During the fall of 2021, our family got the chance to stay a few days with one of my wife’s childhood best friends. Her husband is a preacher for the Churches of Christ, which Wikipedia explains ‘have their historical roots in the Restoration Movement, which was a converging of Christians across denominational lines in search of a return to an original, “pre-denominational” Christianity’ (emphasis mine). We spent two three-day weekends at their home.

A friend of mine shared a story when he and a buddy were at a bar eating their dinner. They started discussing how the beer machine worked. They wondered how the handle levered the internal system and how the beer poured out of the system so clean. The mechanics started to intrigue them, and they pondered the entire contraption. The wonder got the best of them, and they asked the bartender how the machine worked.

Community and the quest for the right path. What would you think I was describing if I said I wanted to talk to you about a group with dietary restraints, garment adornments, public behavior traditions, and leader fidelity? Some may respond, ‘cult’ or ‘religion’ with a bit of disdain for those fools that allow themselves to fall into those traps. Cults exemplify an extreme form of the above features that usually start with a heavy dose of leader fidelity.

Abraham J. Heschel is worth our reading time. He was a good friend of Martin Luther King, lost his family in the Holocaust, and taught for 27 years at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in Manhattan. I believe he is the one that coined the phrase most moved mover in describing God. His daughter explained that he and Martin Luther King used the phrase.1 I am reading Between God and Man which is a compilation of his writings.

What might it mean for a church to look at itself and discover that it has moved beyond Christ? I don’t think it is much different than a child of God looking at themselves and notice that they have strayed beyond Christ. In one of the more exciting dilemmas of Christianity, God invites us to move forward in a very tumultuous sea. We can’t just drop anchor and stay in the same spot.

We want leaders to be infallible or completely fallible. It is hard for us to realize the giant grey zone for every leader on the planet - prophets included. That grey zone is called agency or free will in a world full of others that wield the same power. The life of Mark Hoffman, Gordon B. Hinckley, and our prophetic narrative all seem to make people think that this story of the Murder among the Mormons is a faith crusher.

When did Christ atone for me? Indeed, it happened in Calvary. It must be his death on the cross that set us free. But didn’t he bleed from every pore On a hill where he suffered in agony? Surely, it happened in that dark time before. Can both be included in his atoning reach? Each moment seems part of his love for me. Yes, his sacrifice was more than one momentary breach.

Ok, it’s not really about time. It is about a relationship with God in time. However, as soon as we push the concept of God working with us in our mortal lives in a compassionate give and take relationship, it strikes the cords of a common Christian belief of God’s timeless perfection. This traditional Christian belief often aligns with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I didn’t understand how far-reaching a timeless God assumption could infiltrate all other aspects of God’s nature.

taking positions so dogmatic as to stifle the honest and thoughtful inquiries

Henry Eyring

Science and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in the ability of ‘honest and thoughtful inquiry’ to break through entrenched dogmas that define a community’s beliefs. However, both can succumb to respect for historical decisions to the point that ideas become dogmatic in that no other thinkers are allowed to question the status quo. If we all held to the status quo, we would still be on a flat earth, ignoring that Christ ever came. Sincere questioning and answering are needed to pull us out of our dogmatic beliefs.

We struggle to differentiate dogmatic arguments from reasoned arguments. In our struggle, we can succumb to fidelity tests in place of sustained reasoning. Every cult or ‘cult’ure has to face this struggle almost daily. Whether we depend on one person or a community to establish ’truth’, we face the overwhelming challenge to filter out the wheat from the dogma. Dogma thrives when we silo our reasoning into isolated echo chambers.

A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root.

