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.

Optimization

Optimization largely rules our world. Virtually all of management, engineering, politics, and much of science is about optimization. Optimization, in this sense, is the process of determining the optimal solution given all the objectives and constraints. In management, the process may not be that formal. Perhaps there is a board of directors who gather around a table to discuss the optimal set of policies, the direction to go, etc. In politics it is likely similar. The President of the U.S. surrounds himself with experts on a particular topic, they then engage in discussion, and hope to land on the optimal answer given the objectives and constraints.

For engineers the process is much more formal and precise. Usually optimization takes the form of a cost function – a function incorporating, mathematically, all the objectives and constraints. An algorithm (and there are many) is then employed to “solve” the function resulting in the optimal solution. To demonstrate, here’s an example:

Suppose you are designing an aircraft. There are numerous design possibilities, a canard style, V-tail empennages, aspect ratio of the wings, length of fuselage, coating of the surfaces, wingtips, where to place the turbines, height of vertical stabilizer (if having one at all), etc. etc. We would like to find the optimal answer amongst all these parameters such that we maximize lift, maximize cargo space, maximize safety, minimize energy consumption, etc. Of course we also have constraints. We cannot physically manufacture a flexible fixed wing that is 800 ft long and thin as a toothpick. To solve the problem, we can write down a big, long, nasty equation that would mathematically characterize the physics, constraints, and objectives and then pick our favorite optimization algorithm and wait for it to churn out the answer (which may take a long time).

Bayesian inference is one algorithm that can be applied to such an optimization problem. Typically one would choose this algorithm amidst a cost function that was stochastic in nature, having noise and/or error in the system, that expressed our confidence.

Finding the Truth, Optimization Style

In some sense, the Bayesian inference mechanism I discussed in previous posts could be seen as an optimization method for finding the truth. If we assume that all the new information we regularly encounter has some (even if very little) truth therein, and we apply that information in the regular Bayesian inference sense, we could then reliably conclude that we have found the “truth,” with some probability (level of confidence), given all the information.

This is highly related to a comment FireTag made on my previous post. He asked

So there are routes to evolve our beliefs toward truth no matter where we start or whatever the order of our search algorithm?

In the context of this question, Bayesian inference can easily be seen as a search algorithm. And, in fact, if we used a Sequential Monte Carlo method, it really does feel like a search algorithm.

In expanding this notion, my response, in part, was:

Absolutely (at least in my book)! Though certainly some search algorithms are definitely worse than others and some starting places better than others! Otherwise what prayer in the world do we have (unless you’re absolutely certain that YOU’VE got it right, but I sure don’t)? I view my religion/spirituality as a compass that (I hope) points me in a good direction. My hope is that if/when the absolute truth is made manifest to me I will be humble enough (and my definition of humble is “openness to the truth”) to recognize it because/in spite of my current confidence distribution.

From this perspective, we might view the church (or whatever church you belong to), the Gospel, this life, and all our associated experience as tools to help us optimize for, and draw nearer to the truth given the objectives and constraints of our personal limitations and the limitations of this mortal existence. While I have encountered a very few number of Mormons who claim that we have ALL the truth, this is not the claim of the LDS church. Most of us, I believe, accept there are things we don’t yet know and don’t yet understand. The real challenge is to have an appropriate confidence distribution such that you will accept that truth when it is made known to you.

However, I finished my response to FireTag with the following:

However, this really opens another can of worms – namely, what is truth? My explanation thus far has been about our perception of truth which may or may not correlate with objective or absolute truth. To argue over whether or not our perception of truth is objective truth is to argue over what forms of evidence are acceptable and what weight we should apply to that evidence (which is the conclusion of this post and is an argument with no victor).

I really enjoyed hearing President Carter discuss prayer during the peace negotiations between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  From page 70,

When we went to Camp David on September 5, 1978, Begin, Sadat, and I all wanted to pray.  But before our first talks, I spent several hours negotiating the text of the prayer.  I got a proposed draft from a prayer group in Washington and I made some edits.  Sadat approved it, Begin made some changes, and we issued the prayer the first day….

While we were at Camp David those thirteen days, Begin and Sadat were almost totally incompatible.  They didn’t like each other and kept resurrecting ancient grievances.  So after the third day I wouldn’t let them see each other again.

[Larry King]  There are stories the talks almost ended without a resolution a number of times.

[Carter] I remember one day, maybe the tenth, Sadat told Moshe Dayan he would make no more concessions in the negotiating text that I was carrying back and forth.  Sadat told his people at Camp David to pack, and he told National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to arrange a helicopter to take them back to Washington.

I was in my cabin talking to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and others about budget matters.  I was in jeans and a T-shirt.  I remember changing into a suit and going to Sadat’s cabin, where I had a very sharp exchange with him.  I accused him of breaking promises he had made.  Then I went outside to a quiet place by myself and prayed.

[Larry King]  The Camp David peace accords were signed three days later, on September 17, in a ceremony at the White House.

“Pray for your enemies” has an interesting meaning when looking at the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty.  Do you pray for you enemies?

I also enjoyed Larry’s exchange with Ralph Reed.  From page 184, Reed said,

One of the things the Bible teaches us to do is pray for our leaders.  It doesn’t say pray for the leaders of the political party with which you are affiliated.  It doesn’t say pray for Ronald Reagan but not Bill Clinton.  that’s something we have to rediscover.

[Larry King] Do you include Bill Clinton in your prayers?

Yes.  I pray for our national leaders, that they will be wise and that they will be fair and judicious.  I hope that liberals said the same prayer when Ronald Reagan was in the White House.  On the day Reagan was shot, I think every American prayed for his health and his protection.  Maybe there were some who didn’t, but I think most did.

The book was published in 1998, so I’ll update question:  do you pray for President Obama, Harry Reid, and Mitt Romney, John McCain and (fill in your favorite/least favorite politician here)?

“There are two kinds of people: those that say to God ‘Thy will be done.’  And those to whom God says ‘Ok, have it your way.’  C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

“Under certain circumstances profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”  Mark Twain.

Larry King wrote a book called Powerful Prayers.  He tells a joke on page 25.

“A rabbi and an alcoholic bus driver arrive in heaven at the very same moment.  The rabbi is shocked when the bus driver is greeted with great accolades and immediately asked to come inside while the rabbi is told to wait outside for a moment.  After a while the rabbi is brought inside and he immediately asks God why he had to wait after performing God’s work on earth while the bus driver with the drinking problem was given a hero’s welcome.  God says, ‘Rabbi, when you spoke in synagogue everyone went to sleep.  When the bus driver was on the job, everyone was praying.’

The Gospel Principles manual divides the lesson into 5 questions.  I think we could have a good discussion based on these questions.

What Is Prayer?

While I like this question, I think this lesson is so bland that it deserves a little spice.  I’ve been reading a book titled “The Road Less Traveled and Beyond” by M Scott Peck.

“I’ve said before that I am a born contemplative.  This means that setting aside time to think—and pray—is as natural to me as brushing my teeth.  My routine involves a total of almost two and a half hours a day, in three separate forth-five minute intervals.  No more than a tenth of that time is spent talking to God (which is what most people would consider prayer) and another tenth listening to God (a definition of meditation).  For the rest of the time, I’m just thinking, sorting out my priorities and weighing options before making decisions.  I call it my prayer time because if I simply called it my thinking time, people would view it as less ‘holy’ and feel free to interrupt me.  But I’m not being dishonest.  In many ways, thinking is akin to prayer.

My favorite definition of prayer—one that doesn’t even mention God—comes from Matthew Fox, who describes prayer as “a radical response to the mysteries of life.”  Thus prayer has everything to do with thinking.

Why Do We Pray?

CS Lewis said, “I don’t pray because it changes God; I pray because it changes me.”

Let me quote from Larry King’s book again.  He interviewed Tom Robbins on pages 50-51,

“I think a lot of prayer is nothing more than deity panhandling.  People ask for God for money, for cars, for girlfriends and boyfriends, and for help in their work.  I don’t think that’s the Deity’s function.  At least, I don’t know, I find something tacky about that.  The only think that I ask God for is protection and safety of my loved ones—and myself.

When Should We Pray?

Larry interviewed Steve Young on pages 169-170,

“I don’t pray to win because that’s not appropriate.  I pray for safety and for clarity of mind.  There have been many times when I have left the sidelines for the field and I say a quick prayer for clarity of mind.”

How Should We Pray?

J Willard Marriott on page 149,

“I’ve always been taught it’s not necessarily good to pray for the end result.  But it’s good to pray for assistance and help in whatever you need to do….I’ve come to believe that fasting is an important part of prayer.  It cleanses the body and weakens you to the point where you are more humble and attuned with what you need to say, and it helps you listen.

When I fast and pray, I always say the prayer at the end.  It’s more effective in the end that it is in the beginning.  I think you are more in tune with the spirit….Prayer is work and the Lord requires a lot of work sometimes.

How Are Prayers Answered?

Steve Young said on page 170,

So many times we learn by unanswered prayers.  So many times there are prayers we say—“Gee, if this would just work out once”—but what we need isn’t always what we want, it’s what the Lord knows is best for us.  The purpose of mortality is to learn.

On page 163,  Larry asks rabbi Irwin Katsof,

So I put the question to the rabbi:  If a prayer is answered but we’re not given the tools to decipher it and are not even aware it has been answered because so much mishagoss—Yiddish for “craziness”—has been piled on top of if, then the prayer really hasn’t been answered.  Or has it?

Another uncomfortable pause at the other end of the phone.  Or maybe the discomfort was on my end?  Let’s see, if an uncomfortable pause occurs and there’s nobody there to hear it…

“Larry, if a prayer is answered and your eyes aren’t open, then of course you’re not going to see it or understand it.

Why can’t God speak English?  Why all the hoops?

What do you want?  You want it delivered every morning like the newspaper?  You want room service?  You want a Larry Channel on your TV?”

I must admit, I started thinking about the  last one and enjoying the idea…..

But now, after 36 years of practice, I’m rethinking prayer.  In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I’m not a “lose the keys, pray for keys, find the keys” sort of guy by nature.  When I hear those sorts of stories, I am more likely to roll my eyes than dab with a Kleenex.  Nevertheless, I have a confession to make:  I suffer from Enos Envy (E.E., for short).

You all know the story:  Enos was a young man who, while raised with a knowledge of the truth, found himself having strayed from it.  Then, while out hunting, he had epiphany of sorts, which left him with a heart full of joy and a soul that “hungered.”  Overwhelmed with these rushing emotions, Enos prayed.  And prayed.  And prayed.

The zenith of this day-long supplication was a conversation with God, in which God basically agreed to a long list of requests presented by Enos.  Not only did God forgive Enos’s sins, he agreed to, among other things:  (i) visit the Lamanites according to their faith, and (ii) preserve the records that would eventually become the Book of Mormon.  Pretty good for a day’s work, right?

We use this scriptural account to teach one another about the power of prayer.   In most recountings, however, Enos’s powerful experience is reduced down to a simple formula to be followed (the Enos Equation):

Earnest Prayer = Tangible Results (i.e., blessings)

This is the model of prayer I hear lauded consistently as the ideal.   A quick example:  Just this past Sunday, our EQ lesson dealt with temple worship.  The instructor spoke at great length about the revelations that await us in the Celestial Room.  His lesson culminated with his promise that if we want those revelations and/or spiritual manifestations, “all we need to do is pray.”  Citing Christ’s words in Matthew 7:7, he said:  “‘Ask, and it shall be given you.’  That’s the promise; it’s a guarantee from God.”

This used to be a great source of consternation for me.  So often I felt as if my prayers simply went unheard — I did poorly on tests, both my sisters ended up with MS, and I often was plagued with doubt.  That’s where the Enos Envy kicked in.  I was praying with real intent:  why wasn’t I getting the same results?

