Those who disagree with the the LDS Church on certain policies and positions, especially its stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but also on various other policies that clash with current liberal cultural trends, often cite the Church’s former Priesthood Restriction as a precedent for the church to make further changes to accommodate their views.

In fact, for many of them the Priesthood Ban has become a useful hammer that they employ to drive their agenda. It has become a kind of folklore for heretical members of the church that is used to prop up and justify their agitation for change and rejection of prophetic authority.

The folklore goes something like this:

“Brigham Young, the second prophet and president of the church, was a terrible racist and instituted a church policy that banned black members from being ordained to the priesthood. Many doctrinal and scriptural justifications were given for the ban during the subsequent decades, but it was really only based on the racist notions common to the culture and religions of the time. In the years leading up to 1978 when the ban was finally ended, many good members of the church, including general authorities, were troubled by the restriction and questioned its origins, and some righteous souls even publicly agitated for it to end. In response to the growing challenge from members and the success of the Civil Rights movement the church lifted the ban and admitted that the scriptural and doctrinal justifications for it were wrong.”

Much of the time this narrative is taken for granted and the argument is simply made by referring to it, like this: “Just like the Brethren were wrong about the priesthood ban, they are wrong about homosexuality, and will eventually change and disavow the previous doctrines.”

This appeal to the priesthood ban as a precedent for additional changes leaves out a couple of key details that undermine the parallelism to these modern trends.

From the very beginning of the priesthood restriction, Brigham Young himself prophesied that the “time will come when [black members] will have the privilege of all we have the privilege of and more.” (February 5th, 1852 Speech before the Territorial Legislature). Subsequent prophets reiterated this prophecy that eventually the Lord would lift the ban and the priesthood would be bequeathed to all. Many of them didn’t believe it would happen until the Millennium, after Jesus returned.

In addition to the prophecies, we have very solid historical examples of black men being ordained to priesthood offices by the prophet Joseph Smith himself before the priesthood restriction was declared by President Young.

These are essential details. The disagreement in the decades culminating in ending the restriction was about the the validity of the reasons that had been suggested for the restriction, or whether or not blacks really were descended from Cain or Canaan, the proper time frame for lifting the ban, and whether it could be ended without an explicit revelation. But the idea that the priesthood could be and would be extended to blacks at the proper time was not in dispute. That is why in Official Declaration 2, in which the end of the restriction was announced, President Kimball specifically refers to these prophecies when he says they are “Aware of the promises made by the prophets and presidents of the Church who have preceded us…” and says “the long-promised day has come…”

It is this concept of an explicitly “long-promised day” that is missing from the appeals for additional changes in the church to accommodate modern sensibilities. Putting  aside controversies about whether or not the priesthood restriction was a mistake or an inexplicable decree from the Lord, the priesthood was always supposed to be extended to black members eventually.

A similar example of a “long promised day” is the extension of the gospel to the gentiles by the prophet Peter. Jesus himself had prophesied that the gospel would eventually go to the gentiles, both before His crucifixion and then again after His resurrection. So when Peter received his vision and then extended the gospel to Cornelius the Centurion and his household, upon whom the Holy Spirit had fallen, it fulfilled the earlier prophecy. Putting aside controversies over whether gentile converts needed to be circumcised, the gospel was supposed to be extended to the gentiles eventually.

There is no “long-promised day” prophesied by latter-day prophets and presidents that preceded us to which one might appeal for same-sex marriage. Neither are their solid historical examples of Joseph Smith approving of or sanctioning homosexual relationships in the way that there are of extending the priesthood to black members.

For these reasons lifting the priesthood ban is not really comparable and cannot be legitimately cited as a good precedent for new changes through agitation and public pressure by liberal members of the church.

For an excellent, faithful perspective on the priesthood ban, check out Thirty Years After the Long Promised Day: Reflections and Expectations (PDF) by brother Marcus H. Martins, who was the first black LDS member to serve a full-time mission after the restriction was ended.

The USGA is not an officially approved university organization and the words “It Gets Better” are taken from a national, non-LDS organization, the goals of which are not all compatible with the teachings of the church.

I have many friends who have linked approvingly to reports of the forum and the videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. Like them, I support efforts to help members of the LDS church understand the heavy burdens and loneliness experienced by those members of the church who have same-gender attraction, and to extend their love and support to them. They need to know that God loves them.  They have so much to contribute to their families, their communities, their schools, and the church. They need our love and support.

