This past weekend was General Conference and President Dallin H. Oaks delivered an address where he outlined five inspired principles of government which he taught are what make the U.S. Constitution an inspired document and why Latter-day Saints should feel some special loyalty to the document. Outside of the typical American culturalism in his talk, what really astounded me was that the five principles he outlined are not unique to the U.S. Constitution. They’re not even fully realized in the Constitution because of how the violence of statism limits or altogether prevents these inspired principles from operating to their fullest. But they do in consensual, non-statist government systems such as those found in libertarianism, anarchism, and voluntaryism. In this article I explore each principle individually, demonstrate how they are hobbled in the U.S Constitution, and how they are actually principles of consensual governments like anarchy, libertarianism, and voluntaryism because those forms of government allow these divine principles to operate at their highest and holiest potentials. In teaching these divine principles as the basis for righteous governments, President Oaks has inadvertently made the strongest argument for the rejection of the U.S. Constitution and the embracing of anarchy I have heard from any General Authority.
Category: Religion
How To Achieve World Peace
Last weekend was both Pascha (Easter) and General Conference, making it a weekend doubly full of spiritual blessings. One of the most powerful talks given was Elder Jeffrey R. Hollands discourse “Not as the World Giveth,” he addresses the problems of the world – its violence, hatred, and contention, all of which originate in Satan and wicked influences – and explains how we can find solutions to these problems can be found in the Covenant of Peace – the concepts, teachings, and ordinances that can only be fully found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the world we find wars and rumors of wars, rape, murder, greed, anger, social division, isolation, oppression, mockery, corruption, riots, mobs, and every excuse humans can think of to despise one another, kill one another, and hate our blood. Elder Holland then goes on to talk about the solutions to these problems and mentions three Christian principles that, if fully realized, would end all the problems of the world. These are Faith, Hope, and Charity. In this article I breakdown each of these principles and doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and show how they hold within themselves the power to truly transform the world into the place of peace, love, and liberty that we all wish it was already. Within these three principles is the key to world peace, to Zion.
The Important But Forgotten Part of Easter
Holy Saturday is the day which most of traditional Christianity spends in a kind of solemn mourning in commemoration of the death of the Savior and in anticipation of His glorious Resurrection. Often overlooked is that while Christ’s body may have been laid low in the Arimathean’s tomb, His spirit was active and engaged in one of the most essential but overlooked aspect of the Atonement of Jesus Christ – the initiation of the redemption of the dead. This Holy Saturday I want to remember and celebrate Chist great postmortal ministry when He began the work of saving all people who have ever or would ever live, ensuring all would have the oppurtunity to have the eternal blessings of His Gospel and to be transformed by the power of its ordinances, so that all people could stand before God and be judged fairly and redeemed completely. This article explores His work in the Spirit World, what we know about the work that happens there, and how this can empower us to live live our faith in this life and in the next.
Remembering The Power of The Cross on Easter
It is well known within and without of Mormonism’s cultural bubble that Latter-day Saints don’t wear crosses, nor do we consider the Cross as the symbol of our faith. Why this is will have to wait for another time. This Holy Week I instead want to explore the symbol of the Cross not in our society but in our theology. Unlike our discourse, every book of LDS scripture is awash with the symbol of the Cross and the Suffering Savior, the Crucified Christ, as the symbol of discipleship and the focus of faith. What do the scriptures have to say about the symbol of the Christ and what does it mean for what we believe and how we should teach about the Atonement of Jesus Christ? What does it mean for our Christianity? How should Latter-day Saints look at the Cross, especially as we go into the Paschal/Easter season? This is what I explore in today’s article as I prepare my heart and mind for celebrating the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ the Lord.
On The Death of My Father
This is the story of two deaths. The death of my father and the death of my friend’s father.
They both died of similar illnesses – systemic cancer that ravaged their body beyond the ability of present-day science to repair. But it isn’t their cause of death that is meaningful.
What is meaningful is how people reacted to their deaths. What about the way they lived their lives elicited the reactions their deaths had and what this can teach us about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Fathership of God – this is what I find to be so instructive. In their lives and in their deaths, we can see the quiet but profound impact that living the Gospel can have not only in the life of the disciple but on all those around him or her.
This may be the tale of two deaths, but it is also the tale of two lives – one of tragedy, one of victory, and the hope to be found in Christ for us all.
When Elder Orson Hyde Predicted World War I in 1862
In this LDS Classic we have an article originally written by Elder Orson Hyde of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to a Missouri newspaper in 1862, during the height of the American Civil War. In this letter, Elder Hyde does a number of fascinating and insightful things.
First, he talks about how the events of the Civil War in Missouri were divine punishment on the people there for their persecution of the Saints.
