Female Ordination Statistics

A:  Episcopal church, taken from https://episcopalchurch.org/files/2004GrowthReport(1).pdf Red line shows female ordination.

B: Evangelical Lutheran Church: Ordination of females was instituted in 1990.  1990 membership stats from their executive summary shows  2,919,270 active Evangelical Lutherans, or 262.16 confirmed active members per congregation on average. In the 2000 report membership stats show 180.66 confirmed active members per congregation on average, and the 2001 report gave 173.66.   The Evangelical Lutheran Church was formed in 1997, and have never grown.

C: Disciples of Christ: They were already struggling before 1970, Which sealed their fate.

D: Unitarian Universalist: Possibly the only congregation to report getting their membership numbers back up.  Women reportedly started seeking to be ministers around 1970, according to here https://www.meadville.edu/files/resources/v2n1-sangrey-the-feminization-of-the-unitarian-uni.pdf, they lost a solid 15% of their membership in 12 years before turning the trend around.  There's no way I see to determine what percentage here is active attendees- Blue line marks end of decline, though they still have not broken even with their 1960 numbers.

E: United Church of Christ: Pretty much always allowing female ordination, but had less than 20 female clergywomen (among thousands) until roughly 1970s with the women's suffrage movement, according to the UCC's article.  http://www.thearda.com/denoms/D_1463.asp shows They gained members until about a year before 1970s, and then immediately entered a decline which has not recovered.  In the 40 years since, they have lost over *half* their membership.

F: United Methodists: Beginning ordination in 1968, they show the exact same trend as the United Church of Christ.  They have lost three million members in 40 years.

G: RLDS (Community of Christ) - 1984 - Can't really find any good data on this one, the only statistical set I can find shows gains and losses over 50% from year to year at random.  I assume there's been a lot of change in how they've done their statistical reporting.

Major churches which do not echo the death spiral (and do not ordain women) include Jehova's Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ, Roman Catholic, and Southern Baptist. https://ifphc.wordpress.com/2017/05/10/church-stats-1975-2015-charts-show-decline-of-mainline-protestants-and-growth-of-pentecostals/

General Conference and Multiple Witnesses

Short talk I gave in church today.  Mostly unedited notes other than the markers regarding parts I could cut out if I was short on time.

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There I was, in the Mississippi Jungle, fried chicken in one hand, Bible in the other, name tag on my shirt signaling intent of preachin' the word o' God.  I was lanky and dangerous, and the miles of daily biking had boosted my metabolism to scientifically improbable levels.  I'd eat two subway footlong sandwhiches for lunch and twice that for dinner, and members showed their appreciation for the missionary work I did by taking me to all you can eat buffets just for the spectacle of the thing.  I was maybe slightly skinnier than I am now.  Often the people throughout the land were heard to exclaim: "That's obscene!  I'm pretty sure gluttony is a sin!".  So I, like a good little Elder, pulled out my scriptures for personal study and looked up gluttony, and you know what I found?

Its not a sin!  The Bible doesn't condemn gluttony anywhere! The only place the word is used is when Pharisees accuse Jesus himself of being a glutton!  So it went that when I was met with accusation of gluttony, I would reply "Bible don't condemn it!". I was rationalizing, but it justified my lifestyle and that's what scriptures are for, right?  But that all changed when general conference came around.  You see, we were in the church listening to the sessions on the screen and it was going pretty good until some guy named Jorg Clebenskot, in the middle of some irrelevant talk on making a happier marriage or something, pauses, and he looks right at me, and says "Oh and by the way pay attention to what and especially how much you eat, because it will affect your ability to be in tune with the spirit."

October 2014 general conference.  Ruined my life. 

Anyway I was convicted, the spirit stripped my rationalizing away and told me what was right and what was wrong on a completely obscure topic that I had gotten off track on, and it did this on a screen in front of 15 million people who as far as I know for the most part didn't need that particular correction.

A common critisicm of the Church of Jesus Christ is that we have and study from the Book of Mormon, and accept it as the word of God.  They say, quote, "A bible, a bible, we have got a bible, and we need no more bible!".  What these people don't understand is that God is too big to contain himself in just one revelation, like it says in the last verse in John's gospel. There's nobody on Earth who you could just write a book about and encompass every aspect of them and their personality and experience.  Some churches try with creeds, but those don't take into account history past or future, and fall short because a list of attributes, no matter how thorough, will always fail to encapsulate how a person will feel, think about, and react to, another real person or situation.  They have to be generic, and in doing so they lose some accuracy.  Personality tests are the same way.  They are great for introspection and learning about yourself, but always end up a poor descriptor of others, though as C.S. Lewis put it "we'd all like to think we've got each other taped."

So you have a Bible, and you have a Book of Mormon.  As missionaries we'd teach about this, that since the Bible fails to capture everything about God, you end up with over 30,000 different sects of Christianity, with their own creeds and ideas about who and what God is.  But if you add a second witness, then it is much more difficult to go astray.  There are diverging sects of the Church of Jesus Christ, but all except I think 2 have under a thousand memebers, and most died out completely shortly after their inception. Two witnesses anchors the gospel in place. 

