• Politico.com – cool interactive maps, segmentation of different interests and types of races
• interesting image breaks down what to looks for tonight
• FiveThirtyEight – very technical analysis, lots of charts and maps
• Pollster.com – really cool interactive map which even shows which news networks are “calling it” for either candidate on a state-by-state basis

For the most part, the websites for the major networks are not that great because they integrate too much advertising (both for their clients and for their own content) and become pretty cluttered.  Pollster and Politico look like the best and most accessible tools for the night.  I will probably be bouncing between MSNBC and Comedy Central on TV, and complimenting it with Pollster on the laptop.

Get the popcorn ready!  (I know, I’m a geek.)

Residents of California (Prop 8), Arizona (Prop 102), and Florida (Prop 2) will be voting on propositions which would amend their state constitutions to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, that is not news. You have probably been overwhelmed with rhetoric from all angles. My goal here is to summarize what I have observed as the large-scale effects of this issue.

The Last Battleground

It wasn’t that far back when the official LDS Church position on homosexuality was that it is a moral and behavioral issue, chosen by individuals who succumb to deviant temptations. As such, the majority of faithful Mormons and Evangelical Christians were opposed to even civil unions for gay couples. The “umbrella issue” was that if any form of acceptance or recognition is granted to homosexuals it would be interpreted by society, and most importantly – our children— as condoning that behavior.

Today, it seems that footholds have slipped on the muddy moral/civil rights battlefield and Religion is making one last stand. Fortunately, the LDS Church has conceded that homosexuality, in many cases, is not a choice and goes beyond mere social influence and personal will. Furthermore, Mormons and Christians, in the current campaigns, seem to have conceded civil unions almost completely, even using them as a counter-argument to suggestions that the propositions violate equal rights. These are positive changes. And yet, in spite of these concessions, the “umbrella issue” remains the same –homosexuality, while understandable, even pitiable, is not acceptable, nor equal. Equality is the last battleground in the war for gay rights.

Special Treatment

The umbrella issue is often presented as being about giving special rights and special treatment to gay couples. This is troublesome, because really what gays are trying to achieve is only an equal level of treatment. Sometimes it might appear that gay rights get an inordinate amount of public attention, but there are two reasons for that. One reason is that gay rights are currently not recognized in consensus, so they have to “talk louder” than normal volume just to be heard. The other reason is that traditional marriage is so common and taken for granted that we just don’t notice how much attention and treatment it gets. There is far more time given to the subject of traditional marriage in media, entertainment, education, and public life than all other kinds of relationships combined. It is so common that it has blended seamlessly into the canvas and anything of a different color jumps right out.

The Real Cause

Arguments like these are only deflections from the more uncomfortable reality. It is a remnant of the belief that homosexuality is a behavior that can be disciplined out of society. The goal of these propositions is not to protect society from special treatment for non-traditional lifestyles, it is to protect society from equal treatment of them. The reasoning is that a lifestyle afforded equal treatment is essentially considered morally equal by society. In a world where homosexuals are considered moral human beings with equal potential to contribute to the moral health of the society as anyone else, there is a fear that children will more commonly consider “choosing” the gay lifestyle, thus producing more and more gay people.

The reality is that such a world would produce no more or less gay people than in a discriminating society. It would only produce more happy and healthy people among them. It would save some lives, too. That same blanket of shame and disapproval that exists in our current society about homosexuality, that which the current movements are trying to preserve for the good of the children, is the weight which suffocates thousands of human beings – children of God – and drives them to suicide. If being gay was a choice that could be intimidated out of a person by restricting privileges, how did we get to this point now with so many gay people fighting for their right to be gay? Being gay has been anything but comfortable or convenient up until now and yet it is not keeping people from being gay. Of course, that is because they can’t choose it. If they could, the beatings – physical and emotional – they have received for so long would have accomplished their goal.

Sanctifying Our Own Paths

Aside from sympathizing with the plight of homosexuals, there is another problem with the social engineering approach. It is the idea that what is sacred to me is defined by what someone else is allowed to make sacred to them. Most Mormons have known people who drink alcohol, smoke, have tattoos, use profanity, do not observe the Sabbath, do not pray, think the temple is weird, think garments are weird, etc. etc. Yet, somehow we are able to continue to sanctify the human body, the temple, our garments, the Sabbath, and other aspects of our lives without taking away the right for those other people to live the way they do.

Sacred is the life we live, not the life we keep others from living. The sanctity of your family is nothing more than the sanctity of *your family*. If society celebrates the straight couple across the street it does not make your marriage more sanctified. If society denigrates the gay couple next door it does not make your marriage more sanctified. You can only sanctify your family by the way you live and love within your own home.

A Failed Experiment

Social engineering doesn’t work in either direction. It has not worked to keep people from being gay. Whether they are in-and-miserable or out-and-happy, they are still gay. It has not worked to elevate traditional marriage. More than half of one-man/one-woman marriages end in divorce. Less people are getting married in general. Even in the Gold Standard of LDS temple marriages, LDS Church leaders receive a constant flow of letters about the epidemic of pornography, spousal and child abuse, and unrighteous dominion.

Quite surprising too is willingness for Mormons to use the law to impose social engineering, considering our heritage of being on the victim end of that stick. Haun’s Mill. Far West. Nauvoo. The Reed Smoot Hearings. Have we fully considered the implications of creating a precedent for the constitution being used to impose an unequal morality on its citizens? Are we so sure that there is nothing about our lifestyle that might be at odds with a large enough segment of society that could seek to impose laws against us next?

The Sun Will Rise Again On November 5th

Regardless of the results of the ballots, the sun will rise again the next day. The congregations which employed the rhetoric of war and valiance will take attendance again the next Sunday. The home teachers of the gay members will have to stare at the phone number on the assignment sheet with a phone in hand. Family members will have to sit at the Thanksgiving dinner table across from their relatives who stood on the other side. Gay people will still be gay and traditional families will be no more sanctified than the day before.

We will need to forgive. We will need to love. Each day more than the last. I hope we can. I hope I can.

Just in case some readers don’t know, the Community of Christ is not one of the polygamist branches of Mormonism. They formed about 10 years after the LDS left Nauvoo, out of the saints who were not convinced that either Brigham Young or Sidney Rigdon should be the successor to Joseph Smith. They rejected polygamy especially, but also most of the theological evolution Joseph Smith went through during the Nauvoo period (i.e. ordinances for the dead, God as an exalted man, etc.).