As I have thought about prayer, I have come to see the Enos Equation as missing the point of the story.  It has all of the right elements — faith, prayer and blessings certainly are wonderful things and belong together in the same sentence — but the emphasis is wrong.  In the traditional telling, the Enos Equation focuses on ends of prayer, rather than the means by which we communicate our desires to God.  In my example above, the well-intentioned EQ teacher taught prayer as the direct method to by which to obtain revelation, with nary a word about how we should approach God with our requests.

Taken to its extreme, this view of prayer smacks of the Prosperity Theology (or “Health and Wealth Gospel”) preached in Evangelical mega-churches.  In a nutshell, these churches teach that God wants us to be financially prosperous; if we want a new Mercedes, all we need do is ask for it and, if God deems us “godly” enough, we’ll get it.  And the secular version of this approach is wildly popular, as well.  After reading “The Secret,” some folks I know have taken to “sending” their requests “out to the Universe.”  Want a new a new and bigger home, get the Universe on the horn and you’ll moving in sooner than you think.

In short, the Enos Equation reduces God (or the Universe, for you atheists out there) into a spectral Santa Claus, just waiting to grant even the most materialistic wishes of our hearts.  To be clear, I am not suggesting that those who adopt this approach pray only with selfish intent.  But focus on self is inherent in the model.

This strikes me as backwards.  For me, the important part of Enos’s account is his “wrestle” with God which preceded his experience.  To that end, I propose a Revised Enos Equation:

Faith + Humility + Prayer = Communion w/God

In this formulation, the emphasis is on our relationship with God, not on what he can do for us.  Said another way, the point of prayer is put ourselves on a spiritual and emotional plane (i.e., the “wrestle”) where we can communicate openly with God.  This “wrestle” is no easy feat — it requires faith, humility, patience, sacrifice, etc. — characteristics Enos had in spades.  For example, think about how we teach our kids to pray:  kneeling with eyes closed, arms folded, and head bowed.  Simple gestures, but they bespeak a reverence for the act of communicating with God.   I don’t imagine God cares one whit about the position of limbs during prayer, or that he conditions his blessings on our ability to pray in ritualistic form.  But these gestures can help us to focus ourselves such that we God can speak with us.  The means by we speak with God matter far more than whether we obtain the end we seek.

Even with this new perspective, I still suffer from occasional bouts of Enos Envy.  But now, I’m less concerned about my abilities to call forth the tangible blessings of heaven, than I am jealous of Enos’s ability to find peace with God, to reach a state of mind where God can communicate with him directly.  So what if I haven’t moved a mountain or cured anyone’s cancer?  If I can, even on an occasional basis, reach that state of Enos-like zen, then I consider my prayer a success.  Blessings will follow according to God’s will.  I  no longer feel I have the authority/right to demand such blessings at will.  God is God, and that’s good enough for me.

So, do you suffer from Enos Envy?  What are your thoughts on, and expectations regarding, prayer?  (I would have created a poll, but I am far too lazy for such an endeavor.  Perhaps I should throw that out to the Universe — check back in a day or two to see if my wish has been granted )

*Anyone who served a mission South of the border offered this prayer more than once, guaranteed! Unfortunately for some, God is sometimes cruel, even to his beloved servants.

OK Paul technically isn’t exactly an international DJ, not unless you consider that you can listen to his interviews on line.

He’s a returned missionary and member of the Grays Ward in the Romford Stake Essex England.  Paul got the show after being a presenter at Hospital Radio Chelmsford for a year and chased a local station for airtime:

“When I was asked to join Phoenix FM the station manager warned me that radio presenting wasn’t all easy but in fact involved a lot of voluntary service too.  I responded that I was a missionary in France for 2 years for the church and was used to giving service to others, as well as being actively involved in the church weekly.  The station manager was intrigued by this and I was invited to the station to explain more about my religious beliefs and the voluntary service I had done in France.  I was then offered the chance to begin a brand new religious show once a week that they had been wanting to start but couldn’t find anyone with the religious background to do it.  I put together the idea for a chat show where he would bring in local religious leaders and ask them about their beliefs on air and their views on current issues.”

Mark Pinchin and Ian Clarkson from the Church of Scientology – Listen   here

Highlights:

10 million members around the world. Their anti-drug program “Say no to drugs say yes to life”.  Human rights educational programme and other great work they do in the community.  We discussed the 8 dynamics, the founder of the church L. Ronald Hubbard and where the word “Scientology” comes from.

The core beliefs of the church of Scientology are:

Man is a spirit, he has lived before and that man is good. Through wisdom and knowledge man can improve any area of his life he wants. Scientology is all denominational and non-conversionary and members bring with them their own beliefs.

Great Interviews ( All the ads and music have been stripped out)

Habibur Rahman & Forad Edu – Islam / Alfurqaan Foundation
Father Matthew Bemand – St Thomas Church of England
Councillor Dudley Payne – Mayor of Brentwood
Mark Pinchin and Ian Clarkson – Scientology / Jive Aces
Ed Wellman – PhoenixFM Monday Classics
Richard Burch – Brentwood Buddhist Society
Chris Day – Crown Street Christian Fellowship
Reverand Peter Thomas (Baptist)
Reverand Trevor Jamison (United Reformed Church)
Julian May – ELIM
Father Paul Keane – Brentwood Catholic Cathedral
Bishop David Barter

The show can be seen at www.phoenixfm.com/proverbs98.php

Let us know your views

This trend is probably to some extent backlash against the histo-centric year we are having with D&C as focus of GD class and JS manual in RS.  There may also be some desire to reaffirm our status as Christians when other religions often stigmatize us as not being Christian.  So, what would it look like if Christ were the center of our worship?  Here are some possibilities of how lessons & talks might be more Christ-centric:

1. the atonement of Christ; his role and divinity
2. how to apply Christ’s teachings:  how to be followers of Christ
3. stories from the life of Christ, events that happened to him in his lifetime
4. the parables of Jesus – sharing and elaborating on these messages
5. how to develop a personal relationship with Jesus; understanding Jesus’ nature as a personal friend

Have I missed any major angle above?  It occurs to me that these topics might get stale if covered for 3 hours every week.  Also, if speakers only focused on 1 or 2 of the 5, it would get very repetitive.  I also notice that as I look over the list, I don’t find them equally appealing.  Personally, I would prefer them in this order:  2, 4, 3, 5, 1.  What order would you prefer?  I think the order in which they are usually focused at church is the order I listed them above:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Do you agree?

Do you feel that Church should be more Christ-centered or that it is sufficiently Christ-centered?  Which of the above focuses would be of the most interest to you?  Are there some ways of focusing on Christ that you don’t find appealing?  How do you think our focus (especially by topic) compares to other Christian churches?  Discuss.

Faith needs reason because faith unchecked by reason can be just as deadly as reason unchecked by faith proved to be in the gulags of Soviet Russia, the Cultural Revolutions of Maoist China, and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia.  (Would Stalin, Mao, and Pot have ordered the killings of millions if they had had faith in an afterlife and final judgment?)

We Mormons are certainly not immune to the potential dangers of unquestioning faith.

Brigham Young once said he feared that members of the Church would “settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation . . . .” (Journal of Discourses, 9:150 [quoted by James E. Faust, “Continuous Revelation,” Ensign, Nov 1989, 8].) When unconditional confidence in our church leaders is so often hailed as a virtue, one wonders what Brigham had in mind exactly when he warned church members against “trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in [our] salvation”. I wonder, what are “the purposes of God in [our] salvation” that are potentially thwarted by “reckless confidence” in church leaders?

In a similar vein, Brigham taught that we Mormons still have work to do in identifying and rooting out erroneous beliefs held among us. He explained that we receive revelation “line upon line” only to the degree that we have first thrown off “our false traditions and foolish notions”. [1] For me, hearing an LDS Prophet acknowledge that even we Mormons have “false traditions and foolish notions” suggests we have an ongoing obligation to critically evaluate our longstanding doctrines, policies, and practices to determine whether any of them are, in fact, false and foolish.

Of course, the greatest obstacle to identifying our “false traditions and foolish notions” is our own unwillingness to critically examine ourselves. There is no doubt that critical evaluation of our doctrines, policies, and practices is a delicate art in LDS circles, and there are plenty of examples of how not to criticize the Church. However, if done properly, critical evaluation can help us identify the false traditions and foolish notions among us so that we may lay them off, and thereby open our hearts and minds to new revelation from God (the Church’s re-evaluation and abandonment of the pre-1978 priesthood ban being an excellent example). In other words, when done properly, critical evaluation does not tear down the Church, it builds up the Church.

But despite our having successfully cast aside certain false traditions and foolish notions in the past, and despite the scriptural warnings against being lulled into an “all is well in Zion” mentality, there persists a strong resistance to the idea that other false traditions and foolish notions may still exist among us. As a result, when reasoned inquiry suggests that a longstanding doctrine, policy, or practice may be a false tradition or foolish notion that we ought to cast aside, such suggestions are often met with a host of misquotations, misinterpretations, and misapplications of scripture and doctrine that collectively promote the idea that true faith requires us to continue to adhere to the officially established status quo, even if it seems to be erroneous in our reasoned judgment. (Might that be the “reckless confidence” Brigham Young warned us against?) And the problem with that approach is that it can potentially lead people to embrace all manner of falsehood and evil, and in the cleverest manner of all: by convincing people that true faith requires them to ignore their reasoned judgment.

To illustrate my point, I’ve presented a fictional conversation below between an FLDS leader and an FLDS teenage girl. In the discussion below, an FLDS teenage girl is having reasonable doubts about FLDS doctrines, policies, and practices. At every step of the way, her FLDS leader gives her familiar responses designed to reinforce the idea that God is testing her faith by seeing whether she will unconditionally obey her church leaders regardless of her reasonable objections. As you read the conversation below, ask yourself this one question: Should this FLDS teenage girl abandon her reasonable doubts about FLDS doctrines, policies, and practices and exercise unconditional faith in her church leaders? Or should she listen to her inner voice of reason and common sense, and reject the faith propositions that her parents and leaders are attempting to foist upon her?

FLDS LEADER: Susan, I hear rumors your faith in President Jeffs and the Brethren is weakening. What’s going on?

FLDS GIRL: Well, brother Jeppson, I have to be honest, I have been having serious doubts about whether everything President Jeffs and the Brethren are doing is right, and whether everything they’re telling us is true. I feel so confused, and the more I think about what they’re doing and what they’re teaching us, the less sense it all makes to me.

FLDS LEADER: Young lady, God will never give you doubt or confusion. Satan is the author of doubt and confusion. God gives you faith. You need to have faith, nothing wavering. Doubt not.

FLDS GIRL: I’ve heard that before, but I just can’t help having all these questions about whether the things our church leaders are doing are really God’s will.

FLDS LEADER: Be careful, young lady, you shouldn’t be questioning if what our church leaders do and say is right. Follow the Prophet, President Jeffs. Don’t go astray. And be very careful, because questioning the Brethren is the road to personal Apostasy.

FLDS GIRL: What does personal Apostasy mean?

FLDS LEADER: It means rejecting your church leaders, which cuts you off from the one true church and God.

FLDS GIRL: So when you say that questioning our leaders can lead to personal Apostasy, you’re saying that questioning our leaders can lead to disagreeing with our leaders and rejecting them?

FLDS LEADER: That’s right.

FLDS GIRL: But why should we fear disagreeing with our leaders and rejecting them if they are wrong?

FLDS LEADER: Susan, how could you possibly think the Brethren are wrong?

FLDS GIRL: Well, for one, it just seems that so much of what our FLDS leaders do and teach couldn’t possibly be inspired by God.

FLDS LEADER: Well, God’s ways are higher than man’s ways. It doesn’t make sense to you because even God’s foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men.

FLDS GIRL: I know its not wise to reject God’s ways, but how do I know that what FLDS leaders are saying and doing is God’s way?

