Job 38 — what an electric chapter!

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?…

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?…

Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail?…

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?

Our doctrine and practice makes God approachable.  That is good.

But the point of approaching him isn’t to make him our Buddy Jesus.  It’s to stand in awe of all that He is, from intimate familiarity with him.  Instead of holding his greatness beyond measure at a comfortable distance as some kind of murky abstraction.

In summer both rain and drought melt the snow.

An adult will spend their accumulated youth, whether in good or in evil.

Your sin becomes either misery or repentance.

One reason I believe our work on virtue sets is intellectually valid is because it is valid to my experience. It accurately reflects what has happened.

Mellow ambition, carefree hunger, easygoing striving, Type-A hippy, all sound like contradictions in terms. But it is a real thing. It isn’t just moderation between being happy go lucky and being a plucky goal guy. Its somehow capturing the good element in both at the same time and rejecting the bad element in both at the same time.

When I was in college there were guys who desperately wanted to get married and tried supremely hard and they got no where.

There were guys who were apathetic and they got nowhere.

Eventually you reached this state where you cared but didn’t care, where you were easygoing about the whole thing but also focused on your goal . . . and then you got married, often times through what seemed like purest happenstance. I half believe because being able to capture the virtues of being easygoing and being hungry at the same time is a conspicuous display of mastery. Very impressive.

Carefree —–> VIRTUE <—–  Ambition

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Most Tanner Greer is well worth reading, but I would elevate his latest to the top of the stack.

It’s not his most thorough or most scholarly piece, but it is on a topic that is incredibly important even for people who don’t care about current events and politics (which I hope for your sakes is most of you).

The piece is about stagnation. It’s real, and it has been going strong for decades. https://scholars-stage.org/has-technological-progress-stalled/ 

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Three crows were sitting on a fence.

The first crow said, “You should trust us.  We will always, always, tell you the truth.”

The second crow was surprised.  “We will?”

The third crow said, “What is truth?”

Moral: In a sense, you should trust the crows.

I dreamed that I was away for business.  Some kind of conference.  But I had to leave early for another conference in a small city about 60 or so miles south of where I work.  I flew out early in the morning and was going to be in that city for a day until the conference started bright and early the day.

I had planned to go to the historic library down town, which I’ve been too before.  But there was some special kind of food court that I and some other guys in the same boat–they were pretty glum about being stranded there for the day–decided to wander through first.  They had a booth dedicated entirely to chocolate-dipped strawberries.  They had a big counter dedicated to turtle soup.  And there was a Mexican place which wasn’t open yet that was also apparently dedicated to Mexican turtle dishes.

Then it occurred to me that I was close enough to home, I could just go home for the day.  So I did.

An internet resource provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I spend a fair bit of time with is the old map page:
classic.churchofjesuschrist.org/maps

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There are weeks left in the summer.  We still have many days of swimming pools and glasses of ice on the front porch and heat waves and overgrown gardens and praying for rain and mowing the grass and trips to the mountains and swatting mosquitoes.

But I am ready for fall.  Saturday breakfast with the clear light of a fall morning, toast from my wife’s bread, local chicken eggs, green chile, applesauce fresh from the stove where it’s simmering down.

From Jordan Petersen.  Worth thinking about.

It’s amazing how many advocates for being non judgmental, reaching people where they are, being inclusive, etc.  get uncomfortable when its not socially approved victim categories.  Include . . . young men?  Affirm . . . their identity?

We live in a golden age of gross hypocrisy.

(Btw, what is that background?  A trendy cubicular display bookshelf and a stack of firewood)

Ezra and Nehemiah appealed to me in ways I didn’t expect.

First, there was the obvious care the princes and the rich had for their people, including feeling ashamed and voluntarily renouncing debts owed them when they were told that they had freed their people from one captivity only to bring them into another, including ruler and servant alike sharing tents and sleeping on their swords.

Second, the scene where they read the book  of the law to the people who weep, and they celebrate the feast of the booths for the first time.  I was overcome with the sense that for the very first time, never before in their history, they had become a people.  Having their nation destroyed, living in captivity among strangers, and then the trek back to destroyed Jerusalem surrounded by hostiles.  They finally became a people.

For us the pioneers were the ones who made us a people through endless troubles.  I was very saddened yesterday to see not a peep about it on the Church website.

They are still worthy of honor and recognition from those who are still their people, and I do honor and recognize them.

If faith is what you still believe when you can’t see it, is hope only for when things seem hopeless?

Hope isn’t the same as optimism. Optimism is a belief that the probable outcomes are going to turn in your favor.  It is like a very mild form of Napoleonic belief in one’s own star.

Hope is knowing there are miracles.

Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s photo discovered by descendant after nearly 180 years

I’m very grateful for the good discussion on yesterday’s post about the current state of the church.

Two thoughts. (more…)

Today all four Utah representatives voted to make gay marriage the law of the land.  Three of them are Peter Priesthood LDS.

I’m sure they have their reasons.

But it makes me think of thoughts, and experiences, that I have been  having for a long time.

If you believe that the Church is doing well, despite cratering birth rates, despite stagnant conversions, because we are building more temples, you have another think coming.

We are in crisis.

If you don’t think half your congregation are apostates or close to it, you have another think coming.

If you think that all the guidance you need even on issues of great public import you can get by putting your finger in the air and seeing which way the wind in Salt Lake City is blowing, you have another think coming.

If you think the Brethren are willing and able to trumpet out everything that needs to be said, you have another think coming.

If you don’t think the very elect can be deceived, without exception for rank or apparent success or outward measures of righteousness, you have another think coming.

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[Elder Erastus Snow in the Logan Tabernacle, Saturday afternoon, February 2, 1884, as recorded in the Journal of Discourses v. 25, p 31]
The time was, in the infancy of this Church, when our minds were so narrow compared to what they are now, that we looked for the speedy coming of our Lord, and the accomplishment of His great work before this time. But as our minds grew, and our ideas enlarged, we began to perceive that we were only children in our views and feelings, our ideas and expectations. We had the views, ideas and expectations of children; and we see how the Lord has enlarged Israel and expanded His work; and now we behold so much more to be accomplished than what has been accomplished, that we are apt in our minds to put off the day of the Lord a great way.

The time was that we looked for one temple. The early revelations given to the Latter-day Saints predicted a temple in Zion, and Zion in our minds at that time was a little place on the Missouri River in Jackson County, Western Missouri—a town and a few surrounding villages, or a country, peradventure it may be as large as a county. When we first heard the fullness of the Gospel preached by the first Elders, and read the revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith, our ideas of Zion were very limited. But as our minds began to grow and expand, why we began to look upon Zion as a great people, and the Stakes of Zion as numerous, and the area of the country to be inhabited by the people of Zion as this great American continent, or at least such portions of it as the Lord should consecrate for the gathering of His people. We ceased to set bounds to Zion and her Stakes. We began also to cease to think about a single temple in one certain place. (more…)