Sabbath

A Different Take on the Samaritan Story

I want to subtitle this post: Defending the Priest and the Levite. Not long ago, we had a lesson in priesthood on the Good Samaritan.  This is one of my favorite parables, but the lesson quickly devolved into the traditional platitudes.  People began to point fingers at the “hypocritical” priest and the Levite walking past the […]

Posts Restored – Back to the Present

Many of you have noticed a blast from the past on my blog.  Back in Feb 2013, my host server crashed and I had to back up my blog and try to restore it.  I picked WordPress.com, thinking that was a good choice.  Well, it didn’t restore all my posts–I was missing about 150 of […]

Mormon Missions in Islamic Countries

Many of you have read Lengthen Your Stride by Edward Kimball.  It’s a great book in an of itself, and it includes a CD with a treasure trove of material.  Included on the CD is a much longer version of the book, but few people read the “long version.”  Edward Kimball and Deseret Book disagreed […]

Jana Riess: Truth Doesn't have to be Empirical

Jana Riess has recently published a book called Flunking Sainthood in which she decides to spend 1 month participating in various spiritual rituals. For example, she spent one month fasting from sun up to sun down as a pious Muslim would do during Ramadan (though she picked the month of February because it had the […]

Good Friday, Easter, and Mormons

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 […]

Why do I go to Church?

I have left messages on this and other blogs about how boring church can be. This has prompted the question, “Well, if it’s so boring, why do you even bother to go?” First of all, let me state that I am a believing mormon. I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, I believe in the […]