So I was re-reading D&C 122 recently and for no reason at all I started thinking about Joseph Smith’s story from the mob perspective.  It would make a great grim fantasy.

There is this guy that you think is doing evil and leading numerous others into evil, so  much so that you have to bend and break your own rules to get him, but he keeps wiggling out in one way or another.  He gets worse.  He’s semi-openly practicing perversions, etc.  Finally you get him!  But somehow his movement takes  his death as a martyrdom and they become even bigger and more effective.

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This being All Soul’s Day, I found myself thinking about Vader while in the temple.  I think about him a lot.  I will write a post and wonder what he would think about it.  In a way, he is still the audience in my head.

He got in his accident in late October a few years ago and then died in early November.

Rest in peace.  Until we meet again.

I felt low in spirits this morning. Something said to me then,

the purpose of the Gospel is to bring forth Majesty in the soul

That thought was at the same time the cause of my depression and the instant cure for it.

This is the Official JG Review of Catherine Pakaluk’s forum at BYU, as previewed by our very own John Mansfield.

Why Children Became Useless: Faith and the Future of the Family

Attendance: High.  The Marriot Center felt full and had greater than average attendance for a forum.

Babies in Attendance: Low.  We only saw 2.

The Bad: The first half of her talk didn’t hit the right note for the audience.  It was too scholarly–not too deep, but just too focused on which of a number of competing abstract theories best explained the ongoing birth crisis, and it partook of the professorial vice of getting into quarrels with absent people.  In this case, with people who believe the birth decline has structural causes.  (I am one of them, I don’t think we are really ‘the richest and freest’ ever.)

The Good: Her biography and the quotes she read from her educated mothers of large families.  The Spirit hit like a hammer.

I recommend the forum and strongly recommend the book.

In Chad H. Webb’s talk from this last conference, he says that when we are teaching any principle of the gospel, we ought to ask “Can you think of a time when Jesus Christ exemplified this principle?”

Which is a very interesting exercise for the principle of peacemaking. When people describe this gentle, non-confrontational nice-guy Jesus, I honestly wonder how we can be reading the same book.

Jesus broke the Pharisee’s rules right in front of their faces, explicitly to provoke them. He didn’t treat them as if they were arguing in good faith when they weren’t: in fact, he explicitly mocked their hypocrisy, calling them whitewashed tombs, a brood of vipers, children of hell.

He drove out the moneychangers who desecrated his Father’s house.

He told the Samaritan woman at the well that she worshipped she knew not what, and that salvation was of the Jews.

He then goes on to say, using President Nelson’s analogy, that peacemaking is more like surgery than it is being nice.  Except

it’s not obvious where to cut, and you have to keep your hands steady while you’re taking all kinds of incisions yourself, and not necessarily in the right places, and it hurts, and it’s a mess.

The Savior’s way of peacemaking is the cross.

It’s not at all trivial. It’s not for the timid. It’s no wonder people don’t want to do it.

For ordinary people to do this is a miracle. Repentance — receiving a new heart, losing your disposition to do evil — is a miracle. There is no peace — within myself, my family, my country — without the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.

-thus EDJCB.  Much more at the link.

Friend of the JG Bruce Charlton has an excellent post about starting with what you know.
Instead of taking an abstract ideological or creedal concept and then fitting your experience of goodness into that concept, start with goodness.  You know what goodness is, you can live it, experience it, refine your taste for it–and then assume that God is like that, only more so.   When  He said He was good, He was speaking in our terms.  (Yes, goodness can be demanding and inspiring, it’s not all grandfatherliness).

I would also add, you can just know God.  You can just talk to the Father and the Son.

I would also extend this to atheists and materialists.  A man can study and do experiments and come up with theories that he feel leads him to the scientific  materialist conclusion, and then come up with epicycles to explain why most features of our existence are illusions.  Or he can just accept the basic fact, that he himself experiences from day to day and moment to moment, of agency and meaning.  He is swaddled in them.

Sidenote:  I personally don’t believe that all children who die young are automatically saved, i.e., forced to be saved.  Of course nearly everybody is going to be saved, whether they die young or not, so I guess the real question is exaltation, full participation in the divine family and friendship and companionship.    For that I would say that either in divine providence only those souls who have already fully chosen die  young or else those who die young will have other experiences and other chances to choose and grow in the afterlife or the millennium or elsewhere.  There are other options.

