Humility

I’m going to do my best to get back to blogging more frequently. I really enjoy it. It helps me organize my thoughts. Considering the topic of my last couple posts I took a self-imposed hiatus. I guess I was just being kinda timid about how people would respond. But after several long talks with my lovely bride she has convinced me that I need to get back in the swing of blogging again. So here it goes.

I have a meeting scheduled with the Stake President tomorrow. I haven’t attended church for almost 6 months now, except for one for the primary program because I had kids participating. This is about the fifth time that he has tried to meet with me but previously he’s cancelled at the last minute. I’m not pretending that I don’t know what he wants to talk about. In preparation for our discussion I’ve been reading my previous blog posts and talking things out with friends and family.

This is his meeting. He called it and I’m not planning on hijacking it. However, I am more than aware of the Taylor gene that makes me come across as confrontational when I really don’t mean to be. My goal is to just give him honest answers to his questions. If time permits and depending on that mood I may ask a few of my own, but those are of secondary importance to me. I have no desire at all to have anybody change their mind just because I have lost my believe in the LDS church. My only goal in agreeing to meet with him is shared understanding. I recognize that his goal will likely be more than that and I’m open-minded to new answers. Just because a decade of questioning has not provided any new answers so far I’m not closing the door to the possibility.


I’ve really enjoyed the access that the internet has given me to videos and podcast of some of the most brilliant scientists, philosophers and educators in the world. I am particularly amazed at how most of them deal with people that they disagree. Far from the insults and cut-downs they have shown me that it is possible to vehemently disagree but still be polite, respectful and cordial in that disagreement. I admire this. It’s a trait I am consciously working on developing. The following clip is one of my favorite that illustrates this type of civil disagreement that is all too frequently absent in other aspects of life. Incidentally I am in complete agreement with Ann Druyan on her appraisal of the lack of humility in the religious world today.

The King Swing

(Warning!! This post is of a very personal nature and may offend some readers.)
This is a video from a very popular rock climbing route in Yosemite. This technique is called a pendulum traverse. Climbers call it "The King Swing” and it takes place on a route called “The Nose” on the 3000’ feature called El Capitan. About halfway up this particular route the cracks and features kind of peter out once you get to the top of that flake the photographer is standing on. Since the rock doesn’t have any little cracks or bumps there is subsequently nothing to pull up on or stand on. Therefore, no way to climb it. The only solution is to go back down and see if you can find another path. Sometimes you see another path but there really isn’t any way to get to it from underneath. The only feasible solution is to do a pendulum traverse. Just as the name implies you lower down as far as you have to and swing back and forth until you can grab a section of rock that is will allow you to climb it.

I’ve done several pendulum traverses, although not this one. They can be quite intimidating. Sometimes you’re not quite sure if you’re swinging into a section that will be just as unclimbable as where you were. One time it was an emergency situation and this was the safest technique to get off the rock during a thunderstorm. But every time I was more than a little apprehensive. The technique requires much more planning than it appears and things have to be done just right in order to stay safe.

Even though the route ahead seems insurmountable it’s quite a weird feeling to hang your butt on the end of a rope and run back and forth hoping to grasp something better, something that will allow you to keep progressing. It’s not exactly the safest thing to do. The times I’ve done them were only in situations where I was absolutely sure that it was the only way to keep on progressing. The risks can be high, but the rewards can be even greater if this leads you to better climbing or a way out of the current predicament.

I’m at a point in my life where I need to take the King Swing. I’ve been on a path that has provided me with much joy and happiness up to this point. I felt like I was growing, learning and progressing. But for the last several years I’ve been stuck on a ledge looking for ways to keep moving up and not finding anything to hang on to. It has taken me quite a while to even consider looking for another path. I’d been raised to believe that the path I was on was perfect and there was no reason to stray from it. But I just couldn’t see where or how to continue. Consequently, I’ve lowered down a little bit and begun to swing back and forth looking for another path.

I believe I’ve found a path. I’m not quite sure how good the climbing will be over there but I’m sure it is more promising than where I am now. Who knows? This new path may lead me back onto my original path from a different angle. Or I may end up having to lower back down this new route too and look for yet another path. I just don’t know right now.

To those of you who aren’t having any problems negotiating the blank sections of the original route, I have no criticism at all. Congratulations. You are better skilled at finding the route than I am. Simply because I am looking for a different path I have no criticism at all if you are making it work for you.

I’m not suggesting that anybody take the steps that I about to without doing at least as much thorough research, soul-searching and earnestly looking for all of the answers. This decision, to take the swing, has not be reached casually. In my case it has been years and years of agonizing study and prayer that has brought me to when I am now.

It’s time to set the metaphor aside. This post has nothing to do with rock climbing. I’m talking about my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For the past several years I’ve been stuck on a ledge and could find no way to keep moving forward. I’ve discussed some of the specifics on this blog numerous times, but I don’t wish to get into them today. To my friends and family who are members of the church I hope that you will take this with the spirit with which it is intended. I am very grateful that you are in my life and I mean absolutely no disrespect to you at all. I have never felt that absolute agreement on everything was necessary for me to love you and this decision will not stop that. I hope that you can see it in your heart to still love me. The most apprehensive part of this decision has been the considering, reconsidering and re-reconsidering the effects it will have on my family.

I fully expect that many of you will not understand my decision. I’m under no delusion that this will be easy. But I believe it will be better in the long run. I’ve seen other friends and family members struggle with some of the same issues that I have. It’s been very selfish of me to let them struggle alone while I conceal my struggles and go through some of the same things they have been.

I am grateful for everything that I have learned so far on my path. Please don’t think that I am going to consider abandoning all of the progress and the good things that I’ve learned in the process. I have no plans to start stopping by liquor stores or breaking any other of the moral and ethical codes the church has taught me. Quite the opposite; I cherish those values and I look forward to continuing to incorporate them into my life.

The private answers to the questions I have asked in my prayers have led me in an unexpected direction, a spiritual path which, at least for now, has proven incompatible with Mormon doctrine. This search for a new route has brought me some of the most profound surprises and also the deepest sadness of my life. It is very hard for me to leave a path that I love so much.

Prophet's Prey

One of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. If you think that Big Love and Sister Wives represents a realistic depiction of what it’s like to live in a polygamist sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints you could not be more mistaken. If anything these programs are convenient distractions from horrors that are really going on behind the walls of most FLDS communities.

Yes, popular TV programs like to portray modern polygamist groups as just a bunch of quirky little consenting adult Christians who live normal healthy lives, they just all consented to being married to the same guy. However in most FLDS areas, especially those under the control of Warren Jeffs, these shows couldn’t be further from the truth. Most live in squalor because they consecrate everything they earn back to the church. They live on church owned land with no legal lease arrangement so the “prophet” can kick them out for any perceived infraction, the most common of which is just happening to have been born male because that means they will eventually be a competitor for the little girls in the group. Yes I said girls, not women or females. These are little girls that are being married off to much older men to gain political clout within the community. Some of these girls are as young as 12 and most are married off well below the legal age of consent.

