A little learning is a dangerous thing;

drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring

-Alexander Pope’s once-famous couplet

How deep should you drink?

I have a feeling the only way to drink deeply enough is to go under, so far that you cannot get back to the surface in this life.

Most descriptions of what the book of Job is about don’t match the actual book of Job.

No, its not an explanation of why God allows evil to exist, not really.  That doesn’t explicitly come up at all.  The beginning and end where Job loses all and then recovers all is basically a frame story for the disputation.

My own point of view, completely uninformed by scholarship, is that (1) its a poetic recognition that evil happens to good people and is evil and (2) its a long and poetic argument between people who don’t believe in a robust afterlife (Job’s friends) and people who do (Job).  The friend’s keep saying that God is just in this life and Job keeps saying, no, not in this life, so there must be a life to come.

It feels fictional to me.  The prophets say that Job was real and I’m going to believe them, obviously, so could one say it was a fictionalized account inspired by something that actually happened?

Wherefore, the land of Zion shall not be obtained but by purchase or by blood, otherwise there is none inheritance for you.
And if by purchase, behold you are blessed;
And if by blood, as you are forbidden to shed blood, lo, your enemies are upon you, and ye shall be scourged from city to city, and from synagogue to synagogue, and but few shall stand to receive an inheritance.
D&C 63:29-31

Two ways to redeem Zion, but only one way for us.

A passed-out drunk woke up in a field at night.  There was a UFO landed near him and a few aliens gaggling around.  One of them was looking at him.

”Hey!  Hey!” the drunk yelled. “What’s it all for?  Why are you here?”

“Yes,” the alien said.  “We are collectors. ”

The drunk’s expression cleared.  “Oh, hey, collectors.  Art!  I know art.  The Mona Lisa!  You should collect the Mona Lisa.  Hey!”

The alien looked blank. “What is this Mona Lisa?  We collect art creations of great worth.”  He proudly showed the drunk a child’s refrigerator drawing.

“Jesus loves this boy, and the boy loves this art.  Isn’t it wonderful to have something that will last forever?”

The party did not last.  It rarely does.

-thus Elder Uchtdorf, talking about the prodigal son.

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Elder Eyring at conference taught that “purity brings power.”

The easiest way to understand that is that if you follow God’s rules, He grants you power.  That easy understanding makes it seem like the connection between purity and power is arbitrary, part of a system of rewards and punishments.  While that kind of easy understanding is good enough for some purposes, almost nothing in the gospel is arbitrary when you get down into it.  We should ask ourselves,  how does purity inherently bring power?  How is power inherent in purity?

Step back and think about the word purity outside church contexts.  It can mean 100%.  Focused.  Concentrated.  If you described a boxer’s motion as “pure,” no one would think it odd at all that his actions were also powerful.   Pure here means no wasted effort, no inefficiency, no drag.

Everyone would instantly get why a “pure” drug is more powerful.

Be pure like a laser.

I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, Superman said.

I defeat villains using only my mind and my will, Batman said.

I bind on earth and heaven, Prophetman said.

What’s more, my power can spread.

We do not live in fear of the Lamanites.
We have not suffered from vicious Lamanite depravity.
The worst we, personally, have suffered from the Lamanites is some wicked good Indian Fry Bread.

The Nephites in the Book of Mormon had ‘good’ reasons to be angry with the Lamanites. Of course, I deliberately use quote marks around good in this instance. But my point is, we see things differently from the perspective of being 2 millennia later. All they knew was that their friends and family members were taken for human sacrifices.

But we also know the Lamanites, when converted, were FAR, FAR more faithful than the Nephites. The only reason the faithful survived at all, was because of the converted Lamanites. There is a good argument to be made that the Lamanites are the heroes of the Book of Mormon.

Now, let’s discuss current events. I will do this will all the grace I am capable of… so imagine rabid bulls in a china shop.

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Prophets can err. Your understanding of the prophets can err. Your belief that the prophets have erred in one particular instance can (and usually does) err.

Reasoners err. Your understanding of reasoners errs. Your reasoning errs.

Teachers err. Scientists err. Experts err (a lot!). Journalists err like crazy. Officials err.

Memes err, pics err, video errs, print errs.

Emotions err, common sense errs, dreams err.

A perfect being cannot explain everything you need to know perfectly to you because you are imperfect and limited and blind. (more…)

NEW CDC Data: Show Birthrates declining dramatically nationwide. The largest decrease occurring in West & SW states with Utah seeing the steepest birth decline at -36.2% pic.twitter.com/SsrfEFENb9

— Lindsay Penney (@TexasLindsay_) October 6, 2023

CDC data shows Utah had the largest decline in births per 1000 from 2007 to 2022 at 36%.

Utah has seen a lot of social change and move ins, shepherded by its government class who hoped to make the state more appealing to investment by  making it less ‘Mormon.’

So these figures wouldn’t have worried me if it weren’t for the fact that from 2012 to 2022 we experienced a 25% drop in new children of record.  That is an absolute drop, not a drop in per 1,000.  The per 1,000 figure would be a 40% drop.  Worse than the Utah drop.

We can quibble about what these numbers mean, but that the over all picture is bad and the direction is bad–I am tempted to say literally catastrophic–is beyond dispute.

TFR 2.9

Their formula is some combination of material incentives along with a fair amount of just being supportive and  doing a lot of little things to make it clear that the town values having children.

However, from the examples in the article, I wonder how much of the town’s success is from cherry-picking families from their surrounding area?

Most of you know this already, because its obvious.  I didn’t.  Sister Freeman said something obviously true that I hadn’t put together in my mind before.

Just as a wedding does not make a marriage, a covenant ordinance does not make a relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  The ordinance, whether wedding or not, is a vessel that has to be filled.

Wedding:marriage::covenant:divine relationship

I’ve struggled for awhile with how exactly a ‘covenant’ is different from a contract or agreement.  Sister Freeman’s talk gave me the jumping off point I needed.

A covenant is a relationship built on a mutual promises.  Or, which is much the same thing, a covenant is an eternal agreement.

P.S.  I loved her passion for the temple garment

We are reading Ephesians 5 this week.

Coincidentally this morning, I came across a review of Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female, by Brian Patrick Mitchell.  I don’t endorse everything in the review (as always with links) and I haven’t read the book.  Still, from an LDS standpoint, it sounds fascinating.   Mr. Mitchell apparently does a deep dive into the Greek philosophical approach to men and women, which basically saw women as knock-off men.  Or else men as the higher “spirit” sex and women  as the lower “body” sex.  From which much evil follows, including in Christianity.

Time for a second look at “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?”

The Proclamation on the Family is both a timely and practical warning against contemporary evils but also, I and you have been realizing, a profound doctrinal statement.  The sexes are real, and good.  Sex is real, and good.  The body is eternally meaningful.  You are your physical being.  And so on.  Deeply rewarding.

A gentile friend of mine once said, “I got so misogynist that now I love and respect women.”  He meant he’d spent so much time figuring out the ways in which women could not be counted on to act like men that he had eventually absorbed that they weren’t  men. (more…)

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