I posted this at my blog, but wanted to see reactions here at MM.  Over the past few weeks, I have driven by a billboard titled “Remember 9/11″ with an image of the collapsed World Trade Center.  In smaller print on the right, it said “Stand up and be heard.  No mosque at ground zero.”  You can see the sign on a video at this website.

A few weeks ago on KSL, Carole Mikita interviewed a Muslim leader here in Utah.  She asked him what he thought of this idea to build a mosque near Ground Zero.  He said he thought it was a terrible idea.  He said they can build a mosque in many places, and thought it was quite insensitive for these Muslims to incite a controversy there.

As a Mormon, we have had plenty of problems with protests about churches or temples being built.  The Boston Temple was prohibited from building a steeple for quite some time because the steeple was considered too tall.  (It was eventually constructed, but the church was forced to reduce the size of the steeple.)  Many groups have protested the buildings of new temples for a variety of reasons.  My sister lives in Colorado, and 2 Mormon churches sit side by side because the owner of a subdivision refused to allow any churches to be zoned in a particularly large subdivision.  (As I recall, the owner was either a tobacco or alcohol owner that wanted to make sure no Mormon churches were built in the subdivision–so he excluded all churches.  How is this legal?)

I appreciate this Muslim leader’s pragmatism.  I too wonder why Muslims in New York aren’t more sensitive to the issue.  On the other hand, I don’t understand how any Mormon can support a ban on religious construction, given that we have had so many problems with constructing churches or temples.  As a matter of principle, I can’t see how it is constitutional to support a ban on a Muslim mosque anywhere.  What are your thoughts?

I once had the neighbor from hell. I use the expression with theological intent.

Smart and relentlessly treacherous, he was somewhere on the spectrum from malignant narcissist to full-fledged sociopath, and I had no desire to observe closely enough to find out where. I do not know what horror had befallen him — if anything more significant than a stray cosmic ray hitting the genome at the wrong time — but he seemed to be without sincere empathy toward anyone. Worse, he seemed to have grown to love cruelty as the only thing giving meaning to his life. He was Jack Nicholson as the Joker: “So many people to hurt, so little time!” If he was not planning or executing some plot against one person, it was because he was busy with a more hated target.

Our family’s first hostile contact with this guy arose innocently enough. His daughter had a cat. When his daughter was living with her mother — he was, of course, in the middle of a messy divorce — he left it outside in the cold and wet and the hot and dry. My wife, not wanting the cat to suffer, began putting out a bowl of water on our porch in the heat, and a little food and a towel for the cat to shelter under in the cold. Polite suggestions to him that leaving the cat outside wasn’t a good idea led to several conflicted stories about why it was all right, but a clear acknowledgement that the cat was, indeed, his responsibility.

And then, after this had gone on for several months, a middle-aged oriental woman, not speaking English very well, appeared at our door one evening. She asked us if the cat then lurking behind our front bushes belonged to our neighbor, and my wife innocently and honestly answered yes.

And with that simple act, we moved unexpectedly from peace to a full-scale personal war in which our spiritual and emotional health and livelihood was directly threatened.

The woman had purchased the property from a military doctor and his wife when they transferred out of state to a new assignment. She had invested  her savings to make the buy, and then rented the property to our neighbor through an agency. Home prices in our county had been exploding, and she hoped to make a good profit from her investment. Instead, she found a nightmare.

In the year he’d been there, he’d managed to find some loophole each month to avoid paying a cent of rent. County codes here are built more to protect immigrant tenants from slumlords; they really were not designed with what an immoral tenant could do to an immigrant landlord in mind. Heating and cooling systems or plumbing would continually “break” — there were sometimes different heating companies called to the home for repairs on the same day, especially when the first arrivals found the systems to be working properly. He would call for repairs to be made, then deny access to the repairmen. On one occasion, I saw him demand reseeding of grass in his front yard for drainage, and then slip out to the yard that weekend and destroy the new turf.  On another, I saw him inspect a damaged fence, and then, rather than report it, hide the fact from the landlady until another month’s rent was due.

Now, burning through her savings for mortgage payments and repairs  with no end in sight, being harassed by the man by telephone and intimidated by him to the point she was afraid to come to the home without an escort, she saw a possible way to break the lease: it had a no-pet provision. And so she asked about the cat. We answered honestly — and then the neighbor came after us.

My wife had been supporting us by teaching individual piano students from our home for years, and had been the primary breadwinner since my heart attack. He filed complaints that what we were doing instead was a group studio in violation of zoning, and demanded we be shut down. He stole trash during the night and attempted to frame me for illegal dumping of medical waste. He attempted to intimidate parents from bringing children for lessons by rushing to the edge of our property and, without any explanation, taking pictures of the children, and then the license plates of their cars like they were drug dealers. Every night there was drilling into the walls between our homes  or hammering on them, and we never knew if or how he was trying to sabotage our systems. We spent thousands in legal fees just to protect ourselves.

As I began to ask myself who was this guy, and why was he doing this, I found in public legal records that he had a long record of defiance to authority, with a couple of dozen violations, including jail time, for various disputes with neighbors seemingly everywhere he’d lived since adulthood. Simultaneously with his dispute with us and the landlady, he was on trial for phone harassment of his wife, and in a domestic violence dispute with a girlfriend he’d been with less than a month. He sought out potential violations by other witnesses in the neighborhood (such as expired license plates), and threatened to expose them if they testified. He went after the Home Owners Association President, an African-American, by making racial slurs in the presence of her daughter. He went after the county enforcement officials and tried to get their bosses to fire them; he went after the lawyers for conflicts of interest; he tried to get judges removed from his trials. You get the point.

The pressure on us grew more dispiriting, or perhaps I should say dark-spiriting, as months went by with no resolution. And we found ourselves increasingly turning to prayer for deliverance, as we felt imprisoned in our own home, never knowing what we would have to defend against tomorrow. And, as necessary, we were indeed delivered. In a couple of cases, traps laid for us were thwarted by unlikely coincidences. But the darkness, though warded off, was always present.

And then, in one of those deep prayer experiences, I heard in my mind my enemy’s soul cry out in an agony to God to be delivered from the darkness that enveloped him. I do not believe his physical form recognized what his own spirit was doing; he seemed to love the darkness and would cling to his cellphone (from which he harassed victims) like it was a totem of power he could not be without for even a moment. But I heard the Holy Spirit answer: “He is forbidden to remain as he is.” And the word “forbidden” carried all of the undeniable weight of a requirement to choose salvation or doom.

A few days later, entirely unbidden, while I was still trying to understand in my own mind the previous experience,  I heard his soul cry out again that he would be lost. And equally unbidden, my own prayers suddenly changed.

Instead of praying that God would get this guy off my family’s back, I found myself praying that God would get that darkness off this guy’s back. Because I saw that there was truly a predator, and my neighbor was the unsuspecting prey. And I was weeping for him, and praying as hard and as intensely as I have ever prayed for anything in my life.

It was the first time in my life that I truly loved my enemy.  Not decided that someone wasn’t really my enemy (six months after he finally left the neighborhood, he came back to see if sabotage he’d previously prepared for the air conditioning unit had, in fact,  caused the system to fail, leaving new renters he’d never even met sweltering in a summer heat wave for two days). Not just trying to treat my enemy with justice. Not simply restraining my self-defense. For once, I knew what it meant to love an enemy, even knowing he would remain my enemy, and that the existing situation was forbidden to continue.

But why was it only “for once”? What makes it so hard for me — for us — to stay in the loving attitude that the fate of the soul of my enemy (let alone the soul of a stranger or a friend) is of eternal significance even if I must oppose that enemy with all my might?

That seems to be something to spend some time contemplating as we remember this weekend a day of great violence.

And as a second thought, what of all the doctrine taught by Paul? Did he have the authority to declare Church doctrine?

Peter’s death is not recorded in the New Testament and any information is not terribly reliable.  He is thought to have died in Rome and is buried at the Vatican.  According to the Catholic Church, the Pope that follows Peter as the leader is Linus, The Bishop of Rome, who may or may not be the person mentioned 2 Timothy 4:21. However, no credible evidence exists that the Office of Bishop of Rome has anything to do with the Holy Apostleship.  It is therefore, unclear, who, if anyone succeed Peters as the Head of the Church with the Keys of the Priesthood.

The Apostle Paul was certainly among the most prolific New Testament writers with 13 of the epistles attributed to him included in the canon of the New Testament. We also know that he was a “second generation” Apostle, having had a vision of the Savior, but not having ever been in His earthly presence.

So Christ’s teachings Paul received were basically transmitted second hand from the Apostles who knew Christ personally.

In Paul’s writings, he declared doctrine on these important issues:

a.      Men and Women must be redeemed from the fall.

b.      Justification by Faith, no longer following the Law of Moses

c.       Salvation by Grace, through the Atonement of Christ

d.      We become new creatures in Christ, our nature changed.

e.      Gifts of the Spirit

f.        Jesus Christ transcends all things

And many others.

The question is this:

Was Paul’s teaching established doctrine taught by Christ and/or authorized by the Chief Apostle after Christ’s death, or was he proclaiming new doctrine, never before taught?  And if he was doing the latter, did he possess the authority to do so?

The Christian world, including the LDS, rely very, very heavily of the writings of Paul for much of its doctrinal justification, so it is important to know whether Paul was acting under authority or just preaching his own ideas.

What do you think?

I’d like to discuss both Biblical and Book of Mormon archaeology.  Most people believe the Bible is on solid archaeological footing, but that isn’t actually true.  Many books have questionable authorship, and many places remain unidentified.  In a previous post, I discussed Questions about the Exodus: there isn’t a shred of evidence that it actually happened.  During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

I’ve been listening to a podcast from Yale University discussing the Bible.  There are definite similarities between the Babylonian story of  Gilgamesh and the stories of Adam and Noah.  Some people, such as Bishop Rick, have said

I think it is accurate to state that the flood story in the bible is both myth and a forgery. It is obviously a myth for reasons too numerous to mention here, but it is also copied from other cultures/religions, thus making it a forgery.

It could very well be a myth.  While some scholars believe the story is a myth, National Geographic put together a documentary called “In Search for Noah’s Flood”.  They discuss various flood stories, and make the case that a large, localized flood must have influenced these various cultures to write of this flood.  While there is no proof of a flood, it seems like a plausible explanation.

Recently I discussed a couple of sites in the Dead Sea region that some people believe are the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah.  While some people love to claim the Bible is actually a collection of myths, Dr. Carole Fontaine of the Andover Newton Theological School said, “Archeologists often find themselves hooted and hollered out of town, when they first suggest things like, ‘I’ve found Troy, or look, we’ve found Sodom and Gomorrah.’  But history has shown that in fact, the more you dig, the more you find.  It’s amazing how accurate the Bible sometimes turns out to be.”

Speaking of hooting and hollering, John Hamer recently recorded a famous comment regarding Book of Mormon archaeology.  He said,

The scholarly consensus on the alleged antiquity of the Book of Mormon was expressed way back in 1973 in Dialogue by Michael D. Coe, among the foremost Mayanist scholars, who wrote: “As far as I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the historicity of The Book of Mormon, and I would like to state that there are quite a few Mormon archaeologists who join this group”

The best Book of mormon archaeological site seems to be Nahom.  I’ve previously blogged about Nahom, and Daniel C. Peterson called it a “bulls eye”.  In the video called Journey of Faith (distributed by FAIR), a few BYU scholars state,

Daniel C. Peterson, Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic, BYU, “The finding of Nahom strikes me as just a tremendously significant discovery.”

Noel B Reynolds, director of FARMS, BYU, “The gazetteers of Joseph Smith’s day listed no such place.”

Peterson, “What it really is, is a kind of prediction by the Book of Mormon, or something that we ought to find.”

William J Hamblin, Professor of Middle Eastern History, BYU, “Now the chances of finding that exact name from the exact time, in that exact place, by random chance, are just astronomical.”

Peterson, “And to find it in the right location, at the right time, is a really striking bulls eye for the book and there are those who say the book has no archeological substantiation. That’s a spectacular substantiation right there, it seems to me.  Something that would have been unexpected. It’s so unlikely that Joseph Smith could have woven into his story on his own.”

Hamblin, “The Book of Mormon has text, has made a complex prediction and modern archeology actually confirms that prediction.”