If you nail a board to a wall with just one nail, the board can be rotated to point any number of directions, but if you add a second nail, in a differnt location, then the board is firmly anchored.  Now, we're all children of God, and we all have the promise of the companionship of the holy ghost, so what do we need prophets for?  This is a common critisicm I've heard.  Why not, the thought goes, just have a "personal relationship with Jesus" and not bother with religion at all?  Well, what I've seen is that too often overreliance on "a personal relationship with God" becomes basically an excuse to charicature God entirely, and God himself becomes a puppet concept to mirror back to us our own desires. its perhaps always a temptation to make God in our own image.  But besides that, sometimes we receive revelations of all sorts and say "is this God?  Is this myself?  Is this something else?"  And that's okay.  What a living prophet does is place a second nail in the board.  Also, it goes the other way too.  Just the living prophet with no personal experiences with God is just a single nail.  Your conference experience will be far more vibrant if you've been working on your living relationship with God, and there's two weeks now to prepare, so.

I have sometimes received revelations that I wasn't sure about, and even some that contradicted what I felt was right.  This is rare, but when it happens, what I have found and I'd like to bear testimony of is that when God sends a dicey revelation, if you're seeking his will, not yours, if it is a true revelation he will send more than one witness.  You will hear it echoed from the pulpit, from those with priesthood keys and the stewardship.  We often think of Priesthood keys as simply authority to direct God's work, but there is more to them than that. 

In the gospel of John 18:14 Caiaphas gave counsel that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.  James E Talmage saw in this the spirit of prophesy working in the High Priest of Israel, EVEN THOUGH this man was not righteous.  He talks about this in his book Jesus the Christ.  He was trying to kill God, but the keys were still active.

So we should seek revelation from God through every resource he makes available to us, so that we can be sure that we are on the straight and narrow path.  As we do this our testimonies will be strengthened and we will come to know God in a richer, deeper, and more vibrant way, as we gain more perspectives than ours and collect witnessess along the iron rod and gain the sweetness of the tree of life. 

The Priesthod Restriction.

Discussions of the Priesthood restriction always start with several assumptions which are necessary to divest before any real understanding can come.  Most I have found aren't particularly interested in looking for conclusions other than "Brigham Young was evil," but this post is for anyone who is curious for other perspectives.

Nearly always, it is explicitly assumed that the priesthood ban was a bad thing, and then using problem of evil-type reasoning the conclusion of "and therefore was not inspired of God" is jumped to.  Thinking about the priesthood ban is boiled down to just a few heuristic bullet points such as "racism", "premortal punishment", "prophetic fallibility", and "curse". These heuristics are used to reach the conclusion that the ban was not of God, but the heuristics are not neccessarily (as is the nature of heuristics) accurate to reality, and I believe if a person were to reason carefully, from God's perspective as given in the scriptures, upon the related principles, they would not find it as objectionable as the charicatured version.  I will be reasoning on a strict scriptural basis here, so those who already do not believe the scriptures to be inspired will not find these thoughts compelling.  I would insist that the priesthood restriction must be evaluated first from a perspective "as if" the church and scriptures are true, since that is the assumptiom Brigham Young and others would have been working from.  It should be no suprise that when a person starts with radically different assumptions that they find the restriction makes no sense.

The first idea I wish to address is the idea that the restriction upon blacks was due to their actions and "valiance" in the premortal life.  Since the priesthood equals leadership which equals power (at least, in the worldly mind; remember God's kingdom doesn't work like that at all, and that priesthood is about responsibility and being a servant as in Matt 20:25-29), the thought is that since blacks had less (worldly) "power" during the restriction they must not have been as "valiant."  Here's the fallacy:  "Valiance" does not have a 1:1 relation to "blessings" in the gospel.  It is especially important to note that trials themselves are often blessings in the gospel sense, because God's priority is our personal development, not our comfort.  Thus we see in Genesis 3:17 God cursing the ground for Adam's sake; that by this curse Adam may have the ability to become like God, the greatest of blessings.  The curse upon Adam was thus an enabler for certain divine blessings, which is a divine pattern seen in such as the Lamanites being a scourge on the Nephites to stir them to repentance, and the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's overcoming the curse being so strong in the gospel as to never fall away (Alma 23:6) they were known for their righteousness, despite their race's "curse" (Alma 27:27).  Keep in mind that the 2000 stripling warriers of whom not a single one could be killed in battle sprang from this "cursed" lineage.       .  No, none of these instances are an absolute parallel to the Priesthood restriction, but it does suggest a different avenue of study, a better alternative to simply assuming God just kind of let the church careen out of control for a century or so, and gives I think a much better view on what Brigham and others may have been thinking when they referred to African Americans as "cursed" which likely many have not thought about.

Occasionally, people take exception to the idea that the priesthood restriction was based on the "Curse of Cain."  I have seen quite often people say "Black skin is not a curse." It seems to me that that is forcing the conclusion to fit the formula and not the other way around, but either way it must be remembered that the mark of cain was different than the curse of cain; the mark was given as a protection for Cain.  Black skin (even if it was somehow the mark of Cain) would not, doctrinally, even if this folklore was taken for granted, make a person inferior. 

A third argument brought up fairly often is that "a child is not guilty because of the transgression of a parent" (Alma 30:25) But the question is not whether a child is guilty, but a question of punishment.  Does the God of the scriptures curse or punish for something you didn't do?  Uniquivocally, Yes.  (Deut 5:9, 23:2-3 and D&C 124:50) For example, we all have mortality and sin inherent from our first parents, Adam and Eve.  We inherited the curse their transgression brought upon us, though it is an article of faith that we are not judged by it.  Rather, we are judged by how we respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in.  In fact, one of the most astonishing theological points of Mormonism is that the hereditary chain also goes backwards, with the fathers being literally redeemed by the efforts of their children in temple work, and perhaps in other marvelous ways we aren't yet privy to.  (2 Nephi 4:6?)

