Today at 1:30, I’ll be teaching this in Elder’s Quorum. Last week, Elder Ballard taught us in Regional Conference to not “over complicate” the Gospel. I’m trying.

Defining Sacrifice in LDS theology

Sacrifice can and has meant a variety of different things. The definition I like the best in the context of LDS theology comes from our concise little manual “True to the Faith” published in 2004. It says, “To sacrifice is to give up something valuable or precious, often with the intent of accomplishing a greater purpose or goal”. In a way, this definition is very similar to the use of the term in the game of Chess, where the pawn may sacrifice itself for the benefit of the entirety of the team. The pawn is killed for a greater purpose, but does not necessarily receive any direct benefit for itself. I sometimes hear people say sacrifice is giving up something good now for something better later. Thus we end up with sacrifice sounding like investing in a 401k plan. This doesn’t ring true to me. While it may be true that we give something up for something of higher value, the “something of higher value” may not directly have benefit for ourselves, and does not necessitate that benefit. The manual asks, “Why is it important to sacrifice as the Lord asks without expecting anything in return?” I think it is because the greater purpose or goal we are to give up is greater than ourselves. It is the glory of God and all mankind. Anyway, I think this concept of sacrifice as giving up for a greater good is useful as we think about religious sacrifice before Christ, of Christ, and in our lives as Christians.
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I am not really sure I should be posting this. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Please excuse my grammar errors.

I don’t really know what to do. It is the sort of situation I’ve never really thought about. But let me start from the beginning. Lightning moved here years ago, following his sister and parents. Lightning has never been diagnosed, mainly due to parents who have issues that are similar to his, but his sister believes him to have some form of high functioning autism. I am not sure that matches his symptoms, but I have no medical expertise in this area. Lightning spent years in the singles ward here, variously leering at girls until they became uncomfortable, or telling girls they were fat, or bearing his testimony of how he had to beat someone up for on his mission to teach them humility. Eventually, Lightning’s brother-in-law got a job far away and moved, taking sister and eventually parents away. Lightning chose to stay, being over thirty, and moved into our ward, having reached “the age”. Having known Lightning’s sister, I tried to keep an eye on Lightning. I helped him do his taxes, occasionally took him food, and let him do laundry at my home. Lightning meanwhile got a permit to carry a gun and became a security guard, and perpetually asked me if he could write my sister-in-law, “since she’d lost weight”. Lightning was a little odd, making inappropriate comments in Sunday School about teaching other missionaries humility on his mission to the slums of salt lake city, where he taught the gangs. (He did actually serve a mission to SLC. I don’t know about the rest.) Occasionally he would tell me things like God gave him super strength, and this would worry me, but not as much as his owning a gun did. Also a worry to me is Lightning’s engagement to a girl in the Philippines, whom he has flown over to see once. (Using the money from his tax return I helped him to get, and being unable to pay his bills for months afterward)
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You have to be pretty sheltered to not have heard the name “Jimmer” in the last week or so.

Jimmer Fredette, the senior guard for the BYU basketball team, has somehow vaulted from a pre-season all-American and the top scorer in college hoops to a household name this week. See a recent WSJ blog post on the transformation here. In the last few weeks Jimmer has been the lead story on ESPN’s SportsCenter on multiple occasions for his incredible feats of excellence on the basketball court. But after his virtuoso performance Wednesday night against #4 and previously undefeated San Diego State University, Jimmer has suddenly catapulted into superstar status. He is a huge hit on Twitter and NBA stars like Kevin Durrant, Steve Nash, and John Wall have been tweeting in admiration of Jimmer. The whole situation has been somewhat astonishing to witness.

I am very happy for the kid. It is fun to watch. Best of all, the pressure seems to make Jimmer perform better on the court rather than cause him to wilt. Maybe that’s the real reason why he is becoming a superstar.

D&C 89:12-13 reads:

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Recently I heard that the comma after “used” is a later insertion done by James E. Talmage, so this verse should actually be:

Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Is there any truth to this? I could find very few references to such a change via the usual googling but all of them are pretty questionable in terms of veracity.

Interestingly, I’d say the norm is to practice the second reading, although the scriptures currently state the first.

