Cjones brought up a question on a previous thread that I was planning on posting on.

As Christians, we worship God.
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Sorry for the rambling nature of this. It’s been going through my head all day, and I post it now, incomplete as it is.

The Doctrine and Covenants contains an interesting parable that I noticed for the first time this morning. It’s short, and basically, Christ asks his children (all of us) to “esteem his brother [or sister, of course]” as themselves. He then says:

For what man among you having twelve sons, and is no respecter of them, and they serve him obediently, and he saith unto the one: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there—and looketh upon his sons and saith I am just?

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Personally, I am not opposed to civil marriage within the LDS community, so long as it accords with the understanding that eventual temple sealing as the ideal is being sought out. I do understand that prophets and apostles in the past have encouraged temple marriage over civil marriage for a number of reasons. [1] There are several spiritual or religious reasons for this, which I will forego at this point as some may consider them subjective. Instead, let us look at more objective reasons for marrying in the temple.
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The Church website says The Church has delivered $906 Million Dollars in Humanitarian Service Since 1985. This is just over $41 million Dollars each Year. It is unclear if this is all-inclusive (Bishops Storehouse,Internal Ward Giving, Etc.) My Guess is that it is not. I am guessing this because this would come to about $10 per active member (assuming a 30% activity rate).

However, I have no idea why the church would not include the Bishops Storehouse or Internal Ward Giving. I was unable to find any data on the above site as to how this number is derived. However, the reason I suspect most Fast Offering expenditures are not included in Humanitarian Aid is that they are not included in the Humanitarian Aid giving in the UK.
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Of Mice and Mormons

I am somewhat surprised I have not seen this current event discussed anywhere else. In brief, Mormon Family Therapist students are discriminated against at Purdue University-Calumet. Mike Adams does a good job of previewing what should be an interesting case.

Since this is not typical NCT material, I am going to leave comments off.

Recently I have taken to enjoying my Ward Library, which seems to be one of the best kept secrets in the church. No, I’m not talking about the old film strip projectors and film strips it still has failed to throw away, nor am I talking about the 100 or so vhs tapes with conference reports on them that will probably never ever be watched. I’m not even talking about the flannel boards and the flannel cutouts of Nephi, Jesus, and Mary Field Smith, all ready and waiting to make any primary lesson 10 times better.

I’m talking about books. Ones that you can check out and take home and read. (not just the torn up scriptures that the YM and YW check out for SS because their teacher makes them) My Ward Library has some interesting Gems in it. Here are a few:
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6 years ago, I was a missionary in a little town called Siaton. I was the 4th missionary ever assigned there, and was, at the time, very proud of that. It was exciting and new, and we were having great success. It was, in many ways, the most challenging area of my mission, in that I was very sick and lonely most of the time I was there. Also, it was challenging because I was struggling with all the stereotypical things a missionary struggles with, only all at once: My non-member family, my fiance back home, my ethnocentricity, my lack of faith, my selfishness, my fear, my self. And it rained everyday all day, and had been doing that since August 1st or so.
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Boyd K Packer is often maligned for his parable of the atonement he put for in his 1977 conference talk entitled the mediator.
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Well, I finally am moving on with a little bit more of Ostler, and I’ve stumbled into a problem.

You see, Ostler notes that original sin isn’t really as the rest of the world has conceived it. However, he does note that entrance into the world does submit us to genetic pre-conditions and the traditions of our fathers. This means we all do sin, based on these propensities built into us.
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There was a recent Sunstone Symposium session on how well Mormonism is represented by the Bloggernacle. I was brainstorming for empirical ways to test this.

Mainstream Mormonism is purportedly 88% Republican.
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The point of this post is not to give opportunity to arguing whether evolution or no death before the fall (NDBF)is correct. It is not to look at whether S. McMurrin and H. Eyring Sr. or J. Fielding Smith and B. Packer more accurately state the official position of the Church. If you have perspectives along those lines, table them, because those sorts of comments will be deleted here, even if you do have a fancy ™ on the end of your name.

The attempt here is to take the two positions, or for the sake of this post, assume BOTH are true. Then we can look at possible ways that both can work together.
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