The Book Begins

Okay.  Here is the beginning of my book.  It's just an introduction to the introductory material, but it spells out what the rest of the chapter will consist of.

Also, you'll notice a new feature at the top of my blog: Page tabs.

Home = the main page that shows all the blog posts.
Introductions = the first chapter of my book.  As I add to this first draft, I'll put only the new stuff inside these blog posts, but the full text will appear on the Introductions page.

More tabs will come in the future as I get to those chapters.

Enjoy this first installment, and feel free to begin commenting.

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What Is Mormonism?

Invariably when someone finds out I’m a Mormon, they ask me a slew of questions.  What is you guys believe?  What’s different about you?  What’s the same?  How many wives are you allowed to have?

There’s something—just—interesting about Mormons.  They’re controversial, while at the same time, “normal.”  How’s that possible?

In this book we’ll try to answer these questions.  What is it that attracts the attention of the masses?  Why are the Mormons considered to be controversial?  Why do some revere the Mormons, while others despise them?

Of course, as a Mormon myself, you will most likely sense a positive bias in my presentation.  However, I will try my best to provide a balanced view as much as I can.  I will attempt to present different viewpoints, but along the way, I will also explain why I personally believe the way I do.

<Note to my friendly editors … I will most likely move some of these “disclaimers” to the foreword (which I’ll write last)>

Mormonism, in my opinion, is a Christian religion.  Its doctrines are—I’d say—95% consistent with the doctrine of “mainstream” Christian religions.  This includes the doctrines of the atonement.  That is, Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  He died for our sins, and it is only through Him that we can be saved.  If we accept Him and follow his teachings, we can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  

It also includes the concepts of baptism, communion, marriage, a belief in the Bible, the power and influence of the Holy Spirit, etc.

However, there’s another 5% that is “new.”  These are the parts some consider to be controversial.  In fact there may be many reading this today that would say, “5%?  Bah!  Try more like 60%, or even 90%.”  To these readers, the 5% difference is very important stuff, even so much that perhaps Mormons should not be called Christians.  This is an interesting discussion, which I’ll save for later.  But for now, I’ll just agree that this 5% (or 90%) is of great interest to a lot of people.

This 5% includes the idea of prophets being alive today.  It includes the introduction of new scripture: The Book of Mormon.  It includes holy temples at a time when most Christian denominations don’t have them.  Marriages are eternal instead of “till death do you part.”  There are at least three levels of heaven instead of the binary heaven/hell.  Angels and humans are two manifestations of our same existence instead of being separate.  God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are three separate entities instead of being a single three-in-one entity.  We are punished for our own sins instead of having “original sin.”  And the list goes on and on.

So, how about we start at the beginning?  I’ll start with a Mormon primer to introduce the non-initiate.  Then I’ll follow a brother/sister set of twins throughout their lives as I present a “day in the life” of the typical Mormon.  Keep in mind that this whole Introduction chapter will be mostly exposition, and hardly any discussion at all.  That will come in the later chapters.

Where the Mormons Came From

<More coming on the way…>

Oh, Say What Is Truth?

First off, never fear!  I am close to publishing the first piece of my upcoming book.  I'll have something next week.  It won't be much, but it'll be a start.

This week, I'll publish a copy of this talk I found.  This was for a Stake Conference back in December 2011.  Each attendee was asked to prepare a talk to present in front of 1000+ congregation members.  On the day of the conference, the leaders chose a person or two to give their talk.  I think they were given a couple hours notice, but no more than that.

I prepared this talk, but I wasn't chosen, and I've never had a chance to present it.  Well, here it is.  Enjoy.  Keep in mind this is intended for a Mormon audience, but I think it would interest any of my readers.

Oh, Say What Is Truth?

When Joseph Smith prayed and asked which church to join, he was answered to "join none of them, for they were all wrong."  He was then instructed to establish the one and only true church.

