Joseph F. Smith preached,

“The spirit, power and authority by which [the Bible] is written cannot be found within its lids, nor derived from it… If by reading and believing the Bible this authority could be obtained, all who read and believed would have it—one equally with another…The Bible itself is but the dead letter, it is the spirit that giveth life.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 19, 190)

Jesus doesn’t think with that dichotomy. Jesus says:

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John 6:63, ESV)

NIV: “they are full of the Spirit and life.”

And Peter says,

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (6:68)

If the rich young ruler had sold all his possessions and followed Jesus, he would have told him, “Your faith has saved you. Your treasure is in heaven.”

Not, “Good job, you earned salvation.”

To help myself understand the significance of the “mustard seed” in Matthew 13…

He plants it in an existing field alongside massive fields and farm machinery and silos and grain elevators and genetically engineered crops.

No, this little seed, Jesus says, is his kingdom. The others will eventually die. Everything else will burn. Nothing else will last. It doesn’t how matter how big their crops are, their buildings are, their money is, how rich their tradition is, how confident their laborers are…

This little seed, these little ones, the least of these, this little flock, this remnant, these little children, these humbled ones, from these, from this little seed the kingdom comes.

Friends in Christ, when Jesus speaks of

the “least of these” and

the “little ones” and

those that “become like children” and

“my brother and sister and mother” and

his “friends” and his “sheep” and

“my own” …

he is speaking of YOU! You! You!

You own every one of those titles. You are his, and he is yours.

“I know my own and my own know me.” (John 10:14)

God is more real to me than gravity.

I can imagine a world without gravity. I cannot imagine a world without God. Gravity seems so contingent, so dependent. But God preceded gravity, continues after it. God is more direct and immediate to my sight, to my immediate perceptions. He is there.

God is more directly perceived and seen than gravity.

Gravity “acts” on my body, “pulling” it down.

God is closer than that. Closer to mind and soul. As close as my inner thoughts.

Arrogant attempts: To make any other planet but Earth our home. To be embodied by any other body than our own. To be in the image of any other being than God. To make the rest of the animal kingdom anything other than under our stewardship.

True freedom only comes in embracing who we are in God’s sight. Created for a purpose. With a body. And a job-duty. And a mission. And a particular kind of glory.

We had just moved to Utah. We were living in a basement apartment. My wife was pregnant with our son.

BYU professor David J. Whittaker came to where we lived because our host wanted him to talk to me. I had talked faith/Jesus with her. David was in her ward.

I asked him about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, and he conceded flippantly that Smith had little honeymoons (i.e. trysts) with at least some of his plural wives. We got to talking about “eternal marriage.”

Stacie and I were sitting on the couch together, and he was sitting across from us. He asked Stacie, “Don’t you want to be married with your husband in heaven?” And she said matter-of-factly to him, “No.”

He was dumfounded. Stacie explained what Jesus taught in Matthew 22: there would be no marriage in heaven. We will be as the angels. She will worship Jesus. Jesus has joy in store for us at the resurrection that we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Marriage is an old-Earth reality. We trust Jesus for this.

I felt so deeply in love with Stacie. This was a romantic moment. I knew exactly what she meant. I felt closer to her in her very affirmation of not needing our marriage or even wanting it in heaven.

I love you, Stacie.

“Let those who have wives live as though they had none… For the present form of this world is passing away.” (1 Corinthians 7:29, 31)

“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (Matthew 22:30)

(Updated)

I had a long conversation tonight (May 19, 2017) with an editor at Book of Mormon Central. He argued that since Peter denied Christ three times, we should not consider prophets like Brigham Young disqualified over false teachings like Adam-God. “Nobody is perfect.” “Everything is human.” “God corrects prophets.”

Some conversation questions:

• Have your leaders ever confessed and repented of false teaching?
• How bad does a prophet have to be before you would consider him disqualified?
• You say Mormonism began with a new dispensation, succeeding the New Testament dispensation. Did it elevate or lower the standards for church leadership? Are LDS standards lower or higher than the New Testament for leadership?
• Did Joseph Smith and Brigham Young meet the qualifications in 1 Timothy and Titus to be a teacher of sound doctrine and a man of one wife?
• When Jesus said that we would know false prophets by their fruits, did he mean for us to limit fruit-inspection to only “official teaching”?
• [Added] Jesus asks, “Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.” (Matthew 7:16-17) What would it look like to treat someone like a thornbush, or as full of thistles?
• Can non-“official” false teaching conceivably disqualify a person from being a true prophet?
• Do you hold Prophets and Apostles to a higher standard than normal LDS members? If so, then what is that standard?
• You have excused Joseph Smith and Brigham Young over certain teachings; you say they are no longer taught, or that they are not official, or that God ended up “correcting” them. Which teachings specifically do you think were false? Were those teachings actually false teachings?

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In October 2011 I had a related interview with Stephen Smoot.

On growing in the grace and discipline of speaking well of others: other brothers, churches, neighbors, family members, even people we have serious issues with. This probably requires meditating on / listing out things we are grateful for in others. Having things ready in mind to say well of others.

Dear […],

Constant personal attacks/accusations, assuming the worst in people (i.e. he just wants to shift and steer and avoid!) is a flag for me that I am better off spending energy pursuing more genuine and good-natured dialog partners. There are plenty of them elsewhere, and they are my genuine friends. Ironically, you understand someone else’s sin better when you don’t demonize them.

I prioritize face-to-face dialog for joy. I like making friends. I like the more robust way one can be Christlike with the whole body (voice, body, eyes). It is more spiritually satisfying. I also enjoy the ability of a friend in dialog to sustain a topic for a long period of time.

When people have time to constantly do battle on Facebook all week, it signals to me that they are “busybodies” — this is bad for the soul. The New Testament associates this recipe with needless drama, quarreling, slander. Theology is better done when a person is doing due diligence in raising their family and working hard. One has less tolerance for unproductive dialog.

Facebook can be wonderful. I still do it. But I dedicate Thursday nights to evangelism and dialog. Most of the dialog I do is downtown then. That is why I especially invite anyone who wants to do recorded (or private) dialog then.

Grace and peace,

Aaron