Peterson, “It’s a direct bulls-eye, as precise as you could wish it to be.”

I don’t think non-Mormon scholars are as impressed with the site as Peterson, but non-Bible believing scholars aren’t impressed with Sodom and Gomorrah either.  So, must we always believe that lack of evidence argues against historicity of the Bible or Book or Mormon, or is there reason to believe that some of these stories that scholars call myths, forgeries, or pious frauds really might have some historical use?  Is it true that “the more you dig, the more you find?”

I’ve learned some interesting concepts from class on Ancient and Medieval Church History.  Session #23 discusses Eastern Orthodoxy.  First, let’s have a little background.  The Eastern Orthodox Church officially split with the Catholic Church in 1054.  The Pope excommunicated the Patriarch in Constantinople, so the Patriarch did the same to the Pope.  There had been some different emphasis on theology for quite some time.  For example, while the Catholic Church claimed that the Pope held all the leadership, the Orthodox Church held a much less central authority.  The Orthodox belief of revelation is that God speaks through these councils, not one central person.

There were seven early councils (such as the Nicene Council.) These edicts of these councils are usually considered scripture in the Orthodox church.  The various Orthodox churches (Russian, Greek, etc) are quite a bit more autonomous.  The Orthodox church even holds out that there could one day be an American Orthodox church, if membership warrants such an organization.

Even before the official split, there were many tensions between Rome and Constantinople.  In the podcast, the teacher refers to Rome as the “Western” church, and Constantinople as the “Eastern” church.  The western church spoke mostly Latin, while the eastern church spoke mostly Greek.  In the West, the church had an emphasis on:

1. Sin
2. Grace
3. Justification
4. Salvation
5. Sacraments

The eastern church agrees, but has a larger emphasis on:

1. Apophaticism – an emphasis on the mystery of God.
2. Tradition
3. Theosis
4. Icons

I’d like to talk about Theosis.  Theosis is a greek word meaning Deification, as in the deification of humanity.  Unfortunately, I do not know the name of the teacher, but anyone can download the podcast to hear him directly.  I’d like to quote the teacher directly.

“[Theosis] is the word that really sums up salvation.  In the West, we talk about sin and justification as a way of understanding salvation.  In the East, the emphasis is on theosis or deification.  We are changed so that we become like God, or Eastern theologians will say it even more strongly than that.  As Athanasius put it, ‘God became man, that man might become God.’  That’s theosis, or deification.

Well, that strikes the western mind as kind of a problematic way to understand theology and to understand the transforming effect of grace.  The eastern mind though sees that as the real purpose of Christ coming into the world, to transform us that we become like him.  In some ways, we can see that if we’re talking about union with Christ, or becoming more and more like Christ or becoming more and more like God.  But in the eastern expression of theosis, it is stated so strongly that Christ became man, that we might become God that most western thinkers pull back from that.  It sounds like a kind of heresy of some sort.  I expect closer examination of the eastern idea of theosis, will reveal that the eastern theology doesn’t for the most part, go over the line, but it uses language that can be suggested of something that western Christians would want to avoid.

The people in the west that pick up this same idea are the mystics, and in the west, they were constantly accused of pantheism.  Because, to the western mind, this kind of language, and this kind of expression goes too far because it tends to blur the distinction between God and his creation.”

I decided to look up theosis on Wikipedia, and found this interesting quote from St Ireneaus (who lived 130-202 AD.)  He is considered a saint in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches.  “St. Irenaeus explained this concept in Against Heresies, Book 5, in the Preface, “the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”

It seems to me that mormons have much in common with this idea of theosis.  This sounds quite similar to Lorenzo Snow’s quote, “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.” Comments?

I really miss my book club, but I am participating in the Stay LDS Book Club.  The first book that we have decided to read is Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza.  It is her story of the Rwandan Genocide.  I previously discussed the movie Hotel Rwanda, describing the events from Paul Russebagina’s point of view.  Immaculee has an incredibly inspiring story as well.  The book is intensely moving.

Growing up, Immaculee had no idea if she was a Hutu or a Tutsi.  Her parents had endured previous political unrest, and wanted to raise their children as if their tribe did not matter.  (It turns out she was a minority Tutsi.)  In 1994, this awful episode began, and she hid with 7 other women in a small bathroom.  She lost half her body weight, and spent literally 3 months praying.  (She is a Roman Catholic.)  The subtitle of the book is “Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust”.

She describes her attempt to forgive, even amidst this awful tragedy.  She describes a spiritual experience she had, while essentially witnessing a murder.  I don’t emotionally understand the experience, but I can slightly grasp it intellectually.  She describes hearing the murder of a Tutsi mother, and her child left to die:

page 93-94,

One night I heard screaming not far from the house, and then a baby crying.  The killers must have slain the mother and left her infant to die in the road.  The child wailed all night; by morning, its cries were feeble and sporadic, and by nightfall, it was silent.  I heard dogs snarling nearby and shivered as I thought about how that baby’s life had ended.  I prayed for God to receive the child’s innocent soul, and then I asked Him, How can I forgive people who would do such a thing to an infant?

I heard His answer as clearly as if we’d been sitting in the same room chatting: You are all my children…and the baby is with Me now.

It was such a simple sentence, but it was the answer to the prayers I’d been lost in for days.

The killers were like children.  Yes, they were barbaric creatures who would have to be punished severely for their actions, but they were still children.  They were cruel, vicious, and dangerous, as kids sometimes can be, but nevertheless, they were children.  They saw, but didn’t understand the terrible harm they’d inflicted.  They’d blindly hurt others without thinking, they’d hurt their Tutsi brothers and sisters, they’d hurt God–and they didn’t understand how badly they were hurting themselves.  Their minds had been infected with the evil that had spread across the country, but their souls weren’t evil.  Despite their atrocities, they were children of God, and I could forgive a child, although it would not be easy…especially when that child was trying to kill me.

In God’s eyes, the killers were part of His family, deserving of love and forgiveness.  I knew that I couldn’t ask God to love me if I were unwilling to love His children.  At that moment, I prayed for the killers, for their sins to be forgiven.  I prayed that God would lead them to recognize the horrific error of their ways before their life on Earth ended–before they were called to acocunt for their mortal sins.

I held on to my father’s rosary and asked God to help me, and again I hear His voice: Forgive them, they know not what they do.

I took a crucial step toward forgiving the killers that day.  My anger was draining from me–I’d opened my heart to God, and He’d touched it with His infinite love.  For the first time, I pitied the killers.  I asked God to forgive their sins and turn their souls toward His beautiful light.

That night I prayed with a clear conscience and a clean haert.  For the first time since I entered the bathroom, I slept in peace.

I still can’t fathom her capacity to forgive.  It is awe-inspiring to me.  After the war, she met the man (one of her neighbors), that killed her parents, stole their property, and burned her home to the ground.  Semana, the jailhouse guard allowed her to see him so she could spit on him if she wanted.  From page 204,

“He looted your parents’ home and robbed your family’s plantation, Immaculee.  We found your dad’s farm machinery at his house, didn’t we?”  Semana yelled at Felicien.  ”After he killed [your mother] Rose and [brother] Damascene, he kept looking for you…he wanted you dead so he could take over your property.  Didn’t you, pig?” Semana shouted again.

I flinched, letting out an involuntary gasp.  Semana looked at me, stunned by my reaction and confused by the tears streaming down my face.  He grabbed Felicien by the shirt collar and hauled him to his feet.  ”What do you have to say to her?  What do you have to say to Immaculee?”

Felicien was sobbing.  I could feel his shame.  He looked up at me for only a moment, but our eyes met.  I reached out, touched his hands lightly, and quietly said what I’d come to say.

“I forgive you.”

My heart eased immediately, and I saw the tension release in Felicien’s shoulders before Semana pushed him out the door and into the courtyard.  Two soldiers yanked Felicien up by his armpits and dragged him back toward his cell.  When Semana returned, he was furious.

“What was that all about, Immaculee?”  that was the man who murdered your family.  I brought him to you to question…to spit on if you wanted to.  But you forgave him!  How could you do that?  Why did you forgive him?”

I answered him with all truth:  ”Forgiveness is all I have to offer.”

I never want to experience a tragedy so awful.  I truly admire Immaculee’s capacity to forgive; she is a tremendous example of a Christian.

I think so many people want a clear “black and white” answer on many issues. Instead our leaders and the Lord give us great freedom (leeway so to speak) to live our religion.
A lot of people seem to be on a quest to “decide” what our Heavenly Father must feel and what His stance must be on certain things like oral sex, plastic surgery, and even consuming caffeine, for example….
So many people are adamant that they KNOW what’s right and what’s wrong, and that all other opinions are false.
Someone may assume, for instance, that because I am not speaking out against these things that therefore, I must do them myself. What’s important to me is that I don’t join the ranks of people assuming that my answer is the right answer – and then move towards casting judgments.
Agency can be such a tricky thing, can’t it?

Well I couldn’t agree with you more. There are so many reasons I love the gospel of Jesus Christ. Three of its main principles that resonate with me are 1. the gift and importance of free agency, 2. knowing we have the possibility to receive personal revelation applicable to our unique situation, and 3. the guidance to be non-judgmental and merciful when dealing with ourselves and others.

• It is through our free agency that we learn EVERYTHING. If we choose to follow the gospel, then we choose. If we don’t, we still choose. Either way the consequences (whether positive or negative) have to do with learning and progression. It is based on the principle of opposition. For every good there is bad. For every painful experience there is the possibility for joy. If we can truly accept this principle, it is easier to have perspective when we fall, or what can seem sometimes worse, when our loved ones fall.
• It is through personal revelation that one of our prophets, Nephi, came to know he had to kill in order to recover the history of his people. This went against the most basic of commandments.  I am in no way inferring that we should feel justified in murder through the guise of personal revelation, and yet there is a lesson to be learned. Sometimes, for the sake of something better and bigger and through personal revelation, we leave the “rule” behind (i.e. we stay in a struggling marriage for the sake of an eternal family, we divorce our spouse because of personal safety, we embrace the member we know has recently been excommunicated, we love and support our gay son who has left the church, we think before speaking in church and take into account different situations, we cease to judge others whom we know little about, we decide that engaging in oral sex is OK, we decide engaging in oral sex is not OK, etc.). It is of utmost importance for all of us to be continually building on this heavenly means of communication with our Father for it has no limit.
• Once we understand that all of us are on different progression paths, we can better accept the concepts of mercy and forgiveness which lead to the possibility of being less judgmental. The “I can’t believe he did that!” “Did you hear what she just said?” “I could never do something like that!” comments go by the wayside to make way for a more productive process of communication that embodies the true love of Christ: charity. And charity never faileth. It never fails us and it never fails others. Christ Himself loved, served, and healed the most vile of sinners of His time. Is this not the utmost of metaphors for us all? We all sin. It is impossible in this life not to. If we did not sin, what would be the point of even being here?

In my dealings with many members of the church and in looking at my own life experiences, I have come to the conclusion that very little of what we are faced with falls into the “Black or White” category. From the very beginning we know that Eve and Adam face a contradiction: two opposing commandments. We can ask what kind of God would put us in this predicament? I counter with this answer: A God who wanted us to learn mercy. A God who needs us to understand compassion. A God who wants us to think for ourselves, use our resources, and stretch our boundaries or comfort zones. In fact many of our beloved scriptural stories are in some way or another about people who had to find an exception to the rule – a different way than what their cultural or religious traditions proscribed. Jesus Christ Himself was the epitome of breaking the Mosaic and Judaic rules in order to achieve cadence to a higher law – a higher purpose. I am in no way encouraging everyone to go break rules for the heck of it. Commandments and guidance are in place to help us achieve happiness and attain blessings. I just hope that through this gospel principle of looking at the “gray” which surrounds us, we can look at situations on an individual basis (not everything or everyone fits into the same mold) and on a merciful basis (no matter what anyone is doing or not doing, they deserve our love and respect as fellow children of God – including ourselves).

MM readers- How do you see the world?  Black and White?  Or with varying degrees of gray?

In C.S. Lewis’ final Narnia book The Last Battle, there is a powerful scene of an encounter between the Christ-symbolizing lion Aslan and Emeth, a noble-minded worshipper of the false Calormene demon-god Tash:

“[The Lion] touched my forehead…and said, Son, thou art welcome.  But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.  He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.  Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true…that thou and Tash are one?  The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false.  Not because he and I aer one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him.  For he and I are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.  Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.  And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.”

