More Perspective on Prophets

The most chastised and threatened person in the D&C is Joseph Smith - and it's not really very close.

What was the most common reason for early apostasy among the Saints? Joseph's weaknesses and the other leaders' inability to support him as a prophet when they disagreed with his actions and decisions. They accepted his visions of eternity, but they couldn't accept the uneducated and flawed nature that co-existed with the visionary.

I think there is a reason the chastisements were included in the canonized sections.

Why He Is Leaving on a Mission

My son entered the MTC yesterday. This link is in his honor.

Farewell Talk - Sam (The Liberated)

Elder DeGraw's mission blog is "Mrmn's Mission (Ryan/Citrus/etc)" - and has been added to my blog roll.

The Ideal: A Two-Edged Sword

I believe in preaching an impossible ideal for which we should strive, as long as it is coupled with an understanding that it’s okay to not be able to reach it. The ideal itself often is what inspires us to do and become what we wouldn’t do and become otherwise. (One of my favorite songs is “The Impossible Dream”, and one of my favorite books is Don Quixote.)

Having said that, preaching an impossible ideal without understanding it is only an ideal is destructive. Preaching a physical ideal based almost solely on a subjective and cultural standard of beauty - nope, I don’t like that. I have four daughters, and I hope they NEVER want to enter a beauty pageant.

The Gospel is not a beauty pageant, and too often we forget that.

"Judge Not" in Proper Context

Matthew 7:1-5 is the beginning of the wrap-up of the Sermon on the Mount. If it is taken as a stand alone passage, it loses the qualifying context in which it is recorded.

By that, I mean that Matthew 5 & 6 go into great detail describing characteristics of godliness and attributes and actions that a follower of Christ should pursue in order to "be ye therefore ("in this way") perfect ("complete, whole, fully developed")." Those two chapters lay out what KIND of person a believer should be striving to become and some of the ways that such an effort will be manifest to those around them. THEN, after laying out how to strive to become, Jesus IMMEDIATELY adds:

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, even so shall ye be judged."

He then talks about motes and beams and ends by talking about hypocrisy.

Think about that context and what it means.

He's NOT talking about judging the correctness of what people say - about making an intellectual or emotional decision about whether or not something makes sense or someone can be trusted or whatever. He's saying, essentially:

"I just laid out what each person should do to become like my Father. That is a personal journey that each believer must undertake. HOWEVER, I'm not giving ANYONE permission to judge anyone else as that other person navigates his or her own path. When that happens, INEVITABLY hypocrisy occurs, since we can't know what that other person truly is capable of becoming in the here and now - and we INEVITABLY condemn others for faults we also possess. So, simply judge not others' journeys along their own individual paths, even as you make "normal" judgments about other things you simply must judge as a result of being human."

My take away is that Heavenly Father loves the drug addict or the hippie or the ultra-conservative LDS member (or anyone else) every bit as much as He loves me - and that He will reward those who reach Him in the 11th hour every bit as much as He will me even if I reach Him in the 1st or 3rd or 7th hour. It's all about letting go of the idea that I'm special in comparison to anyone else - in recognizing that I'm just as much of an inconsequential nobody as anyone else who needs grace and forgiveness AND that I'm just as much of a glorious god in embryo as anyone who stands and speaks for the Church in General Conference.

"All are alike unto God" is the essence, and until I stop thinking I'm better than those who don't see things as I do I'm violating the spirit of Matthew 7:1-5.

We Believe the Bible, because of the Book of Mormon

I have heard people claim that our use of the Book of Mormon somehow denigrates the Bible. That is ignorant hogwash. Mormon was very clear in his statements that he edited the records in his possession and created the Book of Mormon to do two main things: 1) bring people to Christ; and 2) convince people of the truthfulness of the Bible (the record of the Jews). When I read his own words, especially in the last chapters of his own "book", I simply can't see Mormon claiming that the Book of Mormon is more important than the Bible. Rather, I see him begging people to take the Bible seriously and accept it as a testament of Christ's divine mission.

Moroni continued this supplication. In one of the most under-analyzed verses in the entire Book of Mormon, he sets the stage for his final invitation to pray by saying:

"Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts." (Moroni 10:3)

Think about it: He "exhorts" people to "remember" things that are not included in the record he is compiling - or, at least, included only tangentially by reference. He is asking people to use a desire to know of the validity of the Book of Mormon to base their "pondering" on a remembrance of the mercy of God as recorded in the Bible. Without the foundation "score" that is "settled" in the Bible, Moroni's entire invitation lacks foundation - and the spiritual condition he feels is necessary for an answer to the subsequent prayer is not fulfilled.