The dynamics of the various "cursings of God" is a very interesting study, for which additional points are given in the compass.

Is it possible, like the man born blind, the restriction was to allow the glory of God to shine forth?  The body of the church has many parts.  Can the eye say I have no need of thee?" For a time, perhaps we need the blessings only a cursed-yet-faithful generation could bring upon us.  For every blessing, there is a law upon which it is predicated.  Perhaps, and I speak only as a man, God saw fit in the premortal world to provide a way that some spirits could gain a powerful blessing, obtainable no other way than by taking upon them certain restrictions in this life.  I know from revelation from the almighty himself that this has been the case in at least one major trial in my life, for which I praise God and am ever thankful.

Amen.
----------------compass---------------
Alma 17:15 - The curse of God had fallen on them because of the traditions of their fathers, but the promises of the Lord were still extended to them.

2 Nephi 40:6 - The scales of darkness shall fall from their eyes and after several generations they shall be pure/white and delightsome

Alma 23:18 - they became industrious, and the curse of God did no longer follow them.

Alma 45:15-16 is an interesting mirror to Genesis 3:17 - Alma blesses the earth for the righteous sake, that it should be cursed to those who do wickedly, which is then called a blessing.

Helaman 13:21 - ye are cursed because of your riches, and also are your riches cursed because ye have set your hearts upon them. 

Deut 23:3 - An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord until the tenth generation.

"we have been unconsciously evaluating others solely in terms of material welfare, instead of in terms of faith, charity, kindness, spirituality, and other Christian virtues." -Blacks and the Priesthood, Setting the Record Straight, Marcus H., Ph.D. Martins

Sam Young And Sharem

In the interest of Sam Young's recent excommunication response, I reread Jacob 7 this morning.  The Book of Mormon always provides precedent for the archetypal events of our day.

Here are some of my highlights:

v. 2 "He preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ" - Keep in mind that the real goal of the movement is to abolsih the law of chastity (forefront) and repentance as a principle (background).  Repentance is the second principle of the very gospel, yet Sam's main thrust in his offensive swordplay is "commandments cause shame and guilt, and shame and guilt is damaging".  Whereas we have dozens of archetypes in the scriptures where guilt and shame were the explicit catalyst for a man finding Christ.  Consider Alma the younger, in Alma 36: v12 "I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins." v13 "Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell" and his repentance: v2 "And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea,, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!"

Jacob 7 again, v3 "he labored dilligently that he might lead away the hearts of the people, insomuch that he did lead away many hearts" - Who in our day has been more dilligent in leading people away from the church? Sam's efforts have been consistent, subversive, and dedicated.  I am reminded of Rev 3:15: "thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot."  I have heard it said that every so often the Lord sees fit to "sift" his church, and we are met with trials such that force us to either stand with or against God.  I believe God has allowed Sam so long that he might force people to choose whom they will serve/cast allegiance to.

v4 "And he was learned, that he had a perfect knowledge oft he language of the people; wherefore, he could use much flattery, and much power of speech, according to the power of the devil." - His recent response to his excommunication letter is written with, in my judgement, incredible sophistry and skill.  He primes many pumps and poisons many wells, and rigs the whole thing in such a way that if the church takes action against him he can claim they were dishonest because they didn't meet his contrived demands.  He almost oozes sincerity, and honestly if I wasn't already poised to view him negatively I might have taken the post at face value, and missed all the clever little sleight of rhetorical hand underneath the surface. 

v5 Of course Sam aims to shake confidence in our leaders, and by extension God's ability to guide his leaders, and by extension whether the church is truly led by God.

v10 I wouldn't expect to be able to get such a straightforward answer from Sam.  When I asked him if he thought the church was true, he responded as Pontias Pilate with an existantial deflection on the nature of truth: "what is truth? What does it mean?" Which is certainly a tacit admission of guilt. Sam and his followers do not believe the scriptures.  They do not care about the scriptures. Christ exists only as a prop to bludgeon the church into conformity with their doctrine (that repentance is not necessary to salvation) which they do using the hippie "Christ says love" charicature, thus rigging the discussion.  If you disagree, you're both unloving and not following Christ.  This is not the Christ of the scriptures, who taught harsh judgement in parables, but again, they don't really believe the scriptures anyway. There's no interest in finding the will of God unless it happens to be useful.

v13 and 14 - Sam Young's insistence on meeting with leaders amounts to little more than sign seeking.  If a leader had come and sat in his chair, he would still defy them.  He only asks as a spectacle to bolster himself and as part of his posturing.  I would be interested to find if his sign seeking, like Sharem, is soon to be fulfilled to his condemnation.  If so, verses 16 and 17, though sad, offer hope.

Ayn Rand on Rationalization

"Men do not accept a catch phrase by a process of thought, they seize upon a catch phrase—any catch phrase—because it fits their emotions. Such men do not judge the truth of a statement by its correspondence to reality—they judge reality by its correspondence to their feelings.

If, in the course of philosophical detection, you find yourself, at times, stopped by the indignantly bewildered question: “How could anyone arrive at such nonsense?”—you will begin to understand it when you discover that evil philosophies are systems of rationalization.

