Revelation Can Only Exist Where There is Ignorance

I Believe in Revelation - SilverRain (The Rains Came Down)

The Incorrect Traditions of Our Own Faithful Fathers

What makes Mormons immune from the incorrect traditions of their fathers? Every single early saint was a convert, and converts almost universally struggle to let go fully of the incorrect traditions of their upbringing. So do members who are "born in the covenant" (since all of us carry our own individual perceptions, many of which are not Truth), so why would the early Church be immune from it?

Personally, I believe one of the most important aspects of the first 100-150 years (at least) of the Church's existence was its evolution away from its roots in apostate Protestantism - the pruning of the incorrect traditions (the bitter fruit mentioned explicitly in Jacob's allegory of the olive tree) of their and our fathers. That growth might be mostly complete by now - and it might not. The attendant changes don't bother me a bit, because I can't envision any other pattern that I like - and certainly not a scriptural one.

That's the biggest reason I am unfazed by ever evolving policies and even doctrinal understandings - that I see such change as inevitable, desirable and even necessary as we strive to see through our glasses, a little less darkly than occurred in our collective and individual pasts.

A Trembling Disciple: A Powerful Message

Elder Wirthlin's Last Messages of Love - Andrew Ainsworth (Mormon Matters)

Avoiding Condescension

I have found that very well-educated, very articulate people often speak with a tone of condescension or with a vocabulary that annoys those who hear them.

True story: I used to sell instructional technology to educators. My manager told me one day to lower the cognitive level of what I said to people in that job - that educators tend to feel threatened by those who use words they don’t understand. Likewise, I have found that many average Joe/Jane members are turned off NOT because someone is a scholar, but rather because that person can’t or doesn’t speak their language - because the tone sounds condescending or the statements can’t be understood. There is BIG difference, and it's critical that those who are trying to share concepts that are new to people in the Church recognize that difference.

An Amazing Lesson on Race: Oh, That We Had Understood and Followed

I was preparing to write a post on fasting for my New Year's Resolution series, but I read a post entitled "Mormon Teachings on Race Relations, 1935" at Keepapitchinin (Ardis Parshall's amazing blog) that I want to use as the foundation for a follow-up to my Repudiating Racism Once and For All post from two weeks ago. I am going to excerpt freely from Ardis' post, with my own commentary following each quote:

"Below is the full text of a lesson taught in the Church’s adult Sunday School classes on August 4, 1935. I do not know the author; the lesson was distributed anonymously with the quarterly “Gospel Messages” leaflet issued by the Deseret Sunday School Union Board, as were all other Sunday School lessons in that era. I haven’t changed a single word, not even the occasional outdated vocabulary."

It is important to emphasize that the following quotes have not been altered at all from when they were published in 1935.

"The problem of getting along with people of different racial origin has been a difficult one of solution from the dawn of history and persists even to the present time. There seems to be some sort of a natural antagonism which exists between peoples of different ancestry. This tendency is stronger when there is a marked physical feature of some sort which distinguishes these races from each other. Thus, the difference in skin color between the white and the black races has always been a barrier between the peoples of these differing colors. The same thing is true in regard to those peoples which we know as the yellow races and the whites and blacks."

This beginning paragraph lays a foundation of "natural antagonism" as the source of racial tension. That is fascinating, since it implies that racism is a consequence of the "natural man" - the enemy of God.

"There has always been a tendency for those of one race to consider themselves superior to people of a different race. This feeling seems as natural as it is for members of most families to think themselves in some manner superior, or individuals to hold similar opinions regarding themselves. Usually, if examined from a purely objective point of view, these claims to superiority are found to be without foundation."

This is an amazing statement for the time - that any feelings of superiority based on race are incorrect and, again, "natural man" tendencies.

"Yet, without the multitude having been aware of the fact, their religion has been used in an attempt to determine a policy in this, as in every other important consideration in life."

Remember, this was published in a General Sunday School lesson - distributed throughout the Church. Wow!

"It is evident that the Jews considered themselves superior to the black people with whom they came in contact, for in their religious writings they tell us how God placed a mark upon the descendants of Cain and his children. And in another place the tradition has the story of the cursing of Ham, the son of Noah. As the result of these cursings, the descendants of these men became dark skinned and the children of Ham were designated as servants to the descendants of other sons of Noah . . . Here we see an indication of an antagonism between the dark skinned and lighter skinned peoples, the latter placing a curse upon the former."

The lesson says that people put the curse on other people and claimed it was of God, NOT that God did so.

"Most of the early Christians were Jews and they brought with them into the new religious group the race prejudices of their own people. Yet Paul explained to them how they had misunderstood their own religion in this regard and he succeeded in leaving the new and growing church the far greater idea of the brotherhood of man in Christ."

This says the expansion of the Gospel by Paul to the Gentiles is a model of how the racial prejudice of his time was overcome - that the prejudice needed to be rooted out by a pure understanding of the Gospel ("good news") of Jesus Christ.

“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:26)

"No finer declaration of the brotherhood of man can be found than this. Here Paul says in substance: Jesus has given us a new vision of the universal Fatherhood of God. By faith in Jesus you are all the children of the God of Abraham. More, you are the actual descendants of Abraham and all the promises which God has made to Abraham he makes equally to you. God cares nothing for race, He cares nothing for condition of servitude, He cares nothing for sex. All God is interested in is that you follow the teaching of his son, Jesus."

This statement could not have been worded any more forcefully and clearly.

"Joseph Smith is credited with having said that when a man joins the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that he becomes, by so doing, of the “blood of Israel.” It appears that we are justified in concluding from what we have seen that John the Baptist and Paul and Joseph Smith all saw the great truth that actual physical descent, in other words race, is of no importance in the sight of God."

