I’m speaking in Church today (I volunteered) but I am not going to bother putting  the talk here because you are already familiar with it.

The point is to talk about why fathers matter, why its good to become a father, and then connect it to our divine father.  Getting to that point mostly involves doing a quick tour of JG highlights–

Unrighteous dominion bad means righteous dominion is good

conditional love/glory

God’s amusement in our prayers and in his guidance

Throw in some ranting about birthrates and how no precious moment will be lost, and that’s about it.

Several young architectural students were surveying a grand old building.  Mostly they were criticizing it.  They pointed out various real flaws here and there.  That window was misaligned.  That cornice was damaged.  They then went back to their school to resume drafting cheap McMansions to be built en masse on sandy soil.

But one student stayed behind.  He was starstruck.  “Look how solid those foundations, are!”  he said.  “This building can last forever.  Look how it was built to be easily repaired and even added on to!”

Some people say that the Book of Mormon makes an argument against racism. Others that it makes an argument against military defense (and for pacifism)  Not because it really says anything against them as such but because it shows them both turning out badly.
You could make the same case that the Book of Mormon is against democracy and religious freedom. Not that the Book of Mormon is against these things–its not, the text is strongly for them–its just that they don’t work out.

I am against all three arguments. If you are against racism, against war, or against democracy and religious freedom, it shouldn’t be because the Book of Mormon has a secret structural message against those things that the actual writers were not aware of.  But it is true that there’s an argument to be made from the Book of Mormon that none of these things work out.

So lets talk about democracy and religious freedom in the Book of Mormon, how they went wrong, and why.

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Certain “outward observances” are private by design.  It’s very hard to virtue signal or be conspicuous about them.

Hypocrisy is the vice of claiming a high degree of righteousness in public while excusing your black sins in private. Hypocrisy is a satanic parody of the virtue of upholding standards that you yourself fall short of. We call this the nameless virtue.

The virtue that is the opposite of hypocrisy is obvious. It’s where you do good in private so you don’t get social credit for it. Virtue non-signalling, we could call it. Christ was big on this virtue in the gospels. ‘that which do in secret your father will reward openly’ ‘let not your right hand know…”

Probably any type of virtue can be hypocrited, but the two classes of virtue are the most vulnerable. One is whatever type of virtues are involved with publicly signalling your allegiance to good stuff.  We don’t normally think of these as virtues because virtue signalling is so common in our world.  But there are virtues like that, they are just buried under the vice of virtue signalling.  The other one is when doing good requires outward observances, where virtue consists of identifiable acts that people can see.  This was the type of hypocrisy that the Pharisees embraced.  Super-large phylacteries, tithing their herb garden, etc.

It’s interesting that most of our restoration outward observances are things that naturally occur privately.  Wearing the garment, fasting, paying tithing, are all things that no one really knows whether you are doing it or not.  To an extent the same is true with sabbath observance and even with the Word of Wisdom.  Of all these I think garment wearing is particularly interesting.  It is *by design* private.  People can tell if you are not following the standards, but it is hard to tell if you are.  Wearing the garment is in a sense the opposite virtue to the nameless virtue.

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Ice gets less cold and less cold but is still ice. The changes are literally just a matter of degree. Than a degree or two more—and it is no longer ice. It’s water. That is called phase change.

You keep growing and changing throughout life, but sometimes you go through a phase change. A discontinuity. You look around at all the same things as before and recognize nothing.

Svalbard, Arctic Ocean.

The first time you go to school.

When you move out of the house.

When you marry.

Your first child.

And then as a parent you go through equal phase changes yourself when your children do these things, especially the first child. (more…)

Durn tootin‘

For behold, after the Lord God sent our first parents forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence they were taken—yea, he drew out the man, and he placed at the east end of the garden of Eden, cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the tree of life

-thus Alma 42:2

Drawing out is an interesting phrase.  It suggests getting someone who is shy or inert to participate in an activity.    For a tool, like a sword, it means getting it out to use.  In the sense that ‘drawing out’ means unsheathing the Lovely One thinks there may be a sexual metaphor or at least a reference to Adam and Even discovering their ‘nakedness.’

In the sense of ‘unsheathing a sword,’ there may be a small chiasmus

• he drew out
  • the man
  • he placed cherubim
• and a flaming sword.

I would love to know more.

By Frshanadu – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112091294

When Adam and Eve were driven out, an angel in all his angelic ferocity was put to guard the tree of life so Adam and  Eve would not be cursed with undying mortality.  There is no record that the tree of life was barred to them before them.  So if they had already eaten the fruit of the tree of life, why would barring them after make any difference?  Why would shutting the barn door help when the horse is already out?