FLDS LEADER: Susan, surely you’ve heard that scripture enough times. “Whether by mine own voice or the voice of my servants, it is the same.” There you have it. If our leaders say it, it’s the same as God saying it. If President Jeffs says it, then you can rest assured it is God’s way.

FLDS GIRL: I’m not so sure that’s the correct interpretation of that scripture. I read that scripture as saying if God says something to his servant, and his servant says it to us, then that indirect communication through a servant is the same as God saying it directly to us. In other words, if A says something to B, and B says it to C, then it’s the same as A saying it to C. But that’s quite a different proposition than the idea that everything B says to C must have come from A. That’s just bad logic.

FLDS LEADER: Bad logic? It seems to me you’re using the philosophies of men. And frankly, I don’t know where you get off thinking you have authority to interpret scripture for yourself. FLDS leaders alone have the authority to interpret scripture. And because we are God’s modern-day Prophets, what we say is new scripture, even if it seems to contradict existing scripture.

FLDS GIRL: I’m sorry, but I just can’t buy into that.

FLDS LEADER: You can’t buy into it? Young lady, you need to be humble. Be obedient. Be teachable. Be submissive. Don’t be so prideful and arrogant as to think that you are better able to discern the truth than your leaders who have decades of experience with matters of the Spirit.

FLDS GIRL: I’m sorry, but it just seems ridiculous to me that God would place in the hands of a select few men the ability to discern the truth, and then expect the rest of us to follow them no matter what.

FLDS LEADER: You’ve misunderstood me. I never said that FLDS leaders alone have the ability to discern the truth. You have the ability to know for yourself that FLDS leaders are God’s chosen prophets, seers, and revelators. First you must desire to believe, then you need to pray and ask God in faith, nothing doubting, if what the Brethren tell you is not true, and God will tell you that it is true.

FLDS GIRL: Well, I’ve done that, several times, but I don’t sense God confirming to me so many of the things the FLDS leaders and teaching and doing.

FLDS LEADER: Well, the Holy Spirit can only communicate with you if you have clean hands and a pure heart. Susan, is there any sin or other misdeed in your life that could be preventing you from feeling the whispers of the Holy Spirit?

FLDS GIRL: Sins and misdeeds? I’m sure I have plenty. The Bible teaches us that we have all sinned, and that not one doeth good. The Book of Mormon teaches us that we can’t count all the ways we can offend God. So I’m sure I have many sins.

FLDS LEADER: Well then, now we’re making progress. You need to repent of your sins, and when you’ve fully repented and abandoned all your sinful ways, you’ll be able to feel the Holy Spirit confirming the truthfulness of FLDS teachings. And if you do that and still can’t feel the Holy Spirit confirming the truthfulness of FLDS teachings, then you need to keep repenting until you can.

FLDS GIRL: Maybe I should have been more clear. Although I am sure I have sins, I can assure you that I am not guilty of any serious sins or transgressions. Like Joseph Smith, I can honestly say that “while I frequently fall into many foolish errors and display the weakness of youth, and the foibles of human nature; which, I am sorry to say, lead me into divers temptations, offensive in the sight of God. In making this confession, no one need suppose me guilty of any great or malignant sins.”

FLDS LEADER: Well then, if you are certain your heart is sufficiently pure to receive revelation, then all you need to do is give the Lord more time to give you a testimony. Be patient and exercise faith by doing whatever your leaders tell you to do. And by so doing, over time, maybe even after years or even decades, you will receive a testimony that what they are telling you is true. But don’t abandon the faith of your fathers. Endure to the end.

FLDS GIRL: I’m sorry, but I just can’t spend my whole life obeying orders and believing things that don’t make sense to me, hoping that one day, years or decades down the road, I might finally get a witness of their truthfulness. What if decades go by and that spiritual witness never comes? By the time I realize it was all wrong all along, it will be too late; most of my life will have already gone by.

FLDS LEADER: But you don’t have to worry about that, Susan, because if the Prophet tells you to do something and it’s wrong, and you obey it, then the Lord will only reward you for your faith and will never punish you for it. But don’t worry, because the Lord will never allow President Jeffs to lead us astray in the first place.

FLDS GIRL: I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me that God will reward me for doing something erroneous because I chose to disregard my reason and follow the commandments of men who claimed to be divinely inspired but weren’t. And I understand President Jeffs thinks the Lord will never let him lead us astray, but what if President Jeffs is leading us astray by telling us that he will never lead us astray?

FLDS LEADER: Listen, young lady, you know what the Proverb says: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not to thine own understanding.” Trusting in the Lord means trusting in his chosen prophets instead of relying on your own understanding.

FLDS GIRL: Well, maybe trusting in the Lord means trusting in his prophets, but how do I know the FLDS leaders are God’s chosen prophets in the first place?

FLDS LEADER: I already told you: repent and be clean, desire to believe, then pray in faith, nothing doubting, and if the answer doesn’t come, just keep obeying and doing what they tell you, and in doing everything they tell you to do, eventually you’ll know for yourself that what they say is true.

FLDS GIRL: And what if I’ve done that and I feel the Holy Spirit has told me something that contradicts what the Brethren have said?

FLDS LEADER: That won’t ever happen, because everything the Brethren say comes from the Holy Spirit. Remember: they will never lead us astray.

FLDS GIRL: I hate to say it, but it seems we’re just going around in circles here.

FLDS LEADER: You know, that’s a really contentious thing to say, and I’m getting really concerned by the contentious tone of your remarks. Stop contending with me and the Brethren. Contention is of the Devil.

FLDS GIRL: So let me get this straight: when our Church rejects all the other religions and churches and their leaders and their beliefs, that’s not contention. And when the Brethren tell members they’re wrong and that they need to get in line, that’s not contention either. But when members disagree with the Brethren, that’s contention?

FLDS LEADER: Young lady, I’m sad to say it, but it’s quite apparent to me that you just don’t have a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

FLDS GIRL: With all due respect, I don’t think it has anything to do with that. It’s just that so much of what our FLDS leaders are doing and saying these days seems to just defy plain common sense; it seems so illogical.

FLDS LEADER: But don’t you see, Susan, that’s the whole nature of faith — believing or doing something even if it contradicts your sense of reason! Do you think it made sense to Noah to build an ark when it wasn’t raining? Do you think it made sense to Abraham to have to kill his own son? But Noah and Abraham defied their “common sense”, their “reason”, their “logic”, and they did exactly what the Lord told them to do even though it seemed not to make any sense at the time.

FLDS GIRL: Look, I completely understand why we would need to follow a direct commandment from God like Noah and Abraham received, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense. But isn’t that a very different proposition than the idea that we need to unconditionally follow a man, President Jeffs, even if what he says doesn’t make sense to us? Isn’t that really just asking us to put blind faith in a man?

FLDS LEADER: No, Susan, that’s not asking you to put faith in a man because God is at the head of this FLDS Church. I so testify to you. Unconditionally obeying President Jeffs is not putting your faith in man; it’s putting your faith in God!

FLDS GIRL: Well, I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t make sense to me either. It seems like asking me to unconditionally obey President Jeffs and the Brethren is asking me to put my faith in man.

FLDS LEADER: Susan, I feel impressed to warn you that the eternal fate of your soul is at stake here, so let me get down to the bottom line. Susan, this whole life is really just a test to see if we will do everything the Lord requires of us, yes, even if it contradicts our “logic” and “reason”. And you need to understand that President Jeffs and the Brethren are the only ones on Earth who have the authority to tell us what the Lord requires. So by obeying them, you are demonstrating the faith that God requires of us. And in fact, the more illogical the Brethren’s actions or teachings seem to you, the more faith you are demonstrating to God when you obey them!

FLDS GIRL: So it seems you’re telling me to ignore my sense of reason.

FLDS LEADER: Well, Susan, that’s precisely what true faith requires!

FLDS GIRL: But why would God give us reason and then require us to forsake it?

FLDS LEADER: Well, I guess that’s a question we’re just going to have to wait until the next life to understand.

CONCLUSION

To be clear, the point of the fictional dialogue above is to illustrate how scripture and doctrine can be misinterpreted and misapplied to preach a false version of faith that can be probably found amongst most religions, churches, and denominations — an unquestioning faith; a faith that requires us to ignore reason; a faith that demands unconditional obedience to leaders because of their claimed divine authority. And the problem with that unreasoned faith is that it can lead people to embrace all manner of falsehood and evil by convincing devout believers in any church that the status quo established by their leaders must not be questioned, must not be challenged, must always be right, and must always be followed, no matter how unreasonable it may be.

NOTES:

[1] The full quote is as follows: “[God] would be glad to send angels to communicate further to this people, but there is no room to receive it, consequently, He cannot come and dwell with you. There is a further reason: we are not capacitated to throw off in one day all our traditions, and our prepossessed feelings and notions, but have to do it little by little. It is a gradual process, advancing from one step to another; and as we layoff our false traditions and foolish notions, we receive more and more light, and thus we grow in grace; and if we continue so to grow we shall be prepared eventually to receive the Son of Man, and that is what we are after.” (Journal of Discourses 2:309-318).

First of all, here’s what it says:

64 Whatsoever ye ^aask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is ^bexpedient for you;

65 And if ye ask anything that is not ^aexpedient for you, it shall turn unto your ^bcondemnation.

Expediency.  The definition of “expediency” is:  1. fit or suitable for the purpose; proper under the circumstances. or 2.  conducive to advantage or interest.  Expediency is a big JS word.  It appears 52 times in the BOM and 27 times in the D&C.  It only appears 7 times in other scripture:  John uses it 3 times and Paul uses it 4 times.

• Do people pray for things that they don’t think are expedient?  Don’t they ask for something because they think it’s what they need?  So, is this a caution against being too specific in what you ask for?  Or against misunderstanding what’s proper under the circumstances or advantageous to you?  Doesn’t that notion contradict this one:

Luke 11: 11-13:  11  If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?  12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give ^athe Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

• Is something expedient for some people and not for others?  Can I ask for something and get it, but if you ask for it, it will turn unto your condemnation?
• How expedient is expedient?  What if something is kind of expedient, but then the time has just passed?  (Like OC translating was no longer expedient, “Sorry time’s up, thank you for playing.”)

Condemnation.  This doesn’t specify whether you will get it or not if it’s not expedient, just that it will be for your condemnation. 

• Does that mean that if God doesn’t give you what you asked for (I keep picturing a vending machine), that it wasn’t expedient and now you’d better duck because condemnation is coming?  Can nothing happening or just not getting it be the ”condemnation”?
Does God ever give you the thing that wasn’t expedient, and him giving it to you is in fact how it turns to your condemnation?  (An ironic twist – that’s how it works on Fairly Oddparents anyway).
What kind of condemnation is this we’re talking about?  Full-on raging condemnation or something mild that goes away with an over-the-counter salve?

Discuss.

I share that background to explain why – at Sunstone West this past weekend – I took such a keen interest in a screening of the film “Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons.” Produced by Margaret Blair Young and Darius Gray, this movie goes through the history of black people in the Church and the evolution of the priesthood ban, which is largely “credited” to Brigham Young. Apparently, he evolved (or de-volved) in his views, as the movie had some interesting early quotes from him that were far more kind and tolerant towards blacks than some of his later whoppers. The historical context painted by the film shows an influx of Mormon converts from the southern states who brought their slaves to Utah. Henceforth, Young made the decision to make Utah into a slave-friendly territory. Another bit of historical context that I don’t remember being mentioned in the film is that the Democratic Party (then pro-slavery) was also more tolerant of plural marriage, which was likely another factor in the decision.

Fascinating as the history was, the movie was far more touching for me on a personal level. I was utterly floored by the powerful testimonies shared by the many black LDS members interviewed on camera. Many of these folks joined the Church while the ban still existed. One African-American sister shared the heartbreaking observation that the first time she was ever called a “nigger” was in the Salt Lake temple. Yet, she was far from angry. Like many others of all races, her life had been touched in a positive way by the Gospel. That many of these folks retained a love and loyalty to an organization that had rejected them for so long was amazing. The Church apparently did not sponsor this project, but it should buy every copy that it can and send it out to all four corners of the Earth. Seriously, who better to share the hopeful message of the Gospel than a group of people who consistently getting the short end of the stick.

