines and other official publications, a newspaper supplement, letters from Church leaders, general conferences, and regular meetings and conferences in local units. Similarly, alternate voices are heard in magazines, journals, and newspapers and at lectures, symposia, and conferences. Elder Oaks is very careful in his recommendations regarding these fora--"Members of the Church are free to participate or to listen to any alternate voices they choose, but Church leaders should avoid official involvement, directly or indirectly." He reasons that there are procedures which are used by the Church to ensure approved content for materials published in the name of the Church or used for instruction in its classes. "They provide a spiritual quality control," he says, "that allows members to rely on the truth of what is said. Members who listen to the voice of the Church need not be on guard against being misled. They have no such assurance for what they hear from alternate voices."

Nevertheless, certain symposia, none of which are controlled by Church correlation, enjoy the favor of mainstream members like Dr. B. These include the Mormon History Association, the FAIR Conference, The Sperry Symposium, the recent Sacred Space Symposium at BYU, and many others. Even liberal speakers such as were heard at the recent SMPT conference at Claremont seemed above reproach, perhaps because of their prestigious Howard W. Hunter Mormon Studies Chair they have recently added to their religion program. I think it's strange that some "so-called intellectuals" are tacitly approved in Church circles, while others are not.

I do find it stimulating to attend Mormon-themed conferences and symposia. Different religious styles appeal to different people. Some find a questioning approach exhilarating, while others find it threatening and exhausting. There are a large group of LDS members in the mainstream who prefer an approved, correlated, "answer-based" curriculum. I find this boring. Hopefully we can learn to respect each other's styles.

Finally, retreats seem to fulfill a desire for social interaction with like-minded people. The few retreats that I have attended I have searched out for their open-minded approach to Mormonism. I do not feel the need to accept every perspective which is held by these varied groups of people, but I am enriched by hearing their stories and seeing how they are able to integrate their unconventional styles into the LDS Church.

I'd love to hear about some of the conferences and retreats that our readers have experienced. Which ones have you attended? Are there any of these gatherings which you would avoid, and why?? Tell us about it!

He Said: The King James Version

2009-06-10T13:52:00.001-04:00

The LDS Church is into standardization and chooses to use the King James Version of the Bible despite newer translations that might be closer translations. One of the main reasons is that Joseph Smith did a revision of this edition of the Bible and they have integrated his revelatory changes in to the footnotes and in a section in the back of their printed Bibles.

In Guide to the Scriptures: Joseph Smith Translation (JST) we read:

A revision or translation of the King James Version of the Bible in English, which the Prophet Joseph Smith began in June 1830. He was commanded by God to make the translation and regarded it as part of his calling as a prophet.

Although Joseph completed most of the translation by July 1833, he continued until his death in 1844 to make modifications while preparing a manuscript for publication. Though he published some parts of the translation during his lifetime, it is possible that he would have made additional changes had he lived to publish the entire work. The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints published the first edition of Joseph Smith’s inspired translation in 1867. They have published several editions since that time.

They have a very lucrative practice selling their own editions to members of the LDS Church. In addition it would be hard to have other publishers include the JST inclusions. I think that is the main reason they stick to using the KJV since Joseph Smith's changes wouldn't lend themselves to any other edition.

In the Mormonism Unveiled blog we learn:

The LDS edition of the King James Version of the Bible is identical to the normal King James Version, except that it has cross-references to other LDS standard works. Some excerpts from the JST are included in the newest LDS edition of the King James Version. Expert LDS blogger Jeff Lindsay also presents Q & A about LDS usage of scriptures HERE.

Jeff Lindsay says Hugh Nibley throws a little bit of light on the subject of why we stick with the KJV:

Until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, the oldest manuscript we had of the books of Moses (the first five books) was from the ninth century A.D., the Ben Asher Codex. There are eight thousand different old manuscripts of the New Testament, no two alike. So there is a lot of collating, comparing, and arguing about which passages are which and what order they come in. Then when you have translation, there is no agreement about that. Year after year there are new revised translations coming forth. Well, if the last translation is reliable, why the new revised, improved Cambridge, or Anchor, or whatever it is, edition of the Bible? It's processing all the time. The Bible is a very human document, of course it is. So is the Book of Mormon. It covers thousands of years. It has many authors; it was edited, etc. But it was handed to us in a single passage. Bang, just like that, the whole thing - all edited, all in order, all translated. We don't have to argue about any of that stuff. If it is true, it comes to us whole, and there is nothing to slow us down on it - nothing to hold us up until we have decided what this passage means, or what that is. It was translated directly by the gift and power of God. There is no need to argue about it.

I guess it doesn't really matter which edition you use if they are all riddled with errors and differ in what they consider canonical writings.

She Said: The King James Version

2009-06-10T13:51:00.002-04:00

I'm a waffler when it comes to the official use by the Church of the King James Version of the Bible. I think there are two main considerations one must take into account when discussing which translation of the Bible to use: One is its language and style, and the other is doctrinal accuracy.

Language and Style:

I personally love the King James Version, I love its elegance, and I am comfortable speaking and reading the pre-Jacobean form of English it employs. But I realize that I may be different than the general Bible reader since I was weaned on the KJV. For almost half a century I have been listening to its cadences and idiosyncrasies. I am familiar with the use of "thee"s and "thou"s and Shakespearean-era conventions. Unfortunately, the language of the King James Version keeps many modern readers from understanding what it is saying, which is unfortunate. I particularly recall teaching the 23rd Psalm to a group of 9-year-olds in Primary. I didn't even realize that the phrase "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want" would sound to them as if the author did not want the Lord as his shepherd. Some modern versions translate the phrase as follows:

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not lack, (Amplified Bible)

You, LORD, are my shepherd. I will never be in need. (Contemporary English Version)

The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need. (Good News Translation)

Jehovah [is] my shepherd, I do not lack, (Young's Literal Translation)

The Lord is my shepherd. He gives me everything I need. (New International Reader's Version)

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. (New International Version--UK)

God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing. (The Message)

None of these sounds as beautiful to my ear as the King James Version, and I find this to be true in numerous passages, especially the poetic ones. But to my 9-year-old students, and indeed, many others, any of these would be more understandable. Should more of an emphasis be placed on trying to educate its readers into an appreciation of scriptural-sounding language, or in providing the Word of God to readers wherever they are? I'm not sure.

I also think it is interesting to consider that different parts of the Bible likely were written in different types of language originally. Isaiah was written in a high, intellectual, poetic form, while much of the New Testament was in the common vernacular.

Doctrinal Accuracy:

Every translator of the scriptures brings his own unique bias to the translation, no matter how hard he or she tries to be impartial. (And many are not trying to be impartial.) One must keep this in mind when deciding upon a version of the scriptures to use. Bible scholar Fred P. Miller explains why he thinks the KJV is superior in this regard:

...there are good reasons for retaining the King James Version as a base instead of the translations from texts that more modern translators have used. The more modern translators are gifted linguists and their forte is in nuances of language. The earlier KJV translators and those on whom they based their revision (Tyndale and Coverdale) were careful students of the Word of God. This is of particular importance since understanding much of Hebrew syntax is dependent on contextual ideas that are a part of a continuing flow of thought.

