Blind, unquestioning obedience?

The other day a friend at work asked me about the Mormon church demanding "complete" or "blind unquestioning obedience" of its members. Just hearing the phrase brings to mind the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, doesn't it?

Every time I hear reference to that, I unconsciously cock my head to the side, finding myself trying to connect to what the person might be talking about. Am I a pawn on some huge chessboard, being used to do someone's dirty work?

The idea is hard to discredit personally since it implies I've been duped from the start and my disbelief is merely an indicator that they've done a good job duping me. Sort-of like the claim that the Masons are running the government. "Don't believe it? Well you're not in on it, so you wouldn't know!"

Bottom line:

Do I obey my priesthood leaders? Yes!
Do I obey God's commandments? Yes!

Why? Because I trust both God and my priesthood leaders because they've proven themselves trustworthy to me time and again throughout my life. Over and over I've been asked to do things, and I knew and felt at the time it was the right thing. We constantly are out counseling, helping, training, teaching, reasoning, listening. The bishop directs these efforts, and it's a wonderful experience. Given that history, if my bishop asked me to do something strange, I would do it because I trust him. It's the same as if it were my best friend asking me to do something. It's all about trust.

There's a big difference between being asked to do something hard and being asked to do something that's wrong. I often obey and do things that are hard, even if I disagree*, because I know I've been blessed for my obedience in the past. When all is said and done, I will do my best to obey God or His servants, and the record will show that. On the other hand, I've never been asked to do something I thought was wrong, nor do I know of anyone who has (except for a couple of scriptural accounts, Joshua, Saul, Nephi, etc.). If I were asked, I would spend a lot of time on my knees making sure it was what God wanted. I don't follow men, I follow God who works through good men, and it's up to me to make sure I'm on His side, wherever that is.

---

* It's rare that I disagree, I almost always believe it's what's best at the time. One example of me disagreeing was when we were asked by a Stake President to not watch TV for a month. I didn't think it made much sense at the time, but I understood the point and I did it. I think in the end it was a good experience, and I felt good knowing my willpower was strengthened a little. Even so, those kinds of requests are incredibly rare in the church...

Why I love my mom

Most folks on Mother's Day talk about how wonderful and perfect their mothers were -- but I'll spare you that.

My mom is a terrific mom, but that's not why I'm writing this. A clean house, great figure, and fresh baked bread don't matter much to a little kid. This little kid, yours truly, appreciated the band-aids on scraped knees, her time teaching me to make chocolate chip cookies and snuggling on her lap when it was cold. I miss that comfortable and secure feeling knowing that mom was there, and everything would be okay.

Not only that -- my mom never gave up, even when things went wrong or crazy (even in the rare case when the wrong or crazy was her fault). Having that example is priceless for a kid surrounded by people giving up when things got hard. At every crossroads in her life she had a choice, whether to do the easy things, or the right things -- but she knew what was right and she did it.

You do what your parents did unless you consciously decide to do differently. I'm so grateful for a good set of "defaults".

I love you, Mom.

Approaching Mormon Doctrine

Learning about a religion can be daunting, especially when practically speaking, unbiased information doesn't exist!

Today the Church released a nice summary of how to approach "Mormon" doctrine. I especially appreciate the emphasis on the need to distinguish what's important from what's not. The core "Mormon" doctrine is not about polygamy or temples or jello salad -- it's about Jesus Christ and his mission. Everything else is ancillary.

Along a similar vein, for those who are skeptical about the Book of Mormon and still haven't read it, here's a 2-page summary of the doctrines from the January and July 2004 Ensigns (Church magazines).

PBS: The Mormons -- Update

"Mormonism teaches love and respect, but..."
"The Mormon home is a haven from the world, but..."
"For Mormons, temples are the holiest places on earth, but..."

Sound familiar? I'm seriously surprised that this program would've been considered "balanced". Most of the speakers were non-members who were only casually knowledgeable about the church, or excommunicated members*. This is like producing a piece on Germany using mostly British and French university professors (and German expatriates!).

