We can clearly see that our birth rates are dropping precipitously. If we are to fix the problem, there are two groups we should think about. Those who don’t want children and those who feel unable. Trying to fight a culture obsessed with sex and money is mostly going to be a mostly fruitless endeavor. Go ahead and call to those people, but don’t waste most of your time on them. Rather, we would do better to focus on the second population and enable those who do want kids and feel unable.

Enable and assist married people to have children:

• Car Seats – racket that does more to reduce fertility than actually save children. Get rid or reduce it severely.
• Housing costs
• Hospital birthing costs
• Child care costs? I am loathe to accommodate this one, but it might be necessary, at least in the short term.
• Reduce Child Protective Services, or refocus them so children can roam more wildly. An over-parented child is one who will feel at home with an intrusive Big Brother Govt.
• Encourage family formation by stop having the government favor women. If the government does everything a husband does, that is immoral as porn because it destroys the need for men and women to join together. Too many safety needs isn’t charity. It is enabling. 

Preserve existing Families:

Divorce, in practice, if not in law, favors women. I can’t tell you how many women I have met that are happy just living off alimony and child support payments, mostly the later. Divorce laws have been unfairly biased for a very long time. Correcting this would give men a lot of support. 

China just made it difficult for a divorcing woman to take her husband’s wealth. I am not sure they are wrong. This one is tricky, because we have to balance women who have been married many years and then set adrift (legit need), with women who want to exploit the situation, because they know they will be unfairly advantaged. 

The vast majority of divorces are initiated by women. If we can introduce a level playing field, we can preserve some marriages. 

Dating Culture:

This is a tougher nut to crack. I am proud enough to steady the ark, but I haven’t a clue how to fix this. If people are not dating, they aren’t getting married. From everything I hear, this is a toxic hell, for everyone these days, except the top 2% or so. It was hell when I was single, but that was at least partly because I was a single father and my height puts me closer to Gimli than Legolas. How would I fix this? Genuinely not sure, except to say it is increasingly important to live so that we can have miracles in our lives. Abraham was able to find a wife for his son Isaac, even though he was practically the last righteous man alive. Jacob managed to do it under equally challenging circumstances. Joseph likewise had an unconventional life path, that was only possible because he was righteous and had great faith in God. We need no less. This is a spiritual battle, so perhaps here a spiritual solution is best. 

I probably would not encourage dating apps.  

I don’t think it is as simple as complaining about hypergamy. Rather, it is porn-brain, or if you prefer, Brains Over-Stimulated by Dopamine Enabled by the Internet. Men have learned the hard way that what porn promises, it can’t deliver. Likewise Social Media and dating apps. They promise every woman a prince or a wealthy finance bro. Dating apps showed an endless array of men. Whatever the faults of dating apps, women had plenty of attention and variety. May be not the attention or variety they wanted, but it suggested there were a lot of men out there. If they could just find the right one. There were always more. Perhaps, just perhaps women are just beginning to wake up (maybe? hopefully?) to the realization that it was all a lie. It was a deception by people who wanted their time, attention and money. 

This may not solve all answers, but if we can get rid of some of the more significant roadblocks, hopefully we can help families form, retain, procreate and raise children. 

The Saints who trekked across the plains to the barren Great Basin did not suddenly become plush when they got there.  They lived in scraping poverty.

They did not do it as refugees.  They did it to build an empire in the dust.

They succeeded.

Their only true trial is us.

On the porch in the evening with your arm around your wife.  Thunder and lightning and rain clouds moving.

There is something fine about watching your kids dance in the rain.

“Just one more song, Dad.”

Years ago, my grandmother smoked cigarettes. Even as a child, I knew this was bad for her, so I tried everything I could to convince her to quit. Eventually it killed her.

Would I have loved my grandmother if I hadn’t asked her to do something very hard? What if I had softened the truth, so as not to offend her? What if I told her the laws of health didn’t apply to her? Is there any possible way for me to have had real genuine love for my grandmother, without asking her to do what is difficult?

No, there is not.

Refusing people hard things to do, is refusing them the Grace of God. God will strengthen us, but not while we do not stretch ourselves.

Elder Bednar shares a story about a man who went into the mountain woods, to cut firewood.

So he decided he would cut and haul a supply of firewood for their home. It was in the autumn of the year, and snow already had fallen in the mountains where he intended to find wood. As he drove up the mountainside, the snow gradually became deeper and deeper. My friend recognized the slick road conditions presented a risk, but with great confidence in the new truck, he kept going.