Needless to say, a certain type of Christian evangelical is appalled by this.  I read an essay (by someone who evidently has reading-comprehension problems) arguing that by Lewis’s logic, Osama bin Laden’s diligence in pursuit of what he understands to be his religious duty must be credited as salvific worship of Christ.

And there is a danger, in seeking to be courteous to people who believe fundamentally different things from our own faith, to drift into seeming to say that there is no absolute truth — that all religious traditions are equally valid, that all religious roads lead to God, and the like.  And in fact, the varieties of religious experience are often used by folk-postmodernists to argue there is no absolute truth — that all truths are simply fronts for cultural biases, interests, or power relations.  However — although there is more of a common core of shared moral truth, across many diverse cultures, than often gets acknowledged – the truth claims of different religious traditions are often mutually exclusive.  In the case of Christianity and Islam, for example, Jesus Christ was either a prophet, or the incarnate God.  He can’t be both.  So the only way that “all religious teachings can be equally valid” is for none of them to be valid.  They obtain whatever fiction of validity they have, only from what they are given by their adherents.  Asking, like Joseph Smith, “Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together?”  (JS-H 1:10), the vernacular relativist concludes the answer must be “all wrong together.”  Otherwise, we’d have to privilege one faith claim above another — and in a pluralist society, we certainly can’t have that.  Wouldn’t be courteous.

But it does not follow, from the fact that finding the absolute truth is so difficult that different people, exercising the best of their imperfect judgment, reach different conclusions, that there is no absolute truth.  It is possible that, among all the “contests of these parties of religionists,” somebody is actually right — or more right than others.  Christians give the assent of faith to the proposition that Christ “is the way, the Truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father except by [Him].”  (John 14:6.)  We are committed to believing that there is one absolute Truth, and that it includes the basic fact that the salvation of humanity rests on Christ crucified.

How can faith in an exclusive Truth be reconciled with religious pluralism, not to mention God’s justice, in a world where the accidents of birth are probably the greatest factor that determines what religion a person practices?

I think C.S. Lewis was on to something with his parable of Emeth — whose name is Hebrew for “Truth.”  I think of Matthew 26:32-46, where the sheep are divided from from the goats.  The scripture seems to indicate that at least some of the sheep are surprised at being sheep:  “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?  or thirsty, and gave thee drink?  When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?  Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?  And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, who was one of the major influences in the restatement of Catholic doctrine at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, articulated a concept he called “Anonymous Christianity”:

“Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity — Let us say, a Buddhist monk — who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.”

The Catholic Church subsequently adopted the substance of Rahner’s thinking.  The Church’s Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium provides,

“Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.”

The present Catechism now provides,

“Those who through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.”

The declaration Dominus Iesus (criticized by some religious liberals for, evidently, not abandoning altogether the Catholic Church’s proclamation that it is the one true church), stated,

“Nevertheless, God, who desires to call all peoples to himself in Christ and to communicate to them the fullness of his revelation and love, “does not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors”. Therefore, the sacred books of other religions, which in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their followers, receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain.”

Mormonism, of course, may have anticipated this doctrine (or a version of it) with the doctrine of proxy ordinance work for the dead.  Although there has been controversy on the point, many LDS authorities suggest that even those who have had the gospel presented to them in this life, but rejected it for good-faith reasons, may obtain to salvation.

Some consider the doctrine of “Anonymous Christianity” to be condescending:  Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, goes this argument, don’t want to be saved as “anonymous” or honorary Christians; they should insist on being saved qua Jews, Muslims, or Buddhists.  In my view, “Anonymous Christianity” is as far as a revealed religion can possibly go and remain anything like itself.

However, “Anonymous Christianity” has a potentially startling flip side:  Just as a noble-minded Muslim, who follows the truly holy aspects of his religion, may have his inherently holy actions counted as worship of Christ, isn’t it also at least conceivably possible that I — by practicing the noble truths contained in my Mormon variety of Christianity — could be an “anonymous Buddhist?”  We tend to view even entertaining the possibility that the things to which we give the assent of faith may not be in every respect exactly as we understand them as a kind of infidelity, but is it really so?  To have effective faith in something, do we really have to know it with every fiber of our being, or say that we do?

My faith is in Christ, exercised within the framework of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I have reason to believe — or, more precisely, I choose to believe that certain experiences, whose actual import I may not be able to know with certainty, give me reason to believe — that God is pleased that I exercise faith in this way.  It may be that this is because the Gospel, as it it has been made known to me, is 100% true, to the exclusion of all contrary traditions — or it may be because my faith contains enough of the true God’s truth to suffice.

I recently read Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman. One of the interesting realities on which Ehrman elaborates is that early Christianity was anything but homogeneous. More specifically, there were many factions, some heterodox, some orthodox, some in the middle. Some of the books of the apocrypha, gnostic texts, and other early Christian writings seemed to support various theological ideas not represented, and in fact, even repressed in what became the canonized New Testament.

A few of particular interest are adoptionist (Christians that thought Jesus was fully mortal), docetic (Christians who thought Jesus was only divine and merely “appeared” to be human), and separationist (Christians who thought Jesus was two separate beings, one Jesus (human) and one Christ (divine)). There were many other heretical ideas that various Christian groups espoused. Some parts of our canonized New Testament were intentionally modified to suppress these views.

Translations in Mormonism

In Mormonism we have a very strange use of the word “translation.” Joseph “translated” the golden plates to produce The Book of Mormon. He “translated” some egyptian scrolls to produce the book of Abraham. In each of these instances I think that “translation” is probably a bit misleading. “Divined,” or “revealed,” perhaps, but “translated” in our modern colloquial usage is quite a stretch in my opinion!

To me, “translation” as it relates to Joseph’s work with the Bible, seems to imply that Joseph was a textual critic, much like Ehrman. That is to say, his goal, like a textual critic, would have been to correct the errors in translation and copying to return the scriptures to their original form. The 8th Article of Faith further gives weight to the idea that Joseph would have been interested correcting the translation, as it was the thing that had errors (as opposed to the original manuscripts themselves).

Yet, it is reasonable to me to question whether or not the original manuscripts of the canonized New Testament actually contained accurate teachings of Jesus. Surely if there were many different theologies, all of which claimed to be Christian, differing radically in their implications for modern Christian understanding, is it safe to assume that the books that “made it” into the canon even represent Jesus’ teachings? What of the process that came to finally accept a “canon” of scriptures? It was a process of gradual (read: hundreds of years) consensus among orthodox Christians (read: the Roman Catholic church), culminating finally in the Council of Trent in the 1500′s! Is this really what we now authoritatively accept as Jesus’ teachings and doctrines? And if Joseph’s goal, as translator, was to revert the text to the original, have we really made much progress in understanding the true Gospel as Christ taught?

Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible

Fortunately, as I’m sure many of you are silently screaming about, I think the Joseph Smith “Translation” is, again, a misnomer. It seems to me that Joseph had no business being a textual critic (despite being rather schooled in the Bible), and in fact, I don’t think this was Joseph’s goal at all. A casual glance at the Wikipedia article on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible indicates that Joseph seemed to be using the Bible as an impetus for revelation. From that article, Philip Barlow thinks there are six different types of changes in the JST:

• Long revealed additions having no Biblical parallel (including visions of Moses, Enoch, and passages on Melchizedek).
• “Common Sense” changes.
• “Interpretive additions” often signaled by the phrase “or in other words.”
• “Harmonization” in which Joseph reconciled seemingly conflicting passages.
• Grammatical improvements.
• Unclassifiable changes.

I think this is a fair list, but I would add to it. I think the Doctrine and Covenants is a form of the JST. That is to say, Joseph was not a textual critic, and the JST is not a translation at all. It is a series of revelations that hoped to obtain what should have been in the Bible. I think Joseph was interested in discovering, through revelation, the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ, not in a restoration of the words of the original manuscript of the books that make up our canon.

In this vein, I am completely baffled as to why the LDS church does not adopt the JST and why we don’t rely more on Joseph’s revelations, and less on the Bible. I would even go so far as to argue that Mormonism shouldn’t even really care about the translational accuracy of the Bible. Between The Book of Mormon, D&C, and modern revelation, it seems we have a rich, full theology, that are Christian in their own right!

JST in the LDS Church

The JST manuscripts were preserved by Emma Smith after Joseph’s death. As a result, the then Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS, now Community of Christ church) published and copyrighted the JST in 1867. The LDS church had only a partial collection of the JST manuscripts.  Ostensibly the LDS church was unable to verify, independently, whether or not the compilation of the JST by the RLDS church was indeed accurate and, possibly, to avoid simply accepting the JST as espoused by the RLDS church (relations have not always been good), perhaps the LDS church just used what it had. That copyright has long since expired, and as recently as 2004 the LDS church, with full support from the Community of Christ church, produced a full facsimile of all the original manuscripts. So why not adopt it now? Here are some possible reasons why we have not adopted the JST:

• Tradishuuuuuun, tradishun! Yep, the LDS church is very slow to part with tradition. As we have officially used the KJV (with a few additions) for many years, and have gone to great lengths to print it and bind it, and have incorporated it into many lesson manuals, perhaps we are just sluggish to change.
• Perhaps we are afraid of the label “Joseph Smith Translation.” We already know that “translation” as used in other contexts is a stretch, so maybe we’re nervous about adopting another, possibly erroneous “translation.”
• Maybe there is some interest in differentiating ourselves from the CoC church. After all, from an LDS perspective, it would be easy to view the CoC church as having gone astray. If we adopt their book, who knows what will happen.
• There may be changes in the full JST that cast doubt on LDS church policies, procedures, rules, revelations, culture, etc. (I have not read the full JST so this may be a stretch).
• Doctrinal salmagundi was the modus operandi in Joseph’s day, but today’s church is quite sensitive to new, unprecendented doctrine and/or changes. We seem to be moving toward mainstream Christianity, and adopting the JST might send us in the other direction.

So what do you think? Was the JST really a “translation” in the sense that Joseph was trying to restore the text to the original, and is this even a useful thing to do for Mormonism? Or was Joseph really more interested in getting to what he believed Jesus actually taught? Why do you think the LDS church has not adopted the JST?

Be kind

Help others

I see nothing but good coming from praying, reading the scriptures, and keeping the commandments. But it seems to me that these things give us an inner focus, while a main thrust of Jesus’ message as Messiah was how we treat others. Since our primary concentration during Church instructional periods often centers around improvement of the self, we groom our members to become paragons of personal righteousness who may be lacking in their living of the social gospel.

I first realized this when driving to Salt Lake City from Provo to pick up my parents from the airport. They were arriving to attend my temple marriage, or rather, the reception and ceremonies surrounding my temple marriage, since they were nonmembers. Our car broke down on the way there. It was a Sunday, and the highway was crowded with Mormons in suits and dresses, presumably on their way to Church related activities. None stopped for a young couple in distress. Back in 1981 no one carried cell phones, and we waited for about an hour and a half before a man in blue jeans and smoking a cigarette stopped his truck to assist us. The young convert BiV, just off her mission, was disillusioned that all of the fine Latter-day Saints of Utah would pass by while the “Samaritan” was the only one to stop.

I particularly feel a lack of empathy when members justify not giving to the less fortunate in their own circle of influence because they already pay their fast offering; or because they’ve decided that the bums don’t deserve it, are too lazy to get a job, or will spend it inappropriately anyway!

I know there are many things we do as Latter-day Saints that come under the category of “service.” In the past few years I’ve seen service projects under the auspices of the Relief Society increase. A popular service lately has been putting together humanitarian kits to go to schools, or to people in different parts of the world who have been devastated by natural disasters. I don’t want to say these aren’t good things!  I absolutely don’t want to denigrate this type of service. It’s hard to put together a service activity for a large number of people to do in this kind of context. I guess I just want to point out that this is a service that is removed from personal contact. It’s just right for an internet generation who is one step removed from real face-to-face contact with other human beings. I see too many sisters who put together humanitarian kits, all the while gossiping about others in the ward.