We've heard this a thousand times, but what does it mean?  Today I would like to take a closer look at some of these other religions so that we might gain a little more perspective and be better able to see where we stand with our friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

First, I'd like to point out that ALL religions have SOME truth.  Christians believe in Christ and in his redeeming power.  Jews believe in a subset of our doctrine.  The Muslims believe in the same God that we do.  Buddhists and Hindus have a lot of doctrine in harmony with ours, inspiring people to do good one to another.  Even atheists and agnostics believe in that inner conscious that helps us to make moral decisions.

So why are there so many religions?  Why doesn't God come down here and establish which religion is true?

Because we have so many religions, each individual person has the opportunity to accept the level of truth he is willing to receive.  Consider a man who really loves Jesus and wants nothing more than to be with him forever.  If this person joins with any Christian church and lives a good life, he will gain in the least the middle Terrestrial Glory, where Jesus reigns.  After this man dies and is resurrected, he will have obtained his utmost goal.  He will be in the presence of Jesus for Eternity.

A woman who chooses not to believe in any religion at all still has the light of Christ within her, and following her conscious, she can live a good, rewarding life.  In the least she will gain the lowest Telestial Glory, which is still a fantastic reward for anyone.

Thus, he who seeks after truth will be able to find it, according to how much he wants to learn, and he will gain an appropriate reward.

Now consider the Catholic Church, which arose from the ashes of Christ's Original Church that was nearly destroyed.  It's so easy to harp on the Catholics for their mistakes - how they removed plain and precious truths as they translated and compiled the Holy Bible - how they corrupted the doctrines of the Early Church - how they instituted the errant Nicene Creed as core doctrine of all Christian churches.

But then again, consider everything they did right.  In Matthew 16:18, Jesus promised Peter that the "gates of hell shall not prevail against" his Church.  Though the full authority and priesthood powers were removed from the earth and enemies tried to destroy what remained, the members of this early Catholic Church persevered and successfully preserved a large portion of true doctrine.  Even the Nicene Council was a necessary evil to help strengthen a crumbling church.  Had it not happened, the gates of hell might have indeed prevailed, and the Christian religion might have died out.  Then where would we be today?

Consider Martin Luther who recognized some of the corrupt teachings of the Catholic Church such as the doctrine of monetary indulgences.  He broke off and started his own church in Germany, and he began the practice of translating the Bible to one's native tongue, bringing the word of God to everyone.

Other inspired men soon followed suit: John Calvin from France, and Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland, and others.  Each of these Reformers broke away from the Catholic Church and began their own movements based on their own concerns and beliefs.

In response, the Catholic Church went through its own Counter-Reformation, doing away with the doctrine of monetary indulgences and other corrupt doctrines.  They became a better church - closer to the truth.

The result?  Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all showed that the Catholic Church was not the one true religion.  Had these inspired men not broken away, our church couldn't exist.  Where would we be today?

Finally, true freedom of religion was established in the United States.  All religions can now exist together peacefully, and our Church was formed as it is today.  We owe so much to those who came before us: the Jews, the Catholics, Luther, Zwinlgi, Calvin, etc.  Just keep this in mind the next time you're talking religion with your friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  Even though they don't have all the truth that God has revealed, they may still be happy with the truth that they have today.  This is okay and we should respect their beliefs.  When they're ready to learn more, they'll ask questions - and from experience, I've learned that they almost always do, eventually.

When they do ask questions, be ready to answer.  It's good to emphasize the commonalities between our religion and theirs.  Where there are differences, present them matter-of-factly as points of interest instead of with a tone of "I'm right and you're wrong."

If your friends are Christian, they will most likely see no reason to switch denominations.  They have probably been baptized.  They most likely pray to God every day and receive confirmation of the truths that exist in their church.  They probably read their Bible and believe that it is sufficient for their salvation.  So most likely, they will ask, "What is so different about you Mormons?"  What they mean is "what's in it for me if I were to become one of you?"

When they ask this question, go ahead and answer.  If they like what they hear, they will pursue with further questions.  They will seek out further light and knowledge and they will receive what they're looking for.

How do you answer them?  What does someone gain from joining our Church?  Here, there are so many answers you could provide.  Choose a couple of answers as the Spirit guides.