So if you happen to be born as a girl in a FLDS community the odds are that you will be denied to play with dolls because the prophet has said that girls “should learn to raise real children”. You won’t have any other toys. You’ll be home-schooled but most of that will be only church sanctioned propaganda, like the fact that we never landed on the moon. Then in your early teens you’ll be married off to some man three times your age and brutally raped before you’ve even had the basics of sex education (see comment above about propaganda). You see if girls knew what normal sex was supposed to be like they’d surely resist what the men in the FLDS culture force on them. Now you’d just better hope that your husband overts his eyes from the prophet fast enough ‘cause if he's too slow he might get banished from the cult and you and your sister wives are doled out to the prophet’s political cronies and you just have to submit to him and his abuse and hope the cycle doesn’t repeat itself.

Being born male isn’t exactly an easy life either. You’ll be put to work on church projects when you are so young that the hammer you’ll be given reaches all the way to the ground when you sling it in your work belt. The only way the church elites can maintain their high number of wives is to restrict the number of men in the community. So the odds are pretty good that right about the time you start thinking about starting your own family that you’ll be driven out of town and dropped off on the side of the road adn told never to return. If you get lucky enough to be allowed to stay well hog dog, You will be allowed to follow in your indoctrination and become a serial child abuser. But don't get too comfortable in your role as abuser/rapist. You still could lose all that at the drop of a hat if the prophet decides he doesn't like you anymore.

No matter what your gender your odds are the greatest in the world to develop serious genetic defects due to inbreeding. FLDS geneologies boggle the mind. There are only about four suranmes and they recycle a lot of the same given names and middle names. Wives are sometimes taken from a father and given to his son, or from one brother to another. So you'll have children growing up in the same house whose father is also an uncle or a brother or a cousin. The CDC has estimated that over half of the world’s cases of fumarase deficiency are in Short Creek UT/AZ. So you may be stillborn or only live a few weeks.

The author of this book is LDS. Not FLDS, just LDS. He lived only an hour away from where much of these atrocities were taking place but just didn’t give it much thought. The FLDS were just the red-headed step children of the “true” church. Not until he got involved as a private investigator on a simple eviction did he come to understand the lawlessness and church sanctioned abuse that was taking place in his backyard.

As American’s we are proud of our First Amendment. We like the government to stay out of our worship. People should be able to believe or not to believe what ever they want to and the government is supposed to let that be. But when beliefs turn into actions there is something that the government does care about and does make laws to prevent. You can believe that god will bring destruction on the world, but if you try to fly a plane into a building to start the process then we should expect some intervention, not against the belief, against the action.

Somehow religions that profess a link to Jesus get a little more of a pass than others. If I were to tell you that the Taliban had taken control of a small city in Utah had completely converted to Sharia law all hell would break loose to end the process and establish order. However since the FLDS claims a link to Jesus’ teachings all the same Taliban-like behavior is tolerated now and has been tolerated for almost a century. It’s a serous double standard.

As if he had a chance before, this book more than convinced me to vote against Rick Perry. When close to 500 children were in the custody of the state of Texas Perry went before cameras and read all his talking points about, "safety of the children" etc. etc. Yet the Department of Child Protective Services was pressured from above to release all of these kids back to their abusers for no logical reason except that it was costing too much. Just confirmed my suspicions about him. He'll say whatever he has to to look good, but not offer any real support where it is really needed. I'd like to see how he would have responded if it had been a Taliban group and not an FLDS sect.

Polygamy would not exist to the extent it does in the United States if it were not for one man, Joseph Smith. Joseph took his desire for sexual impropriety and canonized it. Officially the mainstream LDS church has since stopped practicing polygamy a century ago, however the FLDS still claim Joseph as their justification for continuing.

Read this book. It’s not a pleasant read. It will challenge a lot of what you believe and think you know about polygamy in the United States. Bower had unique access to the facts that put Warren Jeffs behind bars. It’s quite an eye-opener. Far from just being a quirky little sub-culture, in every measurable way FLDS communities are the most lawless cities in the United States and generation after generation of children are being taught that this is normal and god’s way.



Cherry Picking

I had an interesting thing happen at church on Sunday. Before I get into specifics I wanted to talk about the rhetorical tool of cherry-picking. Cherry-picking is the process of picking only the data the supports your position while ignoring or under emphasizing the data that goes contrary to your point.
To illustrate my point today I took a Wikipedia article about an individual and picked only the positive and neutral points. From the information below see if you can identify the subject of the article.

An avid downhill skier while in high school.
He studied law at Utah State University.
In college he was baptized a member of the LDS church.
He worked on Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign.
He liked Volkswagens.
He enjoyed spending time outdoors.
He died at age 43.

Okay. He sounds like a pretty good guy, doesn’t he? Well yeah. Anybody would if you only use the details that make him seem like a nice guy. Now take a look at the rest of his profile and see if I left out anything important.

Big difference isn’t it? Even though everything above was technically true by cherry-picking the data, only picking the positive, I was able to create a false picture of who this man really was.

Now back to my experience Sunday. July 24th is Pioneer Day. It’s a Mormon holiday to celebrate those who made the trek west to help settle the Salt Lake valley. It’s typical for the Sunday talks to tell personal anecdotes about ancestors who made the trek and have them make comparisons to their own lives. This Sunday it became a textbook example of cherry-picking. The closing speaker did indeed have an ancestor who crossed the plains and helped settle the west. As he began to list the positive attributes of his great-great-great-great grandfather his name rang a bell. I pulled out my iphone and did a quick search for him. Now here is a short list of the details that the speaker shared with us.

He learned to hunt as a boy.
He converted to the church as an adult.
He was a close confidant on Joseph Smith.
He crossed the plains with Brigham Young and was one of his most trusted friends.
He was a proud defender of the LDS Church.
He was shot several times and eventually died from complications of his gunshot wounds.

I’m going to spare the actual name of the ancestor mentioned because I don’t want to identify the speaker. However, Suffice it to say that the comparison I made to Ted Bundy is not unfair. He was Danite and essentially a hired assassin. This speaker’s ancestor actually confessed to killing more people than Bundy is suspected of killing. Yes, he was a member of the church but he was excommunicated and became an opponent of the church.

My point here is not to criticize Sunday’s speaker. I just seriously am intrigued by the amount of cognitive dissonance that it takes to spin this character into a hero. It’s one thing to cherry-pick data in order to convince somebody else. But I think that more often than not people unconsciously sort that data. They just actually do not even see the disconfirming evidence. Or if they do they minimize it or rationalize it to the point that even a negative becomes a positive.

Semantics

A few years ago I was having a theological discussion with a friend of mine. He was really impressed that the English word son and sun were homophones. It really appealed to him that Christ, the son, brought light into the world and Sol, the sun, also brought light to the world. Now I realize that this wasn’t the format for textual criticism so I just bit my tongue. I was tempted to point out that the significance of his revelation only applied to English. I didn’t know for sure but I was pretty sure that son and sun were not homophones in the original Greek or Hebrew. If this doctrine were so profound why would it be left for only those who spoke English to understand? But it wasn’t my job to take the air out of his sails. So, I just listened patiently and encouraged him to continue his studies.

Yesterday at church I had a similar tongue-biting experience. In Sunday School we were discussing the New Testament and somehow we started talking about the words thee, thou and thine. For quite a while we talked about the importance of using these words when we are talking about deity. Begin tongue biting. Personally I think this type of language says more about England at the time King James version was translated than it does about anything contemporary to Jesus. But I continued to listen.

Then the discussion centered on the fact that thee, thou and thine were more familiar and casual forms of the more formal pronouns for you and your. More tongue biting. One member of the audience even challenged that claim, saying that the instructor had it backwards. Thee was the more formal not you. But he stood his ground and correctly stuck to his point that thee was the familiar form and you the formal.

