Sane and insane are orthogonal to true and untrue. Sane people believe some untrue things. Some truths are only for the mad.
Some lessons from the end of the Book of Mormon.
When people point to all the natural disasters and wars and coups and such happening around the world as proof that we live in end times, I have had my doubts. Don’t modern communications mean we would be much more aware of such things, so the increase would only be apparent but not real?
Although other scriptures use different language, I was interested that Moroni said the Book of Mormon would come
in a day when there shall be heard of fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands;
And there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places
There is a place you can go. You say hello to God, he says hello to you, then he hands you a list. It is a list of all your sins.
You check off all the sins you are willing to repent of, then you hand the list back to God.
The name of the place is called “Judgment.”
Every day the flock trekked down all the way to the river for a drink. They went the same way every time; it was the closest point in the river, and the path had been trodden smooth.
One day, when they set of, an alert member of the flock said she saw some flickers of movement away off at their destination along the river. The ram halted the flock for awhile and sniffed the air. “Wolves, perhaps,” he said, and headed off the path into the rough country alongside the path to cross to a different point on the river.
At that, however, another member of the flock who was already showing signs of distress became even more agitated.
“You are breaking the norm!” she bleated.
Moral: We sometimes try to allay our fears with tried and trusted normalcy, when it is our normal course that has made us vulnerable to danger.
Random thoughts from the end of the Book of Mormon
* It’s droll to read the Book of Mormon as a historical document. You know, with the same scepticism we usually give to ancient documents. Except that you are treating it as a real document, which drives the sceptics mad.
There are limits to doing that. Because if the Book of Mormon is real, it is inspired.
That said, and just for fun, here is what I would infer from the ending of the Book of Mormon if I were reading it as just a document from some ancient civilization.
I was out in the high desert this weekend, morning and evening. I could see the horizon and all the clouds and sky.
I saw the sunrise and the sunset–fortunately I had something else to do so I was able to appreciate their full beauty, I didn’t have to stand there consciously trying to have an aesthetic experience.
I noticed something I have seen before.
Sunrise
Until the sunrise is over, every time you glance over it is more wonderful. The first pale light of dawn is timid. Then after that brighter every time, different colors, and the angles shift. Even if you expect it to be better you still aren’t prepared when you look up again for the actual shock of beauty.
But the day itself is fairly bland unless there are plenty of clouds.
Perhaps there is a metaphor in there for why God mostly conceals his presence from us.
Sunset
The colors shift and the brightness fades. It is probably the exact physical inverse of the sunrise. But this time the quieter colors are the more beautiful. Again, every time you look up and see the sunrise, you are again shocked at the beauty. You weren’t expecting it. There is something about the black line of the horizon, the dark clouds limned with almost imperceptible hints of deep, deep red, and the still faintly blue sky far above them that is almost heart-stopping.
I noted the paradox this weekend. The sunrise becomes more glorious as it brightens. The sunset more glorious as it dims.
Each one because it is becoming more itself. It is working out even further its inner logic.
But for the twilight, especially, it is because even a dimmer light shines brighter when its surroundings have gotten that much more dark.
And the night itself is not bland. Either the stars in the heaven appear, or else like the last two nights, the moon rises over the horizon.
The light is not defeated by the going down of the sun.
You are the Light in the Twilight of the West
Why is the Left so unwilling to leave anybody alone? Why can’t they just be content with their victory?
There are many true answers to that question.
But Bruce Charlton has the truest answer of all.
And by this demand; Leftism reveals its weakness to those with spiritual-eyes to see: that any single individual person who dissents in thought (no matter how apparently obscure) is a significant threat to The Agenda at the level which matters most: i.e. the spiritual level.
The individual has never been so objectively empowered as here-and-now.
The Global Establishment demands that you, specifically (no matter who you are), decide to be On Their Side.
When the demonic powers view our planet; any dissidence, any one Godly Christian, stands-out of this world like a blazing beacon.
(This, ultimately, is why there is “no hiding place”.)
Of course it is vital to The Enemy to persuade Christians that Resistance Is Futile…
Meanwhile, by everything they actually do; Leftism makes clear that any resistance, by any person, anywhere is In Fact a colossal threat to The System – at its primary and spiritual level.
Your faith is not futile. You shine all the more beautiful as the light of our society fades.
A great post from Bruce Charlton from anyone who is interested in revelation and the Light of Christ and the inward promptings of the soul.
On the steppe, when one tribe got big and genocidal and attacked the tribe next to it that tribe fought for a while and then fled, usually by launching a genocidal attack on the next tribe further on. You got these domino effects.
(The Mfecane I mentioned yesterday worked like that also).
But the Nephites at the end stopped fleeing the Lamanites. Why?
Maybe they were completely surrounded by the Lamanites in great depth. But that is not the picture we get from anywhere in the Book of Mormon, nor from the ending period.