Thus, from their beginning they were sort of founded on a very different profile than LDS. One of questioning authority and viewing a prophet as something more nuanced than the LDS view, something which LDS are only now beginning to experience in a mainstream way through things like Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling and the church-sponsored Joseph Smith Papers Project.

Without further ado, the list:

1. Pragmatic Priesthood
   Members are only given the priesthood when they are called to a position which requires it.  Teenagers are rarely ordained.  The priesthood is not considered a rite of passage for spiritual maturation, but a tool that is used when necessary to perform the Lord’s work.
2. A Democratic Canon
   We all agree that all human beings, even prophets, have the potential to be fallible.  The CoC leaders embrace that admission to the point that even new revelation from God is put to the membership at their bi-annual world conference to vote and either approve or reject as new scripture.  I don’t know if there is a corollary, but they also have a much more active canon than their LDS cousins.  The Doctrine and Covenants of the CoC only shares the first 120 sections or so with LDS, and yet they currently have 163 sections, with the latest one coming in 2007.  In the last 100 years, the LDS church has only added one document to the official canon.
3. Formally Trained Leadership
   In order to be an Appointee (an equivalent to a General Authority), a bachelor’s degree is required.  Once someone becomes an Appointee, they are admitted into an Advanced Leadership Study program which results in the equivalent of seminary graduate degree. Many callings actually have an application process where the needs of the position are measured against the talents and gifts of the candidate to provide a good match.  That process is combined with spiritual inspiration for the ultimate selection, but generally callings are qualified on the basis of a person having the appropriate skills for the job.
4. An Open Diversity of Opinion
   Just as with LDS, the Community of Christ membership hosts a wide diversity of opinions and beliefs.  There are CoC members who believe the Book of Mormon is a literal, historical translation of ancient scripture and there are those who see it as complete fiction which may or may not be useful as a source of poetic inspiration.  The primary difference is that the Community of Christ, at the leadership/authority levels, does not impose an orthodoxy upon its members.  They can freely and openly discuss these varied opinions in their public discourse and its just totally normal.  This cultural aspect actually harkens back to early church history when it was fairly common to see a public debate between Orson Pratt and Brigham Young (at the time was the Prophet) heatedly arguing some pretty core doctrines and walking away as friends and fellow saints in good standing.
5. Cyclical Leadership
   The modern leadership system in the Community of Christ is not a lifetime calling.  Even their prophets retire before death.  Current president Stephen Veazey is quite a young man, and I would guess based only on physical appearance that he may be younger than any LDS church president since Brigham Young, and younger than any current LDS apostle.  Some CoC apostles serve for only a couple years (their world conference, in which major priesthood business is conducted, is every two years).  The position of Pastor (like an LDS bishop) is only a one year call which has to be re-confirmed each year (I think most pastors get “renewed” for a while, though.)

Honorable mention: women in priesthood and leadership (but I’ve already written about this before), focus on peace and justice, and fearless approach to facing reality.

Some speakers overtly state something like, “I was assigned to speak on this talk entitled _______ by Elder ________ in the April General Conference.” Others go about speaking on the subject and then in the process make multiple references to a single recent General Conference talk.

The last talk I gave was in 2007 and I was given a topic, but not a General Conference talk. In all the speaking assignments I have had, most have come with a topic (although a couple times I was given a blank canvas), but never anything as specific as a talk given by someone else. In this ward it is completely consistent now, though.

Is this happening where you live? What are the pros and cons of this kind of practice?

1. Service Missions
   I’m talking about Peace Corps style service work, full time. I honestly believe that if 75% of our full time missionaries were doing strictly community service, the church would see higher teaching and conversion rates… and perhaps even retention rates, too. The physical aspect of “raising the bar” would not have to be so severe as the less physically capable missionaries could do the teaching and the stronger missionaries could do the service work. Think about the impact that could have on the world.
2. Women in Priesthood
   This one might be controversial, and its definitely the least likely to happen anytime soon, but I think it would be cool. The talent pool for leadership and administered spirituality is more shallow than we realize since we can only draw from the men in the church, and we constantly hear how men are spiritually weak compared to women. I’ve seen women operate within priesthood in other churches and its very impressive.
3. Consolidated Sunday School – Relief Society – Priesthood
   For about a year, my stake had too many members for the amount of chapels available so they had to fit five wards in one building. In order to make that work, the block of meetings was reduced from 3 hours to a little over 2 hours. In this scenario, Sacrament meeting was still the same but Sunday School and the Relief Society/Priesthood meetings were each reduced to 30 minutes. The short block was fantastic, although with young children the length of Sacrament meeting is still a real issue. However, keeping separate Sunday School and RS/PH meetings ended up limiting the effectiveness of teachers in either meeting. I’d like to see a shorter block, with Sacrament meeting reduced to maybe 45-50 minutes, and then a consolidated Sunday School/RS/PH, with men and women together. The idea of men and women in separate meetings is a theory that doesn’t really bear out anymore since both are giving the same correlated lesson anyway.
4. More Musical Performance
   Without question, my favorite LDS Sacrament meetings have been the ones dominated by musical performances. A few years ago I visited a relative’s ward for Christmas and the Sacrament meeting had NO talks at all. After the Sacrament was administered, the remainder of the time was given to several musical numbers and it was my favorite church experience in a long time. I’d love to see at least 50% of Sacrament meeting time given to musical performance (aside from the usual congregational hymns), although I’d like to see a wider range of musical styles allowed (as opposed to mostly MoTab-style choir numbers and Janice Kapp Perry solos).
5. Less Administrative Meetings
   There are probably not many active LDS folks who need an elaboration here. In recent years there have been General Conference talks, letters to bishops, and programs developed to try to reduce the amount of meetings taking time away from families, but it seems to make little difference. We still have tons of meetings and many of them are way too long.

1. We will either have a black man, or a woman, in the White House.
2. Conservative Christians and Mormons will now have a precedent set for supporting a woman with a young family as being more appropriate for a very high-ranking, important, and demanding job than a man.
3. The dynamic personalities of Obama and Palin will attract a lot of otherwise uninterested folks who will then get some exposure to the important issues facing our country.
4. Regardless of which candidate wins, and as long as they are telling the truth, most of us will see tax savings, less dependence on foreign oil, and some assistance towards making health care more affordable.
5. All of the candidates for the office of President can pronounce the word “nuclear”. (Let’s hope for whole tickets possessing this remarkable ability in 2012!)