...When a theory achieves nothing but the opposite of its alleged goals, yet its advocates remain undeterred, you may be certain that it is not a conviction or an “ideal,” but a rationalization."

-Ayn Rand

Paycheck to Paycheck

According to CNBC, 70% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 10% of people who make more than $100,000 yearly struggle to make ends meet

As a missionary, I witnessed many missionaries who I described as living "p-day to p-day" missionary work was drudgery unto them, and P-day was the only beacon of hope that kept them going. If missionary work would be particularly hard one week, they would burnout, and would crash, leading to petty-disobediences like sleeping in, dragging feet going out, hanging out at members, etc. These petty disobediences fail to adequately energize; a disobedience, to properly energize, must be deliberate (Rev 3:16). Say to your companion "I'm tired, lets take a break for one hour to just unwind at X member's house." This will give you very different spiritual results from saying "lets go to X members house for an active member lesson" when both of you know you will be there for hours and no lesson would be taught. 

The problem is that for many missionaries the day-to-day activities were more emotionally costly than they could afford. Its important to recognize when you are in a state of burn, and to switch gears to be able to make it over the hills. Switching gears doesn't have to mean disobedience; but one should work to save energy so that when horrible uphills hit, it doesn't zero you out. Here are principles to practice:

-Exercise to stay in shape, emotionally and physically and mentally. To continue the bike analogy, hills will always hit. Gears will help, but gears will help more if you're fit in the first place.

-Shift your stance to make your load more bearable. Lift with your back or with your legs. As a missionary: Lift with your sense of humor, lift with your charity. Whatever muscle is strong for you. Your inner self knows, you just need to let it drive. Some missionary's strongest muscle is their work-drive, but other missionaries are play focused and if they see work as drudgery they won't be able to keep up a high pace. They will need many breaks, losing efficiency. The best for such would be to see missionary work as play, so that they are lifting with their strongest muscle.

-Shift gears when hitting hills. Maybe the aforementioned missionary will hit an investigator who has no sense of play whatsoever. If the missionary expects play from them, they will be drained. The missionary must, in this instance, lift with a different muscle.

-Pace yourself. Relax. Don't make things more work than they are, especially in your mind. Dread increases weight and resistance.

-Save up. Carry a little bit of P-day with you, via memories, attitudes, learnings, etc.  I always was on the lookout for fun memories to write home about, and that helped it feel like I was having fun. 

-Learn to recognize burn. This single skill will allow you to address the situation in a mature way, rather than drift into the mire via petty thefts and disobediences.

The Cult of the UPS

I just the other day applied for a job at U.P.S, and I thought that it would be great! I would do work, earn money, and make a living. I went eagerly in the interview, when I was shocked find UPS is a CULT! The BITE model illuminated my path, and I was able to escape without taking the job. Now I'm unemployed, but I am free. Tell your friends! Let them know that the united parcel service is a cult! Do you know any friends and family trapped in the UPS? Share the BITE model with them!


Behavior Control


1. Regulate individual’s physical reality - UPS workers must be located only where the UPS store is.

2. Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates - UPS workers must associate with UPS customers and coworkers (which reinforces the groupthink cult environment)

3. When, how and with whom the member has sex - You can't even have sex on the job! How totalitarian can you get!

4. Control types of clothing and hairstyles - UPS employees must wear UPS uniform. UPS members cannot even have facial hair or wear things that don't match UPS colors!

5. Regulate diet - food and drink, hunger and/or fasting -You can only eat at certain times. The give advice on what foods to use at work (sandwhiches and sugar for energy) and everything!

6. Manipulation and deprivation of sleep - UPS employees can have to wake up very early in the morning.

7. Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence - UPS employees are forced to rely on UPS for money.

8. Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time - UPS employees can only take scheduled breaks!

9. Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet - UPS regularly gives "training" (indoctrination) courses to its employees

10. Permission required for major decisions - you have a manager over you, and that manager has a manager over then, and you have to report anomalities to them!

11. Thoughts, feelings, and activities (of self and others) reported to superiors - a log is kept of your day to day activities which you give to the manager over you.

12. Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative - A bonus is given for working every day of the week; the threat of being fired constantly looms.

13. Discourage individualism, encourage group-think - see everything above

14. Impose rigid rules and regulations - see everything above

15. Instill dependency and obedience - " "

16. Threaten harm to family and friends - the threat of unemployment. "Without us, who will feed your family?". Its all about control.

18. Instill dependency and obedience - " "


Information Control


1. Deception: -UPS employees kept in the dark about UPS' financial holdings

2. Minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information -You can't use a cell phone or computer on the job!

3. Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs. Insider doctrines -Managers are priveledged with more access and information than peons

4. Encourage spying on other members - employees are encouraged to report other employees violating "the rules" and there are even rewards for doing so

5. Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda - There is all kinds of pro-UPS propeganda on the wall, designed to make you feel like you're a part of the UPS "family"

6. Unethical use of confession - they can withhold raises or punish you if you admit to doing things wrong, and they can use it against you in the future!


Thought Control


1. Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth

2.Change person’s name and identity - You're a UPSer now!

3. Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words - all kinds of buzzwords and shortcuts are used in the propefanda and safety literature. "Never back, keep on track" for drivers, etc

4. Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts - being depressed or performing poorly could lead to discipline!

5. Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member -see propeganda

7. Teaching thought-stopping techniques which shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts -I didn't see this, but I bet they do.

8. Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism -"we don't pay you to think!"

9. Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed - Check

10. Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful - Check


Emotional Control


1. Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish - if you spend all day whining every day, you could be fired!

3. Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault - Check

5. Instill fear, such as fear of:

a. Thinking independently - Oh yes, you can't talk back to your boss and expect things to go well.

b. The outside world - We watched a video the first day about how dogs would chase and bite you.

c. Enemies

d. Losing one’s salvation (job) - check

e. Leaving or being shunned by the group -check

f. Other’s disapproval -check

6. Extremes of emotional highs and lows – love bombing and praise one moment and then declaring you are horrible sinner -praises/promotions/discipline/firing

8. Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority - Again, holding a person's welfare above their head to keep them complicit is part and parcel for the UPS.

So that's like a 95% match. Which is more I think than even the LDS church.

Ever since Fred W Anson and other enlightened individuals shared the BITE model with me, I've been able to successfully evacuate a wide range of cults, including work, church, the military, the United States Government, my family, Facebook, my own mind, eating out, my sofa, Star Wars, and the internet. I spend all day doing nothing and believing nothing, but at least I am free.

------- Compass --------

https://dismythed.blogspot.com/2012/10/hassan-toothless-bite.html?fbclid=IwAR0xvlG13Q0-RfpcSElHrDqZb6v53cEX2j4UdtN-gW0o_3MllzmXdUCa5zQ

Ayn Rand On Living Deliberately

"To the extent to which a man is mentally active, i.e., motivated by the desire to know, to understand, his mind works as the programmer of his emotional computer-and his sense of life develops into a bright counterpart of a rational philosophy. To the extent a man evades, the programming of his emotional computer is done by chance influences; by random impressions, associations, imitations, by undigested snatches of environmental bromides, by cultural osmosis. If evasion or lethargy is a man’s predominant method of mental functioning, the result is a sense of life dominated by fear-a soul like a shapeless piece of clay stamped by footprints going in all directions. (In later years, such a man cries that he has lost his sense of identity; the fact is that he never acquired it.)" -Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

Peddled outrage

Beware the peddled outrage
Of fear and politics cheap
Beware the prophets of the net
Who spread shallow writings deep
There's a flavor for every variety
And there's a flavor for you
Distract you from true issues
About which you actually can do.

Re: 12 year old censored by Mormon church

I keep seeing this post about the poor brave 12 year old who the horrible Mormon church is censoring. Of course anything pro-LGBT in any way is "courageous" and worth celebrating, but I have some reservations here.

First: She is 12 years old. I don't want to be the one who says "a 12 year old can't have sexual identity" but... think of when you were 12 years old. You had /just graduated elementary school/. Seventh grade. Maybe you had crushes at that point, but you certainly weren't anywhere near developed enough to take stands this way. She is being fed ideas if not lines from somewhere, as I will argue further shortly.

Second: This was obviously a publicity stunt, as they recorded the thing. Video recording in the chapel is against church policy, and you can see that they are holding the phone camera low so as not to attract attention.

Third: Gay people in church is totally chill. Gay people bearing testimony in church is totally chill. Gay people bearing testimony about their gayness, how its influenced them, how it makes their walk with God more difficult, etc, is totally chill. A gay person standing up and telling everyone that the church is wrong and should change and basically praising themselves for being gay, in church? That is out of line. It wasn't a "courageous testimony", it was a prepared speech, which is not what testimony meeting is for. You're allowed to believe whatever you want in this church. You are not allowed to tell other people what to believe. A ward building is not a government-protected free-speech zone, and the Councillor was well within his bounds to ask her to sit down. They do this when people are going over time, and it is not shocking that one would do it when someone is preaching against the church from the pulpit.

Fourth: We're told she prepared it, with help from her parents. Okay. It sounds more like canned LGBT talk points, but if they want us to believe that she did it all by herself without any influence, whatever. But then submitting this to major news outlets afterward? That's pushing an agenda. /the church is not the place for you to push your agenda/. This should cast some serious doubt on the authenticity of the whole thing.

Fifth: This darling is now the star of the week for the LGBT community. She's going to enjoy a bunch of fame, and then they're going to discard her for whatever new controversy comes up like they always do, and I think it is wrong for her parents to embroil her in that. Most left-politics works this way, feeding a frenzy of pathos swooning media articles, but children should not be used as a hammer for your political issues. A sort of political child sacrifice.

Sixth: You can't feel the spirit watching it. The spirit left the chapel when she started her speech. It always does when you try to push your viewpoint down someone's throat, whether you are pushing a correct viewpoint or not.

"Thought Prison" by Bruce Charlton

Bruce is a nice fellow over at http://www.jrganymede.com/ and http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/, and he wrote a nice book about political correctness, attempting to define the undermining philosophy of the left, though he notes it permeates the political right to a great extent also.  Here are some excepts:

Whence comes the sheer venom of PC?
How is it that people who believe in nothing (or, if they believe in anything, it is supposedly in tolerance, pacifism, ‘relativism’, social constructionism…stuff like that) - how come these people are so vicious?
I think it is because they fear that their own pleasurable distractions – their lifestyle choices - will be constrained or even taken-away by the opponents of PC.
And for the PC, pleasurable distraction is life itself.
I say this without a shred of exaggeration.
If you believe in nothing, if life can have no real objective meaning and all is socially constructed; then pleasure is absolutely necessary as an analgesic, and distraction is the primary philosophical argument.
The politically correct are nihilists, that is reality-deniers, and when there is no reality then the only positive is pleasure.