Then two other members of the class shared personal experiences about the formal and familiar tenses in different languages. And how when they learned the different language they were trained to use the familiar forms when referencing deity, in Spanish and Portuguese just like King James’s contemporaries did with English.

One good thing about have a wife that is so understanding of my condition is that I can quietly vent a little bit to her rather that completely sever my tongue. So I asked her, “Does anybody here know if the original Greek or Hebrew had rank distinctions like Old English, Spanish or Portuguese?” My point was the same as my point to my friend a few years ago. If we were to be having this lesson in the language the original text was written in would there be a distinction at all? It was my suspicion that we were spending valuable lesson time discussion the particulars of doctrine on a subject that quite possibly was just an artifact of translation. Until somebody could verify that Greek and Hebrew had rank distinctions in their pronouns we were just wasting time.

So once I got home I turned to the interwebs and the Google helped me answer my questions in only a few minutes. The instructor was correct. Thou, thee and thine are the familiar form and not the causal form.

“Following a process found in other Indo-European languages, thou was later used to express intimacy, familiarity, or even disrespect, while another pronoun, you, the oblique/objective form of ye, was used for formal circumstances.”

And, as I suspected, Greek and Hebrew do not even have rank distinctions in their pronouns.

“Emphasis in biblical languages was on the noun, subject, or name, whether referring to God, man, a spiritual being, or an inanimate object. There were not two or three sets of pronouns used: for example, one to convey the significance of God's name and another when referring to Abraham. Hebrew and Greek do have pronouns that distinguish between singular and plural and between subject pronouns (referring to the one performing the action of the verb); and object pronouns (the one receiving the action of the verb or joined with a preposition); but they are used without any reference to rank. In Biblical Hebrew and Greek pronouns were a matter of precision not piety.”

I guess what concerns me about issues like this is that it distracts from time that we could be using to discuss truly important things. Rather than talking about how we can help other in the congregation we were nit-picking over our choice of pronouns.

As soon as church was over we loaded up the truck and headed up to visit my new nephew and his parents. He’s still in the NICU since he was born rather small. It was inspiring to see this tiny little soul struggling to survive and seeing his parents do everything they can to help him get started right in this world in spite of his bumpy landing. I really enjoyed the time spent with him, his parents, and the nurses showing him so much love in his first week of life. The drive home gave me pause and really got me thinking about what it means to be spiritual.

What’s in a Name?

Except for a few years of my life we have always had Volkswagen’s in the family. I have fond memories of camping in the green 1970 transporter that my folks bought new while my dad was in graduate school. I remember the day in 1976 when my brothers and I tried to talk them into getting a VW Campmobile, a yellow one just like Pippi, but we ended up coming home with a Rabbit. Later we bought another Rabbit and then I bought a ’67 Beetle while I was in High School. Shortly after Victoria and I got married we found Pippi, our 1976 VW Campmobile. I’ve always had an affinity for the brand.

VW stopped making the Beetle for the US market in the late 70s. But in the mid 90s they announced that they were going to start production of their New Beetle. We were living in Salt Lake City at the time and Victoria and I made a trip to the dealership to see one. We weren’t in the market for another car. I was just curious about it.

After only a few minutes at the dealership I was ready to go. The car was nice but it just wasn’t what I had expected. The car was so different from the original Beetle that it left me pondering why they even continued to call it a Beetle. The Beetle, the original one designed by Dr. Porsche, had a flat-four air-cooled engine in the rear and was rear-wheel drive. All of those things are significant defining characteristics of the car. Yet this New Beetle had a straight-four, transversely mounted water-cooled engine in front of the car and was front-wheel drive. The New Beetle would resemble the original more if you drive it around backwards everywhere. Except for the rounded body styling it did not resemble the original at all. It was much more similar to the Golf, which I later found out the car was based on. Mechanically it was a Golf with just a throwback body styling. Don’t get me wrong, the Golf is a great car. It just ain’t a Beetle.

On the way home from the dealership I complained to Victoria and waxed philosophic about our experience. So how many details could they have changed and still made me comfortable with calling it a Beetle? I’ve blogged a little bit about this once before. I don’t know the answer to that question. But clearly they had changed too many for me. As cute as this new car was I just could not get comfortable with how drastically different it was. Why didn’t they just call it the VW Retro or something else? But as far as I was concerned it sure wasn’t a Beetle anymore.

For the past several years I’ve been going through a transformation too, not completely dissimilar to the example above.

For my whole life I’ve been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormons to most of the world. Mormons have a set of core beliefs that define them. Since I was a young child most of my beliefs have fallen well within the guidelines of the church. I was comfortable calling myself a Mormon and they were comfortable with me.

Like any healthy mind should, I continued to learn. A calling I had teaching Aaron’s Sunday School class got me really studying about the church. I read just about every history and biography I could about the church. After finding more questions than answers using the official, church sanctioned materials I was prompted to look elsewhere for some of my answers. I just couldn’t make certain aspects of the church’s history and doctrine line up without digging a little deeper. As I uncovered new truths, new to me at least, I did my best to incorporate them into my set of beliefs and still continue to call myself a Mormon. One issue at a time and little by little I found myself having to really bend over backwards to make myself fit into the mold that the church was providing. (I’ll spare the specifics of the changes for other posts. I’ve already detailed many of them over the last few years.) How many defining characteristics of being a Mormon could I change and still identify with the name? Like VW did with their Beetle I was rearranging and redesigning massive amounts of technical details while still doing my best to keep a rough tribute to the original.

A few months ago I was in another teaching position at church. The lesson for that day called for me to teach a principle that I no longer believed. In fact I found the whole Old Testament story of genocide difficult to even read. Yet I was being asked to tell the story and then give the official position of the church as if I believed it. I just couldn’t do it. It was an eye-opening experience for me. Just as if I had walked to the back of the car, popped the latch and sat there looking at a spare tire and an otherwise empty trunk rather than the engine compartment I had expected to be there. Things had changed. And I couldn’t stand at the back of the car and pretend that there was an engine back there anymore.

The next week I asked to speak to our Bishop and I told him what I was going through. This would be the third Bishop I’d conveyed my struggle to. At the time I just asked to be released from the teaching position. I just couldn’t be honest with myself and still teach from the official lesson plan.

So on the cusp of this new year I look back at where I was and where I am now. I no longer have so many of the characteristics that used to defined me as a Mormon. My beliefs have changed. Like the Beetle, do I still deserve the name? Am I still a car with a flat-four air cooled engine in the rear with rear-wheel drive? Or have I evolved into something else that deserves a different name? Here’s a little bumper sticker philosophy for you. “If you were accused of being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict?” or in my case, “If I were accused of being a Mormon would there be enough evidence to convict?” I just don’t know anymore. So that round car based on the Golf that VW came out with in the 90s, I’m just not comfortable calling it a Beetle. And whatever I have evolved into in the last several years probably deserves to be called something else too. I’m just not sure what it is yet.

Obedience?

A few weeks ago at church we had a guest speaker present a talk on the subject of obedience. Obedience is a common theme lately in LDS meetings. Despite the scriptural support to the contrary you’d think it was the greatest commandment in the law.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to express my puzzlement with a motivational story that was given during the talk. This speaker closed his 20 minute talk with a story about a boy who was lost in a mine. A group of boys had gone into a mine and one of the boys got separated form the rest of the group. When he didn’t come out they went back and retraced their steps. When they still didn’t find him the authorities were called and a full search was initiated.