1. Mindfulness Exercises
   Bhuddism calls it being mindful, Eckhart Tolle calls it being present or “in the now”.  I’m more familiar with, and practice myself, Tolle’s suggested exercises for trying to get into this state.  Basically, you are trying to stop all the thinking noise about the baggage of the past and anxiety about the future and just become fully present in the current moment.  He suggests simply to take some deep breaths and really focus your attention on the air entering your lungs, all the little sensations that come with that, and the air being exhaled.  As you “get lost” in what your body is doing in the simple involuntary act of breathing, you can then start to expand your focus.  Noticing other sensations you never pay attention to.  Your whole body is constantly moving.  From personal experience, it really has the effect of calming you and bringing your attention to the only time in which you can really take any action… now.  You can’t change the past and the future cannot be affected until it becomes… you guessed it the present.
2. Soaking up the Sun
   On the TV show 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock spent a month living on a Navajo reservation and one very cool practice they shared with him was to get up before dawn and “race” the rising sun. When the sun peaked, they would stop and engage in a ritual of holding out their open hands to face the sun, and then pull them back in to their faces and then inhale whatever it was they soaked up. The idea is that the sun represents the source of light for our world, and thus the source of life (sound familiar?) and they wanted to begin their day by drawing life into their bodies. Way cool.
3. Yoga
   Its exercise, discipline, and spirituality all combined. There was an episode of Speaking of Faith which describes how Yoga can even be used as a way to perform “body prayer”. Using the movements and poses in a concentrated grace that focuses your positive intentions towards a specific goal.  It sounded very similar to Mormon fasting to me.
4. Prostrate Prayer
   In an interview with a representative of a Muslim organization in the United States, an explanation (or interpretation) was given for the practice of bowing prostrate during the five daily prayers of Muslims. The main reason is to demonstrate humility and subjection to God, but an additional insight given was that when you do this, and specifically when you put your face to the ground, it has the effect of mostly blocking out all the light around you. It shuts out all the visual distractions and enables you to enter a mode of direct one-on-one communication with God. That concept seemed beautiful to me.
5. Gardening
   This one might not seem that weird to Mormons. Really, the spiritual aspect is in the way that you are communing with nature and taking up God’s work of tending to and nurturing the growth of living things, and facilitating the cycle of life. Its a great thing to be able to disconnect from the inanimate framework of modern convenience and spend some time in places where you can so clearly see how much life is all around you, all the time.

Sinead O’Conner identifies herself as a Recovering Catholic, but there is still a “Catholic” in that. Its a deep rooted aspect of her. The faith of her parents informs her life, even if to avoid it.

Jerry Seinfeld might be one of the first names that come to mind when I think of a Jew. He is Jewish, but he has never indicated that he’s particularly religious. He’s certainly a far cry from his Hasidic brethren.

OK, it might be different for Jews, since that is technically an ethnicity as well as a religion. But try driving up the I-15 along the Wasatch front sometime and stop at the Walmart. If being Mormon in Mormon country is not ethnic, its as close as you get. Mormons trade anatomical traits (no, I’m not going to make a list) for things like knee-shorts, khaki, cap-sleeves, 3-eye Doc Marten’s, and denim dresses. Maybe we trade phrases like “oy vey” and “mashuganuh”, for “oh my heck”, “fetch”, and “Gol!”. But you can usually spot another Mormon instantly. In Arizona during Summer, just look for the ones with multiple layers on.

Some of the cultural things I mentioned are hallmarks of active Mormons, but how can you grow up in that world and not have any residual “mormanity” left in you? Michael Quinn described himself as a “DNA Mormon”. Is that possible? Can you be so Mormon that you are still a Mormon even if you don’t go to church, or if they kick you out? Is being Mormon in this sense an American Mountain West thing? Do Mormons in Prague or Rio De Janeiro still feel Mormon when they leave?

What does “being Mormon” mean to you?

For starters, how do you know if you are 99 or a 1?

The Ninety-Nine

In most organized religions, the larger group will be the most faithful, loyal, and active-in-practice. These are the people who lead a productive and often religious life, although not necessarily a personalized spiritual life. The majority of faithful LDS (and of all organized religions) may live their whole lives without really straying too far from the 99 and find great value and happiness. Most people within the 99, whether they have ever strayed or not, view the journey of the one as being dangerous and best to be avoided as a rule.

The One

To be a 1 is most simply to become separated (physically, emotionally, OR spiritually) from the flock enough for a reunion to be a non-trivial effort. Sometimes weakness, immaturity, or rebellion might actually be a reason for straying, but it’s certainly not always the case. Even the word straying is slightly misleading, as sometimes the separation from the flock is not so clearly a choice. Often while the 1 is astray, they feel like the 99 are, well.. sheep. The 99 might be willing to accept that comparison given certain biblical parables, but another aspect of the perspective of the 1 is that the shepherd is not Jesus, as we often think, but only church leaders.

Of course, that is actually true for most Christian churches. It is a common belief that Jesus has entrusted (or called) a number of human beings with the responsibility to “feed His sheep”. When it comes to LDS, although we do have a lay ministry, which means that technically I could be called to be the bishop of my ward (or shepherd of my flock) next week… we are still more like a mega-flock which is made of smaller flocks. The mega-flock is shepherded by General Authorities, and the local shepherds are mostly just extensions of the shepherding philosophies of those above them.

For a shepherd, a successful rescue of the 1 is mostly limited to a complete return to the flock. Reconciliation to the ideas they struggled with is directly connoted with repentance, which also assumes that the separation from the flock is always either a result of poor judgment or else a lack of proper commitment (i.e. the truth has always been there and no one has to be surprised.) Some shepherds prefer to perpetuate that idea, as it helps to dissuade the 99 from wandering too far and hopefully avoiding the thorny paths. Warnings about wandering are constantly given.