The “It Gets Better … at BYU” videos are generally positive and the participants are courageous. I have watched most of them. My quibble is that when they say that it is okay to be “gay” they are ambiguous about whether they mean that it is okay to have same-sex attraction or whether they mean that it is okay to act on the attraction and give in to the temptation.

I understand that their intended audience consists of those same-sex attracted BYU students and church members who feel all alone and have contemplated suicide and need to feel love, hope, and acceptance. I support that.

But when you release a video publicly on the internet you don’t get to select the audience. It doesn’t matter who you intended as your audience, with a topic like this it is automatically going to extend to members of the church at large, the media, and critics of the church. So while for the intended audience it may have been unnecessary to spell out the line between being same-sex attracted and acting on it contrary to the church, for the unintentional audience it would have been very helpful.

I suspect that many members of the church who would otherwise enthusiastically support and promote the “It Gets Better … at BYU” videos hesitate because of the ambiguity.  If the videos were to simply add a short statement that “you can find happiness in complying with the commandments and directions of the Lord through his prophets” or something about “finding peace through Jesus Christ and his Church” then we wouldn’t feel so trapped between trying to love and support our same-sex attracted brothers and sisters and upholding the correct doctrines of the church.

Unfortunately reports of the forum, also sponsored by the USGA, indicate that while the students who participated in the forum were all perfectly willing to abide by the university’s “honor code” while they were students, which prohibits acting upon same-sex attraction in compliance to the teachings of the LDS church, some of them also indicated that once they leave the university they fully intend to pursue same-sex relationships in defiance of the church. That gives the impression that the videos could have been purposefully ambiguous.

My inclination is to believe that the ambiguity of the videos represents a miscalculation about audience on the part of the group and not an intentional message. But I urge them to actively disambiguate their message and intention.

I highly recommend two blogs by faithful members of the LDS church who are same-sex attracted and believe in and comply with the teachings of the church about homosexuality:

(Gay) Mormon Guy and Gay Mormon Insights

Both of these brothers are wonderful, honest examples of the struggle to be faithful with same-sex attraction.  Both of them have also written about the USGA Forum and Videos which I have been discussing here. I encourage you to consider their thoughts on the subject as well:

From Mormon Guy:

Gay at BYU .. and in the Church

Original “It Gets Better” Post

It Gets Better … at BYU (A changed view from the original)

From Obadiah (who was present at the forum, but not a participant):

Choose the Right (2 nephi 2:27)

I have never had same-sex attraction, so I don’t know what that is like. But I do know what it is like to be bullied because you are different. Growing up, I didn’t have a strong interest in sports, popular music, or dating. I didn’t go to dances. I didn’t actively date or flirt with girls through all of high school or my freshman year at BYU. I didn’t even have any close friends who were girls. It wasn’t until after I had served an LDS mission that I began to date. I didn’t kiss a girl or have a girlfriend until I was almost 23 years old. I married just before I turned 24. There were people who probably thought I was gay. I had certainly been treated that way by bullies from time to time. I knew I was interested in girls, but nobody else knew that.

Homosexuality can be congenital. But I think that it is a mistake to conclude that therefore all homosexuality is congenital or that biological configuration is the only factor. I suspect that for many homosexuals it is a combination of factors, and the influence of one factor over another is going to be different for each individual. Abuse, societal pressure, influence by other homosexuals, and sin, as well as biological predisposition can all be factors.

Because it is multifaceted and individualized, many people who are same-sex attracted may never be able to change in this life, while others may have a great deal of success at changing. For one individual, biology may be a primary factor. For another, abuse may be the primary factor. They all need love. But we do them a disservice when we assume that it can only caused by being “born that way” and that the cause is the same for everyone.

Increasingly I’ve seen people use the phrase “God made them that way” or ‘God made me Homosexual.” Even if it were true that all homosexuality is 100% biological and unchangeable, we cannot logically conclude that “God made them homosexuals.” From a Christian perspective, the imperfections in the world are part of the Fall. Biological predispositions toward any behavior do not mean that God approves of that behavior.

Because of the Fall, we are all born with biological imperfections that influence our desires and our behaviors (the “natural man”). At best we can conclude that God allows a fallen world in which people may be born with biological imperfections and that he does so to accomplish a greater good. And He loves all of us, even with our imperfections. But we cannot conclude that the imperfections are actually the ideal and should be embraced. Instead they must be endured. We all need the grace of Jesus Christ as we endure our individualized imperfections and trials, looking forward with hope to the resurrection.

