Guest Post: Brown Mormon WHY???

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As a child I would see those old Latter-day Saints commercials on television. I would ask my mother, “Who are they?” Her response was always, “Only white people are Mormons.” Which is how I felt most of my life—that certain things were white, and others were for minorities.

I grew up Catholic—that was what I had to be and the only thing I could be—because I am Puerto Rican. I attended Catholic school and was even in a pre-seminary studying program. I was going to be the priest in the family.

My family is not and has never been a close one. At dinner, we got our meals and went to our rooms and watched television. There was no community involvement in our lives because my mother felt those people would take advantage of us. So I what learned at a young age was no close family and no sense of community.

Flash forward a few years; I am a combat veteran of the United States Air Force, medically separated for PTSD, alone, tired, and suicidal.

Guest Post: Rants of a Summer Ward-Hoppe​r

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This summer I have been wardless in my travels away from my Houston home, jumping from ward to ward as I please, always with at least the connection of a friend somewhere in the congregation. It has been eye-opening and has made me contemplate and develop strong opinions about three things:

1) I appreciate our church as a Christian community.

Church is a great place to be reminded about the things that really matter in life. It is a great place to connect with other people and their experiences in coming to Christ. It is a great way to find opportunities to serve and accomplish meaningful service. It is an excellent place to examine one's life and get back on track. It is a place where we recommit to Jesus, weekly, as we partake of the sacrament. Church attendance is a refuge from the hectic world, as we pay our devotions to God and make him a priority on our Sabbath.

I am indebted to the HUNDREDS of people who have helped me out in so many ways, due to my involvement in my church activity, which has always provided a true community of love and support. I have learned so much from other people who are striving for similar goals.

Ideally, church is a place we come to 1) remember Jesus's atonement, 2) study Christ's gospel, 3) feel the Spirit testify truths and guide our thoughts to future change and action, and 4) renew ourselves for the coming week.

At least, this is the opinion of Melissa.

2) I dislike it when church becomes a social outlet.

As I have attended a variety of YSA wards this summer, I'm not going to lie, I have observed some disappointing behaviors. The main one being that most people in my situation seem to be going to church solely for social reasons. I see members of the congregation craning their heads around, checking out new people, seeing who is sitting by who, why isn't he sitting by her anymore?, spending half of a meeting talking about upcoming social activities, are you going to that one?, want to come over for dinner? etc. etc.

Guest Post: Far Between, A Documentary About Gay Mormons

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A few years ago, Kendall Wilcox called me and asked if I’d like to help him produce a documentary about gay Mormons. Being an accountant and having absolutely no experience in documentary filmmaking, of course I said yes. A short time later, he flew up to Portland and we set to work with post-it notes and a couple of sharpies, littering a bare wall in my condo with notes about all the people we should talk to, the organizations we should talk about, the tone we should strike, etc.

After laying the groundwork, I traveled quite a bit that summer with Kendall, helping out with interviews in the Bay Area; Kirtland, OH; Utah; New York City and the Pacific Northwest. It was an incredible experience. It became a process of Kendall working through his own reconciliation between his sexuality and his spirituality by talking to others in various stages of that same reconciliation and on various and diverse paths. It also became a process for me of reconciliation, learning to listen to stories much different than my own and learning to sit with the tension of placing my story alongside those that contradicted my own.

Sitting with that tension was probably the most important thing I could learn. It helped me explore important questions about myself and my place in the world and my responsibility to others. Kendall is a fiercely curious person and also incredibly respectful of each person’s story. He very conscientiously creates a space that invites in a range and multiplicity of voices. This shows in the diversity of stories he has collected; everything from a Boy George lookalike writer of horror fiction who spent 30 years outside of the church to more traditionally Mormon, temple married couples.