“First, in the Church, we don’t criticize; we don’t discipline members for what they think. But if they teach things that are going to lead people astray and to unhappiness, then we sound the alert. We don’t discipline them for their attitudes or their tendencies. We warn people if they go on that path: there are snares there, so stay away from them. It’s just that simple.” – Boyd K. Packer, from his PBS Helen Whitney interview

The Journey Can Be a Part of Growth

Yet, some 1′s find that the journey astray becomes an integral part of their spiritual lives. This idea can sometimes be unfathomable to some of the 99. After all, wickedness never was happiness, and the condition of separation from the flock in and of itself is often directly associated with some degree of wickedness. Of course, separation is usually not happiness, but its not always related to wickedness. There are pitfalls, yes, but a major reason for the severity of those pitfalls is that there is very little support for the 1, unless/until they return to the 99. LDS leaders receive thousands of letters from 1′s and their families which illustrate vividly the pain that is out there, and perhaps that is why there seems to be little acknowledgment of any positive value in the journey itself.

“We encourage people to get all the education they can. We’re not afraid of it. [...] But if you get hung up and involved and intellectually lose your way — and some do leave — they’re questioning everything. But their questions don’t have a productive insight. The mind is the source of inspiration, but if you get wandering too far the inspiration will stop. And that’s a bad place to be in life — to be without guidance and help, to be without a conscience, in other words.” – Boyd K. Packer, from his PBS Helen Whitney interview

To be “without a conscience” is not a fair characterization, though. There are many 1′s who experience this separation as a result of following their conscience. However, to be “without guidance and help” is all too often the case, but… are the shepherds without any responsibility?

Should the Shepherd Stay or Should He Go?

It is never simple, though. If the shepherd leaves the 99, what happens to them? I think the focus on the 99 leads many 1′s to feel abandoned or rejected, and sometimes even to judge the shepherds as being too corporate in their treatment of the flock. I think this statement from Elder Packer in a 1993 talk to the correlation committee demonstrates the reasoning.

“Those who are hurting think they are not understood. They are looking for a champion, an advocate, someone with office and influence from whom they can receive comfort. They ask us to speak about their troubles in general conference, to put something in the curriculum, or to provide a special program to support them in their problems or with their activism.

When members are hurting, it is so easy to convince ourselves that we are justified, even duty bound, to use the influence of our appointment or our calling to somehow represent them. We then become their advocates — sympathize with their complaints against the Church, and perhaps even soften the commandments to comfort them. Unwittingly we may turn about and face the wrong way.
[...]
If we are not very careful, we will think we are giving comfort to those few who are justified and actually we will be giving license to the many who are not.“

The gist of that statement is that the church is essentially made for the 99. In ironic consolation, it does at least acknowledge that the 1 is sometimes justified, but what will the shepherd do for them? The oft-overlooked intention comes later in that talk:

“The comfort they need is better, for the most part, administered individually.”

Here he places the task of going after the 1 at the feet of local shepherds. It makes sense that they know their flock more intimately, and would be better qualified to help. Why then are there so many 1′s who still feel like there is no shepherd looking for them? The shepherds call out for them to come home, but not many go out to meet them where they are. What if the declaration that those who stray are without guidance and help has become self-fulfilling prophecy?

-Revelation Ch. 20 (vs. 12-15)

Love is a burning thing and it makes a fiery ring. Bound by wild desire, I fell into a ring of fire.

-Johnny Cash

In the LDS church, members are written into the book of life with their baptism and confirmation. For some, the love affair with the gospel can truly become a fiery passion. That passion produces its greatest defenders, but sometimes the fire consumes its lover. So the stage is set for the most intense crime of passion, the greatest act of violence… the blotting out of a name from the book of life.

Whether it is voluntary, through writing a letter of resignation, or involuntary, through excommunication, the removal of a name from membership is violence.

The voluntary resignation commits violence against the authority of the church, with the pen slashing and stabbing at the institution in the effort to eliminate its ability to exercise dominion and judgment. It challenges the veracity of the book of life itself. It comes from the place where the book has no power

The involuntary excommunication is the violence of corporal punishment. It is the parent who believes the only remaining path to teaching is to strike. The hope exists that the subject will make the correction in response to the intensity of the pain, and thus it becomes seen as an act of love. It is the great hammer of judgment and rejection that is meant to crush the pride out of them. The final and terrible weapon. It comes from the place where the book has complete power, because the veracity of the book of life is the very blade that cuts.

When a person has given up the desire to participate in the church community, technically they could go on living with at worst the inconvenience of having to explain that they aren’t interested each time they move, or when a new bishop or ward mission leader is called. They could pro-actively request to be marked as a “do not contact”, although that never completely stops the most zealous of missionaries. This path is not insufferable. So it makes me curious to know some of the reasons why someone removes their name from the records of the church. What made that necessary? Did it accomplish what you hoped?

When a church member has “qualified” for excommunication, and I am talking mostly about those who are moral people but whose philosophical positions are in opposition to the church, disfellowship basically accomplishes the most necessary functions to protect the church. The person is not able to participate in any public worship practices which would indicate endorsement or condoning of their positions, like holding callings, praying in meetings, or exercising priesthood. The only thing that excommunication does beyond that is the blotting out of their name from the book of life. It is an “eternity-level” punishment with no “temporal-level” impact above and beyond disfellowship. So why is such a measure necessary? Does this escalation produce more consistently desired results over disfellowship?

In a way, it almost seems like these acts of violence are like retaliatory interplay between rival gangs, as illustrated by this clip of Sean Connery explaining the escalating violence of “the Chicago way” from The Untouchables.

I have personally had my moments where I felt like participating at all was just no longer the path for me, and as I’ve tried to navigate the actions and causes which I feel inspired to take I have contemplated the possibility of church discipline. However, I’m just not sure I will ever see a need to resign my membership, and although I don’t really fear it, I do hope that I am never excommunicated. Its more about the gesture, than whether or not the book of life is efficacious. I don’t see the good I would accomplish in my own act of ultimate rejection, and I don’t want to look at (in the eyes of my local leaders) the church which means so much to my family and friends as it sets me aflame.

Could we live without this kind of violence? What would be the negative effect if tolerance, long-suffering, and real forgiveness were to trump whatever is the motivation to blot out our names?

Recently I heard Robert Kirby say, “Humans are the only species than can actually think themselves stupider.” Oh brother, you nailed me.