The venom of the politically correct is the venom of a person faced by the extinction of those pleasurable distractions upon which they rely utterly to keep themselves going:

Since PC is a wave of moral 'progress' which leaves-behind all previous moral standards and behaviours - there can be no accumulation of moral capital.

But the news is not all good for victim group members - because as a PC-indulged victim you lack moral responsibility, which means you are treated as a child or an imbecile.Because by merely existing you are regarded as special - therefore anything that you personally might think or do is automatically invalidated, rendered invisible.


(Patrons expect beneficiaries to be grateful. However, it has commonly been observed that patrons are in fact always hated. Do a man a good turn, and you will have an enemy for life. The patronized will not rest until they have expunged their sense of dependent gratitude in the cleansing act of biting-off the hand that has been stroking and feeding them.)

PC altruism can therefore be seen as objectification of Christian ‘charity’. Charity is an individual, chosen expression of Love; by contrast PC altruism is a coercive, measurable, procedural transfer of quantifiable ‘goods’.)

Whatever state of affairs existed in the past or currently exists in the absence of an abstract system of allocation is regarded by PC as intrinsically unjust on principle, and without need for evidence of injustice. So, actual, real world equality of outcome is a matter of near indifference to political correctness; except as ‘evidence’ of the need for PC systems of allocation.

Shy the Allegro

"For example: most men have inner conflicts of values; these conflicts, in most lives, take the form of small irrationalities, petty inconsistencies, mean little evasions, shabby little acts of cowardice, with no crucial moments of choice, no vital issues or great, decisive battles--and they add up to the stagnant, wasted life of a man who has betrayed all his values by the method of a leaking faucet." -Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto

It is always interesting to me when people's first comment about Ayn Rand is that she is "immoral".

Orson Scott Card's Testimony of the Book of Mormon

Orson Scott Card, Author of Ender's Game, gives his testimony of the Book of Mormon. Along with pointing out lots of interesting cultural things to Nephite Society, he gives insight as a fiction writer into where, if Joseph Smith was writing a work of fiction, he falls incredibly short. Very good read, lots of things you haven't thought of.

"Furthermore, when we do find social classes in the Book of Mormon, political divisions, they seem to reflect alien to anything Joseph Smith was familiar with. To Joseph Smith, social classes were based entirely on money, which was displayed in the form of property. Where money is the basis of social distinction in the Book of Mormon, it is never associated with land, but rather with fine clothing. This is entirely consistent with Meso-America, but hardly a pattern Joseph Smith would have known."

"In fact, the very lack of exotic names supports the genuineness of Joseph Smith's translation. Science fiction writers and critics are quite aware of a long tradition of what James Blish called "shmeerps." Blish pointed out how silly it was that most science fiction writers, when trying to show an alien fauna, would produce a creature that looked like a rabbit and acted like a rabbit and was treated like a rabbit, and yet it was called a "shmeerp." This is ludicrous, of course. People migrating to a new land with strange plants and animals will use familiar names for the new creatures. Thus the English immigrants to America called the bison "buffaloes" and referred to maize as "Indian corn" and finally just "corn," even though in England that word had been a generic term for grain. The English felt no need to come up with new names for items that were "close enough."
Surely the Nephites followed the same pattern, using old words for new objects. Thus, if in fact there were no horses in America at the time of the Book of Mormon, the Hebrew wordfor horse could still quite readily be applied to some other animal that functioned like a horse. Furthermore, the language Mormon wrote in may well have been an ideographic language, in which case it would hardly matter what the spoken word for a particular animal was, as long as Nephite writers had agreed to use the old "horse" ideograph to refer to that animal. Thus it is no more surprising that the word "horse" appears in the Book of Mormon than that the word "buffalo" was used in a nation where there were no buffaloes, but only bison."

http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.html

Spiritual Beggars

We notice that there is a group of (260?) people who vote opposed in conference.  From their Facebook group, it sounds like their main issue is the CES letter, which means their vote really has nothing to do with concerns and more that they're just kinda hoping some apostle will get up in conference and be like "dang CES letter, I guess God really isn't speaking to us.  sorry."

I lean strongly Libertarian, and am a fair follower of Ayn Rand (meaning I own more of her works than just Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead), and remember that often she was accused of being greedy, selfish, psychopathic, etc. For advocating her ideas.  She was not:

"Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal." -Ayn Rand

In similar vein, I say that addressing the faithless' doubts and concerns is not the issue; the issue is whether the beggars of faith in apostasy have a right to personal, on-demand attention from the leadership.  Whether the 'old ship zion' must buy leave for its activities from every doubter in spiritual poverty that might wish for it to stop and let them examine it.  These are not generating "wealth" (faith).  Following Ayn Rand's philosophy: if we choose give of our attention to those in poverty, great.  This is good.  But they have no /right/ to our attention.  They have no right to pick apart our testimonies just because they "have questions".

Its not that we don't care about the struggling, nor that we shouldn't help them, but especially in conference, the church's duty is first to its own.  A pleading mother is seeking revelation, through conference, of what she needs to do about a wayward child.  A missionary is praying that an apostle will speak to his investigator who reluctantly agreed to come to conference.  Millions of people, in similar situations, seeking aid from God, which one doubter seeks to disrupt to get personal attention.  Similarly to how we do not give to every beggar who approaches us, we are not called on to engage with Korihor.  We may or may not, but there is a time and a place.  In the end, each is responsible to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.  God won't count peanut-gallery faith-potshots as acceptable.  This is the problem with sign-seeking; its shifting the burden of investigation on another, which will never give one the light a testimony earned through fire and tears will.