King James scholars are recognized by conservative leaning churches to have had a better understanding of the total Biblical context than the more modern translators. Thus churches such as the LDS trust the doctrinal positions available in the KJV more than the others.

For the most part I, too, trust the doctrinal understanding of the King James translators. I do think it is useful for Bible study to compare some of the other versions, especially when you hit a passage where the language is particularly unclear. For example, here's a verse in Isaiah that I puzzled over for quite some time:

But yet in it [shall be] a tenth, and [it] shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance [is] in them, when they cast [their leaves: so] the holy seed [shall be] the substance thereof. (Isaiah 6:13, KJV)

For those who do not have the language skills to go back to the original Hebrew, it is helpful to take a look at how some of the other versions have translated the same verse. Here is one that makes the wording a little more clear:

Even if only a tenth--a remnant--survive, it will be invaded again and burned. Israel will remain a stump, like a tree that is cut down, but the stump will be a holy seed that will grow again. (New Living Translation)

I would compare this with a version that attempts to translate each Hebrew word very literally, such as the following, to see if I could agree with the translators' doctrinal implications:

And yet in it a tenth, and it hath turned, And hath been for a burning, As a teil-tree, and as an oak, that in falling, Have substance in them, The holy seed [is] its substance! (Young's Literal Translation)

Thus the different translations can be extremely helpful for deeper doctrinal study as well as for those students who do not have the background to understand the English of the King James Bible. I would not recommend a change in the LDS practice of using the KJV in their classes, sermons, and regular study. I think it stretches the student to learn and ponder the archaic language in a way that is conducive to Biblical study. But I would urge a more relaxed position with regard to the use of other translations. With the easy availability of many places online to compare the different versions (see below), there is no reason not to make use of them.

Bible Gateway
Blue Letter Bible

Take the Poll: King James Version

2009-06-10T13:50:00.002-04:00

Stolen Innocence: Update

2009-06-10T13:14:00.001-04:00

Elissa Wall is now offering to settle a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the FLDS.

Elissa sued over her forced marriage at age 14 to her 19-year-old cousin. She named the FLDS Church, its leader, Warren Jeffs, and the United Effort Plan (UEP) Trust as defendants. The proposed settlement was filed in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court last week in the ongoing litigation over the UEP Trust, which controls property in the FLDS communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

In the settlement, Wall asks for about $308,000 in compensation and a monetary judgment to be awarded in mediation or a damages-only trial. She also wants some undeveloped trust land as well as the properties that her family lives on.

"(Elissa Wall) will personally receive no further compensation, but will execute on her remaining judgment to facilitate the UEP Trust's goal of conveying the homes built on UEP Trust land to Trust Participants," her attorney, Roger Hoole, wrote in a copy of the settlement obtained by KSL NewsRadio.

Wall is apparently seeking to exert some influence on subdividing the land currently held by the trust, which was originally based upon the early-Mormon concept of a "United Order," where everything was placed in a common pot and doled out according to just wants and needs.

The interesting thing about this is that the FLDS no longer have control over the UEP, as the UEP Trust was taken over by the courts in 2005 amid allegations that FLDS leadership mismanaged it. Right now the Trust is trying to sell land that the FLDS had set aside for a temple to pay some of the outstanding lawsuits. The reformed UEP Trust does away with the communal "united order" concept and paves the way for private property ownership. Elissa Wall seems to be attempting to assist with this dismantling of the FLDS United Order.

He Said: Book Review: Stolen Innocence

2009-06-08T14:26:00.006-04:00

Elissa Wall with Lisa Pulitzer, Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Triumphing over Warren Jeffs. New York: William Morrow, 2008.

Elissa Wall with the help of Lisa Pulitzer does a good job painting the FLDS as a very repressive people with some very controlling behaviors and Warren Jeffs as a scum ball. I have never had the respect that my wife BiV has for fundamentalists and her romanticized view that they are just good religious people trying to live the "principle." Wall reinforced my viewpoint that living polygamy is almost impossible due to the selfish behavior of the participants to control one another. I think if I were a member of the FLDS Church in my current maritial condition that I would have ended up much like Wall's father with my original wife in the end. My own children might have very well gone down the road that Wall's siblings did--or end up the opposite, as very gungho FLDS.

The premise behind this book is that fourteen is too young to lose your innocence, with which most of us in the United States or Canada that are not FLDS would have to agree. Being the parent of seven daughters I personally would not have allowed Wall to be married at such a young age. Even if I were a member of the FLDS faith I wouldn't have let any of my children go anywhere without my keeping in contact on a weekly or monthly basis even if I had been stripped of the priesthood like Wall's father. If anything I would have been more determined to regain my children. I would have known if anyone was trying to coerce a daughter of mine into a marriage that wasn't mutually agreed on by all parties that it just wouldn't happen. Her father is not totally blameless here since he was an absent caregiver out of choice. I read constantly how Wall was talking to different people by cell phone so why not call her dad from time to time. The FLDS are not like the Amish--they drive cars, play in the symphony orchestra and have telephones. They aren't totally as shut off from the world as Wall portrays in her book. She did after all work at the Mark Twain where I am sure even outside truckers frequented for a good home-cooked meal and where she got to know her future lover and current husband.

Wall paints a picture of her family being tragically broken apart by the FLDS leaders for their inability to get along with one another. The FLDS leaders were just trying to help, as I see it, the father being a weak leader and unable to control his family. I saw something even more ominous in that her own mother destroyed her father's family. The mother is very controlling and comes from a fundamentalist family that is well-connected while the father is a convert and has little influence.

Wall and Pulitzer paint a picture of passivity for the mother but from the readings I see that she was quite forceful when she wanted to be particularly in dissolving her marriage from Wall's father. When the mother can't get her own way she takes down the whole family so she can get herself married to a high ranking FLDS leader who is some old guy close to death. The mother seems happy when she remarries now that she is near to the action again. The mother was very manipulative and Wall downplays her own mother's role as being passive when in reality she probably had a great deal of input in to what happened in Wall's life including the marriage that toppled the FLDS leadership.

We learn in the end of the book that Fred Jessop rather than Warren Jeffs orchestrated the marriage. The mother had direct access to Jessop since she occasionally slept with him. She could have suggested when the daughter should be married or even the timing. I find it hard to believe she didn't say something to Jessop in a tender moment. Even after Wall is married the mother is always encouraging Wall to get along with her new husband. Wall never really makes much of an effort to get along but rather goes out of her way to be disobedient. It makes you feel sorry for the husband who is just some teenager without much social skills. She is constantly denigrating him including when he testifies near the end of the book. She never gives the guy a break as you paints him as a buffoon who is weak and spineless. I mean when her boyfriend goes out with a larger group and tells him to buzz off he goes quietly. Then he testifies he would have stayed married to her.

Then when the family members leave the FLDS faith one by one she paints it as if they are merely victims of a bad system when in reality it is their desire to live their lives differently than the what mainstream FLDS follow. Her sisters run off with men they fall in love with as do many of her friends. The truth is that they all left because they wanted to and wanted to follow their own lifestyles. Walls could have left sooner if she really had wanted to since she went away at least twice to Oregon and Canada. I think her staying with her former husband was more complex than simply wanting to remain "sweet."