Sadly, my friend went too far along the snowy road. As he steered the truck off of the road at the place he had determined to cut wood, he got stuck. All four of the wheels on the new truck spun in the snow. He readily recognized that he did not know what to do to extricate himself from this dangerous situation. He was embarrassed and worried.

My friend decided, “Well, I will not just sit here.” He climbed out of the vehicle and started cutting wood. He completely filled the back of the truck with the heavy load. And then my friend determined he would try driving out of the snow one more time. As he put the pickup into gear and applied power, he started to inch forward. Slowly the truck moved out of the snow and back onto the road. He finally was free to go home, a happy and humbled man.

Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease, Elder Bednar, 2014

Elder Bednar’s talk is excellent and I highly recommend it.

Again from Elder Bednar’s talk

Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load. But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of the plan of happiness. Because our individual load needs to generate spiritual traction, we should be careful to not haul around in our lives so many nice but unnecessary things that we are distracted and diverted from the things that truly matter most.

That traction comes from a load, and we will need that traction at some point in our lives. If we are so short-sighted as to deny people a load, we also deny them the traction they will need later in their lives.

There are compensatory blessings, for obedience leading to other blessings withheld, such as the person who is chaste in an immoral world. Those compensatory blessings can result in enhanced spiritual growth and power. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the blessings. “Sacrifice brings forth the Blessings of Heaven.”

God enjoys blessing us. And He knows that what He asks is sometimes very difficult.  But what he promises is out of proportion to what we do.

For thus saith the Lord—I, the Lord, am merciful and gracious unto those who fear me, and delight to honor those who serve me in righteousness and in truth unto the end D&C 76:5

There is no case where the Wicked suffer less than the Righteous. They might have more fun in the short term. Some suppose God enjoys suffering or is some kind of ascetic. Nothing is further from the truth. He is anxious to bless us, but He also understand what will and will not bring us happiness. God will bless the Righteous, or those who struggle to be with more than they can comprehend.

God can make our burdens light. All our burdens.

13 And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage.

14 And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.

15 And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.

Mos. 24:13-15

How close are we to the Savior? Some things are are shown by difficult experience, how close, or not, we actually are. But when we actually are close to him, He can make His commandments easy. By experience, I can say, this will involve a lot of prayer, repentance, dedication to the Lord.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28–30).

A yoke is a instrument of burden, but is is one that the Savior is with us, suffering with us. He can make it light, because He is pushing with us. And just as we feel God in us, the Savior feels us in Him. He feels, and continues to feel, all our suffering. He is with us when we suffer. He is not absent, merely coming by once a month to pick up the rent check.

The covenants God offers us, are not merely transactional, they are transformational.
And He is too loving to leave us as we are.
He will ask difficult things, and He will transform us.

More D&C thoughts once everybody else has moved on.  For the cognitive aristocrats in the slow thinking movement.

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The Vision of the Three Degrees of Glory (and much else beside) is powerful and beautiful.

It seems like it should have inspired LDS artists in aspects of it.  Has it?  Post below.

The art for this lesson in the manual was “Refuge,” picture below.

I like the painting–a lot–but the title makes it wrong for D&C 76.  “Refuge” nowhere appears in the vision and at the eternal cosmic scope the vision deals with is more a terrestrial concept than a celestial one.

This Teichert painting was not inspired by D&C 76 that I know of, but it always makes me think of D&C 76:107

I have overcome and have trodden the wine-press alone, even the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God.

What art comes to your mind?

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The main difference between a novel or a slice-of-life web serial/TV sitcom is the sense that there is an overall structure to the novel.  New random stuff that happens in the novel isn’t random.  It leads somewhere.

I submit to you that your life feels like the web serial, but is actually the novel.

He did not die for you in vain. He would not have agonized for you if He didn’t think–if He didn’t know–that you and He could put you right.

So right. Right beyond your ken. Right in your soul like an atom bomb, right in your happiness like a house on fire.

Unlike us mortals, He is not addicted to grand gestures and Lost Causes. He aims to win. Even in His moments of maddest passion in the Garden and on the Cross, there was iron calculation. The numbers added up. The sums cashed out. You are ROI.

https://x.com/InezFeltscher/status/1943744667675218301#m

Elder Cook told mission leaders that, from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, convert baptisms were the highest of any 12-month period in Church history. Every region of the world saw at least a 20% increase in convert baptisms in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-of-jesus-christ-record-global-growth

It feels like something in the air has shifted. Change is coming. I can feel it.

https://nitter.poast.org/eigenrobot/status/1941864747202117950#m

https://x.com/eigenrobot/status/1941864747202117950#m

eigenrobot

@eigenrobot

Jul 6

“science” used to be great because no one believed in it. but since empiricism is now globally and hopelessly corrupted by Belief and careerism, the only reliable ways to know anything are

1. having good aesthetics for theory

2. direct observation (gnosis)

3. divine revelation

This is another example of Goodhart’s law.  When Data and Science and Experts become the widespread basis for making decisions they inevitable become corrupt.  You might be better consulting entrails.

