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Christianity 101, BoM Style

Tis the start of the New Year, and therefore the start of a new lesson cycle for those of us who serve as teachers in church.  What to do, what to do, we think.  A class participant who is 48 years old may have heard the lessons we are supposed to present some ten or so times!  And this year the Sunday School lesson cycle is the Book of Mormon, which most people can actually read if they try, so it’s not like we’re going to surprise anyone with some new verses about the theological insights of the mothers of the stripling warriors or whatever…

Fortunately, I don’t have that problem.  I’m teaching the oldest adolescents this year, so I seem to have four young gentlemen in their last two years of high school.  They’ve had these lessons perhaps only three times!  However, since they are teenagers it is quite possible that they do already know everything there is to know with that incorrigible certainty so characteristic of youth…

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Mizuko Kuyō (abortion)

During my recent perambulations through various sacred texts searching out how major spiritual traditions claim to handle violence I ran onto a short report on a Japanese Buddhist ritual called mizuko kuyō. This is something of a memorial service for aborted children. There are about a million abortions each year in Japan. For purposes of comparison, I think there are about 1.5 million abortions each year in the U.S., while our population is about double that of Japan.

Since most Buddhist sources hold that life begins at conception, abortion means that a child has been lost. More traditional Buddhist societies, such as Thailand and Sri Lanka, allow abortion only under limited conditions. Elsewhere, I believe that the law varies.

The basic elements of mizuko kuyō are quite simple. An image of the bodhisattva Jizō is dressed in a child’s bib and toys are placed nearby. The image itself might be in the home, or it might be in a roadside shine. In some places, there are even small temples that offer services of various degrees of complexity

Participants in the ceremony include the parents and perhaps other members of the family. A candle is lit and the participants pay their respects to the spirit by bowing. The ceremony may be repeated on anniversaries as the family comes to grips with its loss.

On a personal level I find pictures such as the one to the left disturbing. The scholar Bible dork in me wonders about the public nature of this sort of thing, though. What effect did this have on the community as it began in the 1970s or so? I have also heard that there are folks who are doing this sort of thing in the U.S. now, so I wonder how that will play out.

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Pharisees, Scribes, and Modern Disciples

In TYD’s post below, “A Prophet is Only a Prophet When…,” one of the commenters, identified as Jeremiah Rush, left the following thoughts:

If the Jesus as described in the new testament existed today, he would assert the mormons (and most of christianity) are like unto the ‘pharisees, scribes, and hypocrits.’ Monson as a “prophet?” A penthouse on temple square, wool suits (a wolf in sheep’s clothing), driving around in limos, having his picture in millions of people’s homes, etc–certainly not like Jesus. It all reminds me of this: ‘Those who love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues (or chapel, or conference center)’ and further, ‘ they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ The mormon leadership are a bunch of geriatric, brainwashed and brainwashing men. If he is a prophet, then I’m a f@#$%*&% saint 😉 But of course you will now say, ‘he is fallen, and hath a devil.’

This interests me because it has some elements of what is an enduring appraisal of Christian leadership: that the leaders in whatever is the current age do not conduct themselves as did Jesus or the original disciples. And in fact, many books and articles have been written exploring precisely this point, and suggesting precisely what Mr. Rush suggests: Christ would disown or be disowned by Christianity.

What I wonder is this: Under what circumstances is this a legitimate evaluation?

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Brand Spanking New

Like many Christians I like to read and re-read Romans 5-8. Paul uses very vivid imagery to portray both sin and grace as powers that can exercise dominion over human life. Death and the law are likewise rendered in apocalyptic terms. These chapters come to something of a climax in Rom 8:3

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Now I’ll stop here and ask you to reflect on what sort of things strike you as important about this passage. Since there are no wrong answers you are free to answer in whatever fashion you like but do take a moment and think about it.

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The Always Placid Mormons

…is how we are described by the Catholic blogger who writes as “The Anchoress.” I read her pretty much daily. On the whole, she’s usually a refreshing combination of entertainment, spiritual insight, and wisdom. My kinda person, and especially so since I teach from within her tradition.