In the end she leaves the very same way committing adultery, divorcing someone she married for time and all eternity and taking down Warren Jeffs. I agree that she lost her innocence involuntarily when she was forced in to marriage at fourteen but I disagree that the sequence of events had to transpire the way they did after that point. I think she could have adhered to her beliefs and still have broken free. Being a fundamentalist didn't help her live a very moral life in the end. Elissa Walls voluntarily lost the rest of her innocence by her choices from sixteen through eighteen. If Wall were really the good faithful Saint that she portrays herself as being, she certainly wouldn't have been out there listening to Bon Jovi, questioning her religious beliefs, drinking beer in the deseret, fighting with her husband, not having children with him nor sleeping with Lamont Barlow. I give her the benefit of the doubt that she was immature but there are literally hundreds of FLDS youth and tens of thousands of LDS youth who wouldn't have done any of those things particularly committing adultery when they are sealed to another man for time and all eternity.

I don't fault her for taking down Warren Jeffs for that she should be commended. I think she was hypocritical for absolving her father and mother who in my opinion caused the situation when they converted to the FLDS faith. To be fair Wall should have also taken down her own father for getting her in the mess in the first place as well as Fred Jessops (if he had lived longer), and any and all FLDS men who pressure girls under eighteen in to forced marriages.

Warren Jeffs only had the power that Wall and the other believers gave to him. The group had a few opportunities to stop him and looked the other way. The Centennial group proved that when their feet did the walking. If the FLDS had stood up to Jeffs he would have had to back down. Even today they are feeling the heat from the Texas debacle. Now that outside forces are putting pressure on them they are finally able to say we won't be bad anymore. Now they have a revisionist mentality we don't engage in girls under eighteen being married is their public statement.

I think from my reading that most FLDS are pretty spineless people including the heroine of the story. For one thing I think the whole concept of letting people out of marriages and giving them to other people is against what Jesus taught except for the cause of fornication or adultery no divorces should be given. If polygamous preached there will be no divorce except for physical abuse or adultery there would be fewer broken homes like Wall's parents had. The father would then have been put to the test since he was let off as an absent parent.

The problem with polygamy is that anyone can get out of a bad marriage if they want it bad enough and complain hard enough. Wall wants to say she tried a couple of times but when she had Allen in the position where she could have delivered the death blow to her marriage she slept in her car and avoided him while messing around with Lamont. If she had gone every other week to Jeffs and said I am going to run off with Barlow he would have whisked her off some place else and gotten her out of the marriage. Of course she would have been married to who Jeffs and the leading elders wanted not Barlow perhaps. She got the same effect in the end she was free but she and Barlow are now on the outside looking in. The truth is she wanted to be with Lamont Barlow not whoever Jeffs would have chosen.

I think Wall and the Utah court case and the recent events in Texas have started to reform their practices. Will they completely adhere to this practice of only marrying legal age wives? I doubt it. I mean after all they are breaking the U.S. law by entering in to polygamy in the first place. I think if they were smart and didn't want the United States government to crack down on all fundamentalist like they did one hundred years ago they would agree among all independent groups and FLDS groups to only marry legal age wives and stick to that practice. Otherwise I think they should suffer the full extent of the law and should be prosecuted.

I don't deny Warren Jeffs got what he had coming and he did what she probably said. But her mother who was her legal guardian gave permission and she should also be prosecuted. She knew full well what was going on. Her mother is no more the dupe of the FLDS than other FLDS woman. Unlike a bunch of innocent women in the Texas compound who didn't have underaged daughters married off Wall's mother did and in my opinion should have her remaining children given to non-FLDS family members or placed in protective services.

In the end the principles Wall purported to believe in didn't keep her on the moral path. Her victory is that she took down a bad man in a very screwed up cult. I admire her for getting out of a bad situation but she could have done it a little more nobly. She would have had a greater victory if she had taken Jeffs down while remaining true to her moral compass.

She Said Book Review: Stolen Innocence

2009-06-08T14:25:00.012-04:00

As you can see, Dr. B. and I have decided to include book reviews on our blog. Occasionally we will read the same book, and I think you might find our discussions interesting. Case in point: Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer. I think Dr. B.'s review may show more about him than it does about the book. I am sure my review will do the same.

Just looking at this photograph of Elissa Wall at age 14, the age at which she was constrained to marry her 19-year-old FLDS cousin, one can see that the title of Elissa's memoir is apt. This child was much too young for marriage, and the story she tells in her book is tragic. There are many reviews available for this particular book, so I won't try to summarize or duplicate what's already been said. Instead, I'd like to look at the polarization caused by the FLDS practice of arranged marriages. Elissa introduces us to the heartbreak caused by this practice when she describes how her father, Douglas was found by Warren Jeffs to be unworthy of the Priesthood and unable to control his family. This was evidenced by physical fighting between father and sons, and complaining on the part of the wives. Warren decided to solve the problem by "assigning" Elissa's mom, Sharon, to another man. Now I realize that it is a very flat pancake that doesn't have two sides. Warren may have felt that Sharon truly was not happy in the situation she was in, and that the family problems could be solved in this manner. But in Stolen Innocence, we see the turmoil this decision brought to the family members, especially the children, as they were torn between the teachings of their religion to follow the prophet's counsel in all things and their attempts to keep a troubled family together. I agree with Dr. B. that this could have been our family. We're not a perfect model of good LDS teachings, but the Church is deeply ingrained within us, and we are more than willing to follow our leaders' well-meaning advice. So I can see how some of the problems the Walls encountered happened, and I'm hesitant to blame either Sharon, Doug, or Warren Jeffs. But I think the breaking up of the family caused many problems later, including the horrible marriage into which Elissa was pressured.

In the book, Elissa insists that she made her objections to her marriage to Allen Steed known to her mother, her mother's new husband, Fred Jessop, to Warren Jeffs, and to Allen. This picture I found of Elissa and Allen seems to me to be a perfect illustration of the reluctance that she describes. While Allen looks happy to be married, Elissa is turned away, stiff, she even looks frightened. He looks straight into the camera, while Elissa's gaze is elsewhere, embarrassed. At 14 years of age, the FLDS girls knew nothing of what was expected in marriage. I feel sorry for her that she had to endure the trauma that she did. In addition, I feel a lot of sympathy for the 19-year-old Allen.

Even through Elissa's story, one can see that Allen was really trying to make the marriage work. The marriage was not consummated for some time. Allen seemed to be patiently trying to figure out how to win Alissa's love. He wrote her love notes, took her on trips, and stumblingly attempted to teach her the ways of marriage. No wonder that it was less than a success. Some commenters have opined that Allen should have been tried for rape, and was as guilty as Warren Jeffs for this crime, but I am not so sure. Allen himself was young, and had been taught that his marriage to Elissa was proper, and seemed to show great restraint for someone in his situation. Elissa writes that she was forced to have sex, but fails to support that Allen raped her by her own descriptions of what happened. She instead portrays herself as reluctantly submitting to Allen's pressure, as in the following paragraph:

“I’m doing it out of love,” Allen declared. Everything he did was a contradiction, and before I knew it he was playing the guilt card again. As he continued to put his hands all over me, I just froze.