I figured this could be a bloggernacle catch-all thread for the awesomeness that is BYU hoops this season. BYU cracked the top ten in the coaches poll this week after going into Las Vegas and completely stomping the Runnin’ Rebels. (Jimmer Fredette dropped 39 points on their noggins.) The Cougs are now 16-1.

I’ll use this post to update progress of the team over the next few week. BYU heads to Salt Lake tonight to play the struggling Utes.

Have you been keeping up on the BYU hoops team this year? If not you should be.

Sound off below.

While many posts have been dedicated to the new CHI, I am quite surprised that this major doctrinal shift has been overlooked. To my mind, this is probably the most important “micro-mormon” (Thanks, Scott B.) level change to occur in the handbook.
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There was a fascinating post over at BeliefNet this week on attitudes among Mormons about women receiving the priesthood. Here is the most interesting part, quoting studies found in the book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell:

Yet the most remarkable finding is that within Mormonism itself, there is a significant split by gender on this question. The number that looks the most extraordinary to outsiders–that only 10% of Mormon women want the priesthood–seems pretty predictable to those inside the faith. But the finding that 48% of Mormon men say they favor female LDS clergy is truly startling.

The blog author, Grant Hardy, goes on to give a long list of possible explanations for these survey results. Most of them seem fairly plausible as contributing factors at least. All of them are pretty nice to Mormon men and women I thought.

The cynic in me thinks Hardy danced around one obvious explanation. That is that 48% of men wouldn’t mind letting the ladies do more of the heavy lifting regarding clergy duties in church. In contrast, 90% of the ladies like the fact that they can be completely guilt-free when it comes to those difficult and time-consuming clergy duties.

What do you think though? Certainly there is some combination of reasons why Mormon men are nearly five times more likely to favor women receiving the priesthood and serving in clergy duties than Mormon women are to favor such a thing. But what is your guess about the primary reason for these results? Something Hardy said? The more cynical reason I mentioned? Or something else entirely?

This is not intended to be a position piece, but as I have had a couple conversations regarding LDS theology and Human Sexuality in the past 24 hours, I thought it would be best to articulate what I see as some of the theological issues that are repeatedly coming up. I am also trying to link to either good sources I am aware of that relate to these issues, or at least more fully articulate the issues.

1. The Problem of Determinism- If a human being can be determined in something as fundamental to human behavior as sexual preference, how free are they really? One could argue that if we are not really free, then we are not really accountable. This argument is used in Mormonism and Many Legal communities to deny accountability for infractions do to lack of willful intent. Perhaps the best theological path here is to accept a concept of limited free will, as articulated by Geoff J here.

2. The Problem of Evil- Why would a loving God allow something so fundamental to life to be so fundamentally off as sexual preference. This is the question that was excised from Boyd K. Packer’s talk. This is, of course, the most challenging question in all of Christendom. An excellent articulation by Rosalynde Welch of the issue in this specific context is here and I do my best to give my theodicy of the problem here.

3. The Problem of Sentimentality- How much of romantic love is merely chemistry and biology playing out within us, rather than the profound experience our society has set it up to be. Must sexual preference override all other forms of relational compatibility? This question is tightly related to the problem of determinism above, and I have attempted to articulate it in the past here.

4. The Problem of Scriptural infallibility- The New Testament has numerous scriptures involving homosexuality as a non-allowed sin. Wikipedia has a very complete list. This is above and beyond the more blatant statements in the Old Testament. Of course, the New Testament also calls women the weaker vessel, and says they should not speak in church. Thus appeals to the authority of scripture alone truly do need prophetic clarification.

5. The Problem of Doctrinal Non-clarity- With pseudo-doctrinal teachings of our eternal existence and purpose ranging from eternal sexual procreation to the necessity of a male and female to create a whole deified person, there is much confusion on what our sexuality infers upon our eternal existence. Add to this non-clarified doctrines regarding Heavenly Mother, viviparous spirit birth, and questions around what Joseph meant in terms of our spirits being Eternal, and we are left with a wide range of possible theological world views to pick from. I find myself most in line with Jonathon Stapley on these issues while perhaps taking a more apologetic view in regards to Heavenly Mother.

