For the sake of expediency, I am going to take down my previous two posts in this series. While initially, I had intended to allow Widtsoe to speak for himself, the way I was parsing his quotes by topic was creating some confusion where it otherwise would not be, and was causing me to respond too often “wait and see” to issues which came up. More important, I was frankly just being lazy in my blogging. I hope no one is offended as my removing the two prior posts will delete comments. (more…)

God sometimes tells us no when we ask him for assistance or intervention on various things. Sometimes the “no” answer is very clear. Sort of like the big ol’ “no” that the ancient prophet Mormon got when he prayed that his people might repent and be spared:

2 But behold, I was without hope, for I knew the judgments of the Lord which should come upon them; for they repented not of their iniquities, but did struggle for their lives without calling upon that Being who created them. (Mormon 5: 2)

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On a recent thread, RT made the following comment:

I think the Spirit rarely gives propositional knowledge; it instead gives experience and comfort. The Spirit primarily reveals God as a being, we get to know God and Jesus Christ through the Spirit, as the New Testament suggests — note that the phrase is know as in become acquainted with, not know about as in have propositional knowledge regarding. Knowing someone involves joint emotional experience and the development of empathy, not the acquisition of true sentences. The Spirit likewise is called the Comforter because we receive God’s love, compassion, and comfort through it. Again, none of these involves propositional knowledge. (RT in this comment)

RT asks us to imagine a scenario in which a person has feelings which are spiritually meaningful, but carry no content with respect to propositions. After some time and effort, I have been unable to imagine such a scenario. (more…)

Several people or organizations have made attempts to subdivide the church into classes of people. Some examples include “iron-rod” and “liahona” members, “liberal” and “conservative” members, and even “orthodox” and “heterodox” members. Typically these labels seem to have the intent of looking down upon some other group of people, and do not seek to improve the church in any way shape or form. Thus, I consider these labels worthless, and would like to suggest a different line that may be more useful to define in the membership of the church. I would like to move away from the theological foundations of our beliefs, and instead focus on the activity of two types of members. In my dichotomy, I will label these two groups participants and volunteers. The basic concept here is that there are two groups of people who are at church, those who go to church to be helped, and those who go to church to help others. This is much like any other charitable organization, and it doesn’t mean either group is evil.
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Today we covered John 9 in Sunday School. I’ve always admired the man who was blind from birth in this story — partially for his faith but more for his belligerent attitude toward the prideful and conniving leaders of his community. Let’s look at some of the relevant passages. First, after the man’s sight is restored the people are astonished and ask him what happened:

10 Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened?
11 He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.
12 Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.

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So Q-Dog is five years old now and we have made our first foray into the world of little league baseball. I gotta tell you folks — I’m not liking the looks of this so far. (That’s not him in the pic BTW — just some random tee ball photo I found)

Doggy has two older sisters so I already have experience with some sports and activities for kids. We have done the dance thing, gymnastics, swim team, and I even helped coach the volleyball team for Number One (that’s our oldest who turned 10 yesterday). At most those activities required one practice per week and perhaps an hour long game on a Saturday. Not bad.

Enter Tee-Ball.
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Ok, as may be apparent by some of my previous posts, I am very interested in retention in the LDS church. In scholarly research, there have been studies done on employee volunteer retention, student retention, member or participant retention, patient retention. There have even been studies of church retention. Which do you think applies to Mormonism?

In other words, what is the Church? Is it a Church like other Churches? Is it a Volunteer organization with it’s vast unpaid clergy? Is it a therapy session where we are all patients? Is it a school where we are students? Is it a club where we’re all members? Perhaps it is all of the above depending on the individual? Perhaps it is none of the above? What do you think?

Personally, I hypothesize that there are multiple distinct groups within Mormonism, with either Volunteer, member, student, or patient mentalities, depending on the situation. Thus I hypothesize that the most effective retention program in the LDS church is going to be an amalgam which seeks to identify members into these groups, retain them at their needs level, and also to run larger more generalized retention processes as well.

Lastly, if you know of any really good impactful retention studies in any field, I’d be interested in them.

In 1937, John A. Widtsoe presented the following test as a measure of spirituality. I really like what he says:

Spirituality in man or woman may be recognized by simple tests, of which the three following are of major importance:
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Many of the prevailing ideas surrounding the atonement have parallels in our ideas about the fall. For example, the idea that our sins are transferred to Christ in the atonement is very similar to the idea that Adam’s transgression was transferred to each of us in the fall, giving us a “fallen nature.” I often pontificate against these sorts of transferals, as I don’t believe sinfulness or righteousness can be transferred from one person to another in an economic sort of transaction.

Instead of Adam’s transgression making the rest of humanity inclined to sin, I favor the view that the fall effected a change in the spiritual environment. The Earth fell from the presence of God. According to this explanation of the fall, the natural tendency of humankind to sin is explained by our pre-existing weakness before coming to earth. When we leave the presence of God to face the experience of life on our own we find that we have not yet developed the strength of character necessary to remain righteous in the face of temptation.

Now, there are many scriptures that could be brought to bear on this topic, but I wanted to focus this post on a favorite of mine. I don’t remember ever seeing the following scriptural argument made, but then, I don’t read much. I am interested in your reaction/criticism. As is often the case, I could be way off base. (more…)

I have been diverting myself by debating with several of Zelophehad’s Daughters and their friends over the past few days. The ZDers are mostly a group of intelligent and well-educated Mormon women (many of whom are actually sisters) who like to talk about, well, Mormon women’s issues. After two too-long threads we arrived at a disagreement on what what the ultimate “trump card” (their term) is when it comes to understanding metaphysical truths (aka the ultimate realities of existence).

The general topic of the latest debate specifically was this subject: Is God a sexist? In other words, does God see women as the property or possessions of their husbands?

(No, I’m not kidding. Some of them really are deeply concerned that this is the case. I can only imagine how distressing taking such a metaphysical nightmare seriously would be.) (more…)

As of this summer I am officially no longer a “newly wed”. G and I will hit our 15 year anniversary right about the time the temperatures are reaching their peak. For some of you that may seem like a drop in the bucket and others it may seem like an eternity. For me, there are days when it feels like I just got married and days when it feels like I’ve been married forever. (more…)