As the political battles over the definition of marriage have continued over the last few years, I have seen an increasing number of Latter-day Saints who seem to think that Marriage Privatization, often described as “Getting the Government out of the Marriage Business”, is both a good solution and consistent with the LDS Church’s Proclamation on the Family and its desire to preserve traditional marriage.

Privatizing marriage is the idea that the government should only recognize civil unions for both heterosexual and same-sex couples and that marriage would refer only to private religious ceremonies.

But they are wrong. Marriage privatization is not a solution, it is surrender.

It is doubtful that the government can ever conceivably get out of the marriage business, regardless of what we call it.

Marriage exists because of sex and procreation. In other words it is not just a construct, but is a refection of biological realities. When God instituted marriage between Adam and Eve, it was explicitly in terms of lawful procreation (“multiply and replenish”). A child is the literal manifestation of the physical union of woman and man. They are literally one flesh embodied in the child. Women have a natural right to claim support and protection from the man with whom they have become one through a child. Children, who are born helpless, have a natural right to the care and support of their parents until they are mature enough to support themselves.

Because of biological constraints imposed by sexual reproduction, throughout history it has always been easier to correctly identify the mother of a child than to identify the father. Because it is the proper role of government to protect the natural rights of the people, government will always have an interest in protecting the rights of women to support from the father of their children, and in protecting the rights of children to the support of their parents.

A great deal of law arises out of the government’s responsibility to protect these natural rights and to enforce natural responsibilities. Until the advent of DNA testing, there was no easy way to prove paternity, and since so much of inheritance property rights and other law involve issues of paternity, it was natural for government to give preference to exclusive sexual relationships created by contract to establish legal maternity and paternity for children. Children born outside the contract were considered “illegitimate” because there was no easy way to prove who the father was.

So Civil Marriage arose out of a biological, natural, and legal necessity. As long as government must be involved in the issues of paternity (inheritance; child support; abandonment; adoption; dividing assets between divorcees; protecting parental rights related to education, discipline, and health) government will have an interest in marriage.

Additionally, because the fulfillment of natural parental responsibilities has a direct influence on the civilization of children, when the government fails to support the natural rights of children to claim support, care, and proper civilization by parents, the children become less civilized, more dependent on government, and more of a legal burden on society as a whole.

To say that government has no business in regulating and enforcing parental obligations toward their minor children, or spouses toward each other, or property rights between family members, is to advocate chaos and to deny these natural rights.

There is simply no way for the government to get out of marriage.

So, when most people advocate for marriage privatization, what they are really advocating is a semantic game that lets the gay marriage movement win while appeasing those who are concerned about marriage with a superficial language change. They take what we currently call “marriage” and re-label it a “civil union” and take what we currently call a “commitment ceremony” (which has no legal meaning) and re-label it “marriage”. And since same-sex couples can easily find someone who will be willing to perform a commitment ceremony (now labeled “marriage”), they get to claim both the extra-legal “marriage” label and the legal construct formerly known as “marriage” now labeled a “civil union”.

Marriage privatization is simply a case of calling surrender “victory” to make the losers feel better.

As the image included at the top says, “The simplest solutions are often the cleverest. They are also usually wrong.”

I hope that LDS proponents of marriage privatization will reconsider. It is impossible to construe surrender, even when it is labeled “victory”, as the kind of defense of traditional marriage that the Prophets and Apostles of the LDS church advocate.

[See: What Is Marriage? (PDF) by Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, & Ryan T. Anderson for a more extensive academic argument for government recognition of traditional marriage]

View the full large version here (5.8 Mb, 4767 x 4767 px)

For many of you, the initial reaction to this image is probably something like “Cool! Uh…what?” So let me give an overview of what you are looking at, followed by a more in-depth explanation of the technical details.

What is Sentiment Analysis?

Computer programmers and linguists have developed algorithms which take a sentence or paragraph and try to automatically identify the feeling, or sentiment, of the words. Most commonly these algorithms try to identify polarity. Basically, polarity means whether what is being said is positive, negative, or neutral. That automated determination is called sentiment analysis. More ambitious systems go beyond polarity and try to identify specific emotions like happy, angry, or sad.

On the Internet, millions of people are constantly talking about almost everything. Google, Facebook, or Twitter can run sentiment analysis on all the posts and status updates made on their services to identify trends around specific words– not just the most frequent searches or popular topics, but trends in how people feel about those topics.

That kind of information can be extremely valuable. Without disclosing any personal information, Facebook could conceivably gather sentiment analysis of all the posts by its users on a given topic and sell the aggregate information to interested parties. That is part of the reason why Google has made a tremendous effort to get a piece of the social web and created Google+.