“Okay, fine,” I uttered. “Get it over with.”

In her description of their sex life, Elissa betrays a lack of understanding of the consideration that the newly-married, passionate young Allen was extending her:

It felt like we were having marital relations all the time, at least once or twice a week.

As I read on, I found the story more and more heartbreaking, as Elissa continued to search for love and friendship outside the boundaries which her family and religion would find acceptable. The conclusion of her tale brought forth a mix of emotions in me. I was relieved that she was able to find strength within, enough to find her own voice and to escape the bondage of Warren Jeffs. I was happy to see her reunite with her siblings and her father. I am glad she has found joy with her new husband, Lamont Barlow. But I ached for Allen and for her mother, both of whom endured great hardship to remain true to their faith and the things they had been taught.

I think it is incumbent upon us to read this book with compassion toward all who are involved. There is a great temptation to blame Elissa Wall's situation, and other failures in FLDS family life on Warren Jeffs and the practice of arranged marriages. As far as I am able to tell, the strict control of a prophet over the marriages of the people of a Mormon-based religion is limited to Warren Jeffs. Jeffs' father and previous leaders of the FLDS did not require this, and neither do other fundamentalist groups of which I am cognizant. Now that Jeffs is in prison, it seems clear that he was at fault. I feel no compunction to defend him. But I feel that it is important to be aware that there is another side of the FLDS story that I wish I knew better. We have Elissa Wall's and others' depictions of Jeffs as a fearsome, controlling, dictatorial leader. But I have seen pictures of a slight, gangly, geeky-looking Warren. I've heard tapes of his soft-spoken voice. I've heard the testimonies of those who have met him of his unassuming character. As Dr. B. has said, I think Warren Jeffs had power because his people gave him respect and authority over their lives. They believed the words he spoke to them.

There's a blog I read sometimes that is written by a man in Douglas Wall's situation--his wife and children were taken away from him by Jeffs because he was deemed unworthy. This man continues to defend the faith and to strive to one day be worthy to get his blessings back. He has a different way of looking at all of this. My heart hurts when I read about him and I wish I could hear more of his thoughts. He joins the ranks of Sharon Wall, of Lamont Barlow's grandfather, and many other faithful FLDS. Where do they find their faith? I'd like to read their stories too.

She Said: How to Combat Chloroform

2009-06-06T22:00:00.011-04:00

I hate to say this, but Church meetings are sometimes downright BORING. One Sunday I found myself staring at the clock on the wall, willing that big hand to move, and chewing my hair wondering if I could possibly sit in the room for one more minute.

I'm not quite sure how things have changed since my young adulthood in the Church, when I attended two ward's full meeting schedules and firesides, often for a total of 10 hours in Church on a Sunday. And I loved every minute of it.

Was it the rollicking fun of Relief Society, as we discussed mother education, cultural refinement, spiritual living and social relations, topics and lessons which had been selected and written by women for women? Was it the disregard of teachers for prepared lesson materials when they felt inspired to delve into the off-topic comments of interest to their students? Was it the class participation, the innovative sermons which were never expected to be based on General Conference talks?

Back then the jokes told about Gospel Doctrine class didn't revolve around "Sunday School answers," they invoked the amusing speculative comments in which the High Priests indulged. I'm afraid that by encouraging correlation and doctrinal conformity, we have only succeeded in boring our members to death. What can be done?

In a previous ward, I attempted to enliven Sunday School by heavily researching the topic to be discussed, then bringing up interesting and controversial points for which I was certain the teacher would not be prepared. This added a bit of amusement to my day. But I soon repented of my folly. Unfortunately now I find myself retreating into extra-curricular literature. A couple of weeks ago I went out to the car during a particularly boring lesson, and emerged with the only bit of reading material to be found: my 10-year-old daughter's novel on dragon magic. It got me through the rest of SS as well as a 5th-Sunday combined meeting on preparedness.

I haven't yet succumbed to texting, to games of tetris, or to surfing the internet on my iphone yet. But I have seen plenty of other members surreptitiously using these methods of entertainment to relieve their agony. I can't say I blame them, but I want to resist surrendering my expectation of powerful, interesting, affirming, spiritually motivating LDS meetings. What is to be done? Is my angst over this issue simply a function of my age and having been through the four-year cycle of Church curriculum one too many times?

Recently I read an ad campaign for the United Methodist Church which read: "What if church wasn’t just a building, but thousands of doors? Each of them opening to a different concept or experience of church. So that whoever knocks might find a journey to call their own. Would you come?" For some reason that paragraph reminded me of Joseph Smith. I like to imagine that each of his sermons opened the doors of thousands of possibilities for his listeners. He showed us a new way of looking at so many things. How can we reclaim that excitement of the early days of the Church, when there were tongues of fire in the Kirtland temple, handkerchiefs bringing healings, and thousands of people willing to die on the plains for a religion that had captured their souls?

What if Church was more like Dentyne??

What if Church was more like milk?

What if Church was more like Starbucks??

What if Church was more like PostSecret?

He Said: How to Combat Chloroform

2009-06-06T21:59:00.004-04:00

Recently my daughter and I discussed the concept of whether or not church is boring. Since she is a recently returned missionary she still glows with a missionary's zeal for the gospel. She said she really couldn't understand how anyone who was truly converted to the gospel could find the messages taught each week as being repetitive since every time she hears it she gains a fresh insight and renewed testimony of the truth of the gospel message.

She said she agreed with what a young Henry B. Eyring as a bored teen was told by his father when he wisely instructed him to become involved in the subject even when we think the speaker is boring:

"I finally got up enough courage to ask him what he thought of the meeting. He said it was wonderful... Like all good fathers, he must have read my mind, because he started to laugh. He said: 'Hal, let me tell you something. Since I was a very young man, I have taught myself to do something in a church meeting. When the speaker begins, I listen carefully and ask myself what it is he is trying to say. Then, once I think I know what he is trying to accomplish, I give myself a sermon on that subject.' He let that sink in for a moment as we walked along. Then with that special self-depreciating chuckle of his, he said, 'Hal, since then I have never been to a bad meeting'" (To Draw Closer to God [Desert Book: Salt Lake City, 1997], 23).

My daughter tells me the gospel is so filled with truth that every time she listens to the same topic over the teacher or speaker or students say things that she finds profound.

I have often heard in the church as an argument that only boring people get bored. A wise person once said "YOU are responsible for motivating yourself to find meaning and purpose in what you do. Life is not there to entertain you."

I have to admit that in my ward I am a member of the Sunday School presidency and that every now and then we get a teacher who doesn't really understand pedagogical variety and could use a stint in the Teacher Development course.

I find the manual Teaching No Greater Calling manual one of my most favorite ones since it has some great insights in to making the gospel relevant in our lives. If lessons are relevant than the Spirit is there and makes up for the deficiency of the teacher. Many times teachers follow in to monotonous patterns and need variety. Both the teacher and the students need to be engaged in the gospel discussion.