Another interesting tidbit from the film was a story about Dr. Cecil “Chip” Murray, retired pastor of the First AME Church of Los Angeles (which was founded by a former slave of Mormon pioneers). Murray shares a story on camera that he was once invited to meet with then-President Hinckley at the Church Office Building. At that meeting, he says Hinckley apologized to him for the Church’s participation in the slavery issue and for its part in perpetuating prejudice against black people. How broad he meant that is arguable, but it certainly seems a long way from just three decades ago.

Ms. Young was there and hosted a lively discussion afterwards. She is working on getting the film distributed. Apparently, Howard University has agreed to show it on its PBS station. Hopefully, BYU does the same. Anyone interested should start bugging their local PBS station. And maybe some e-mails to Netflix to spark their interest wouldn’t hurt, either.

Basically, two thumbs up here. Despite the lousy economy, I would heartily recommend dipping into your wallet for $25 to buy the DVD (it can be found at

http://www.untoldstoryofblackmormons.com

) And no, I’m not getting a cut. Thanks for listening.

Late one night in the middle of it all, I considered my roommate. He was a friend of mine and also the Elders Quorum President. It came to my mind to ask him for a blessing, using consecrated oil. I desperately wanted to be healed from this chain of horrible sicknesses, and the prayer in my heart went something like this: “Lord, I know when I get blessings for these things, they usually don’t work, and I might be selfish to ask. But could you just do me a solid this one time? People got healed constantly of much worse than this in the Scriptures. I’m not testing you, I think. I just want to get better.” My roommate then administered the blessing, and, much to my dismay and anger, it didn’t work.

Let me pause for a moment to say that I have a strong testimony in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’ve testified time and time again that Joseph Smith is a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true and comes from God. So it’s moments like this that give me pause. I was a little irritated that the Lord wouldn’t just heal my illness. It had gone on too long, I had missed so many days of work, I had spent a lot of money on doctors and even antibiotics for the sinus infection, and I still wasn’t healed. I was having trouble sleeping, and, during the time I had the throat infection, I couldn’t eat solid food, so I was losing weight. It was all awful. I was doing everything I could in my life, I wasn’t guilty of any grievous sins, so why couldn’t the Lord just throw me a freakin’ bone and heal my illness just once? He healed all kinds of people in the Bible, why wouldn’t he heal me? What’s the point of Priesthood blessings if they don’t work?

In my feverish, angry mind, I went over some possibilities, in this order:

1. Maybe my roommate didn’t do it right? He performed both parts of the blessing, maybe I should have gotten two people to do it?
2. Maybe I simply don’t have the faith to be healed.
3. Maybe blessings are pointless rituals.
4. Maybe we don’t really have the Priesthood like we think we do.
5. Jesus healed many people over His ministry. What happened? Shouldn’t we be able to identify His church based on the miracles that occur?
6. Is this really His church?
7. Will the Universe really end someday in a Big Crunch and take us all with it? How can God stop it?

At this point, needless to say, I wasn’t thinking very clearly, so instead of trying to answer these questions that night, in my frenzied state, I decided to just take some Ny-Quil (sweet, precious Ny-Quil) and go to sleep.

Two weeks later, I woke up and went to work just like any other day. I brushed my teeth like any other day. I ate my morning Pop-Tart (brown sugar and cinnamon, which is the best flavor ever) just like any other day. As the dry pastry went down my throat I remembered for an instant that two weeks previously I couldn’t have eaten such a dry food because it would have been too painful, and it was at that moment that I realized I had been symptom-free for at least three days.

I offered up a prayer to the Lord and thanked Him for my health. With a more complete fullness of joy and gratitude than I’d had for months, I told Him that I was thankful that I felt better, thankful that I could go to work without being faint and queasy from lack of solid food, thankful that I could eat my dry little Pop-Tart for breakfast. I felt so good. In hindsight, let me say that it would have been very unusual for me to offer up a prayer such as this before I got sick, and that’s where the lesson for me was.

The purpose of my blessing at this time was to consecrate my illness unto the Lord. There are so many difficulties in this life, and for me, illness is a difficulty because I hate being sick. As a singer, and as a person who relies on food to stay not dead, I hate it when my throat hurts. I hate congestion, I hate having a fever, I hate aches and pains, I hate not getting a good night’s rest. But this time, asking for a blessing in the middle of my illness caused my thoughts to turn towards the Lord, even if they were confused and angry. It was like fasting, but instead of a fast from food it was a fast from health, and when I returned to full health, my heart was bursting with gratitude.

Am I denying that miraculous healings occur? Absolutely not. But God decided not to heal me during this illness, and that’s why I think that sometimes God gives men the Priesthood, the power to act in God’s name, in order to consecrate illness unto Him. To make our illness and affliction holy.

What if we looked at every hardship in this way? What if we saw every blessing of comfort, strength, and healing as a consecration of our hardships, that we might be open to the lessons God wishes to bestow upon us? Most importantly, and on the flip side of all of this, how do we avoid the strange but very possible temptation of taking too much glory in our affliction?

I’ve been thinking about Levi Peterson’s The Backslider lately (SPOILERS AHEAD).

The 1986 novel tells the story of Frank Windham, a Mormon cowboy from southern Utah. Frank struggles with his faith and finding his place in Mormon culture. Topics including sexual sin, backsliding, self-mutilation, and guilt have made this novel pretty controversial in many Mormon settings. Despite being beautifully written, I’ve always thought that the true genious of the novel is the way Frank envisions God & Jesus.

Something happens during the transmission of Heavenly knowlege from God into the human mind. We are terribly incapable of understanding or comprehending God. And this means that our visions and revelations, as sacred as they may be, aren’t actually visions of God. They’re human interpretations of glory beyond our understanding. We have visions of God – glorious visions – real visions – but they’re filtered through an earthly lens colored by our personal circumstances. We understand God based on who we need Him to be. This isn’t to denigrate the authenticity of visions, but we should be careful when trying to make categorical statements about God based on an earthly vision.

At one point in the novel, Frank is feeling guilty because of his backsliding and he imagines God pointing a gun at him, calling him to repentance. For some this is absurd, but for Frank, it was as real as any other heavenly vision. His understanding of God is shaped by his experiences. Whereas God communicated his wrath to Adam through banishment, to Noah through flooding, to Moses through serpents and plagues, He communicated his wrath to Frank through a rifle.

By the end of the novel, Frank imagines Jesus as a Cowboy, riding a horse with cigarette in hand. It’s an account that is sure to rub many Mormons the wrong way, but it’s who Frank needed Jesus to be in order to have faith in Him. A merciful God wouldn’t send Frank anything less than Cowboy Jesus.

So we can talk about who God is, what He looks like, or where He came from, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that He is.

I don’t know much about God, but i’m pretty sure Jesus rides a bicycle.

“Happiness is a full bike rack!” –Yehuda Moon

So attentive MM readers, won’t you tell me a little about YOUR version of God?

• Intercessory prayer for the sick only has a health benefit when the sick person knows about it.    Does prayer for the sick make them healthy?  If so, how does it work?  It is simply placebo effect (sounds a lot like being healed according to your faith) or is there more to it?
• Prayer and meditation actually change the brain’s development; those who frequently pray have much more developed frontal lobes.  Maybe we could replace TR questions with a simple brain scan.  I kid.
• Those who do not attend church have twice the risk of dying in the next 8 years as those who attend church weekly.  Risk levels vary based on church attendance.  (1992, Univ. of TX study).  Conclusion:  Go to church or die.
• Those who attend church live 2-3 years longer than those who do not.  (Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical Center).

So, why all these health benefits?

• Community centers.  Social benefits of church attendance or being in an extended family of believers.  Some congregations deliberately work together to promote health or weight loss.
• Friendships.  Individual relationships can provide the extra support needed to relieve stress, to feel understood, and to care for each other when ill.
• Physical sensations associated with houses of worship.  As a hospital can contribute to wellness (or illness if dirty or depressing), so can houses of worship transport one’s body by creating feelings of comfort and health.
• Belief that the body is a temple.  When you believe that your body is sacred or divine, you are not only more likely to take care of it, but you create health through your emotional state.
• Prayer’s impact on the brain.  Prayer and meditation can literally transport the body and create health.

So, while every church has health benefits, what are the unique components to Mormonism that lead to a healthier life?

• Focus on Families. Healthy family relationships that are supportive and free from abuse are probably the number one prolonger of life.
• Visiting/home teaching.  The sense that someone knows and cares that you exist is a powerful force for those who might otherwise succumb to despair or feel they are alone in illness.  Friendship is one of the great health benefits of religion.  Plus, you may get a rush of endorphins when your VTers just can’t get to you in the month, feeling like you have extra time in your schedule.
• Fasting.  Many religions and spiritual disciplines prize fasting for its health benefits in clearing the body of toxins.  Mormon fasting also has the benefit of altruism; those fasting feel good about donating the cost of the skipped meals to the poor.
• Lay clergy & participation expectations.  The more engaged you are in your religion, the more likely you are to reap health benefits from fellowship, service, and a sense of purpose or meaning.
• Prayer.  Prayer can literally help your body heal in transcending the temporal concerns that might plague you.  Deepest prayer accesses parts of the brain not normally used.
• Priesthood blessings.  Rituals associated with healing allow faith to release the benefits to the body, much like a placebo effect.  The better the ritual, the more convincing environment for faith (think suspension of disbelief).
• Temple attendance.  Boring?  Mystical?  Transcendent?  If for no other reason, the temple provides a health benefit through silent meditation (anything above a stage whisper is gauche) and complete isolation from outside distractions such as blackberries and whining kids.
• Tithing & church welfare. Especially in trying economic times, it’s a comfort to know that there is a fallback with church welfare for those full tithe payers.
• Word of Wisdom.  If for no other reason than eschewing alcohol and tobacco, the WoW would have health benefits for those who might otherwise O.D. on harmful substances.  In times of stress or illness, though, eliminating coffee and tea and eating meat sparingly can have additional health benefits.

What are the components to Mormonism that could lead to reduced health?  Are any of these unique to Mormonism?

• Stress.  This varies from person to person, but there seems to be a correlation between high levels of belief, perfectionism (expecations of perfection from oneself and others), and responsibility (aka stewardship).  If we could just get rid of that pesky middle one, all would be well.  IOW, “be ye therefore perfect” could land you six feet under.
• Two words:  Funeral potatoes.  It’s hard to imagine a more cholesterol laden food.  Oh, wait.  Honey butter.  Possibly fry sauce.  So-called Mormon foods are neither good for the body, nor for the belly.  If you want to develop a hefty pair of Relief Society arms, go to a ward potluck.
• Repression.  Repressing one’s feelings can lead to depression, ulcers, and can weaken the immune system and make one more prone to all kinds of illness.  Those who feel they have to put on a mask to fit in to Mormon culture are going to be less healthy, first emotionally, then physically.  There has to be room in the culture for a diverse array of people to feel comfortable being their authentic selves.  We literally kill people when we don’t accept them for who they are.  And last I checked, “Thou shalt not kill” was still one of the top ten no-nos.

So, is Mormonism more or less healthy than other faiths or about the same?  Are there times when someone should leave the church for health reasons?  How can we make church healthier for all?  Discuss.

I always have struggled to pray formally and daily on a personal level. For as long as I can remember, I have had a hard time kneeling alone and praying vocally. For most of my life I didn’t understand why, and, although I tried to recommit numerous times, I never could “conquer” that particular habit. My struggle continued through various church callings, including stints in a Stake Mission Presidency, as a Ward Mission Leader, in a Bishopric and to this day as a High Councilor. I still have a hard time, but now, at least, I understand why a little better.

