Monthly Archives: December 2011

66: Spiritual Secrets of Addiction Recovery

December 28, 2011
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66: Spiritual Secrets of Addiction Recovery

As the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous discovered, something profound can happen when addicts invite God or a power higher than themselves into their lives and efforts at recovery. Through understanding addiction as a symptom of spiritual “dis-ease” and addressing recovery as an attempt to restore a healthy balance between one’s own ego and desires to run things versus the will and wisdom of God or the universe, AA and its Big Book and Twelve-Step offspring programs have saved countless lives. What are the spiritual principles at work in addiction recovery? Do addicts at their wits’ and wills’ ends discover...

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65: LDS Views on Christ’s Second Coming and the End Times

December 20, 2011
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65: LDS Views on Christ’s Second Coming and the End Times

Elder Boyd K. Packer’s October 2011 General Conference encouragement to youth to not fear that because of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ they will not have a chance to have a full life, including having children and grandchildren, is the latest in what seems to be a trend among LDS leaders to de-emphasize the kind of apocalyptic thinking that was prevalent among Mormons even just a few decades ago. Yet class discussions during recent lessons in the priesthood and Relief Society manuals on the signs of the Second Coming, what will happen upon Christ’s return, the Millennium, and...

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64: Mormons and Prayer

December 13, 2011
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64: Mormons and Prayer

Mormons pray . . . a lot!  Latter-day Saints are encouraged to have daily (twice or more) personal prayer, family prayer including children (in addition to parents praying together), prayers before meals, prayers for safety, and even other injunctions to “pray without ceasing.” Mormon meetings and classes all open and close with prayer, and Mormons offer scripted prayers when blessing the emblems of the sacrament, when baptizing, and performing certain temple ordinances, and they offer blessings and other types of prayers in language that isn’t scripted but that must include certain elements. LDS rhetoric also often prescribes certain language...

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63: Oh Say, What Is Truth?

December 7, 2011
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63: Oh Say, What Is Truth?

We Mormons have heard it countless times: “I know the Church is true?” But what does  this mean? Heck, even more basic, what does “true” mean? In this podcast, host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks, Dennis Potter, and Rhett Tenney take a deep dive into these questions. Explorations include overviews of major philosophical approaches, especially those most relevant to thinking about religious beliefs and practices, the shifts in thinking that in the past century have revolutionized thought about the nature of truth, including strong recognition of the way we all inhabit discourses that shape our views of truth...

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