My life has been filled with trials. I grew up in poverty. I’ve been homeless on multiple occasions. My family broke apart when I was young. My father was an alcoholic. I’ve lost everything I’ve owned and everyone I knew on multiple occasions. Yet, through it all, I have discovered a sublime truth about God’s power and how our deepest trials lead to our greatest blessings. This is that story.
Tag: Latter-day Saints
Bioshock Infinite: Great Ideas, Faulty Storytelling
Herein I review the game Bioshock Infinite and its two DLC extensions, Burial At Sea Episodes 1 & 2. I mostly eschew gameplay (it is a typical first-person shooter with some small variety) in order to focus on the storytelling and character elements in the game. I look at the major characters of the game, important elements, and notable settings and evaluate what they tell us about one another/themselves and how they fit in the overall story. And while I find much to laud in specific memorable moments of the game, the overall storytelling in Infinite and its DLCs leave a lot to be desired. Much of it is contradictory, nonsensical, vague, ill-defined, caricaturistic, and out of character for those involved in the events taking place. The game is enjoyable and playable. It even flirts with some grand ideas. But ultimately it has plot holes big enough to drive a semi-truck through, which brings the entire experience down.
Is The Book of Mormon Racist?
The claim that the Book of Mormon is racist is a common refrain among our critics, some of their most potent ammunition to destroy the interest of investigators and sow doubts in the faithful. But they’re wrong.
The Book of Mormon isn’t racist. And in this article I prove it by taking a detailed look at the symbolic and literal interpretations of the Lamanite curse and “skin of blackness” to demonstrate that it not only isn’t racist, it has nothing to do with race at all. The Book of Mormon, when understood in its proper context as an ancient document reflecting the language and ideas of people whose culture and understanding of the world was fundamentally different than ours, is very clearly not racist. When someone sees it as racist they are only demonstrating their ignorance of the document itself and projecting our own modern problems onto it.
Apostles Destroy Nationalism and Statism at General Conference
General Conference was earlier this month. Among the many inspired messages shared by the Prophets and Apostles were some that directly and indirectly criticized the worldly philosophies of nationalism and statism as well as the spirit of contention these ideas are based upon. The remarks of Apostles Jeffrey R. Holland and Dale G. Renlund especially presented nationalism as being in direct opposition to the doctrines of Jesus Christ.
Why The Minimum Wage Has Never Worked, Will Never Work, And Only Devastates Poor People
The minimum wage is a hot topic right now with a lot of ill-informed people having very loud opinions about what it should or shouldn’t be and what the government should or shouldn’t do. As Latter-day Saints we are of course drawn into the discussion because we, as a matter of commandment, have been directed by the Lord to care for the poor and needy, to uplift the sick and afflicted, to lift up the heads that hang low, and to strengthen the feeble knees of those ready to collapse under life’s burdens. But, caught up in the tumult of political opinion, many of us have no idea what we should or shouldn’t do regarding a great many things, including the minimum wage.
This article is meant to address that by looking at the effects of the minimum wage on poverty, jobs, prices, monetary value, income inequality, and its roots as a racist practice designed to cripple the ability of minorities and women to care for themselves and their communities. After looking at all the evidence of history the conclusion becomes inescapable – the minimum wage is a racist policy designed to destroy the ability of poor people, especially minorities, to be able to care for themselves or improve their lives and that if we want to actually help everyone in society, including helping those in need, we must take drastic action to rein in government actions, including abolishing the minimum wage.
What Mormon Women Had To Say About Polygamy- Part 1
We all know how we are supposed to think and feel about the practice of polygamy by early Latter-day Saints. We have been told that it was sexist, oppressive, abusive, and harmful to women, something we should be ashamed of, so much that even many Latter-day Saints assume the assertions are axiomatic. But, are they? Are these statements in fact true or are they, like so many other things today, merely modern anti-Mormon drivel projected onto the past?