A friend of mine recently shared the following analogy:

Some people are perfectly content to sit down in front of the TV, turn it on, change the channels, and turn it off and the end of the day and not know how the TV really works. The TV works that so that is all that matters. Then there is a small minority of people that are driven to take the TV apart and figure out how it works and see what it looks like inside. We are absolutely driven to do this, we can’t stand now knowing how the TV works, the TV will be in pieces for weeks, maybe months, as we work through all the pieces. The gospel is like the TV, some people, the large majority of people are handed the gospel, it works for them, and they don’t have to take it apart to be happy. Then a certain number of people, just because of the way their brain works, they have to take the gospel apart, to look at it from all angles, in order to be happy.

I think its clear where I fall in that story. But This story is not about over-analyzing or thinking too much or deconstructing TVs. It is about the balance of complimentary personalities.

My wife is on the other side. She does not need to take the TV apart. I’m actually not much of a complainer, really, I’m not. Yet, occasionally I will get to talking about something and I’ll reveal a little about how I am perceiving things in a critical way. In some of these cases my wife has heard me and has disagreed with me. She is perfectly capable of acknowledging and even criticizing flaws or issues, so its not that she’s being apologetic or ignorant. She will just tell me I’m making a bigger deal out of it than it really is. When this has happened, I am always somewhat surprised at how I end up truly defeated. She is usually right in these cases (even though I’m right most of the rest of the time ).

This is the incredible beauty of relationships, and especially spanning masculinity and femininity. Chinese culture describes this beauty with the symbol of the Yin Yang. Two incomplete and oblong shapes that come together to make the symbol of perfection: a circle. In the LDS church we hear a lot about how women are more spiritual than men, yet ironically we suggest that spiritually inferior men should lead the home. Heck, not just the home, the whole church. Women are only given authority over other women, in which cases you still end up with only one part of the Yin Yang.

Just think of what kind of trouble a room full of men, without the temperance of a feminine perspective, could rile up. If I were without the influence of my wife, I can only imagine the damage I might do. In the LDS church the affairs must be guided by the priesthood, and of course women do not hold the priesthood. Perhaps we don’t really appreciate what we are missing out on. Now, perhaps, we can.

I was present for a powerful talk by Susan Skoor, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the Community of Christ. This was my first encounter both with a woman who held the restored priesthood and one who was involved in church leadership at its highest level. I listened out of curiosity. Sort of a “What does that look like?” kind of thing. I walked away moved beyond description, and then other things just clicked. It changed the way I look at my wife, and the way I will see other women as well. It is really an experience in the value of diversity, and not just the expendable kind of value we find in a good day or a random act of kindness, but an essential value that you wonder how you survived without.

Since this is a Sunstone recording (2008 SLC Symposium), I can’t publish the entire talk, but it was great and I would recommend checking it out once they have it available on the website. (It was part of the perennially fantastic “Pillars of My Faith” session.) I selected a short highlight, with permission, that I hope will illustrate what I’m talking about. This clip is of Susan talking about the experience of being called as an Apostle. I should note that in her entire talk she spoke without any notes at all. Completely freestyle.

After listening, perhaps we could discuss the merits of having the balance of women in leadership, completely separate from the hurdle of doctrine or policy that exists currently. What are your feelings about the concept itself?

UPDATE: You can now purchase the full recording here.

Obviously the topic is loaded with a lot of personal emotion. Hopefully we can keep this civil and respectful and get to the real issues worthy of discussion. I think the issue is much bigger than this one case, and it might be better to approach it from a high-level view. In my view, here are the pertinent questions:

• Does the LDS church influence its members to oppose same sex marriage?
• Is the influence explicit from top leaders, explicit-but-rogue from local leaders, or is it a cultural perceived thing from members? (Any arguments that it is explicitly taught would best be supported with actual quotes.)
• If it is a cultural thing, is there a reasonable basis for a member to perceive that voting to oppose same sex marriage is considered equal to choosing good over evil, in an LDS perspective?
• Perhaps tangential, but do you feel there is more or less latitude for a member to support civil unions as opposed to SSM, since civil unions do not impinge upon the concept of the sanctity of marriage?

As promised, here are the back-story links:

• Initial story from the SL Tribune
• A response to the story from FAIR
• The Danzigs’ personal story
• Official press release from the LDS Church
• Commentary on the issue at Messenger and Advocate

Original quote from a sermon: “When that earthquake hit when I was on my mission, there were many deaths, but I felt calm because I knew that God protects his faithful missionaries.”

The false notion, or Unsaid Sermon: “My son was killed on his mission. I wonder if he was unfaithful.“

Dr. Bohn goes on to give many such examples and ultimately gets to how we might be able to protect ourselves from this kind of interpretive doctrine. The talk, and the response by Toby Pingree, explores a serious problem in the practical everyday lives of Latter-Day Saints. I encourage you to listen to the podcast, but as a highlight I’m including Dr. Bohn’s list of 9 steps that will help neutralize the perpetuation of these false notions in your own life.

1. Understand how we develop false cultural doctrines. (IOW: Identify Unsaid Sermons as such.)
2. Replace these false notions with the correct gospel doctrine which brings hope and happiness, not despair and misery. Correcting our thinking helps us overcome cultural guilt much like correcting our behavior helps us overcome gospel guilt in the repentance process.
3. Be careful not to make generalizations about the specific experiences of others. (Side note: we do this with scriptures all the time, in fact we are taught this is the proper thing to do with them, its called “likening the scriptures unto ourselves”.) Because something happens a certain way to one church member does not mean that all other members must experience life exactly the same way.
4. Realize that sometimes people say things they genuinely feel but may not be gospel doctrine. Often people people justify their own circumstances and say things that make them feel good based upon what happened to them.
5. Remind ourselves that what we hear is meant to edify us. It is not necessarily a representative sample of what most saints are experiencing in their lives each day.
6. Stop trying to live our life exactly like others. Instead, we should develop our own lifestyle which is consistent with the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. While gospel principles are the same for all of us, how we apply those principles in our lives sometimes varies.
7. View our life from an eternal perspective of justice, which is not limited to our mortal existence.
8. Assume responsibility for our feelings and commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ instead of reacting to other members’ well-meaning, false notions and cultural doctrines.
9. Focus upon changing ourselves so that we reflect the gospel in our words and deeds, rather than becoming cynical about the shortcomings of others. In reality, we can only change ourselves, not others. The best we could do is influence others.
10. Bonus (added by Toby Pingree): Don’t take offense where none is intended.

In the Q&A portion he goes into a great point that if you are waiting for any person, group, or organization to change before you will be happy, you will never be happy. Definitely something to ponder.