P.S.  one reason why revelation also doesn’t always come quickly and immediately and clearly maybe so that we don’t start relying on automatically and then interspersing it with our own feelings about what we think ought to be done without realizing it

More on the parts of the D&C that everyone else is done talking about–

In sections (D&C 67-75) that are full of power–crowns, glory, immortality, eternal life, riches, lands, inheritance, generations–the part that hit me the most was three simple commandments.  Teach your children, honor the Sabbath, remember your labors.  68:28-30.    And a piece of advice: gird up your loins but be sober.  73:6.

Delving a little deeper, Isaiah 5 is about False Doctrine.

When we read Isaiah 5, we are prone to assume some very simplistic symbolism. But the Jews have a deeper symbolism that we have not always delved into. The Vineyard may be the Lord’s people, but what is wine? For the Jews, wine represents understanding or knowledge.

How does this illuminate the passage? This chapter starts off with the Parable of the Vineyard – a vineyard was planted but brings forth bad, perhaps even poisonous, grapes. So the Lord of the Vineyard will destroy it.

Thus, the vineyard is yielding corrupt understanding, or false doctrine.
But this is more interesting once you start looking at the Six Woes. At first, they appear to be six unrelated curses. But they all have a common theme, once you understand what wine is.

First: (5:8-10) Hording land -> hording vineyards: At the surface level, this doesn’t appear to have a connection to the parable, but what would this mean in terms of knowledge? Those who gatekeep knowledge, perhaps including schools.

Second: (5:11-12) Those who drink carelessly -> those who do not treat knowledge seriously. “they regard not the work of the Lord,”

Followed by two Therefores. Notice the theme is a lack of knowledge, that is equated with thirst and hunger.

Third: (5:18-19) Drawing vanity. -> In the context of knowledge, is this those who make rationalizations for sin?

Fourth: (5:20) Call evil good -> flat out falsehood

Fifth: (5:21) Wise in their own eyes -> proud

Sixth: (5:22-24) Mighty to drink wine. Why would alcohol lead to “Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!”? Unless they are drinking knowledge, and using it for corrupt ends. It is knowledge and power they are drunk on.

Followed by two Therefores. Notice that their root and blossom, instead of growing the vineyard, are part of the vineyard becoming rotten and dust. In other words, the result of all this false doctrine, and misuse of knowledge, is destruction. Not merely for the ancient Jews, but for us as well. This pertains to us today.

And that is how the chapter ends, with the Lord promising to destroy them. The end of the chapter isn’t about missionary work. It is Isaiah showing just how dire things were, and just how apostate his people are.
Notice, that the Book of Isaiah does not start out with Isaiah’s vision and commission. We get the stage set first, with the Lord of the Vineyard saying, “what more could be done?” Nothing, except destruction. This is what makes chapter 6 powerful, because we now understand the stakes and the context that the vision happens in.

I read an interesting article on Catholic doctrine on usury lately.

Here.

To summarize, there was a Catholic law in medieval times against charging interest on loans (“usury”) that went way back, all the way to some passages in the Old Testament.  St. Thomas Aquinas came up with a logical explanation for it (I can’t make head nor tails of it, which is no reflection on the saint) and then later thinkers developed and articulated his rationale in a way that legitimately undercut the rules on usury, so the rules on usury largely went away.

This is a story that generalizes.  There are two morals you can take from this story; they cut in opposite directions.

First, the tendency to come up with explanations and rationales for commandments can be dangerous.  Catholics in particular but basically everybody have a real tendency to decide that the explanation is the Thing, not the commandment it attempts to explain.  So the commandment can be modified or abandoned when it conflicts with the explanation.   This can be bad.  It is one of the main tools of casuistry and Pharisaism, and its in the form of historicism, of liberal theology.

But second, commandments that are generally phrased were still often implicitly modified and contextualized by the situation that existed when they were given.  It is often a mistake (not to mention contrary to agency) to refuse to think about *why* a commandment might exist at all.

The only solution is to get light.  Revelation is the answer.

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Happy Fourth!