OT SS Lesson #6
Hidden in our scripture reading for this week is a strange little passage which many modern Biblical scholars say was originally intended to explain the rise of the giant race of antiquity by the union of angelic beings with human wives. These verses in Genesis stirred a lively debate among early Christian theologians as they struggled to explain why God felt it necessary to cleanse the Earth with a worldwide Flood. It all starts with this odd passage inserted in the account before Noah built his vessel, the great ark. Continue reading…
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A recent post by Cr@ig on Main Street Plaza caused me to reflect on the strength of interfaith marriages. I had hoped to generate a follow-up post on 
this topic at MSP. However, since the comments on the Cr@ig’s post devolved into a blame game of whether the believer or non-believer was more responsible for marital dissolution, I decided it was probably best to avoid a second opportunity for mud-slinging.
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. Continue reading…
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Squaring the Circle is a geometry problem and a spiritual puzzle. It dates back at least 4,000 years. All of the great cultures that expressed advanced mathematics and philosophy approached this problem and had a mythology to give it meaning. On one hand, it is a practical, geometric exercise exploring approximations of PI and Phi. On the other hand, it is a philosophical puzzle to combine opposites and find the perfect balance. Can a human find their way through the maze of different extremes that we encounter in our mortal experience? We must navigate between light and darkness, health and sickness, pleasure and pain, life and death, good and evil. The greatest minds in history have expressed pleasure and enlightenment from this geometry exercise. A famous Greek philosopher included a statement in his work “On Exile” referring to one of his fellow countrymen who worked the squaring problem:
“There is no place that can take away the happiness of a man, nor yet his virtue or wisdom. Anaxagoras, indeed, wrote on the squaring of the circle while in prison.”
-Plutarch
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OT SS Lesson #4
Although our SS lesson for this week presents Adam and Eve as two literal, physical characters, the temple ceremony hints that we can benefit by viewing their story as figurative. I am often dismayed that symbolism, while given lip service, is so little understood in LDS circles. Since the majority of Mormons believe in a literal Adam who will return to the earth in his physical resurrected body and fulfill a major role at Adam-ondi-ahman, there is little reason to investigate the allegorical aspects of the Adam and Eve story. Thus, they have become “unidentified figurative objects” whose symbolic impact is veiled. Continue reading…
Mormon Matters introduces the 2009 Niblets Awards!
It’s back! The opportunity to honor the unique and talented Mormon bloggers of 2009. It’s a chance to look back on the year and remember the great things that happened in the Bloggernacle, to come together in a spirit of comaraderie and fun! Mormon Matters will be hosting this event to highlight YOU and your favorite 2009 Mormon blogs, and we are pleased to announce our continuing collaboration with Ziff of Zelophehad’s Daughters, the mighty numbers cruncher, who will handle results presentation at the end of this event. Continue reading…
OT SS Lesson #2
This was an interesting lesson to read after last year’s brou-ha-ha over an alleged “generals in the war in heaven” quote. On the 25th of February 2008, the Church issued an official statement from the Office of the First Presidency to all General Authorities, Area Seventies, Stake Presidents, Mission Presidents, District Presidents, Temple Presidents, Bishops and Branch Presidents which read:
A statement has been circulated that asserts in part that the youth of the Church today “were generals in the war in heaven . . . and someone will ask you, ‘Which of the prophet’s time did you live in?’ and when you say ‘Gordon B. Hinckley’ a hush will fall, . . . and all in attendance will bow at your presence. [You were held back six thousand years because you were the most talented, most obedient, most courageous, and most righteous.]”* Continue reading…
My wife brought this to my attention while reading the front page of the Deseret News: 2000s: The First Decade-Mormon Church Influence Soars. Without providing any sources, it says,
President Thomas S. Monson has been named the most influential 80-year-old in America and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are listed among the most important 100 Americans in history
Other noteworthy items from the article include from the past decade: Continue reading…
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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. Continue reading…
Many lament that Christmas has turned into a commercial gift-giving holiday. However, the Bible shows that gift-giving happened right after the birth of Christ. The Book of Matthew tells of 3 gifts the Wise Men gave: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Prof Deirdre Good of the General Theological Seminary in New York tells us the meaning of these particular gifts in Mystery of the 3 Kings: “The gift of gold is for royalty. The gift of frankincense is for divinity. The gift of myrrh is for death.”