Technologically progressive companies, politicians, and other entities can tap into sentiment data to get an idea of how huge numbers of people on social websites feel about their products, brands, policies, or people. For instance, the LDS Church could run an ongoing sentiment analysis of all public posts on Twitter that mention words related to the church (like LDS, Mormon, Joseph Smith, BYU, or Proposition 8 ) and watch the negative or positive changes over time in relation to events, ad campaigns, or announcements.

Whether you were aware of it or not, these web companies are already using sentiment analysis in exactly this way. For instance, just last month Facebook posted a graph comparing current Republican presidential candidates based on sentiment analysis of the status updates of their users.

In Google’s 2011 Zeitgeist they also included sentiment analysis results for Republican presidential candidates, as well as many other topics.

I understand that the church is not yet using sentiment analysis of public social network posts to measure positive and negative reactions on the web, but that it is something that they are currently working on.

Sentiment Analysis of the Bible

The idea of running sentiment analysis on scripture didn’t originate with me. Sentiment analysis can be run on any selection of writing and a smart blogger at openbible.info (a site that posts a lot of great projects that apply technology to scripture) realized that just as it can be run on twitter posts, sentiment analysis can be run on verses of scripture. He used a free sentiment analysis service to analyze multiple English translations of every verse in the Bible, and then devised a stunning visualization to display the results. The post got some attention among technology geeks on Google+ where I saw it.

I contacted the author who was kind enough to freely supply me with the code he used to generate the visualization so that I could adapt it for my own purposes.

Sentiment Analysis of the Book of Mormon

To produce the sentiment analysis visualization of the Book of Mormon, I wrote a custom program that submitted every verse to the same sentiment analysis service that had been used to produce the Bible visualization. The service rated each verse as either positive or negative and returned a probability that the analysis was correct. Like the Bible image, I used the probability as a reasonable proxy for sentiment intensity.

The visualization draws a moving average of the sentiment (black is positive, red is negative) in order to see if the sentiment analysis can bring out patterns in the Book of Mormon narrative.

I had some doubts about the validity of parts of the sentiment analysis of the bible; after all the algorithms had been developed to analyze modern English language on the Internet, not the archaic Jacobean English translation of the Bible or the translation of the Book of Mormon. So I was curious to see what it would do with the Book of Mormon.

I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide whether the sentiment patterns identified by the program make sense, and if they provide any additional insights. So please share your observations.

Anyhow this has been a fun tangential project. I’m not sure if it really illuminates much other than being a fun, compact, geeky way to represent the whole Book of Mormon.

But now I really need to get back to my rewrite of the Scripturelog project.

Technical Details & Raw Data

Thanks to my continuing work on the Scripturelog project, I already had a convenient database of every verse in the LDS scriptural cannon to start from. Like the original bible visualization, I used the free version of the ViralHeat API to do the actual sentiment analysis of each verse. The free version of the API has a limit on the number of queries that can be made each day, but it didn’t take too long to retrieve and store the sentiment and probability for all 6,604 verses in the Book of Mormon.

I made sure that I was able to reproduce the exact bible visualization that had been posted at openbible.info to be sure I understood how the code interpreted the data. The program expected a tab delimited text file containing moving averages of 15 and 150 verses on each side of the sentiment data. I used the free Tableu Public program to produce the moving averages, and then export them into a LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet. Then I ran the PHP program on the resulting data to generate the visualization.

I then scanned through the entire Book of Mormon and wrote my own short summaries of every single chapter so that they could be displayed by the program around the sentiment visual, similar to the bible visualization.

The first draft was interesting and I was very excited about it. After a close look I noticed a couple of problems, even though it did show some fascinating and promising patterns. For instance, the last chapter of the Book of Ether looked positive, even though it is clearly one of the most bloody, terrible parts of the whole volume. On closer examination I discovered that this was an effect of the moving average. Even though the raw data indicated that the last chapter of Ether was indeed very negative, because the beginning chapters of the subsequent Book of Moroni was so extremely positive, the average masked the negativity near the transition.

The moving average is necessary to smooth out the data enough to bring out some patterns visually, so some of this kind of effect is unavoidable from chapter to chapter, but I decided that at a minimum I should run the moving averages only within the largest logical narrative divisions. I re-calculated separate moving averages for the Small Plates of Nephi (1st Nephi through Omni), Mormon’s abridgement of the Large Plates (Words of Mormon through Mormon), the Book of Ether, and finally the Book of Moroni. The Book of Moroni had so few verses that a moving average of 150 verses basically flattened the data completely, so for that book I used a much lower number of verses in the moving average.  Then I adjusted the visualization program to show these divisions and regenerated the image.