Maybe they realize that in fleeing they would have to leave behind many of their people to die, especially the women and children. But if they were all that wicked, why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they act on the wicked principle of each man for himself and devil take the hindmost? King Noah and his wicked priests did.
That is one question – why didn’t the Nephites flee? It actually takes quite a bit of courage and cooperation and self-sacrificing spirit, in other words, virtue, to stay and fight to the death when you have a chance to run away.
Here is the second question. Why didn’t the Nephites desert?
200 AD — the children of Lehi live in a perfect society with visible miracles and deathless men who had seen the Christ walking among them
210 AD — wicked churches deny the Christ and try to kill the Saints
230 AD — They split again into warring Nephites and Lamanites
How quick the fall.
Why? Or better yet, how? Nearly every adult in 210 would have had the living experience of being part of that ideal gospel world. 10 years later, they are trying to burn people.
Corruptio optima pessimi. That is the Book of Mormon’s answer. When those most blessed of the Lord reject Him, the Spirit of the Lord withdraws completely and they perish. With the ordinary wicked, the Spirit of the Lord continues to strive, so they can still muddle on. Not so those who reject God, whom God rejects. (more…)
This post is about sex and I apologize in advance for those of you–you know who you are–for whom this topic is justly painful. Would that it were not so.
I’m no Francis Berger–I have neither the depths nor the heights–but I do have some more Deep Thoughts about porn. Or rather, my brain does. Yes, at 3 AM. It’s no literary affectation, poppets, from time to time my brain really does wake me up at 3 AM to brood about Deep Thoughts. There seems to be no consistent connection to what I ate or my mood or my activity or mindset the night before.
In addition to the many more obvious problems with porn, one big problem is that it conditions men’s brains to associate sexual satisfaction with being passive and inert. There is no masculine energy involved. Further, because we have a celebrity culture where screen time is status, it conditions them to approach sex as an inferior. Passive and low status, they are getting sexual reward from being passive and low status. Like a rat that gets a little bunt of cocaine for pushing the button, but the button they push is the destruction of their own masculinity.
Oh, the crafty plan of the Adversary! He’s a sly devil.
Remember when our ancestors built their own meetinghouses? I grew up in a little church by a stream that the ward there had built. Some of the old men had laid the foundation. Most of the people there had painted or remodeled or added a wing where we had classrooms. There was a ‘cry room’ for nursing mothers that was built on a second story at the back of the chapel, with a little balcony, so they could still see the service. Naturally, because there were no piped-in sound systems back then.
There were real joys to doing it that way. At the same time, the hardship of building and paying was intense. It is a blessing that we can now afford to hire builders. But we only know it is a blessing if we remember there used to be another way.
Years ago I had the opportunity to preside over a stake whose roots reach back a great while. When the first ward was formed in that area, the local people, out of their own meager resources, bought the land and constructed the building without any help from the general funds of the Church. When that building became too small, they constructed a larger one entirely from their own resources.
By the time I came into the presidency of that stake the Church policy provided for matching funds, the Church to put up one dollar for each dollar provided by the local members. Under that formula, we in that area built six new chapels, in addition to providing funds for their maintenance and all of the activity programs carried on in the various wards.
There may have been a few murmurings, but the faith of the people overrode all of these. They gave generously, notwithstanding the stresses of their own circumstances, and the Lord blessed them in a remarkable way. I know of none who went hungry or without shelter. And I know something of the fruit of those homes which have produced a generation and almost a second generation who walk in faith and who have gone across the world and become men and women recognized for their various skills and integrity, as well as for their activity in the Church.
In those days we would have thought the Millennium had come if we had received word that the Church would bear all of the costs of providing land, all of the costs incident to building construction, operation, and maintenance, let alone an activity and administrative budget allowance of forty dollars per year per individual, based on the number who attend sacrament meeting.
It is not the Millennium, but this long hoped-for and prayed-for day has come. Though I have been a party to its inauguration, I still stand in awe at what has happened.
-thus President Hinckley
Marilyn Nielson Let us not quibble or complain
The Nephites and the Lamanites have a complex history. They split, they merge, they have dissenters, they have converts, they split again…
In 4th Nephi they apparently completely merge and become just one people. Then when they become wicked again they become Nephites and Lamanites again. But it’s even more specific, they split into their individual varieties of Lamanites and Nephites–the old tribes that they used to belong to. (more…)
Goodness is always underrated.
It can’t be overrated.
Think of the goodness you know in your family and friends. There is nothing better.
I dreamed Miss Swan went gliding along the sparkling water, white and sinuous and effortless, and as she came by Mr. Stork she gave a demure and graceful bob of her head.
Mr. Stork, he bowed. His stilt legs pushed back and his stilt body pushed forward.
And just like from her, from him I had an impression of great beauty. In his own way. It was not curved and elegant. It was angular. But it was a real bow with real grace–his body lent itself to the essence of bowing–and it was distinctly like a stork.
Moral: achieve the glory that is yours.