Continue reading…
In this part 2 of the Studying the Old Testament series, we will discuss the books of the Old Testament, how they were organized, different books contained in different bibles, and extra-biblical books.
Continue reading…
I’ve always taken it as a given that Mormonism’s view of the afterlife shuffle has always been more universalizing than most of the other alternatives. Our formulation of heaven intuitively accommodates for the varying levels of understanding people can achieve in this life and in the spirit world: instead of a binary — heaven and hell — we have glories of heaven. So, we can safely say that although most people aren’t Mormons, most people won’t go to “Hell,” or at least, not the kind of Hell that many non-LDS religious people want to posit for nonbelievers of their religions. Regardless of people’s disagreements with the particulars of exaltation for the celestial aspirants, things actually look pretty good for the rest of us non-celestial people.
That being said, we do know that there is a divider between the glories and the non-glories. We have that ominous concept: Outer Darkness. But what does it mean? Who is it for? Continue reading…
In a lecture entitled ‘A Historian’s Perspective on Joseph Smith’, Richard Bushman shows an interesting trend in religious cultures that surrounded Joseph Smith. This trend centers around the tension between the Charismatic gifts and the Bureaucracy which contain them. I had an experience six months ago that made me realise that there is, in my view, a centralised view of the Spirit in the LDS Church that may restrict the spirituality of our local meetings. Continue reading…
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“For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, 
and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;” (D&C 58:26 – 27) Continue reading…
If you didn’t happen to read the February issue of Ensign Magazine in 1987, you missed some valuable instruction about how to provide critical feedback to Church leaders. Luckily for you, this post provides a second chance to get up to speed on what all would-be “improvers” in the Church should know about how to seek improving the Church without crossing any line that will forfeit your eternal exaltation and doom you to an eternity of teeth-gnashing with a TK smoothie. Continue reading…
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If someone can find something in the Book of Mormon, anything that they love or respond to or find dear, I applaud that and say more power to you. That’s what I find, too. And that should not in any way discount somebody’s liking a passage here or a passage there or the whole idea of the book, but not agreeing to its origin, its divinity. . . . [W]e have many people who are members of the church who do not have some burning conviction as to its origins, who have some other feeling about it that is not as committed to foundational statements and the premises of Mormonism. But we’re not going to invite somebody out of the church over that any more than we would anything else about degrees of belief or steps of hope or steps of conviction. . . . We would say: “This is the way I see it, and this is the faith I have; this is the foundation on which I’m going forward. If I can help you work toward that I’d be glad to, but I don’t love you less; I don’t distance you more; I don’t say you’re unacceptable to me as a person or even as a Latter-day Saint if you can’t make that step or move to the beat of that drum.” . . . We really don’t want to sound smug. We don’t want to seem uncompromising and insensitive. -Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Mar. 6, 2006. (Source.)
I testify that one cannot come to full faith in this Latter-day work and thereby find the fullest measure of peace and comfort in these our times until he or she embraces the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the Lord Jesus Christ of whom it testifies. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text, teeming with literary and Semitic complexity, without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages somehow–especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers–if that’s the case then such persons, elect or otherwise, have been deceived. And if they leave this Church, they must to do so by crawling over, or under, or around the Book of Mormon to make their exit.” -Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Oct. 4, 2009. (Source.)
When Elder Holland delivered his stinging rebuke to Book of Mormon critics in his General Conference address last Sunday, reactions ranged from “woots” and “double woots” by literalist believers of the Book of Mormon, to disappointment by those who felt Elder Holland was backtracking on his prior statement that Church members who don’t believe the traditional story of its origins should not be considered “unacceptable . . . as a Latter-day Saint if [they] can’t make that step or move to the beat of that drum.” However, after listening carefully to Elder Holland’s address again, I think both camps might be mistaken about what Elder Holland was intending to say, particularly with regard to the “Inspired Fiction” theory of the Book of Mormon. Continue reading…
OT SS Lesson #6
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