In listening to all these assorted stories, I developed more of an understanding of and respect for why people make choices different than my own. At the same time, it helped me flesh out my own understanding of why I have made the choices I did. I learned to sort through important questions like how do I resolve differences between my beliefs and how others choose to live their life? How do I form my values? How do I process conflicts between internal and external forces? How attracted am I to the same sex versus opposite sex and in what ways? What role does religion play in my life? How much of my overall identity is bound up in my religious identity? What happens when someone else thoughtfully and conscientiously arrives at different answers to these questions?

I’m certainly not the only one who has been faced with important questions. During the past few years the national conversation about homosexuality and gay marriage has exploded. In that time, the number of states where marriage is legal for same-sex couples has more than tripled, with dozens of challenges to state gay marriage bans advancing through the federal legal system. Some states have pushed back by attempting to pass and enact laws protecting discrimination based on religious beliefs. Religious leaders have pushed back and asked for religious freedom protections. The Boy Scouts of America changed their membership rules to allow gay youth and continues to face pressure to also allow gay leaders. The problem is the questions around the role of religion and sexuality too often play out in the political realm, which too often polarizes and fails to empower individuals to address some of the questions I mentioned above in a way that brings greater understanding of self and therefore more peace and respect for the process and decisions of others.

I don’t have a crystal ball and don’t know for sure where the gay marriage debate will end, but I do know that whether gay marriage becomes the law of the land or is abolished completely, the polarization is frustrating for people on all sides of the issue. I also know there will still continue to be religiously oriented individuals who also experience a strong orientation of attraction to their own gender. There will still be a segment of the population (both inside and outside Mormonism) who have to wrestle with the tough questions that bubble to the surface as a result of the at times seemingly irreconcilable conflict between their religious and spiritual identities. This is why I got involved with the documentary film project (titled Far Between) and why I think it’s so important. These questions don’t just affect those who are gay and Mormon. These are questions that affect all of us: gay, straight, transgender, religiously affiliated, non-religiously affiliated, etc.

We currently have hundreds of hours of footage, encompassing over 180 interviews, loads of research and a detailed outline (a script of sorts) to guide us to completion. We now need to assemble a postproduction team, including editors, colorists, sound designers, etc. to create the final product. Our goal is to enter the final product in the Sundance Film Festival so that we can take the ongoing conversation to a broad audience. If this conversation is important to you, or if these are questions you’d like to explore yourself, please donate to Far Between, like our facebook page, or share our Kickstarter page with your friends and family in order to keep the conversation going.


Jon Hastings lives in Portland, Oregon and is an accountant by day and by night and on occasional weekends is an associate producer for Far Between, a documentary that explores the experience of being homosexual and Mormon.

Guest Post: Mormons, Garments, and Body Image: A Survey

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I contemplated writing a song parody about garments to the tune of “I’m Too Sexy,” but there were some issues with tone and appropriateness.

Jessica Finnigan and I are writing an article on Mormon’s views of their bodies and garments and we’re doing a survey. We want to know how you feel about your body and how you feel about your garments and how your feelings about those two things interact and/or intersect. We also want to collect some demographic information and some info about your beliefs.

We need your help. To participate, you do need to be Mormon (of any variety, including former/ex) but you don’t need to currently wear garments or have received your endowments to participate. To quote the above meme, we need all the Mormons. Please share far and wide.


Nancy Ross is an assistant professor in art history at Dixie State University.

Guest Post: On Waiting and/or Winning and Probably Whining

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So here is my story. About four months ago I decide that I should try and see a specialist (1) about this thing. So I go and look up the list of doctors that deal with this thing that are covered by my insurance. And there are four of them. So I go down the list and call and, in turn, the first three receptionists tell me they aren’t taking new patients. Not a good sign but I am intrepid. I call the last on the list and they can see me, in four months. So I make the appointment. I tell the person getting my information what I want to be seen for and they say, sure, come on over in four months.

Last night is the day before the long-awaited appointment. And like I do, when I’m trying to go to sleep, I’m totally obsessing about this appointment. It is like Christmas for a six-year old except without presents. I’ve been waiting for a long time and I’m anxious about what they are going to want to test for and what they might discover and all that and so I toss and turn and get maybe three hours of sleep.

