The Importance of Compasses and Reliable Instruments
Play a couple of guessing games with a "standard" and then the right "standard":
1. How much does it weigh?
2. How long is it?
Is it important to have reliable instruments when building a house? cooking? flying?
Then what about living your life and people telling you how to live it?
You are ultimately responsible for how you live your life
While you may receive guidance from your parents, your teachers, your friends, the prophets and any number of people and voices in the world today, at the end of it all, it is up to you to decide.
My goal today, is drive this single point home: You (each of us) wholly own our thoughts and actions. As such, each of us has to take that responsibility seriously. At the end of the day (or this life) we can't say, "my parents made me do it" or "I was just trying to follow my leaders."
Nuremburg Trials
After WWII, the Allies put many of the Nazi leaders and industrialists on trial for their war crimes. Many tried to use the defense, "I was only following orders." But in many cases, that defense was not successful, because the crimes they committed were so egregious - essentially the Allies were saying "you should have known better as a human being." The Wikipedia page on "Superior orders" does a good job explaining this.
Mark Hofmann, the Prophet and Forgeries
Everyone can be deceived; which is why it is so important for each of us to really check our assumptions and underlying philosophy. We simply cannot outsource our personal philosophy or religion.
As primary kids, we sang the song "Follow The Prophet"; the chorus goes:
Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,
Follow the prophet; don’t go astray.
Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,
Follow the prophet; he knows the way.
Each of the verses talks about how people regretted not following the prophet. Unfortunately, "the knife cuts both ways." There have been times when people did follow the prophet and regretted it.
It is wise to remember we all, including prophets, are fallible and subject to deception. Again, this underscores the fact that we need to be responsible for our own beliefs and philosophy - we can't just delegate this responsibility to others.
Case in point is a man by the name of Mark Hofmann and how he deceived many of the leaders of the LDS church. It all started, if you recall, when Joseph Smith and Martin Harris attempted to get a professor to vouch for the reformed Egyptian characters. The professor's name was Charles Anthon. Martin Harris took a paper with some of the Egyptian characters on it and asked Anthon if they were legitimate. Supposedly Anthon said they were, and he signed a document stating as such. But upon further inquiry, Harris told him all about how Joseph found and translated the Gold Plates, at which point, Anthon asked back for the paper and ripped it up. What became of the paper that had the Egyptian characters is up for debate. No one really knows if it still exists today or not; it is called the Anthon Transcript. Under this cover, Mark Hofmann created a forgery and claimed it was the real transcript. He took it to Church leaders, who evaluated it, were deceived by the excellent forgery, and then proceeded to purchase the forgery for $20,000. Thus began Mark Hoffman's career in forging Church History artifacts.
He continued to create forgeries and the Church continued to collaborate with him and purchase them. Hofmann was secretly trying to make the leaders look bad. He created what was called the Salamander Letter, which basically tried to make it sound like the angel Moroni did not visit Joseph Smith, but instead a spirit in the form of a white salamander, appeared to Joseph at the time of him obtaining the gold plates. The Church bought this letter, which caused many members to stop believing in Joseph as a prophet. Many top Church leaders, including President Oaks, defended the forgery. What is even more fascinating is that two avid critics of the Church (Jerald and Sandra Tanner) readily criticized the forged letter, saying it was fake, despite the Church saying it was real. At this point in the story, you may begin to feel a bit of vertigo yourself. Who can you trust? Who is right? Who is telling the truth? And you'd be right and justified in asking those questions.
Eventually Hofmann was caught in his lies and, sadly, killed people who were catching on to his lies. To this day, he sits in a Utah prison.
Who can you trust? What measuring stick or instrument can you rely on? What is constant and unchangeable and undeviating? That is the real question we must all try to find.
What is the 'measuring stick' for life?
Again, each of you will need to decide what your moral compass is. You may find that what you think is right, is actually not. You may find that after going down a path - a way of life - you conclude it was not right for you. Many claim to know what the correct philosophy is, but it is interesting that on some points they agree and on some points they disagree.
For me, personally, I think it all boils down to the two great commandments:
1. Love God with your whole heart
2. Love others
If we do well in those two commandments, we can comfortably stand before God at judgement day, and honestly say we've lived those two commandments, then that is the best we can do.