At this point I also corrected another source of error. The ViralHeat API has a limitation of 360 characters of text (including spaces and punctuation) per analysis query. In my original script I had simply truncated each verse at 360 characters. In the entire King James translation of the Old Testament, there are only 28 verses that have more than 28 characters. The New Testament only has 1 verse with more than 360 characters. So it made sense to truncate these few long verses without worrying too much about it causing a lot of error.

The Book of Mormon, in contrast, has 538 verses with more than 360 characters, including 2 that are greater than 720! So when these verses were truncated to 360 characters before being analyzed the chances were pretty high that the analysis would come back wrong because the sentences would be syntactically and semantically incomplete.

To correct this problem, I modified my original script to break long verses up into chunks smaller than 360 characters by identifying sentences and clauses that were as likely to be semantically viable. The program favored ends of sentences (periods, question marks, exclamation points) within a verse as dividing points, but failing to find those, looked for semicolons, colons, and hyphens, and failing those fell back on commas and then spaces. Then it submitted these smaller pieces for analysis and stored the results for each one. Then I averaged the resulting sentiment to produce a more accurate sentiment for the entire verse.

With the new separation of the moving average into larger narrative section and the improved sentiment analysis for longer verses, the visualization was starting to take shape.

I noticed, however, that the Book of Mormon visualization was smoother than that of the bible, with longer continuous sections of negativity instead of frequent ups and downs. I realized that the smoothing effect of a moving average of 150 verses on each side was proportionally smaller in relation to the total number of 31,102 verses in the Bible than to the 6,604 of the Book of Mormon. So I recalculated the moving average using 32 verses on each side to produce a similar smoothing effect to the Bible.  And that resulted in the image at the beginning of the post.

For anyone who wants to play with it, I am making the raw sentiment data for all of the verses of the Book of Mormon available. In the raw data the sentiment is represented as a number from 0 (negative) to 1 (positive). You can download it as a tab delimited text file here:

book-of-mormon-sentiment-raw.csv

Using the raw data, and the free Tableu Public program linked above you should be able to play around with the data and produce your own graphs without too much technical knowledge and without needing to program anything. I’d love to hear about anything interesting anyone else does with it.  Please mention my contribution or link back here in any derivative works. Thanks!

Because of this contrast, more than a few Paul supporters have demonized Romney as the functional equivalent of President Barack Obama, and many indicate that if Romney becomes the Republican candidate they will vote for a third party candidate or refuse to vote altogether. Quite a few Romney supporters, on the other hand, demonize Ron Paul as a crazy, conspiracy theorist whose views are simply too extreme to take seriously.

What most people don’t seem to realize is that, ideological differences aside, if you compare the details of what Ron Paul and Mitt Romney say they plan to actually do as President they are much more similar than the characterizations would lead you to think.

Here is a table of what Ron Paul would do as President, adapted from Ron Paul’s “Plan to Restore America” on his official website, side-by-side with the similar portions of Mitt Romney’s “Believe in America” plan on his official website:

As you can see, 70% of the individual measures that Paul and Romney are proposing are the same or very similar. The 70% in which they match consist of practical measures that can be implemented to shrink the size of government and improve the economy.

The 30% of measures which Paul proposes that Romney doesn’t consist primarily of the more drastic measures, many of which are appealing to some limited-government and libertarian conservatives. This 30% would need to be planned out in far more detail before they could be realistically implemented. Things like abolishing all foreign aid and eliminating whole federal agencies require practical phase-out transitional planning to win wider support, as well as cooperation from a congress that is sure to resist drastic changes.

Politics in the U.S. is all about coalition building. Ron Paul knows that his chances of becoming the Republican nominee are slim. But he’s playing the game to get as many delegates to the convention as he can so that his libertarian views will be assured a more influential place within the Republican coalition.

Romney would deliver most of the more practical measures that Paul supporters would get from a Ron Paul presidency and by sticking in the party, Paul guarantees that the Republicans will make concessions to appeal to his sizable faction. That means that a Romney Presidency would be smart to include Paul in some fashion. He might even get to audit the Fed and move the TSA closer to extinction.

I suspect that Ron Paul knows that he will accomplish a lot more in this way then he could by drawing away his supporters as a 3rd party candidate.