Some things I’ve seen in the Church that I think foster other-focused living of the gospel: We were living in Texas in 2001 during Hurricane Allison. Our home came through OK, but there were homes in our ward and stake which were completely destroyed. On Sunday we showed up for sacrament meeting and the members of the Bishopric were dressed in jeans. They dismissed the meetings and sent the members out to shovel out homes, rip up carpet, collect belongings and prepare food. We started at the homes of members and spread out to the entire neighborhood. I have never seen the youth work harder or feel more fulfilled. Their faces were absolutely glowing with health, exertion, and pure joy in service. These same members were so touched by this experience that a few years later when New Orleans was flooded they organized parties to drive down and spend their weekends assisting with the efforts there. They brought with them food, shovels, and everything they needed to be completely self-sufficient while they were there plus contribute in a major way.

Mormons are actually quite good at this. But huge disasters don’t happen every day. What can we do to symbolically dismiss our members from Sacrament Meeting to go out and make a difference in the small disasters of people’s lives? How can we send our members home from Sunday School not only to pray and read their scriptures, but to see the people around us and be kind to them?

“Delegation Takes No Action on Human Sexuality Issues: Church Will Continue Dialogue.”

Headline  by John Hamer on BCC on Thursday, April 15, 2010:

“Gay Rights Revelation Added to The Community of Christ D&C”

———-

The two headlines above generally cover the spectrum of opinion about what happened at the Community of Christ World Conference as it completed the process of canonization of a new Section 164 for its D&C. The spectrum of opinions about whether what happened was a good thing or bad thing, of course, runs even more broadly. Indeed, I’m not at all certain that we’ll even be able to see how intense the various “colors” of that spectrum will prove until information about the conference filters down to the bulk of the North American church that maintains no real connection to the World Church in the “Blogitorium”. As in many churches on the Christian left in North America, that membership tends to be somewhat more traditionalist than its leadership.

Nevertheless, I’ll give my view as someone from one part of the peanut gallery, focusing on what was in each portion of Section 164 and the effects of associated legislation passed to begin implementation. A future post will provide a similar analysis on legislation considered by the Conference not specifically addressed by Section 164 and suggest something about the overall direction of the Community of Christ in the future.

SECTION 164, PARAGRAPHS 1-4

President Veazey describes the experiences of meditation, particularly on portions of Galatians 3:27-29, that led him to offer the Section. After commending the church for similarly seeking to discern the Spirit in a structured process that has been going on for well over a year, he makes explicit an understanding of the church and its sacraments which has been implicit in CofChrist theology for a number of years.

“…Instruction given previously about baptism was proper to ensure the rise and cohesiveness of the church during its early development and in following years. However, as a growing number have come to understand, the redemptive action of God in Christ—while uniquely and authoritatively expressed through the church—is not confined solely to the church. God’s grace, revealed in Jesus Christ, freely moves throughout creation, often beyond human perception, to achieve divine purposes in people’s lives.”

The Community of Christ is to see itself as “one true church”, not as the “one and only true church”. How serious is this theological intent was earlier signaled by something I haven’t seen commentators note elsewhere. The first sessions of Conference always feature certain speeches of welcome. One is usually a non-CofChrist speaker. This speaker is often a local Congressman or a Missouri Senator. The speech is strictly non-political even then, but the identity is interesting because trends over time seem to show the direction of the church leadership’s interest.

This year that slot went to the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches. Kinnamon unabashedly spoke of the Community of Christ having unique gifts that should be seen as adding to bodies such as the NCC, rather than as a body going its own way. Ironically, contacts between the RLDS and the NCC were among the suspicions cited by fundamentalist opponents of the church circa 1970 as evidence of apostasy. Thus, such a speech 40 years ago might itself have been too controversial to occur.

Section 164 then lays out specific instruction (that will be followed quickly by formal administrative policy guidance to become effective by September 1, 2011). These policies will result in acceptance into membership into the Community of Christ upon confirmation by CofChrist priesthood – without requiring rebaptism if the original baptism: a) involved water;  b) was performed by an ordained Christian minister;  and c) as a personal expression of faith in Christ. In particular, we will not require someone to present proof of their baptism or the baptizing minister’s credentials, since that would be impossible in many places throughout the world. This clearly expands the notion of true priesthood authority beyond the boundaries of those called through the priesthood line passed to Joseph Smith.

The phrase “using water” also allows for baptisms done by immersion, pouring, or sprinkling, while upholding the church’s own standard practice of baptism by immersion at the age of accountability. There is also some additional specific guidance regarding the substance of the prayer of confirmation (Baptism of the Spirit) that is now the means by which one moves from being part of the Body of Christ into membership within the denomination. And preparation for confirmation will now be a formal requirement for the ordinance to occur.

Paragraph 3 contains a call for all members to serious consider and live the meaning of their baptismal covenants (water and Spirit). Paragraph 4 ties this call to consideration of the role the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper should play in renewing, witnessing, and amplifying our covenant. (Portions of the preamble specifically warn us to NOT make the meaning of the covenants atrophy even as we broaden the procedures, because of the concern that in some places this has happened with open communion).

This portion of the Section makes the Community of Christ look very Protestant – if you can call becoming more Protestant through modern revelation a Protestant concept in the first place.

SECTION 164, PARAGRAPHS 5-7

These are the paragraphs whose approval generated the widely divergent headlines above. Their actual content is to call attention to “serious questions about moral behavior and relationships” – but to prioritize those questions not simply as they are listed within the dominant culture of the denomination.

“These issues are complex and difficult to understand outside their particular settings because of strikingly different cultural histories, customs, and understandings of scripture. For example, the issues include female submission, female genital mutilation, child brides, forced marriages, and sexual permissiveness. They include cleansing and exploitation of widows, harsh conflicts over same-gender attraction and relationships, and varying legal, religious, and social definitions of marriage, to name just a few.”

More importantly, the Section calls us to see the solutions for these moral dilemmas as arising from an understanding of Christianity as a community that transcends definitions by economic status, social class, sex, gender, or ethnicity. They simply are no longer primary. Relationships are to be rooted in the principles of Christ-like love, mutual respect, responsibility, justice, covenant, and faithfulness, against which there is no law.

Section 164 then extrapolates that these principles require that the church move the resolution of moral issues to the church in the cultures most affected by them rather than let the dominant North American church decide for the rest of the world. Field Apostles, under the guidance of the Presidency, are authorized to call and set the agenda for field, national, or (non-geographical) cultural groups to deal with issues such as those listed above as they feel directed.

Uncertainty about the nature and timing of these conferences is generating the widely divergent headlines about gay rights. First, everyone in the Community of Christ seems to understand that the leadership feels that it must not expose our leaders and members in cultures where discussion of gay issues is taboo. If so, they can hardly move toward expanded gay rights in the United States unless they can find a way to maintain what the government would call “plausible deniability”.

Second, there is a large body of conservative members in the US church (and non-members in society) whose reaction must be anticipated and allowed for. The LDS experience with Prop 8 shows what happens when the church in the US takes any position on controversial issues in the political arena. Many feel the church has moved too hesitantly and will continue to do so; others are likely to feel the church is moving in the wrong direction entirely.

Finally, there are logistical questions. It seems unlikely that the US church has the resources to assemble a national conference on gay rights issues before the spring of 2012 at the earliest. It will take until September, 2011, simply to implement the new conditions for membership.

The greatest sign of movement toward gay rights comes from something in administrative minutia. It is normal for the church to realign Apostolic Fields following a World Conference (our Apostles retire, so there are usually changes in the Twelve). This time a gerrymandered field has been carved out for Apostle Susan Skoor that stretches from Southern Australia to Eastern Canada – and just happens to cover all of the non-US jurisdictions that proposed World Conference legislation expanding full priesthood and sacramental rites for gays. The extension of rights in that Field or in nations within that Field might be granted while maintaining sufficient distance from the World Church (and prying media) to protect the church in cultures hostile to gay rights.

Expansion to the US is much more difficult to do while maintaining any credibility to foreign governments and religious bodies that “this is just local jurisdictions acting on their own.”

Perhaps more significantly in the long run than the particular moral issues – at least from the perspective of this Washington spectator – is the change these paragraphs make in the legislative rights of mission centers to set the agenda for the church. The Presidency immediately ruled 21 legislative proposals that had been painstakingly brought to the conference as out of order because they reflect National or Regional concerns. These rulings were entirely appropriate under Section 164 guidance.

However, the Conference later passed implementing legislation for the field and national conferences that make them “special conferences”. Such conferences operate under different parliamentary rules than World Conference. In particular,  Mission Centers lack the right to place items on the agenda of special conferences; that agenda is set only by the Apostle who calls the conference with the approval of the Presidency. In short, this revelation makes the Community of Christ less democratic and more theocratic than it was a year ago.

SECTION 164, PARAGRAPH 8

Paragraph 8, by contrast, shows the flexibility and speed with which the Community of Christ can move on organizational issues when it wishes to do so. The Twelve and the Presidents of the Seven Quorums of Seventy have been meeting for several years in response to the immediately previous revelation (Section 163) to consider organizational changes to increase evangelistic effectiveness. Paragraph 8 is taken as authorization to make these changes.

Within 24 hours of Section 164 approval, the number of Quorums of Seventy was increased from seven to ten, the additional Quorum Presidents were named, and they were approved by the Conference and set apart to that calling. Jack Bauer couldn’t have moved faster. Clearly, the outcome of these discussions among the leading quorums was well prepared in advance, while they are still feeling their way around the notion of how and when national conferences will function.

Reorganization of the Twelve, while not fundamental, essentially separates the world into 10 Fields for the moment, each led by an Apostle, with the remaining two Apostles focusing on Headquarters-oriented tasks. For the first time, a single Quorum of Seventy will be aligned with the geographic or other missionary focus of a Field Apostle.

SECTION 164, PARAGRAPH 9

The final paragraph of the document is a benediction of sorts, and a challenge that the rise of Zion is no farther away than the willingness of all of us – all the “beloved children of the Restoration” – to overcome our insecurities and embrace a Christ-like life.

“The mission of Jesus Christ is what matters most to the journet ahead.”

At baptism, we covenant to take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ.  Taking the name of Jesus Christ means you “always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them.” (D&C 20:77; Moro. 4:3.) If we are truly born again, we become His Sons and His Daughters and taking upon His name has even more significance. (Mosiah 27:25)

This is a universal Christian principle, not exclusive to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Apostle Paul wrote “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3:27) Peter reinforced the idea that “neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

And while the Church teaches that salvation and exaltation come in and through the Lord’s true church, even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one can make the case that taking on the name of Jesus Christ and belonging to the LDS Church can be independent of one another. You will not find that taught in the Church, but certainly, there are many, many non-LDS Christians who are deeply committed to the Savior, follow His example and keep His commandments as best they can.

So, what of those who reject His Gospel, whether as members of LDS Church or not? While most Christian denominations believe in the principle of “once saved, always saved,” the LDS Church does not teach this principle.  Through sin, unbelief or rejection, one can lose their place in heaven.

So, for those who have left the Church, forsaken the covenants made at Baptism and through partaking of the sacrament, have they, in fact, given back His name?

And, does it matter?

What really happened on that first Easter morning around 2000 years ago?  There is the “swoon theory” advocated by those who assert that Christ did not really die upon the cross, that His supposed death was only a temporary swoon, and that His Resurrection was simply a return to consciousness. This was promoted by Paulus (“Exegetisches Handbuch”, 1842, II, p. 929) and in a modified form by Hase (“Gesch. Jesu”, n. 112).  Another theory is the “imposition theory urged by Celsus (Origen, Against Celsus II.56).  The disciples, it is said, stole the body of Jesus from the grave, and then proclaimed to others that their Lord had risen. This is a theory the Jews proposed as described in Matthew 28:12:

“And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.”

A third possibility, the “vision theory,” explains that enthusiasm, nervousness, and mental excitement on the part of the disciples caused them to experience mass hallucinations; to see and believe things that weren’t really true.  But is it possible that the Biblical account can be trusted?  Can one who was raised in a modern, secular culture such as ours really lay his or her head back and float in the nebulous pool of faith?

Did five women, led by Mary Magdalene, set out for the tomb of Jesus early on a Sunday morning?  Intending to anoint his body with spices, did they instead find an open tomb with the stone rolled away?  After the women spread the news that someone had taken the body of their Lord, did John and Peter run to the tomb and enter, astounded?  Was there something supernatural about what they saw: the graveclothes lying on a ledge in the tomb almost like an empty cocoon after the butterfly has emerged?  Not long after that, it is written, Jesus appeared to Mary. Then to the women. Then to Peter. Then to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Then to the 11 disciples. A week later he appeared to Thomas who believed in spite of his own doubts, crying out, “My Lord and my God!”

