Is it possible to have NO state religion (ideology)?

Elder Neal A Maxwell about irreligion.  He put into words (very eloquently I might add) the thoughts I have been having as of late.  It seems impossible to NOT have ANY state religion.  Wouldn't you agree?  I use the word 'religion' very loosely here.  Maybe a better word is ideology.  Having Atheism as the states ideology is still an ideology (religion.)

In related news people are angry at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for speaking out on what they feel is a moral, not political, issue.  This is very interesting to me.  I might be biased, but I feel like I see a lot more hatred aimed at the Church from the so called gay community than I do vice versa.  I would say that I don't see any hate from the Church toward the gay community, but I admit that there are probably members of the Church that (wrongfully) hate "homosexuals", but they do not represet the Church.  Just because you disagree with someone, doesn't mean you hate them, am I correct?

Plant the seed - Testimony

I have to write this down on here because it has had such a HUGE impact on my life.  This is something my sister-in-law Tricia Burbank said and I LOVE it.  It is so profound to me.  It probably sounded better (and more profound) in the context of the discussion we were having, but alas.

"Everyone has to gain their own testimony about each individual gospel principle."  And I would add "...and this comes slowly, line upon line."

The frustrating thing is when people try to force their own testimony of something onto someone who hasn't gained that testimony.  You CAN'T give someone a testimony of something.  I do believe people can borrow testimonies from others, but they have to accept it, it can't be given to them, if that makes sense.  But eventually they need their own.

For example Tricia said she has gained a really strong testimony of the importance of watching/listening/looking at good entertainment.  A few years ago she decided to only watch movies that have a rating of 4 and lower (I think) in all categories on kids-in-mind.com (because the MPAA rating system is a joke).  Since deciding on this guideline she has seen why this is becoming increasingly important.  Emily and I adopted the same family standard about 2 years ago.  Before we started doing this I used to think "Eh, it isn't that big of a deal."  But now that we have tried it out, I can say I have a testimony of it.  This is where I could go off about why I think it is important but that isn't the purpose of this post, but I'll just say if you look at media today versus 5 years, 15 years, 35 years ago, it is ridiculous and becoming more so everyday!  Think of something "wicked" and I'll bet you can see it portrayed as good somewhere in entertainment.  And calling something that is bad, good enough times can have a dramatic effect.

On the flip side I know people who have a very strong testimony of the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy which to them means not watching sporting events, like, the Superbowl!  I have a very weak testimony of this.  I know I should probably change this, but I haven't yet.  I guess I justify it because I actually don't care about the Superbowl, but I do love any excuse to get together with family, and spending time with family is also an important gospel truth, right?

So the key things I see is that people have to follow the Alma 32 approach and plant the seed and exercise faith, and then make a decision to try it out.  You don't gain a testimony by just thinking about things.  You have to try it out, exercise faith, and then you can ponder on whether or not you have a testimony of it, or in other words if it is True principle.  This is the best way I have found to find out if something is "True" or not.  But often people seem to try it the other way.  For example I could have thought, "Is it really that important that I watch 'good' movies?" and I would conclude "nah, probably not".   But when I try it out and then think about it, I get a different answer, a more correct one I believe.

The other key thing is to realize that people are at different stages in their lives and have stronger and weaker testimony of things than you do.  It is okay...this is part of mortal life.  It is fine to "teach people correct principles" but when you start forcing them to exercise faith, well, then you have a crossed the line!

I guess this is one of those things I have heard all of my life, but until Tricia said the above quote, it didn't really ring true.  I think this will be increasingly important now that I am parent.

Is understanding "why" important to faith or not?

Just a follow up on my last post.  First I enjoyed this quote I got today and it is slightly related to the rest of this post:

"While understanding the “what” and the “how” of the gospel is necessary, the eternal fire and majesty of the gospel springs from the “why.” When we understand why our Heavenly Father has given us this pattern for living, when we remember why we committed to making it a foundational part of our lives, the gospel ceases to become a burden and, instead, becomes a joy and a delight. It becomes precious and sweet."

--President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Forget Me Not", November 2011 Ensign

Also, Salt Lake Tribune wrote an article a few days ago called "Mormons tackling tough questions in their history."  It is very much related to the FAIR article I posted last time.