I have struggled with “formal prayer” all my life, largely because I have not struggled with “informal prayer” at any point in my life. All my life, I have prayed regularly; it simply has not been on my knees and vocally, on a set schedule. I naturally commune with God; I just do it silently, in my own head. I understand the following passage from Amulek in Alma 34:18-27, since it resonates with my own experience:

18 Yea, cry unto him for mercy; for he is mighty to save.

19 Yea, humble yourselves, and continue in prayer unto him.

20 Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks.

21 Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening.

22 Yea, cry unto him against the power of your enemies.

23 Yea, cry unto him against the devil, who is an enemy to all righteousness.

24 Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them.

25 Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase.

26 But this is not all; ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness.

27 Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.

I truly do naturally have a prayer in my heart always, and I truly do pray by actually forming words in my mind often throughout each day. I struggle, however, to vocalize those prayers and to offer them in a formal manner. I have reached a degree of peace with that conflict, since I believe it is more important THAT I pray than HOW I pray, but I still am not comfortable completely with my inability to remember and schedule formal prayers. I see it as a weakness that I still have to overcome, even as I see my tendency to pray “continually” as a great strength.

Recently, as I was contemplating this irony, it struck me that it has been easy to excuse my difficulty with formal prayer by thinking what I do (pray continually) is obeying a higher law – that if I have to choose one or the other, it is better to pray as I do than as I don’t. I actually believe that, but I have come to realize that I still don’t pray “completely, wholly and in a fully developed manner”. In other words, I don’t pray perfectly yet. That is the goal for which I am striving – not necessarily to pray “perfectly” right away, but rather to be able to learn to pray more completely by finally praying more consistently in a formal manner – at the very least in a manner than can be considered “regularly”.

I have no driving desire right now to do more than that, and, honestly, I’m not sure I ever will – since I truly am satisfied overall with the way and regularity with which I pray. All I know is that I need to learn to pray formally (and, perhaps, vocally) more easily than I currently do.

As I considered all of that this past week, I was left to ask:

Why then do I struggle so much with formal prayer? Other than what I articulated above (the fact that I really do carry a constant prayer in my mind and heart), is there some other personal characteristic that “gets in the way” of kneeling and vocalizing prayer?

First, some of the paradox behind the struggle:

I have no inhibitions whatsoever with public speaking or one-on-one conversation. I have performed in public since the days of my earliest memories. I sang a public solo for the first time when I was six years old (I think; it might have been eight, but I believe it was pre-baptism.) – “I Hope They Call Me on a Mission” in Sacrament Meeting for a cousin’s missionary farewell. I gave my first public speech in First Grade, when I received an award for reading a ridiculous number of books during a contest. I sang in solo competitions and vocal groups from 4th – 12th Grade; I’ve played piano solos and accompanied others hundreds of times; I played the saxophone for eight years in school; I was the Drum Major of our High School Marching Band. I was a school teacher. More recently, I’ve been in Sales and Marketing for nearly twelve years. I don’t remember EVER being nervous or shy about speaking or performing in front of people. A shrinking violet I am not.

I also am not shy about expressing my thoughts and feelings – as anyone who knows me in the Bloggernacle can attest. When it comes to group participation, I am more likely to be highly visible and audible than quiet and invisible. Communication skills and inclination are not a problem for me.

It hit me just a couple of days ago that I simply am not a very “formal” person. I am totally comfortable interacting in formal situations, but, for me, doing so is an artificial way to concede to the need to “play the formal game”. In a past job, I walked the corridors of the Ohio Statehouse and talked about million dollar funding projects with executive directors of major philanthropies, but my actions in those discussions were “artificially” formal for me. I would have been much more “at home” and “natural” in jeans and a t-shirt, sitting outside on the grass and just having a heart-to-heart chat. I’ve conducted formal interviews for years, but I’d rather sit and rap with someone than grill them in a formal manner.

Also, I am a natural tease, and I tend to take lots of things less seriously than many others. For example, I’m not sure the member of the Stake Presidency who heard my talk last Sunday expected the quote from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (on charity: “Be excellent to each other.”) or the description of listening to someone learn to play the bagpipes as similar to hearing someone kill a cat – in context of being charitable as people learn to play their souls (although I did mention in the talk that I probably shouldn’t say “kill a cat” in Sacrament Meeting). I’m a country boy at heart, and the sociality that exists in a small town tends to be a bit less formal than at a country club or in a middle-upper class suburb.

I’ve known all of that about myself for a long time, but it never really registered in the context of formal prayer. Simply opening up my mind and heart and talking with God works for me. It’s who I am. I’ve had some incredible spiritual experiences in my life, but I’m having a hard time thinking of one that occurred during a formal, vocal, personal prayer. (Priesthood blessings are a different story, but I’m distinguishing them as “ritual prayer” from “personal prayer”.)

What struck me is that the most powerful experiences I have had in my life that are associated with prayer have come when I was being most “true” to myself – when I wasn’t engaged in an activity that was “foreign” or “unnatural” to me, but rather when I was doing what I do best. Those experiences all have come either when I simply was chatting with God (talking with him informally in my head and/or heart) or when I was involved in a ritual of some kind – like a Priesthood blessing or an ordinance.

This insight has been a revelation to me, and I am contemplating the implications. At the very least, it has reinforced the need to be careful of requiring all God’s children to speak with him in the exact same way – of over-simplifying and communalizing something that might be better left complex and personal. Sometimes, unity of purpose and result might be better than total unity of form and function. At the very least, it’s given me more to ponder – and it’s made me even less inclined to judge others with regard to how they pray and how/if they feel they get their own answers.

• On one end (and according to most TBMs), anyone, at least in theory, can know the Church is true as long as they sincerely ask God, and as long as they aren’t too sinful.
• On the other end, there are people who firmly believe that no one can know anything for certain about God. As an LDS missionary, I met a woman who would counter every testimony by saying, “you don’t really know for sure, you only think you know.” Yeah, this was pretty awkward, especially in church. Also, it was rather odd how she alone could be certain that no one else was certain.

In addition to addressing the question epistemologically, it’s also important to take into account the historical usage of the term “true”.

In the 19th century, when sailors would get their bearings on ships, they would say that their heading was “true” if it would lead them to their destination. If they found that their heading was not leading them to their destination, their heading was considered “false”.

In 19th century America, when people would debate about religion, they would often argue if certain beliefs were “true” (or if they were useful for steering your life so that you would end up in heaven). If a belief was “false”, it would not help you get into heaven and by default, it would send you to Hell.

A number of Protestant (mostly Evangelical and Fundamentalist) denominations still use the “true”/”false” classification system for religious beliefs, arguing that their doctrines were “true”, and that anyone who said anything different was teaching false doctrine.

From this perspective it still doesn’t make a lot of sense to say “the church is true” (since a church can be anything from a building to a belief system), but the statement that the gospel is true is an assertion that the Gospel will lead you on to an eternal reward.

This is why it is so common for people to say that Mormons are going to Hell. The logic is that if: 

1. Mormons have beliefs that are not approved of God (such as the Book of Mormon or the prophetic authority of Joseph Smith) and
2. Their unapproved doctrine is false in the sense that it will lead them away from a heavenly reward then
3. Mormons are going to Hell.

The question of whether individuals or groups are capable of plotting “true” courses towards heaven (as well as the question of whether there can be more than one “true” course), are still widely debated.

I’d be interested to hear what others think.  Do you believe everyone can know?  Can anyone?  Can you?  Discuss.

If you interpret Oliver’s “gift of Aaron” in Section 8 as a divining rod, it makes for some interesting reading.  Oliver’s gift has told him many things (verse 6).  The gift only works for Oliver because of the power of God (verse 7).  If he has faith in his gift, he will use it to do marvelous things (verse 8).  Oliver’s gift is the work of God (id.).

When I first learned of what “the gift of Aaron” might be, my initial reaction was that it was, well, odd.  I mean, a divining rod?  I knew about Joseph Smith and folk magic, but I sort of put the idea aside.  Then, I read the heading for Section 11 which says, “This revelation was received through the Urim and Thummim in answer to Joseph’s supplication and inquiry.”  And I thought, “Whoa.” 

Faithful Mormons accpet that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim and a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon.  He used the Urim and Thummim to receive revelations that became scriptural passages of the Doctrine & Covenants.  Is a divining rod any stranger than a Urim and Thummim?  At least I have seen a divining rod.  I have heard people talk about divining rods.  I have never seen a Urim and Thummim.  And that got me thinking about revelation.

Divining rods and seer stones and interpreters are certainly outside our daily experience, and it is easy to think them odd.  But weren’t they just aids that Joseph (and perhaps Oliver) used for a while in seeking inspiration and revelation from God?  Don’t we all use tangible objects to help us believe and seek God’s guidance?

I have long thought that part of the power of ordinances is their tangibility.  You know precisely when you were immersed in water, and that meant something to you.  You know when hands are placed upon your head.  When you eat the bread and drink the water, it is a signal to your soul (the tangible and the intangible part) that you are seeking for God’s spirit.  When I think about it, I see lots of examples of tangibility as an aid to revelation and faith.

Easton, a commenter at Gospel Doctrine Underground, raised a couple of interesting ideas.  He referred to a talk by Dallin Oaks who said that reading the scriptures can be like a Urim and Thummim.  By that, Elder Oads meant that we can receive revelation through scripture study, not just on the topic we are reading about, but on any topic.  Easton also referred to a statement by Brigham Young that Joseph Smith had taught that everyone could and should have their own seer stone.  I don’t know if Joseph was speaking literally, but I think we all use tangible things to seek revelation.  The temple might be the ultimate example.  Among other things, don’t lots of people who really need revelation and guidance go to the temple because they believe being in a sacred place, a building, will help them find it?

I guess it is natural to think that things outside our experience, like the Urim and Thummim and seer stones, are kind of strange.  But we have a wealth of tangibility that Joseph and Oliver did not have:  sacrament emblems blessed by the priesthood, the laying on of hands, celestial rooms.  All these things help us find inspiration and direction from God.  Maybe God just finds ways to work through the tools we have.

What do you think?  Can tangible things help us get revelation?  Do you have a “seer stone”?  What is it?

When you hear the name Oliver Cowdery, you probably think of the story that culminates in the revelation that became Section 9 of the Doctrine & Covenants. This section uses Oliver as a (bad) example of how to seek and receive personal revelation.  Today’s guest post is from The Teacher.  Come visit The Teacher here.

But, the poor guy. I can’t help but thinking that Oliver felt a bit like the rug was pulled out from under him. In sections 6 and 8, the Lord seems very encouraging of Oliver’s desires to help with the work and even to actually translate. “If you ask of me, you will receive; if you knock it shall be opened unto you” the Lord says. (6:5). “Even as you desire of me, so it shall be done unto you” the Lord says (6:8). “If thou wilt enquire, thou shalt know mysteries,” the Lord says. (6:8). Whatsoever you shall ask me . . ., that will I grant unto you,” the Lord says. (8:9). Then, the Lord gets very specific. He tells Oliver that if he asks to translate, by his faith “it shall be done unto [him.]” (8:11).How could Oliver not feel like it was done deal? Oliver Cowdery was no slouch in the personal revelation department. He learned of the Prophet Joseph and the translation of the Book of Mormon while living with the Smith Family. He prayed for his own confirmation of the truth and saw the plates in a

vision, before he ever met Joseph. Clearly, he was a very faithful, believing person. Why else would he essentially abandon his life to go help a self-proclaimed prophet he’d never met translate the Book of Mormon?But we know the rest of the story. Oliver tries to translate, and fails. The Lord famously tells Oliver that he did not get it; it was not just going to be given to him. Oliver had to work for it. He needed to study it out and seek confirmation. (9:7-9). “Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it to you when you took no thought save it was to ask me.” (9:7).