Quickly the word spread, “He’s alive!” This became the watchword of the early church. The apostles ended up as martyrs for their faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After 2000 years do we dare to conclude without any evidence that Jesus died on Friday afternoon and that he literally, physically, and bodily rose from the dead on Sunday morning?

And even for those who do believe the Easter story to this point, a deeper struggle comes when we stand next to a sickbed, gazing at the face of someone we love. The crisis may come at the senseless death of a child, a spouse, a brother.  Many of us wonder at that moment, “Is it possible that I will see this person again?” The body is cold.  Death seems so final, faith so unsure.  The following poem was written by an unknown soldier who died during World War I. It powerfully expresses what must follow if there is no resurrection from the dead:

If death ends all, then evil must be good,
Wrong must be right, and beauty ugliness.
God is a Judas who betrays his Son,
And with a kiss, damns all the world to hell—
If Christ rose not again.

This is reminiscent of the poignant passage in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19:

“And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”

To appease the pain these questions leave for modern man, existential theology demythologizes the miraculous elements of the gospel to reveal the “true” Christian message: the call to authentic existence in the face of death, symbolized by the cross.  As much as I believe the teachings of Christ are all about social justice, this leaves me flat.  If there is no resurrection, it doesn’t seem to make a difference.  To quote another poet (Henry H. Barstow),

What matter though we laugh or cry,
Be good or evil, live or die,
If Easter be not true.

Today I WANT Easter to be true.  I’m plunging my head back, holding my breath, willing myself to float.  I’ve got that same feeling in the pit of my stomach that my little swimmers do.  I don’t know for sure that Christ lives, that the water will hold me.  I’ve never seen him face to face, never touched his wounds. But on a day like today, I believe.  I’m looking at the sky, the mountains, the flowers, I’m feeling the early morning sunshine on my skin.  I’m letting the words of the scriptures work on me. I’m thinking of a Savior and the resurrection and I’m reciting — over and over — the words of that unknown soldier who died in World War I:

If it be all for naught, for nothingness
At last, why does God make the world so fair?
Why spill this golden splendor out across
The western hills, and light the silver lamp
Of eve? Why give me eyes to see, and soul
To love so strong and deep? Then, with a pang
This brightness stabs me through, and wakes within
Rebellious voice to cry against all death?

Why set this hunger for eternity
To gnaw my heartstrings through, if death ends all?

http://bycommonconsent.com/2010/04/02/friday-reflections-on-mormonism-and-the-cross/

I am going to include my own thoughts on that post – then take this post in a very different direction.

When I talk about the Atonement, I also reference the Sermon on the Mount – and I emphasize the command to be perfect. The wording in verse 48 says, “Be ye therefore perfect.” In the overall context of Chapter 5, I agree that this conclusion means that we become “perfect” by becoming the type of “blessed” person described in the previous verses. Finally, our footnotes for verse 48 define being perfect as being “complete, whole, fully developed” – and I re-word that as “finished”.

It only was at the end of his time on the cross that Jesus declared, “It is finished” – just before he “gave up the ghost”. Iow, it only was after the cross that the Atonement was complete – that Jesus fulfilled his own command to “be ye therefore perfect.”

I honor Gethsemane, but when we ignore Golgotha we worship an incomplete, paritally developed, imperfect Savior and Redeemer.

However, how does this apply to my own life – and, more specifically, my participation in a forum like Mormon Matters? 

I was blessed to be raised with a mother who never once raised her voice to anyone – not in anger and not in any other way. I can say honestly that I have never heard her condemn anyone. When we did something we shouldn’t have done, she would automatically tear up because of what she feared our actions, if continued, would do to us. Those tears were worse BY FAR than anything my dad did to punish us, but it was not transmitted through a sense of guilt. It came across obviously and strongly as a deep and abiding love for us and concern for who we would become.

I have a deep and abiding desire for respectful conversation and mutual understanding explicitly because of what I saw my mother live. She was loved, truly and deeply, by everyone who met her, and I wish I was like that more fully.

Elder Wirthlin’s words about accepting all within the orchestra (not just the piccolos) resonated with me largely because of my upbringing, but my experience since beginning to blog also made his words ring clearly to me. I have seen so much contention and bickering and vitriol, even here at Mormon Matters, and it pains my soul – especially when I know what it does to people.

I don’t ask for compassion in commentary simply because of what it does to a conversation; I ask for it also because of what it can do within those who comment. 

I ask for an increase in civility in our conversations today as a token of our worship, respect, admiration, reverence and/or acknowledgment of He who “finished” his work without revililng those who were the instruments of that end. 

My question for everyone is simple:

How can we recognize the part we play in incivility – and how can we create a healthy, diverse, open, civility here that will be special and meaningful for ALL who participate – even those with whom we disagree strongly?

Though it’s only an “additional teaching idea” in Lesson 12, Jacob’s ladder has captured my imagination due to some conversations I’ve recently had with Christian evangelicals.

The theme of the ladder to heaven is often used by the Early Church Fathers. Their interpretations of Jacob’s symbolic dream in Genesis 28 are similar to those made by Mormon General Authorities. In the 2nd century, Saint Irenaeus described the Christian Church as the ladder of ascent to God. In the 3rd century Origen explained that there are two ladders in the Christian life; one of which is the ladder that the soul climbs on the earth increasing the virtues. In the 4th century Saint Gregory of Nazianzus spoke of ascending Jacob’s Ladder by successive steps towards excellence, interpreting thus the ladder as an ascetic path, while Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote that Moses climbed on Jacob’s Ladder to reach the heavens where he entered the tabernacle not made with hands, thus giving to the Ladder a clear mystical meaning. The ascetic interpretation is found also in Saint John Chrysostom who wrote:

“And so mounting as it were by steps, let us get to heaven by a Jacob’s ladder. For the ladder seems to me to signify in a riddle by that vision the gradual ascent by means of virtue, by which it is possible for us to ascend from earth to heaven, not using material steps, but improvement and correction of manners.”

The account of Jacob’s Ladder as an analogy for the spiritual ascetic of life is again found in the classical work Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus. The ladder in Jacob’s dream represented a symbolic journey where each of the rungs suggest the steps needed to move upward. Man must climb up one level at a time as he participates in the saving principles and ordinances of the gospel offered by the Lord, who stands at the top. Notice how similar this description is to the quote by Marion G. Romney found in our lesson:

“Jacob realized that the covenants he made with the Lord … were the rungs on the ladder that he himself would have to climb in order to obtain the promised blessings—blessings that would entitle him to enter heaven and associate with the Lord” (“Temples—The Gates to Heaven,” Ensign, Mar. 1971, 16).

***
Later Christian interpretation of Jacob’s ladder is quite different than the early Church fathers, and demonstrates the dichotomy of thought between evangelicals and Mormons on the faith and works issue. In this exegesis, Jesus is seen as being the reality to which the ladder points in that he bridges the gap between heaven and earth. According to Martin Luther, Jacob’s vision of the ladder represented the incarnation of Christ. In the Gospel of John 1:51 there is a clear reference to Jacob’s dream pointing towards Jesus Christ, referred to by his title of the Son of Man:

And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Adam Clarke, an early 19th century Methodist theologian and Bible scholar, elaborated upon this verse:

“That by the angels of God ascending and descending, is to be understood, that a perpetual intercourse should now be opened between heaven and earth, through the medium of Christ, who was God manifested in the flesh. Our blessed Lord is represented in his mediatorial capacity as the ambassador of God to men; and the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, is a metaphor taken from the custom of dispatching couriers or messengers from the prince to his ambassador in a foreign court, and from the ambassador back to the prince.”

In this one Biblical symbol we find differing schools of thought over the issue of salvation: One group views the ladder as a way to reach heaven based on their own actions of improvement and obedience to covenants and ordinances. The other group has access to heaven based on the provisions of God through the Mediator, Jesus Christ, who came to earth and became that ladder or stairway for the sinner to reconnect the relationship with God.

In pondering this issue in the past, I have lamented that such a rift exists between our two faith traditions. It often seems to me that we are closer than we think, and that grace and works are both important. Mormons, I explain, emphasize works so much because we fear that if we don’t, the sinner might lapse into laziness or indifference. Christians emphasize the grace aspect of the equation so that no one will mistakenly trust in legalism rather than the Savior for their salvation. Isn’t the truth a balance between Paul and James? However, the evangelicals have labored hard to convince me that salvation must be accepted upon grace alone. Lately I’ve been pondering why I am reluctant to join them in their assurance. I’ve accepted Christ as my Savior, and it certainly would be a lot easier not to worry so much about whether I was paying my tithing, going to the temple regularly, or doing my visiting teaching. But here’s what holds me back: if Jesus offers me the grace they describe, then I’ll be OK whether I’m doing my works or not. But if the Mormon view turns out to be the more accurate description of the will of God for us, I need to be trying my hardest to do all of those works which are in my power.

Am I living my life based on fear rather than faith? Maybe. Will it count against me in the end?  I don’t see how it could.

What’s your take on Jacob’s ladder? Do we walk up, or does God descend to meet us where we are? Can this scriptural metaphor be of any help to us in our faith journey?

Sod, seed, and salvation — it’s how I like to describe the Abrahamic Covenant. There were three promises in the covenant. The first was a land promise, where the Lord gave Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. The second was the promise of a great and numerous posterity. And the third was the blessing of the everlasting Gospel: the priesthood and the promise of exaltation, to come to the world through Abraham’s lineage. (see Genesis 17)  But just look at how often the covenant was renewed!

• Several times with Abraham in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17
• With Isaac in Genesis 26
• With Jacob in Genesis 28
• With Joseph in Genesis 49

Not only that, but you may be surprised to learn that this covenant consisting of a land promise, a posterity promise, and a gospel of salvation promise was also given to

• Moses and the children of Israel in Exodus 6
• David in 2 Samuel 7

and, though we call it the Abrahamic Covenant, the same covenant was made even earlier, with

• Adam in Genesis 3
• Enoch and Noah in Genesis 9, Gen 9:21-25 JST

Finally, if you’ve read this week’s Sunday School lesson, you’ll know that the Abrahamic Covenant is made with faithful members of the Church today, as promised in D&C 132.

But when speaking of the Abrahamic Covenant, we might well consider the claim of Abraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael, his alleged descendants, and the ongoing conflict over the land of Canaan. I think it is interesting that the claims of both Palestinians and Israelis can be distilled into sod, seed, and salvation claims. Before you jump to a conclusion about how the argument over Palestine/Israel should be solved, let’s look at these with an open mind.

Sod: The Land Claim

Jewish claims to the land of Israel are based on the fact that this was the historical site and native site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel. There were always large communities of Jews in Israel, and the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. Palestinian Arabs’ claims to the land are also based on continuous residence in the country for hundreds of years. The land was originally “Arab” land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews, they say.  Who’s right?  Let’s see: 

§ It was the British who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948.

§ But the territory was Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917.

§ If you look back earlier in history than the Ottoman Turks, who took over Palestine over in 1517, you find it under the sovereignty of the yet another empire not indigenous to Palestine: the Mamluks, who were Turkish and Circassian slave-soldiers headquartered in Egypt. In 1250 they took Palestine over from:

§ The Ayyubi dynasty, the descendants of Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim leader who in 1187 took Jerusalem and most of Palestine from:

§ The European Christian Crusaders, who in 1099 conquered Palestine from:

§ The Seljuk Turks, who ruled Palestine in the name of:

§ The Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, which in 750 took over the sovereignty of the entire Near East from:

§ The Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, which in 661 inherited control of the Islamic lands from

§ The Arabs of Arabia, who in the first flush of Islamic expansion conquered Palestine in 638 from:

§ The Byzantines, who (nice people—perhaps it should go to them?) didn’t conquer the Levant, but, upon the division of the Roman Empire in 395, inherited Palestine from:

§ The Romans, who in 63 B.C. took it over from:

§ The last Jewish kingdom, which during the Maccabean rebellion from 168 to 140 B.C. won control of the land from:

§ The Hellenistic Greeks, who under Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. conquered the Near East from:

§ The Persian empire, which under Cyrus the Great in 639 B.C. freed Jerusalem and Judah from:

§ The Babylonian empire, which under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. took Jerusalem and Judah from:

§ The Jews, meaning the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who, in their earlier incarnation as the Israelites, seized the land in the 12th and 13th centuries B.C. from:

§ The Canaanites, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were dispossessed by the Israelites. (from Lawrence Auster)

This brings us to our second point. The Hebrew Torah clearly shows that the Jews seized the land from the Canaanites. Can we go back into history and discover who the descendants of these ancient native peoples are?