At my family Christmas party I had a discussion with one of my sisters about various gospel topics similar to the one above.  It was sparked by this article.  She talked about how she doesn't care about all the "why" questions (in relation to gospel discussions.)  She said she is more concerned about whether or not something is "True." (I use capital "T" on purpose...this means it is a God given universal truth...that is another topic, but I don't have time right now to fully explain.)  She went on to say "if it is True, then why does the "why" matter?"  Man, this was a revelation of sorts to me.  However, I continued to think about it, and for me the "why" is a small part of my coming to know something is True.  I feel everything True has a logical explanation.  I also accept that I may not be able to understand everything with my finite mind. ("...my ^aways^bhigher than your ways, and my ^cthoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9).” But I feel that there is no harm in trying to understand.  God gave us the ability to think and reason, why not use it?

I have been told that the "my finite mind may not understand" argument is a very convenient cop-out for Theists.  It is true that it is convenient (although not really), but that does not mean that it isn't true.  Try giving a 5 year old a school test about logarithms and when she fails and says "I don't understand this", don't go to her and say "That is a cop-out!  That is just convenient for you to be able to say you don't understand."

However, I also discovered that I felt like my way was better than my sister's, and this is not true.  They are just different approaches.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way my sister goes about her spiritual journey.  While I don't have time to point out all the reasons, I actually admire my sister's faith.  Some people would say "oh well, she is using blind faith and that is not smart", but I feel that by definition faith is partly blind. I am trying to think of a quick example.  Here is one, but there is probably holes in the logic, but this is off the cuff to try and explain somewhat what I mean.  If people are nice to each other the world will be a better place.  I don't know EXACTLY why it makes the world a better place.  I just kind of have an overarching feeling that it makes the world better.  I don't know all the processes and minute details, but I do know it makes the world a nicer place.  This overarching feeling is good enough for me.  However, someone else might need to study it down to the nity grity to see why.  Alright, pretty poor example, but it will have to suffice.

As long as someone comes to know something is True (and then acts accordingly) I believe they will be happy.  It doesn't matter how they come to know it.

These are my random recent thoughts.  I open to comments, as I am still on a journey to make this all make sense.

Anywho, I have some thoughts I'll post next time about "faith" as it is a topic I have been studying a lot lately.  It is good to be blogging again.

Need more Church History

My dad sent me a presentation by Davis Bitton that was presented at the 5 Aug 2004 FAIR Conference, in Sandy, Utah.  It is titled "I don't have a testimony of the history of the Church."  I will include the entire talk below, but first my comments.

I thought this paragraph interesting and agreeable.  

Some of us might deplore the fading of church history from the curriculum. In the meantime, of course, you can still read on your own, individually or in study groups. To my knowledge, no one is forbidding such study.

I remember in my history of Mormonism class at USU this was a sentiment that my instructor shared.  Of course he was happy that he could be teaching a university class that included Church History, but I could see the desire that he had that it be a subject for a class somewhere inside of the church...probably preferably a sunday meeting, but at the very least a institute class.  And actually I did have a class in institute in which we talked about Church History in such a fashion, but it was the type of class that only had 5 or 6 people in it.  

BUT, I see this article is nearly 8 years old, and I feel the church is moving in a direction of promoting more church history with projects like the Joseph Smith papers and whatnot.  So I am happy to see that.  Why has it taken the church so long to promote more church history?  Well, besides the things mentioned in the article below I also have come to realize that this is a Church made up of humans.  Humans shy away from things that are embarrassing or don't make sense.  I don't believe the Church was hiding anything or trying to be sneaky or dishonest.  They were just acting like rational human beings by focusing on what they do understand.  

 I enjoyed how the author talked about how Church history can be shocking because it doesn't meet our expectations.  I have been exposed to quite a bit of "shocking church history" in my life.  Most were obviously mis-statements or out of context, but sometimes not.  But they have never been faith-destroying....but more along the line of interesting or different.  I believe if members of the church discussed the history of the church before an "anti" person discussed it with them, it would help many members to not 'fall away'.  In fact it would be funny how it would frustrate the "antis".  I hope 5 years from now the Church will have produced so many volumes of histories that the "antis" will have to find another purpose in life. 

I wish the article was a little more concise but it drags a little around the middle, so if you get bored in the middle and must skip ahead, jump to the heading "How Important Is History?" and read the rest from there. 

This is the letter I got from Orrin Hatch today in regards to my disagreement with PIPA.  Am I happy with the response?  Eh.  Do I think it sounds like a poorly written letter in which Hatch is just trying to please his voters, but doesn't actually agree with his voters? Yes.  I actually believe Hatch is very intelligent.  He is creative in his solutions to problems.  And it is always nice to have someone in the senate with such seniority as he, but my support for him goes downhill from here.

Emilie inspired me to write my reflection of 10 years ago yesterday.  I am a day late on everything.