So finally the long awaited day comes and I go to the doctor’s office. The waiting room is tiny and dimly lit. The go through the deal with me signing more papers and copying my insurance card and having me wait in the first room and then moving me into the second waiting room where the doctor will eventually see me. The room where I am asked to wait for the doctor (2)  has about the same square footage of other rooms of this type but it is crammed with stuff. There is the examination bed, two regular chairs and then this crazy 1970s style ergonomic backless chair with a makeshift table attached to it. I literally have to walk sideways to get to the seat. This room is maybe three stacks of newspapers away from being a hoarders episode. And here I wait.

The specialist finally arrives. He looks to be about 300 years old, about 4 foot 11 and maybe 85 pounds. As required of old men, his pants are hiked up to his armpits, barely leaving the pocket in his shirt that holds no fewer than 12 pens visible. He has his white doctor’s coat on and has his auxiliary pens in that pocket as well. I have seen my fair share of doctor’s over my lifetime. Typically, when they enter the room, they greet you and ask what I am here to see them about. No big surprise but this was not the case with Dr. McOldy. He walked in, said hello, I said hello back and he then sat down in his goofy ergonomic backless chair, opened my file, put a nice crease down the middle of it and stared at it in silence for a good two minutes. After this moment of mediation, he cleared his throat and said that he isn’t really enthusiastic about trying to work with patients with the thing I have. Which is super funny because the insurance list showed him as being someone to see about this thing. He blah, blah blahed on for a little bit and then said that he bet that I was wondering why they had me come down in the first place, given his disposition on this matter. I felt that was a valid question. He was unable to provide an answer. After some more of his blah, blah, blahing, I stood up and suggested that “we were done here” and left.

Guest Post: Declaring His Ministry

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We do not know much about what sorts of things Jesus did after his birth, since no information about his childhood or youthhood or early adulthood can really be found in the Bible.

We do know that, when he was twelve, he stunned all of the learned men at the temple in Jerusalem with his profound wisdom and understanding, but that is it. It is only a glimpse. We know he went about doing his Father's business, but that's all we truly know without haphazardly speculating.

It is interesting to think about how, even after all the glorious signs of his birth, Jesus went incognito for the first thirty years of his life.

This is the Savior! This is the Messiah! This is the Lord!

But Jesus did not draw attention to himself. He used this time to prepare himself for what was to come.

I absolutely LOVE how Jesus reveals himself when the appropriate time finally comes. I am going to quote it exactly from Luke 4, because I cannot give it justice in paraphrase:

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

Guest Post: A Mormon Yankee in King Joseph's Court

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One of my favorite books as a kid was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Mark Twain was inspired to write it after a dream in which he was a knight burdened by his heavy armor, and wrote a story about a man from the 1800's (Hank, the Connecticut Yankee) who wakes up in medieval England and has to survive. While people much smarter than me categorize it as a satire poking deep fun at the romanticism of the Old South, I simply thought it was a great example of what would happen if you traveled in time back a few hundred or even a few thousand years. The main character uses his 19th century knowledge and experience to single-handedly dismantle the feudal system, unmasking magic with science and everyday (1800's) common sense.

My kids are now growing up in a largely demystified world, where they will never have to wonder what are the lyrics to a popular song, whether an urban legend really happened, or whether global warming truly exists. Okay, maybe not global warming, however, the wealth of information available to them, to me, to all of us on any subject is staggering.

For example, not only can they find the lyrics to a song in mere seconds, but they can also find the names of every person who was ever in the band, the schools each person attended, and with some small amount of searching, the names, phone numbers and addresses of their classmates, teachers and anyone associated with the band. This kind of information, literally at the tips of fingers, has never before been available, and in certain situations, much like that of our Connecticut Yankee, a game, life and history changer.