"The brotherhood of man, as springing from the common Fatherhood of God, is the very essence of Christianity. The teaching of Jesus has no place for race hatred, racial distrust, any feeling of racial superiority. The brotherhood of man transcends all lines of color, of race, of family."

Again, no clearer words are possible.

"Christianity holds within it the solution to all our race problems. That solution rests in the mere application of the spirit of the religion of Jesus to all situations which rise."

AMEN, and amen.

Thank you, Ardis, for finding and publishing this lesson. Please, everyone, go to her blog and read the entire lesson.

Oh, that we collectively had understood and followed its simple message.

Elusive Mormon Orthodoxy

With a foundation of continuing revelation, I believe there is relatively little "immutable orthodoxy" when it comes to Mormon doctrine.

Perhaps there is Smithodoxy (Joseph and Joseph Fielding), Prattodoxy (particularly Parley P.), Youngodoxy, Talmageodoxy, McConkiodoxy (makes me laugh just pronouncing it as I type), Nibleyodoxy, Hinckleyodoxy, etc. - but there is almost no orthodoxy on which all "good Mormons" will agree. Things change too much to pin down almost anything as orthodoxy, unless it is defined specifically as what is taught generally at a particular time or by a particular person.

I LOVE THAT; it flummoxes others; it really, really torques off some.

Giving Part of Myself

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a part of thyself."

My sister likes to tell a story about a little boy who walked many miles to give his beloved teacher a beautiful shell. The teacher told him, "I love you for making the effort, but I can't believe you walked all this way to deliver a shell to me." The little boy told her simply, "The long walk is part of the gift."

davidson - Anyone with bread-making expertise?? (Mormon Momma)

Reverence: The Kids Aren't the Issue

I wouldn’t trade having children in our meetings for anything, and, as bluntly as I can put this, they aren’t the problem. The adults are, and I say this from the perspective of quite a few years sitting in front of the chapel looking out over the congregation. Here are a few of my observations:

1) Reverence is not quietude. It is an internal feeling of awe, respect, worship - of "revering" something.

2) Children who see their parents or other adults talking in Sacrament Meeting will learn to talk in Sacrament Meeting. Children who see adults not being respectful and worshipful will learn also to model that behavior. This is particularly disheartening during the actual administration of the sacrament, when awe, respect and reverential worship are the heart of the very purpose for the ordinance.

3) Reverence does include a degree of quietude in situations where quietude is appropriate - like the administration of the sacrament. Children who are not taught to be quiet outside of Sacrament Meeting, as a component of reverence, will not be able to be quiet during Sacrament Meeting. I know my wife and have been blessed with children who do not have difficult issues that make being quiet particularly difficult, but we also took time each week when they were pre-nursery age, at home, to sit with them on our laps for extended periods of time (while reading or talking quietly at first and then simply “thinking”) - specifically to help train them to be able to sit silently during the administration of the sacrament and quietly throughout the service. They aren’t perfect little angels, but they don’t distract from the spirit - even when my wife was alone with all six of them.

4) Parents (or mothers alone) who struggle to control the chaos of a disruptive child and others they simply can’t leave alone need others (adults and/or teenagers) who are willing to ask privately if they can help - either by sitting with the family throughout SM or moving to them when the parent(s) needs to leave with a child. The screaming child isn’t the issue; the mother or father not feeling like s/he can leave is - and that is a problem of lack of service within the congregation. The parent who blithely sits and ignores a screaming child also is much more of a problem than the child, and a parent who chastises in again during a time requiring reverence also is a problem.

5) Many husbands and fathers need to take a few slaps upside the head and stop acting like dealing with the kids in Sacrament Meeting is their wives’ job. There is a heavy dose of repentance necessary for many.

There are more examples I could give, but I believe firmly that the issue is not kids in sacrament meeting but rather adults abrogating their responsibilities for those kids. Jesus said, "Suffer the children to come unto me" - and allowing them to worship with us is one way to help fulfill this request, imo. God bless the parent (usually the mother) who sacrifices a bit of her own peace and sanity in an effort to bring her children to Christ and help them learn to worship Him. NOTHING in this post should be used to make that good brother or sister feel guilty when children still are learning reverence and simply being children.

In our ward now, our last Bishop focused a lot of attention on humbly and gently teaching the adults to take responsibility for reverence in the chapel, especially during the administration of the sacrament. The difference in our ward over the past few years has been nothing short of amazing - even with plenty of children in our midst.

The Lord Will Break Me

Priesthood, Missionaries, and Bayonets - Margaret Blair Young (By Common Consent)

Mountain Meadows Massacre: Every-Day Lessons for Our Time

When the movie “September Dawn” was released a while ago, then when newspaper articles were written about the 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, I read a few of them - and the comments about them. I quickly stopped doing so, specifically because of what I saw on both sides - the vitriol that came from those who use any excuse to spew bile about the Church, but also the reactions of the Mormons who tried to defend the Church.

What I saw disturbed me deeply.

Each side was lashing out at a perceived threat - one side swinging verbal hay-makers at the Church, and the other side swinging just as energetically back at them. There were no dead bodies - no bullets or other tangible weapons, but these people were reacting essentially in the exact same way that the local members had with the Mountain Meadows Massacre so long ago. There really wasn’t a life-threatening attack on the Church occurring, and there really wasn’t a need for a “counterattack” on the perceived attackers.

I loathe the tactics of the bitter, anti-Mormon crowd, but I am saddened much more over the members who were lashing out in defensiveness over an attack that really wasn’t a serious threat to themselves. When all is said and done, if we don’t learn from history we are destined to repeat it - even if there are no tangible weapons involved in our own "battles".

Matthew 5:44-46 is direct, and it applies to so many situations in our lives:

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?