The Old Testament is full of family-based small networks as examples of both the good and the bad that can come from depending on one person as the conveyor of truth. If we are not careful, we will look to the Bible’s experiences to justify letting one man tell us what the truth is at the expense of all other truth sources. If we examine the life of Christ, we will see in his example, a leader that taught using history, scripture, and logic to convey truth. He is also careful not to enforce his right at the expense of other’s agency. I appreciate the picture that I see in the gospels. How can we discern between those that speak the truth without succumbing to those that demand dogmatic devotion?¹

After last week’s post, I realized how many prayer posts I have had in the previous two years. This post includes a poem I wrote about prayer with a summary of those previous posts. Except for the Tyler Griffin post last week, these prayer posts came about as I talked with my brother and His wife as we dealt with his terminal illness. He was a great mentor and friend, and we would often spend 2-4 hours talking gospel topics whenever I visited. We had differing views on God’s omniscience, which made for some energetic conversations over the last year. It was in those conversations that I derived many of these prayer posts for mostmovedmover.com.

We have coined the phrase ‘social networks’ as primarily a set of apps and websites connected to the internet. Our national and religious leaders use this phrase to imply how we talk to people through our phones. There was even a movie given that title to represent the rise of Facebook. However, social networks have been vital in humankind’s existence since the fall of Adam and Eve. As humans, we build truth beliefs based on the social connections that surround us¹. God and Satan both know that social networks are how we find and learn the truth and use it to their advantage. I connect the latest in social network science with examples from our scriptural history and current environment to see that we build truth and lies on the same foundation.

Our western society has been diverging quickly on the understanding of knowledge. Some feel that it is our personal liberty to know what we want to know and that our individual freedom allows us to ignore experts that have spent a lifetime building up knowledge in a domain. Others argue that all deference must be given to experts and that we are not justified in criticizing experts as our understanding is too limited.

This week my second father died of cancer and has allowed me to think about what it means to create one’s life in the image of God. He lived his life as if yesterday were done and that today could be done in such a way to bring joy to his and other’s future. He was the type of person that shined so bright that you couldn’t be in his presence without going through his personality.

Once there were grandparents that had more money than could be counted by any grandchild. These grandparents announced that tonight’s dinner would be on them at McDonald’s and that everyone could pick whatever they wanted from the menu. This promise seemed almost unreachable by some of the grandchildren. How could they pay for so many people without knowing what they would even order?

I admit that my views on jealousy may be more visually impeeding than others that read verses with the phrase, ‘jealous God’. When I hear the word ‘jealous’, I instantly see an abusive boyfriend in a wife-beater representing nothing of quality about love. Clearly, the term does not have to mean this when referencing God; But, I decided to remix the scripture verses that reference a jealous God with the definitions of jealous and zeal.

The Old Testament has multiple verses that tell us that God is a jealous God. The Book of Mormon and the New Testament have just a couple of verses that reference the jealous God. Oxford’s definition from a Google search of Jealous helps us see that Zealous is just as viable of a translation when reading scripture. It also helps us see that ‘Jealous’ is most often used to understand that there is an intense emotion attached to a being’s relationship to their possessions or relationships.

This post may get a little political in my attempt to share President M. Russell Ballard’s 2016 fireside with the church educational system teachers. I think the Church’s struggle with history are a result of early conflicts with the establishment press and government. It has a comparable narrative with our current political climate and the difficulty of understanding facts an how those facts are interpreted. I appreciated President Ballard’s acknowledgment early in his message on our attempts at church history in the past.

Each year the Seminary and Institute teachers of the Church Education System for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hosts a night with a general authority. I remember attending these when I was trying to get hired as a seminary teacher. BYU-I faculty are invited to participate in a remote stream of these firesides. My wife and I attended with a few friends that also teach at BYU-I at the beginning of the year.

This post focuses on President Eyring’s talk titled, ‘He Goes before Us. However, the broader conversation is around how western culture has mixed up wisdom and knowledge to the point that we rarely differentiate the two words. As seen from the image above for this post, our writing guides even recommend them as synonyms. I want to take a journey through a few ideas before I tackle President Eyring’s quotes from his message about knowledge and time.

During the Sunday morning session of the general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I heard Elder David A. Bednar talk about the growth of temples during the lifetime of President Russel M. Nelson. It gave me an idea to plot an exponential growth that would bring joy to the LDS faithful. I am amazed at exponential growth and its implications.1 For those that are R programmers, you can get the code here.