• Member Missionaries
  This is probably the most clear parallel. Most people who know nothing about either group can identify with an image of either the guys in suits on bikes, or the families knocking doors on Saturday mornings with a handful of Watchtower magazines. Some people think they are from the same church. Being a faithful and active Jehovah’s Witness is similar to being Mormon, in that there is an implied call to missionary work. You are called to step out of your fears of alienating yourself socially and proselyte to your own community and friends.
• Defining Praxis
  If Mormons are defined to the unfamiliar by the missionaries, we are most likely defined to the familiar by the commitment to “clean living” as punctuated by abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. Likewise, the peculiarity of Jehovah’s Witnesses is expressed to the familiar in their rejection of holidays and customs and refusing blood transfusions. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that holidays essentially consist of giving praise or glory to someone or something other than God, which is unacceptable. Also, most holidays originate from rituals and religions very different from the people who observe them today. For JW’s, if its not approved in the Bible its a no go. Blood transfusions are equated to consuming blood, which is prohibited in the Bible.
• Millennialism
  For the average mainstream Mormon, the millennium is not really a major focus on their mind, but it is still considered an event or stage that is extremely important and most likely coming soon. I’ve heard many conversations speculating on when the Second Coming might occur. With the Jehovah’s Witness friends I had, it was an obsession. Their life was hard in high school. Constantly mocked by the cool crowd, chronically outcast from even the outcasts. The Second Coming represented a turning of the tables, at least to my friends. They would tell me about dreams they would have wherein they would be riding horses alongside the horsemen of the apocalypse slashing down the wicked, including the jerks from school. They really did glory in scriptures describing how the wicked would be burned as stubble during Armageddon.
• Community Isolation
  On the ugly side, we have a term for our own religious, separatist elitism. “Utah Mormon”. To me this term represents behavior like parents not allowing their kids to play with non-Mormons, or the kids choosing to be exclusive on their own. This problem exists for Jehovah’s Witnesses, too. I initially met my friends at school because of our shared interest in punk rock, illustration, and skateboarding. I wanted to come over to their house to play on their skate ramp, and they told me their mom would not permit it unless I began the equivalent of “taking the discussions” with them.
• Other churches as abominations
  Recent LDS rhetoric has been much more ecumenical, but our Mormon past has been clearly marked by a belief that our church is God’s only official and authorized church on the Earth. The party line for Jehovah’s Witnesses as I knew them was pretty much equivalent to the harshest McKonkie-esque expressions. All other churches are collectively the Church of the Devil. This attitude greatly contributes to the whole reveling in the destruction of the wicked and the separatism mentioned earlier.
• Jehovah is Jesus
  In JW theology, Jehovah is the God of the Old Testament. The name emphasis is common between us, as well as Jews, but JW’s also believe in a more trinitarian view that Jehovah became Jesus as He left His heavenly throne to become mortal and redeem us. Of course, in Mormon theology, we technically believe the same thing. Jehovah was the God of the OT and left that position to come to Earth as Jesus. We only differ in that we believe there is another god (Heavenly Father or Elohim) ranking higher and kind of behind the scenes. Incidentally, JW prayers are said directly addressing Jehovah, not seeing a need for Jesus to mediate prayers.
  Edit: My memory was totally off on this one. See the comments below for corrections.
• The influence of Satan
  The war in heaven mentioned in the book of Revelation that Mormons interpret to have occurred before the mortal stage, JW’s believe was a prophecy of 1914. They believe that World War 1 was the signal that Satan had been cast down to Earth. While we differ wildly in that view, we do share in common a heavy sense of the influence of Satan all around us, and often use similar terminology in church meetings with imagery of war and battle with the forces of evil.
• Calling and Election Made Sure
  While the Mormon view of this is that some people (Moses, Elijah, City of Enoch, Joseph Smith) can be guaranteed exaltation before their death, and there is a controversial rumor of a special temple ceremony that seals this on the lucky recipient as well, its not really a core principle doctrine for us. For Jehovah’s Witnesses, their view of the afterlife is different and similar at the same time. Like looking at Mormon doctrine with a kaleidoscope. There is an equivalent of a Celestial kingdom. 144,000 persons who were worthy of exaltation to live with Jehovah, and the rest of humanity who is good will live in a paradise on Earth (millennium, anyone?). Interestingly, the 144,000 are believed to mostly have been born before 1935 (when the WatchTower Society supposedly declared the gates of heaven to be shut). This is a stark contrast to the popular Mormon belief that the best have been saved for last.

I’m sure there are other distinctions and parallels, but its been a while and this is already a fairly long article so I’ll stop there. You may find it interesting to note that in a recent beliefnet article, Jehovah’s Witnesses were identified as the fastest-growing religion in North America with over 1 million members and a growth rate of 2.25%. We were #4 with 5.7 million US members and a growth rate of 1.56%. Here’s the official site of the Jehovah’s Witnesses for those curious among you.

To begin, I think I need to define the vocabulary. I’ve chosen to speak in terms of “being right”. What I mean by that is seeking to know the empirical truth because it is the Truth, and not because it can bring about some positive benefit for the knower. I feel that as Mormons, because of the implications of the restoration concept, we are very susceptible to looking at Truth as having implicit¹ value because it is true and truth comes from God, and we can become content to not inquire about the explicit² value. In lieu of actually understanding the explicit value of the Truth we presume to hold, we may substitute the satisfaction that we are among the fewer holders of this knowledge. The surrogate value is a sort of pride, but it exists in such a subtle form that we mistake it for drawing nearer to God. It makes you feel good, but the ultimate deficiency is that it does not make others around you feel good.

Even the good feeling you get from this satisfaction of being right, or the assurance that you are in the right place, doesn’t seem to match the expectation I get from the scriptural promises of The Good News. In this sense, the mere circumstance of thinking I have the Truth is deficient in its ability to make even myself truly happy. Being right does not even come close to touching what Peter spoke of as “joy unspeakable and full of glory”, or Ammon being “overpowered with joy”. The Book of Mormon really drives home the importance of this unspeakable joy in the oft-quoted verse from 2 Nephi, “…men are, that they might have joy.”

One of the upsides to having the assurance of Truth challenged for me, is that it exposes the lack of joy. Just like when you are empty of food, you can sometimes go for quite a while without feeling the pangs of hunger, but when your attention is awakened to your emptiness, you feel it full force. Having your own lack of joy revealed to you is painful. As is said in the Psalm, “They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy.” The sowing we do with these tears is to really ask ourselves why we lack joy. I feel like I have answered that question for myself. I share it now for you to take what you can from it.