6. The Problem of Prophetic Fallibility- Perhaps the greatest challenge in the modern LDS worldview that has been high lighted in terms of the church’s doctrine regarding human sexuality is that it has and does change. Up until the 1980s Birth Control was incredibly frowned upon, and then there was a major shift, with one statement from Gordon B. Hinckley. Polygamy ended with a prophetic proclamation, institutionalized racism like wise. These massive doctrinal statements make it more difficult for church members to solidly anchor themselves to any single teaching of the church, leaving them to reason out for themselves with mixed results what is best. The Narrator best articulated this issue for an article for the SMPT journal Element, which can be read here. I am told there will responses to this article in another issue of Element, but I am not aware if they have been published.

So there you have it, these are the issues I could think of which come into play when discussing the theology of the LDS position in regards to homosexuality. I am not aware how deeply these issues impact the reasoning for the LDS position, but they undeniably have all come up as a consequence to it.

Are there other issues that you think are coming up at a theological level? Are there other posts you’d recommend on these theological issues?

As we have discussed in the past, Mormonism embraces at least a quasi-universalism in its teaching that hardly any of the inhabitants of the earth face an eternal hell after this life. And if it turns out that there is progression between kingdoms (an idea that has had both detractors and supporters among Church leaders over the years) then an even more robust form of universalism exists.

But as we have also discussed, it is not clear that it is useful to Mormonism (or to God for that matter) for all Mormons to embrace a more robust universalism even if it turns out to accurately represent reality. That is because universalism tends to kill motivation to repent and to work hard in the church. Why? Well to use the old “carrot and stick” motivation analogy (where the stick = negative consequences for actions and the carrot = positive consequences) universalism completely removes the “stick” when it comes to religious motivations.
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Remember when I used to post about Mormon theology a lot? No I can’t remember that far back either…

Anyway, this Saturday the BYU Cougars football team will head up I-15 to play the Utah Utes in the annual rivalry game. In recent years fans on both sides of this rivalry have gotten pretty nasty. Hopefully the meanness will recede over the next few years with the teams leaving the Mountain West Conference to go their separate ways. But this year should be pretty intense still. BYU has rebounded from an atrocious first half of the season and has won four in a row in convincing fashion to become bowl eligible again. More importantly, the BYU offense and defense both appear to have found their stride (even if it was against weak teams). Utah is trying to steady the (pirate?) ship again after rising all the way to #5 in the country and then being beaten soundly two weeks in a row. But the Utes did manage to hang on against a solid SDSU team this weekend so perhaps the Utes are back.

The real surprise is that BYU has a legitimate chance in the rivalry game this season. Five weeks ago it looked like BYU was going to be terrible all year and that Utah was practically a juggernaut. Utah will still be favored this weekend but as “Holy Wars” go this one looks more evenly matched than anyone would have thought a few weeks ago.

Jimmertime

In the meantime the NCAA basketball season has begun. BYU is led this season by its first preseason AP All-American player since Danny Ainge in senior point guard Jimmer Fredette. The Cougs are currently 3-0 and ranked in the top 25. It is hard to tell how good this BYU team will be but I think they have a decent chance of being even better than the BYU team last year that won 30 games and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament. The biggest win of the season so far was a victory over a solid Utah State squad last Wednesday. BYU didn’t look great but a win over a good team is always a good thing. I expect to see BYU hoops in the top 20 soon.

Anyhow, sound off about the football season or hoops season in the comments. Oh, and Go Cougs!

So my current calling is to teach Elder’s Quorum once a month. It’s been about 8 years since I’ve taught the Gospel to adults, so I am feeling a bit rusty. I’ve taught 3 times now, and I haven’t quite found my rhythm. Anyway, I am posting my notes here in hopes that some of you brilliant folks here can come by and give me some pointers on what I can do to make this lesson better. I have decided not to do a power point, but to just go through the lesson material on the board, if I feel like I need to use a visual aide. My biggest challenge in teaching these lessons has been that I have two gentlemen with disabilities who wander radically off topic that I don’t know how to handle, so any tips for dealing with people with Schizoaffective Disorder and/or Autism/Aspergers would be greatly appreciated.
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