Brigham Young appears to be a favorite punching bag in the church and especially on the Bloggernacle. I read and interesting post over at Unofficial Manifesto asking “Is Brother Brigham our black eye?” Apparently many in the church feel he is on several counts, but none more so than on the now infamous doctrine he taught about Adam. (more…)

There have been a couple of interesting discussions going on recently about what we can know or not spiritually and the hypothetical possibility we could be deceived about our faith. I like this topic. And since today is my birthday, I think we should talk about it. (You must obey the birthday boy after all). (more…)

We covered lesson 15 in Gospel doctrine yesterday. Once again my friend and neighbor Bruce did an excellent job. (I’m trying to butter him up to get him to start posting here.) The most important nugget I got from his lesson is that the injunction Moroni gives us to “deny not the gifts of God” is not so much him imploring us to avoid denying their existence as it is a plea for us not to decline the gifts God wants to give us. If this reading is correct (and I think it is), then the saying might be more appropriately read “decline not the gifts of God”. (more…)

As promised, this is the third in my series about the worlds without number and the inhabitants thereof talked about in our scriptures and in the church. In the second of the series we explored the question of who the inhabitants of those planets were. It basically comes down to one fundamental question: Were we those people or were they completely separate batches of spirits? (We are calling the first model the Heber C. Kimball (HCK) Model because he and other 19th century leaders taught it and the latter The Batch Model). Not surprisingly opinions differ on this issue. A separate but related question is: Did each of those worlds have a savior inhabit it? (more…)

I think teaching the gospel is very much like live performing of music (both rock and jazz). When I play gigs it is a lot better when the crowd is into it and responding and dancing. I can read the reactions and feed off of it and build the energy accordingly. When I teach from the pulpit instead of in a classrom setting (like I had to tonight at our Stake Women’s Conference) I lose much of that connection. The congregation may be getting a lot but it is hard to tell so I often sit down wringing my hands a bit. I think “Did they get it? Did any of that inspire anyone? I gave ’em my best stuff… Was I just off tonight?” If nothing else I hoped my prayer and pondering and fasting in preparation helped cover for me. The women were complimentary afterwards tonight but I’m always happier when it’s more obvious that light bulbs are coming on over heads. I think I might have seen a few light bulbs tonight in that half-full chapel, but they were sort of far away. (more…)

I’ve been asked to teach a class tonight for a stake Relief Society activity called Rejoice! You don’t have to teach this class! The goal is to provide “Tips for teaching by the spirit”. I am one of about twelve guest speakers under assignment from the Stake Relief Society president that will teach a class. There are about four concurrent classes in three segments so I won’t be teaching the entire stake RS or anything. (Besides, who knows how many people will actually show up). Still it is a little nerve racking for me. I am one of the few male speakers and the topic is a little tough – how to teach by the spirit. Talk about pressure! If I don’t manage to get the Spirit to show up for this I’m gonna look like quite an idiot. Oh well, I look like an idiot regularly enough not to care so much about that, but I do want to be useful to God if I can. (more…)

Yep, ask any my kids who daddy loves the most in the world and that would be their answer. Ask them who mama loves most in the world and the answer would be “daddy”. My kids assume that’s the way it is supposed to be and they are right. Further, they tell me they are quite happy with these facts. (more…)

I suspect I’m not the only one who has been baffled by the advantage (or not) of being the literal blood of Israel vs. being adopted into the house of Israel. Being adopted in to the lineage by taking baptismal covenants makes good enough sense to me, but then we hear various authoritative quotes about how basically everyone that joins the Church probably has the literal blood of Israel coursing through their veins already anyway. Here is an example: (more…)

The law of consecration worries me. It nags me. It harasses me. It won’t leave me alone. It’s like that paper boy in the 80’s teen flick Better Off Dead that kept showing up out of nowhere demanding his “twoooo dollllaaarss!” — It just won’t go away. (more…)

Steve put up a great post today over at Kulturblog on developing tastes for the finer things in life — food, music, art, etc. It is an interesting subject in itself and in the comments Clark linked to another very interesting blog with a cool listening experiment. Go try it yourself.

As hard as I found it to believe, apparently a lot of people can’t tell which version of the music is askew. It was painfully obvious to me, but then again I have a degree in music and have played semi-professionally, etc. So let me know if it is obvious to you or not. If it is not, don’t fret — apparently you are in the majority. According to the study cited, most people don’t currently have the ability to discern any difference. But if it is not this might serve as an interesting object lesson on the spiritual subject of discernment. (more…)

Most of the Christian world believes the afterlife is divided into two states: heaven and hell. It was revealed to Joseph Smith that there are more details to the afterlife than that. The Lord explained in section 76 that when Paul talked about resurrected bodies having glories as different as the Sun, the Moon and the Stars that this was in fact a model of the afterlife. So in the Church we now understand that rather than just heaven and hell, there is gradation in “heaven”. There is a telestial kingdom which matches the glory of the stars, a terrestrial kingdom that is likened to the glory of the moon, and a celestial kingdom that is likened to the glory of the sun. It is my opinion that just as the three-kingdom model shows more gradation than the heaven/hell model, that in reality the afterlife is a continuum of glory ranging from no light (outer darkness) to enough light to be likened to the sun at noonday (in Arizona no less). (more…)