One of the things that has fascinated me about the Old Testament, since I read Approaching Zion, is the idea of the Year of Jubilee.

There is no record of it actually being fully observed, but the idea is this, every 7th year all debts between Israelites, would be forgiven their fields would lie fallow. After 7 cycles of 7 years, they would have a year of Jubilee, which does this, and any sold land would revert original family holdings.

There is some suggestion (by which I mean the writings of an early 13th century Jewish mystic) that 2017 is a Year of Jubilee. It is also 50 years from the Six-Days War, and the birth of the Nation of Israel, so there is that too.

I know this is unrealistic right now, and yet, I yearn for it. It is audacious, but it is beautiful. That and I dislike the idea that the Law of Moses requires more from us, than we now require of ourselves.

We have talked a bit about a Constitution 2.0. What if we wrote into the Constitution, a 7 year debt release, so that all debts, including mortgages, would be forgiven in January, every 7th year. So, the next one would be Jan 1, 2024. We are a little to comfortable with debt, and too prone to bubbles in the marketplace. This is not the full law of the Year of Jubilee, particularly as that should be voluntary. But it is a significant part of the law.

Dare we go so far as to include that in the Constitution 2.0?

“Dynamic analysis versus static analysis” is a phrase that I should have used in previous posts about SSM and margin creep. Jane Galt describes it, but does not name it in her original article that I re-posted at the first link.

Static analysis is when people say “There’s no way that SSM can affect my marriage.”

Dynamic analysis is when people ask “How will SSM affect my children and their future children?” (more…)

If my memory is correct, 30 years ago, people came to church 15 minutes early and socialized. Local leaders had to remind people to socialize in the hallways and foyers before coming into the chapel proper, so that everyone could be quiet and reverent in preparation for sacrament meeting.

Now, it seems as if everyone who doesn’t come early for leadership meetings, arrives at the chapel at the last minute. There are exceptions, who are usually the older members.

What’s it like in your neck of the woods?

Have people forgotten how to socialize face-to-face? Is all socializing done online now?

( Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. )

An intellectual is somebody who thinks ideas are more important than people.

— Paul Johnson

You sometimes never know what you had until you lose it. In this case, I do not think I had even heard the name before I saw the obituaries this week. This was my loss, if this quote is typical of her:

Feminist fundamentalism holds that the battle of the sexes can’t be won unless women make war on the tiniest enemies of their independence.

That line had the ring of Kate’s sensibility, or her sense of irony, always engaged, and so she was quick to spot the “irony-impaired Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) [who] explained, ‘I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion.’”

If Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living – he was probably referring to metaphysics: metaphysics being the fundamental assumptions about reality, upon which our knowledge and beliefs are built. He perhaps meant that unless we know our own metaphysical assumptions then we are unwitting slaves to them; and freedom, agency can only come from knowing, evaluating then deliberately embracing our own basic assumptions.

We all have metaphysical assumptions; but most people do not explicitly know what these are. And indeed many modern people (eg. most scientists) do not even know they operate from basic assumptions; but instead deny that metaphysics is a genuine discourse – they regard it as nonsense – either sheer idiocy, wish-fulfilment or covertly manipulative. Modern people believe only in ‘facts’ and ‘feelings’…

Yet we all have assumptions even if we unreflectively take them for granted; and we may be accepting assumptions that we would reject if only we were explicitly aware of what they were.

Mormons are, in an important sense, more aware of their metaphysical assumptions than are most people, including most Christians; although Mormons do not identify their metaphysics as such. I mean the Plan of Salvation or Plan of Happiness, which is one of the first and most basic things that missionaries teach and that children learn – is in fact a metaphysical system expressed in the form of a narrative. It describes the main components of reality, their nature, principles and purposes.

However, Mormons mistakenly label their metaphysical assumptions as ‘doctrine’ – that is, as something given by revelation and to be ‘learned’ along with many other doctrines. Yet the nature of metaphysics is that it provides (in broad terms, at least) a coherence and explanation of everything else; metaphysics really is more fundamental than the doctrines that are derived from it.  Mormon metaphysics really does underpin the detailed doctrinces and practices of the religion – and where it does not, then those doctrines and practices probably require examination, evaluation and clarification of their nature.