It’s always interesting to find out how you’re viewed by others. And I don’t mind being “always placid.” If, through this Proposition 8 tempest, one of the labels that sticks to us is “placid,” it won’t be such a bad thing.

In fact, I could go for the placid thing on my tombstone: Here lies Mogget, usually reasonably placid unless you get frisky with the 2nd Amendment or you proof text from the Bible…

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No Time

The 20th comment on David Clark’s “Mormon Anxieties” post comments that the request to support a “yes” on Proposition 8 was “time sensitive.” After comparing this to President Hinckley’s recent directive to read the BoM before the beginning of the year, this same author writes “we didn’t have the luxury of weeks and months to ‘gain a testimony’ of it.”

There are instances where we must react based without detailed thought. For example, those who use firearms regularly in their line of work rely on decisions made earlier, in more leisurely moments, about how they will react under certain legal conditions and circumstances. But moral-political propositions presented for a vote with an understanding that there is insufficient time to seek genuine spiritual confirmation seem to me to be similar to $700 B bailouts for which we likewise somehow lack the time for public debate. Katy. Bar. The. Door.

Like David, I am not going to open a debate on the Prop. 8 issue. But I am interested in the idea that there might be circumstances in which we should act without spiritual confirmation on some major political or moral decision. This does not seem likely to me, because the LDS lifestyle seems to be full of at least anecdotal evidence of major life changes made on the basis of rather sudden spiritual inspiration. I am, however, open to learning more from those who have given it some thought.

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The Pre 4 November Gun Thread

I am Mogget the Exegete and, as I have already exercised due diligence in the Quadrennial Varmint Detection and Selection Exercise, it’s time to prepare for the Day.

First, I’d like to introduce the newest member of my household:

Is she pretty, or what?  That’s the SA 1911 EMP.  My CC should be coming in soon, too.  It’ll make an unusual, if not unique, fashion statement in RS, or it would if anyone were to see it.  But we gotta be mindful of what the first “C” is for, eh!

And notice the JHP there on the left.  Who would have thought that the single greatest need in my storage might be another 200 rounds of Hydrashock, just in case the 2nd Amendment becomes a casualty of the messianic woes, so to speak?

So anyway, to the point of this post.  Have you noticed that gun shops are doing a booming business these days, even as the rest of the economy appears to be shrinking a bit?  It’s probably the right time for one of those EBRs before they’re all bought up.  What are your suggestions?  Should my purchase be adjusted for the results of the Varmit Detection and Selection Exercise?  Can you think of an EBR that might really, really, be irritating to any duly selected Varmit?  Or hey!  How about a suppressor?  Heheh.  Always wanted one of those…

 

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I Desire to Dwell Among This People

In 1219 Francis of Assisi traveled to Damietta, Egypt, in order to convert Sultan Malek al-Kamel and avoid the Fifth Crusade.  He did not baptize the sultan but he did work out a peace treaty which was later rejected by his fellow Christians.  He also spend time in Egypt and in the Holy Land ministering to the needy regardless of creed.

After Francis returned he drew up a Rule for those who were to join him as Franciscans.  This document is called the First Rule, or, because it was rejected by Pope Honorious III, the regula non bullata (Rule not ratified by papal bull).  According to official reports, the pope rejected Francis’ first effort because it was too austere.  The real reason, however, may lie in the way in which his experience among the Muslims was reflected in the First Rule.
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A Particle of Faith

I sometimes hear folks at church distinguish themselves from other Christians by asserting a difference between the LDS “I know that…” and the non-LDS “I believe that… The former, it is implied, is the stronger and therefore the better faith. At the level of individual intent, I am not sure that such is the case. But the real issue is a bit of a misunderstanding about the effectiveness of faith.

The efficacy of faith does not depend on its fervor, but on the trustworthiness of its object. It is quite possible to believe passionately in something or someone who is less than worthy of this trust. The results of such misplaced confidence can be quite devastating. On the other hand, a minimum of faith reposed in a trustworthy object or person is always rewarded. This, I believe, is one facet of what Alma meant when he insisted that our experiment with the seed must entail a “good” seed. For if the seed is good, then “a particle” of faith is all that is needed.