Author: John Crawford

Sure, the bloggernacle is a place to discuss obscure points of doctrine and the true meaning of Zelph. It is a place where you can scratch your itch for intellectual approaches to the Gospel and fluffy testimonials. But where can you get the violence, the splendor, the glory, the gory of NFL football in the ‘nacle?

Well, right here, assuming that I get 6-10 interested nackers.

Announcing the Bloggernacle Fantasy Football league! Knock heads with Kaimi*! Drill Steve Evans* into the dirt! Watch Ryan Bell* juke Kristine Harris*! Catch a Hail Mary from Rosalynde Welch*! Get sacked by Danithew*!

Let me know if you are interested.

*actual participation by said Bloggernacle luminaries is dependent on their actually wanting to participate. Also, all afore-mentioned violence was and will remain purely metaphorical. Thank you.

This post was prompted by a comment made by my brother over here. I understand that the way of God is one eternal round and that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But I don’t think those things mean what they seem to mean at face value. For two reasons:

1) If God is static, whence eternal progression?
2) If the Gospel is static, whence the need for continuing revelation?

Discuss.

First, may I say that if our entirely scientific poll is any indication, then Mitt Romney will do more presidential damage than Hatch did. Mitt, the comeback kid, came from 8 votes back to win by 6.

This week’s competition is the result of a special request. As you know, here at FPR, the customer is king.

Historical Mormon Smackdown: Scriptural Bloodletter Edition
Who is the less problematic scriptural holy warrior is the LDS Canon: Capt. Moroni or Joshua, son of Nun?

Capt. Moroni: Nephite war-leader; fought invaders and internal traitors; forced said internal traitors to fight or be killed; made them hoist copies of a torn coat from their towers (how gauche!); and, finally, really, really didn’t enjoy himself in all of this.

Joshua, son of Nun: hung out with Moses and, apparently, God; enacted God’s haram, resulting in genocide in several Canaanite cities (according to the Book of Joshua, at least); and wasn’t much into the whole “shade of grey” morality viewpoint. Unfortunately, we don’t know how he felt about what he did.

So there you go, two heroes of a previous generation (okay, several generations) whom we might consider monsters nowadays. Express your defense or disgust below and vote away.

I promised that I would talk somewhat about temple work and the work for the dead from time to time. Today is such a time. This is less about work for the dead, so you know.

The Adversary is at his most effective when he can get us to do the right thing for the wrong reason. If our outward appearance and action seem righteous, then we are less likely to question our inner beliefs and attitudes. In our church, there is sometimes such an emphasis on certain outward shows of faith (eg. church and temple attendance) that ministry toward people making these shows is never initiated until something drastic occurs. We need a way to help the despairing, lonely, confused, and wayward before it becomes physically apparent that they need help. More on that another time…

What I want to talk about today is the way that the Adversary has taken some of the most sacred things that we do in the temple and has altered them. Not in the outward appearance, but in the inner meaning.

Take for instance the relationship between a man and a wife. In the temple, God has something to say on the subject (although his remarks avoid a single interpretation). Outside of the temple, many other people have something to say on the topic. In the temple, the most important aspect is that God is to be involved in decision-making. Outside of the temple, however we care to structure our families is fine, so long as the parents agree with it. God is removed from the structure of family life, even though he was the one to initially ordain it. We now have an understanding of family structure without God. Some might argue that it is better this way, but I disagree. By substituting human understanding for Godly instruction, we create a situation where our inadequate social skills and our lacking wisdom is all might keep a family from self-destructing. We need God to keep our families going. Attempts to structure the family with anything else in God’s place are doomed to fail.

The same can be said for the Gospel. There are several different Gospels out there, depending on how you want it interpreted. The vital truth of The Gospel is that it’s interpreter is Christ himself (and, from Him, the Light of Christ). When we choose a Gospel other than Christ’s, we are substituting someone or something else in His place. I had a friend who was investigating the church tell me that when it came down to it, he had to choose between what the Bible told him and what Mormonism told him. He choose the Bible. He made the choice he did because of how he understood the Bible and how he understood the way God works through it. I agreed that if we kept ourselves strictly to what the Bible (as it is translated) says, that the Book of Mormon does say and do things differently (it even contradicts the Bible on occasion). So if we want to put our understanding of the Bible above what God might tell us, we are again substituting something for God. If we prefer the interpretations of John Wesley, Martin Luther, or Eld. McConkie to what we are being told today by God, we are putting someone else in God’s place. Churches or doctrines that are not founded in God are doomed to fail.