Seed: The Descent Claim

Ibrahim Alloush describes the descent claim of the Palestinians as follows:

“The Arab identity of Palestine emanates not from the Islamic conquest, but with the Canaanites who came into Palestine from the shores of the Arabian Peninsula around 2500 BC, and who had sovereignty over the land until about 1000 BC. Hence Palestine was called the Land of Canaanites, until the Philistines came from the island of Crete and intermarried with the Canaanites to melt peacefully into them leaving only the name behind: Palestine. The ancient Hebrews were indeed part of the peoples of the region but they came into Palestine (the Land of the Canaanites) as invaders.”

Those making this claim point out that descendants of the Canaanites/Philistines (ancient Arabs) have maintained a continuous presence in the land throughout history. Others say that the archaeological evidence disproves this. There is no record of the Canaanites surviving their destruction in ancient times. Prior to 1964 there was no “Palestinian” people and no “Palestinian” claim to Palestine; prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the name “Palestinian” referred to the Jews of Palestine.

Meanwhile, the Jews have their own problems proving literal descent. For example, Shlomo Sand insists that Diaspora Jews descend from converts and have no ethnic link to ancient Israel. In addition, human rights groups make the point that no other indigenous or aboriginal peoples on the planet are granted the same consideration as the Jews. But there is one other consideration being used to make a claim for the land.

Salvation: The Religious Claim

According to the Torah, Eretz Yisrael was promised to the Abraham and his descendants. Muslims believe that since Abraham’s son Ishmael is the forefather of the Arabs, then God’s promise of the land to the children of Abraham includes Arabs as well. The prophet Muhammed passed through Jerusalem on his first journey to heaven, and all of the land of Israel is designated as Islamic “Waqf” which implies it must be governed by Muslims.

Israelis insist that the covenant was renewed with Abraham’s son Isaac and the inheritance was passed through his line to the Jews. They made Jerusalem a holy city over three thousand years ago have remained steadfast to it. They pray in its direction, mention its name constantly in prayers, close the Passover service with the wistful statement “Next year in Jerusalem,” and recall the city in the blessing at the end of each meal. The destruction of the Temple is still an event commemorated by a special day of mourning, houses left partially unfinished, a woman’s makeup or jewelry left incomplete, a glass smashed during the wedding ceremony. Christians identify with the Jews’ love of Israel in many ways. The plaintive sound of Psalm 137 is reinforced in many of our hymns: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” This sympathy has been apparent in modern reactions to the conflict over Israel.

In attempting to keep this post from being unwieldy, I am afraid that I have greatly simplified the issues. Please feel free to make additional points about these claims in the comments. However, what I am most interested in discussing is the great support the Christian world has given to the Jews’ political return to Israel in modern times. (Zionism was actually opposed by Orthodox Jews at first — they regarded Zionism as a violation of God’s will.) But the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people in 1947. Do you think there is a solution to this conflict? Who has the better claim? Should a world-wide coalition define boundaries, or should we let the two nations duke it out on their own?

Does your religious worldview and your Christian understanding of the Abrahamic Covenant affect your position on the issue?

Differences in religious belief can be the death knell to a marriage. For that reason, many organized religions strongly advocate against being “yoked with unbelievers”. This is not only a Mormon phenomenon; you see this in any faith tradition that teaches that they alone have exclusive access to God. Even before marriage, it is rare for the unmarried, devout Mormon to even consider dating (let alone marrying) a non-Mormon; most LDS women raised in the Church are taught from an early age to make a temple marriage to a returned missionary their primary goal.

Likewise, in the Catholic Church, marriage to any non-Catholic (including Protestants!) is not permitted within a Catholic church building, and is not considered to be a Sacrament. In particularly conservative Catholic cultures, it really is considered a heresy to marry someone not of the (same rite of the) Catholic Church. Consider, for example, the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding: Toula refuses to marry Protestant Ian until he joins the Greek Orthodox Church (thus leading to a humorous scene of Ian being baptized).

Similar to Mormon ‘Marriage Prep’ and ‘Temple Prep’ Sunday School courses, dating Catholic couples are required to pursue a several-month course of marriage preparations classes, known as Pre-Cana. Similar to Mormons, Catholics who have pre-marital sexual relations (usually known from the resulting offspring) cannot be married on Catholic church grounds. However, they can have their marriage “convalidated” at a later date, similar to to a family being ‘sealed’ a year after a civil marriage.

I compare these things not so much to indicate how Catholics do things so much as to show just how non-unique Mormons are in many ways with regards to their approach to interfaith marriage.

Disbelief that comes after marriage, however, is harder to deal with. Despite the admonition of Paul in the 1 Corinthians that:

[I]f any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is they are holy. (1 Cor. 7:12-14)

it is really not all that uncommon to see marriages Mormon temple marriages dissolve once one member of the union loses faith. The same can also be true in Catholic culture, where one of the vows made at the altar is to raise your children Catholic.

A few examples, then, to illustrate some of what I am talking about:

A Mormon female friend of mine (who also happens to be a reader of this blog) attended a non-LDS university for college. Her Patriarchal Blessing was explicit that she was to marry an RM in the temple. When a Baptist schoolmate asked her on a date, she turned him down several times before giving him an ultimatum: She would only go on a date with him if he would read the Book of Mormon and consent to taking the missionary discussions. Confident that the Mormon church was misguided, and that he could show her the error of her ways, he consented. He joined the LDS Church and they two were married in the temple a year later. Obviously, she and the Church would consider this example to be a huge success story; his Baptist family, in contrast, at that time considered their daughter-in-law to be the devil incarnate. (I suspect that they mellowed with time).

Another friend at the same university for four years dated a non-Mormon off and on, and was fairly involved with him physically (although never so far that she needed to go to the Bishop). She loved him and he proposed to her, but since he was not interested in the Church, she said no. Several years later, she met and married a convert of 1 year, in the temple. Another Church success story.

A Jewish friend attended a Jew-friendly university, but did not find a spouse. She later moved to an area in the Midwest that was predominantly Protestant, and met and fell in love with a Protestant. They moved in together, but when her family would call or visit, she threw him out of the house for the weekend. When her parents found out that she was dating this man, they first gave her a series of lectures on being ‘married under the canopy’ and of all that her grandmother had suffered at Auschwitz. They then cut off all verbal communication with her. When the grandmother found out about the boyfriend, she literally suffered a stroke. She broke up with the boyfriend, and later married an Orthodox Jew and was welcomed back into her family.

A Muslim co-worker of my husband’s met and married a Hindi woman. The parents of the Muslim refuse to acknowledge their daughter-in-law, and the parents of the Hindu refuse to call the Muslim by his real name, instead calling him by the Hindi equivalent.

When I married my husband, we were both Mormon, however I had converted to the Church as a young adult. My mother’s side of the family (who are culturally Catholic) refused to speak with my husband at family functions and boycotted our wedding. Indeed, my own marriage might now be considered as an interfaith marriage, with each of us losing our faith in the LDS Church and taking divergent faith paths. I’ve left the LDS Church and now consider myself a post-Mormon liberal Catholic, returning to the faith of my mothers (since Catholicism in America is largely passed down matriarchally). My husband is an agnostic atheist who remains actively Mormon: regularly attending his meetings and ‘magnifying’ his calling, held in the church by the faith of his fathers. My family is urging me to do what my responsibility as a Catholic mother would be: to baptize my son Catholic and raise him in the Catholic Church.

And so it goes, and so it goes. Its remarkable how adherents of all faiths claim that God will only recognize marriage in their church.

Through it all, my husband and I have retained enormous respect for each other and our religious decisions, as well as the effect that those decisions have on our son. I think respect for each other is really the only way such marriages can survive. My husband’s loss of belief was founded in his respect for me: Trusting that my reasoning was sound, he wanted to determine for himself what validity there was in my conclusions. Obviously, we came to different end-points, but part of respect is learning to accept (and even welcome) differences of opinion and conclusion.

My questions for the readership are these:

• What are your stories?
• How can a couple who finds themselves in a Mormon interfaith marriage make the relationship work?
• Is it possible to maintain a believing Mormon/non-believer relationship?
• If so, what components are required?

CofChrist Prophet: Baptism in Christ Transcends Culture

“5 It is imperative to understand that when you are truly baptized into Christ you become part of a new creation. By taking on the life and mind of Christ, you increasingly view yourselves and others from a changed perspective. Former ways of defining people by economic status, social class, sex, gender, or ethnicity no longer are primary. Through the gospel of Christ a new community of tolerance, reconciliation, unity in diversity, and love is being born as a visible sign of the coming reign of God.”

With these words, the Prophet/President of the Community of Christ delivered to the church for its consideration as divine counsel on January 17 a document that changes the relationship between its sacraments and its people. Copies of the documents are already posted at http://www.CofChrist.org.

Most stunning to readers on the bloggernacle, the document places resolution of pressing issues of marriage, sexual identity and roles, among others, into the hands of field or national jurisdictions to resolve within the context of their own cultures and secular laws. This appears to mean that the Community of Christ will no longer have a world-wide policy toward these cultural institutions, although what local policies will come into place is left undefined. Thus, jurisdictions in which gay marriage is permitted by the culture may be able to move forward with this practice as a sacrament of the church as well, and the church may continue to forbid discussion of the issue in nations where such discussion is taboo.

In addition, persons baptized by water within other denominations who are led by the Spirit to the Community of Christ are now to be accepted without rebaptism into membership upon confirmation following a period of study.

The headlines will probably not be the most important part of the document in the long run. Take a look at it and see what you think.

I would like to introduce Madam Curie which many of you know her by on her replies at Mormon Matters she also has her own blog Third Wave Mormon . She has shared with us what I think is a very interesting and thought provoking article.

Is a “believing heart” really a positive attribute?

“Blessed are those that have not seen, and yet have believed.” – John 20:29

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” – Hebrews 11:1

Having a “faithful” or “believing” heart is greatly prized among the religious. Those who uncover less savory aspects of LDS history are frequently told to “Just have faith,” even in the face of opposing evidence. As I have pondered the question of faith, I have begun to question whether a “believing heart” is really a positive attribute, or where and when it should be applied.

From a scientist’s perspective, faith is about the worst thing you can have; the scientific method entirely depends on an ability to be objective, and to rationally and logically question what you see. This seems absolutely antithetical to the idea that we should have a “believing heart”. From the perspective of a smart shopper, you should never take a product’s claims on their word only. And in terms of internet safety, there is an army of Nigerian princes waiting for you to have “faith” in them.

Is there a requirement that the thing we have faith in be a “true” principle? For example, I can have faith that my son will one day win the Nobel Prize in Medicine, but that doesn’t not make it so. In fact, that faith may lead me to make potentially detrimental decisions in my son’s upbringing: for example, stressing science over any other talent he may have, and giving him unrealistic and unattainable goals. Goal setting is incredibly stressed in the LDS church. In the Single’s ward we were told that all we had to do was set a date for when we wanted to be married; if we had enough faith, God would provide the man.

Even if we constrain the practice of faith to the spiritual realm, it is still not entirely clear what religious teachings we should have faith in. I have heard strong, compelling testimonies of faith from Jews, Muslims, polygamous FLDS, Mormons, Catholics, and born-again Christians. Each of them had a “believing heart”. Furthermore, am I required to have faith in the doctrine alone, or must I also have faith in the leaders of these individual religions? What if I am asked to do something that is illegal, or morally wrong? (An immediate example is Joseph Smith’s commandment to enter into polygamous marriages, something that was both illegal and was considered a moral aberration). Are faith and obedience to be prized above courage and conscience?

What about when your faith in something is at the expense of another? For example, Pres. Monson told the CA Saints to give their time and money to pass Prop. 8, which overturned the ability of homosexual Californians to marry. For many of those individuals, they had faith that Pres. Monson was speaking directly for God on the matter. If they had not, they may have acted differently.