In the Teaching manual it emphasizes: "The gospel can likewise be presented in a number of different ways. No teacher should fall into a monotonous pattern of presenting the same kind of lesson week after week. When you use a variety of learning activities, learners tend to understand gospel principles better and retain more. A carefully selected method can make a principle clearer, more interesting, and more memorable." Like they say variety is the spice of life.

It also says:

Just as we need nourishing food to survive physically, we need the gospel of Jesus Christ to survive spiritually. Our souls are nourished by whatever speaks of Christ and leads us to Him, whether it is written in the scriptures, spoken by latter-day prophets, or taught by other humble servants of God. The Savior Himself said, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

Teaching that is nourishing to the soul uplifts others, builds their faith, and gives them confidence to meet life’s challenges. It motivates them to forsake sin and to come to Christ, call on His name, obey His commandments, and abide in His love (see D&C 93:1; John 15:10).

Many topics are interesting, important, and even relevant to life and yet not nourishing to the soul. It is not our commission to teach such topics. Instead, we are to edify others and teach them principles that pertain to the kingdom of God and the salvation of mankind.

Teaching that stimulates the intellect without speaking to the spirit cannot nourish. Nor can anything that raises doubts about the truth of the restored gospel or the need to commit ourselves to it with all our heart, might, mind, and strength.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie counseled: “Teach the doctrines of salvation; supply spiritual food; bear testimony of our Lord’s divine Sonship—anything short of such a course is unworthy of a true minister who has been called by revelation. Only when the Church is fed the bread of life are its members kept in paths of righteousness” (Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, 3 vols. [1966–73], 2:178).

In conclusion: Our mental attitude can really affect our participation in listening to a sermon or participating in a class. Teachers need to have the Spirit when teaching and students need to seek the Spirit when in class. The Spirit brings the gospel down into our heart like fire and drives boredom away.

Take the Poll: Do Your LDS Church Meetings Bore You?

2009-06-06T21:58:00.002-04:00

He Said: Caffeine!

2009-06-05T22:00:00.010-04:00

When I joined the church 35 years ago the only bad habit I had to give up was drinking Pepsi cola. At time the person interviewing me suggested that my drinking four or five cans a day was a violation in their opinion of the Word of Wisdom. Not knowing any better and wanting to conform my life closer to the teachings of the Gospel I switched to drinking 7-Up or Sprite which I have continued to this day.

When I went on my mission one of my more experienced companions who was a convert to the church explained to me that drinking colas was an individual discretionary matter and that his bishop and stake president drank them. Most of the missionaries were evenly split on the subject but none of us drank them since our mission president asked us not to for a couple of reason: one he didn't want to confuse investigators who were struggling with coffee or tea and second he thought soda pop was a waste of the little money his missionaries received each month. He felt there were more nutritious things for us to eat or drink. After my mission I just continued the practice of not drinking caffeinated beverages. I rarely even drank hot cocoa although I do admit eating chocolate candy bars which has its own baggage.

About fifteen years ago I switched to drinking decaffeinated Pepsi Free on special occasions. Since I consumed too much soda pop I have diabetic tendencies. My wife has forced me to switch to diet soda pop which in the Pepsi or Coke decaffeinated versions is not even close to the original taste. On Father's Day, my birthday, and Christmas my family have an inside joke of giving one bottle of Pepsi Free (sugared) and a bag of Fritos.

I have had a few minor lapses this past couple of years when I discovered my wife drinking Diet Coke and Mountain Dew. She insists that she is only a social drinker of the suspect beverages and drinks them to get along with other social caffeinated drinkers who are a majority of her family and friends. The first few times she drank them in the presence our eight children she scandalized them since we both adamantly taught them over the years that consuming them was the height of hypocrisy.

One of our daughters picked up this bad habit on her mission to a foreign country which saddened me. In a blog post that I entitled Maté, Kava, Coca-Cola and LDS Missionaries I tracked down all the major statements I could find by Mormon authorities and concluded that

I don't really have an answer to whether you should or should not drink these beverages. There are conflicting guidelines and statements. Maybe they are intentional or maybe they are there so we can have our free will. I do know some former leaders have spoken out against them. I haven't heard anything in about twenty years though.

Personally I come down on the side of not drinking caffeinated soda. There are a few reasons I am opposed to it. I believe I am addicted to soda pop and think any kind brings health problems such as diabetes, kidney stones, etc. I feel guilt every time I pop the lid on one which is once or twice a day. Another reason is that caffeinated beverages including new energy drinks have as much caffeine in them as coffee or tea, in some cases, more. Even Sobe drinks which have vitamins and herbs can contain a great deal of caffeine. I recently saw a commercial that said drinking soda pop erodes enamel on teeth and that you can't replace hard enamel once it dissolves.

Despite my feelings many LDS members including my wife and Church leaders including mission presidents, bishops, stake presidents and even a few general authorities still drink colas. One of the contentions about drinking cola beverages is that there is just as much caffeine in them as in coffee or tea. A few members tell me that it is hypocritical to refrain from coffee and teas and drink the other substances. Many times uber-righteous non-caffeine drinker members tell cola drinkers to their face that they are just plain wrong in giving in to their natural cravings and consuming them.

I cringe every time I see my wife pop the top on a diet Coke. But lately I have moved across the line and bought her one on a recent trip. I do draw the line at Mountain Dew which is hard core stuff. I even drank one of her diet cokes when she wasn't looking a few months back when I was unusually thirsty. It was left over from a retreat with a bunch of feminist liberal women from Open Mormon. I didn't have the money or the inclination to go get a diet sugar free Root Beer at the local grocery store and couldn't stand my craving for the carbonated cool beverage when I was hot. I just hope I don't go to hell in the end for compromising on something that doesn't feel right to me and causes me such guilt and remorse.

She Said: Caffeine!

2009-06-05T21:59:00.008-04:00

It's true--at one time I was a Nazi Word of Wisdom follower.

There are many issues which surround D&C 89, but today Dr. B. and I want to narrow the discussion down and talk about caffeine. One might well wonder why Mormons are known for not drinking Coca-Cola when the relevant statement from our "health code" states:

And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.

We all know that "hot drinks" has been interpreted to mean coffee and tea beverages. This interpretation developed from a statement made by Hyrum Smith in 1842.

And again "hot drinks are not for the body, or belly;" there are many who wonder what this can mean; whether it refers to tea, or coffee, or not. I say it does refer to tea, and coffee. (Hyrum Smith, "The Word of Wisdom", Times and Seasons, 1842-06-01, vol. 3, p. 800.)

By 1881 it was being taught that "hot drinks" should be understood as tea and coffee, no matter what form, hot or cold.

I understand that some of the people are excusing themselves in using tea and coffee, because the Lord only said "hot drinks" in the revelation of the Word of Wisdom .... Tea and coffee ... are what the Lord meant when He said "hot drinks." (In Joel H. Johnson (1881). Voice from the Mountains (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office) p. 12; cited in Church Educational System (2001). Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual: Religion 324 and 325 (Salt Lake City: LDS Church) p. 209.)