I've always realized and accepted that religion is based (almost) 100% on faith, on a belief in something that simply cannot be proven. The origins of all core religions (the Big Five – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism) can be traced back historically to a point at which one either believes or one doesn't. The problem the LDS church is now facing is that belief in the church's foundations are a little different than that of the Big Five. Specifically, while their ancient origins are clouded in murky legend documented decades and centuries after the fact, LDS church's history is recent enough (a scant 200 years) that first person accounts, journals and a wealth of other documentation abounds. Not only has a staggering amount of the information been vetted by researchers and academics with a dizzying amount of clarity, but their texts, papers and even scanned historical documents are available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Guest Post: Personal Responsibility

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Personal Responsibility: fill our own lamps with oil

In the Church at present, we assert that obedience to certain mortal officers is the same thing as obedience to God, and thus, that our salvation will be assured if we obey those mortal officers. Meanwhile, there are teachings in our history which adamantly reject that worldview. Here are a few of them:

“President Joseph Smith read the 14th chapter of Ezekiel–said the Lord had declared by the Prophet, that the people should each one stand for himself, and depend on no man or men in that state of corruption of the Jewish church–that righteous persons could only deliver their own souls–applied it to the present state of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–said if the people departed from the Lord, they must fall–that they were depending on the Prophet, hence were darkened in their minds, in consequence of neglecting the duties devolving upon themselves.”(Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pages 237-38).

“If we have presidents or apostles or anybody that we do not like, let us vote them out, and be free men, and cultivate and cherish in our bosoms the principles of liberty.” (John Taylor, 7 October 1872; “Discourse,” The Deseret News Weekly, volume 21, number 48.)

“We have hitherto acted too much as machines, as to following the President. I will confess to my own shame that I have acted contrary to my own judgment many times. I mean hereafter not to demean myself, to not run contrary to my own judgment. When President Young says that the Spirit of the Lord says thus and so, I don’t consider that all we should do is to say let it be so.” (Elder Orson Pratt, 1847; see Conflict in the Quorum, Gary James Bergera 2002)

“We can tell when the speakers are moved upon by the Holy Ghost only when we, ourselves, are moved upon by the Holy Ghost. In a way, this completely shifts the responsibility from them to us to determine when they so speak”. (President J. Rueben Clark, CN-7/31/54)

“Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.” (2 Nephi 28:3; also see 2 Nephi 28:21, 24-25, which warns us about “carnal security”, and warns us against being complacent in Zion. Might these warnings be referring to excessive trust in mortal officers?)

The basic predicament that exists is as follows: if a member feels that the Holy Ghost is impressing him with the knowledge that a particular policy/doctrine within the Church is not inspired and shouldn’t be obeyed, should he stand his ground, or should he abandon what he feels, and yield to the Prophet?

In August of last year, I presented this question to several thousand of my fellow members via email, and received 401 replies. Of those respondents, 12% answered that they would stand their ground, 26% answered that they would yield to the Prophet, and 62% chose a third answer: that neither option was satisfactory to them, thereby manifesting their unhappiness with of the wording of the question, or simply their unwillingness to answer it.

For a longer discussion about personal responsibility within the Church, see here.


Raised mostly in Utah, Joe Murff is a transplant to Massachusetts. A technical writer by trade, his avocations include gardening, carpentry, and trying to keep up with his wife and two daughters. After serving a mission in Milwaukee Wisconsin, he attended the University of Utah and completed an English degree.

Guest Post: Race and the Priesthood Survey

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We’d like to interrupt the flurry of bloggernacle posts about women and ordination with a survey about black men and the priesthood. Nancy Ross, Christina Duncan and Kristine Olson at Dixie State University are studying responses to the Race and the Priesthood document that the Church recently published on its website. Individuals have very different reactions to this document and they want to know what you think. They are looking for a broad range of Mormons to participate. Preliminary findings will be presented to the Utah Academy's annual conference at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah on April 11. They invite you to take this survey.

