The Gospel According to Jeffrey

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 ...

In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about “gender equality” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While so-called “Mormon feminists” have been around since at least the 1970s, the current renewed focus seems to have started with a Facebook group encouraging women to wear pants to Church on Sunday, 16 December 2012, in contrast to the prevailing culture which encourages them to wear skirts or dresses. (The Church, for its part, does not have any position on pants vs. skirts. As Church spokesman Scott Trotter stated in response to the proposed action, “Generally church members are encouraged to wear their best clothing as a sign of respect for the Savior, but we don’t counsel people beyond that.”) As for my ward of the Church, my perception was that “Pants Sunday” was an utter failure. As far as I could tell, most people had no idea it was even happening. My wife and I saw a grand total of two women that seemed to be participating, but one of them alway...

In the midst of my constant blogging about interesting things in my life and giving other people suggestions, I’ve got a bit of a switch-up, tonight: I could really use some help, here. About two months ago, my five-year-old son, David, suddenly became terrified of the dark, of going upstairs by himself, and of going to bed by himself. (He’s our only living son, so he’s been going to bed by himself since he was an infant.) At first, he was afraid of zombies; these days, he’s just plain afraid, ostensibly without the ability to articulate just what it is that scares him. Either way, the problem is the same: we have a lot of trouble getting him to go to bed. We’ve tried talking to him, assuring him that zombies aren’t real ( CDC page notwithstanding). We’ve helped him look out the window, to let him see that there’s nothing out there. We leave his lights on all night, so he’s not afraid of the darkness. We bought him a dream catcher, to help “keep the nightmares away.” I taught...