One of the unique challenges of the current age, is a loss of identity and purpose. As much trouble as men are having here, women might be having a worse time. Women have gained opportunities their grandmothers lacked, yet many seem no more certain what those opportunities are for. I am not going to try to solve all problems here, but if we can just get a clearer view of the ideal, this will be worthwhile. I may not be able to get you to Paradise, but I hope to at least point in the right direction.

(more…)

My wife is ill and for whatever reason what has been on our minds and been sustaining us is our courtship.  It was storybook.  We were very young and naive and neither of us had known anyone else (biblical).  It could have worked out, but it would be less storybook, if we had.

One of my daughters just had her first kiss.  No guarantees she marries the guy but its possible.  That would also be storybook.

So much of our morality and commandments that we tie ourselves into knots about is really about giving yourself the opportunity for a storybook life.  It may not happen, but you are living your life in a way that it could.  You live in hope and yearning.

Most ordinary people who reject morality do it because they have implicitly written off the happy ending.

This is the same insight as All Things Before Our Face in a much more ordinary register.

Do not just believe in happy endings.

Live for happy endings.

In line with our innovative trend of discussing Come Follow Me Isaiah after you’ve already talked about it in church, when there is no one left to impress–

• The absence of prophets is a curse, and their presence is a blessing. Isaiah 30:9-11, Isaiah 28:7, Isaiah 29:9-14.  So much so that it is a Millennial promise that God will put us in a hard spot but with teachers to warn us when we are making mistakes.  Isaiah 30:19-21.

Is it a problem that we haven’t been rebuked much lately at General Conference?

(more…)

Some have said, with some justice, that Come Follow Me dumbs down the gospel.  It’s not just that we eschew the speculative stuff, its that everything gets reduced to Christ caring about you personally, which large swathes of the Old Testament, for example, are NOT about.   The new schedule would seem to make this problem worse.

But while I think there is some justice to the complaint, as a Sunday School teacher I have decided to lean in.  What we did this Sunday, pretty successfully, was what I would call ‘scripture-guided testimony.’  I encouraged people to share scriptures or passages from the reading that they had felt testified to when reading it, with no further comment necessary.  A simple ‘and I believe this’ if needed.  Some people didn’t limit themselves to that, but it worked well.  A transcript would have been banal but in person the Spirit was there.

One curious thing–I have noticed it before-was how the same little verse will sometimes have stood out to more than one of our congregants.

On Sunday it was Proverbs 22:13

The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.

September 11, 2001. 25 years have passed—25 more nails in the cross—but we remember. (more…)

My brain’s favorite 3:00 a.m. thoughts are the ones that make it hard for me to get back to sleep.

Here’s the doozy it woke me up with in the wee hours this morning.

(more…)

The great cloud of unknowing around male and female doesn’t prevent us from seeing their virtuous and vicious syntheses all around us.

The virtuous union of manliness and womanliness is marriage and family.

The vicious union of gross manliness and gross womanliness takes many forms, but if you think about it and look around, you will no doubt find some objects for your contemplation.

Manly

Womanly

Greg Matsen had a discussion with Jacob Hansen about Strong’s new book, Torn. This was far more enlightening than anything else I have heard about Strong’s book. The thing that hit me the hardest was Jacob explaining how we are often wasting our time explaining things the way we have for the last two hundred years to Christians. But now we have an audience that either doesn’t believe in Christ, or doesn’t know how to receive His grace and inspiration in a serious way. The problem isn’t a doctrinal issue that merely needs to be cleared up, most of the time. It is an entire worldview built on different assumptions about reality, authority, and human purpose. It one that points people toward the wrong sources of meaning, authority, and happiness.

(more…)

We live in a very feminized society dominated by managerial bureaucracy, but a great many people are miserable and struggling, both male and female. This is not to say it advantages women in the ways they need. It doesn’t appear to do that for anyone other than Elites, and their henchmen.

The current order is not governed by healthy feminine values. It selectively uses traits culturally associated with women—risk sensitivity, relational enforcement, therapeutic language, and aversion to direct conflict—inside institutions built around impersonal power. Used as armor to maintain power. But the more celestial aspects of womanhood are absent.