Guest Post: The Magic Eight

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At eight years old you are accountable for your sins. At eight years old you are eligible to take name of Jesus Christ upon you. At eight years old you are learning your two times tables.

I think I was a mature little kid. With that maturity, when I was eight years old I knew enough to know I did not know nearly enough to get baptized. I begged my parents to let me wait until I was the wizened old age of ten to get baptized. I even asked the bishop about it. I argued if I waited until I was ten, I would take the covenant more seriously and really understand what I was committing to. They argued that if I was thinking about these things, I was already taking it seriously enough.

I can't remember if I was just trying to be difficult/unique or if I really felt unprepared, but I do remember feeling like I, as a good girl who wanted to please my parents, did not have a choice. Baptism was a rite of passage, something you do as a Mormon eight-year-old child.

I received my temple endowment at 20 years old, a week before I got married. I didn't get my endowment because I felt like it was the right time and I was prepared to receive my endowment. I made those commitments because I wanted to get married. I felt sick to my stomach on my endowment day. I knew the seriousness of the commitments I was about the make, and I just didn't know if I was ready for it. But I wanted to marry the love of my life in the temple (that's the YW goal), so I did it, ready or not.

Guest Post: The Reality of the Atonement

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When I was 18, as a freshman at Utah State, I received a phone call from home. It was my mother, and she had called to inform me that one of my childhood friends had committed suicide.

WHAM.

It hit me badly. I did not take it well. Optimism was absent; I was full of darkness, a figurative darkness that was suffocating my soul.

Well, mostly guilt. To quote scripture, "my soul was racked with eternal torment."

I felt guilty because I had not maintained contact with this friend when he went to college. I felt guilty because I could have been a better friend to him when he was in high/middle/elementary school.

Guest Post: The Problem with Comparing the LDS Church to the Church in Christ's Time

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I just read a recent CES devotional by Elder Callister of the Presidency of the Seventy. It bothered me. His thesis was that many New Testament verses prove that out of all the Christian churches out there today, the LDS Church is the only one that is a carbon copy of Christ’s church. That, in turn, means that it’s the one true church. He cites many New Testament scriptures that back up the various aspects and elements of the church that we as Latter-Day Saints are familiar with: baptism by immersion, apostles, elders, the three degrees of glory, baptism for the dead, etc. The idea is that the LDS Church is the only church that exactly matches the blueprint of the church of old because hey look, we’re the only church that practices baptism for the dead and believes in the three degrees of glory as mentioned here in the scriptures.

The problem is that when you use Bible verses to back up your claims, you open up the door for people to draw verses from the Biblical well that could contradict or refute your claims. It turns into Bible bashing. For every Bible verse that Elder Callister reads that purportedly backs up our modern practices of baptism for the dead or the three degrees of glory, I can find a couple Bible verses that talk about things that we don’t do in the church today. We Mormons are willing to point to the verses about the seventy [Luke 10:1,17] but rightly or wrongly ignore the verses about how women shouldn’t speak during church [1 Cor. 14:34-35], how there were female prophetesses [Luke 2:36], and how divorce shouldn’t be allowed [Matt. 19:3-9]. And sure, apostles are mentioned in the New Testament, but the idea of a first presidency as a unit separate from and additional to the twelve apostles is not. We’re just cherry picking the verses that are most tasteful to us and conveniently ignoring everything else.

Guest Post: The Reluctant Blogger: What It Thinks It’s Saying About Mormon Culture and What It's Actually Saying

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The Segullah review of Ryan Rapier's The Reluctant Blogger describes it as "a peek inside the head of a modern, Mormon man." Let's examine that claim, shall we modern, Mormon men?

Please note this post is primarily about the novel as a cultural artifact (today's posts on Dawning of a Brighter Day and A Motley Vision discuss, respectively, the novel's successes and failures as a work of literature) and thus I will not be precious about avoiding discussion of spoilers. Not even a little. Check it out: the final sentence of the book is "It was my pleasure." I just ruined the whole book. That's how cavalier I'm going to be. Consider yourself warned.

