“Should I Be My Brother’s Keeper? Yes and No”
We typically teach and often even sing that we should be our brothers’ (and sisters’) keepers. And rightly so. But there’s another way to think about this matter.
Serious issues are involved
The recent Associated Press article about a case of sexual abuse in Arizona and about certain related claims regarding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to generate controversy and accusations.
A Time to Lose, A Time to Heal
"Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday." – Wilma Rudolph
Choices vs. Abilities
“Exactly,” says Dumbledore, “Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
A memorable acquaintance beside an Alpine lake
What the heck. I’m in the mood, and I think that I haven’t told this missionary story here before. So I offer to you yet another exercise in geezerly nostalgia. (It’s my blog, after all. Just try to stop me!)
A curious missionary experience in northwestern Switzerland
I would love to be able to bottle whatever it was that had such an impact on that Swiss investigator and pass it on to others. But I have not the faintest idea what “it” was.
Reminiscences of a beautiful but difficult mission area
Serving as a missionary in German-speaking Switzerland, while it had its substantial personal rewards and while I am passionately in love with the country, posed some challenges.
What does it mean to be a witness?
We tend to make more progress, spiritually, in times of stress, sorrow, sadness, opposition, and difficulty than in times of ease. Or, as the great thirteenth-century Muslim poet and mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi put it, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Ranking books to rankle believers?
If the Book of Mormon was to be mocked because it only ranked thirty-fifth, shouldn’t those authors be dismissed because they failed to make even the top one hundred?
“A Comet, Christ’s Birth, and Josephus’s Lunar Eclipse”
I freely confess that the American Founders and the founders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alike were and are human. But I also believe them to have been good men, on the whole and for their cultural milieu, and I won’t stand idly by while they’re defamed and marginalized.
Bluffing a Beatenberger
I’ve been thinking of an experience that I had many years ago when I was a missionary based in Interlaken.
Thinking about the world’s religions
Long ago I formulated Peterson’s First Rule for the Study of Other Religions and Worldviews: If a substantial number of sane and intelligent people believe something that seems to you utterly without sense, the problem probably lies with you.