I believe I have to let go of both the saccharine³ satisfaction of having the Truth and the distracting, self-centered pursuit of being right. Now, if I were my prior self, heavily focused on being right, I might take a statement like that to imply an abandonment of moral commitment. Its not that at all. In fact, I’m trying to suggest a new commitment to what I now see as a higher moral goal. This is the goal of having joy. After all, that is our purpose of being, right?

Again, my former self would look at that and see the abandonment of God (after all, Truth comes from God) in exchange for self-gratification. I think that view grossly misunderstands the nature of joy and the means by which it is generated. Real joy ( or love, or peace), as is proclaimed in scripture to be the result of goodness, is not anything like gratification. It is in itself paradox-producing, because in order to have joy for yourself you must lose your own self from your purpose and effectively work to bring joy to others. You only become a receiver if you become a producer.

So more than just *having* joy, I want to be a source of joy. I think it is the great jewel in the crown of Mormonism that we believe in our potential to be something divine. This idea that we can be a producer of light, not just a consumer. That is the standard that measures the value of any belief or position for me. Does this idea create peace, joy, progression in myself or others?

How then do I live in a framework of faith when I have abandoned the pursuit of acquiring Truth? Simply put, faith no longer becomes a proposition of knowing things that are unseen. Instead, faith is now an offering of hope given to a principle that proves itself joyful. I hope the principle is true, and I am willing to live with it like it is true as long as it is joyful, but there is no value its veracity. There is no satisfaction in having that piece of the Truth, and there is no disappointment in having given my faith to a falsehood. The fruit of joy that results is the explicit value.

Of course, living like this isn’t easy. I have a really hard time shedding the old habits. It’s instinctive to seek for justice, from a desire for things to be right, by actually taking joy away from the offender and then realizing with disappointment that justice does not create joy. I think there are some principles which may be eternal and essential and therefore are over-glorified. I think of a particularly popular analogy of the Debtor that places justice as one of God’s great attributes. The debt must be paid with suffering by someone, because justice must be satisfied. To me this suggests that God’s forgiveness is not powerful enough to overcome the demand of justice. It says to me that forgiveness doesn’t actually accomplish anything because the debt remains the same and is merely transferred to someone else to pay. I prefer to think that justice only exists to make forgiveness beautiful.

I am in need of amnesty, and the amnesty of God’s grace is incredible to me, but in those moments of closest contemplation of who I want to believe Jesus is, I find myself much less willing to cause so much pain to one who would love me. The parable of the debtor supposes that these two eternal opposites, justice and mercy, are in complete equality. It is Mormon doctrine that everything has its opposite, but certainly not that all the opposites are equal. The sting of death is swallowed up in resurrection. The plan of Jehovah triumphed over the plan of Lucifer by two to one. Good overcomes evil. Joy overpowers. Why then can mercy not overcome, overpower, or swallow up justice without having to doll out incomprehensible suffering on the one being who deserves it least?

I need forgiveness to be better than justice. I need more joy and less Truth. I want to stop being satisfied, and start being overpowered.

1. American Heritage Dictionary, definition 3: Contained in the nature of something though not readily apparent.
2. American Heritage Dictionary, definition 1b: Fully and clearly expressed; leaving nothing implied.
3. American Heritage Dictionary, definition 2: Having a cloyingly sweet attitude, tone, or character.

Something changed.

In my past I spent some effort as an apologist. I was not a typical apologist, but a calming voice. I’ve never really enjoyed the sparring or “Bible-bashing” as it were. I just felt like the critics’ arguments did not even stand up against my understanding of the gospel, in the sense that if they saw it how I see it the argument would become moot. I really did seek for understanding more than winning, but ultimately I still thought I was right. Eventually, the arguing became tiresome and I gave it up. Ecumenicism is hard work. In the time I spent in apologetics, there were a few of the classic critical arguments that I was faced with, but many of the real zingers remained hidden from me. I think that speaks a lot to what we can expect the bulk of members to have been exposed to. I was in the fray and looking for info and I somehow did not hear about Fawn Brodie (some of her discoveries, but never her name or book), polyandry, baseball baptisms, Joseph’s early magical involvement, etc.

My entrance into New Mormon History was similar to my earlier entrance into apologetics. The first time, I had a job in front a computer with a lot of downtime so I wanted to find places online where I could have interesting church-related conversations with people. In the more recent case, I got an iPod and heard about podcasts so the natural place to start was with podcasts related to Mormonism. A few years ago there were not many choices. I first found a couple blatantly anti-Mormon podcasts which were basically rants on tape. I moved on and landed on John Dehlin’s Mormon Stories.

For those not familiar, or who came to Mormon Stories later, or with short memories, some of the early topics covered on the podcasts included: missionary abuses (soccer and beach baptisms in Latin America), John’s own follow-up experiences of ecclesiastical abuse, racial issues in modern history (Greg Prince), Masonic influences on Joseph Smith and the temple rituals, polygamy/polyandry and their early secretive nature, Grant Palmer’s alternative explanations for the Book of Mormon’s origin, and more. I know, all of that sounds pretty heavy and maybe even like the agenda of an anti-Mormon convention. For years, from an apologetic point of view, I always treated these subjects with a partially closed mind. It was easy to associate these issues with the bitterness and vitriol that usually accompanied the messengers. Somehow John managed to come at these topics so neutrally that the classic defense of dismissal, discreditation, and denial was left in the chamber. An interesting thing happened as I listened to John’s podcasts. Perhaps for the first time, I began to… listen.

The sheer mass of issues and questions and concerns became so much that I could not sweep them under the rug anymore. We become complacent in our testimonies, don’t we? We take wonderful experiences and use them to give out free passes to anything that is uncomfortable. Pretty much every LDS woman I know who has vocalized their feelings about polygamy is confused and even sickened by the thought of it, yet… they feel comfortable just not dealing with it.