Rapier (ruhPEER) seems to have a few clear points he wants to make about Mormon culture. Some of these lessons are plainly projected, eg, Mormons should relax regarding therapists and singles and gays. And we'll talk about those. But I want to start with protagonist Todd Landry's father whose dedication to always doing what he thinks the Righteous Mormon Man should do has a history of hurting members of his family---though he doesn't feel obliged to worry about this as clearly anyone hurt by his righteousness just isn't righteous enough themselves.

The question posed to LDS readers is how many of us feel the drive to say Yes! to every request, regardless of personal circumstance? Perhaps we've never ruined the Most Important Moment in teenager Todd's life in order to go clean up for Girls Camp, but the tension between serving at Church and being with family is real. And sometimes the "right answer" doesn't reflect what is actually most important. But leaping from one assumption (eg, always say yes) to the other (eg, keep that promise to roast marshmallows) can be difficult. It requires humility---maybe even humiliation---and you might not ever know if you made the right decision.

It doesn't help that Todd's father is a true Chicken Patriarch. When he unilaterally decides he and his wife will serve a full-time mission, he doesn't time his decision out of a disregard for his wife's opinion but out of a certainty that she does (or will) agree with him. She's super-righteous, after all, so if he's the decider (presider) and she's the agreer, there's nothing bullyish about it. They both equally decide to do what he decides to do. Of course they do.

Guest Post: Top Five Running Blogs By LDS Runners

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It's a new year. Time to get off your lazy rear and get into shape. Many folks turn to running to drop some pounds, do a couch-to-5K, take up a hobby, or cross a marathon of their bucket list. But the good intentions of January 1 can quickly wear thin, long before your waistline gets very thin. Keep the fitness motivation going by checking out the adventures of top notch LDS running bloggers.

Here are five of the best LDS running blogs that will keep you motivated and interested while you pursue your own running fitness goals. I try to regularly read pretty much every blog by an LDS runner that I can find. These blog selections are based upon the awesome running stories and the sprinkling of LDS lifestyles discussed in the blogs. These blogs show that LDS runners are pretty great people, or, at least are pretty normal people that rise to the occasion with hard work, goal setting and the ability to write and hit the publish button on their blog on a regular basis. So go read these blogs and then lace up your running shoes and google a good couch-to-5k or marathon training program.

No. 5 Fast Cory (www.fastcory.com)

Cory Reese is a long-distance runner living in southern Utah. Does he bang out a scenic southern Utah picturesque 100 miler on a weekly basis? Does he run 20 miles around his neighborhood on a Friday night just for the fun of it? It sure seems like he does. Check out his blog for his long-distance running adventures. It is just plain fun to read and he seems like a cool dude.

No. 4 See Mom Run Far (www.seemomrunfar.blogspot.com)

Erin Henderson is a superwoman living in Wyoming. She has a family of 12 kids yet ran 3,480 miles last year, often getting up at unchristianly early hours to get her runs in so that she can still take care of her large family. She has a working goal of qualifying for the Women's Olympic Marathon Trials. Her blog is an interesting mix of race reports, training tips, family interactions and an amazing example of juggling family, work, church and running.

How to Get Kicked Out of Lamaze in Four Easy Steps

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This is an anonymous guest post.

Let me start by saying to you modern Mormon men out there that this is not meant as some "how to" post with the goal of explaining how to get out of something you should do. If you are reading this so that you can avoid childbirth classes, then all I can say is MAN UP! In fact, that may be the best point of this entire post, so I guess now I'd say READ ON.

Step One: Have Someone You Love Get Pregnant

Sure, this is a rather obvious step, and, trust me, it looks odd if you just breeze into childbirth classes without someone who might soon be giving birth.