From there, the prohibition developed to mean coffee and tea only. Modern Latter-day Saints will readily drink hot beverages such as hot chocolate, spiced cider, and even herbal teas. It's instructive to track the evolution of this. With "hot drinks" narrowed down to coffee and tea, one might reason that they are restricted because they both contain caffeine. So in the early 1900's, when caffeinated soft drinks became readily available, many members figured that they should also abstain from these drinks. Elder John A. Widtsoe taught:

Whenever a drink is advertised to "give you a lift," the "lift" is likely to be caused by the drug which it contains. Such soft drinks are decidedly harmful and habit-forming, even though sold by the millions. Such caffeine-containing drinks, offered by every soda fountain and most eating places, and consumed in large quantities, should be known and avoided. (The Word of Wisdom: A Modern Interpretation, p.97)

With this in mind, President Heber J. Grant in April 1922 General Conference asked the Saints as a personal favor to him not to drink Coca-Cola. Two years later, after meeting with representatives from the Coca-Cola company, he became convinced that the amount of caffeine in the beverage was harmless and stated that he would no longer speak out against the use of cola drinks. Many other General Authorities since that time have cautioned against caffeinated soft drinks. But they are generally very careful to note that these drinks are not specifically contrary to the Word of Wisdom, because there are just as many GA's who do partake!

I think it is interesting to analyze motivations for members who have decided it is important to abstain from caffeinated soft drinks. It is recognized that it is not specifically caffeine which is against the Word of Wisdom. So why are some members determined not to partake? Those who cite the health risks often consume foods such as jello with food dyes, soups with MSG, processed meats with nitrates or chocolate, which contains mood-altering and addictive substances. They are also apt to ignore the health benefits of eating more grains and fruits in season and limiting meats, which is suggested in the Word of Wisdom.

I often wonder if those members who eschew caffeinated soft drinks are using this relatively simple religious behavior as an identifier to signify their level of "Mormon-ness." Cutting out the Coke is an easy thing to do, and it immediately brands you as a committed LDS Church member.

On the flip side, what does that say about those of us who love our Diet Dr. Pepper? Do we enjoy flouting outward convention? Is it a "safe" way to be just a little bit rebellious?

Take the Poll: Caffeine!

2009-06-05T21:58:00.002-04:00

She Said: Mormons and Civil Disobedience

2009-06-04T22:30:00.003-04:00

The concept of civil disobedience has been around for centuries--we see it as far back as ancient Greece. But the term coined as "civil disobedience" is a lot more modern. American author Henry David Thoreau popularized it in an 1849 essay, Civil Disobedience, dramatically urging that although one does not necessarily have to physically fight the government, it should not be supported if the disagreement is urgent enough. The essay had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. In it, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican-American War.

Civil disobedience, then, consists in publicly announced defiance of specific laws and policies which an individual or group believes to be unjust. The defiance must be publicly announced, since the point of it is to bring the injustice to the attention of the public and to effect change. The perpetrator must understand that this defiance is illegal and carries prescribed penalties. Willingness to accept such penalties is a crucial part of civil disobedience.

Modern civil disobedience theory began to take shape in the mid-1800's. This was precisely the time when Mormon settlers in Utah were faced with a conflict of conscience of their own against the government of the United States. Early Church leaders preached unequivocally that members of the Church must practice the principle of plural marriage in order to attain the highest degree of the celestial kingdom. At the same time, polygamy was illegal in the Territory of Utah.

Approximately twenty to thirty percent of the Mormons then living in Utah followed civil disobedience by contracting marriages which were against laws they felt were unjust. Although most of them attempted to conceal their marital arrangements, Church policy and publications openly and publicly defended the practice. Members understood that there would be penalties, and many served jail sentences for their illegal practices.

Under the United States government's constitutional power to enact laws governing territories, Congress enacted the Morrill Act (1862), making bigamy in a territory a crime punishable by a fine and five years in prison. The statute was upheld in Reynolds v. United States (1879), although the defendant argued that the law violated the First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion. The Edmunds Act (1882), made bigamous cohabitation a misdemeanor and barred persons living in polygamy from jury service, public office, and voting. Over 1,300 Latter-day Saints were jailed as a result of the Edmunds Act. The Edmunds-Tucker Act (1887) disincorporated both the Church and the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, authorized seizure of Church real estate, disenfranchised women, and annulled Territorial laws allowing illegitimate children to inherit.

In 1890, after 40 years of Mormon civil disobedience, it became clear that plural marriage was leading toward the economic and political destruction of the Church. President Wilford Woodruff then withdrew the requirement for worthy males to take plural wives and announced a manifesto formally stating his counsel to Latter-day Saints to abide by antibigamy laws (D&C Official Declaration—1). The Manifesto was intended to end the legal confrontation between the U.S. government and the Church.

For several reasons, it took many years for the LDS Church to completely end the practice of plural marriage. The Manifesto was couched in what, for Mormons, was ambiguous language. Instead of a "thus saith the Lord" type of revelation, Wilford Woodruff instead publicly declared "that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land." In an address in Logan, Utah, he asked:

The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue—to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?

Some apparently felt that the "wisest course" was to continue to live the fundamental spiritual principles they had been taught by the early leaders of the Church. Priesthood holders in top leadership positions continued to solemnize plural marriages, and much confusion ensued. Nonetheless, with the issuance of the Manifesto, Mormon civil disobedience had effectively ended. No longer was the Church attempting to change the laws of the land to align with conscience, but to comply in order to gain Statehood.

Never again would the LDS Church participate to such a degree in civil disobedience. Instead, members are urged to follow the laws of the land strictly, wherever they live. They feel that through proper legal conduct, they can gain the good graces of political authorities and thereby advance other Church objectives. For example, Blogger Silver Rain recently wrote:

"Because we are painstakingly compliant to local laws wherever we go, the LDS church has been granted many freedoms that other religions have not always enjoyed. Countries in the Middle and Far East have welcomed us in as service missionaries when we were not allowed to proselyte. We were one of few religions allowed practice in Cold War East Germany. Doors have opened to us multiple times in multiple places because we show respect to the law."

There's something in me that rather respects the willingness of those early members, and even Mormon offshoots today, who will take the risks of civil disobedience to take a stand for what they believe. Mainstream members are now urged to show caution, sometimes to the detriment of conscience. This quotation is a case in point:

“Our participation in life’s important events may be jeopardized if we fail to follow the rules contained in our Father in Heaven’s commands. Involvement in sexual sin, illegal drugs, civil disobedience, or abuse could keep us on the sidelines at key times.” (Bishop David Burton, ”And That’s The Way It Is,” Ensign, May 2003)

I disagree with Bishop Burton that civil disobedience should be included in that list of foibles. For, as Thoreau put it:

"Indeed, you serve your country poorly if you do so by suppressing your conscience in favor of the law — your country needs consciences more than it needs conscienceless robots."

________________________________________________

Picture (1): In the Utah penitentiary in 1885 are (L-R) Francis A. Brown, Freddy Self, Moroni Brown, Amos Milton Musser, George H. Kellogg, Parley P. Pratt, Jr., Rudger Clawson, and Job Pingree. Photographer: John P. Soule.