A local man felt the need to go volunteer his services since he was familiar with the mine. When he showed up on site he was sent back home by the authorities, who assured him that they had it under control. This happened a few days in a row. The local man offered his services and was sent home every time.

On something like the forth or fifth day of the search the authorities were no closer to finding the boy and announced that they were going to call off the search. One last time the local man went and pleaded with the authorities to be allowed to look for the boy. They reluctantly agreed. Being more familiar with the mine than any of the other searchers so, far he was able to check out a little known passage and he found the boy in about 20 minutes.

Now here is my question. How in the world is a story about the virtues of obedience? If the boy had been obedient to his leaders in the first place he wouldn’t have been alone. If the leaders had been obedient to scout policy they wouldn’t have been in a mine in the first place. But they were not the focus of the story. The most glaring problem I had with it was the prime focus of the story, the local man’s actions. Since he knew the mine better if he had been disobedient and defied the so-called authorities the boy would have likely been found days earlier. I saw this as a story about perseverance to do what you know is right in spite of what you are being told, but obedience?

Sometimes I really enjoy the talks at church. Sometimes I may disagree with the concept but still understand it from their perspective. But this one just eluded me completely. I just couldn’t see how in the world this story would support the idea that we need to be obedient.

Different Monitors

I’ve been looking at buying a flat panel monitor for my wife’s computer. I had a friend of mine email me a link to the monitor he has. In the email he was bragging about the color definition on his monitor. I looked at the monitor online and then, with tongue firmly planted in my cheek, responded, “The color definition doesn’t look any better than my monitor.” He laughed and thought it was pretty funny and then suggested we head over to a computer store and look at one in real life.

The incident reminded me of the TV commercials where you’d see a whole bank of other TV’s and you get to compare the picture quality. As a kid I remember remarking to my dad about how stupid those ads were. We never even had a color TV so I got a kick out of a Magnavox commercial showing a bunch of color TVs and I only saw 6 relatively identical black and white images. Today it’s the same thing. You can brag about your 1080P HD images all you want. Showing me a picture of it is not going to convince me unless I already have a 1080P HD TV. And in that case I don’t need the advertisement.

Well y’all know how I think. I couldn’t help but take this experience and extrapolate it out to other aspects of life. How often do we try to relate to somebody else and not take into account how they would see it? Each of us has certain filters that we view the world through. Expose somebody to a new idea and they are going to experience it differently than we are based on those filters. Suppose a friend were confined to a wheelchair. She would likely see a youtube video of a rock climber with a whole different attitude than I would. It would remind me to get off my butt and work out a little bit more, but it may bring nothing but discouragement to her.

I see this same thing come up all the time in discussions. Take the topic of climate change. Many people are only looking through the filter of politics. And it is a very political issue. I have many friends who refuse to accept the science behind climate change because they are afraid of what the political ramifications might be, higher taxes, increased cooperation with other countries, etc, etc. All of these are honest political concerns and there is nothing wrong with debating them. When I put on my political filter I see much the same image that they do. But if we could look at it with another monitor, if we could set the political filters aside and look at the science alone, ignoring the politics for now, I think it’s much easier to see the real image.

Lately there has been a lot of press about some remarks that were made by an LDS general authority at last week’s General Conference. I think we have the same thing going on to a great extent with this issue too. Those in the gay community have their filter that they are looking through and the faithful members of the church and church leaders are looking through another. Both sides seem to be talking about the same event yet they each see it in completely different colors. I have my own opinions about this issue too. But I recognize that my perspective may not be any better than the others.

It’s all too easy to jump to conclusions based on just our perspective. I’m not going to completely dismiss purchasing the monitor that my friend sent me until I check it out in person. Similarly I try not to completely dismiss anyone’s opinion or idea until I’ve at least attempted to view it through the same filters that they have. Now I still may not buy the new monitor or accept the other opinion. But at least I have made a solid attempt to view it in the most realistic way before I dismiss it or accept it.

Common Nonsense

A few months ago I heard a great podcast interview with Alexander Zaitchik about his new book, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. The interview was very eye opening and inspired me to read the book.
I’ve always felt that Glenn Beck was just a failed shock jock who couldn’t keep up with the likes of Howard Stern. So he switched to am radio and started using the same shock jock strategies and even some of the same skits to shock am listeners.
Zaitchik successfully illustrates that Beck is a brilliant marketer. He is always looking at how he can spin anything to promote himself. As a FM DJ he called and taunted the wife of a competing station on the air because she had recently had a miscarriage. When other people are genuinely distraught about a national tragedy, Beck is trying to figure out how he can make the event improve his brand. And for those of you who would like to claim that this was the “old Glenn” before he found Jesus and converted to Mormonism, I have seen no change at all in his strategies since. He switched sides on the Teri Schiavo case after he realized that siding with Michael Schiavo would be a death nail for his new am gig. He vilified liberals for opposing Bush’s polices “..while we have troops in harm’s way” yet didn’t think twice to compare Obama to Stalin and Satan while pretty much all of those troops are still “in harm’s way”.
I’ve always felt that’s Beck’s tears were just a tool to manipulate. Sure they may have been genuine at first, but they have grown to be a great marking strategy. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that his emotional outbursts started shortly after he converted to Mormonism. Anybody who has attended an LDS, first Sunday service will recognize the pattern. You go up and stand before everybody and the firmness with which you believe something replaces logic, facts and evidence. Tears are just the ace in the hole. There can be no further argument on that issue once somebody has cried. I am sure that most of what happens on Sunday is genuine. With Beck I’m not so sure. Zaitchik interview several of Beck’s co-workers who detail examples of him getting all choked up before a commercial break then ordering a pizza on the phone and then turning the tears back on when he’s back on air. I’m just not buying it.
Another little strategy of Beck’s that he has commandeered from the LDS is church is his persecution complex. If people picket him or criticize it only can mean one thing. He is doing the right thing. Beck capitalizes on protests and disagreement and he has no desire for them to go away. His books are literally covered with quotes from those who oppose him. He eats it up.
His claim that his 8-28 rally was just “coincidentally” scheduled for the anniversary of Dr. Kings speech is very hollow. In my mind there are two options: 1. He didn’t know it was the same date. In which case he’s a moron and should have known. Or option 2. He knew full well and was planning on capitalizing on the controversy. Considering his history of doing things that upset his opposition and using their protests as free advertising I have to accept the later. As a shock jock he worked up PETA supporters into a lather and then relished the free publicity they gave him.
The really disgustng part of Beck’s rally and his whole “reclaim the civil rights” rhetoric is that it’s just patently false. Had he been a contemporary of King's he’d have been standing right beside his John Birch Society role models W. Cleon Skousen and Ezra Taft Benson condemning King as a communist.
In the book Zaitchik was referring to a couple Cleon Skousen books and he called them, “…elaborately imagined, feverishly argued, and poorly researched.” I think the same could also be said for everything I’ve hear come out of Glenn Beck’s mouth. I think Beck is counting on the ignorance of his audience. He expects them to just connect the dots the same what his conspiracy theory mind connects them on that chalkboard without any further research.

Sibling Solidarity

(This is another personal post that will likely upset some readers.)