Step Two: Lack the Emotional Awareness of How Terribly Frightened you are of Childbirth

This step can also be very, very easy. As guys, we are socialized to be super heroes, James Bonds, and Captain Moronis who always have a plan and are always in control. All of that goes completely out the window when someone you love gets pregnant. There is no plan; you control nothing. When someone you love is pregnant, you can do nothing to make the nausea stop or soothe the emotional or physical pain she is in. You cannot make sure that the baby grows properly or that it doesn't get turned around or that it doesn't have some serious defect/comes out pulling for the Florida Gators. Also, because of the Male Code of Silence, which, like the rules of Fight Club, must never be discussed, guys who have women they love who are pregnant cannot talk to other guys. Yah, we can complain about stuff as a lame cover for abject terror, but we don't say, "wow, this is surprisingly painful and frightening." We cannot talk about fears of delivery mishaps or tragedies or anxieties about coming up short or disappointing the one (or, as will soon be the case, ones) we love. And, of course, the inability to talk about such fears only reinforces them.

Oh, and one more little note: part of the reason why we cannot discuss these anxieties is because often the women in our lives don't seem to have the means to hear them. All too often, if men sound afraid or worried it is seen in comparison "with what she is going through." Once the hint of "oh, you think you've got it bad" comes out, you will get blasted for comparing your plight to hers. Nothing makes you sound more like a [word redacted because this is a family-friendly blog] then sounding like you are comparing your challenges with hers. And with that, the possibilities of a discussion with the one you love, trust, and cherish the most are foreclosed completely.

Guest Post: 3 Things I Learned About Mormons on the Grammys

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Last Sunday on the Grammys, we saw Mormon rock band Imagine Dragons make the big time, winning a Grammy and performing on the awards show. In fact, many people have said that their performance was the best one that night, topping some very experienced entertainers. I could tell that from just by looking at the faces in the Grammys' audience—it probably sounded even better in person.

Here's a link to the video of the performance.

Some of you many have noticed that there were a few silent moments in their performance with Kendrick Lamar. These moments weren't because the signal went out—the silences were most likely because Lamar was swearing up a storm, and it was being edited out during the time delay. (These edits are probably why the Deseret news article on Imagine Dragons didn't mention expletives.) "What?" you say, "Mormons agreed to be in an act laced with expletives? On a Sunday? Shouldn't they have walked off stage?"

Guest Post: How Would You Have Answered This Investigator’s Question?

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Last week I was invited by the missionaries in my ward to join them as they met with an investigator. The lesson was about the Word of Wisdom. The lesson went well. The investigator had some great insights and great questions, which we answered to the best of our ability. But our friend was confused about the alcohol part. If Jesus drank wine, she wondered, how could alcohol consumption be a sin? We explained that the prohibition of alcohol wasn't a commandment back then, but it was now. And this is where she asked a question that none of us had a good answer for.

She said that if God is eternal and has been the same forever and ever, and if time is meaningless to God, it would make sense for him to be in any situation in any period of [our] time and still be sinless and blameless. Were that not the case, he would cease to be the perfect God that we know him to be. She said that it didn't make sense that Jesus would be a sinner if he were here with us today, but by our definition, he would be a sinner because he has drunk wine.

That's an interesting point that I had never really thought of before, and I felt that none of our answers were very satisfactory.

One of the missionaries replied that he didn't know if what he was about to say was true or not (rarely a good sign in a church setting), but that he heard that the wine they used back in the day was really just grape juice. I reminded him that there are instances in just about every book of scripture we have of people getting drunk from wine. You don't get drunk off of grape juice.

Guest Post: Warnings From Outer Space

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Our universe filled with galaxies: worlds without number

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to contain 100-400 billion stars, with 10-20% of these being like our sun. In March of 2009, NASA launched the Kepler Observatory to search the Milky Way for habitable planets. Data from this space telescope are now being analyzed and reveal a wealth of fascinating information. One study found that 22% of sun-like stars are orbited by rocky planets in the 'Goldilocks Zone' which allows liquid water to exist at its surface and therefore be habitable for life. Now, a new study using computer modeling suggests that the 'Goldilocks Zone' may be 10 times wider than originally conceived.

