Archive for August 2007
The quote in the title is taken from a passage in a chapter of LDS scripture titled Joseph Smith History. This chapter describes a heavenly vision in which Joseph Smith has a dialogue with Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith is asking Jesus which church/sect he should join and receives a surprisingly candid and negative response:
18 My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)and which I should join. 19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. 20 He again forbade me to join with any of them; …”
When I hear people complain about organized religion and it’s negative effects on history and people, I think they are merely observing what Jesus himself is saying about organized religion - in the passage above.
I bring this up because of something I read today.
In its sideblog section, By Common Consent linked to an article titled “Religion Beat Becomes A Test of Faith” by William Lobdell. This article basically explains how, over an extended period of time, Mr. Lobdell lost his faith in organized religion. He writes critically, even searingly, of corruption within the Catholic and evangelical churches and he clearly knows quite a bit about his subject.
He doesn’t neglect to give Mormons some critical attention as well:
In late 2001, I traveled to Salt Lake City to attend a conference of former Mormons. These people lived mostly in the Mormon Jell-O belt Utah, Idaho, Arizona so-named because of the plates of Jell-O that inevitably appear at Mormon gatherings. They found themselves ostracized in their neighborhoods, schools and careers. Often, they were dead to their own families. “If Mormons associate with you, they think they will somehow become contaminated and lose their faith too,” Suzy Colver told me. “It’s almost as if people who leave the church don’t exist.” The people at the conference were an eclectic bunch: novelists and stay-at-home moms, entrepreneurs and cartoonists, sex addicts and alcoholics. Some were depressed, others angry, and a few had successfully moved on. But they shared a common thread: They wanted to be honest about their lack of faith and still be loved. In most pockets of Mormon culture, that wasn’t going to happen. Part of what drew me to Christianity were the radical teachings of Jesus to love your enemy, to protect the vulnerable and to lovingly bring lost sheep back into the fold. As I reported the story, I wondered how faithful Mormons many of whom rigorously follow other biblical commands such as giving 10% of their income to the church could miss so badly on one of Jesus’ primary lessons?
I think the whole article deserves serious attention - he basically skewers religious groups for their hypocrisy and leaves his readers with a lot to think about.
WordPress users in the Bloggernacle who have Facebook accounts may want to try out the WordBook plugin. It’s an easy and non-intrusive way to let your Facebook friends know when you’ve added a new blog post.
I’m a little bit intrigued with the developing possibilities that involve connections between WordPress blogging and social-networking applications like Facebook.
In the LDS Church, when a person teaches the principle of forgiveness, we often hear about the importance of forgetting the acts or events that caused the offense. My impression is that this supposed doctrine or principle has arisen based on the commonly-heard but non-scriptural saying “forgive and forget.”
We also often hear the negative example of someone who stubbornly states “I will forgive but I will never forget.” This is considered a negative example because it is obvious from the tone of what is being stated that resentment still exists and that forgiveness is not in fact taking place.
I can understand why that attitude is a problem and why this negative example is used.
However, I am less sure about the scriptural foundations of this “forgive and forget” idea. As far as I know, there is no scripture in the canon that teaches us that we should forget any thing.
The common scriptural injunction and emphasis, in fact, is to remember and not to forget. But what are we commanded to remember? We are told to remember God, to remember Jesus, to remember our covenants, etc.
So I don’t think we forgive because we forget something that has happened - rather, we should forgive because of the things we are commanded to remember - the things we are commanded to contemplate continuously. Perhaps the most important thing we are commanded to remember is the atonement of Jesus Christ, what He did for us in the garden of Gethsemene and on the cross.
Laying the scriptural approach aside at least momentarily, I also want to make another point. I don’t think it’s actually possible, in many instances, to forget something that has happened - particularly something that was painful. Often, maybe without consciously choosing to do so, we will mentally revisit negative experiences in our lives and mull them over.
This doesn’t mean that the “forgive and forget” saying is foolish or lacks application. Rather, I think to “forget” in this context is meant to signify that a person has arrived at a place where he or she will not actively and consciously dwell on a negative memory or experience that had previously created feelings of offense. Instead, feelings of anger and distress are replaced with a desire to forgive and a desire to feel peace.
In the past couple of days I’ve been working towards the process of importing the old blog site into this one. Thanks to some help and guidance from J. Max Wilson, the process is now complete or mostly complete. Specifically, he split the rather cumbersome WXR file into four smaller components and also tweaked the code of the wordpress.php import file and the export.php file so that they would ignore comments classified as spam.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find some adjustments have to be made here and there so that the old pictures and artwork fit into this theme I’ve chosen. Otherwise, this process should be mostly complete. If you should see something that is obviously mis-formatted, please let me know.
Every summer at the Graffiti Hall of Fame (located at 106th Street and Park Avenue) they put up some new artwork. So it was time to go take some pictures.
Last time I went over there, I didn’t take so many.
