Posts Tagged ‘ Jesus Christ ’

The Ten Commandments was one of the first Biblical epics to command a mass audience, and so my parents took me into downtown Detroit as a boy to be sure I saw it in its full widescreen glory in one of the few theaters capable of so screening it. The movie was well worth the [...]

The response to trauma is instinctual, even if our instinctual responses are wired individually. God evolved our species’ instincts to do something fast –flee, fight, or freeze — because the lethal nature of most of the dangers that killed humans throughout history is immediately perceptible and requires immediate response. Instincts don’t do as well when [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some aspects of the new Mormonism 101: FAQ that were confusing.  These seemed confusing in the sense that they seemed to change things that I thought were taught as doctrine in the church as I was growing up.  While I pointed out some things I didn’t like [...]

Given the increased media interest in the Church over the past year, the Mormon Newsroom recently published a document entitled “Mormonism 101: FAQ” .   Overall, the document does a good job of clearing up some misconceptions about the Church, and it is very well written, but I do have an issue with some of the [...]

Over the New Year holiday, a comment by Stephen Marsh in his own post on rent seeking reminded me of something John Dominic Crossan had talked about in his book The Historical Jesus — the parallelism between the concepts of an earthly patron in the development of the Roman Empire, and heavenly patronage as it [...]

There has been a book of personal testimony making waves in Evangelical Christian circles for the past few months. Indeed, it isn’t just limited to Protestant Evangelicals; the person who recommended it to our family is a devout Catholic liberal. The book, entitled Heaven is for Real, is the real life story of Todd Burpo, [...]

“Bring a miracle and request a table. Those you heal must accept you into their homes….The deliberate conjunction of magic and meal,  miracle and table, free compassion and open commensality,  was a challenge launched not just at Judaism’s strictest purity regulations,…but at civilization’s eternal inclination to draw lines, invoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations…. [...]

There are some nutritious and delicious meals that you would never eat if you knew what was in them before you sat down at the table. I would never have had scrambled eggs, for example, if they’d first been described to me as ground-up unfertilized bird embryos. I had heard bad things about the Jesus [...]

Canadian filmmaker and non-Christian Simcha Jacobovici (aka History Channel’s The Naked Archaeologist) is a magnet for Jesus relics.  In 2007 he claimed to locate Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem – with Jesus and other family members intact.  His latest find is a pair of nails he posits were the crucifixion nails, found in Caiaphas’s tomb (the high priest of [...]

As Easter approaches every year, it seems that many people type “do mormons celebrate easter” into Google.  If you do that right now, you will see that my post from 2008 is the #1 result on Google: Why Don’t Mormons Celebrate Easter? Frankly it’s shocking to me that my post is ranked so high on Google.  [...]

Today is not a day for rosary-beaded rumination, not a day for bathing his feet with tears, or oil, or any other expensive ungent of the soul. Temple-toned whispers are not welcome here; nor silent reverie. And even Contemplation, Meditation, Urbane oration, Have no station at this cross – It is empty. Rise, Shout him [...]

Isn’t it funny that most of us here are about to celebrate Easter, but this here will be a post about the Epiphany? …ok, maybe not. I dually apologize for my lateness as well as for any offense I may commit. Anyway, several months ago, a friend asked in a Facebook status: So this question [...]

I was in high school when the original Star Trek television series premiered. As nerdy then as I am now, I watched every episode, and every re-run, and every afternoon syndication for years. I finally stopped — not because I wasn’t interested in the Star Trek universe, which was infinitely expandable (as multiple incarnations have [...]

First, I must start with a confession.  I haven’t yet watched General Conference.  Despite living in the future here in Asia, we are living in the past in terms of General Conference which will be aired at the local church next weekend (or alternatively, live on-line now).  However, I have read some of the recaps, [...]

At the end of February, during the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)  meeting, data from the Kepler space probe was announced. Kepler is a planet hunter. The NASA craft stares at a small parch of sky containing about 150,000 stars and waits for something to pass in front of a star, [...]

We’ve talked about Flatland and strings with 10-dimensions.  We’ve talked about God outside time.  But now it’s going to get even more counter-intuitive – less certain, perhaps.  As per the rest of the posts in this series, we’re going to follow an “Outside-In” paradigm – where we look at what science has to tell us, [...]

NT SS Lesson #3 Welcome, once again, to the “Gospel Speculation” class. Since I am not a Ward Sunday School teacher, I am under no obligation to stick to the lesson manual or even stay true to the stated purpose of each lesson. Rather, I write these columns to entertain myself, and as motivation to [...]

Scientists have tried to figure out what star appeared to announce Jesus birth to the Wise Men.  I did a post a few years ago titled Astrology in the Christmas Story.  It is pretty much an accepted fact that our current calendar (called the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory who asked his monks to [...]

Providing another take on Kolob, we are pleased to have this guest post by Joseph Antley, a student of history and ancient Near Eastern studies. I am not an Egyptologist, nor do I have any formal training in Egyptology. But I do love the Pearl of Great Price’s Book of Abraham, and I enjoy learning [...]

I have been teaching the CTR 7 class in Primary — this group all turned 8 during the year and they were baptized.  Today we had a lesson on Jesus Christ in which we pulled different scriptures about the Savior out of the Gospels and made a Concentration game from them.  During a short explanation [...]