I love my kids. Sure they can frustrate the hell out of me sometimes but I still love them. I didn’t enjoy being a teenager and I can tell that my two teenagers aren’t exactly digging it either. It seems that most of their troubles come from peer pressure; so-called friends attacking them, frequently physically, for their opinions and beliefs and trying to get them to just go along with the crowd. What’s really upsetting to them is that most of this criticism comes from people whom they think should know better, members of our church. As a parent few thing make me more proud than when one kid stands up for the other, especially in a situation where they really don’t have anything to gain my doing it. We had just such a situation last night. And although it was very traumatic for her, I couldn’t have been more proud of my oldest daughter.
A little back history: Aaron hasn’t been attending church at our ward for the better part of a year now. He has been arranging, on his own, to get rides back and forth from the Brocket Ward. He gets along with the kids in that ward better, they accept him and genuinely love him. In stark contrast, the kids in our ward tease him, call him a Satanist and frequently physically assault him. In his own words it is rather ironic that the least spiritual hours of his week are spent at church. He doesn’t participate in the Varsity scout program on Wednesday night. We’ve moved him to another troop that is a real community troop where sharing the same religious upbringing is not a requirement to hold positions. He gets along much better with these guys. On Wednesday he even arranges for rides over to Brockett to hang out with the kids from that ward that he gets along with so well. In the entire time that he has been attending that Ward only one person from our ward has asked about Aaron. He was genuinely concerned and I thanked him for caring and not forgetting about him. Not a single other person has given us the slightest clue that they’ve even noticed his absence. In stark contrast, the leaders from Brockett comment to us about how they enjoy having him there and miss him when he’s gone.
Well last night I dropped Rachel off at the church for her Young Women’s activity. She typically doesn’t have the same issues as Aaron so I was a little surprised when Victoria brought her home and she was in tears. I asked her what was wrong. Rachel then proceeded to ask if she too could attend Brockett Ward rather than our ward. Apparently even in his absence Aaron is still a topic of conversation. A few of the kids were making fun of him and it really upset Rachel. I found a bit odd that their primary criticism of Aaron is that he “believes in evolution”. Rachel has never been one to gossip and hence she refused to tell me which kids were involved. But she did say that it really surprised her because she had though that these kids were above that. Apparently she had spent half of the meeting outside crying and just waiting for us to come pick her up.
Rachel didn’t openly defy these kids, that’s just not her style, but she did refuse to be a part of what they were doing. They still fight like, well brothers and sisters, but when the chips are down it’s really nice to see them standing up for what they know is right. Rachel didn’t want to tell anybody, especially Aaron, about what happened. I thought that he needed to hear it. After he was dropped off from his activity at Brockett we talked about it and he gave his little sister a nice big hug.

I chose to post this in order to add my name to Rachel’s. I stand behind my family. You criticize one of us you criticize us all. And we won’t tolerate it.

As far as the chief complaint lobbied again Aaron goes, Evolution is a fact. Get used to it. It used to be a theory but it has long ago graduated to a fact as far as I am concerned. I would even go so far as to say that evolution is more of a fact than gravity. Gravity is still lacking a clear definition of how it works. Like evolution gravity has been tested and tested and tested thousands of times but gravity is still lacking a carrier. We don’t quite know how it works. We have hypothesized the existence of the graviton, but haven’t actually seen one. In contrast we have found DNA and natural selection, the elements that make evolution work. So in a very real sense there is more evidence supporting evolution than gravity. In the past when people have asked me if I “believe” evolution I’ve had to rephrase their question in my answer. Because belief requires faith I don’t think it applies to evolution. Faith is a belief without evidence or even in spite of the evidence. You just aren’t looking if you don’t see evidence of evolution. So I respond something like this, “I accept the overwhelming evidence that life evolved via natural selection.”

"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality." The Dalai Lama
Wise words. It's a shame more people don't apply this same idea to thier own beliefs. I'm glad my kids are.

Under the Banner of Heaven

I initially read Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith when it first came out six or seven years ago. That was before several recent high profile polygamy cases and the HBO series “Big Love”. These recent events prompted me to read it again. I also had a friend tell me that he was interested in hearing what I thought of the book. I couldn’t find my original review so I’ll do my best to cover all those details as well as post some of my impressions from reading it the second time.
Krakauer has a very easy to read style. His books feel like the in depth investigative reports that they are. All of them have a similar approach that works very well. He starts with quick overview of what hit the news. Then he goes backwards as far as he has to on each line to explain why the events unfolded as they did. I’m currently reading Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. He’s using this same format to tell Pat’s story and it’s working very well.
In Under the Banner of Heaven the news story was the savage 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty and her daughter, Erica by her two brothers-in-law Dan and Ron Lafferty. The Lafferty brothers were members of a polygamist sect of the LDS church. The details of the murders were very tough to read. But had Krakauer stopped with the events of that year it would have been very incomplete. It was important to explain what lead up to the murders and what caused these murders to believe that they had the right and even the duty to murder innocent family members.
To get those answers Krakauer had to go back to the early 1800s and pull a lot of skeletons out of a lot of closets. This is the primary section that most Mormon readers will be uncomfortable with. The history of Joseph Smith is presented based on the contemporary evidence. Most LDS readers would not be familiar with this since they are likely used to the whitewashed “official” versions of the history of the early church. That being said I did not think that one sentence of the history was mean spirited or could honestly be classified as persecution. But if you’re the type that refuses to accept any imperfections in the people you have chosen to follow you might want to stay clear.
The simple truth is that polygamy would not exist to anywhere near the extent that it does in the United States if it were not for the actions of one man, Joseph Smith. Giving an accurate account of the Lafferty murders without mentioning Joseph Smith would be like writing a book about September 11th, 2001 that did not mention Islam. Like it or not, the LDS Church will be forever linked to these polygamist sects who, incidentally, all believe that it is the Salt Lake church that has gone astray and they are preserving the true teachings of Joseph Smith.
I’ve detailed some of my own opinions on polygamy previously on this blog and explained how it’s a mathematical recipe for child abuse. And here is a link to some of my Great-Grandfather's journals. He grew up in a home that still practiced polygamy long after the 1890 declaration by the church stating that it was a forbidden practice. One of the next books I have on my reading list is Lost Boy. Victoria just finished reading it and from her report it seems to validate my mathematical theory.
In my humble opinion Under the Banner of Heaven should be read by every Latter Day-Saint. The practice of polygamy never should have been officially sanctioned by the church and I believe that Salt Lake should take much more drastic measures to apologize, make amends and distance themselves from this evil practice. Simply saying “Yeah but that’s in the past. We don’t do that anymore.” is seriously inadequate.

Respect

Take a second and read this speech.
If this is Oaks’ interpretation of the First Amendment I'm glad he isn't still practicing law. He seems to think that it's OK for a church to criticize but that they should be immune from criticism. We can't have it both ways. If we demand that other groups keep quiet when it come to criticizing us then perhaps we should afford them the same courtesy and stay out of politics. If you feel, as I do, that churches should have every right to make political statements, then we need to accept the flip-side of that same coin we toss and stop whining about being criticized.

I'd like to know which article in any constitution protects a church from criticism. He needs to pick up a history book. Freedom to criticize the dominant churches was also a main tenant of our founders. Most of the religious colonists were looking for both, freedom of their religion and freedom from the one they were fleeing. This church wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Joseph's right to go against what others felt should stand beyond criticism. But the laws of this country allowed him to continue.