In order to figure this out I have decided to go back to listen the voices of the women who had firsthand experience with plural marriage, the polygamous women of Utah, to see what they had to say about the practice. Needless to say what I found is quite the opposite of the malignancies spread about plural marriage today. These powerful, intelligent, educated women saw plural marriage as an essential right of theirs that brought numerous blessings and protections to their lives which they would rather die fighting to protect than give up at the demand of the law. In this series I want to make their voices heard to counter the lies falsely spread in their name in by anti-Mormons. When it comes to plural marriage, thee truth about, like everything else, will set us free of the falsehoods we believe and reaffirm the truth of the Restored Gospel.
How Language Is Used To Convince You Of Transgender Ideas And How To Fight Back
There is a lot being said right now about gender dysphoria, transgenderism, and the usage of personal pronouns to affirm a person’s individual gender identity. In this article I cite several studies to prove a few very important things: Language has a massive influence on the way that we see the world, that altering how we speak, even in small grammatical ways, has a huge impact on our consciousness itself, that the repetition of information over time changes the way we think and convinces us that what we are saying or hearing is true, and that ideas spread like virus, co-opting what we believe and how we live and changing them to turn us into ideological spreaders. I then put it all together to argue that the usage of preferred pronouns takes advantages of all these facts and act like a viral vector to infect us with the beliefs and ideals of transgenderism. The ultimate culmination of this is a form of reality control where what we believe is re-written by the things we hear repeatedly until we win the victory over ourselves and adopt the ideas in question as our own – in this case transgenderism. Finally, I discuss how we can resist this process and why liberty is so essential in establishing a society where all people can live as they believe.
The Truth About Mormon Culture And Why It Is Amazing
There is no end to the handwringing that and internet article posts made by members and non-members of the Church of Jesus Christ that claim to accurately diagnose problems in “Mormon culture” and then offer solutions. Claims of homophobia, sexism, racism, nativism, transphobia, hatred, cliquishness, and more are all laid at the feet of the Latter-day Saints, told their culture is to blame, and demand (or “suggestions”) are made that will supposedly banish these ills from Latter-day Saints society. But is this true? It is certainly true that Latter-day Saints do some of these things, but is the reason they do it because of the influence of uniquely LDS theology and cultural beliefs?
In a word? No. These problems exist among Latter-day Saints, but these problems are not caused by Latter-day Saint or Mormon culture. Rather, Latter-day Saints are made scapegoats for problems which exist universally in the worldly societies in which Latter-day Saints participate and the values of which they have absorbed. When a Latter-day Saint is sexist, racist, nativist, etc., he or she is acting out the prejudices and biases of his or her own national culture and not so-called Mormon culture. In this article I explain how Latter-day Saints are indoctrinated into the virtues and vices of their national cultures and end up repeating those errors which are then incorrectly blames on Mormonism’s influence. I also talk about how you can get down to what is an actual, true Latter-day Saint culture, providing some examples to support my arguments about what it is and what it looks like. Finally, I conclude by looking at how real Latter-day Saint culture is a manifestation of the culture of Christ, which we should embrace wholeheartedly while abandoning all the Babylonian cultures of the world.
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.
Nonviolence in Early Christianity, Part 1
Some of the oldest and most affirmed truths in all of Christendom are that Jesus Christ commands us to love our enemies, to renounce violence, and to reject all other worldly loyalties – be they nation, empire, or people – for the Church, the Gospel, and Jesus Christ Himself. These truths can been in the writings of the earliest surviving Christian leaders and writers. What follows below is the first part in an effort to share a small sampling of these statements which I have tried to place within a rough chronological order. Hopefully they will help the reader, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Pentecostal, Christian Scientist, Latter-day Saint, etc. to understand the role of what we now call nonviolence, civil disobedience, rejection of world powers -what we today call the State – and loving and serving your enemy as central beliefs in the long history of true Christianity, ancient and modern.