Focus on finding contentment and happiness in things you can control. Accept the things that are not in your control. After repeated practice, you will begin to find that virtues such as self-discipline, courage, justice and wisdom are indeed in your control and are also the attributes, which if you develop, will bring you contentment in your life. Other things that may worry you, such as pursuing money or lucrative career, seeking a life of ease and pleasure, indulging in excess, selfishness, dishonesty, fear, anxiety or general worry - these things are not important and are generally out of your control - so why set your heart on them?
Heart Failure
Why would our hearts fail us? Read this post to find out.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Saturday, April 14, 2018
April Week 3 - Apostasy & Restoration
How can I liken the events of the apostasy and restoration to my life?
What does the word Apostasy mean?
It is almost always used in a religious context
It means, "the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief"
But isn't it really just a fancy way of saying someone got new information or their convictions changed and they decided to do something different?
As a missionary, I asked many Catholics and Evangelicals to apostatize from their religious beliefs and convictions
What does the word Dogma mean?
"a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true"
Then read a Dr. Seuss book to the class: The Sneetches and The Zax
What were the convictions or beliefs of the Sneetches and Zax?
Did some change their mind? Some Sneetches did, but the Zax did not.
Did any of it matter? (not really, in fact the whole thing is laughable and sad. The one dude made a ton of money off of the ridiculousness of the Sneetches wanting to be "right", while the Zax - that is just sad.)
What is the relationship between Apostasy and Dr. Seuss?
What beliefs and dogmas did the Sneetches and Zax have?
Did the Sneetches apostatize? Did the Zax?
At some point, you have to ask yourself if your beliefs and dogmas (or what you're being told to believe), really matters or not. Then you have to decide: what really matters in this life?
Let's look at a few examples:
What are core beliefs of Islam?
- Belief in Allah as the one and only God
- Belief in angels
- Belief in holy books
- Belief in the prophets (Adam, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus)
- Belief in Judgement Day
- Belief in Predestination
What are core beliefs of Judaism?
- God exists; is one and unique; and is incorporeal (no body); is eternal
- Pray to God and no other
- Belief in the Prophets
- The Written Torah (first five books of Bible) - there is or will not be any other Torah
- God knows the thoughts and deeds of men
- God will reward the good and punish the wicked
- The Messiah will come
- The dead will be resurrected
What are the core beliefs of Christianity?
- Belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son of Go and the Holy Spirit
- The death, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension of Christ
- The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints
- Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful
Even within Christianity; there is a fundamental dispute about the nature of God, along with other topics.
So you have to ask yourself a few questions:
1. Does belief in a dogma matter?
a. Some people think it is all spaghetti (see CotFSM)
b. Some become agnostic or atheist
c. For others, it is important to belief in a dogma
2. If so, then you are faced with a decision about which one?
3. Are they all correct? Are they all incorrect? Is there just one that is endorsed by God? Or are there two, three?
What does Apostasy mean in the Mormon context?
After Christianity was established, Mormons believe the power, beliefs and traditions of the Apostles were lost. Catholics believe it was never lost - power went to Peter and down through the Popes.
All through the time of the Apostles and down through the many hundreds and thousands of years, it was just the Catholic church with a few deviations.
Watch this 26 minute video, which I think, does a pretty good job explaining how we got here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH79F0Hn56U … focus on the explanation. Towards the end, he reveals his opinion and you can decide to agree or disagree.
Then a guy by the name of Martin Luther came along and protested against the Catholic church - thus started the Reformation as well as Protestant Religions.
As a side note, check out this mind-blowing podcast about Martin Luther and the Muster Rebellion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN8A4ygoEgo / https://player.fm/series/dan-carlins-hardcore-history/show-48-prophets-of-doom)
The bigger new churches / denominations are:
Lutheran (i.e. Martin Luther)
Anglican
Calvinist
Methodist
Baptist
Among this time with all the "new" churches established, a new wave spiritualism / revivalism began in upstate New York. There was so much preaching and debating among the churches there, it was referred to as the Burned Over District (see the Wikipedia entry on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district)
It was during this time that Joseph Smith had his own reckoning with religion and would soon introduce the Mormon version of the Restoration of the gospel via the translation of the Book of Mormon, the visitation from John the Baptist for the Aaronic Priesthood and Peter, James and John for the Melchizedek Priesthood. And then temples, Masonic rituals and polygamy were introduced followed by multiple iterations of Mormon beliefs from the 1850s to the present day based on "continuing revelation."