I agree with the advice given in the speech as far as how to respond when confronted with people with whom we disagree. I just disagree with his notion that religious organizations are due a certain respect and should stand immune from criticism even after they throw their two cents in to an already very heated political argument.

False Dichotomy

All logical fallacies irritate me. But one that really gets under my skin is the false dichotomy. This is when someone takes a really complicated issue and narrows it down to just two choices. Sometimes there really is a true dichotomy, (for instance either 2+2=4 or it does not equal 4. all possible answers fit in one of these two groups) but most of the time I've heard people do this there are several other options. Perhaps even a whole spectrum of choices that they are not considering. Here's a quick apolitical example. When you RSVS to a party there is frequently a choice between chicken or fish. At first you may think these are the only options. But I can think of at least two more. Most caterers will make preparations for at least one or two vegetarians in a crowd. You could ask and see if that were possible. You could also just not eat anything. None of the above. My point is that almost always we do have other options besides the two we are given.

Since 9/11 often have we heard the phrase "You're ether with us or you're with the terrorists." Probably one of the worst abuses of the false dichotomy I could think of. Truth is there are several other positions that you could take that don't fall completely in either of these extremes. I could be 100% against the terrorists but disagree with the strategy of opposing them. This is my position. I'm against terrorism but I don't like sacrificing liberties, i.e the Patriot Act, in order to combat them. Or you could be somewhat sympathetic to a group's goals, but 100% against their actions. Pakistan? By turning the issue into a dichotomy many who may have minor strategic differences are unfairly labeled as un-American or as terrorists. Some politicians just find it easier to think in black and white and avoid the more realist, more nuanced nature of reality.

One abuse of this fallacy is the one that comes all too frequently from the pulpit. Either quoting Joseph Smith or any number of the other general authorities who have restated it, "The Book of Mormon is either the greatest book ever published or it is a fraud." As with the political example there are several varying other interpretations and positions. A religious scholar who doesn't have a testimony of the book doesn't necessarily have to think it is a fraud just because he doesn't believe the doctrine. An investigator who is trying to gain a testimony may gain a testimony step by step. There is no quantum leap from thinking it is a fraud to thinking it is doctrine. These things come "line upon line".
Specifically with regards to the Book of Mormon dichotomy, this can be a very disastrous way for someone who is struggling with their testimony to think. If they were to find a story about any number of the missteps of our early church leaders they may be tempted to "throw the baby out with the bathwater". The truth is much more nuanced. It is not an all or nothing proposition. I find it ironic that most LDS members can accept these same nuances and gradations of truth in the Bible, but would consider it heresy to apply these same rules to the Book of Mormon.

No matter what the subject. I find that only very rarely can my choices really be narrowed down to only two.

Intellectual Honesty

It has been pointed out to me by others that sometimes I just think about things too deeply. I would counter by asking something like "How deep is too deep?" And completely make their point for them. Anyway I've been giving a lot of thought to what it means to be honest.
A few weeks ago I was put into a position that would have been really easy to tell a little white lie and as long as nobody called me on it everyone would have walked away with no hard feelings. Instead I opted to do the intellectually honest thing and tell the truth. The result was some hard feelings and I left feeling like I could have avoided the bad feelings if I'd have made up something rather than tell the truth. I don't regret my decision, but in spite of what well meaning people tell you in Sunday School, sometimes it's a lot harder to be honest.
A month or so ago I started a facebook.com page. I don't remember why I did it. I think I needed one to respond to somebody else's website or something like that. Anyway, one of the options that they give you when you're filling out your profile is political views. Although libertarian fits many of my views it doesn't quite get them all. And in Atlanta if you say you're libertarian many will assume that you agree with everything that Neal Boortz spouts out. I don't. In fact, I tend to vote issue by issue and not along any party lines. So I typed in free-thinker. It just felt like a more honest way to define my political views than any of the labels in the drop down menu.
Another slot asks about religious views. Many of my LDS friends answer this slot with "Christian- Latter Day Saint". Initially I wanted to select that too. However, I have a real issue with any kind of label that paints too broadly. The majority of my religious views do fall in line with LDS theology. However, I have made peace with some of the conflicting LDS doctrines in ways that many LDS friends and family find far too uncomfortable to even talk about. So I again avoided the drop down menu and did what felt intellectually more honest and typed "Seeker of wisdom". The easier and more comfortable path would have been to simply accept the label given to me and move on. It just didn't feel right.
As a result I had one friend ask sincerely if I was ashamed of the church. That was not my intent. I fear that once again my attempt a honesty may have made others uncomfortable. Everybody I know is aware that I am LDS. I've had very deep doctrinal discussions with most of them. In fact I believe that because I am not the cookie-cutter Mormon that they are able to feel more relaxed in discussing their own questions about religion with me.
In the past few months I have had detailed discussions with Liberal Baptists about their interpretation of James; Methodists about how they can improve attendance at their meetings; a Catholic friend about the impact of the new pope; an online discussion with a bunch of skeptics about how I justify my skepticism and my LDS beliefs; and countless conversations with people explaining the difference between official LDS doctrine and that pedophilia taught by Warren Jeffs. I don't believe that any of these conversations would have happened in the same way that they did if I had portrayed myself as the stereotypical Mormon. It's not who I really am and I believe that by honestly calling myself a "seeker of wisdom" I am a better positioned for encouraging others to keep looking for truth where ever they find it.
Incidentally, I don't see "Christian- Latter Day Saint" and "Seeker of Wisdom" as mutually exclusive. Isn't seeking wisdom exactly what Joseph Smith was doing? And isn't that wisdom exactly what James encouraged us to seek?

Tough Decisions

I'd like to share a rather bittersweet event that happened last night.

Aaron and I attended the scout meeting for another troop. Troop 129 has been chartered for over 50 years and is a very well run program. We showed up last night primarily as observers. They introduced us both and then just went about their normal meeting. I was impressed at how little the adults did. The boys were clearly in charge. And it wasn't just token leadership for a few minutes until they turned the time over to an adult. Besides about 5 minutes worth of announcements the adults were not involved at all.
They guys had just gotten back from Summer camp and they also had another group off at Florida Sea base so there was only about 20 scouts there. The patrols are not sorted by age. I really like that. The younger guys can learn a lot from their elder scouts in the same patrol. It also makes inter-patrol activities a lot more level than having all the 12-13 year-olds in one patrol, the 14-15 year-olds in another and the 16-17 year-olds in a third. Yes, you heard that correctly. They have boys active in the program right up until their 18th birthday. Last night they even had an 18 year old alumni visit from college. He was looking for some assistance to go help do some up keep on his Eagle project.
I spent about 30 minutes talking with their scoutmaster about the troop and the boys' plan for the the next couple of years. It was refreshing to hear him frequently refrain from telling me what they were going to be doing just yet. You see they have a PLC, a boy lead planning meeting, on Thursday and until then he doesn't really know what the boys will be planning for next year. It really is up to them. After that meeting he will take their plans to the committee and see what assistance they may need from the adults. This is how the program is supposed to work. And it has been working very well at this troop for decades.
So by now you may be wondering why I said it was a bittersweet event for me. You see part of me feels like switching to a clearly superior troop would be throwing in the towel on my current troop. Aaron and I have had several conflicts recently with the way the LDS church administers the scouting program. Far too much of the program is dictated from the top down. The SPL must be the deacons' quorum president which means it's an appointed position rather than an elected one. I ask you, whom do you respect more, the leader you elected or the the one that was appointed to govern over you? We've also had a few instances where the boys' plan was deliberately overridden for no real reason at all. We were just told to follow the directives of our Stake leaders. This is fine in any other situation, but it simply isn't the scouting program. These issues would be bearable if it were not for the fact that the church has turned a voluntary organization into a compulsory activity. Some of the boys Aaron's age would never have any interest in Scouting were it not for the church requiring it. There's nothing wrong with that at all. They may fit in just fine in school sports programs or other activities. Many of the same leadership and teamwork skills taught in scouting are also taught equally well in these other venues. Not coincidentally, these are the very same boys with whom we have the hardest problems. They simply are attending because the church and their parent make them. Personally, I think it's a waste of their time and it degrades the program for those that really want to attend because the enjoy Scouting.
Another part of me really hates to give up on the other boys in the troop who are enjoying Scouting. There are about five that would continue to attend and enjoy it even if the church stopped making it compulsory. I've grown to love them all, even the ones that don't want to be there. I've just grown weary of the constant struggle to do it the way Baden Powell set it out and the way the church wants us to do it. There are just too many conflicts.
Fortunately, the other troop meets on Tuesdays and my troop on Wednesdays. I will likely bring Aaron to 129 on Tuesdays and work behind the scenes at that troop, while still maintaining my Scoutmaster position at 519. That is at least until the church decides that somebody else needs to take the reigns for a while. As difficult as it is to work with, I've made a commitment to these boys in 519. I'll continue to struggle to make it work for those few boys that still want it to work.

