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About faith crises
Last weekend I was asked whether I had ever had a crisis of faith. This wasn’t the first time, but I had to ask for some room to define, to interpret the question. I will write about my chain of thought about that.
About faith: I want to remind that faith is not about absolute knowledge Read more…
They say I’m not Christian? I’m indifferent…
The headline here is revealing. So I’ve been reading yet another set of press articles, where “journalists” interview a Baptist pastor about the “Mormon” faith? (Deep breath.)
Anyhow, there have been about a billion blog posts, where Mormons argue that their church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a Christian church Read more…
Is Critical History forbidden to Latter-day Saints?
On another forum (in another language), we had some discussion about Critical History some while ago. In that discussion, I guess we all were very much for open history. The audience was somewhat self-selected for openness, as it is a site for airing “issues” in a polite, but open way. We should not, by any means, leave the Historiography of LDS restoration to those who do it to look for something unflattering for us. We’re much better off bringing as much as we can to light.
Our theory in principle is, that if we can research the Church history, as well as secular history, with an open mind and without blinding ourselves to contradictory Read more…
Gay marriage, another personal take
As someone else already pointed out, marriage ceremony was always between one man and one woman in Judeo-Christian culture, although one man could end up with more than one living wife in several cultures in history (including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) up to the turn of the 20th century).
The lurid ideas that some people seem to have Read more…
Nonviolence vs. Pacifism, or How to solve unsolveable problems?
How to countenance a situation that can’t be countenanced? I started thinking about that again as I was reading the updated biography of Nelson Mandela by Anthony Sampson (updated by John Battersby, pub. 2011). First of all, there is the kind of racism that, while stepping on your toes, isn’t about running you completely to the ground so as to avoid having to make concessions. Then there is the other kind that sees you as property and whipping you to work harder so as to squeeze every last bit out of you until you’re discarded as useless.
We are dealing with the latter kind here. When Mandela was born in Transkei, Eastern Cape in 1918 Read more…
Good and Evil — Thinking of Moral Philosophy
I must stress my disclaimers here, especially: These thoughts are my own, if by nothing else, my adopting them because they make sense and sound right. Also, I am by no means an official representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just a member with a few decades of experience on local/district (call it diocese or, stake, as we call it). Please feel free to comment, even if you haven’t read every single word here–this is, after all, 1,500 words. I love learning new stuff.
Also, if you run into any leftover spilling mistokes, please let me know and I’ll fix ‘em.
There are many, who struggle to understand good and evil from a post-modern perspective. Read more…
Rise (and fall) of rational Theology
When I mentioned King James Bible in an earlier post, I deliberately left out the turmoil of Continental Europe. The 17th century brought on wars that have somewhat falsely been called religious wars, but are generally the 30 years war.
It was about formerly Catholic princes, king, dukes etc. pitting their forces against Read more…
Celebrating King James Bible
Some others may have read the August Ensign, and noted the pages dedicated to celebrating 400 years of King James Bible. I was sort of inspired to put my 2 cents about the Bible in ordered bits as if someone else were interested in my thoughts. Feel free to criticise/correct me; but my hope is that people would study history, so we could learn from past mistakes. Read more…
Finding the historical “Truth”
It’s interesting to notice how easy it is to misunderstand/misinterpret history. Historical “facts” arise from different sources, and it is the historian’s job to sift the documentary evidence and see what kind of balance comes out in the end. And the balance doesn’t necessarily come from the volume of the documentation. Popular lies get reported much more–creating documentary evidence–than the uncomfortable truth. Read more…
Crisis, Choice and Commitment
So a theme I’ve been reading about lately is the crisis of faith phenomena in Mormon circles. It seems that there are endless numbers of people who 1) have been brought up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) by parents, who have taught the gospel at home and have strongly supported their childrens’ activity; 2) have also “found out” something they think is compromising Read more…
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