Unfortunately, some of Paul’s supporters don’t seem to be as wise as Ron Paul himself. They are so uncompromising that they are willing to sacrifice the chance to get 70% of what Paul would do and the chance to have their views wield more influence in the Republican party because they will refuse to vote for Romney if he is the nominee. And if that inflexibility results in four more years of a Democratic party controlled White House, that would be a tragic mistake.

Intraparty political contests are all about focusing on difference and ideology. Candidates need to distinguish themselves from their opponents in order to compete and attract supporters. But it is also valuable to counterbalance the difference with a realistic look at similarities. If we neglect the comparable and complementary and only look at the contrast we risk a distorted, unbalanced perception.

So vote for Ron Paul in the primary elections if you believe he is the best candidate, or if you want to see his positions have more influence.  But don’t refuse to vote for Romney, who may likely be the nominee, because he isn’t Ron Paul.  And if you are a Mitt Romney supporter, don’t demonize Ron Paul supporters.  They hope to accomplish many of the same things, and they make a positive contribution to supporting limited, constitutional government.

For the best view, and especially for printing, I recommend downloading it as a PDF document:

Timeline-Book-of-Mormon-and-Old-Testament-Prophets.pdf

The timeline has a few flaws.

For one, I am certainly not a graphic designer. I created it using LibreOffice Calc so that I could update the date ranges easily without having to re-create the graphic from scratch.

For another, the correct date ranges for some of the prophets are notoriously difficult to pin down. I’ve placed the prophets according to the best information my research could find and I’ve included a little margin of error in the date ranges. The more ancient prophets are especially fuzzy, so the ranges tend to indicate a longer period in which they may have been operating. For those prophets for whom there are multiple proposed dates with little consensus, like Joel, I have selected the date ranges that made the most sense to me based on the information I had, but marked them with a lighter background to indicate that there are other possible placements.

I am also aware that scholars believe that books like Jonah and Daniel may have been written after the Babylonian captivity and that others may have been written over a period of time by multiple authors under the same name. However, I have opted to place the prophets in the time when the events of these books are set or when the prophet to whom the writings are attributed likely lived.

Along the right side the prophets are listed in the order they appear in books of the Old Testament and Book of Mormon to make it easy to correlate the book order to the timeline. It also identifies which group of Hebrew and Christian scriptures the book comes from (Major Prophets, Minor Prophets, The Writings) and the Book of Mormon.

I hope it will be as helpful to others as you study the Book of Mormon and Old Testament as it has been to me.

First, a little background: We don’t do Santa at our house. We all make or get presents for each other. All of our children are almost as excited about the gifts they are giving as they are about what they might get. I’ve been teasing the kids all week by telling them that if I couldn’t find anything cool to give them I would just give them all coloring books. Not that coloring books would be a bad gift. But they have received a number of coloring books for birthdays and such and I know that it really isn’t something they want.

It’s Christmas Eve.

With some of our extended family we’ve shared a meal, had a nice time singing Christmas Carols around the piano, and re-enacted the story of Christ’s birth while reading the account from the New Testament.

Throughout the evening our youngest son, who will turn five years old in February, has not wanted to participate.

As I try to get him ready for bed, we have the following conversation:

Me: “Son, you need to go to bed now so you can wake up early tomorrow to open your presents.”

Son: “I’m not tired yet.”

Me: “But don’t you want to go to sleep so you can wake up early for Christmas and get your coloring book?”

Son: “I don’t want a coloring book for Christmas.”

Then he pauses, looks up into my face with a compassionate smile, and says with absolute sincerity:

“It’s okay, dad. I love you even if you only get me a coloring book.”

Then he throws his arms around me and hugs me close.

Choking up, I hug him back.

Me: “I love you too!”

Best Christmas present ever. Eat your heart out Santa!

I did get him something better than a coloring book. But he doesn’t know that yet.

“At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

“And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

“Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.”

“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

- Matthew Chapter 18 verses 1 through 6

The Creator of all literally became a little child. And they laid him in a manger because their was no room at the inn. And he did it because he loves us.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

I mean seriously folks, how can you continue to debate tertiary considerations like moral character, policy position, political philosophy, consistency, trustworthiness, or experience while this primary consideration is still so hotly contested? Can we really risk the chance of having another Andrew Jackson or Martin Van Buren? I mean, whoever we pick could someday end up on our money, hair and all!

Speaking of hair, isn’t it about time we had a President with facial hair again? I mean it has been nearly 100 years since we had a president with a mustache (Taft, 1913) and almost 120 years since we had a president with a full beard (Harrison, 1893)! If the president had one, then maybe BYU would start allowing students to have them too.