What does the word Apostasy mean?
It is almost always used in a religious context
It means, "the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief"
But isn't it really just a fancy way of saying someone got new information or their convictions changed and they decided to do something different?
As a missionary, I asked many Catholics and Evangelicals to apostatize from their religious beliefs and convictions
What does the word Dogma mean?
"a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true"
Then read a Dr. Seuss book to the class: The Sneetches and The Zax
What were the convictions or beliefs of the Sneetches and Zax?
Did some change their mind? Some Sneetches did, but the Zax did not.
Did any of it matter? (not really, in fact the whole thing is laughable and sad. The one dude made a ton of money off of the ridiculousness of the Sneetches wanting to be "right", while the Zax - that is just sad.)
What is the relationship between Apostasy and Dr. Seuss?
What beliefs and dogmas did the Sneetches and Zax have?
Did the Sneetches apostatize? Did the Zax?
At some point, you have to ask yourself if your beliefs and dogmas (or what you're being told to believe), really matters or not. Then you have to decide: what really matters in this life?
Let's look at a few examples:
What are core beliefs of Islam?
- Belief in Allah as the one and only God
- Belief in angels
- Belief in holy books
- Belief in the prophets (Adam, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus)
- Belief in Judgement Day
- Belief in Predestination
What are core beliefs of Judaism?
- God exists; is one and unique; and is incorporeal (no body); is eternal
- Pray to God and no other
- Belief in the Prophets
- The Written Torah (first five books of Bible) - there is or will not be any other Torah
- God knows the thoughts and deeds of men
- God will reward the good and punish the wicked
- The Messiah will come
- The dead will be resurrected
What are the core beliefs of Christianity?
- Belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son of Go and the Holy Spirit
- The death, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension of Christ
- The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints
- Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful
Even within Christianity; there is a fundamental dispute about the nature of God, along with other topics.
So you have to ask yourself a few questions:
1. Does belief in a dogma matter?
a. Some people think it is all spaghetti (see CotFSM)
b. Some become agnostic or atheist
c. For others, it is important to belief in a dogma
2. If so, then you are faced with a decision about which one?
3. Are they all correct? Are they all incorrect? Is there just one that is endorsed by God? Or are there two, three?
What does Apostasy mean in the Mormon context?
After Christianity was established, Mormons believe the power, beliefs and traditions of the Apostles were lost. Catholics believe it was never lost - power went to Peter and down through the Popes.
All through the time of the Apostles and down through the many hundreds and thousands of years, it was just the Catholic church with a few deviations.
Watch this 26 minute video, which I think, does a pretty good job explaining how we got here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH79F0Hn56U … focus on the explanation. Towards the end, he reveals his opinion and you can decide to agree or disagree.
Then a guy by the name of Martin Luther came along and protested against the Catholic church - thus started the Reformation as well as Protestant Religions.
As a side note, check out this mind-blowing podcast about Martin Luther and the Muster Rebellion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN8A4ygoEgo / https://player.fm/series/dan-carlins-hardcore-history/show-48-prophets-of-doom)
The bigger new churches / denominations are:
Lutheran (i.e. Martin Luther)
Anglican
Calvinist
Methodist
Baptist
Among this time with all the "new" churches established, a new wave spiritualism / revivalism began in upstate New York. There was so much preaching and debating among the churches there, it was referred to as the Burned Over District (see the Wikipedia entry on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district)
It was during this time that Joseph Smith had his own reckoning with religion and would soon introduce the Mormon version of the Restoration of the gospel via the translation of the Book of Mormon, the visitation from John the Baptist for the Aaronic Priesthood and Peter, James and John for the Melchizedek Priesthood. And then temples, Masonic rituals and polygamy were introduced followed by multiple iterations of Mormon beliefs from the 1850s to the present day based on "continuing revelation."
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