For those who are troubled by what was said, make sure you visit Jeff Lindsay's site. There's another side to the issues that wasn't presented. "Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish." - Austin Farrer. And there's *plenty* of argument for most of what was said.

---

* Getting excommunicated is not easy -- you basically have to either do something terrible, or actively do very wrong things and flat refuse to even *try* to change. These aren't just poor souls who didn't fit the "mold".

"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

Conjecture, innuendo, rumor, and outright falsehoods are vomited back into our faces once again. The new PBS Frontline special, "The Mormons", is almost entirely negative -- ignoring beautiful truths and positing misunderstood tenets as the shaky foundation of a rotten religion. Sad.

Each aspect of the church's history can be viewed in a positive light or a negative light. The producers have chosen mostly to ignore the positive viewpoint and only present the negative viewpoints, over and over. I fear mainstream Christianity would fare much worse if given this same treatment.

Early faithful church members wrote their point of view, and outsiders and disaffected members wrote theirs -- I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure which is true. However I have entire books written by the men being denigrated here, and their words are incredibly inspiring. Feel free to read the writings of Brigham Young or Wilford Woodruff to see what I mean. "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet [water] and bitter?"

The masses wanted Jesus crucified in his day, and things haven't much improved. Don't buy it.

Rotating desktop pictures from an iPhoto smart album

When I was little we'd often go on long roadtrips. I remember being surprised that my dad was constantly fascinated by the scenery, especially the scenery he saw the last time we drove down that road! Still, as long as the view changed noticeably between times when I'd look up out the window, I felt like we were making progress.

Same deal for my desktop picture. As long as it changes periodically, I feel like I'm getting somewhere. If it's set to random, my brain somehow thinks that someone smarter than me is driving this car, and we'll be at a better place soon.* "How much longer?" "5 more minutes."

But tonight, I noticed that if I select an iPhoto album, it grays out the "Change picture" option, meaning that I have to drive the car! Why can't it drive? What could be so hard about that?

Well, here's an option for people who really want to do it and who aren't afraid of copy/pasting regular expressions and into the Terminal:

1. Make a new folder called "Desktop Pictures" (or whatever) in your /Pictures folder
2. Open a new plain text document in BBEdit ($$) or TextWrangler (free, both available from http://www.barebones.com)
   
3. Open iPhoto, then select all the pictures in the album you want and cmd-drag them to the new BBEdit or TextWrangler document -- this should insert the path to each of the pictures on its own line
4. In that text document, replace "(.+)" with "ln -s '\1' ." (without the double quotes, make sure "Use Grep" is checked on)
5. Open up the terminal, enter this and hit return: cd ~/Pictures/Desktop\ Pictures
6. Then select all the lines from the text document and drag them into the Terminal window
7. Switch back to the Desktop system preference, pick "Choose folder", and select the /Pictures/Desktop\ Pictures folder

Now you should be able to on-click the "Change picture" setting. It won't auto-update if you change the contents of the album, but this is pretty close to what we wanted. =)

---

* Not really, but a little. Ask me about sleeping on an elevated bed sometime.

Response from Senator Kyl

Here's the response I got from Senator Kyl:



I'm not really sure if he read my email or not. Of course I would expect that a good politician would respond to letters and emails, probably with a canned/bland smattering of gratitude and praise. A better politician would have his staffers generate a dozen or so canned responses to common concerns and mechanically dole them out. The best politician would have his staffers weed out the banal and asinine, then personally review the rest. I like to think my idea was more than just a general concern about balancing the budget, but I guess I don't know exactly what goes on over there.

It's too late for my idea now. Here's a new one: Appoint an independent commission to monitor congressmen -- if any accept anything material from a lobbyist or insert any "pork" into a bill, they're sent to jail.

We'd probably see quite a few not run for reelection. Of course, what congressman in his right mind would vote for that bill? So who exactly is going to make Congress do the right things? Us? The President?

That was really the point of my original suggestion.