Those Who Became His Seed

When Jacob talks about polygamy in the Book of Mormon as a means to raise up seed to the Lord (Jacob 2:30), similar to other posters, I don’t interpret that to mean numbers at all.

I think of when Christ was trying to teach the people of his day when he said that God could raise up seed to Abraham of “these stones” — I read that to mean that he was trying to drive home the point that lineal numbers in and of themselves meant squat.

On the other hand, when Christ and various prophets in the scriptures venture to teach us about becoming God’s seed or a son or daughter of Christ, it seems that they are repeatedly pointing us to a significant qualitative change in the individual — a sacrificial abandonment of one’s own will to wholly carry out God’s will forevermore and covenants are always a part of that process.

Personally, I have come to see the Nauvoo women in particular who entered into the practice, not as being those who raised up seed to the Lord but AS BEING THOSE WHO BECAME HIS SEED in the initial spiritual crucibles many of them went through in entering into PM and in ongoing acts of wholly abandoning their cultural and personal preferences/norms to devote themselves to continuing therein as a matter of following God’s will no matter what it required.

In other words, imho, the righteous Nauvoo men and women who entered into PM were themselves the seed that were raised up unto the Lord and with that covenant, God now not only had his gospel again on the earth, He truly had a people.

Comment #77 by Laura on Why BIV Totally Would Have Slept with JS - StevenP (By Common Consent)

Sharing the Gospel Is Our Responsibility

If we were more active in actual missionary work, we would retain more of the people whom we bring to church with us and are baptized as a result.

I think too many members still see the conversion process as a linear progression:

1) missionaries find people; 2) they teach people; 3) they invite them to church; 4) they baptize them; 5) we fellowship them once they are baptized - or at least, once they are close enough to baptism to have the PEC start discussing a HT assignment.

I believe if we viewed the conversion process the way that Preach My Gospel describes it, we would be approaching it very differently. It would be:

1) WE invite and bring friends and family and acquaintances to church; 3) the missionaries teach them whenever they are ready AFTER they start attending church with us - no matter how long that takes; 4) WE baptize our friends and help them prepare for the temple.

We should be the central part of the process, but too many members still view their role as secondary and supportive of the missionaries. It should be the other way around - just like the ideal that has been preached for quite a while.

Out of the Mouths of Babes Comes Perfected Praise

A testimony written by an 8 1/2-year-old boy with Asperger's:

"I believe that God is the most powerful thing in the universe. I believe that God loves me and will never stop loving me, even if I do something wrong.

We should repent if we do something wrong. Jesus who died for our sins lets us repent. Jesus loves me as much as God does. He is my older brother.

I like that at church you don’t have to stay as long as at school. Also, I like learning about history and the gospel.

I am grateful for my family and that they do not dislike me. I’m glad that we are sealed together."

The Word of God in Modern Times

"What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice (SINGULAR) of my servants (PLURAL), it is the same." (D&C 1:38)

This verse says "it is the same" when the servants speak collectively (plurality of individuals) as a united body (singularity of message) - not when any one or two or six speak as individuals. That's worth considering.

Asking, Seeking and Knocking in Accordance with His Will

This is posting late today, because I left the house this morning to drive to Canton, MO and get settled into our new house prior to starting at my new job on Monday. Needless to say, I have been a bit distracted, but I have been focusing on my resolution for this month - praying more specifically and less generically. I will post more later in the month about my experience so far, but I just want to share one quick thought that hit me quite hard:

As I said last week, I struggled a bit in setting this resolution - since I don't view God as a vending machine that will give me whatever I want if I just give it the right coins. What struck me is that I have had experiences where I knew I was praying for the Lord's will to be done and, later, realized that what happened really was His will. In other words, I didn't realize at the time, but after "enduring to the end" I was able to see His hand in the process and realize His will had been done.

This led me to contemplate the idea that I should be praying to know God's will AS it unfolds, so that I can recognize it happening in the moment. If I can learn to accept His will no matter what, I then can ask for those things specifically that I know He desires of and for me, seek to find His will, knock on a particuar door that must open in order for His will to be accomplished, etc. If I'm not asking, seeking and knocking for my own desires alone but rather for His will (and whatever of my own will meshes with His will), I have full confidence the passage that is the heart of my resolution this month can be actualized - that I can ask and receive, seek and find, knock and have it opened to me.