There are a variety of answers, but one answer is that the fruit of the tree isn’t just a one time thing.  You have to keep eating it.  So Adam and Eve were deathless only so long as they had continued access to the three.  Once the angel cut them off, their mortality became mortal.

We broke some new ground in our understanding of Lehi’s Dream this year.  Instead of the normal static interpretation we discovered that it was possible to view the dream as a series of vignettes all of which have the same point–you have to keep coming back to the source.  We discovered that the key difference between those who fall away from the tree in Lehi’s Dream and those who don’t is not whether they endure to the end but whether they enjoy to the end–in other words, whether they keep eating of the fruit after their first one.

Hmm.  Now isn’t that odd?  The tree of life in Lehi’s Dream and the tree of life in the Garden of Eden may both have as key features that to continue benefiting from them you have to continue partaking.  Since these are at least symbolically these same tree, it seems we may be on the right track.  These interpretations are mutally confirming.

From ‘The Inklings,’ by Humphrey Carpenter
H/t. https://twitter.com/tillwehvfaces/status/1798006137842962729

For an upcoming ward youth summer activity, a permission and medical release form created by the church needed to be signed. This form, copyrighted by Intellectual Reserve, Inc., includes a second page regarding “conduct at church activities.” No pornography, no vaping, no shoplifting, no threats to harm self or others, etc. If a youth participate in any of the prohibited activities, “leaders at the event or activity will speak with you, your parents, and your bishop or stake president. These leaders may decide to send you home immediately.” Stuff that sometimes needs to be spelled out explicitly now and then.

But I found the form’s first admonition disheartening:
“Please note that Church activities are not the time or place for romantic behavior or for conversations and actions that distract from the purpose of the event or activity.”

President Oaks needs to have a conversation with some form writers and those who direct them if he is really concerned about young adults not marrying. Habits of mind leading to lots of unmarried 26-year-olds have taken hold. Learning to engage in initial stages of romantic behavior should be listed somewhere as one of the purposes of bringing youth together for activities. Chewing tobacco and carrying guns at a youth conference should be discouraged. Flirting should be encouraged. We who believe in chastity should be the ones teaching romance as something good and distinct from unchaste actions that we teach people not to mire themselves in. We should exercise faith that those we call young men and young women can learn to talk to one another and experience attraction in the Lord’s uplifting way instead of Satan’s degrading way. If we don’t believe we can teach that . . . prepare for tiny Primaries, consolidated wards, and fewer stakes of Zion.

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I recently went through the new temple recommend interview.  Pretty much  just like the old temple recommend interview, except there’s more about wearing the temple garment.

One bit made me realize something that I am probably the last Latter-day Saint to figure out.

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Two interesting things about Mosiah 25

First, Alma is I believe the first high priest who is not the king.  Until then the kingship was also the high priestly office.  So the king later stepping down to create the judgeship isn’t just an ideological change, its because for the first time the Nephites don’t need a king to keep their religion going.

Second, on demographics, there’s an interesting verse here:

And it came to pass that king Mosiah granted unto Alma that he might establish churches throughout all the land of Zarahemla; and gave him power to ordain priests and teachers over every church.

20 Now this was done because there were so many people that they could not all be governed by one teacher; neither could they all hear the word of God in one assembly;

The Book of Mormon tells us there were a lot of Nephites, plus there are things like Sherem trying to meet Jacob for the first time.  But then there are these two verses.  Remember, most of the narrative of the Book of Mormon was written by Mormon and Moroni, who were the heirs of a large, complex civilization.  It is unknowable the extent to which they read into the record their own assumptions about how it must have been based on the civilization they were familiar with, but it is possible that they did.

I just finished a fantastic lecture by Eric Cline, author of 1177BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed and After 1177BC. What really struck me, listening to this, was how successfully different cultures transitioned from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. There was a range of success. The Phoenicians innovated and reinvented themselves, and did very well. Egypt merely survived. Others were only able to cope and return in diminished form, if at all. Some, like the Hittites, disappear from history completely.

I remember going white water canoeing on the River of No Return (Salmon River) when I was younger. I remember being on a placid calm waveless stretch of water just watching the point ahead where the river dropped off into frothing white water. I remember the terrifying and unyielding approach of those rapids. Also remember having a great and invigorating time getting through it. I feel similarly at the moment, because I can feel great change on the horizon. That and I can read the news.

We are now approaching a hinge point in history, a New Axial Age, if you will. Things are going to change, faster and more differently than any of us expect. Will we merely cope, or will we innovate and reinvent ourselves, and become new creatures in Christ?  I don’t think Christ wants us to merely cope. He has greater and much grander plans than that.