Mormons have access to a living prophet who has a direct line of communication with God.  With times ever changing, this open communication is essential to keeping us up to date with what we should be doing in our lives.  Without this constant guidance, even some prominent churches are struggling today with some morally gray areas.

Mormons have access to the Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ.  This volume of scripture confirms and clarifies the doctrines taught in the Bible.  It relates some events that occurred on the American continent.  It restores a few plain and precious truths that were removed from the Bible and enables a person to have a better understanding of the nature of God and our relationship with him.

Mormons have access to the sealing power.  Couples can be married forever.  Families can be forever.  All other churches teach that marriage ends at death, but temple marriages can last through eternity.

Mormons have direct access to the Holy Ghost's influence.  More than just a conscious to tell us right from wrong, this "gift" can be a constant companion to reveal truth beyond a shadow of a doubt and to help guide us through all decisions we make in life.

Mormons can gain access to the highest levels of the Celestial Kingdom where we can dwell with God forever and even become just like him.  This is the ultimate reward for anyone who is willing to do what it takes.

Yes - all religions have truth, but there is always more to learn.  For those who seek, God will provide, and he "upbraideth not."

<end with testimony>

The First Month

Yeah! This blog has reached its first month. Let's take a look at it while it's practically nothing. Then later when the blog is more popular, we can compare and see how far it's gotten.

Here is the viewing history since January 10:

This graph misses the first few days, where I had approximately 30 views. But look at that big blip around Jan 13, when I posted "My Book's Outline."  Awesome! My recent gun story (Feb. 2) didn't get that many views. Not as exciting as I thought. (Hee hee)  Or perhaps the blip represents all my facebook friends checking me out, and then the normal decay of interest afterwards. Or perhaps the peoples are waiting for me to start publishing the first part of my book (maybe in another month or so ...).

The audience right now is mostly from the US, while some 10% of views are coming from Malaysia. Whattup with that? I'm happy to get viewers from anywhere (as long as you're not some roaming searchbot). To my new Malaysian friends: Ngi hao!

Basically, since my blog is starting out, it's getting very little views. 130 total in 35 days is almost 10 views a day. We'll check again in a year.

For comparison, here are stats on my other two blogs:

The "Word of Mel" is my main writing blog. It's more established. It's getting 10 times as many views as my Mormon blog. Also note how only one recent post made it into the top 5 favorite posts. And I have viewers from all around the world. 100 views a day still isn't crazy cuckoo popular, but it's still enough to see interesting stats.

My economy blog is basically dead. It's the blog I neglect unless I get really riled up on an economic subject. Neglected blogs don't get very many views.

I'd be happy for this Mormon blog to do at least as well as my writing blog, and not die out like my economic blog.

We'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends. More good stuff is on the way!

Missionaries and Guns Don't Mix

I'm sure you've heard the stories. A couple of missionaries go knocking on some doors, and before you know it, some crazy dude is shooting buckshot at them. "Get off my property!!!"

I served my mission in South Korea from 1988 to 1990, and not even once did this happen to me. Two whole years, and the most that happened was some dude on the bus who yelled in my face. "Yahnkee go home!"

If you don't want to talk to us missionaries, I've seen the following responses, all of which are very effective:

• Don't open the door (the most common response).
• Slam the door in their face (second most common response).
• Call the police because they're soliciting and there's a sign at the front of the community.
• Invite them in for a good old Bible bashing session and explain why Mormonism is wrong.
• Just plain yell at them until they leave.
• Make up some white lie: "I'm Buddhist" or "I'm Catholic" and kindly shut the door.
• Pretend like you don't speak their language.

Never once did anyone threaten our lives in any way shape or form. That is, until this past Sunday when my peaceful streak came to an end.

Occasionally, our missionaries will invite church members to tag along. So, I went out with them for a night of door-knocking fun. Reliving the good old days!

We arrived at our last house at about 8:50 PM. Right off the bat, something seemed off with the house. There was trash on the front porch. Strange things were hanging everywhere. Even before the door opened, we joked that we had just found Voldemort's house.