Violent Imagery

The English language is loaded with violent imagery to describe thing that in reality aren't violent at all, or at least shouldn't be. At work that talk about being "at war" with our competition. People talk about winning a debate with a "knock out" argument. The news reports on the "fatal blow" to a candidate's campaign. Even the term "campaign" has military overtones. These references have always annoyed me.
I've done my best to avoid them, but didn't take them too seriously. I just wrote it off as my own hyper-sensitivity against violence. However, lately some events are convincing me that all too frequently the violent imagery we use is not only annoying it is counter productive to the message that is being conveyed.
One Sunday, while attempting to describe all the struggles that young people are faced with each day a good friend related a story about the Battle of the Bulge. The soldiers were surrounded but the general convinced them they could fight this battle on all sides. He compared their struggles to avoid pornography, bad language, drugs, etc. to a battle being waged on multiple front. At face value I saw nothing wrong with this. That is until one young man stood up and, pretending to hold a machine gun, began facing each of us in the room and saying, "rattta-tat-tat-tat!" The whole point of the lesson was immediately derailed and turned into a chance for him to play war. The metaphor not only lost its meaning it was counter-productive. Otherwise it was a great lesson. But at least one of the students will walk away thinking that the Battle of the Bulge was the topic and not the metaphor used to visualize the topic.
I really dislike the story of the stripling warriors in the Book of Mormon. I just don't see the point of it. The whole reason they went to fight in the first place was because their fathers had developed such unconditional Christ-like love that they never wanted to fight again. They would rather die themselves than deny their enemy the chance to repent. This is my goal. I hope to be able to develop this type of love and this fathers are the true heroes of the story, not the military leader who persuaded a bunch of kids to go against their fathers' wishes.
I recently received a devotional packet that I'm expected to use while at summer camp. I've always done my best to stick to the program that I've been given and support my leaders. One day next week is going to be exceptionally difficult. They want me to teach the story of Capitan Moroni. Not only that they have embellished the scriptural account by referring to the enemy as highly trained "ninjas" and provided additional gory imagery of what battle would have been like with swords. Obviously this was in order to appeal to the young men. My concern is that the focus will again be lost, just as it after the Battle of the Bulge reference. Rather than focus of the concept of standing up for what is right they will take away a message that we need to fight away the ninjas. I'm sure that if I stick to the script more than one of the boys will turn the next stick they see into a sword and start swinging. Hey, I enjoy playing with sticks this way too, but not at the expense of learning to live a better life. I will do my best to teach the boys to stand up for what is right and resist what they know to be wrong. Outside of that, I don't think I'll be able to stick to their modern rewrite of Helaman too well.
A few years ago a friend was teaching an Elder's quorum lesson. He brought up the word "jihad". Most were shocked that he would even bring it up. The non-Muslim connotation of this word is typically something like "kill the infidel". And when Arabs holding guns over their head are chanting it it's easy to see why. However, all the word really means in Arabic is simply "struggle". Struggle? Personally, that's a much better word to describe what I'm going through than fight, battle, war or any other violent imagery. In that aspect aren't we all struggling to live a better life and to make this world a better place? In this tone I will continue to fight struggle to be a better person and remove these violent imagery from my thoughts and words.

Note:
Some if this post was inspired by a journal entry of my father's. My intent was not to plagiraize, but to echo his sentiments and to thank him for his example.

Conference Report

Twice a year rather than our normal LDS services we attend a General Conference. I use the term attend rather loosely. The conference is broadcast via satellite to each stake center. We also can attend via the internet or if you have access to KBYU you can watch it on TV. Each conference we usually watch each session with the in-laws and then I will download the mp3s from www.lds.org and listen to them again throughout the the next week or so.
A few month ago Gordon B. Hinkley died and Thomas S. Monson took the reins as the new Prophet and President of the Church. Since the church has grown so much in the last ten years and this was the first time it had happened for so long, I fully expected speakers to explain and support the process that brought Monson to the head of the church. As I lifetime member I kinda felt that they took it a little too far. It felt like every speak started out by explaining the process. Perhaps this was more useful to other who hadn't seen it before. I've always liked Monson and had always accepted that he'd be Prophet one day.
I've always felt that religion was best when it dealt with specific ways that we can apply love into our lives. In this aspect conference did not disappoint. I specifically liked M. Russell Ballard's advice about how to treat your family members. Rather than just tell us to love and respect them he detailed specific ways that parents can support children, children support parents and parents support each other. There were other talks that dealt with ways of applying this love into our lives too. Ballard's was just the one that I remember most.
To end it all off Monson gave a very touching story about when his wife was in the hospital. As if to put the exclamation point on Ballard's talk, he shared a personal story that showed how he was applying this Christlike love in his own life.
As you read other posts on my blog you may be tempted to think that I am bitter toward religion. Nothing could be further from the truth. At it's best I believe that religion can add meaning and provide guidance and hope. My criticism of religion is when it looses sight of these goals and ventures into unfamiliar territory. This weekend I believe I saw examples of the best in what religion can be. When I get home tonight I'm planning on downloading the mp3s of all the talks. I look forward to listening to them again to glean what advice I can to learn to apply love in my life. For starters I plan on easing Victoria's load a little by taking care of some chores around the house.

Cemeteries

A few years ago I was up in Utah for my Grandmother's funeral. While there I took a trip to the Salt Lake City cemetery to do some genealogy research. I found quite a few family head stones and also quite a few headstones for prominent figures in LDS history. I'm not freaked out by cemeteries. On the contrary, I think they are cool. It intrigues me to think of the history that is quite literally just under my feet.
Of all the tombstones I saw that day only one made me sad. It was the headstone for Marjorie Hinkley, the wife of Gordon B. Hinkley. The stone had both of their names on it and it was a little uncomfortable to see the name of a living person on a tombstone. It saddened me think of the two of them being separated after having spent so much of their life together. I know it's kinda weird to think this way, but my heart was gladdened by the news this morning that these two are separate no longer.
So long. I'll miss your leadership and sense of humor but I'm glad that you are once again with your sweetheart.