Huh? What is going on here? Despite my ironic title, I do not think God fooled Oliver Cowdery. God is by definition just and fair. But, I tell you this: I am not as faithful or diligent a person as Oliver Cowdery. If Sections 6 and 8 had been directed to me, I would have assumed that I was going to get what I wanted if I asked.

So, why did the Lord put Oliver in this situation?

We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true Mormons. Joseph Smith

Are you a Unitarian without knowing it?

We believe that:

• In the spirit of civil and religious liberty, equality of respect and opportunity is for everyone
• Everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves.
• The fundamental tools for doing this are your life experience, your reflection upon it, your intuitive understanding and the promptings of your own conscience.
• The best setting for this is a community that welcomes you for who you are, complete with your beliefs, doubts and questions.

We can be called religious ‘liberals’:

• Religious because we unite to celebrate and affirm values that embrace and reflect a greater reality than self.
• Liberal because we claim no exclusive revelation or status for ourselves; because we afford respect and toleration to those who follow different paths of faith.

We are called ‘Unitarians’:

• Because of our traditional insistence on divine unity, the oneness of God.
• Because we affirm the essential unity of humankind and of creation.

A liberal approach

Unitarians find their bond of unity in shared values, such as:

• The nurture of life’s spiritual dimension.
• The use of reason and honest doubt in the search for truth.
• Mutual respect and goodwill in personal relations.
• Constructive tolerance and openness towards the sincerely-held beliefs of others.
• Peace, compassion, justice and democracy in human affairs.
• Reverence for the earth and the whole natural system of which we are part.

It is the Unitarian experience that these values form a more effective foundation for true community than insistence on uniformity of belief and doctrine. Unitarians affirm that truth and humanity are best served where both the mind and the conscience are free. They maintain that no one book, institution or individual has the monopoly on truth, no matter what they may claim for themselves or their devotees may claim for them. Unitarians affirm that:

• Every person’s life involves developing a value-system by which she or he lives.
• People should enjoy individual liberty and private judgment in spiritual matters.
• Respect for integrity is preferable to the pressure to conform.
• Beliefs may change in the light of new understanding and insight.
• The final authority for your faith lies within your own conscience.

On our personal life journey we are aided and inspired by:

• The example and spiritual insights of others.
• Writings deemed ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’ by the various faith-traditions of humanity.
• Inherited traditions of critical and philosophical thought.
• The ongoing creative work of artists, musicians and writers.
• The scientist’s search for knowledge and understanding.

Here Unitarian PDF A Faith worth thinking about?

You Tube video explains it very well!  Here

Questions

As you probably know there are 5^th Generation Mormon/Masons who receive all the privileges affiliated with the church

But can you be a non-theist=non Christian Unitarian and a Mormon receive all the privileges affiliated with the church?

Even in our church there seems to be a growing number of active non-theist members?

Aren’t we encouraged to have Inter-Faith Partnerships and Dialogue associate with religions whose teachings differ from ours?

Do you disagree with some of their teachings?

Do you identify with some of their teaching and principles more than you do with some LDS teachings?

What are some of the good principles we should gather together and bring into Mormonism?

“We thought that we had the answers.
It was the questions we had wrong.”
-U2, 11 O’Clock Tick Tock

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the dilemmas God must encounter on an almost daily basis when His children ask Him questions that are based on a host of false assumptions and man-made concepts. I’m sure God wants to answer everyone’s prayers, but what’s a good Father to do when He’s constantly being asked the wrong questions?

The questions we ask God are necessarily based on our own perceptions and understandings of the world around us. Of course, being that our perceptions and understandings are hopelessly limited and therefore hopelessly flawed, we inevitably formulate questions that, from the perspective of an omnipresent and omniscient God, range from childish to foolish to utterly nonsensical.

To illustrate my point, let’s use a hypothetical example. Imagine that Sam lives in what is now Kazakhstan in the year 600 B.C. His whole life, Sam has been taught by everyone that Zorg is the true Grand Mufti of Korm, the one legitimate heir to that highest of spiritual offices first held by Zorma the Blessed (blessed be his name), and is therefore the only genuine possessor of the Oracle of Yurt, which, as everyone knows, gives its possessor alone the power to discern God’s will for all mankind. (The one catch is that the Oracle of Yurt is not a physical object that the purported Grand Mufti can just show the world to prove his claim; the Oracle is supposedly an unseen spiritual device whose true possessor can be discerned only by the pure in heart through prayer.)

So far the hypothetical sounds ridiculous, I know, but that’s exactly the point. Imagine a scenario where someone’s entire perception and understanding of reality is based on concepts, doctrines, ideas, terms, phrases, and titles that seem completely normal to him because they’ve been taught to him his entire life but that, from God’s perspective, are just way out in left field.

Now imagine one day our friend Sam decides to gain a testimony for himself about whether Zorg is indeed the true Grand Mufti of Korm. So Sam fasts for a week, gives all his surplus to the poor, ritually shaves and washes himself, and climbs to the top of Mount Zuru to pray. As he kneels on a ritual bed of obsidian shards, he utters the following prayer from the depths of his soul: “Dear God, please tell me whether Zorg is indeed the true Grand Mufti of Korm, the one legitimate heir of Zorma the Blessed, the only genuine possessor of the sacred Oracle of Yurt.”

Before discussing God’s possible answers to Sam’s prayers, let’s first consider what God actually hears when Sam utters his prayer. It would seem that Sam, like us, has actually offered two prayers: (1) the spoken prayer that was based on erroneous man-made concepts; and (2) the unspoken prayer in Sam’s heart, i.e., for God to show him how to live a good and happy life, and to “do the right thing.” It was those sincere, well-motivated unspoken desires of Sam’s heart that caused him to climb the mountain to pray. But when he knelt down and opened his mouth to pray, those unspoken desires were filtered through the lens of Sam’s time, place, and culture, and in that process, Sam’s pure unspoken desires were translated into the erroneous man-made language and concepts he’d been taught to use his entire life, resulting in a sincere but utterly misguided spoken prayer.

Now let’s evaluate God’s options for answering Sam’s sincere but misguided prayer. But first, a caveat. I realize there are is a wide range of possible nuanced answers that God could give Sam. But for the sake of time and space, I think it’s fair to say that all the possible responses could be summarized as either leading Sam toward or away from Zorg, the purported Grand Mufti. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to the former as a “Yes” answer and the latter as a “No” answer.

1. The “No” answer. Since there is no such thing as a true Grand Mufti of Korm, etc., etc., God would be perfectly justified in giving a simple, direct “No” answer in response to Sam’s sincere but misguided spoken prayer. The upside to this approach is that it’s the most honest and truthful. But there could be significant downsides to revealing the “truth” about the Grand Mufti to Sam. What if God knows that leading Sam away from the Grand Mufti would cause him to pursue a lifestyle that will ultimately bring great sadness to Sam, his family, and his friends? What if there are no other belief systems/religions/churches that can lead Sam to a better life? What if God knows that Sam’s rejection of the Grand Mufti could lead to his being shunned by his community, or imprisoned, or even killed? In short, giving a direct, honest “No” answer to Sam’s sincere but misguided spoken question may actually lead Sam farther away from what God knows to be the righteous unspoken prayer in Sam’s heart (i.e., to live a good life and be happy).

2. The “Yes” answer. God can choose to look past the erroneous assumptions in Sam’s spoken question and focus instead on the unspoken prayer in Sam’s heart, i.e., for God to show him the path toward a good and happy life. Assuming the Grand Mufti is a pretty good guy who dispenses a lot of pearls of wisdom, and there are no superior belief systems available to Sam, then giving Sam a “Yes” answer will point him to the path that is most likely to fulfill the righteous unspoken desires of his heart. The upside to this approach is that it seems more loving and merciful. I know I’d rather have God give me what I meant to ask for rather than responding to what I literally asked him. I don’t like the idea of a God who would lead me away from a path that he knows will fulfill the unspoken righteous desires of my heart because of technical errors in my spoken questions. But the downside is that a “Yes” answer will likely validate and reinforce erroneous, man-made concepts in Sam’s mind (i.e., it will cause him to believe there is actually such a thing as a true Grand Mufti, an Oracle of Yurt, etc.). In that respect, a “Yes” answer, although compassionate and merciful in a certain sense, could also be considered deceptive and misleading.

To be clear, my purpose here is simply to illustrate how our flawed conceptions of reality may cause us to formulate flawed questions in our spoken prayers, which may present God with the dilemma of either (1) giving us technically “misleading” answers to our spoken prayers that paradoxically lead us closer to the unspoken prayers in our hearts, or (2) giving us “honest” answers to our spoken prayers that paradoxically may actually lead us away from the unspoken prayers in our hearts.

One final thought: substitute the words “Zorg” and “Grand Mufti of Korm” and “Zorma the Blessed” and the “Oracle of Yurt” with the names and official titles of the leaders, both past and present, of the various religions and churches in the world, along with their claims to authority. Might this dilemma help explain why the devout adherents to all the world’s different faiths all feel so strongly that God has confirmed their beliefs?

So where do these medical miracles come from?  Certainly, from the minds and work of Doctors and medical researchers.  In most cases, many years of study, trials and treatments bring about these things. But, really, who is the author of these miracles?

The first thought that comes to my mind, is that these things come from God.  That He has given the gift of intelligence to the people to discover medical miracles that prolong life.  That He inspires them and allows certain positive things to happen to make these advances a reality. Because all good things come from God.  I don’t think you’d get an argument about this from a religious person.  Secularists would argue otherwise, but then they argue anything that has to do with God and religion.

Here is the LDS Church position on prolonging life:

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not believe that allowing a person to die from natural causes by removing a patient from artificial means of life support, as in the case of a long-term illness, falls within the definition of euthanasia.  When dying from such an illness or an accident becomes inevitable, it should be seen as a blessing and a purposeful part of eternal existence.  Members should not feel obligated to extend mortal life by means that are unreasonable.  These judgments are best made by family members after receiving wise and competent medical advice and seeking divine guidance through fasting and prayer. ” (http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/public-issues/euthanasia-and-prolonging-life

But, on the other hand, I wonder if God, in His infinite wisdom and perfect Plan of Salvation would allow unnecessary prolonging of a life that might, through the natural progression of things, pass away from the infliction.  It seems that He allows those inflictions as part of the cycle of life.  Could it be that these medical miracles actually thwart the Plan of the Father?  Could these seemly positive things be the product of him whose purpose is to put obstacles in the way of God’s children who try to realize their greatest reward, that of Eternal Life?  Could these medical miracles be his work? 

Could it be Satan?

Kind of a crazy premise I know, but I can think of a number of reasons why it could be so.

For an older person, at the final stages of his/her life, it would seem cruel to intervene medically to prevent that person from passing through the veil to the other side to a possible reunion of loved ones, an assignment and peace and rest from the trials of this life.

For an infant, born prematurely with a life threatening condition, needing only to gain a mortal body, being hooked to wires and tubes, treated for months to receive a partial life, with multiple challenges and a difficult existence.

Think of the resources, both time and money that go into prolonging a life. The millions of dollars poured into research.  The profits made by huge corporations.  The fact it can drain a family’s life savings, leaving them in debt forever.

Now, there are many, many examples of lives being prolonged that are fruitful and worthwhile.  There is no doubt about that. 

There are many stories about miracles that have happened to cure someone of an infliction.  But, in many of those cases, they are without medical intervention and a mystery to medical personnel.  That is very different than what I am discussing.  Those non-medical miracles are given to us by God.

So, what do you think?  Again, I know it is crazy, but it is something I thought about.

What is Knowledge?

“Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraces it feels himself at liberty to embrace every truth: consequently the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft, fall at once from his neck; and his eyes are opened to see the truth, and truth greatly prevails over priestcraft.”  (1839)

(Note the singular use of the word “truth.”)  How does an open canon (ongoing revelation) enable members of the church to accept all truth as it is revealed regardless of the superstition, bigotry, ignorance or priestcraft of the day?  How does ignorance, bigotry, superstition and priestcraft still creep in?  What can individual members do to embrace truth and eschew superstition, priestcraft, bigotry and ignorance?