Its better to be forthright about one's lack of oil, than to let the person believe they have oil until the bridegroom calls.

--------------Compass--------------

"The only real wealth of the church is the faith of its people." -Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Gordon B Hinkley p336

Some Quotes On Blind Obedience

"Though general authorities are authorities in the sense of having power to administer Church affairs, they may or may not be authorities in the sense of doctrinal knowledge, the intricacies of church procedures, or the receipt of the promptings of the Spirit. A call to an administrative position itself adds little knowledge or power of discernment to an individual. (Elder McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, s.v. "General Authority")"

"The Latter-day Saints do not do things because they happen to be printed in a book. They do not do things because God told the Jews to do them; nor do they do or leave undone anything because of the instructions that Christ gave to the Nephites. Whatever is done by this Church is because God, speaking from heaven in our day, has commanded this Church to do it. No book presides over this Church, and no book lies at its foundation. You cannot pile up books enough to take the place of God's priesthood, inspired by the power of the Holy Ghost. That is the constitution of the Church of Christ. … Divine revelation adapts itself to the circumstances and conditions of men, and change upon change ensues as God's progressive work goes on to its destiny. There is no book big enough or good enough to preside over this Church. (Elder Orson F. Whitney, Conference Report, October 1916, p. 55. Quoted by Loren C. Dunn, in General Conference, Ensign May 1976, p.65-66)"

Found here

Moral Absolutes

Nephi slaying Laban conflicts both the law of Moses and our delicate sensibilities.  Nonetheless, it was commanded by God and therefore we are to perceive the act of killing as in fact a righteous act in this instance.  Not that Laban was innocent; he had already tried to kill Nephi and Laman, so Nephi didn't shed innocent blood, but this is still perhaps an icky instance in our reading of the scriptures.  Surely God is linear, and would never command me to do anything that conflicts with my sense of right and wrong! (because our moral compasses are all so developed, right? Ha ha.)

I think Mormonism might be a moral relativist ideology.  In fact, much stumbling that occurs in people's testimonies is because they want things to be black and white, when in fact the terrain is constantly shifting, and unless we have a strong tie to the living water, we will get lost.  A map is no good in a shifting maze.  The adversary will not hold still, sticking to one tactic, and neither must we.  In fact, most of error is committed when a person picks one moral maxim or value (for example, charity, mourning with those that mourn) and then orienting oneself by it, rather than by God himself.  This leads to other virtues being sacrificed or subservient to the one, rather than to the true guide.  We sympathise instead of giving needed criticism because our moral absolute is "mourning with those that mourn".  We defend the sanctity of marriage, at the expense of alienating those without opportunity for marriage.  We vigorously keep the mission rules, and make that our iron rod rather than the voice of the spirit itself.  Now, these are all true principles.  We are supposed to do these things.  But it is a juggle, and a virtue without the other virtues supporting it will become a vice.  In fact, most vices are simply one virtue exaggerated and not practiced with decorum.  Hitler wanted to make Germany great again, and to fix the German economy, and those are not bad ideas, except that they were unsupported by any form of virtue in other areas.

This is why pet gospel hobbies and pet gospel peeves can be dangerous; the devil will try to make us lose track of God by getting us to orient ourselves by a single principle, rather than making God himself our compass.  The more principles you can orient yourself by, the better off you'll be.  Don't lose balance.

-----Compass-----

http://www.jrganymede.com/2015/08/31/the-military-mental-model-of-mormonism/

An Open Canon

A closed scriptural canon tends to come with an attached belief that God no longer speaks.  Now, society is organic and a changing thing, and all religions will naturally be organic and changing because of that.  Hence even religions with a closed canon such as Judaism still have the Talmud and the oral Torah.  Its impossible to have one solid set of unchanging beliefs in a changing world.  The challenge is to make sure that as beliefs change, they stay in line with God's will.

A change to a religion must come through God, man, or the devil.  Without a God who speaks, without a belief in an open canon, the door to divine guidance is closed.  Man can do good things, of his own agency, and a worldly change to a religion may very well be a good thing; many worldly churches do much good.  But without active divine guidance, the church will suffer moral entropy.  It takes an outstanding leader/congregation to fight against that decay, indeed, such is a nearly futile endeavor against a powerfully manipulative devil.  Those who keep their churches pure against such deserve our respect. 

Investing and Hammering in the Church's Gospel Forge

One of the founding principles of the gospel is the Law of the Harvest, and yet we so often have the audacity to be frustrated when we "aren't getting anything from the church."  The church and culture could do better, sure, but there is always more we can do.  We are the only variable we have control over.

The gospel is for /investing/.  This doesn't mean just invest time though. You can invest time and it will return, sure, but it won't give you what you look for in religion.  For the peace and the spirit and the guidance and life and vibrance offered, you have to invest emotions, and you have to invest soul. 

We sometimes think too hard on the "lose his life for my sake" scripture, thinking that the gospel is to fundamentally remake us because we're flawed sinners and all that.  Too much of this rhetoric is misleading.  The savior does not expect nor ask us to stop being... Us.  God wants us to take what you are, and channel it into the gospel.  Invest, oneself.  Not invest something that is not you, and not destroy oneself and invest the rubble that is left over, and not invest empty time and works, but invest what you are.