If you apply the criterion that the thing you have faith in must “enlarge your heart,” well, even that is unclear. I have found equally strong spiritual emotions in the practice of Paganism and Buddhism as I have had as a Mormon, and I find great joy in attending Catholic Mass. Does that make all of these faith traditions “true”? Yet, they contradict one another in doctrinal teachings, so how is that possible? And several of them contend to be the “only true church”.

Where is the value in faith for faith’s sake?

New Year celebrations are some of the oldest holidays known to man.  The Babylonians had an 11 day celebration to ring in the New Year about 4000 years ago.  This celebration began with the first New Moon following the Vernal Equinox (Mar 21).  The Romans continued to observe the New Year in March, but due to tampering with the calendar by various emporers, the calendar became out of synchronization with the sun.  In 153 BC, the Roman senate decided to start the New Year to match the same time the senate started sessions:  January 1.  Further calendar tampering continued, and Julius Ceasar decided to synchronize the calendar in 46 BC by allowing the previous year to last 445 days.  (This is known as the Julian calendar.)  Our current calendar is based on the Gregorian Calendar, (named after Pope Gregory 13th), and was introduced February 24, 1582 using the birth of Christ as year 1.  (However, it is widely believed he was off a few years–even by his contemporaries.  With all the changes in calendaring systems, it’s easy to see why.)

Many of you are probably familiar that April 1 was originally the day of the New Year, and it was the April Fools who didn’t know it had been changed to January 1.  A possible origin for April Fools Day may have been when King Charles IX of France officially changed the first day of the year from April 1 to January 1, some of his subjects continued using the old system, based on the Julian calendar.

——

We don’t normally associate January 1 with Christian celebrations, but there is a great story in the Bible.  If Dec 25 represents Christ’s birth, 8 days later (Jan 1) would be the day Christ was circumcised.  The story is found in Luke 2:21-30.  You may remember that Simeon was promised that he would not die before seeing the Lord Jesus.

Luk 2:27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,

Luk 2:28 Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,

Luk 2:29 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

Luk 2:30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

The Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, Lutheran Churches, and some churches in the Anglican Communion celebrate Jan 1 as The Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. According to Wikipedia,

The feast is celebrated with an All-Night Vigil, beginning the evening of December 31. The hymns of the feast are combined with those for Saint Basil the Great. After the Divine Liturgy the next morning, Russian Orthodox churches often celebrate a New Year Molieben (service of intercession) to pray for God’s blessing for the beginning of the civil New Year.

So, would anyone like to celebrate the New Year the Russian Orthodox way?

———–

Now, I thought the beginning of Elder Eyring’s talk introduces the idea of New Years Resolutions quite well:

I feel blessed to have the opportunity to speak with you on this Sabbath day. Different as we are in circumstances and experiences, we share a desire to become better than we are. There may be a few who mistakenly feel they are good enough and a few who have given up trying to be better. But, for all, the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is that we can and must expect to become better as long as we live.

It’s hard to tell by reading just the print version here, but Elder Eyring is actually saying this is a kind of joking way “There may be a few who mistakenly feel they are good enough”.  I’ve always noticed that Elder Eyring frequently gets choked up with emotion (as he does later in this talk), and it is nice to see that he is trying to exhibit a sense of humor, though there were no chuckles here.  (I get tired of people who feel the need to cry every testimony, and it seems to me Eyring usually fits to this category–if the gospel makes us happy, why all the crying?)

I think there are some who won’t do any resolutions because they “have given up trying to be better.”  I admit that I often don’t do resolutions, and perhaps I fit into this category.  Are there any others willing to admit this?

———–

The next paragraph, Eyring seems to have misplaced the setting of a scripture, calling it a revelation to Joseph Smith at first.  That seems like a bit of a mis-characterization to me.  Rather than a revelation to Joseph, isn’t this a sermon/exhortation from the prophet Mormon?  Is this some sort of off-handed way to say that Joseph revealed the Book of Mormon, rather than translated the Book of Mormon?  Eyring says,

Part of that expectation is set for us in a revelation given by God to the Prophet Joseph Smith. It describes the day when we will meet the Savior, as we all will. It tells us what to do to prepare and what to expect.

It is in the book of Moroni: “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.” [Moroni 7:48]

That ought to help you understand why any believing Latter-day Saint is an optimist about what lies ahead for him or her, however difficult the present may be.

———-

Wait a minute–aren’t Mormons depressed because they’re trying too hard to be like Jesus, or is it true the Mormons live in the happiest State in the Nation?  Which side do you pick?

———-

Eyring continues,

We believe that through living the gospel of Jesus Christ we can become like the Savior, who is perfect. Considering the attributes of Jesus Christ should quash the pride of the self-satisfied person who thinks he or she has no need to improve. And even the most humble person can take hope in the invitation to become like the Savior.

Ok, I guess we all have need of New Years Resolutions….  How far do we take this analogy to be like Jesus?  Can we take it to exaltation/theosis?

———–

Elder Eyring gets choked up while relating the words to a children’s song.  I think the words could well be heeded on the bloggernacle.

“Love one another as Jesus loves you.
Try to show kindness in all that you do.
Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,
For these are the things Jesus taught.”
[“I’m Trying to Be like Jesus,” Children’s Songbook, 78–79.]

I know that I can do a better job of “trying to show kindness in all that [I blog]“.  While feelings can often get heated on the bloggernacle, how do we disagree in a way that “show[s] kindness”?

——–

I liked Elder Eyring’s counsel to see the good in our spouses.  As marriage lengthens, it is really easy for all of us to become shorter with our spouses, and I don’t look for the good in my wife as I should.  I resolve to look for the good in my wife.

First, I give counsel to husbands and wives. Pray for the love which allows you to see the good in your companion. Pray for the love that makes weaknesses and mistakes seem small. Pray for the love to make your companion’s joy your own. Pray for the love to want to lessen the load and soften the sorrows of your companion.

I saw this in my parents’ marriage. In my mother’s final illness, the more uncomfortable she became, the more giving her comfort became the dominant intent of my father’s life. He asked that the hospital set up a bed in her room. He was determined to be there to be sure that she wanted for nothing. He walked the miles to work each morning and back to her side at night through those difficult times for her. I believe it was a gift from God to him that his power to love grew when it mattered so much to her. I think he was doing what Jesus would have done out of love.

———–

I think this counsel can be applied to the bloggernacle as well.  We ought to pray for the love which allows us to see the good in those we disagree with.  We ought not to be so judgmental, especially on divisive topics.  One wouldn’t think that the next paragraph would be divisive, but it sure can be on the bloggernacle as we talk about families.

That is because the greatest joys and the greatest sorrows we experience are in family relationships. The joys come from putting the welfare of others above our own. That is what love is. And the sorrow comes primarily from selfishness, which is the absence of love. The ideal God holds for us is to form families in the way most likely to lead to happiness and away from sorrow. A man and a woman are to make sacred covenants that they will put the welfare and happiness of the other at the center of their lives. Children are to be born into a family where the parents hold the needs of children equal to their own in importance. And children are to love parents and each other.

That is the ideal of a loving family. In many of our homes, there are the words “Our Family Can Be Together Forever.”

———

I think the Prodigal Son is one of my favorite parables of Jesus.  It is the story of both Judgment and Forgiveness, and I think its’ application is one of the most difficult.

The story of the prodigal son gives us all hope. The prodigal remembered home, as will your children. They will feel your love drawing them back to you. Elder Orson F. Whitney, in a general conference of 1929, gave a remarkable promise, which I know is true, to the faithful parents who honor the temple sealing to their children: “Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold.”

Then he goes on to say: “Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God.”4 You can pray for your children, love them, and reach out to them with confidence that Jesus reaches for them with you. When you keep trying, you are doing what Jesus does.

When we look at people with drug problems, or serious sexual offenses, how do we apply this story?  Recitivism for drug addicts and sexual predators is very high.  Some believe they can’t be rehabilitated.  Governor Huckabee’s pardon of a man who went on to kill 4 police officers seems that he was trying to use the example of the Prodigal Son.  From the Washington Post article,

“If I could have known nine years ago this guy was capable of something of this magnitude, obviously I would never have granted a commutation,” he told Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly on Monday night. “It’s sickening.”

Huckabee defended his decision,

On Tuesday, Huckabee defended his decision to commute Clemmons’ sentence during a call to “The Joe Scarborough Show” on 77 WABC radio in New York. If his critics had been there in the governor’s mansion, Huckabee said, “They would have seen a 16-year-old kid commit crimes of which normally, there would have been a few years. And if he’d been white and middle-class with a good lawyer he’d have gotten probation, a fine and some counseling. But because he was a young black kid, he got 108 years!”

“People don’t go to prison for murder” with that sort of sentence, Huckabee said.

The recent hit movie, The Blind Side, seems to be a feel good story of a family who took in a Prodigal Son, Michael Oher, and turned his life around from a life of crime and gangs.  How do we practically apply this parable, when it is so easy for criminals to deceive?

A close friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous recently saw in the shadow of the temple his story follows

In October, I was fortunate to attend the Portland, Oregon, screening of the movie, In the Shadow of the Temple. http://www.intheshadowofthetemple.com The screening was hosted by the producers, Karen Di Millia and Dennis Lavery. Prior to the screening Dennis and Karen spoke for 10 minutes and explained how they started this project. After the screening they took questions and answers for roughly 30 minutes.

Lavery and DeMillia, who are not–and never have been–LDS, originally planned to make a movie about people who had left the religion of their youth. They attended a meeting of the Portland Humanist Society, explained their project, and asked if anyone had such stories they would be willing to share. In the course of discussing the project with members of the society, they were told that who they really needed to talk to was Sue Emmett, who had left the LDS church. After talking with Sue and others with whom she put them in touch, they decided to re-focus their project on the experience of those who have left the LDS church.

They did hundreds of hours of interviews over two years and edited it down to a 55 minute film. The film is very moving–a tribute to those who shared their stories as well as DeMillia and Lavery’s videography and editing skills.

About two dozen people appear in interviews in the film. Each story is unique, but a common thread runs throughout them all. All faced a similar rejection by family, friends and community. Some of those interviewed have left the church. Others no longer believe, but remain active because of family or community pressure. The latter are filmed in shadows, to obscure their identity. The film refers to these people as “Shadow Mormons.” They define “Shadow Mormons” as those who privately do not accept the exacting doctrine of the Church, but publicly profess to be true believers. They are in shadow to protect their relationships with family, friends and employers.

Someone commented to me after the film, “That’s you. You’re a Shadow Mormon.”

Yes, I’m a Shadow Mormon. Maybe that’s why this film hit me so hard. I haven’t believed in over 20 years – most of my adult life. Yet, during that time I’ve paid my tithing, gone to the temple, served in bishoprics and high councils and done all the things that were expected of me. Why? Because I am tied to the church by family and community.

The story of “Grace” (not her real name) resonated with me because it was so similar to mine. Her pain, and anger, were born of all the energy she has given to a religion that she doesn’t believe in. Finding out that the Church was not true was like a death experience for her. Like me, she tried following the Church’s teachings to fast, pray, read the scriptures and yet never felt she received the “burning in her bosom” that is promised in the scriptures.

What of the families and communities of these people? What are their stories, their experiences with loved ones who go through a process of losing belief and leaving the church. Only one person who was a family or friend agreed to be interviewed for the film. The believing husband that was interviewed told how he still loved his wife, even though she has left the church. What about the others? Are they embarrassed to say that the Church was more important than their relationship with the person who left?

The saddest stories, to me, were of divorce caused by one spouse believing and the other not believing. Michelle (another woman interviewed in the film) said her heart was broken that her husband would choose the Church over her. He told their marriage therapist that if she had not been Mormon he never would have married her. “There was more to me than being a Mormon,” she said. “And I thought that there was more to him.”

The dictionary defines empathy as “the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” We could all use a little more empathy for those around us. I have had several people tell me, “I can’t imagine how a person could leave the church.” Either they need a better imagination or they need more empathy. Maybe they just need to see this film.

One of the questions at the screening–one that Lavery could not answer–was, “How do we get the right people to see this film?” Sadly, many members of the church would not even consider it. (It screened in Salt Lake City in October and got almost no media coverage.) The film does not try to de-convert anyone or disparage the doctrine of the church. It doesn’t assert that someone is right because he or she believes, or that someone else is right because he or she leaves the church. This film is about accepting people regardless of what they believe, and about how we treat those who believe differently than we do. I wish every member of the church could see this film.

