The Gospel According to Jeffrey

I’m going to say something that may not be popular, something which might even cause some people some hurt. I preface this by saying that I grew up in the New York City area, where people have the reputation for being rude and unfriendly, which I personally find insanely laughable. You want to find rude and unfriendly, go to the Midwest or to Utah; I’ve experienced quite a bit of each, in both places. Conversely, New Yorkers are very open and accepting; we just don’t beat around the bush. We tell it like it is and expect everyone to accept that, because in our world, everyone does. If you don’t want to hear me tell it like I see it, feel free to read something else. Yesterday afternoon, Elder Neil L. Andersen  (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles ) addressed the 184th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . In his discourse, he reiterated two of the Church’s consistent positions: 1) We should respect everyone and bully no one. ...

It’s time for yet another installment of Responding to Facebook , the show where I share stuff that’s really just way too long for microblogging. For the last few months, the Bloggernacle has been rife with stories about the Ordain Women Movement , a group that seeks to have The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints change its longstanding policy of only ordaining men to specific offices in the Priesthood. While the reasons behind this are far too complex to be treated in this post, the point is that this group wants this change to occur, and has been attempting to effectuate this change through a variety of methods—not the least of which is showing up at the Priesthood Session of the Church’s Annual and Semiannual General Conferences and requesting admission to the men’s meeting. (As an aside, the men’s meeting is always preceded by a General Women’s Meeting, the preceding Saturday. Of course, all women are invited to attend this meeting, and men requesting admissio...

A few years ago, I was talking with a new friend who was investigating the Church. Her backstory was long and complicated, but it was obvious that she and her husband were faithful and progressing toward joining the Church. In the course of conversation, this friend told me how wonderful the Church was. She said that over the years, she’d been to many different churches, but that nowhere were the people as good and loving and friendly as in ours. I responded that I was flattered, that I was glad she felt that way; but I cautioned her that if she were planning to join the Church because of the people, she’d be better off not getting baptized at all. She seemed a bit shocked, but I continued: if and when she joined the Church, she’d better do it because she loved her Savior and wanted to follow Him. I promised her that someday—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday—one of those great people was going to really piss her off. It might be a bishop, it might the woman sitting n...

As often happens, I’m involved in a discussion on Facebook and have a response that’s much too long for what amounts to an extended tweet. Long-time readers may remember my posts to Brian Dunning regarding the Book of Abraham. This will be much of the same, but since old questions die hard, I’ll be responding to it again. The rest of this post will therefore be directed to Facebook member Darren Ashby . First of all, Darren, you asked me a few questions. However, that was just before I headed to lunch and ran some errands, and when I returned, I found over 100 comments following them. So that being said, I’m going to ignore most of the comment thread and focus on you. Hope you don’t mind me jumping back over 100 some-odd comments and answering the questions you asked. :-) So without any further ado, let’s start at the beginning. You asked: “So you define translation as not direct translation? When I translate the words "mi nombre es Darren" from Spanish to English I...

Last night I was waiting for my older daughter, Leah, to emerge from her first-ever Activity Days when I overheard an interesting conversation. The participant doing most of the talking was a woman I did not recognize, but whom I’m guessing is one of our ward’s many new members. (Not only have we had quite a few recent convert baptisms in our ward, but perhaps 40-50% of active ward members are married-student families, so transience is very much a fact of life.) Regardless, the woman seemed to be a member of the recently reorganized Young Women’s leadership, which will become relevant in a minute. The other participant—if you can call her that—was a young girl whom I also did not recognize, but I suspect is a member of the Spanish branch with which we combine for youth and Primary activities. Judging by her appearance, the girl was probably somewhere in the vicinity of her 12th birthday, and the conversation sounded like the adult leader trying to encourage her to participate in t...

A person on a web site I frequent claimed, yesterday, that the Book of Mormon cannot be deemed accurate from external sources. His argument is that the Bible is evidenced by external documents confirming, for example, the existence of Joseph Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate . I’m rather pleased with my response, which thus far remains unchallenged, despite this individual’s continued participation in the thread. As such, I share it here. U-Kish Kan For the record, there is as much extra-scriptural evidence for Kish as there is for Pilate or Caiaphas. Monument 47 displays a named engraving of U-Kish Kan , an Olmec king who lived in the same time and place as the Jaredite ruler. Now, is it possible that U-Kish Kan is not the same Kish mentioned in the Book of Mormon? Of course. Is it even possible that the Book of Mormon Kish is a fictional character? From a strictly logical standpoint, of course. But is it not equally possible, equally logical, that the scriptural Caiaph...

Just over a year ago, in late 2011, I was called to meet with the first counselor in our ward bishopric and extended a call to serve as a Primary worker. My assignment was to be one of two instructors for the 10-12–year-old boys, a class with about half a dozen active members. The first counselor, Brother Gardner, informed me that the bishopric tried to call Primary workers for about a year, which I immediately assumed was wishful thinking. My wife, Anna, had previously been called into Nursery “for about a year” and wound up serving from before our son David started Nursery (age 18 months) until well after his fourth birthday. Nevertheless, I accepted the calling and was sustained on 1 January 2012. Yesterday morning, I arrived at the ward building at 9:30 a.m. for our annual “Meet Your Teacher” breakfast. I dropped my daughter Leah off at her CTR 7 table and was about to drop off David at the CTR 5, when the new first counselor in the bishopric, Brother Asay, told me he needed to ...