I am going to note a little history, and make some educated predictions. I fain no vision or prophecy, but I have a wild prediction, which I would like to discuss. I think things will shortly swing to the male-dominated (shortly, meaning within the decade-ish). As with pendulum swings, there will be many who swing too hard. I want to make sure as many of us as possible, end up in a healthier state. I want even the most extreme feminists, to agree that life was better after the correction pendulum swing. But in order for this to happen, we need a vision of what is possible, first.

Because if we don’t, then the pendulum will swing back again to an even more extreme feminized managerial bureaucracy.

(more…)

There are many doctrinal arguments that are unworth having – they amount to angels dancing on pins. There is currently a debate online amongst Latter Day Saints, about the Doctrine of Infinite Regress, or if you prefer, the Doctrine of an Infinite Lineage, of Family of Heavenly Parents. And this debate does have both genuine importance and current relevance, beyond simply agreeing with former prophets.

It is also worth noting we are not in the position of churches with a dead canon with largely settled creedal theology.  There are still real debates to be had. And God does want us to really think and struggle with profound doctrine. But instead of relitigating the evidence in this debate (it was certainly what the Brethren taught for a long time), let’s discuss why this is important, instead of only arguing about LDS Sola Scriptura.

Because it has everything to do with the doctrine of the Family. (more…)

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, in the midst of UAP/UFO disclosure efforts, told people “Read the Book of Enoch”. As men and women of scriptural distinction, it is obvious to us, she meant First Enoch. If the US Govt has to tell me to read my scriptures, it is probably time for me to read my scriptures, so let’s investigate this.

Nothing beats actually reading the word of God, no matter how corrupted.

(I am still working on Isaiah – we will get back to that eventually!)

This source has non-standard chapters. In other texts, this is ch. 6-16 in the standard way. But this is easier to read.
Next time, chapter 4! (more…)

There is a part of Isaiah that has been weighing on my mind.

Ch. 2-5 Explain the dire situation of the people, with Ch. 5 having the prophet say, I have done everything I can do! I give up!

Ch. 6-12 Begins with Isaiah’s Vision of the Divine Throne and the Lord, in the Temple, and ends (Ch. 12) with a Testimony of the Righteous Men and Women.

Ch. 13-27 The Fall/Collapse of Babylon

13-20 – Temporal Collapse
21-23 – Spiritual Collapse
24-27 – We see the world bifurcated – the wicked exist in a ruined state, where nothing is working, like they all just ran out of steam. And the righteous live in a strong city, with great blessings and glory

The situation is not merely apocalyptic. It is a collapsed society. Nobody has anything, nobody knows what to do, nothing works. This affects everyone from the top to the bottom. Every idea, philosophy and idol have been tried and found wanting. The people are out of ideas. And repentance… well, they simply are not going to think about that!

(more…)

This was a fantastic post by FoJG William Tychonievich

Satan Divided Against Himself

 Remember what Sorath wants — for men to hate the good as such and to pursue evil strictly for the evulz — and how contrary to human nature that is. How to get us humans to sail against the wind of our own deepest nature? By tacking, of course.

• Sorath’s goal: Avoid good, pursue evil

• Human nature: Pursue good, avoid evil

• Lucifer tack: Sacrifice the avoidance of evil in order to pursue good (e.g. to seek pleasure)

• Ahriman tack: Sacrifice the pursuit of good in order to avoid evil (e.g. to be “safe”)

Full of Virtue Set goodness.

The Lovely One and were talking about King Noah’s people–they fled leaving their women and children behind at one point–at another point they sent their daughters out to meet with a hostile army–and the only conclusion we came to is that they seemed to have no concept of chivalry.  There is possible counter evidence, like the text of the Title of Liberty, but it still seems to be true.

Now, many say that chivalry is a Western invention, and though I don’t entirely believe that to be true, I guess there’s something to it.

Which means your primary experience in reading the Old Testament and also the Book of Mormon, when running across something hard to understand, is a sense of the eerie and of awe:  that people can be so different from you; that they are nonetheless objects of God’s justice and mercy.

Shoot, you should probably take the same position for anything pre-1940.  We should take C.S. Lewis seriously when he says he grew up in a different world than the one he died in.

Someone you love is doing wrong.  It is sickening and it is changing even their face and posture for worse.  You try to say something and get clawed.   You… pray?