Film Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICbylWK-i2Q&NR=1

Gold is a gift for an earthly king, and holds obvious symbolic significance.  Frankincense is used in incense, for many religious observances.  Frankincense was used by Jews in the temple, as well as a great number of other religions of the day.  It is made from the resin of rare trees.  It was so precious that it was literally worth its weight in gold.  Myrrh also comes from a rare plant (in Arabia) and is worth 7 times more than frankincense.  It’s use was for annointing the dead, as well as for healing properties.  In modern day use, it has anti-fungal properties, and there is some anti-cancer research regarding myrrh as well.  It would have been a gift for a physician.  Obviously, Jesus was a master physician with all the healings he performed.

Astronomer David Hughes tells us “Myrrh is used to anoint the dead.  You get this Christian attitude that even as Jesus was born, they knew he was going to die on the cross.”  While none of us would have any idea what to do with frankincense and myrrh, when we uncover how the ancient people felt, it helps us realize how valuable these gifts were.

Matthew and Luke seem to have some differing accounts of Jesus birth.  In Luke, the shepherds visit a manger.  In Matthew, the Wise Men visit a house.   One tradition has it that the Wise Men visited 12 days after Jesus birth, but it could also be that Jesus may have been as old as 2, since Herod ordered all male boys killed under the age of 2.

The gifts may have been a test for Jesus.  There is evidence that the Jews expected as many as 3 different Messiahs:  a spiritual one, a great warrior, and a healer.  When presented with the gifts, the idea was that if Jesus chose gold, he would have been an earthly ruler.  If he had chosen frankincense, he would have been a spiritual leader.  If he had chosen myrrh, he would have been a healer and miracle worker.  Legend has it that he chose all three, showing that he was all of the above.

Of course, the magi sneaked out of Judea due to the dream not to return to Herod.  Joseph was also warned in a dream to leave for Egypt.  These gifts would have been very helpful for their flight into Egypt and would have helped pay their way.  Jesus going to Egypt follows previous precedents of Joseph and Abraham fleeing there to save Israel.

So, has anyone received gold for Christmas?

A child is born in Bukavu

A child is born in Bukavu, and sadness fills his mother’s heart… Bukavu is not the city of David. It is a town in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. War has been ravaging the country for years. Ever since Kabila invaded the former Zaire with military support from the US. It is a war that no one speaks of – but it has cost the lives of millions of people and caused unimaginable suffering.

The child’s mother is a young girl, a daughter of the area. This young girl is named Maria.  Maria was a girl like most any other girl in her town. She walked miles for water, she helped her mother with the cooking and she also tilled the land. She learnt how to read in primary school, but ever since the war her parents no longer could afford to pay her school fees. Maria was a believer in the Christian gospel – and went like all other young girls her age to church on Sunday.

Church was a mud hut with a roof made out of straw. There on Sundays, the kids would gather to learn about God. The preacher, an older man with glasses and graying hair, would always talk about God’s love for humanity – and that God once, long time ago, had come to the world as a male child to save humanity. In church, she had also learned some words of English. She knew that when you greeted someone, you had to say: “Good morning, class”. 

The morning breaks

That was then. Prior to the attacks… One day, as the morning broke and shadows gathered, foreign soldiers drove into town. The houses were set on fire. The adults were gathered on the square and the older men were executed one by one. This is how Maria lost her father – and she and her mother witnessed it. The soldiers held their heads for them to watch. Maria was afraid. After having seen the murder of her father, they also separated her from her mother. She was chosen from among the young girls to follow a group of soldiers. One of them stripped her of her clothes and forced himself on her – he, subject to the commanders’ orders.

Now she held this young child in her arms. Her heart was filled with sadness, and she knew that her firstborn child would have given her joy under other circumstances. Some months after the soldiers left, Maria was chased away. The villagers who were left behind were ashamed of her and of the other girls who had become pregnant. These girls were a constant reminder of the day when the men in the village had been powerless – confronted with the threat and the fear of a gun. “Do not ever come back”, were the last words she heard as she was running for her life into the deep woods. 

Maria sings to her little child a song she learned many years ago: “Lullaby, lullaby, my little one. Lullaby, my child so dear. Thy precious life has just begun. Thy mother holds thee near”. And yet, she knows the words do not ring true. True, all life is precious. But not one soul will ever value the life of this child. Born of a violent union, unwanted by his mother, into a world where people willingly march to the sound of guns. What future can she promise him? What life can this child possibly hope to have? Even though she loves him, he is a constant reminder of what happened to her, and like the villagers who once chased her away she cannot find peace when she looks into his eyes. 

Its ranks are filled with soldiers, united, bold and strong…

Victory, victory… The guys were singing and shouting, drunken by their thirst for blood and proud of their conquest. Bukavu had been encircled, trapped, taken, raped and ravaged. The soldiers executed the orders of their commander and had in turn executed the elders of Bukavu – one by one. Herodes was the commander’s name. His boys feared him.

They were now men. They had proven it – to themselves and to him who had led them into victory. Joseph, one of the soldiers, the one who raped Maria, was nonetheless feeling some unease. In following orders, Joseph had forced himself upon this young girl. The others had told him that having sex with a virgin was going to save him from the disease that was making him weak, this pandemic they called AIDS. But more importantly, the others respected him now. He had become one of them: their partner in crime.

You are the man! We saw you, Joseph. You did it. You made her cry – you and your gun. You made her scream. The words were both making him feel proud and good about himself, but for one reason, unknown to him, they were also haunting him. Could he look at a woman again without thinking of the pain he had caused to this young girl – whose name he would never know? In order to survive – either you dominate or you are dominated, Herodes used to say. To rule, you have to systematically brake down the bonds that bind communities together. They need to fear you or fear will overtake you…

I am trying to be like Jesus

War does not bring out the best in us – it brings out the worst in us. True, some acts are acts of courage – but aren’t those heroic acts always associated with saving lives, and not with taking them? Fear begets fear. It is the opposite of love. Misery begets misery. It is the opposite of joy. Violence begets violence. It is the opposite of peace.

The nativity story told the world of a little baby boy, born to Mary, a girl chosen among other girls to be the mother of a Savior, rejected by men and yet, many are they who believe he is their safe ticket to heaven. The story from Bukavu is the story of a little baby boy, born to Maria, a girl chosen among other girls to be the victim of a soldier, so he could gain accept in the eyes of his comrades, so he could become a man, taking by force what he believed was a safe ticket to health.

Jesus taught us that he was not Herodes. “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”  Jesus was nonviolent. Not exactly what you would associate with being a King. He was God. He was love, both long-suffering and kind. That is why he came to earth as a man and not as a woman: not because God favors men, but because the concept of what it means to be a Man on earth is so contrary to what it means to being God in heaven – who Mormons believe is male. Be kind, as a child, he said to them, and loving as a hen gathers her chickens:

“O ye people of these great cities which have fallen, who are descendants of Jacob, yea, who are of the house of Israel, how oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have nourished you. Yea, how oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not. O ye house of Israel, whom I have spared, how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart”. 

Love one another

It was necessary for Jesus to come to earth in the form and shape of a male – to represent God as his firstborn son, the first among all great men, a king of kings. “Little children, a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”.

The divine irony is the fact that Jesus exhibits throughout his life traits that we call feminine: peaceful, loving, kind, sharing, meek, forgiving, gentle, and caring. He helped the poor and he healed the sick. We crucified him, because he was a threat to men everywhere. He challenged the very idea of what it means to be a man: strong, violent, forceful, greedy, noisy, arrogant and proud. He challenged the way we think about achieving peace, not by dominating others before they dominate us, but by showing us a better way to freedom – paved with love and with sacrifice.

In short, this was the message Jesus gave to the modern House of Israel, to the modern sons of Jacob: “What manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.”  He showed all men an alternative masculinity – that of the nonviolent male who sides with the poor and the downtrodden. Come, follow me, the Savior said. 

For an alternative and nonviolent study of the Book of Mormon, mormongandhi is regularly publishing a study chapter on mormon nonviolence (latter day satyagraha) at http://mormongandhi.com. Each chapter follows the set-up of the Institute Study Manual of the LDS Church. In addition, you can share your thoughts and insights on the nonviolent readings of the Book of Mormon with other “peaceable followers of Christ” (Moroni 7:3) at the discussion forum (http://peaceablefollowers.wordpress.com) created in parallel to the “latter day satyagraha” site.

mormongandhi currently lives in Oslo, Norway. He has a BA in peace and development studies from Bradford University in the UK, where he studied religious peacebuilding, as well as a master’s in peace operations from GMU in Washington D.C.

mormongandhi is looking for alternative and more peaceful ways of thinking and living. He calls himself an advocate for nonviolence in the Restoration movement.

Firstly, I can understand other religions who live in my community who might be frustrated at the effort and money that is spent of events during the Christmas season, that is not directed into events that would help their own religious festivals.

Secondly, I sense that if Christians want their festivals to remain important then we need to ensure that they are important by our practising them rather than using (or assuming) some sort of cultural supremacy simply because we happen to be the dominant religious culture in a country.

Thirdly, no one else can determine whether I worship Christmas and the extent to which I feel the spirit of Christ.  Therefore although I think having that focus at Christmas time is a good thing I should not let the fact that other people do not believe become the major focus of my worship.  I am sure people who celebrate any of the Islamic festivals do not concern themselves with my benign neglect of their religious festival so why should I use mine against them.

Fourthly, no one can stop me from calling it Christmas, if I so choose.  I don’t care what anyone else calls.  If they want to change the legal name so that it does not alienate other religious denominations then I can’t see an issue with that.

This just seems a mis-directed way to focus on Christmas at a time of year when Christians should be at their most tolerating, inclusive and forgiving.

What do you think?

Should we legally protect Christmas or should we emphasise celebrating it ourselves and not be concerned about what others do?

I talked previously about the Wise Men and their part in the Christmas Story.  Not much is known about them, but there are quite a few interesting legends.  For example, we assume there are 3 Wise Men, but some ancient paintings show as few as two, and sometimes as many as four.  Names and legends have even sprung up to provide more information about these men.

In the Greek church,  Gaspar (or Caspar), Melchior and Balthasar are their names.  Some artists have shown them to represent all of humanity: its youth, middle age, and elderly.  In the Renaissance, other artists sought to make the magi represent race, color and creed.  In one painting, one of the Magi is represented as coming from Ethiopia and was black.  The others came from Persia and India.

Syrian Christians have a 6th century tale naming them Horamistar, King of Persia; Yestigat King of Saba; and Perozad, king of Sheba.  Wikipedia lists some other names and legends, and has some footnotes to provide some sources to these legends.

According to this video, in the Spanish world, presents are not exchanged on Christmas, but 12 days later on 3 Kings Day, January 6.  Presents under the tree are left by the 3 Kings, not Santa Claus.  A special cake is prepared, representing good luck for the next year.  The one who finds a ring cooked into the cake gets the good luck.

Marco Polo in the 13th century, claimed that he was shown the three tombs of the Magi at Saveh south of Tehran in the 1270s:

“In Persia is the city of Saba, from which the Three Magi set out and in this city they are buried, in three very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And above them there is a square building, beautifully kept. The bodies are still entire, with hair and beard remaining.”

Another legend says their bones were allegedly removed by Helena, mother of Constantine, who was looking for Christian artifacts in the 4th century.  She took them to Byzantium, and the bones have been moved a few times, finally ending up in Cologne, where they are today, sealed in a golden coffin in a cathedral.

So, can anyone verify that the Spanish celebrate 3 Kings Day?  It sounds like a very interesting tradition to me.  I really like the cake idea.  About 3 years ago, I was trying to explain to my then 4 year old that Christmas was more than just Santa Claus.  I told him that it was Jesus’ birthday.  My boy exclaimed, “We should make him a cake!”

As I thought of this 3 Kings Day tradition, I thought that might be an interesting addition to the holidays.  Perhaps we should all celebrate 3 Kings Day.  Perhaps we could save some money on the post-Christmas sales if we waited to buy presents after Christmas.  What do you think?  I like the idea of 3 Kings Day better than giving birds to my love (and I think she wouldn’t know what to do with all the birds either.)