“Knowledge is necessary to life and godliness. Woe unto you priests and divines who preach that knowledge is not necessary unto life and salvation. Take away Apostles, etc., take away knowledge, and you will find yourselves worthy of the damnation of hell. Knowledge is revelation. Hear, all ye brethren, this grand key: knowledge is the power of God unto salvation.”  (1843)

Joseph Smith takes his definition of “knowledge” for granted.  He seems to use it to mean revelation, not facts, scientific evidence or information.  How does this definition alter our view of the role of knowledge in our salvation?

How to Gain Knowledge

The lesson gives examples of how to gain knowledge, all of which are based on learning from those who know more, not through scientific experimentation or scholarly research.  Even revelation can be viewed as gaining knowledge from a Person (God) who knows more than we do.

How can we seek out the best teachers?

What Are the Obstacles to Gaining Knowledge?

The lesson outlines several obstacles to gaining knowledge (or one might say obstacles to revelation):  Word of Wisdom violations, creeds, and doubt and darkness.

Word of Wisdom.  When the School of Prophets was convened for 4 months of study, the Word of Wisdom was given to the members of the school so their minds would be clear and open to “knowledge.”  (Not as a temperance movement or a cultural marker of obedience as it is used today).  How does considering this original view of the Word of Wisdom change your perception of it?

Creeds.  JS specifically felt that other religions’ adherence to creeds was an obstacle to “knowledge” (remember that he used the word knowledge synonymously with revelation).

“I stated that the most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived its members the privilege of believing anything not contained therein, whereas the Latter-day Saints are ready to believe all true principles that exist, as they are made manifest from time to time.”  (1843)

“I cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations, because they all have some things in them I cannot subscribe to, though all of them have some truth. I want to come up into the presence of God, and learn all things; but the creeds set up stakes [limits], and say, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further’; which I cannot subscribe to.”  (1843)

“I say to all those who are disposed to set up stakes for the Almighty, You will come short of the glory of God. To become a joint heir of the heirship of the Son, one must put away all his false traditions.”  (1843)

How do creeds limit our ability to receive revelation or accept changes to our current thinking and interpretations?

How do creeds compare with the efforts to correlate church materials (rather than remaining completely open to multiple interpretations and speculations)?

There are times when this total open-mindedness seemed to cause Joseph problems (e.g. Kinderhook, etc.).  Are there ways in which this complete open-mindedness can cause current members problems (e.g. speculation, wishful thinking, foolish notions)?  How can we avoid that?

Doubt and Darkness.  When we listen to teachers who do not have more (spiritual) knowledge than we do, or we allow doubt to overcome belief, we stop gaining additional (spiritual) knowledge.

“Knowledge does away with darkness, suspense and doubt; for these cannot exist where knowledge is. In knowledge there is power. God has more power than all other beings, because He has greater knowledge; and hence He knows how to subject all other beings to Him. He has power over all.”  (1843)

“When men open their lips against [the truth] they do not injure me, but injure themselves.  When things that are of the greatest importance are passed over by weak-minded men without even a thought, I want to see truth in all its bearings and hug it to my bosom. I believe all that God ever revealed, and I never hear of a man being damned for believing too much; but they are damned for unbelief.”  (1844)

“As far as we degenerate from God, we descend to the devil and lose knowledge, and without knowledge we cannot be saved, and while our hearts are filled with evil, and we are studying evil, there is no room in our hearts for good, or studying good. Is not God good? Then you be good; if He is faithful, then you be faithful. Add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, and seek for every good thing.  A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more knowledge, and consequently more power than many men who are on the earth. Hence it needs revelation to assist us, and give us knowledge of the things of God.”  (1842)

How do we sometimes let doubt create distance between us and additional spiritual knowledge?  How does listening to bad (spiritual) teaching cause us to lose (spiritual) knowledge?

Does pursuit of knowledge (facts, information) sometimes lead to loss of knowledge (spiritual knowledge, revelation, closeness to God)?  How can we avoid that while still embracing learning?

So, this is a pretty good lesson, IMO.  What do you think of some of the questions it poses?  Discuss.

I wish to speak to those in a similar situation to me on my mission. This could be a youth seeking a first testimony, hoping to realize Moroni’s promise at their bedside. It could even be a prospective missionary hoping to do the same. It could be a life-long member seeking a renewal or reassurance of testimony.

I also want to speak to others struggling with testimony in a very different way. I believe some of us here, while believing we had a strongly rooted testimony in the restored gospel, have encountered things that may have challenged that testimony This could come in many forms: a realization of the imperfections of the prophets and apostles (past and present), or, on a related note, a run-in with some fragment of church history that just does not seem to sit well with you, or any number of other reasons that lead us to a point of confusion or frustration and a difficulty to believe as fervently as you once had.

Finally I wish to speak to the members of the church as a whole—assuming that all of us are continually seeking to define, defend, and renew our testimonies.

First, to those seeking a first testimony or renewal/confirmation of testimony: I wish to share a couple anecdotal stories that illustrate the dangerous expectation that we as individuals and as a church sometime have: the expectation to obtain our “witness” by some miraculous means. The first given by Orson Scott Card, a well-known LDS columnist.

Years ago, two young women we knew went on a temple trip. A temple official addressed the whole group, saying, “At this temple, we are keeping records of the spiritual experiences people have while doing temple work. When you’re through, we’ll give you paper so you can write down yours.”

The two girls had opposite responses. Girl A — let’s call her Agnes — felt a thrill of excitement. As she went down into the water and performed baptisms for the dead, she kept watching her own emotions — and in the process she found herself having stronger and stronger feelings, until she was convinced that she had had a great spiritual experience. So Agnes wrote it down with all the fervency of youth.

Girl B — Betsy — felt a great dread. What if she didn’t feel anything? What if she was the only one who had nothing to write about? And, indeed, while she felt good about taking part in the sacred ordinances, she had no great rush of feeling, no sign from God, no special connection with the other side.

Afterward, when everyone else (or so it seemed to her) was furiously writing, Betsy was miserably disappointed in herself for not measuring up.

Both of these girls were cheated out of the real temple experience by the false expectation — the demand, really — that they have and share a “spiritual experience.”

My second story comes from Elder Godoy as he recounts in General Conference an experience he had when visiting a ward in Brazil.

A few years ago, when I was serving as an Area Seventy in Brazil, my family and I were on vacation in the beautiful city of Florianópolis. On Sunday, as usual, we went to the closest church that we could find. My wife and I and our oldest daughter attended a Sunday School class where they were discussing our personal testimony of the gospel.

At some point in the lesson, the teacher asked the class members if they would share a powerful spiritual experience they had while developing their testimony of the Church. While some brothers and sisters were sharing their stories, I mentally reviewed my own experiences as a convert for something I could share with them, but I could not think of anything very remarkable in my process of gaining a testimony.

While I was thinking and listening to the others’ experiences, I realized that the teacher expected me to participate. She was listening to the other members, and she let me know that she was waiting for my great experience to be shared. After all, I was an Area Seventy, and I should have something impressive to share. Feeling that the time was passing and she was waiting for me, I tried harder to find something that would fit in this category of a powerful event, but I was not able to think of anything, to the disappointment of the teacher. For all I wanted to help, I could not meet her expectation.

Both of these stories focus on the point I wish to make here. Often times we as a church, and as a culture, focus on the importance of obtaining a witness to the truthfulness of the church. We often do so using such language as “a burning of the bosom” or other well-known Mormon phrases. We hear about people that experience a proverbial Pentecost at their bedside. We do this often times, to the exclusion of the stories that tend to be more common in the church: obtaining a witness through everyday experiences that nevertheless tell us in our mind and in our hearts that the gospel is true, godly, and good. To those struggling in faith because you have not had a “profound spiritual experience” rest assured that your testimony is no less valid than someone who has. You belong to a sometimes silent majority in the church to which General Authorities belong.

Elder Godoy of the Seventy concluded his story (the part that follows the foregoing excerpt) by saying that his testimony was not based on one irrefutable event either, but the sum total of many experiences that led him to believe that the seed was “GOOD.”

This word, “Good,” leads me to my next topic and audience: those who have been shaken in their testimony.

Some of you, like me, me have encountered things that have made you scratch your head and wonder a bit from time to time about the “truthfulness” of the gospel or the restored gospel.

Here I need to pause and question just what exactly we mean when we say “truth, or truthfulness.” We are often taught that the church is true or false, black or white, right or wrong, miraculous or a fraud. While I hold these statements in large part to be true, I also believe that this view of the gospel can be destructive for some. Viewing the gospel, the church, and its leaders in such a binary fashion can be disastrous. It leads many, including myself for a time, to believe that if the history of the gospel, the church, and its leaders is not blemish-free, then the logical conclusion is that it is altogether false. As a matter of fact, I know people who have left the church based on this premise.

I wish now to return to the word, “Good.” If you find yourself questioning the truth of the gospel because the church and its leaders do not have a perfect history, I encourage you to find strength and encouragement from this fact, not discouragement and a lack of faith. I believe that the reason why so many of us are so bothered by blemishes, is because we believe in the church so strongly, and we care so much about it… not that we care to little and wish to discard it. We would do well to remember a few things.

I can sum them up in an old adage: While the Catholics say the Pope is infallible, none of them believe it. And while the Mormons say the Prophet IS fallible, no one believes it. Do not be discouraged that we are lead and have been lead by imperfect men. While they are prophets and apostles, and I do not mean to minimize that fact, they are men—just as we are men. We are all walking through the lone and dreary world whether we want to believe it or not–you and me, and the prophets and apostles. We, just as the apostles and prophets, have been separated from our God and must seek daily to discern between truth and error, to hear His voice and discern between it, our own wills and desires, and those of the world. It was Paul, the great apostle himself, who said when addressing the Corinthians that he “saw through a glass darkly.” I think it presumptuous to assume anything different concerning our modern day apostles.

To conclude my thoughts on the word “GOOD,” that Alma and Elder Godoy use, I mean to say that GOOD means neither perfect nor infallible. If calling the church, an institution, by the adjective true, seems odd to you, especially because we recognize that we as individuals and as a church are a work in progress, imperfect and fallible, then you are not alone. What an odd usage of the word! To mean it’s like calling a ham sandwich true. It just doesn’t mean anything… unless of course we understand that when we say true, we mean Good, or “of God,” etc. And I do think that is what we mean when we say “the church is true.” So, to those of you struggling due to encountering history that challenges your testimony of the church or of its leaders, remember that above all else, you know that the church is GOOD, and that it as well as all of us are a work in progress.

Finally, I wish to address all of you as individuals that are just like me: seeking to define, defend, and renew my testimony. I believe all of you, whether you have experienced any of the aforementioned feelings or not, will one day experience some sort of discomfort as you explore the foundations of your former, current, and future faith. But discomfort is a good thing, it means we are thinking, feeling, evaluating, readjusting, redefining, in sum developing our understanding of God and Man. And so far as I have understood it correctly, that is the very meaning of life.

Wendy Ulrich, a PhD, focusing on religious and specifically Mormon psychology, describes our relationship with God in much the same terms as she would any long-term relationship, even a marriage.

The first of these stages is a honeymoon stage of blinding idealism, in which we delight in our new partner and are sure that the problems faced by other couples, other parents, other believers will not bother us. We are in love, full of hope, enthusiastic about our new relationship. We relish being loved and cherished, but even more we relish being someone who is easily loving and good. We are sure we have found a wonderful spouse, child, church, relationship with God, and we are also sure that this will last. We finally know how to be in a relationship, or how to get answers to prayers, or how to be part of a community. We are happy, sure that little problems that come up will be readily resolved. This stage lasts weeks and sometimes years, but it intermittently gives way to the second stage of committed relationships, the power struggle.

