First, read this quote from James Talmage’s Jesus is the Christ, which is quoted (among other places) in the Doctrines of the Gospel manual (published in 2000):

“For over seventeen hundred years on the eastern hemisphere, and for more than fourteen centuries on the western, there appears to have been silence between the heavens and the earth. Of direct revelation from God to man during this long interval, we have no authentic record.”

Then, read this quote from Elder Ballard’s 1994 General Conference talk:

Read More

One of the things I like to do when I read scriptures is to add Heavenly Mother in. Where it says “God” I add “and Goddess,” where it says “Father” I read it as “Parents,” and where it says “Lord” I add “and Lady.”

Because we are studying Doctrine and Covenants in Sunday School this year, I thought it would be interesting to re-imagine the First Vision with God the Mother introducing Christ. So I opened up my scriptures and read,

When the light rested upon me Isaw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!

Read More

This past fall, our stake president introduced me to a new way to look at the miracles of Jesus feeding the multitude, which I wanted to share here. The feeding of the multitude is the only miracle that is mentioned in all four gospels, and in Matthew and Mark, there are multiple versions of the miracle. It has obviously touched the hearts of the early Christians for it to be recorded so often, and is dear to us today.

To feed thousands of people to the point of being full with only a few loaves and fish is huge and with baskets of leftovers is huge. To try to figure out how you’d have to physically do that (would you re-arrange the molecules? beam extra loaves in from a hidden teleportation device?) is mind boggling. We don’t know. My stake president offered another idea.

Who was in the multitude? Probably a range of people of different socioeconomic status, families, tribes of Israel. Perhaps there were people in the crowd who had brought some extra food in their own bags. Perhaps, when the basket came around, they saw that the crowd was huge and they had a little extra, and maybe moved by the compassion and healing miracles they saw Christ demonstrate or the teachings of love and charity they heard, or the example of Christ’s examples in giving all their own bread and fish, they took from their own bags and placed their extra into the baskets.

And thousands of people were fed. And there was plenty left over.

I don’t believe that this version makes the miracle of feeding the multitudes less miraculous. It is a miracle to have power over the physical world, but I think it may be even more of a miracle to have the power to change the hearts of human beings.

Do we have extra in our bags that we can put into the baskets and share with our community? Does Christ inspire us to action?

“Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.” John 6:14

This Christmas, as we celebrate the man who changed the hearts of millions of people, let’s remember to let him change ours as well.

Read More

This past month, our Relief Society was able to do a chapel session with the temple matron. This was my first time going to the temple after the birth of my son over a year ago, and the first time doing an endowment session since before that pregnancy. Sitting stagnant for a couple of hours while pregnant? No, thank you.

So it had been a while. I was nervous about some of the feminist issues that have been brought up here in the past, but decided to go with an open mind. At one point the temple matron, emphasized that we were queens and priestesses and that in the temple endowment and sealing ordinances we are promised great blessings. She went over the specifics of those blessings, and suddenly, I didn’t want any of it. None of my original worries were ever addressed in her talk, and while that was unsettling, none of that mattered: I didn’t want these promised blessings.

I should clarify: it’s not that I don’t want the blessings, it’s that I don’t want blessings to be a reward for “good” behavior, a carrot on a stick. I spent the entire endowment session with my mind reeling with frustration. What does it mean about God’s view of us if rewards, and even threats, are used to keep us on the straight and narrow?

The way we talk about the Celestial Kingdom, we use words and phrases like gold, glory of the sun, highest of all, wealth untold. Why resort to afterlife bribery? Does God think so little of us? I’m leaning towards shelving the afterlife altogether and just focusing on here and now because I really can’t handle how degraded I feel when I think that God might see me as a puppy who will get a rawhide bone when this is all over.

I don’t think God bribes us to do good. I think that the reward in heaven mindset is a product of our culture (thousands of years of it!) and does not appropriately reflect our relationship with Diety. But then what? How am I supposed to reframe this? So much of Mormonism and Christianity is this promise of the glittering shininess of glory in the end.

So I want to ask you, have you run into this dilemma? Have you had to reframe your entire religious framework and how did you tackle that? Are there scriptures that discuss the afterlife without using it as a pat on the head?

Read More

By DefyGravity

(DefyGravity just graduated from BYU in theatre education and history teaching. She’s a theatre addict, avid reader, anglophile and has been a raging feminist since she was in junior high, which fortunately hasn’t scared away her husband of 2 years. )

I was sitting on the floor in the religion section at Barnes and Noble with tears streaming down my face. This was a very odd experience for me; I don’t cry often, and almost never in public. And what was even stranger was what had brought me to this rather ridiculous place — the song playing over the sound system:

“All God’s creatures got a place in the choir

Some sing low, some sing higher,

Some sing out loud on telephone wire,

Some just clap their hands or paws or anything they got. “ (Celtic Thunder’s album Heritage)

Some may recognize these lyrics as inspiring the title of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Emma Lou Thayne’s book of essays All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir. (Fantastic book by the way.) I knew the book, but that is not why I was crying. As I listened to the lyrics, it came to me that I had a place, that my voice added something to God’s world. The feeling of validity in the eyes of God was overwhelming.

Read More