Love Thy Neighbor...

I gave a talk in church a few months ago and I'm finally getting around to posting it to the blog. Enjoy!

Judging by what we see, hear, and read in popular culture, I think that “love” the most frequently used and most misunderstood word in the English language. We find it everywhere from books, to movies, to TV shows, to songs, to speeches, to anything else you can think of. People have been talking, writing, acting, singing, dancing, signing, nodding, smiling, and winking about love for millenia. And what it has produced is a confusing, confounding, and conflicting cacophony.

Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love. Love is blind, love is a battlefield, love is like the dew on a summer’s morn. Love conquers all, love will set you free, all’s fair in love and war. Can’t buy me love. Love means never having to say your sorry. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. 

With His Stripes

A few weeks ago, I was teaching a lesson on repentance in Elders’ Quorum when one of the class members asked an interesting question: “What is the difference between sinning and repenting and not sinning at all.” In thirty-five years of learning and teaching about repentance, I don’t think I’d ever quite thought about that specific question before. As I stood in front of the class and pondered how to respond, thinking about what I knew and had just taught about the Atonement, I came to one inescapable conclusion: there is no difference. I was unprepared, though, for how controversial that statement would prove to be.

Rights and Obligations

When most of us think about contracts, we probably think about legalese, fine print, and language designed to give us less than we thought we were bargaining for. We have been taught, through hard experience, that contracts are something to be wary and suspicious of. So when we talk about covenants as contracts, as we often do in the Church, I wonder if some of our suspicion toward contracts doesn't sneak into those discussions. That is, we fear that despite our best efforts to live up to our covenants, when the time comes to reap our eternal reward, we will get less than what we thought—or hoped—we were bargaining for.

Discerning God’s Light

I spoke in church today (for the second time in as many months; my family moved to a new ward and my wife and I were asked to speak very soon). Here is what I had to say.

I want to begin my talk by asking you to conduct a thought experiment. I want you to imagine being in this chapel in pitch darkness. Imagine that we’ve turned out the lights, closed the doors, and blacked out the windows. There is absolutely no light in here at all. Now imagine that way up here on the stand, I light a candle. Wherever you are sitting, I hope that you are imaging that you can see it, because even though our imaginary candle would a very small light, everyone in this chapel would be able to see it through the darkness. Now, here comes the experiment: ask yourself, how far away from the candle you would need to be before you would not be able to see it anymore.

Sanctifying Motherhood

I spoke in church today on the sanctifying power of motherhood. Here is the text of my talk:

I want to begin my talk by summarizing a short story written by a nineteenth-century American writer named Bret Harte, called “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”

The story begins in Roaring Camp, a mining settlement up in the Sierra Nevada during California’s Gold Rush. It was like most other mining camps, and it’s residents were like most other miners. The term “roughs” applied to them was a distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye. One or two of them were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless.

Now, these roughs were all collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the settlement because something was happening inside that cabin that had never happened in the camp before. Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. And at just that moment, a sharp, fussy cry — a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp — rose into the air.

How We Know What We Know About the Godhead

A few weeks ago I was in a Sunday School class about the nature of the Godhead, when one of the class members said that it is obvious from the New Testament that the Godhead is as we Mormons believe it is: the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as three distinct beings, the Father and Son having glorified physical bodies, and the Holy Ghost being a personage of spirit. This is not an uncommon position among Mormons, but it rubbed me the wrong way and the more I thought about about it, I understood why: because it’s not true.

What Scripture Stories Have to be Literally True?

One of the flashpoints between religion and science is the origin of humanity. The Bible tells us that God personally created the first two human beings (Gen. 1:26–27). Science tells us that humans evolved over millions of years from single cell organisms to more complex lifeforms to primates to humans. The two accounts seem to be mutually exclusive, and, traditionally at least, believers couldn’t accept the theory of evolution without undermining their faith. Peter Enns, in his book The Evolution of Adam, argues that this is a false dichotomy, and that belief in God and an acceptance of evolution are compatible.

What We Teach When We Teach About Joseph Smith

I spoke in church today, so I thought I would share my remarks on my blog. It's longer than a normal post, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

I’d like to start my talk by recounting a story that President Thomas S. Monson told in General Conference over a decade ago. It involves two missionaries that he presided over when he was the president of the Canadian Mission. “In Ontario, Canada,” he recounted,

two of our missionaries were proselyting door-to-door on a cold, snowy afternoon. They had not had any measure of success. One elder was experienced; one was new. 

The two called at the home of Mr. Elmer Pollard, and he, feeling sympathy for the almost frozen missionaries, invited them in. They presented their message and asked if he would join in prayer. He agreed, on the provision that he could offer the prayer. 

The prayer he offered astonished the missionaries. He said, “Heavenly Father, bless these two unfortunate, misguided missionaries, that they may return to their homes and not waste their time telling the people of Canada about a message which is so fantastic and about which they know so little.” 

Sacred Moments, Sacred Places

The Sacred Grove at the Smith family
farm in Palmyra, New York.

About a year and a half ago, I went with my family to the Sacred Grove at the Smith family farm in Palmyra, New York, where in 1820, God the Father and his son, Jesus Christ, appeared to a young Joseph Smith, the first step toward restoring Christ’s church to the earth. Walking into the grove, I already believed Joseph Smith’s story, so I wasn’t expecting to have a spiritual experience. The experience I did have further sanctified that place for me.

Jesus Christ Super-hippie?

Did Jesus Christ have much in common with this guy?

It annoys me when modern people, usually atheist modern people, talk about Jesus. Take this commentary from a book I recently read called Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. The book is about the author’s foray into the minimum wage world in month-long stints. During one of these episodes, she makes a visit to a local church and describes the service this way:

The preaching goes on, interrupted with dutiful "amens." It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say.

Why Prophets Don’t Prophesy (Usually)

Micah the prophet, Russian icon from the
first quarter of the 18th  cen.

When people hear that the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a prophet, they sometimes dismissively ask what he has prophesized. I have been asked more than once why we need to pay tithing when the prophet can just predict which stocks will rise, where oil can be found, etc. The modern definition of the word “prophecy” focuses so much on telling the future, that we have come to think of prophets as mere psychics who give us vague foretellings of things to come (which, if they are vague enough, couldn’t possibly be untrue). But that isn’t what prophecy is all about.