The recurring trouble that I continue to face is actually one of Mormonism’s greatest strengths. We believe that you can know for yourself by asking God about the truth or goodness of any thing. I love the idea that God cares about us enough to help us make sense of all this. Of course, the great variance of definition of what the witness of the Holy Spirit feels like can certainly be confusing, but an amalgamation of the purveying concept is that good things are confirmed by a positive gut feeling and/or peaceful and clear thoughts. This is the instrument we have been given by which we can determine the sham from the sacred. Yet, when we run into these troublesome questions, we don’t use the instrument. Perhaps we are afraid of what it might tell us. My wife has told me that whatever it is that I’ve learned that could change my testimony this much, she is afraid to hear, and thus does not even want to hear. I know I was afraid, and for good reason. The answers have complicated my life. Ultimately I think that’s a good thing, but I will get into that in the next post.

What happens when you use the instrument, and it says something you weren’t expecting? What do you do when you take counsel to seek the comfort of the Spirit on a troubling concern and it does not comfort you? Sadly, I don’t feel that we are trained to really trust the Spirit or ourselves. It seems as though we are trained to trust our leaders more than ourselves, and perhaps even more than the Holy Spirit. In the gospel picture that I see painted in the modern LDS church, it is the place of priesthood authority to tell us what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is false. In this picture the Holy Spirit is there to help you know if you should give a pass-along card to that guy in line at McDonalds, or if you should turn left on 7th street today to narrowly avoid a fatal traffic accident, or if you should go on that skiing trip to Colorado with your friends that end up buying booze and drinking all weekend.

When you face the issues, you not only have to fight the pain of disillusionment, but you also have to fight through the guilt that you must be somehow spiritually inferior if you can’t get right with priesthood discrimination or polygamy or Masonic temple connections or Book of Mormon historicity. After all, the Spirit witnesses the truth of all things to the honest in heart.

I don’t know why, or what is different about me, but this process has not hurt as much for me as it does for a lot of folks. I came into the church from a world of poverty economically, spiritually, and emotionally. The gospel liberated me and gave me confidence in my own worth. I went from a very shy and fearful nobody to a fairly vocal and confident person. Maybe it is that confidence and determination to not be a victim that has taken me through the passage mostly uninjured. The biggest challenge I face personally in this journey is resisting the instinct to anger. Anger and bitterness will not bring about peace for myself or the changes that need to happen for others’ sake.

It can be difficult, having been spiritually raised in the Mormon faith to revere justice, to deal with the apparent injustice of what is really implied when we say our leaders are fallible. I feel like that is a backup defense when apologetics fail, and the implications are rarely taken seriously. So much of what we believe is built upon foundations of other things also being true. Its easy to oversimplify the situation by presenting it as one bad brick taken from a pile of good bricks. In reality it is more like the party game Jenga, where you have a tower of blocks and you carefully remove blocks and hope the structure stands. Eventually, you start to see how certain blocks can’t be removed without failure of the whole because many others stand only on its strength.

You can easily find yourself in the very place from whence the church claims it will rescue you. Like a wave on the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That feeling is extremely uncomfortable when you feel that your spiritual health, both now and eternally, completely hangs on being right. The Great Apostasy concept declares that it is an unacceptable relationship with God to be wrong about doctrine and practice, and the Restoration of the God’s organization and priesthood represents fixing that problem. So why does it still feel broken?

This may seem bleak, because it is. Its important to understand the thought process, and the seriousness of the challenge to faith. However, this is not the end of the story. The obvious question is, what next? Once you get here, it is usually not acceptable to simply shelve your concerns and pretend to be the Happy Mormon again. I hope you’ll stay tuned for part two, where I will approach the “what next” as best I can.

Update: you can find part two here.

The passage in the manual is taken from the King Follett Discourse, perhaps Joseph’s most controversial sermon.

“God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another. …

For the sake of openness and fairness, I’m providing the most apologetic source for discussion of President Hinckley’s interview, the topical page from FAIR. Regardless of how you slice it, doesn’t it seem weird to say we don’t teach it and then so clearly include it in a correlated church manual now?

What are your thoughts?

Lately in General Conference, I get the impression that the canonized First Vision is the official standard for the nature of God. If that account is accurate, it tells a little about what God looks like, or at least what form He took when talking to Joseph Smith, but it doesn’t say much about the nature, or character, of God. But this was definitely not a silent issue for Joseph Smith.

The opening paragraph of James Fowler’s Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian : Adult Development and Christian Faith begins:

The shorter Westminster Catechism begins with this question: “What is the chief end of man?” Its answer, learned by twenty generations of the theological heirs of John Calvin, states: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”

To the best of my knowledge, this concept of God is not strictly Calvinist, but is actually quite common across many denominations and into other faiths. It is a picture of God as both a sort of cosmic zoologist, and a bottomless void of need for man’s worship. This image of God as the Ultimate Codependent defines the purpose of human existence to be for God’s amusement and self-gratification.

I don’t buy it. My resistance to that image is not just out of my own admittedly peculiar sensibilities, but it was also completely dissolved by Joseph Smith. It is Joseph’s revolutionary concept of God that I personally feel was his greatest contribution to humanity.

In the King Follett Discourse, Joseph Smith re-painted God as a being much more consistent with the character of charity and unconditional love that Jesus demonstrated in His life. A Christian has to be able to reconcile the character of Jesus Christ with the God they worship from the Old Testament, since Jesus himself said that He could only do what He had seen the Father do. This reconciliation becomes even more necessary if you believe that Jesus is the Father incarnate. Why suffer so much, why teach us so much about loving each other, if our whole purpose is just to worship and glorify God?

We could split hairs about how Joseph explains that as we are saved and exalted we glorify God. Something he says later demonstrates that there is more to God’s motive than simply to be glorified. I interpret it that God’s glorification is a bi-product of His actions in pursuit of His primary motive. The primary motive being our glorification, not His. In Joseph’s words:

The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. God Himself found Himself in the midst of spirits and glory. Because He was greater He saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest, who were less in intelligence, could have a privilege to advance like Himself and be exalted with Him, so that they might have one glory upon another in all that knowledge, power, and glory. So He took in hand to save the world of spirits.

Its odd, considering the other heretical views I hold, that I take such comfort in that statement. Here is a God that my logical mind can understand and love. I am no longer a pet or a hobby or worse. God’s interest in man makes much more sense and at the same time provides an ethical standard by which to we can judge other teachings attributed to Him. When someone claims that a principle is from God, does it contribute to our advancement? Perhaps this sounds humanistic to some, but in my view I more completely love a God whose entire work is His love for me, rather than a god whose work is making me love him.

For behold, this is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)