“You may say I’m a dreamer; but I’m not the only one.” John Lennon.
Acts 2:17: “. . . your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
“You may say I’m a dreamer; but I’m not the only one.” John Lennon.
Acts 2:17: “. . . your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
“Whitewashing” is an accusatory term often used against the church to describe efforts to gloss over sticky points in doctrine or history. So, does the church engage in whitewashing? Continue reading…
Are teens who practice polygamy devout or brainwashed? Are teen terrorists devout or brainwashed? When is a teen old enough to be held accountable for crimes, but not old enough to make his or her own life decisions? Continue reading…
The Fallout Story is a rule of etiquette (that I made up) that I hold sacred for discussing breakups. The rule is: the dumpee owns the fallout story. The dumper is prohibited from making any disparaging remarks (henceforth and forever) about the dumpee, as a matter of courtesy. As a friend put it: “She keeps the ring; she tells the story.” This is where we get the phrase: “It’s not you; it’s me.” We all know that’s not true (c’mon, if it wasn’t them, why are you dumping them?), but it is good etiquette. The Fallout Story rule applies for all kinds of breakups: romantic, employment, loaning money or credit, and I would like to suggest, leaving the church (it’s usually called an “exit story” in this last case, but the rule applies). Continue reading…
In my last post I wrote about how we are all forced to take a thought and translate it into words and that this is a sloppy and imperfect process. To make matters worse, the person that has to take those words and decode them back into a thought will fail to do so correctly in many cases because they’ll get stuck on the words used, either because they don’t realize words have many meanings or because they have incentive to misunderstand.
In this post, I want to apply what we’ve discussed to a real life situation: Bruce R. McConkie’s talk on worshipping Jesus.
Case Study 2: Do Mormons Worship Jesus?
The word-offense in question comes from Bruce R. McConkie’s now famous (infamous?) talk entitled “Our Relationship with the Lord” where McConkie states that Mormons do not worship Jesus. Continue reading…
Are Mormons really more persecuted than other faiths or do Mormons just perceive that because the criticism is aimed at us? Are there as many anti-[insert religion here] as there are anti-Mormons? I decided to take a very cursory, unscientific, yet interesting look at this question. 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…
I’m not a member of the LDS church, although I was once. I’ve had many members ask me over the years, why we left. When I try to explain, I tend to get cut off mid sentence, with protests about how the sources or people I am quoting are Anti-Mormon (insert ominous music here).