The Andromeda Galaxy

Astronomers estimate that at least two billion and as many as 60 billion planets are therefore capable of sustaining life in the Milky Way alone. Consider then that the visible universe* contains up to 500 billion galaxies and 30 billion trillion stars. The numbers are beyond comprehension. Science is gradually proving what we have long known:

And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten. (Moses 1:33)

Thus, I Abraham, talked with the Lord, face to face, as one man talketh with another; and he told me of the works which his hands had made . . . and I saw those things which his hands had made, which were many; and they multiplied before mine eyes, and I could not see the end thereof. (Abraham 3:11-12)

The idea that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists is actually pretty common, and certainly not new. Surveys in the US and UK put the number of believers in intelligent extraterrestrial life as being between 60 and 70% of the population.** SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been patiently listening for radio waves from our intergalactic neighbors for many years using high-tech telescopes. Despite of its lack of success, SETI isn't giving up. I'm therefore seriously thinking of forwarding the decisive 'white paper' on this subject so they can rest a little easier. I recently stumbled onto it while my plane was stuck on the tarmac.

Guest Post: On How to Not Suck at Praying

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I was born and raised in the Church, but I have the lifelong habit of sucking at praying. I forget to do it before I eat. My mind wanders when I pray in the morning, and I fall asleep while praying at night. I forget to pray for friends and family that need to be prayed for, and when I do say a prayer, it's often more out of a guilty feeling that I should be praying rather than a sincere desire to do so.

Overall, my experiences with prayer have been like trying to Skype with someone over a spotty Wi-Fi connection. Sometimes the words are clear and we can communicate just fine, but other times I'm wondering if what I said went through while awkwardly waiting for the person on the other end to reply to something he or she may or may not have heard me say.

Then last month I decided that I would focus for as long as necessary on improving the quality of my prayers. I have had occasional good experiences with prayer in the past, and I wanted to have those kinds of experiences on a more regular basis. I read a bunch of conference talks about prayer. I left notes around my apartment that reminded me to pray. When I did pray, I made the point of staying on my knees until I felt like I had delivered a good, heartfelt, meaningful prayer, and not to rise up prematurely due to frustration or fatigue.

Doing those things helped, but I knew there was more that I could and should do. As I analyzed my praying habits, I realized that the root problem was that I was too comfortable. I'm not talking about physically comfortable, but lexically comfortable. The language of my prayers had become too routine.

Guest Post: The Theology of Trash

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Some of you may know that I received my degree in Archaeology (1). Archaeology is fun because you get to mess around in the dirt and dig holes very slowly. To dig your holes, sometimes you use shovels, sometimes trowels and every so often, you use paintbrushes. I have heard some describe it as a "lazy person's way to dig a hole" and how could I argue with that assessment? We dig, we look, we think about what we see, we take pictures of what is in the hole, maybe draw a picture of it, we take notes of what we think it is that we see and we have lengthy discussions with others trying to determine what the prehistoric function of whatever it is we see in the dirt. I have personally witnessed multiple-hour long discussions about what a particular thing is in a hole, only to have someone come by and say "that is a rodent burrow" (2). We of the archaeological world fancy ourselves as big thinkers, not necessarily big dirt movers.

An archaeologist's job is to explain what these things are in the holes. When reports are written, explanations like "I dunno" or "Beats me" are unacceptable. What takes their place is the explanation that the unexplainable thing has some "religious significance." That label gets chosen because most aspects of human life, whether prehistoric or current, have some fairly rational explanation. They built pit houses to live and sleep in. They grew corn to eat (3). They made pottery to store their junk in. Many religious activities of the past and present do not have the same clear explanation. Why did they make this different sort of building that is different from a pithouse? Why did they make these ceramic figurines? Why did they carve this pendant out of slate and why did they have a collection of red and green ochre (4)? I dunno, it must have some religious significance. When I read "religious significance" in an archaeological report, I know what that means -- they "dunno."