Let’s perform a thought experiment. Pretend like there is no Mormon Church at all. But one day Jesus Christ returns and the Millennium beings. Christians around the world rejoice! They were right all along about Jesus being the Son of God. But after Jesus has been here for a while, word gets out; it turns out that many of the doctrines of all Christian religions weren’t true after all. For example, substance theology turned out to not be true. Instead Jesus and the Father are separate people that share a common will. Their oneness is complete, but so is their physical separateness. The Trinity is a social Trinity. It is true that there is only one God made up of three persons, but in another sense, but only a lesser sense, it might be appropriate to say there are three Gods.
Then word comes again: there isn’t just a single heaven or hell as tradition held. There are actually three kingdoms or glories that people can attain to. And against the traditional beliefs of most Christians, it turns out that all good hearted people of all religions go to the second heaven which is called the Terrestrial Kingdom. Even an ethical atheist can go to that heaven if he accepts Christ now. The Atonement of Christ saves all good people of all religions. The Terrestrial Kingdom is everything Christians have hoped and dreamed for; they live with Christ forever as angels and servants of God!
Many weep over their lost children and loved ones that chosen a life of unrepentant sin and have been thrust to hell. But Jesus announces a new doctrine: those in hell can accept Him there, repent, and change. Though it may take a while, perhaps 1000 years, all but a few in hell will be eventually redeemed by the Grace of Christ and will go to the lowest of the heavens: the Telestial Kingdom. The hell experience itself is a work of justice, as all believed, but also a work of great love and mercy. The hell experience allows people to repent, change, accept Christ, and have joy. Hell itself is Eternal, but a person’s stay there doesn’t have to be! God’s love does not stop at the bounds of hell! Continue reading…
Well, I’m back after a bit of an illness. I don’t know if this post will generate any interest, but I thought I’d share it.
A Letter to Glenn Beck
February 29, 2008
Dear Mr. Beck:
First, let me tell you that I am not a regular viewer of your program. My politics is to the left of yours, and so I naturally gravitate toward other broadcasters. You make no bones about being a conservative. I appreciate this openness. Continue reading…
When I was a kid in Southern California, it was obvious to me that there were two kinds of people in the world:
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and the rest. As I got older, the rest became more differentiated; there were Catholics and Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Baptists, Syrian Orthodox, Church of Christers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists and even some people who claimed to have no religion at all. I was puzzled at one family’s celebration of Christmas when they apparently didn’t really even belong to any particular religion that I could discern.
As I attended high school and early-morning seminary, I began to notice that there was more than one kind of Mormon in the world as well. Some Mormons had such different attitudes and beliefs from me that I sometimes felt like I had grown up in a different church. Also, some Mormons I knew made strange comments, like whites shouldn’t date those of other races because the prophets have counseled us not to, or Americans shouldn’t pay income taxes because the prophets said not to. To my horror, as one raised by a baby-boomer mom to respect Martin Luther King and John Kennedy, some even used statements of the BRETHREN to condemn the civil rights movement as communist-led and hence Satanic. Continue reading…
Published in Asides,
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Sometimes I recall nuggets of spiritual wisdom but cannot remember when or where I picked them up. One in particular has increasingly taken on new meanings for me as I’ve wrestled with some of life’s tougher questions. You might call it the “Parable of the Elephant.” This is how it goes, as best I remember, with a few adaptations of my own:
Continue reading…
I always thought the midlife crisis was just a cliché. But now I’m 41, and I’m finding myself in the midst of an all-too-real midlife phase of questioning myself, my identity, and my place in life, with accompanying feelings of anxiety, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment.
Nearly all these feelings focus on my career situation. I’m ten years into a wonderful second marriage, so that’s not affected. But I sense the crisis spilling over somewhat into my religion/faith. For this post, I thought I would do a bit of self-inventory in the spirit of “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.” Continue reading…
Explosive Church growth has had a real impact on one of the core experiences many LDS had growing up — knowing apostates. The lack of them hampers us and in many ways we need more apostates.
After all, it used to be that everyone, while growing up, would know at least one ex-apostate, someone who had left the Church and returned. Sure, the bloggernacle has some (e.g. Bookslinger), but someone on-line is a poor substitute for having someone in your ward or stake that you get to know and interact with. So we have a need for more apostates.
Continue reading…
Mormons in 1830 were in league with a slew of millennialist faiths (Shakers, Campellites, and Adventists) on the brink of actualized utopia after the resurgence of premillennialism. The Second Great Awakening was typically seen as symbolic of the “refreshing of times” as spoke by Peter and a rejection of the philosophical polemics of the religious aspects of the Age of Reason. The only thing to do was to wait for Jesus to put His capstone on the Romantic Age.
According to Bushman, early Mormon converts were imminent millennialists. Even Joseph himself was sure of its coming. The establishment of the Church of Christ and the gathering to Kirtland was seen as an event that would insulate them from the calamities that would come in a very short. In fact, many other charismatic millennial sects were doomed in this time period. Mormons were a bit different. The imminent feeling abated with the construction of the temple and Joseph’s and the Church’s feeling that a sort of second coming occurred with that seminal event and the visions that took place thereafter. This didn’t satisfy some converts such as Ezra Booth as many apostatized after the promised Second Coming didn’t take place after the construction of the temple and the failure of Jackson County. Continue reading…
One stumbling block to communication between Mormons and other types of Christians is our use of the word “church” — sometimes at least — as a synonym for “religion.” The word “church,” as used in the New Testament, meant an assembly or congregation. (Presumably the entire body of believers in Jesus in the case of the New Testament.) Modernly the word “church” has also come to mean the building that congregation meets in, as well as the specific denomination that congregation is aligned with. By comparison, the word “religion” usually refers to a set of beliefs about the nature of the universe. Even an atheist is a religion in this sense. Mormons somtimes use “church” and “religion” more or less interchangeably because of our belief in a restoration of a set of beliefs simultaneously with a restoration of authority.
