I have been meaning to use these pithy post titles for some time now but since the content I have in mind for them overlaps I decided to use them all for this single post. The overall subject is one of my favorites and one of the most important we could talk about – personal revelation. (more…)
I am finally getting around to reading Sterling McMurrin’s 1965 book called “The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion“. Clark already sponsored a reading club for this book about 18 months ago so in this post I will pick up on that long-dead discussion and follow Clark’s outline. Both Clark and Dave started by posting on the topics covered in the first eleven pages. (more…)
Johnny was bad, even as a child, everybody could tell…
– Opening line to Only a Lad by Oingo Boingo
I gave the priesthood lesson today in my ward. It was based on President Hinckley’s recent talk on forgiveness. You remember the story he related about the generous woman that was so forgiving to the young man that had foolishly and carelessly heaved a frozen turkey through her windshield and disfigured her face in the process. It is a touching story of repentance and forgiveness – I highly recommend it. (more…)
The discussion at Rebecca’s post on Bullying over at FMH reminded of my darkest days… Middle School. (more…)
I took a class with Stephen Robinson at BYU in the early nineties. I got the feeling I annoyed him a bit. I suspect I might annoy him even more now (if he spends much time on the Web) since my post on why his parable of the bicycle is wrong now shows up as the #4 Google result for the search term “Parable of the Bicycle”. After bashing the parable of the bicycle I felt obligated to try to find a better explanation of what the atonement does for us so I concocted and presented my own parable and called it the parable of the mortgage. The problem was that I was not really satisfied with my alternative either. (more…)
The Garden of Eden story is packed with symbolism. Jeff Giliam has even made compelling arguments here at the Thang that the Garden story is entirely symbolic. In this post I will riff on this idea that the Garden story is symbolic rather than literal. Before doing so, I want to point out that I am not hinting that there was no literal Adam on this earth. I think the evidence that there was a literal Adam is quite compelling. Rather, I want to look at possible meanings of the garden story and pre-garden story. (more…)
“Let me give you a definition in brief. Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell.” (Discourses of Brigham Young [Deseret Book Co., 1941], p. 416.)
Over at BCC Kris posted on the subject of women healing. She focused on the ritual of healing through the laying on of hands in the post. She writes:
Most members would agree that women are not precluded from receiving or seeking any of the spiritual gifts outlined in Doctrine & Covenants Section 46, “And again, to some it is given to have faith to be healed, and to others it is given to heal.” This is not a gendered statement. Yet while it seems that Mormon women are not officially forbidden to heal, they are prohibited from engaging in the rituals of healing. The current Handbook states that, “only brethren who hold the necessary priesthood and are worthy may perform an ordinance or blessing or stand in the circle.” In this system, women become “hidden healers”; often the gift of healing that literally lies at their fingertips is unused, accidentally discovered and sometimes serves as the source of confusion or guilt.
Buckle up amigos. I’ve been a thinkin’ again…
A few recent doctrinal discussions I’ve had raised a question in my mind: Are we participating in a “Council in Heaven” right this moment? I figured this would be a good place to explore the idea. (more…)
The comments in a recent post at BCC reminded me of all of the unsubstantiated beliefs that float around this church regarding the afterlife. In the following series of posts I will talk about some of them.
In this first post I want to discuss the following assumption that many Mormons make: The Kingdoms of Glory described in section 76 are separate physical places. (more…)
So Clark and I were discussing superheroes and Mormonism briefly the other day. He already put up a post on it (but in true super villain form failed to mention me – he shall hereafter be known as Dr. FailsToGiveProps). Anyway, I always thought the Mormon super power (if we had one) would be closest to the powers of an obscure former X-Man named Longshot.
Longshot was actually neither a human nor a mutant, but somehow he made it into the X-Men for a while. His super powers included things that have nothing to do with Mormonism like agility, knife throwing accuracy, etc. But his best super power was this: Good Luck. (more…)