We knocked on the door, and no one answered. After a minute, we knocked again a little louder. The door opened and this dude with a big white beard stepped into the space between the house door and the screen door. He said in an antagonistic voice, "What's the problem?"

One of the Elders (that's what we call the missionaries) said, "There's no problem. We're from the church ..."

Right when he said "church," we all heard it ... the racking of a shotgun. Yikes! The two missionaries even saw the gun. The wife held it behind the door. It wasn't pointed at us, but the threat felt real. The homeowners' attempt to intimidate was successful. After some talking down and retreating, we were shortly back in our car and done for the night.

And let me tell you ... never having had any incidents with a gun in my life, it was a very scary experience. There's the whole, "Wow! I could have died!" Then there was a little PTSD for about a week afterwards. And there's also the "boy do I have a story to tell you" aspect. (Though I've found that people grow tired of hearing this story over and over.)

I can understand why the wife grabbed the gun. It was moderately late at night. Strangers were standing on her front porch. It would have been a prudent choice to have the gun ready to be used.

But as soon as they learned that we were harmless missionaries, why did they have to rack the gun? I can't find the justification. In North Carolina, it's against the law to threaten anyone with a gun if you don't feel that your own life is in danger. That is, pulling out your gun and chasing off a salesman or missionary is basically against the law ... even on your own property.

Yet, these homeowners stayed within the bounds of the law. Had they pointed the gun directly at us, or if they had verbally threatened something like, "Get off our property or we're going to shoot you," then they would have been spending a night in jail. Evidently, just racking the shotgun isn't enough by itself to determine assault.

Though, it certainly felt like assault. All three of us felt our lives were in danger.

Racking the gun wasn't protecting their property. That was just plain being mean. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned several different peaceful alternatives. In fact, we were getting ready to leave before they opened their door. 

Missionaries don't go around killing people who reject their message. They aren't a physical threat. They just want to talk. Sure, they can be intrusive and show up at the most inconvenient times, but do missionaries do anything at all that's worthy of being threatened by a gun?

I can't think of anything.

My Book's Outline

Here's a big picture look of what my upcoming book will look like ...

• Introductions -- Basic overviews of Mormonism.

• Belief Systems -- Exploring the way people think and believe, including a discussion on the scientific method, faith, knowledge, and the roles of religion and science.

• Belief in God -- Analyzing the question of whether God exists, presenting several different arguments for and against his existence.

• Belief in Jesus -- Looking into several different saviour and messiah figures, comparing and contrasting.

• Belief in Mormonism -- Exploring several different Christian denominations, comparing and contrasting with my own religion.

• Mormon Apologetics -- Analyzing several different claims against Mormons.

• Other Stuff -- Not sure what goes here, yet.

• Closing Comments -- Wrapping it all up.

We'll see how it turns out!

Why Don't The Guys Do Their Home Teaching?

I used be the perfect home teacher. I'd do the rounds every month and take good care of my families, but then like so many of my colleagues, it seems that I've fallen by the wayside (well ... mostly).

For those of you uninitiated to Mormon living, home teaching is a program instituted by the Church. The idea is that each active Mormon male is paired with another male, and they are given a few families to watch over. The suggested modus operandi is to visit each family once a month, deliver a spiritual message, and make sure each family's needs are met.

It's a great idea and a sound program. The bishop and other ward leadership can only do so much to watch over the flock. Home teachers can provide much needed assistance to families, and also help to build up comradery among the church members.

Active Mormon females do something similar called visiting teaching. On the most part, the women seem to do a better job at consistently doing their visiting teaching, while men tend to forget, be busy, and all around fail to meet their families periodically.

In fact, it's almost a given in Mormon social life that men basically suck as this calling. This is parodied in Mormon movies like The RM, which features home teachers showing up at 11:50PM on the last day of the month, shoving cookies through the mail slot. They even go so far as to show the men sleeping in Elder's Quorum while the women are having this great spiritual outpouring in their Relief Society meeting ... complete with awesome centerpiece.

