My personal thoughts on various religious topics
The Temple – A history from the perspective of a ...
The temple has played a big role in the history of Jewish and Christian life, with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints still building and using temples today. The following will give you a good idea of how the ...
Unjust steward, meet the prodigal son
Unjust Steward: The Problems The “Parable of the Unjust Steward” in Luke 16:1-8 is confusing. It seems to teach lessons contrary to everything that lots of Christians believe in. The short version is that a steward for ...
Why did Christ come to Bountiful?
Christ in the Americas As recorded in the book of 3 Nephi 11-28 in the Book of Mormon, Christ ministered to the people living in the Americas shortly after His resurrection. This partially fulfilled His prophecy in John 10:16 when ...
Jephthah: A Judge unrighteously judged
I’ve noticed that many people associate the Old Testament with writings like Isaiah, or Jeremiah, often thinking of complicated, long, and confusing prophesies. Much of the Old Testament, however, is loaded with stories. We’re all familiar with stories like Noah, ...
Orthoenai
Orthodoxy vs. Orthopraxy When studying the many religions in the world, it’s not uncommon to see publications categorize the many faiths as being either predominantly Orthodox (correct belief) or Orthoprax (correct action/practice). Writers and scholars often use ...
Joseph of Egypt – Christlike or Adamic?
Parallels between Joseph of Egypt, Adam, and Christ There are a lot of parallels between Joseph of Egypt, Adam and Jesus Christ. Since nearly all Old Testament figures have parallels and are symbolic to other ...
Doing the Rameumptom
Rameumptom in Sunday School I have heard the story of the Rameumptom used to teach some interesting lessons in talks and Sunday School classes. This story in chapter 31 of Alma in The Book of Mormon is a memorable one to readers, ...
Seeking truth
One of my duties at church has been to teach a class on Sundays to the Priesthood Quorum (which means teaching a class to a room full of guys age 18 to 50sih). One week I was assigned to teach ...
Almsgiving
Giving of our substance to others (almsgiving) is a complicated issue. One subject that frequently comes up (among those of us that think and talk about these things) is the issue of giving to people ...
Women and the priesthood
The Problem If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons. In the church, God has given us the ...
How to be sensitive to spiritual promptings
Many of you will know that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly referred to as the Mormons, or LDS.) This post about How to be Sensitive to Spiritual ...
Faith and questioning
A post on faith and questioning deserves a little background as to why I decided to write it. I had a job evaluating survey data at BYU, which sometimes means reading through heaps of open responses ...
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