The more developed a person is, the more they will have to invest, but the act of investment will be harder.  One has to search for the proper niches of the gospel for oneself, which bring the most nourishment, but this searching is a difficult, energy and time consuming process.  Lots of people kind of avoid developing themselves, using the church as a substitute, clinging to church principles and in case of conflict between those and their identity, the church supersedes.  For example, not doing a thing because it is the wrong thing for a Mormon/missionary/parent/etc to do, and not because its a wrong thing based on wrong or under-nourishing principles.  There is little growth, because there is no reconciling process.  The gospel forge works as we take all that we are and bring it to bear and in line with the best principles.  Avoiding and ignoring the question, acting as if we aren't what we are, will not do a lot for us.  If we want the highest quality returns, we will have to do difficult work.

Investing with intent of returns is not wrong.  God wouldn't promise blessings otherwise.  God wants us to have, stuff.  Spiritual stuff, temporal stuff, etc.  Gifts.  We get stuff, through the investment principle of the law of the harvest.  The point of doctrine is to teach what kind of investments will yield maximum spiritual returns.

Sometimes it helps to use some focus gimmick in order to channel into the gospel, and that's fine.  If I'm obsessed with the "mysteries" there's nothing wrong with putting in some kolob research.  If I love art, then finding or creating art in the gospel, that is good.  If I love social dynamics, I'll profit lots more from studying relationships in the Book of Mormon than someone who likes native american history.  Find the parts that work.  Its about multiplying talents, not about bashing yourself into caring about family history.  For those parts that don't work for us...  Well, there's the forge.  Look for how to reconcile these things. 

There are many archetypal roles in the gospel framework.  Teancum was an assassin.  Moroni was a political agitator, and didn't really seem to possess any mystic qualities.  Paul focused on calling people out.   Hugh Nibley just studied old things.  There are common gospel components- home teaching, loving people, listening to councel, Word of Wisdom, etc, but there is also a great deal of leeway, even in how one carries each of these things out.  Nowhere is it written home teachers have to once-a-month share an Ensign message.  Style your home teaching after your own identity's pattern, and then, when you have invested properly, watch for fruit.

Busyness Misses The Mark

"It is more noble to give oneself to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses. A man could be involved six or seven days a week, spending twelve to fourteen hours a day doing good things for other people, and yet not have a loving and meaningful relationship and communication with his wife or child or business partner; and it would take more nobility of character in the form of humility, patience, understanding, and courage to do whatever is necessary to rebuild that one relationship - to create a new and higher level of love and communication in the family - than to continue to labor diligently and faithfully for the many others outside of it. Ironically, bringing healing to this internal family or other vital relationship is often the most important key in being effective with the many. Going after the one is often the key to the ninety-nine. What a person /is/ teaches far more eloquently than what a person /says/ or even /does/. It communicates quietly, subtly; it is a constant radiation, and others, though unable to identify or articulate it, still understand it, sense it, absorb it, and respond to it. " -Steven R Covey, "The Divine Center"

Oftentimes we help and serve as a way of cowardly hiding from relationships. This is very risky, for relationships /are/ the gospel. We do well to examine if our personal busynesses are smokescreen and diversions from things of true(r) import.

Gods Among Us

The creeds, the Greeks, and the Muslims, they preach of a God intransigent, nebulous, and other.  They teach of a God beyond need, a state of pure being, a character so flawless that it can't be hurt.  Kind of like a rock.  A God as inorganic as possible while still being "alive".

Why do we worship the idea of something being "above need"?  Does it make something great, that it could spit upon or heal us without it making a difference?  

I would rather worship something that needs me.  To exist as a part of something greater, both beneficiary and benefactor.  I don't want to be a leech.  And a leech cannot worship its host, for it neither comprehends nor appreciates it.  Nor can the host ever really have love for the parasite, entirely dependent upon him for its existence.  Yet many would have us formulate our relationship to God as parasite/host.  Because that makes God more powerful, for him to not need us.  This is the same psychological distancing that pro-abortion advocates do- calling a fetus a parasite, in order to keep it as a second-class creature.  Except now it is man calling itself parasite, to keep it second-class to God.

You do not marry a woman because she doesn't need you.  Of course, you want her to be independent, but would you want her to be in a state of sovereign apathy towards you forever?  As love grows, dependence does also.  This is why it hurts when we lose someone we love.  Understanding that God is hurt-able would stimulate one to guilt, and empathy would stimulate one to repentance.  It is thus profitable to keep God at a nice theological distance, to keep our consciences from bothering us.

We are afraid of making God human.  We are afraid of making humans gods.  And we drive this wedge between the almighty and us just as far as it will go.  We make up doctrinal justifications after the fact, but really we're just afraid.  If we get too close to God, after all, then our reality starts changing.  And who wants change?

Wouldn't want God to get too close.  Wouldn't want God to get too real.

----compass----
Exodus 33:11 - The LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend

John 17:3 - And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

“Why then, since God could have created cocreators, would he choose to make us creatures? Why did God choose to make us his everlasting inferiors?”
At that point one of them said, “God’s very nature forbids that he should have peers.”
I replied, “That’s interesting. For us God’s very nature requires that he should have peers. Which God is more worthy of our love?” (The Highest In Us, Truman G Madsen)