The seventh commandment, Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy (Exodus 20:8) seems like a fairly simple statement on the surface. But, in practice, its interpretation is as wide as the Grand Canyon.
orthodox
Resolving the Conflict between the TBM and the ExMo
Today’s guest post comes from Ulysseus, a frequent commenter at Mormon Matters and elsewhere in the b’nacle. His website can be found here. To take a line from Shakespeare — a pox upon both your houses. The Ex-Mos and TBMs continue to argue past each other and never the twain shall meet. While the thought of a kind, loving heavenly being comforts and then closes the ears of the believer, the list of inconsistencies, logical disconnects and “anti-Mormon” cliches assuages and then closes the ears of the non-believer.
A Non-Historical View of the Book of Mormon
Perhaps the time has come in the church to recognize that some members want to openly espouse a non historical view of the Book of Mormon?
Pharisaical Observation
I wrote a post some time ago on whether they Pharisees were given a bad rap in the New Testament. It can be found here. One of the other bad raps against the Pharisees is that they were more concerned about the performance of the Law than the spiritual meaning of the Law. The story of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:10- 14) is meant to illustrate the point. Since modern Judaism is the outgrowth of Pharisaical Judaism, the same charge is made of the most observant Jews of our time. More on that a bit later.
Comparing Religious Observance: Mormons and Jews
I thought it would be interesting to map the religious observance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) and the Jews. I’ve recently heard some podcasts and read some posts talking around this issue, so I thought, since I have at least one foot in each religion, I might give it a try.
Virtual PH/RS Lesson: Elder Eyring’s talk and the New Year
I was asked to teach the lesson in Elder’s Quorum on Elder Eyring’s General Conference talk from October: Our Perfect Example (click here for video.) Inspired by Hawkgrrrl’s Virtual RS/PH lessons, I thought I’d give it a try again. I’m not sure if everyone is supposed to review this talk, but I believe this is the talk our stake has chosen. I think Elder Eyring’s talk is a perfect lead-in to New Year’s Resolutions. Shouldn’t we all resolve to be more like Christ? So, before I get to Elder Eyring’s talk, I want to discuss the History of New...
Death to the World!
In my endless search for connections between faith and music, I came across a stark and beautiful sight last month. First of all, I finally bought a Sleep album after knowing about them for years. Sleep is a sludgy, brutal Doom/Stoner Metal band from the early ’90s, and I really can’t explain why I love them so much. But that’s beside the point. I was reading about their history, and discovered that one of their original guitarists, Justin Marler, had left the band to become an Orthodox monk.
To Those Struggling In Their Faith
There are many within Mormonism who struggle daily with their faith. They have been exposed to historical information they were not aware of, they were torn in political battle, they dislike the culture, or in some other way awoke to a “reality” they had not known before. It can be a lonely place in a tight knit community with such strong beliefs. And when a person is in that frame of mind, it often feels like the solution is to crawl in a hole and disappear. To further throw salt in the wound, the church doesn’t have any sort...
Great Expectations: What Are Your Hopes and Predictions for General Conference?
“It’s the MOST WONderful TIIIME of the YEARRRRRR.” The leaves are starting to change color. The evenings and mornings are a bit crisper. Even the birds’ singing suddenly sounds sweeter than ever. General Conference must be coming this weekend.
A Personal Interpretation of Elder Hafen’s Remarks
At the Evergreen conference held September 18-19, 2009, Elder Bruce Hafen gave a talk regarding homosexuality. The talk was reprinted on the official LDS Church Newsroom website. I will not synopsize the talk here but I suggest reading it yourself. Within a very short time, for obvious reasons, the bloggernacle was dissecting and analyzing the speech. These actions generated some interesting discussions here, and one permablogger at FMH did a good job of challenging the less-than-spectacular research here.
Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up?
David W. Bercot, a Texas attorney and Evangelical Christian, embarked on a quest to discover what Christians believed and practiced before the Nicene Creed. What he learned caused him to seriously re-evaluate his beliefs, to eventually change his religious affiliation, and to present his findings and analysis in his book Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up. Although the book represents a critique of mainstream Evangelical Christianity in light of the teachings of the Early Church Fathers, Bercot’s analysis has surprising and thought-provoking application to Mormonism as well. While some may see Will the Real Heretics Stand Up as...
Adam and Eve: the First TBM & NOM
There have been several attempts over the years to categorize Mormon “belief-styles”: Orthodox Mormon versus Liberal Mormon, Iron Rod Mormon versus Liahona Mormon, and so on. In the online world of LDS blogs commonly called “the Bloggernacle”, Mormons are often categorized as being TBMs (True Believing Mormons) or NOMs (New Order Mormons). One evening when my wife and I had the opportunity to reflect on the timeless story of Adam and Eve, it struck me that their different responses to God’s commandments, and to Lucifer’s “temptation”, perfectly exemplified the different mindsets of TBMs and NOMs, and symbolically portrayed the...
Women are from Venus, Men are from Kolob
Based on my experience, I would guess that the majority of LDS women under age 65 would say that polygamy is NOT an eternal principle and that it doesn’t require any earthly worrying as a result. While the men are probably not worrying about it (although any of them who are married to me should think twice about expecting additional wives in the future), my impression is that a higher percentage of them believe it is an eternal principle that will be practiced long term.
The Problem with Tolerance
The church has a history of high level leaders making sweeping pronouncements that are later deemed incorrect, speculative, or unauthorized, yet in each case, church leaders are reluctant to make public correction of those presumptions. This tolerance sometimes results in dogmatic voices flourishing, drowning out those same tolerant voices that have graciously granted them access to the open mic.
An Explanation of My Reduction in Participation
For the past two years (almost), I have been an active blogger – to say the least. (*grin*) Actually, to be more precise, I have been a VERY active blogger. OK, that is an understatement. That has changed over the last three weeks.
Interfaith International British DJ
OK Paul technically isn’t exactly an international DJ, not unless you consider that you can listen to his interviews on line.
Worship or Whine?
This post was inspired by David Stout’s series of posts on LDS Worship, Part II and Part III as well as HawkGrrrl’s post entitled “More Christ at Church.”
Mormon Masks
Often people have a hard time with intimacy (intimacy = “into me see”) because they feel vulnerable. They would rather deal with ideas than people, and they don’t want others to see who they are. They might feel insecure or care what others think of them. People who feel this way wear what we call social masks to hide who they are and present a facade instead of their true self to others. And sometimes, the mask people wear is the church.
Who Should Go to Church, Anyway?
So over at T&S they’ve been having this discussion about the recent media report about the majority of America’s drifiting faith issues. And I know, you’re about to say, “Dude, this isn’t T&S. We do things differently at Mormon Matters,” and I understand. And while I discussed this a bit at my blog, I most definitely know we do things differently here than there. So I wanted to try to approach the subject differently here and add some value (well…perhaps I won’t be so successful at this latter endeavor.)
More Christ At Church
The mission of the church is to bring people to Christ (it is not the tri-fold mission of proclaim the gospel, perfect the saints and redeem the dead). Yet many members feel that the focus on Christ is missing in our weekly worship. So, what’s the best way to bring Christ back to the center of our Sundays?
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