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.

God is Our Loving Heavenly Father, Not Our Loving Heavenly Grandfather

God the Father by Cima da Conegliano, c. 1515

Some people point to life’s harsh reality as evidence that God could not exist. The suffering that is so prevalent in the world — from hunger, disease, natural disaster, and human carelessness or cruelty — is simply not compatible in some minds with what an all-powerful, loving God would allow to happen. But just because something doesn’t conform to our expectations doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It probably means that we need to change our expectations.