Secondly, he explains how the Civil War itself is a fulfillment of a prophecy given by the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1832, which is D&C 87 today. He also explains how this connects to the imagery of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Revelation, specifically the Horseman of War and the opening of the Seven Seals.
Finally he teaches that the “demon of war” will move from America to Europe and issues a prediction of war there that fits perfectly what we now call World War I.
An excellent read for all the insights and prophecy contained herein.
What Christians Need To Know About Romans 13
The traditional argument says that in Romans 13 Romans 13 the Apostle Paul tells Christians that they should be obedient to their governments which have been appointed by God to be His servants on Earth. But is that what the Paul really taught? In a word? No. Not even close. In this article I delve into what exactly Romans 13 does teach.
First, after looking at the teachings of multiple theologians and the text of the scripture itself, I demonstrate that even assuming Paul is talking about governments he isn’t teaching that we should be obedient to every government or that every government is from God. Rather Paul teaches that Christians should only obey governments as the laws and actions of those governments accord with the commandments of God – which means that Christians are not bound to obey most modern governments.
Next, I attempt a re-interpretation of Paul. After delving into the actual Greek text and the meanings of the words that Paul used, I conclude that Paul isn’t even talking about worldly governments at all. Instead Paul is actually talking about the kind of relationship that Christians should have to the church and its leaders, as well as the role those Church leaders should play in the lives of Christians.
No matter how you look at it, the Apostle Paul did not teach Christians that they should be obedient to governments or that worldly governments are God’s servants. And those that think otherwise have misunderstood the scriptures.
The Insidious Ways That Governments Use Propaganda To Control You
Over the last year I have written repeatedly on the different ways that governments utilize propaganda to manipulate the public into obeying those in power even when such obedience violates the individual’s basic humanity, his or her basic human rights. Yet, I am still left me lacking an explanation for how propaganda is used to manufacture the consent of the masses to taking part in a system that is built to profit the very few rich and powerful political and corporate leaders at the top at the cost of all the rest of us.
I couldn’t understand why people have fetishized democracy as if merely having a system of elections would protect people from those in power while ignoring the ideals and values that make democracy anything other than the choosing of a new dictator every four to six years. I could not understand how something like the Deep State/Double Government could develop in the most fervently democratic age in human history.
That changed once I was exposed to the book Propaganda by Edward Bernays. An experienced propagandist himself, having produced propaganda for the US government during World War I, Bernays literally wrote a book about how the government uses propaganda in times of peace to “engineer the consent” of the masses and to secure their obedience to those in power.
In this article I delve into his book and pull out some choice excerpts that can helps us to understand the ways that the masses are indoctrinated with government propaganda without realizing it, how the government uses propaganda to manipulate and control the masses, and what we can do about it. This one is an eye-opener for everyone, no matter what your political or religious beliefs.
Nonviolence In Christianity And The Apostasy From Peace: The Complete Series
In the series of articles gathered herein I accomplished three things.
First, I demonstrated the historic fact of Christian nonviolence by examining the writings of a variety of Christian leaders over a period of 300 years. In all that time not a single Christian leader whose works have survived ever taught anything other than the complete renunciation of violence and war as a central tenet of Christianity, a commandment given by Jesus Christ.
Secondly, for my Latter-day Saint readers I showed similar teachings as taught in our modern beliefs and church leaders. The teaching of early Christian leaders on this subject are not simply applicable to our lives today, they directly relate to what we believe in such a way that our modern teaching echo and are elucidated by these ancient writings.
Thirdly, and finally, I wrote a short explanation of the loss of the truths as Christianity, in a moment of Great Apostasy, abandoned centuries of Christian truth and teaching in order to construct a false and heretical doctrine that would justify the pursuit of power, prestige, and wealth by those who claimed to be Christian but who were in fact heretics and apostates corrupting Christianity into a tool of the state.
If we hope to use the full power of Christianity to help solve the problems of the world we must reject the foundation upon which all injustice is based, violence, and return to truths that made Christianity so powerful to start with, Christ-like love, service, forgiveness, and peace.
The Apostasy From Peace
Having just spent the last month demonstrating the historical fact that Christians practiced a form of what we would today call nonviolence, rejected being in the military, and taught the importance of loyalty to the universal church of Christ over and beyond all worldly political authorities and powers all as part of fulfilling Christ’s commandments to love and serve our enemies and to do nothing but good, even to those who evil to us, we are still left with a singular, important question.
What happened?
How did we get from that to where we are today? How did we get from a faith focused on self-sacrifice, love, and service to one that justifies violence, war, and subservience to the powers of the world in all their evils? How did we go form Christians being literally kicked out of church for joining the military to Christians treating the military as some sort of sacred calling?
This article not only explains how this occurred, but also how this process robbed Christianity of one of its most radically Christ-like and powerful truths and how reclaiming that truth is essential to transforming the Earth and establishing the Zion of Christ.