Similar things can be said regarding the bloody recitation of the suffering of the saints and the ascetic sacrifice of monks or even in the Horatio Alger stories of self-sacrifice and success, the replacement of marriage as being between a man and a wife with something much broader, or the communitarian ideal of communism. In all these cases, God is taken out of the equation, replaced with some human’s idea of what is right or even some human. This is the Adversary at his subtlest. The outcome appears the same (strong families, stable societies) but the Adeversary’s outcomes are only temporary. The substitution of mortal for immortal always works that way.

The appeal of all of this is to our pride. We believe that we are capable of these great moral heights without divine intervention. But we are not. We are a jealous, short-sighted, stumbling bunch of sinners. There is no lasting institution on Earth that isn’t inspired and maintained by God. Although we may see in these developments things that make us better, without God, they have no effective force on us. Reason, education, reeducation, suffering, and strife have no edifying value of themselves. It is God to whom we must turn to be lifted above ourselves. All other sources are pale shadows and poor substitutes of the real thing.

In a discussion with a BYU religion professor yesterday, he mentioned that he had been told by people at the Marriott School of Business that graduates from that institution are universally praised in all areas except one (I may be slightly exaggerating here). The one area in which the BYU grad is behind his fellow MBA’s? Handling Ambiguity.

I wasn’t terribly surprised by the revelation. I don’t want to blame the “the brethren have spoken” mindset here, because I don’t believe that provides sufficient explanation for this trend. The truth is that, in the church, we are conditioned to reject ambiguity. If there are no answers to our questions, we pray/study harder. If that doesn’t work, we do it some more anyway. Problems are not problems, they’re “tests” that we need to pass in order to resolve. Things do not just happen in the Mormon worldview. In spite of our insistance on free will, it turns out that God has carefully controlled everything in our lives so that we can learn the appropriate lessons from our challenges (if we choose to, of course).

Why do we fear the inexplicable, the contradictory, and the unmotivated? Perhaps a certain believe in a divine overseer removes fear when life becomes unpredictable and confusing. It seems hard for us to accept that some things are beyond our comprehension (perhaps because of our beliefs about intelligence and intelligences).

Perhaps I am only speaking for myself here.

In any case, it seems that we have lost our taste for mystery (in the Christian sense) in the church. We do not like to dwell on paradoxes in doctrine and faith, telling ourselves that there are no paradoxes and creating elaborate schemes to make our contradictions no longer contradict.

But the mind of God is not the mind of man and the ways of God differ from ours.

Joseph Smith once said:
“By proving contraries, the truth is made manifest”

To be honest, I have no idea what this means. It could mean that by showing that contradictions exist and that it is necessary to accept them, we approach God. Or it could mean that by examining apparent contradictions, God can help us unravel them and find the rational truth therein. I am not convinced that we have an either-or situation here. In any case, it seems that we need to pay close attention to the paradoxes in our belief. Contemplation thereof seems to be a manner of approaching God.

Now on a new day and time!

This week’s contest is inspired by the news of late. Enjoy:
Which recent presidential aspirer has done more to impact the perception of the Church: Mitt Romney or Orrin Hatch?

Romney: “fixed” the Salt Lake Olympics, become a Republican governor in Mass, appears ambiguous on some key social issues, sure is purty

Hatch: has been a senator for a long, long time; constantly appears on “talking-heads” type shows; pro-stem cell research/anti-flag burning; those awful, awful songs.

That’s it folks, get your political fix here. Vote to the right or below and discuss these almost-rans (or might-runs) here.

Sorry for the sporadic posting of late. I’ve been busy. Also, I am still recovering from the results of the last poll. John Lee over Gary Gilmore? As other people have mentioned regarding other polls, I am beginning to suspect the tastes of our readership. Sure, Lee was pivotal in a minor event in Southern Utah a century or so ago. Gilmore only created a situation where W. could say, with a straight face, that he never executed an innocent man (also, Gilmore inspired the Cremaster cycle, for which he can never be forgiven in all the eternities). But I digress…

On to this week’s competition:
Who is the more historically significant LDS bomber: Marc Hofmann or Gail S. Halvorsen?