The Natural Man

For about the last six years I've had a hard time concentrating in Sunday School. I pretty sure most of this started right about the time I really began to delve into the history of the church and the obvious whitewashing of many facts and events. I think that up until that time I was very guilty of falling victim to the argument from authority. Basically, I went about things incorrectly. Rather than examine the facts and then make my own conclusions I accepted what I was told as facts and then looked for evidence that supported those facts. Once I started looking at theology and life in the correct order I began to question most if not all of the assumptions that I previously had held to.
Yesterday in Sunday School was no exception. We were studying Ephesians and somehow we got on the subject of putting off the natural man. Most of the other students just accepted this premise and moved on, but for some reason I got stuck on it and couldn't concentrate on the rest of the lesson. What bothered me was the premise that man is naturally evil. I don't recall that as a tenant of LDS doctrine. In fact we take it further than most and even reject the idea of original sin. Philosophers have debated the idea for millennia. Is man naturally good but easily tempted to do evil? Or is man naturally evil and needs the fear of punishment to turn him good? I don't know what the answer is. And it is likely different for each person. However, I think that since the instructor didn't elaborate any more on this scripture that she believes that we are naturally evil. Personally I don't take this pessimistic approach to humanity. I believe that if left to their own devices they will choose good over evil more often than the opposite. Ironically, after reading the Lucifer Effect I am even more convinced of the inherent goodness of humanity. It is only when we surrender our choices to a perceived authority and act as a mob that we become evil.
Years ago in a business setting a supervisor told me that you could separate all employees into two groups: those that are motivated towards a good result, and those that are motivated away from a bad result. Although it may sound the same, since they are both going the same direction, in practice they are very different. One is a pessimistic approach and the other is optimistic. The first group will respond to a statement like, "Good job, this is top quality work." But the second wouldn't but be just as motivated by "be careful. You don't what this think to blow up."
Although I can see elements of both in myself, in my heart I just cannot accept that humanity is naturally evil. If we are actually the offspring of deity I find it much harder to believe that we are naturally evil. It's much easier for me to accept that we are naturally good but just stuck in a tough situation to see how we will choose.
It saddens me to think that so many people have such a dim and pessimistic view of humanity in general and themselves in particular.
I avoid expressing these points in class simply because I have my own doubts about how relevant they are to the topic at hand and in many cases I admit that they are at best a tangent to the main lesson. But it does provide me with something to ponder about and post to my blog. :)

Polygamy

With all the publicity of the Warren Jeffs trial and with the new season of "Big Love" on TV I've been getting a few questions from friends and coworkers about my opinions and thoughts on polygamy. This has been an awkward subject for me and lately I've been very surprised by the sympathetic reactions I have heard from LDS friends and family members. It is not my intent to offend or hurt anyone. However I feel morally obliged to separate myself in every possible way from what I believe to be an evil practice.
I do not believe that polygamy was ever sanctioned by God. Seeing all the suffering and sorrow that has been caused by this single revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants I simply cannot accept that it came from God. It goes directly against other modern scripture. I have blogged in the past about the "fruits test". Polygamy fails this test time and time again.
Polygamy is a mathematical recipe for child abuse. When I've attempted to explain this to folks in the past it has worked best to give a simple analogy. Suppose you have a high school with a 50/50 mix of boys and girls in each grade. Now it comes time for the senior prom. If each boy can ask one girl to the prom then every senior, boy and girl will be able to attend the prom. Simple enough.
Now let's bring "plural dating" into the picture. Suppose each senior boy could ask two girls to the prom. Soon every senior girl would be asked and then the senior boys would have to start asking junior girls in order to get both of their dates.
Now let's make this analogy even closer to the real doctrine of the early LDS and the current FLDS sects.
What would happen if each of these senior boys was required to have at least three dates to the prom in order to receive their diploma? Well pretty soon every senior, junior and now sophomore girl would have a date to the prom.
Now what if we opened up this prom to the entire high school student body? Where would they go to find all the required dates? If every high school boy was indeed required to have three dates then every girl from senior down to first grade would have a date.
Creepy isn't it.
My analogy holds true when extrapolated out to real polygamist communities. In most societies the age of the wife is slightly lower than the age of the husband. Don't know why this is considering women out live men but it seems to be a good rule of thumb. I don't have any hard facts to back this up but I'd be willing to bet that in polygamist communities the average age of the husband is pretty close to the combined ages of all of his wives. If at first this statistic doesn't seem to work out please don't forget to include the men who have zero wives into you calculations. Once you've married off all the 12 and 13 year olds to older men who already have two other wives who is left for the rest of the men to marry? Nobody. In fact this is becoming a big issue as so called lost boys are being ostracized from their communities for no other reason than they are in competition for the brides.
When it first came out, I read Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. This is probably the best and most thorough book I have ever read about the many polygamist off-shoots of the LDS church. Krakauer details the violence and abuse that permeates these sects. Krakauer is fair in his depictions of current LDS positions but many LDS members felt he did not distance the behavior of the lunatic fringe from the LDS church. I think he did as best as he could under the circumstances. Let's face it; polygamy would not exist in its current form in the United States if it were not for the official actions of the LDS church in the 1800s and early 1900s. Any book on polygamy that did not detail this history would be intellectually dishonest. The book is by no means light reading. It will and should scare you a little. Introspection is a good thing to do but it's never comfortable or easy.
I've read my great-grandfathers histories. He tells of how hard it was to be child in a polygamist marriage. I've had family members long for the Millennium to come so we could "start practicing the gospel the way we're supposed to be.” referring to polygamy. I've even had an unmarried female friend of the family tell me that in the Celestial kingdom she plans on being "sealed" to my father and she was looking forward to being my other mother. I just have such a hard time making this doctrine line up with other much more important doctrines that the only way I can make peace with it is to reject it entirely. It is wrong and it always has been.
The official LDS position is simply that it is not a doctrine of the LDS church and we excommunicate members who engage in it. It would be nice to hear a much more condemning and definite statement against this evil. The current attitude in practice is nothing more than "Yeah, but we don't do that any more. Can we talk about something else?"
Wouldn't it be nice to hear something like this from the pulpit:
"The taking in marriage of more than one wife is immoral and an insult to the institution of the family. In the past the LDS church has sanctioned and performed these marriages as if they were doctrine. This evil practice made it into our doctrine only by the selfish desires of early church leaders who used scripture and supposed revelations to justify their selfish carnal desires. To this we simply and sincerely say that we are profoundly sorry. With his first step of the repentance process we now look to do everything in our power to right the wrongs that we have caused. Nothing can atone for the many decades of sadness inflicted on women and children involved in these marriages. However, we can and will take a more active role in preventing the spread of this counter-doctrinal behavior. We also invite those who have left the church or may be struggling with their testimony because of this issue to please come back to the fold. You were right and we we're wrong. We need your love and strength to help us move forward and heal."


"6 Yea, it grieveth my soul and causeth me to shrink with shame before the presence of my Maker, that I must testify unto you concerning the wickedness of your hearts.
7 And also it grieveth me that I must use so much aboldness of speech concerning you, before your wives and your children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God;" Jacob 2: 6-7