As the power struggle gradually takes over more and more of the relationship we begin to wrestle for control. We may try any of a number of old or new tactics to try to coerce, cajole, reason, manipulate, blackmail, convince, bribe, punish, or flatter our partner in the relationship into changing to give us what we want, whether what we want is a spouse who does the laundry or a God who explains Himself to our satisfaction. While some of these tactics may work with spouses or children or parents, they do not work with God. He invites us to change instead, and this is often very painful. We want the world back the way it was when we were innocent and full of hope and before we had discovered the snakes in the grass, but He evicts us from the garden and tells us to keep walking. Much of our behavior is about trying to get safe, and much of His is about trying to help us see that our safety lies in our submission to and trust in Him despite pain and struggle, not in our freedom from physical or emotional discomfort. We keep thinking that there are answers and solutions to all difficulties if we can just get someone else to see our point of view and give us what we know we need. And that someone else keeps holding out on us, keeping us guessing as to what to try next. We are sure that if we could just change them we could get things back to the honeymoon, not realizing that this is not only impossible, but unhelpful.

The third stage of committed relationships, which usually comes after years of vacillating between lingering idealism and the increasing futility of the power struggle, is withdrawal. At this stage we essentially give up, although we may not leave. We resign ourselves to not really getting what we want, not really changing the other party, and not really being happy. We are tired of fighting, but we can’t recoup our lost idealism. We go through the motions of relationship but we are frustrated and we feel more or less betrayed and misunderstood. This period of withdrawal allows us to regain some independence, pursue other sources of satisfaction, and develop other talents and interests. If we are lucky we begin to work on ourselves–whom we can change–instead of working on our partner whom we cannot change. With the Church or with God, this means we begin to face that there are some questions we will not get answered, some differences that will not be worked out, some losses that will not be prevented. This is a risky stage, a stage when some people decide there is nothing to hold onto because they are no longer in love (stage 1) and no longer have hope for change (stage 2). But as we continue to work on ourselves, see reality more clearly, and resolve our own issues we have a chance of moving toward stage 4.

The fourth and final stage of committed relationships is about renewal. Not exactly a renewal of the honeymoon, but a more mature, realistic, and truly loving renewal. We come to accept our spouse or our parents or the Church, and we come to accept ourselves. We allow God to run the universe, and we become more content to let go of things we cannot change. A deeper, more mature love begins to emerge, with fewer power struggles and less disengagement. We do not need to see all the answers, and we do not need perfection by our standards in order to not be embarrassed or ashamed of our Church, our partner, or our God. We reinvest in the relationship, not because we have decided to risk yet one more time that we will not get hurt only to have the rug pulled out yet one more time from under us, but because we have learned that hurt can be survived, that this is a risk worth taking, and that it does not mean we cannot be happy or that we are irrational suckers or that we are doomed to failure because we take another chance on trust or because we fail or are failed again. We see ourselves and our partner more realistically, and we do not run from either vision. We recognize that we can be hurt by being betrayed or we can be hurt by not trusting, but we don’t get the no-hurt choice because there isn’t one, at least not until we simply choose not to read betrayal into every ecclesiastical failure, or abandonment into every unanswered prayer.

I encourage all of you, to continue developing your relationship with God. To not avoid those moments of disillusionment and frustration that come with a growth in knowledge, but to confront them, embrace them, and learn from them. Learn more about yourself, and learn more about God. Indeed, realize that your testimony is a process.

To those struggling with doctrines or moments in church history, again anchor yourself in what you know to be good, and I do believe that you know the church is good, or else you would not be here today. Be comforted that God does not expect perfection of anyone, not you, nor the leaders of the church, but he does expect that we all move in the right direction and follow another admonition of Paul, to “cleave to that which is good.”

To those struggling to find a first testimony or those seeking to renew it through prayer, continue to pray. While God may not visit you with angels in the night, or even a physical feeling or burning, he will hear you and reveal truth to you in the way that he knows will benefit you most. For some that may be an angel, or a feeling, but certainly not for all.

My testimony, like yours, is very much so a work in progress. I even hesitate today to say that “I know” certain things. But I am comfortable in saying that my faith is that God is there, that Jesus Christ lived and died for us, and that God has revealed much for our good through ancient and modern day prophets, and that he will reveal much to us individually if we seek him out and say as Samuel did, “Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth.”… “Hear” of course being used figuratively.

I was given a tool (the church) and I used it for all kinds of things – it was a hammer, a door prop, a food masher, whatever. I loved my tool.

Suddenly, life started to demand new things from me and the tool wasn’t cutting it. I felt betrayed. This tool was supposed to last.

Then, I start looking at the tool (I don’t throw it away rashly), and I see a button. I press the button and realize that this tool is actually a flashlight. It’s been a flashlight the WHOLE time. I’d been using it inappropriately from the start .

Sure, it worked for all kinds of things, and I suppose it still could, but for the first time, I can start using it for what it really is. Can’t really blame the salesman, he probably didn’t know what it was either. And I’m glad I didn’t throw it away. Now, that is one cheese-ball analogy, I know. But it’s how I feel.

After a life change or a crisis of faith, some people would like their “old testimony” back. I remember times when I wanted that old testimony back so badly.  It’s like I wanted that world back where my tool worked for everything.  But we can’t.  As human beings we grow.  We can never have THAT testimony ever again.  Not anymore.  And as long as we’re scrambling for it, we’re not moving. The sacrament of doubt is ruthless but it’s so worth it. The scales fall from our eyes, and we can finally see the world for what it really is.

And again, I have no solutions other than time, books, people, time, patience, time, more books, a vacation, time and patience. Maybe a massage, too.  I do know, though, that it’s hard to move on until we find new purpose.

I see the church as tool, like a flashlight, that gives me more God. Its truthfulness and exclusivity are nice (like, sure, I could use my flashlight as a door prop), but it shines light on life, and that’s why I keep it.

So, what is the church to you?  Does this analogy speak to you?  Discuss.

Psalms 55:22 says, in part: “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee.”

Note that this is singular (“burden”) – not plural (“burdens”).

Ether 12:27 says: “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”

Note that this is singular (“weakness”) – not plural (“weaknesses”).

Matthew 11:28-30 includes the following: “Take my yoke upon you.”

Here is what I learned:

The concepts in these three verses constitute a complete solution; without the first and second, the third is impossible – and even destructive.

In simple terms, the Lord wants us to cast our “burden” at His feet and pick up the “yoke” that He knows will give us strength and bring eternal life. In a very real way, he asks us to exchange loads. Please take a moment to create that mental picture. Envision yourself removing a pack from your back or shoulders, setting it aside, then picking up a new pack to carry instead. If we fail to leave our own natural burden with Him, then all we do when we assume the responsibilities of membership in His kingdom is to pick up a second pack and increase a load we already are unable to bear alone.

That, in my mind, is the central power of the Atonement – of His grace and mercy. He will shoulder our burden, if we shoulder His. Each of us needs to figure out what this means in our own lives, with our own personalities and struggles, but, at a minimum, we need to accept His atoning grace and quit beating ourselves up over our natural weakness – that for which He has paid the price already. (See the 2nd Article of Faith.) We need to recognize and accept the forgiveness He has offered already. We need to believe Him and what He has promised us.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by guilt or inadequacy or the burdens of your life, may I suggest a simple solution – not an easy one and not one that always will happen completely and all at once, but the only one of which I know that truly will work. Find a quiet place, where you can kneel totally alone and unable to hear anything else, and pour out your soul to your Heavenly Father – able to approach Him directly because of the grace of His Son. Tell Him of your anxieties, your fears, your weakness, your pain – then ask Him to take the burden from you and help you walk away from it. Repeat that request (something like, “I gave it to you; please help me leave it at your feet.”) whenever you begin to feel overwhelmed – even if it means you have to do so sometimes in the middle of the confusion and chaos of your daily life. Take a deep breath, close your eyes if you can, and ask Him to intercede once more and keep you from picking up your natural load.

I have a deep and abiding testimony that if you cast your burdens upon the Lord, He truly will sustain you as you shoulder His yoke and begin to carry the burden He has chosen to make your weakness become strength. Although I believe in the symbolism, purity and real release that can accompany baptism, a fundamental and basic burden exchange can happen within or without any particular church structure. Anyone can cast her burden upon the Lord, take His yoke upon her and find rest to her soul.

Witches are people who don’t fit in our notion of society (or any group of people to which we belong).  Witch-hunters are those who feel obligated to protect that society from these harmful individuals.  So, at a given time, in a given society, you could be either a witch or a witch hunter.

There are a few basic steps all witch hunters must follow.

1. Know that there are witches out there.  And they must be stopped.  Those witches may not even know how dangerous they are, which is why you are really just doing them a favor.  Remember, the world is a black and white place with danger lurking at every corner.
2. Find the witch.  Once you know there ARE witches, it should be really easy to spot them.  They are not like you.  (It’s much harder to hunt someone you identify with because you might get to know them as a person and find you have much in common).  Therefore, those who are not like you are probably evil and need to be corrected.  It’s your responsibility to “help” them fit the mold, even if you have to kill them to do it.  They will thank you for it.  Also, they brought this on themselves.  Tip:  If you are having a hard time finding the witches, you need to go back to Step 1 and try again.
3. “Out” the witch.  People will thank you for exposing the hidden danger.  You are really just performing a community service, after all.
4. Bolster your authority.  Some people just don’t have your powers of discernment, or might question your judgments when you are just performing a much needed service to others by exposing the danger.  So, be sure to surround yourself with like-minded individuals.  Be sure to emphasize your pedigree or credentials as a witch hunter, and make it clear that whoever is against you is really just allowing evil to flourish.
5. Hunt for some more! Now that you have some success and a taste for blood, keep going!  Remember, you are doing what’s right, and others are counting on you.  You are making a difference, and the only cost is a few witches who brought this on themselves anyway.

So, what can you do if you are one of the unlucky “witches”?

• Humor the witch hunters.  Some of the things they are saying are correct, even if some is misinformed.  Find the mutual purpose between your view and theirs and encourage agreement where you can find it.
• Let go of being right.  Just give it up.  You can’t fight City Hall.  Witch hunters invariably work at City Hall, BTW.  The witch hunter’s primary need is to be right and sustain that black & white worldview.  Don’t play that game.  You can’t fight their “right” with your “right.”  You’ll both end up wrong.
• Accomodate reasonable requests.  Be as flexible as you can.  Do anything you are asked that is not harmful to yourself or others.  Obviously, if they ask you to tie yourself to a stake while they go get some wood, well, that’s just not reasonable.
• See the person behind the witch hunter.  People create villains when they are frightened and feel powerless.  Maybe they are scared of change.  Maybe they are afraid of being irrelevant.  Maybe they have spooked themselves with tales of the boogeyman lurking at every corner.  Making themselves a mighty “hunter” helps them to feel like they have control.  It’s sad really.  Find a way to love that person, to “pray for those that persecute you.”
• Appeal to the citizenry.  Before you get dunked in the lake, you probably have a chance to appeal to either a judge or the mob of fellow citizens.  Remember the scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail?  Point out the absurdity (if there are absurdities) of the accusation.  Point back to the reality and facts.  Appeal to the witnesses.  If you can kindly marginalize the witch hunter as a nut job, you may not be burned alive or drowned by well-meaning concerned citizens.
• Don’t accuse your accusor.  They call it the high road because it’s not the same level as the low road.  The high road is less muddy because it’s closer to the sun.  It’s cleaner because so few people travel it.  And bonus!  There are no witch hunters on the high road.
• Don’t get offended or become bitter. The witch hunter is just one person, not everyone.  Even the others who didn’t stop the witch-hunt were probably just trying to figure out what was really going on, just doing the best they could.  Remember:  “You’re smart enough, you’re good enough, and doggone it!  People like you!”

So, for all you witches out there, good luck.  And for all you hunters, be careful, because this is the witching season!