Hofmann: forged a whole lot of “early Mormon documents”, killed a couple of people to keep it quiet, inadvertantly got Michael Quinn’s career going, inadvertantly got Jon Krakauer in touch with Dan Lafferty (Justin has a collection of articles about Hofmann up on his site).

Halvorsen: dropped candy out of his bomber for impoverished German children during the Berlin airlift. Read about it here and here.

So, what will it be? Vote below or to the right and defend your choice in the comments.

I am sorry for not getting any posts out this week. I’ve been busy. According the the poll, it turns out that there isn’t an unwritten order of things because Elder McConkie wrote it all down.

This week, somewhat inspired by recent events, is a little different in that I am not sure if one of the participants is LDS (and five minutes on the internet didn’t help).

Historical Utah Smackdown: Killer edition!
Who is the more important executed Utah killer vaguely associated with Mormonism:
John Lee or Gary Gilmore?

John Lee: led the Mountain Meadows Massacre; claimed to have done it on orders from Brigham Young; the only person convicted for involvement (Justin, correct me if I am wrong).

Gary Gilmore: the first person executed after Furmand vs. Georgia had invalidated prior capital laws, captured by my stake’s second counsellor, rumored to have sought death by firing squad because of things Brigham Young taught about “blood atonement.”

Have at it, vote below or to the right.

So, last week we learned that, much as on the gridiron, it is the quarterback that has the influence, even though the running back does most of the work. But enough about that, on to this week’s event:

Historical Mormon Smackdown: Hardliner edition
Who is the more influential hard-line interpreter of current LDS orthodoxy: Elder Boyd K. Packer or Elder Bruce R. McConkie?

Elder Packer has written and given several influential talks regarding what is and what ain’t orthodoxy and firmly implying which side of the line the Lord would like you to be on.

Elder McConkie practically codified orthodoxy by writing Mormon Doctrine and has been known to take a firm position in a talk or two.

So, who is your pick? Who do you send in if you have a group of possible apostates in serious need of a spiritual beatdown (done with compassion, of course)? Vote below or to the right and comment on the proceedings.

My father has never been antagonistic to the church exactly. For all intents and purposes, he appears to have been indifferent. He never objected when we went, attended when something important happened, and generally refrained from criticizing the aspects of it to which he objected. He has reportedly even told neighbors that if he was to join any church, it would likely be ours.

We have had a whole slew of missionaries come through the house. Sometimes he has liked them; usually he hasn’t. He’ll generally tolerate them through a meal, sit and listen to their lesson, and then disappear into a back room until they leave. I don’t think that he has ever taken a discussion; it is possible that he has never been interested.

During my mission, he started attending church with my Mom (it was really the first time she had had to go alone in a long time). Mom reported that he had started reading the Book of Mormon. In our eagerness for this development (long overdue in all our minds), we peppered Dad with so many questions (mine via mail) that we quickly overwhelmed his patience and he stopped reading to get us off his back. That period may have been the closest my father will ever come to joining the church and his family contributed to his turning away then.

We are told that there is no such thing as a death-bed confession. The spirit that inhabits the body in this life will be the same that in the next. We’ve also been told that this life is the time. My father is forty years older than me, has suffered pancreatitis and a heart attack. We are often told that there is hope for the parents of wayward children, what is there for the children of wayward parents?

I am not sure that my father will join the church before he dies. I used to be sure he would, but his mortality bears more and more upon me. He still isn’t interested in the church after 40 some-odd years in close contact with it. I (and the other family members) often wonder if it is our fault. Was there something we could have done to be a better example? Have we failed to offer testimony when the moment was right? Did our reaction that one time (when I was on my mission) ruin his one chance? If he dies, will he get another?

The scriptures are sufficiently ambiguous on this point. The whole point of the work for the dead is to help those who couldn’t help themselves. Does my father fall in this category? He has known about the church for a while; does his refusal to learn more constitute a rejection of knowledge or a simple ignorance of how important the gospel is? I know that he knows that we think the Gospel is important, but that’s hearsay right?

If my father dies before he joins the church, we will have him baptized vicariously. He knows this. Does his refusal now mean that he will refuse then? If we do it, are we disrespecting his wishes? Or giving him an opportunity that he couldn’t take advantage of in life?

This is a lot of mystery surrounding our beliefs about the work among the dead. I’ll be posting on it on occasion for the next little while, if for no other reason than that I am worried about my dad. I love him and I wouldn’t mind hanging out with him for an eternity or two.