My sense is that there are a lot of Mad Max Mormons in the world. Now admittedly I just made that term up, but what I mean by it is there seem to be a lot of Mormons who expect the world to get worse and worse until some massive calamity nearly wipes humanity out and just as we are in the verge of being forced to live like Mad Max in a post-apocalyptic dystopia Jesus will return and fix the world. And who could blame Mormons for such a world view? Not only are there plenty of prophesies in the Bible that seem to indicate that’s how it will come down prior to the second coming of Jesus, there are supporting modern revelations saying the same things in even more detail. The term “Latter-day” is in the official name of our church for cryin’ out loud. To most people that indicates that these are the very last days of the world. (more…)

This is the last installment in the series of the Plan of Salvation. Click here for previous posts in this series and why I’m writing this children’s book.

The process of becoming like Christ is called sanctification. As the Holy Ghost sanctifies us, we receive more light, knowledge, and love for others; which makes us happy because we also enjoy God’s presence in our lives. n order to be sanctified, God will ask us to sacrifice the temporary things of this world to choose the things of eternity. In order to strengthen us against the temptations we will face to cling too tightly to the things of this world, Christ has outlined, through His prophets, specific habits that focus our minds on life’s purposes and invite the Spirit into our lives. (more…)

I finally started reading that copy of Truman Madsen’s Eternal Man that has been sitting on my bookshelf for the last couple of years. Eternal Man is an interesting little set of short theology and philosophy essays aimed at laymen. It was published in 1966. In the second chapter of the book Madsen makes the following assertions about the minds/souls/intelligences/spirits of all people:

The quantity of souls is fixed and infinite.
There is no beginning to us.
Mind has no birthday.
No one is older or younger than anyone else.
We have always been separate from, and coexistent with other intelligences.
Creation is never totally original.
Immortality is not conditional — it is inevitable and universal.
Death does not destroy the self.
Suicide is just a change of scenery.
No self can change completely into another thing.
No one will ever lose their mind or consciousness.
Nothing is something we never were and never will be.

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I am trying for something devotional here. A fire and brimstone sermon to myself, if you will…

One thing I loved about my high school freshman year of Catholic History was the chapter on the Spanish Inquisition and discussing the horrible things done then. It opened up discussions of religion which I had never before considered and helped me gain an understanding of and frankly a dislike of those evils which had come before. But this acknowledgement of evil was not enough to keep me in the fold. Confessing to evil isn’t enough. It only makes you guilty. (more…)

Click here for previous posts in this series and why I’m writing this children’s book.

Christ can’t force us to receive His gifts of life and joy. For us to be like Him and receive all that the Father has, it requires our participation. God can’t just make us become as He is because at the deepest level, we all have agency or free will, and that cannot ever be taken from us. Agency is the ability to choose who and what we will love and how we will use our power to pursue our desires. At our core, we have always existed with agency. (more…)

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is one of those books that a lot of people talk about so I figured I should get around to reading it. I finally did recently. Here is my review.

Grade: B

The Good

The book is a real page turner (even when you have it on your ipod). Weaknesses in prose notwithstanding I found myself really wanting to see what would happen next. That is a good sign with any book. It is heavy on philosophy and while others might not appreciate that I dug it.

The Bad
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