Posts Tagged ‘ faith ’

Recently one of my online friends requested that I write about healing stories within the Mormon faith. My first thought was to share the traditional stories those of us who have been around the Mormon Church for awhile have all heard.  I’m sure there are many bloggers out there who are well more versed on [...]

When Joseph Smith was explaining our faith’s beliefs to John Wentworth, he wanted to point out that we believe in the Bible, but that he felt it had errors.  After all, he was working on a new translation of it.  He said: 8 We believe the aBible to be the bword of God as far as [...]

To many, “do you believe in the gospel?” means “do you cognitively accept this set of propositions to be a map of reality?”

Welcome back to class! How might Mormonism be viewed through Fowler’s descriptions of poly-, heno-, and monotheism. Or, why we’re probably all idolatrous.

Which is more important?  What a person believes or actions they take?  What about works done without faith?  Deep thoughts. Discuss.

The story is often told of a person who complained to a friend that she couldn’t see well.  The friend took of her glasses, handed them to the friend, and said, “Try these – they work well for me!”  I suspect we have all had a boss or a friend that fits this description. When [...]

Yin and Yang are powerful concepts stemming from Chinese philosophy, and religiously from Taoism. I was recently reading a book that leveraged the concepts of Yin and Yang to explain why liberals and conservatives (in America) are both needed. The point is brought out that opposites are interconnected, interdependent, and their harmonization is critical to [...]

For me, as a conservative Mormon guy living in Washington state, the 2012 elections were rough in a number of ways, starting from the top down: Romney lost the election.  I had spent a year volunteering for his campaign and truly thought he had a good chance of winning.  He nearly pulled it off, but [...]

I haven’t been around as much here because I’ve been working on something new. Hawkgrrrl and I were discussing recently that you might be interested, so here’s an introduction. Meet Real Intent.

For more than a month I’ve felt driven in family times each evening to talk to my teens (I have five still at home) about asking more of themselves. We can get up each day, brush our teeth, put on clothes, go do our thing, come home and relax, go do fun stuff, and go [...]

For August, I’ve participated in a gratitude challenge. Although I was aware this could change me, the change still came as a surprise.

What is faith? Is it something believed or something in action, and do we choose it?

Understanding the priesthood administrative structure and the balance of authority between stakes and the presiding quorums is one of the keys to understanding gender issues in the church today. Yep. It’s another post about women and the priesthood.

Seth Adam Smith, a private videographer who creates LDS-themed material and makes it available on YouTube, has written about the political and social connotations of being Nephite or Lamanite in a recent blog post. He makes some compelling connections to modern day with Christians and Muslims using the words of modern prophets, as depicted in [...]

Recently I was thinking about a conversation Bruce Nielson and I had years ago in which he pointed out something I was also beginning to see: that many who were criticizing the church or doubting their own spiritual experiences wanted to limit “the spirit” to whatever agreed with their own political or personal viewpoints.  Joe [...]

I watched my father, who died at age 68, make abysmal health choices and despite having an incredibly strong constitution, he was almost unable to move by the time a massive stroke took his life. It would have been nice to have enjoyed my Dad a bit longer, but as I chew on Elder Scott’s quote, I realize that I didn’t need longer, I needed better: improvements in both the quality of his life and his well-being.

Share your thoughts about practical principles, especially health-related, that improve your quality of life, sense of well-being, and receipt of inspiration.

“Surely the thing God enjoys most about being God is the thrill of being merciful.” One of the most powerful talks this past General Conference was, for me, Elder Holland’s talk on the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. How simply he unwound the seeming unfairness of the Lord’s treatment of the workers at [...]

Peter Pan was a wonderful story for me as a six-year old when the Broadway show was first televised by NBC to help market the new-fangled color TVs. Even though we didn’t have the money for color TV, seeing pirates and flying children cavort above the stage even in black-and-white made the program then the [...]

For the past week we’ve discussed what we believe Wheat & Tares contributes to the larger dialogue about the Mormon faith, exposing parts of a conversation that has been occurring behind the scenes for weeks. Hawk has articulated who we are with guidelines that we’ll post to the site permanently. Andrew has shared his views [...]

It’s been over 16 months and 40+ posts since Hawk invited me to try my hand writing a guest post for Wheat and Tares, and I’m still plugging along.  With some of the recent posts and comments, it made me step back and wonder – why do I keep doing this?  This site has been [...]