Humility is rare among the great–the powerful, the famous, the rich, the beautiful, the gifted.  But it is rare not just in being uncommon.  It is rare the way a choice vintage is rare.  True humility is only possible among the great.

Or among those who have begun to aspire.  Poverty was not what made the poor among the Zoramites humble.  It was poverty plus Alma showing them the possibilty of a better way.

The three things I enjoy about the modern age are flossers, water bottle filling stations, and the group chat.

So someone in the group chat (the family version) shared this wonderful product

The existential crisis duck lamp.

Then the knock knock jokes started.

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When you enjoy the temple, you are becoming as a little child.

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

-thus Matthew 18:3 (KJV)

Somehow in the sacrament on Sunday I got to thinking about children’s stories.  A lot of them have a lot of repetition and easily grasped structure.  The Big Bad Wolf huffs and puffs at each house, using the same formula, and we go through a simple three-step progression from house type to house type.  The ending is no sense a surprise, especially because almost always the child has heard the story before.  The child wants the repetition of the same ol’ story they know and love.   Children’s stories often don’t even have a plot structure.  In Goodnight Moon, you say goodnight to things over and over.

The House Built Out of Stone

And there I was in the sacrament thinking about kid stories when the prayer for the water happened, in the exact same way it is always done, using the exact same formula, no plot, no surprises.

Basically, kids’ stories are a ritual.   Sacraments are rituals.  The temple is a ritual.  If you enjoy them, you are letting yourself be as a little child.  You don’t have to enjoy them–participation with faith and reverence is enough.  But eventually you will need to enjoy them or you will not be happy in heaven.  Heaven is a lot more like an old beloved story than it is like a new movie.  You will have to become as a little child.

In heaven, only the stories worth retelling are allowed.

And then I had a vision–not a Vision, nothing miraculous, just something in my mind’s eye–of telestial and maybe terrestrial people happily wandering as adventurers through the infinite variety of creation, never bored, always finding something new.  But the celestial people becoming as large as gods, seeing everything, feeling everything, as large as the universe, and deeply deeply happy because the all of everything was as familiar and belonging to them as the inside of their home.

For the history-minded I strongly recommend this interview with Sean McMeekin, author of Stalin’s War and other books.

The great men of history are seldom humanitarians.

The national declines in marriage and childbearing are understandable for historic reasons, but Latter-day Saint values and practices should improve—not follow—those trends.

-President Oaks

The prophet is calling us to have more children.  That means he is calling us to be extraordinary.  We have to find a way to not be swept along with national or global trends.

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Our President Oaks, with the approval of our prophet Russell M. Nelson, deplored the few number of babies among the Saints and tied it to many an LDS family being a consumptive family instead of a productive family.

Elite level visual pun right here

Here I am going to outline the very basic principles of being a productive family for the many, many Saints who have enthusiastically embraced the prophets’ call and are wondering how to begin.  Each and every one of you make us proud.

• The four fundamentals of being productive
• Why being productive matters
• How to be productive (it’s easy)

Many of our friends are already production-pilled.  Please discuss what you know with the Church, especially friends and family, along with anything you learn here.

But first, a reminder of what President Oaks said to us in his first keynote Conference address: (more…)

President Holland pointed our attention at evidence for the gospel.

He told the story of the man blind from birth who was healed by the savior, and when asked to denounce Jesus as a sinner replied that he didn’t know anything about that, but he did know that he now could see.

How important evidence is, as opposed to wishes or argument or even malice in opposition to the truth.

–thus President Holland

Evidence is not the actual root of testimony.  That is the Spirit–the peace of God which passeth understanding–sweet is the peace the gospel brings.

But it is also good, important even, to tally up the evidence that you also have.

Here is some of mine. (more…)

Yesterday I asked our friends about godly fear.  You responded very well.

I am particularly interested in the suggestion in the first one that “fear of man”, i.e., caring what people think about you, is an imperfect or incomplete form of love.

And more
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Elder Bednar made a harge contrast between regular fear and godly fear.  He said godly fear creates peace.

I made a virtue chart but I’m not sure its accurate.  I think godly fear may not be a refinement of regular fear at all.  In other words, I don’t know that regular fear is a distortion of godly fear.  It may be something more like awe.

Anyway, here’s the chart.  Your thoughts urgently needed.