Yeah ... we all laugh. Girls are on the ball, and boys just suck. So why even try? Right?

As such, there are always calls for men to do their home teaching ... it's a sacred calling ... and all that. There are at least one or two talks on home teaching in each of our semiannual General Conferences. We even had a lesson this past Sunday in Elder's Quorum on home teaching. Every time it's the same message ... go out there and do your home teaching. It'll be good for your families, and good for you.

But there are some aspects that I rarely hear about concerning home teaching. Rarely, I'll hear some much needed advice about the families calling the home teachers to be home taught instead of the other way around. There are several times I've heard people complain, "My home teachers never come to see me," and sometimes I want to answer, "Well, did you call them to come visit?"

I've found that outside of college life, it becomes very difficult to set up appointments to visit. It seems a lot of the time I suggest a time or two to meet, and none of the times work.

This happened with one of my families over a decade ago. It was almost as if they didn't want us to come visit. When we did happen to get inside their homes, they would look at their watches and act like they didn't want us around. My home teaching companion and I finally gave up trying to go see them and instead decided to watch them from a distance. A year later, I heard second hand that the family resented us because we weren't coming to visit.

I was all like ... #1) Those guys pushed us away, and now they're angry with us? #2) Knowing that they hated our guts made it even harder for us to even want to home teach them.

Another funny horror story happened at BYU. I had prepared a heart-felt lesson featuring reading one of my favorite stories from the scriptures. The response at the end of the lesson? The two roommate girls turned to me and my companion and said that next time they wanted a lesson with more pizzazz ... more pictures and stuff so that they could better feel the spirit.

Yeah, right.

And then there were some wards where it seemed to be more about the numbers than taking care of people. We needed to keep the stats up. 100% home teaching. It's so difficult to want to do home teaching when the guilt trips fly every week.

I think in the past few years, the Church has moved away from this numbers push, and is now emphasizing the "human being" aspect of home teaching. You need to care for your families, and help meet their needs. There are far less guilt trips in Elder's Quorum, and more inspirational success stories that emphasize what happens if you do a good job at home teaching.

They still collect stats, though. :)

Yet all these horror stories I've listed are nothing more than excuses. I'm sure that any "tired" home teacher can relate with the stories I've told, and I bet they have their own horror stories.

Why don't the guys do their home teaching? What's the real reason? It really comes down to one thing: attitude. If you want to do your home teaching, it'll get done. I've had really gung-ho home teaching companions who shoot for 100%, and it's fun being their companion. They find ways to get to even the hard-to-get-to families.

On the other hand, if you simply don't want to do home teaching, for whatever reason, then it's not going to get done.

So, the best way to get the guys to do their home teaching ... get them to WANT to do it. If you want to start yourself, then simply WANT to do it. Get over all those excuses and horror stories. Get over those guilt trips. Sure, you can tell your stories and get them off your chest, but then ... Go do that home teaching. Care for your families.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some appointments to set up ...

Hello World!

Here I go with another new blog.  I have this great desire to explore religion ... my own and others ... and what better way is there to do this than to blog it?

As you may have guessed from the blog's title, I'm a Mormon.  Why in the world would I pick this one religion out of many?  This is one of the several questions I will try to answer.  While exploring my own thought processes, I hope to uncover some new and interesting insights.  And hopefully I'll be able to engage you, the reader.  We can figure things out together.

In particular, I enjoy exploring science and philosophies, and aiming to find harmonies with religion.  After all, if a religion is "true" then wouldn't you expect the religion to be consistent with science and anything else that is considered to be "true"?  (We can come back to this question later.  It's an interesting discussion all by itself.)

Also, over the next couple (or few) years, I will be putting together a book, which will appear in its entirety on this blog.  And you all get to critique my work and help create a better product.  I will first put out a first draft and allow any interested parties to comment as I go along.  Then when I create a second draft, I will consider the comments that were made on the first draft, and so on.

It'll be a fun experiment ... we'll see how it turns out.

Welcome to my blog!