One of the most prominent and appealing concepts throughout our religion is that of continual eternal progression. Another important concept in our religion is the eternal nature of matter as opposed to ex nihilo creation. I would venture to say that these two concepts are widely agreed upon among all my co-religionists.

Some other concepts don’t merit such unanimous support. Sometimes, this is due to the slippery nature of the language we’ve given ourselves. For example, there is the question of what eternal means in these scenarios. Is it never ending progression, or is it Progression like God? Is matter never beginning and never ending or is it God’s matter? Is there a distinction between these two or isn’t there? Is there sometimes a distinction and sometimes no distinction? (more…)

So, just to show I suck at New Years Resolutions, I switched from the Book of Mormon to the OT around the beginning of this month, and am currently in Leviticus.

Anyway, in Leviticus 19, we read the following:

23 ¶ And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.
24 But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal.
25 And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the Lord your God.

Looking at other translations of the Bible, we see another word alternatively used for uncircumcised is forbidden.

So this got me thinking. A lot of the stories in the book of Genesis call on the law of Moses to illustrate part of the story. An example is Judah sleeping with Tamar, which requires Judah knowing and understanding Mosaic Law for it to make sense.

Is Eve’s story like this? Is the Forbidden Fruit she partook fruit of a tree that was under three years old?

(It’s interesting to note that the above mosaic ruling on uncircumcised fruit is put forth without a punishment attached, and thus could be considered only a transgression, rather than a sin out right.)

Any thoughts or feed back from you scholarly types?

A few months ago, I enjoyed being in a Question and Answer session with Elder Anderson of the Presidency of the Seventy, as our stake was split, This weekend he has returned as we are being moved from our stake into another Stake, which is also splitting. Having anticipated this meeting for some time, I began compiling a list of questions I’d ask him, some about things like the second anointing, others about theodicies, others still about the atonement and pre-mortal life, but this morning, I felt a strong prompting to ask my wife what to ask, and she laid out her concern, which I am sure our sisters over at Zelophehad’s Daughters could empathize with. So feeling prompted by the Spirit, I asked Elder Anderson tonight in the Stake General Priesthood meeting:

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While I wait for Blake Ostler’s book 3 to arive in the mail from Amazon.com, I’ve been whiling away the free moments skimming Paulson and Musser’s excellent introduction. Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies . (It’s a great book, with some great introductions to different schools of thought. Check it out if you get the chance.)

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Yes I know they’ve never been effective, but my stake does Priesthood Committee Meetings Every other Fast Sunday, which amounts to either 4 or 6 times a year, depending on whether you do them on the odd or even months. What’s odd is there is a rumor in our stake which has gone on for two or three years that the rest of the church got a first presidency letter years ago discontinuing these committee meetings, and though it’s [supposedly] in the handbook, that’s because book 2 hasn’t been revised since 1998. [I say supposedly because I only have book 1 and not book 2, oddly enough]

Here’s the thing: How do you look at first presidency letters? They don’t seem to be compiled or stored anywhere that is accessable.

Anyone have any ideas on how one can get this kind of information? I mean, I don’t want to vent, but I’ve never seen these things be effective in any stake or ward I’ve ever been in, and if there is a way I can free us from them and move on to better things, I’d love to hand a copy of it to my stake president. What drives me even more crazy is google searches pull back absolutely zero hits for priesthood committees outside of PEC and APC!

Further, I often hear little things like this “First Presidency Letter X said Y, so we need to do Z” and there doesn’t seem to be any general way to confirm or deny such.

Basically, I currently have this to take to my Bishop in the Morning to try to put a stop to this committee nonsense, but anything more would be nice.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were talking about Christ and how he never gives up on his relationship with us. We were talking about how he is perfect, and understands us, and wants us to be like him and his Father. And we were talking about how he loves us so much that he leaves it up to us, and doesn’t force us. Lastly, we talked about how he never gives up on us.

Then my wife reminded me of a friend of mine who I’d been avoiding, who had been really hateful to me, and hurt me badly, and we hadn’t spoken in years. He’d quit the church and tried hard to get me to quit, calling me intellectually dishonest for believing in God and Evolution. My wife reminded me that as Christ doesn’t quit loving, and neither should I.

As a man, I began thinking of How th Scriptures do say that “The Spirit shall not always strive with man.” and how Christ does quit in his efforts to reach some. Then I thought about how this could be: How does Christ quit on us? There is only one reason I can think of why Christ would back off. That is because it would be more painful for us for him to continue than for him to go on. It’s not his own pain Christ was concerned with, but it is our pain. He lets go and steps away because he knows it hurts us more for him to hold on sometimes. He allows us to “shrink” away.

This is kind of what I think is happening here in this life, Our Father in Heaven saw it would cause us more pain in the pre-existence if we were’nt able to progress. Joseph Smith once said that in the preexistence that we were oppressed, and the primary reason for gaining a body was to be free from this oppression. I think part of that freedom is freedom from the presence of God. It is God quitting. Cutting his apron strings, He let go, like the old cliched of when you love some one. If we love him, we’ll come back, right?

When I was in High School I dated this girl, we dated for six years, she slept with some other guy, and we broke up. I was crushed. I hurt all over. I wanted her back so badly, but after a while, when the guy moved away, and she was lonely and came back, I realized, as much as I wanted to be with her, to have ger be my life again, I had to let her go, because the pain we caused each other together was to great. I was hurting her, she was hurting me. We were bad people. In that pain, I, a wanna be atheist, called out to God and asked him to make the pain stop. A year and five months later, I joined the church, and the pain was gone. Looking back, I learned a lot from that year of pain. I learned a lot about letting go. I learned there is a God, and I am not him.

And I am not Jesus. Jesus quits because he knows it would be more painful for us if he continued. I have no such knowledge. Last night, I had dinner with my friend, grateful not to know, grateful for the ability to quit. To quit being angry. To quit feeling upset. To let go.

In Mosiah 2, it says, in a rather long sentence:

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The Book of Jacob is a pretty short book, I thought about combining it with Enos-Words of Mormon, but I thought it had two really interesting points I hadn’t before thought of, so I’d go ahead and share them.
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Hey: My sister-in-law is moving to Salt Lake to go to LDS Business College. I know a bunch of ya’ll live around there. She just got off her mission (to Utah, but Provo) and is looking for a place to live. We live in Texas, and I’ve never lived in Utah (except the MTC) anyone have any ideas of someplace safe (and really cheap) we can afford to put my sister-in-law up in?

I know this is atypical for the blog, but this girl is pretty important to me.

I’m making pretty good progress on my Goal this year to read the Book of Mormon from beginning to end. I just finished second Nephi. Previously I had reported on 10 things I never knew before in First Nephi. Here are 10 things about 2nd Nephi. (more…)

This month’s Ensign, page 67

discuss.