Whichever candidate grows a beard before the election will get my vote. Even if it is Michelle Bachmann. That’s just how important this election is.

Nearly as important, I already have a pretty good idea of which actor would play Mitt Romney in the inevitable movie, should he win. But who would play Newt Gingrich if he wins?!

[All satire aside, isn't it scary to think that a large number of citizens choose the candidate for whom they will vote based upon criteria not so different from this. If they bother to vote at all...]

Though it has received some attention in the press, most people still seem to be unaware of the pedophilia problem in Afghanistan:

“In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called “dancing boys” a “widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape.”

Even though the practices are illegal in Afghanistan, they are culturally acceptable and the laws are rarely enforced.

In recent months we have found out that pedophilia is also wide-spread in Hollywood. Former child-star Corey Feldman has come forward as a victim of Hollywood pedophilia:

“I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. That’s the biggest problem for children in this industry… It’s the big secret.”

Feldman won’t name names at this point, but his claim is backed up by a couple of other Hollywood stars, including Alison Arngrim who was a child star on Little House on the Prairie:

“I literally heard that they were ‘passed around. The word was that they were given drugs and being used for sex. It was awful – these were kids, they weren’t 18 yet. There were all sorts of stories about everyone from their, quote, ‘set guardians’ on down that these two had been sexually abused and were totally being corrupted in every possible way.”

Hollywood condemns the sexual repression imposed by religious conservatives and in turn Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan decry the perversions of the sexual liberation pushed by Hollywood and the Great Satan. And yet both turn a blind eye to the gross sexual abuse of children perpetuated among their own.

Whited sepulchers indeed.

So here is a little supposal:

Think of a presidential candidate that you do not support.  Now put the candidate’s name into the appropriate places in the following passage:

And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should support [a specific candidate] for President; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I supported a [candidate of that ideology/party/record]. And I shrunk and would that I might not support [her/him].

And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold it is the Lord’s desire that [that candidate] be President of the United States…

We spend a lot of time debating and defending our political beliefs, and comparing political candidates to our ideals. But what if, regardless of political party, or ideology, or record, or aptitude, or personality, or anything else we might use to judge our candidates, the Lord for His own reasons wants you to support a candidate different than the one you would choose?

It seems likely that most of the time He will leave it up to our best judgement. But we should also be open to the possibility that He will prompt us contrary to our reasoning. We should make sure that we consult with the Lord in prayer about who we should support in our political decisions and not rely solely on our own understanding and political philosophies.

So, continuing with the supposal:

Once the Lord has communicated his desire, how do you go about supporting the candidate? You can’t say that you honestly agree with the candidate’s positions.

You could say that he is the best person for the job, but since you don’t know the reason why the Lord wants him in office, you don’t know that for sure. Maybe she is not the best person, but the Lord wants her in office for some other reason.  All you know is that for some unknown reason, God has told you to support the election of this person.

You do not have the authority or stewardship to tell others that they should vote for the candidate because you have received a revelation that the Lord wants that candidate to be president.

And you’ve spent the last few years establishing your bonafides in a political position contrary to that of the candidate.  Now you will look like a flip-flopper, or even worse, incoherent.

So what do you do?

Before 1972, the auxiliary organizations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including the Relief Society, the Primary, Sunday School, and the Young Men and Young Women Organizations were largely directed at the stake or ward level, and the curriculum could vary from ward to ward.  A Correlation Committee had existed since 1908, but the First Presidency of the Church under the direction of President Harold B. Lee placed all organizations, curricula, and periodicals under the direction of the priesthood and established departments to  standardize and correlate the programs of the church.

As recently as the April 2010 General Conference, President Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles referred to this change in his talk “The Power of the Priesthood“, asserting that it is an inspired program, and quoting President Monson, who was an Apostle at the time:

Years ago we began correlation under the direction of President Harold B. Lee. At that time President Thomas S. Monson said: “Today, we are encamped against the greatest array of sin, vice, and evil ever assembled before our eyes. … The battle plan whereby we fight to save the souls of men is not our own. It [came through] the inspiration and revelation of the Lord.”

During those years of correlation, the whole operating face of the Church was changed. The entire curriculum was restructured. The objectives and relationships of the organizations one to another were redefined. The key word during those years of correlation and restructuring was priesthood.

For more information on Correlation, see these entries in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism: Correlation of the Church Administration, Curriculum .