What is astonishing about Mormon metaphysics is how truly, astonishingly different it is from anything which (so far as is known) ever came before in the history of the world. Certainly it is radically different from the metaphysics of preceding Christians – but also different from anything known to philosophers or theologians; indeed the basic nature of Mormon metaphysics was not described philosophically until a couple of generations later, by William James (who developed his ideas independently, but then explicitly recognised the similarity with Mormonism).

I cannot go into the distinctive characteristics of Mormon metaphysics in a blog post – they can be found in the work of Sterling McMurrin, Blake Ostler and (more digestibly) Terryl Givens (also, before these, in BH Roberts, although I have not personally read him). (I previously put my thoughts onto a blog: theoreticalmormon.blogspot.co.uk).

As I have often stated, I am in love with Mormon metaphysics, smitten by its beauty and truth – I am thus (perhaps uniquely?) a full and unreserved believer-in Mormonism, even though not a member of the CJCLDS. I hardly know where to start in describing it! But if I was to make just one statement of the unique nature of Mormon metaphysics – that which sets it apart from all others – I would say that it is the first and only metaphysical system built upon the primacy of relationships, specifically of the loving relationship between God (i.e. our Heavenly Parents) and children. Whereas, almost all other metaphysical systems are based upon concepts derived from physics (Time, Space, Change, Stasis, the apparent versus the real etc). The idea of Mormonism is that at the very bottom level of reality is family relationships and love – these are the ultimate things.

From where did Mormonism – Joseph Smith in particular – get this astonishing idea? Well, from the Gospels mostly; especially (I guess) from John’s Gospel and his first letter: a metaphysical system built on the princacy of love, the ‘literal’ relatedness of God and his children. To this, Joseph Smith added many other revelations – but the basic metaphysics is based on the Gospels seen from the perspective of a vast interconnected web of personal relationships; this instead of Christianity being seen frm the persepctive of prior-existing Greek and Roman metaphysics with its already-defined categories. Thus Joseph Smith set aside centuries of philosophical tradition and made a new metaphysical system; and it supported Christianity quite easily and naturally.

Not many people know about this – not many people are interested in metaphysics. Secular non-Mormons are ignorant and incredulous: they simply cannot believe that Mormonism could have a coherent and novel metaphysical basis (“Joseph Smith a major philosopher? Per-lees…”). Mainstream Christians – insofar as they do understand the metaphysical differences – usually regard them as logical errors or dangeous heresies; or simply as unChristian.

But Christianity can and should be distinguished from the metaphysics used to make coherent and explain it – one can be a real Christian on the basis of many types of metaphysical assumption.

Yet some metaphysical systems do interfere-with Christianity, do tend to subvert it. For example the mainstream modern (but implicit and denied) metaphysics that everything that happens is either directly caused or else ‘random’ does make it hard to believe in the agency necessary to Christianity. The usual non-Mormon Christian emphasis on reality as being essentially like physics, can make it difficult for Christians to have a relationship with God, or even to be confident in God’s personal qualities such as love, or to know that humans are genuinely agents… and so forth.

Mormon metaphysics really does have many very helpful qualities compared with what went before – and has the advantage of explaining what is most distinctive about Christianity (as contrasted with other religions such as Judaism and Islam); but first we need explicitly to know what our metaphysics is, to understand it – only then can it be evaluated.

So, in the end, nobody is really off-the-hook: we need to know our own metaphysics. It is too much to say the unexamined life is ‘not worth’ living – what about children? – but it does leave us defenceless against the kind of covert metaphysical manipulation (the smuggling-in of false and incoherent – but undetected and denied – fundamental assumptions) which undermines Christian belief, and which has probably been Satan’s most potent weapon over recent generations.

I hvae often seen people pondering about their good fortune in being born among the Haves rather than the Have Nots of the world (and of human history) – meaning that those of us born into the modern West and to wealthyish parents have undeserved good fortune.

(And therefore a reason to feel guilty, or perhaps grateful, for being who we happen by sheer chance to be.)

But for Christians and in a spiritual sense; this is to put matters exactly the wrong way around.

Those of us born into a society of material peace, plenty, comfort and convenience – but of spiritual poverty incuding value inversion the likes of which is unprecedented in its badness.

The compensatory supposed-imperative of the Developed ‘helping’ the Undeveloped nations (via so-called ‘aid’) therefore ends-up being also an inversion: inversion of the traditional idea of Christian mission: because – insofar as it is effective, rather than counter-productive (e.g. funding guns and thugs for warlords) – Western redistribution acts as a potent materialist corruption to infect those more spiritual parts of the world.