Picture (2): Utah Territorial Penitentiary 1888-9, located at the Sugarhouse site, now the northwest corner of Sugarhouse Park on 21st South & 13th East of Salt Lake City, Utah. Standing(L-R): Sylvester Frazer Jones, Simon Topham, Joseph S. Barney, Lorenzo D. Watson, Thomas Chamberlain, Henry Langford, Samuel Wooley, Nephi J. Bates, Frances Webster, Cornelius Mc Greavy, Jonathan Covington. Sitting on Step in center: Benjamin Perkins, William Butler, Francis M. Lyman. Doorway: George Q. Cannon.

Picture (3): The site of the Utah Penitentiary, selected by Brigham Young in October 1853, then a safe six miles from the center of the city. The first buildings of adobe brick, surrounded by a twelve foot wall, were occupied in January 1855. Early accounts indicate that escapes were frequent because of poor facilities and the lack of guards. In 1866 the penitentiary was renovated. The three buildings, wall and the guard houses were upgraded to stone. Later a dining hall, hospital and women's quarters were added. By 1882 the penitentiary included 244 steel cells and 250 capacity chapel. A new 19 foot wall enclosed 2 acres. A large area surrounding the prison was used by inmates to farm and raise livestock for inmate consumption.

He Said: Mormons and Civil Disobedience

2009-06-04T22:29:00.002-04:00

As a conservative member of the LDS Church I have always been taught in Article of Faith 12 "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law." For the most part I have always strictly adhered to the laws of the land except occasionally speeding.

As a history major at BYU I learned that we as Latter-day Saints try to adhere to the laws of the land except on occasion when religious principle clashes with the law.

Bored in Vernal covers the historical roots of plural marriages for the living, but I say that a spiritual form of the practice remains.

Even though polygamy was officially abolished by 1904, LDS leaders still practiced a limited form of civil disobedience in that they continued the practice of spiritual polygamy. I am aware of Ezra Taft Benson being sealed to a deceased distant cousin in the 1940's. I suspect he wasn't the only one to receive that honor. So vicariously apostles and other high ranking church leaders participated in a religious ceremony which did not require a marriage license and entered into spiritual polygamy. Apostles and other worthy priesthood holders whose wives died naturally could also remarry and be sealed to other spouses one at a time since they were not in violation of the laws of the land. Despite fundamentalists' contention that the church fell we have an unbroken chain back to Joseph Smith that does not violate the law in the strictest sense. An interesting aside is that recently some of the more well-known Fundamentalists such as the LeBaron brothers are now being baptized for the dead in our temples. I would consider the continuation of polygamy a form of civil disobedience skirting on the edge but adhering religiously to both the law and religious principle. Plural spiritual marriage is a way to keep the practice alive while still adhering to the law.

In fact, this is the way that I would say civil disobedience continues to be practiced in the Church. In studying LDS history there have been many examples of civil disobedience or just plain not following the law when it comes to Latter-day Saints worshiping according to the dictates of their own conscience.

As early as the late 1930s and early 1940s totalitarian regimes like the Nazis, Facists and Communists resisted the Church's efforts to gain official sanction to worship or send missionaries in to their countries. During the Nazi regime our efforts were opposed. Kahlile Mehr wrote about mission president Wallace Toronto's failed attempts for 29 years to gain official recognition in Czechloslovakia under both the Nazis and later the Communists (See “Czech Saints: A Brighter Day,” Liahona, Sep 1997, 10). Mehr described Toronto's experiences:

In 1949 the Communist government began to restrict the missionaries. Still, baptisms rose from 28 in 1948 to 70 in 1949. (see “Jirí and Olga Snederfler: A Closer Look at Two Czech Pioneers,” page 16).

Late in January 1950, two missionaries disappeared. No word of their fate was received until 11 days later. They had been arrested for entering a restricted border zone and were accused of spying. The Communist authorities released the two elders in prison on the condition that all the missionaries would be evacuated. A Czech governmental decree liquidated the mission on 6 April 1950.

For the next 14 years, Czech members kept their faith in silence, unable to worship publicly or to enjoy any regular contact with the Church beyond Czech borders. From his home in Utah, President Toronto continued to provide what assistance he could. When possible, he corresponded and sent financial aid, clothing, medicine, and Church publications. During those years, he applied nine times for a Czech visa—and received nine refusals.

It was not until 1964 that the official presence of the Church once again entered the nation. President John Russon of the Swiss Mission and Lynn Pettit, an early missionary in Czechoslovakia, arrived in Prague. Word of their arrival spread, and a small group met at a member’s home for a celebratory testimony meeting.

Meanwhile, President David O. McKay advised Wallace Toronto to apply again for a visa, saying, “[The members] have been carrying on underground long enough. They need the authority of their mission president.” Within a week the Torontos received visas. They visited members in Brno and Prague.

In July 1965 President Toronto returned to Prague, intent on reestablishing the Church. Although he was well received by many governmental officials, the secret police arrested him and evicted him from the country. Mission growth would be suppressed for another 25 years before reemerging in a new epoch of freedom.

This is just one example, that has been repeated in various countries during the 20th century.

In Islamic and Communist countries which have strict laws concerning religion there have been sizable groups of Latter-day Saints who either were converted elsewhere and returned to their native countries or went there for work opportunities. In such countries LDS members have learned to be creative in finding ways of worshiping without alienating these militaristic governments. The last few years I have participated in civil disobedience myself when I attended church each week. In the country where I lived it was expressly forbidden that anyone meet in a formal or informal religious gathering of any kind other than the official state religion. This is not uncommon in many countries throughout the Middle East or in Asia.

In order to meet we had to gather as private citizens and take extra precaution so as not to draw attention to ourselves. We actually had security rules that stated we were not to enter the residence in large groups and that women needed to adhere to strict dress codes. A long-time member described earlier members as being deported who made their religious attendance known to employers or co-worker. Even though LDS members were meeting at the U.S. Embassy which was officially U.S. ground they agreed in employment contracts not to show any form of civil opposition.

Today members realize that they could still be arrested and deported if someone became angry with them getting together. The law calls for the termination of anyone attending any philosophical group other than the official one of that country, possible arrest, beating and deportation.

In the country described above I was told by a church leader that a former ruler of the country told us that we could meet privately if we didn't draw attention to ourselves. The new ruler hasn't made any proclamation other than the official one that only one religion is recognized in that country. By gathering together we are practicing civil disobedience since there are employment policies which preclude meeting about any ideology other than the official one.

My last form of civil disobedience has to do with immigration law in the United States of America. I lived right on the border in Calexico, California which is a suburb of Mexicali, Mexico. In my ward there are many people who live on the U.S. side who are not American citizens. Members of the church know that they are illegal aliens. In fact many members of the church work for the border patrol. A few of them have a don't ask don't tell mentality. Leaders even know who many of the illegal immigrant members are. They still call them to positions of leadership. Many of the men have been former bishops and members of stake presidencies.

