Making our history one step at a time
I teach the 16-18 year-old Sunday School class in my ward/congregation, and September begins a discussion on the commandments. I gave a lot of thought on what to share this week, and I decided to do a compare/contrast setup with common secular views of commandments with the religious rationale for commandments. Perhaps I was waning... Continue Reading →
The Prophet is another book I serendipitously stumbled upon, this time through a reference in another book I recently read. The book When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir of a written by a man as he is dying of cancer. The author is a Catholic, and the book reflects at times upon his spiritual... Continue Reading →
Among the many books that Harry Potter recommends in Methods of Rationality, the first one I chose to read was Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. It is by no means light reading. Among the selection of journal articles presented, I was reading about a common heuristic (rule of thumb, set of assumptions used to... Continue Reading →
What does your everyday Mormon recall about one of Mormonism's most important founding figures and most colorful characters, Parley P. Pratt? Before reading this book, I couldn't recall an awful lot. I know that his name pops up in the hymnbook a few times. After a quick peek, he wrote a few well-known ones including... Continue Reading →
Isaiah really gets dragged through the mud quite a bit in Mormon culture. In all our new goals to re-read the Book of Mormon, give it a week or two and you will hear things like "I hit the Isaiah chapters, and it's a doozy!" or "I had to skip those Isaiah chapters, or I... Continue Reading →
I'm always grateful for an honest attempt to explain Isaiah to us lay members of the Church. When reading the Book of Mormon, it is made clear that understanding Isaiah is absolutely vital. But the moment we hit 2 Nephi's extensive quoting of Isaiah, we give up. We're caught in this endless conundrum, always feeling... Continue Reading →
This week, I come to the Church in the days of Alma. Alma was a repentant sinner who changed his ways and came to serve as both chief judge and high priest among the Nephites in the Book of Mormon. During the time of his ministry, the Nephites were in a period of relative peace,... Continue Reading →
Last week, I examined how we don't always need to dichotomize our world into who is right and who is wrong, as exemplified by the stark differences in approaches to war between the Nephites and the Anti-Nephi-Lehis. This week, I want to use another example from the Book of Mormon, the Zoramites. First, let me... Continue Reading →
Hey all! I'm going to be writing a seven-part series this week. Each post will examine a scripture in the Book of Mormon the meaning of which has changed for me or become more apparent to me over time. I want to try to capture how my faith and understanding of the gospel has changed... Continue Reading →