We are the spiritual Have Nots; therefore by spreading around our ‘fortune’ we act to make the rest of the world more like ourselves – in our irreligion, alienation, nihilism, anti-morality and despair.

(Note: The spiritual reality is that we in the prosperous West, now;  have been born into the most difficult, challenging environment that humans have ever experienced.)

It is a puzzle why humans need to be born, die and be resurrected before attaining eternal life. And why even Jesus also needed to do this….

Clearly, this fact implies that the actions of our creator are constrained – in time and space – because it is necessary that this process actually happens requiring bodies and duration. (i.e. God cannot do anything instantly – perhaps especially where he is dealing with agents. Some things must be done via stages.)

One way of understanding may be that incarnation is (for Jesus as well as ourselves) into actual, ‘biological’ human families – and Mormons recognise that this is also our eternal destiny.

So; we were premortal spirits who were (in a sense) inserted into biological matter (derived from our biological parents) when we were incarnated. And therefore there is a tension, and an unintegratable quality about our union of spirit and body, during our mortal lives.

This disunity of spirit and body is solved by death – by the death of the biological body, followed by its re-making in a perfected form, from the surviving spirit. My assumption is that the process of resurrection is not possible until the spirit has experienced life ‘in’ a body – and only after this experience that is it possible to make a new, resurrected, perfect and therefore immortal body – using the experienced-spirit as a ‘template’.

In sum – the pre-mortal spirit cannot be a template for resurrection, because it lacks experience of incarnation; and only after incarnation (and this applies no matter how briefly incarnation is experienced – including those who die in the womb, or at birth). But after incarnation is experienced, the spirit is a suitable template for an eternal incarnation.

The temporary incarnation of mortal life makes the template for the permanent incarnation of immortality.

As a star (of sufficient size) burns its nuclear fuel, it fights against contraction from gravity without, by pressure from the nuclear reactions within. But when the hydrogen in the core runs out, the star contracts until it is hot enough to burn helium. Once the helium is gone, it contracts more, until it can burn the next available element.

I have been doing some thinking about what makes a nation, or society of nations, fragile. I posted recently about the collapse that destroyed the very powerful nations of the Bronze Age, and left them with Dark Ages. And I have been wondering why we are headed in the same direction. Why is it that Americans have lost their mojo?   1

I think the problem is productivity. I can see a few of you have (Vulcan-like) raised an eyebrow in abject shock, but let me explain.

(more…)

My wife, who is a former Catholic, complained to me that we don’t do as much for Holy Week as we should. And I have to say, I think she is right. But rather than complain to the Brethren, I think any change on this, ought to start with the members. So, let us remember and worship this season with greater fervor.

In line with that, I share with you, chapter 53 of my Isaiah translation. It makes things clearer to me, and I hope it helps you as well. Of course, the actual text has greater depth, but there is nothing wrong with some training wheels to get you started!

Isaiah: Chapter 53

1 Who believes the prophets? And who has seen the power of God in their lives?

2 The Messiah will grow in the knowledge of God, like a tender plant in a dry, barren desert. He didn’t look impressive. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance. His appearance is not attractive.

3 He is despised and rejected by mankind. He is familiar with pain and suffering. He is excluded from popular company and is ignored.

4 He took up our pain and sickness, and it was he that bore our suffering but we assumed his problems were his own fault, and were a punishment for his own sins. (more…)

Saturday night I had occasion to try to remember my 38th birthday, and found that I could. On that birthday almost thirteen years ago, I went directly to the temple after work and realized as I drove that it marked 19 years since I received the temple endowment on my 19th birthday, a precise bisection of my life.

As for why I was calling up memory of that day, well, (more…)

My discussions with mainstream Christian theologians about aliens usually leaves me disappointed.

But this discussion by an Islamic scholar did not. A thoughtful discussion of where Aliens and Cavemen fit into God’s plans, even if we are not given all the details.

Here or here. (Choose your poison, CNN or Daily Mail.)

I think I saw this in a movie once.  I forget how it turned out. Or maybe it was Gamera. 

Anne Case quoted in a Washington Post interview describes our times in a nutshell:

“In a previous generation, you had the chance of getting a good job with only a high school degree — a job where you could move up the ladder, where there would be what we call ‘returns to experience’: that as you grew older, your wages would rise. (more…)