Many of the children of these members are called to missions in the United States. They can't get a passport or VISA but they go on missions. I am not opposed to this practice since it seems to me that they can spend their whole lives going to U.S. schools. I know of one boy who was valedictorian of his high school class but not able to attend college on a scholarship because he had no proof of residence. In such cases it is more humane to either give them amnesty. One boy in one of our wards mother did not get amnesty so our bishop who was a lawyer was trying to help him get a green card so he could serve. It is a complicated mess. One girl we know was raised totally in English and she would have been hard pressed to go to her mother's home which she never knew.

I think the LDS Church walks a fine line in obeying the stated law but in the grey areas it chooses religious worship or conscience in actual practice. In none of the cases I have described is there a clear resistance to any law. It is not against the law to practice spiritual polygamy but actual living polygamy even in legal settings is eschewed. Even in Africa where polygamy is legal or the Middle East LDS worthy males only have one wife. In countries which are restrictive where religious meetings are concerned we are just a bunch of friends enjoying a day together. Even in the case of illegal immigrants the U.S. government ignores the young men in question. They are not revolutionaries trying like Thoreau or Paulo Freire trying to overthrow bad practices they are just trying to practice religion without overturning the apple cart.

Take the Poll: Civil Disobedience

2009-06-04T22:28:00.002-04:00

She Said: Death of A Mormon Tradition

2009-06-02T22:41:00.000-04:00

To me one of the strengths of the Mormon Church is its personalization. When wards get too big, they are split, thus the Bishop knows all his members quite well. On Fast Sundays, we know our fellow travelers and why they are up there crying. We have faces and names and stories, and we have traditions.

I've been sad over the years to see the loss of many of the very traditions which draw us in to the lives of our fellow Saints. For example, I understand the Utah-based impetus which led to forbidding of missionary farewells and homecomings in Sacrament Meetings. But in wards where there are never more than 5 missionaries out at a time, this new policy was a loss. The emotion and the Spirit of a mother's or a sibling's talk as their son/brother went out to serve was uplifting. It was a wonder to see the maturation that had taken place when said missionary returned home. It brought us closer as a Ward Family. And the Open House was a lovely tradition and a perfect opportunity for the Ward to celebrate together.

At Mormon Matters today there was a discussion of the new policies for funerals, popularized by Boyd K. Packer. Funerals are no longer to be, in the long-standing Mormon tradition, a family affair celebrating the life of the deceased. Instead, doctrinal talks are recommended, with the program and speakers being chosen by the Bishop.

So with all of the policy changes which have taken place in the past few years, I very much regret to see another of our Mormon traditions bite the dust: the MTC drop-off.

It's been a wonderful tradition, ever since the Provo MTC was built in 1978, for families to be able to bring their missionaries to the campus, check them in, take pictures, participate in a brief orientation, and then bid their missionary goodbye. Families exit one door, and missionaries another, amid many tears. As a young convert missionary in 1981, I had no family to take me through this ritual, but I watched with a tender heart as mothers hugged their sons goodbye, little brothers shook hands solemnly, and the families wept. I loved being a part of it. I had the opportunity to take my oldest two daughters to the MTC in 2006 and 2007. When my third daughter departed this past January, we were unable to go with her, but three of her sisters, who were attending BYU took her through the rigamarole.

Now, amid worries over the swine flu virus, which has been contracted by some of the missionaries currently in the MTC, the powers-that-be have decided to permanently end the tradition, and missionaries are now to be dropped off curbside. What a shame.

Here's what SHE SAYS:
Let's keep as many of our Mormon traditions as we can, especially the ones that personalize us. Let's keep the special ceremonial rites of passage for individuals. Allow ward members and families to celebrate, as much as possible, the lives and milestones along the way of their loved ones.

He Said: Death of A Mormon Tradition

2009-06-02T22:40:00.002-04:00

This week I learned of the discontinuation of another LDS tradition--the dropping off of a missionary child. I have mixed feelings about no longer dropping off a missionary at the MTC. I read about it on M and M's blog when she linked to the KSL report which cited the reason as being the spread of the Swine Flu or H1N1 virus.

Richard G. Hinckley, a member of the Seventy states:

Friends and family are now being asked to say their goodbyes outside because three missionaries have the swine flu. Church officials say their mission is to keep the H1N1 virus from coming into or out of the MTC.
"We've had protocol in place for these kinds of things for a number of years. We isolate them," said Elder Richard G. Hinckley, executive director of the Church's Missionary Department.
Hinckley says they've had outbreaks of other viruses before and similar protocols are used. However, this time it will permanently change how parents say goodbye to their children at the MTC.
"Those [parents] who typically do come, from this area, will be asked to drop them off, from this point forward in time, at the MTC and say goodbye to them at the doorstep and not come into the buildings," Hinckley said.

When I lived in Utah I dropped off my two oldest daughters. It was a really production to take them to the MTC. We drove the three hours to Provo and then assembled their three siblings who were attending BYU together. We had all their bags which we took and placed with hundreds of other bags that looked similar. Some old guy directed us where to park after dropping off the bags. I didn't really enjoy trying to find my daughters and wife who left me to park the car when they wandered off with the bags.

We then had to stand in a huge line to take our pictures in front of the entrance. In order to get us all in the picture we had to beg some other stranger to take our picture in front of the wall with the MTC's name. Literally thousands of parents had to go through this process to get the tradtional shot that is on every missionary's blog of them with their parents standing there.

Another trying experience was getting in the foyer with hundreds of family members who pressed against you as some sweet little old lady gave your missionary a name tag with a bright colored dot. Again you had to force y9urself on someone to take a picture in front of Christ. If you went down the stairs they tried to tell you not to take a picture from that point on.

Next you had to stop every few seconds as your wife or daughter grabbed a Kleenex to wipe the tears out of their eyes as guides tried to move you along to the room where the twenty minute devotional was held.

The first time I shed one tear when my first daughter was separated from us going out one entrance as we were instructed to go out a different one. The first time not knowing any better we followed the MTC president's advice treating the separation like ripping off a bandage and gave a last quick hug. The following year hearing the same spiel we were slower as that particular daughter was more emotional about leaving us and it took four minutes. I didn't shed a single tear that time. I regretted though I didn't bring all eight kids but they asked people to limit the size of their paries so we only brought the kids at BYU. I noticed though the great bonding opportunity that siblings had as they shared in the missionary's first experience.

I am not sure what their experience will be now that this sappy tradition is ended. I think of the literally tens of thousands of hours spent in saying goodbye and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in traveling to Provo by families who would come from all over the country. The Church ending this tradition is being more health and resource conserving.

I never knew until my third child went on her mission that the LDS Church pays their way to the MTC so this time I said goodbye at the Charleston International Airport. I have some nice pictures of my wife and daughter saying goodbye. I think the Church is probably wise in not having such big fanfares for missionaries any more like farewell talks, open houses and now missionary drop-offs. I mean what is the big deal anyway. It is like fasting--God knows and recognizes the sacrifice. You don't need a program to part with your kid. When I went on a mission as a one year convert my parents didn't even help me find a way to Provo. I think this practice of dropping off is only a twenty year phenomenon. In a few years no one will care one way or another.

Take the Poll: Death of a Mormon Missionary Tradition

2009-06-02T22:39:00.015-04:00