As a Baptist once told me: “It’s the utmost of arrogance that Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons think they are the only true Church! As a Baptist I don’t believe we’re the only true Church!”
I’ve heard many Mormons opine that such a statement can’t be true. Do they really think there are several different sets of religious beliefs that get one to heaven? Continue reading…
Whenever I heard about a “style of our own” I thought back to Moroni’s robe and David O McKay’s vision of the City of God. When I mentioned that I got accused of just wanting clothing that let me see into the bosoms of others, and a friend quipped up that he was interested in a dress code that banned underwear.
But seriously, why aren’t we dressed like the angels, why don’t we encourage men to go unshaven, to reject “the great unisex conspiracy” that C. S. Lewis said came of the devil and resulted in the apostasy of shaving?
There are three reasons generally given:
- Our dress bears witness of what and who we are and we should not bear a false witness to the world of who we are by dressing inappropriately;
- Our dress provides us with a brand image that is valuable and that communicates;
- Our dress communicates inwards — people are affected in how they act by how they dress.
That may be, but all of those assume that we are forced to abide by the styles and conversation of the world.
Why not have a style of our own that abides the styles and conversation of the celestial world instead?
Published in Culture,
Discrimination,
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Many of you may be aware of an ongoing case in Utah involving Peter and Mary Danzig. I’m not going to summarize here, as you can read about the details on various sites, but I’ll post links to the back-stories below. This post is just about opening a conversation. The core issues I feel are under debate are about how much involvement the LDS church officially has in the opposition of same sex marriage. The Danzigs resigned their membership because they felt the church was pressuring them to act against their own consciences. The church says (in a very unusual press response to a personal case) that it does not encourage one position or the other, but rather to be active in politics to support your values. Continue reading…
There seem to be a number of disaffected Mormons lurking the Bloggernacle these days.
I am not one of them.
Here is why.
Continue reading…
In Little Rock, Ark on a relatively calm September day in 1957 the all-white Central High School tries to blocked nine African American students from entering the school. Governor Orval Faubus tries in vain to stop the students from attending the school even though 3 years earlier Brown v. Board of Education deemed segregation to be illegal in public schools. It took the actions of The President of the United States of America, Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the help of federal troops and the National Guard to persuade Governor Faubus to allow these nine students to enter the school. The Governor was persuaded by his own, or others, prejudice to take action against these nine students, the court system and the United States Government itself.
Growing up as an African American I have faced discrimination, and prejudice but nothing that hampered me from accomplishing the things I have done and wanted to do. I could not imagine the travesties these and others went through to just to live and breath and just be who God made them.
Fast forward 50 or so years after The Little Rock Nine and discrimination is still disallowing children into schools. No. It’s not about the color of skin this time. It’s about the Flavor of Religion. Namely Mormonism. Continue reading…
The Earth we perceive with our physical eyes is billions of years in age. Life began to inhabit this sphere eons ago and evolved to fill the world through a process of natural selection. Several millions of years ago the ancestors of humankind diverged from our nearest surviving cousins and our basic physical form was achieved perhaps 200,000 years ago.
Unlike some of their religious contemporaries, early Mormons did not reject or fear science; they embraced it. Their cosmology (view of the universe) expanded the Biblical scope of creation to include souls on worlds without number. Their cosmogony (explanation for the universe’s origin) embraced contemporary science which held that matter could not be created ex nihilo. (The contemporary scientific “law of conservation of mass” contradicted the Genesis account but was perfectly attuned to the creation described in the Book of Abraham.)
Let me propose that Mormons today needn’t be locked into a world-view that embraces science up through 1844, and rejects subsequent advances in our understanding of geology, astronomy and biology. The understanding of the universe can be elastic, because a veil runs through it.
Continue reading…
It is easy to realize that you are right and everyone else is wrong. A number of people have asked just what they should do about that once they realize the gross errors the rest of the world has fallen into and the way the world is sinning against them. The following is a guide.
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Today’s post is by Terry Foraker. Ever since its initial publication in 1830, the Book of Mormon has been the subject of countless studies. This post is the first of a series to introduce those who may be familiar with these studies to some of the more prominent of these writings as a starting point. While the series is not meant to be comprehensive, and though it is admittedly saturated with my own bias, hopefully it will be a helpful introduction to the rich literature examining the Book of Mormon from a variety of angles.Shortly after the Church was organized in 1830, a 19-year-old named Orson Pratt was introduced to the restored gospel through his older brother, Parley P. Pratt. Within a few years he would become one of the original members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and a tireless missionary, writer, theologian, and philosopher. Through his sermons and especially his writings he helped inaugurate a tradition of rigorous inquiry within the church. He is still regarded as one of the greatest minds the church has known. Continue reading…
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