In 1 Corinthians 1:19-27 Paul tells us that foolish and wise are the same things, just different positions on the scale of wisdom. We would put wisdom as the great attribute at the top of the range and foolishness as the worst form of wisdom at the bottom of the scale. In verse 25 Paul states this fact clearly; Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; In my ‘What is wisdom?

What is wisdom? The prophet Jacob in the Book of Mormon provides one of the most succinct injunctions in scripture when he says, ‘O be wise; what can I say more?’ (Jacob 6:12). To Jacob’s question after the injunction, I would ask many of the following questions, Can you describe wisdom? Is wisdom that much different than knowledge? Does wisdom require an existence with randomness or uncertainty? Can one exemplify wisdom in a world without unknowns?

In a recent Neal A Maxwell institute podcast, Terryl Givens said, Well, you know, we’re suffering waves of defection, and there are lots of reasons for that and lots of remedies that have been suggested, but I think it’s unavoidable to acknowledge that one of the main reasons we’re losing people is that we’re boring them to death. I think the job of a Sunday School teacher is to excite the people, it’s not just to reiterate the old formulas.

More than once in the last year, I have encountered a space-time explanation from friends when we are discussing the topic of God and timelessness. In almost every instance, there is a phrase, something like, “Time is just another dimension. God can just step outside of it. Like in the book Flatland.” Often, they leverage time as a human construct that does not relate to God because one of our leaders talks about timelessness1 and Einstein taught us about space-time.

I have quoted many books on this blog over the last ten months. I thought it would be good to keep a better record of the books that I have read and cited on this blog. Besides the list, I provide more detail on a few of my number ones.1 Going forward, I will keep a link to the current book list on the homepage. The Number Ones At the end of this post, I have an alphabetized list of the books I have read and cited.

The semi-annual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is happening this weekend. The time when all LDS can justify staring at a big screen for 8-10 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. My ears perked up when President Dallin H. Oaks shared a talk on what our life will be like after death. Early in his message he quoted Brent L. Topp, I believe a BYU religion professors article on this subject had it right when he wrote, ‘When we ask ourselves, what we know about the spirit world, from the standard works.

Having responded to a few people that have posted on my blog, I got up the nerve to comment on another Latter-day Saint’s blog. Dennis Horne is the author of that blog, and he has even published a book on LDS doctrine. I think I was direct and clear without condemnation. Dennis was also relatively cordial to me, but not to Terryl Givens. It looks like Dennis and Terryl represent a significant fissure that exists in the LDS faithful.

In June 1883 The Chautauquan magazine asked, “If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings, would there be any sound?” 1 This is one of those philosophical questions that can create a lively conversation if asked among the correct group. Today, I have a similar question, “If nobody understands the truth, is it still a truth?” I know that I may have already made half of the eight people that read this blog stop reading because they don’t want to have this lively conversation.

James E. Faust shared a devotional at BYU in 1993 titled, The Voice of the Spirit. Mormon messages used this talk to create the following message. Elder Faust shares an impactful quote about light (or truth) being part of our very essence. Signaling that truth is much more than facts. You will not be able to travel through life on borrowed light. The light of life must be part of your very being.

According to John Sanders, the concept of truth has multiple meanings. There are three main theories of truth in Western thought. The correspondence theory: This theory holds that truth is that which corresponds to a state of affairs or fact of reality. The coherence theory: a statement is true if it fits (coheres) with a set of other statements accepted as true. The pragmatic theory: an idea is true if it is fruitful and workable in relation to our experience.

Since the posts have come based on my previous week’s thoughts and readings without any organization, a navigation guide has become essential. We now have a static page titled Reader’s Guide that guides newcomers and provides a reference for previous users. For those that use ‘RSS’ to get updates the Subscribe link has the appropriate file. The rest of this post is a copy of the Reader’s Guide. Introduction This page introduces new readers to mostmovedmover.

The testimony of Christ comes from more than historical facts. It comes from more than the biblical witness. It is more significant than knowledge from the living prophets. It reaches farther than the witness in Latter-Day scripture. These witnesses with the testimonies of our forefathers establish a footing that stabilizes our view into His heavens. They provide stability for patient ponderings within our soul. The testimony of Christ lives through the grace of His covenants