Follow the Prophet, Internal vs External Authority

Follow the Prophet is a beloved phrase and a primary song, until it isn’t. And it usually stops being beloved when church members begin to assert their own internal authority:

“I determine my faith commitments”

“The church doesn’t get to dictate to me what I believe”

“I follow Jesus over the church”

“There’s no middle-man between me and God”

“I’m the one who determines what my church participation should look like”

“We’re all cafeteria members, so my choices in the cafeteria are no less valid than someone else’s”

Beware of Sedevacantism in the Church

Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, if a person is not born from on high, that person is not able to see the kingdom of God.

(John 3:3)

Sedevacantism “seat-empty-ism” is a term commonly used to describe Catholics who think the pope is illegitimate because he is apostate, lacking authority, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, etc. In Catholicism, there has long been a rift over Vatican II, where the Catholic church convened a huge council in 1962-1965 and implemented a set of reforms that included no longer doing the mass in Latin. Remember that one of the core elements of fundamentalism is an idea that things were ideal in the past, and we need to return to some past way of doing things, because back then the faith was more pure or whatever. So fundamentalist Catholics typically reject Vatican II and to the extent they still participate in the Roman Catholic church, they constantly clash with popes and other authorities who maintain the reforms of Vatican II.

Liberal and Conservative at Church

What do we mean when we use the terms “liberal” and “conservative” in our discussions of faith?

Is the church “too conservative?” What does that mean?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of liberal and conservative tendencies when it comes to faith?

Are there liberal and conservative patterns in apostasy?

In this presentation, we discuss these and other questions.

Spirituality is Addition and Subtraction

Spirituality is part addition, part subtraction.
In the West, we tend to focus on the addition part: doing things, getting things, and achieving things. That is not necessarily bad, but in our focus on addition, we can sometimes inadvertently add things that are not healthy, like perfectionism. We can also fail to account for our Western worldview and how it impacts our spirituality.

Memory, Prophetic Translation, and the Lost 116 Pages

I am unfortunately at an advanced enough age that I have now encountered more than once something I have said, done, or written, that I have no memory of at all. This is a humbling experience. So while I was reading Kent Jackson’s excellent book Understanding Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible that Joseph Smith translated some sections of the Bible more than once, apparently having forgotten that he already had done so previously with a different scribe.

How do his second pass translations compare to the first? Did he translate the passages in exactly the same way?

The Spiritual Discipline of Living in Reality

Acceptance is letting go of:

Denial
Avoidance
Pretense
Delusion
Escape
Numbing
Drama
Delay

An acceptance statement can be phrased as, “My present reality is _______”

Why I Don’t Panic Over Controversies Involving the Church

Why does there seem to be a steady stream of bad headlines about the church?

Has it always been this way?

How do we process allegations and bad news without losing our minds?

Sustaining Leaders and Fellow Saints

This blog post is based on a talk I gave for my ward on February 12, 2023.

Introduction

A little over seven years ago I got the idea of reading through all the General Conference talks that are easily available on the Church’s website, which means going back to the April 1971 General Conference. I haven’t kept to my schedule perfectly since then, but I’ve read many, many talks, and I’ve really gained an appreciation for the wisdom and consistency of these teachings.

So when I was asked to give a talk on the fourth temple recommend question–a kind of topic I’ve never heard of before–I knew where to start. I did a quick search and ended up reading (or at least skimming) about two dozen talks, some of which were incredibly powerful to me. I’ll be quoting from these talks at length.

It’s good to have cognitive ground rules

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

-David Foster Wallace, This is Water

If we don’t have some basic principles and ground rules that we adhere to, it’s very possible to think our way into delusion and confusion and all kinds of mental problems. A recent conversation about depression led me to ask myself about my own cognitive ground rules, including the ones related to my thinking around faith. We sometimes call these assumptions, and these are the ones I choose to adhere to.

“If the Church were following Jesus, it would give all its funds to the poor!”

“Why doesn’t the church give tons of money to the poor?”

I’m currently developing an article about fundamentalism, and how its core impulse is to avoid cognitive dissonance no matter what.