With that background, I want to draw your attention to an interesting article posted recently on the On the Square Blog of the religious periodical First Things:

A New Translation and an Old Fight

The author, professor Geoffrey M. Vaughan, talks about a practice common among Catholics which he calls “Church Shopping” in which church members shop around for a parish which matches not only their aesthetic tastes, but their ideological views. He refers to parishes where the language and order of mass has been altered to conform to liberal cultural attitudes, such as omitting gender-specific language.

In contrast, the LDS Church’s approach of not letting members “ward shop” and instead assigning congregations by geographic location prevents, for the most part, the aggregation of members with non-mainstream views into like-minded wards. So while the Catholic Church has whole parishes where they omit gender-specific references to God, or introduce their own variations on Mass, such modifications in any LDS ward would be considered a clear case of apostasy.

However, according to the article, the Catholic Church, under Pope Benedict XVI is about to impose its own form of “Correlation”.

The Vatican has produced a new English translation of Mass and they want all parishes to discontinue their current presentation and use the new official translation and implementation instead. The new translation officially goes into effect on November 27th, the First Sunday of Advent.

This will be a test of the hierarchical priesthood authority construct of Catholicism on the parish level. The liberal parishes that have assiduously removed gender-specific language from their presentation of mass, or made other changes, will have to choose whether to submit to or flout the authority of Rome. Also at play is the fact that the members in general have not been well prepared for the impending change. Many are unaware that it is coming. So if the selection of their particular parish when “church shopping” was dependent on certain variations in the liturgy, they will be surprised if their parish submits to the new official liturgy.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the Catholic Church.

Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like to carp and murmur about Correlation, but it really does seem to be a very effective way, along with geographically assigned wards, to prevent the kind of fragmentation and apostasy that could arise otherwise.  Of course, that is probably why some of them hate it so much. As President Monson testified, and was reaffirmed last year by President Packer, Correlation came through inspiration and revelation from the Lord and was implemented by those holding the Priesthood Keys for the direction of His church.  It protects the church from sin, vice, and apostasy.

Though I am not a prolific poet, the poetry I write is usually infused with gospel concepts and imagery. But I had never thought of poetry so directly inspired by scriptural narratives before.

As is usual for me, the time between when the idea for a poem occurs to me and when I actually write it is substantial. It has been well over a year, and I am now approaching the one year anniversary of my trip to Israel for Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles.

This last Sunday, I sat down and wrote a draft of the first poem, and then honed it during the next day and a half. Hope you enjoy it.

____________________________

By the Hand of Uriah
( 2 Samuel 11 : 14 – 15 )

Just open it! one roared a goading taunt,
and then the rest in chorus joined the dare.
We face the foe alone, the king doth not,
so open up the letter that you bear.

For not a moment tempted was his eye.
Oh faithless fools! he shouted as he stood.
Though least among his mighty men am I,
with Israel’s king I stand; his word is good.

My honor tried by query of the king,
though sore I yearned to know my wife once more,
while cov’nant’s ark in tent doth dwell, such thing
I would not do and slept outside the door.

To my hand commends the king what he did write.
In vain his trust is not, as God’s my light!

____________________________

Read more of my original poetry.

I have repeatedly found that the best scholarship and writing concerning the Constitution comes from the good folks at the Claremont Institute.

Thomas G. West and Douglas A. Jeffrey, both senior fellows at the Claremont Institute, have published a booklet entitled “The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government in America”, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to better understand the Constitution and the dangers presented by our modern abandonment of its principles.

It is available as a free PDF document here:

The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government in America: A Guide to Understanding the Principles of the American Founding (PDF)

“No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles”

- Virginia Bill of Rights, June 12, 1776

The Constitution does not contain its own explanation. It says how the government should function, but it does not explain why it should function that way. To understand the Constitution we have to look at the principles invoked in the Declaration of Independence and the other writings of the founders.

West and Jeffrey manage to give an excellent explanation in just over 50 pages that is easily accessible to most adults and teens, and a great resource for teachers and parents looking for a guide to teaching children about our Constitutional Republic.

Read it today and share it with your friends and family!

The new LDS manual for Mormon Women is now available in PDF format.

The official website for the book is:

http://lds.org/relief-society/daughters-in-my-kingdom

The book is unique among the church’s modern manuals in that it is the work of a single author, Sister Susan Tanner, and not written by a committee.

Even though it’s been a while, he recently rediscovered this video he shot of a couple of Mormon missionaries from West Africa singing the LDS missionary anthem, “Called to Serve” and he just put it up on YouTube.

With all of the potential pop-cultural misperceptions of Mormon missionaries resulting from the “Book of Mormon” Musical, I thought it would be useful to share a taste of real LDS missionaries in Africa.  Enjoy!