I was a senior in High School.  I think my dad was dropping me off for school and I remember being aware some plane had hit a tall building in New York.  My dad was making a big deal of it (because he had seen that building before and so to him it was real, but to me as a 17 year old kid it was…not as real).  I remember thinking, "stuff like this happens dad, it is no big deal."  Then when I got to school I had  a class with Mr. Orme and he had the TV on and we watched it for a while.  I realized then it was a bit more serious.  We sort of had class, but Mr Orme kept the TV on in the background the whole time. 

I think my next class was Yearbook, or something, because I remember talking to Mr Riley and he was freaking out.  He said he was leaving and headed down to his wife's classroom (she taught at the same school).  We worked on yearbook stuff by ourselves, but I remember needing to ask Mr Riley something so I went down to Mrs. Riley's room and I think they were listening to a radio.  I sat and listen for a moment.  Then on my way back I heard a classroom yelling about something and I popped my head in.  I think this is when the towers collapsed and I remember getting chills (and I just got them again as I typed that). 

My next class was in Mr. Watson's room (a class about computers, but I was the TA).  I remember he had a TV out and was watching everything the whole the whole class.  I was sitting there with a few other students talking about it.  I remember Mr Watson was kind of freaking out…saying stuff like "this might be the end of the world guys…maybe not today necessarily…but  this would start a war or something and then the world might end".  This scared me a little.

The whole day at school was strange.  The halls were quiet.  People were well behaved.  Their wasn't any joking going on.  I think everyone kind of knew this was a big deal.

When I got home my parents were both home just flipping through channels and so I just sat down and watched it the rest of the day.

My online shopper warning to the world: lens.com

I needed some new contacts and so I did a Google search for my brand (night & day) and a few sites popped up.  I hate buying contacts.  Every year I have switched which website I buy from based on who is the cheapest.  1-800-CONTACTS was my first company to use, but has become one of the most expensive.  Last year I bought from www.CoastalContacts.com.  One of my searches brought up www.lens.com.  They claimed I could get Night & Day contacts at 39.99 per box.  That is $6 cheaper per box than I had found elsewhere, and I am buying four boxes.  So I went ahead and started working on the order, because I wanted to see if some crazy fee or shipping would be added.  So this is how far I got:

And I was happy to see they were including a free case.  Shipping for 7.95 is okay with me...but then I realized....something isn't right.  Do the math: 79.98 + 79.98 + FREE = ????  It should be 159.96, not 170.36.  Ummmmm....this is wrong.  I have sent them an email and I am waiting to hear back.  Sounds like a scam to me.

On the flipside I found another website called www.contactlensking.com that had my contacts for 40.95 per box.  I was about to go ahead and follow my tradition of switching stores to get contacts from, but then decided to check www.coastalcontacts.com one more time...mostly because I already had an account with them and I didn't want to have to enter all my contact information again...and I am glad I did.  I found out coastal contacts had a price match.  So I called them up, told them about contactlensking.com, they put me on hold to check on contactlensking, got back and told me they would give me my contacts at a rate 10% better than contactlensking!  Wahoo.  So I am very happy to be a Coastal Contacts customer.  I got Night & Day contacts at 41.50 per box including shipping!

Summary of lesson learned:
www.coastalcontacts.com = good reputable company that price matches and is easy to work with.
www.lens.com = scammers

UPDATE:

Below is the email I received-

Dear Joe,
Thank you for contacting Lens.com.The variation in the costing you’re seeing is due mostly to the fluctuations in the economy coupled with our efforts to provide you with contact lenses at the lowest possible cost. We pass through the costs to you as close to break-even as we can. Due to a recent increase in our handling costs we have been forced to implement a temporary handling surcharge. We are working hard to find ways to eliminate this cost, and in the meantime, we are absorbing as much of the increased cost as possible. Currently, a handling fee of 6.5% of the product value will automatically be included in your order total and itemized on your invoice. Despite this increase, our efforts provide you with consistently lower prices than the competition.
Sincerely,
Tonya
Lens.com
Customer Service Department

So I replied with this:

And at what point was I going to be made aware of the added handling cost?  It doesn't matter to me that you have one, or that it is temporary, I only want to be made aware of it.  If I would have been aware you were adding the handling fee I may have ordered from your company.  However, because I was not made aware I figure your company was scamming people...which it still sounds to me that you are.  I would recommend a swift change to your checkout procedure that spells out the added handling fee in a line on the checkout and/or just add the 6.5% into the end price of your contacts, so that it raises the "price per box" amount.  This would be the best.  Thank you.  I have already ordered from another website, and written a blog post about your questionable math.  I would however look forward to seeing some changes on your website.  I am trying not to be upset, but I really feel you guys are cheating people and I hope you understand.  Thank you.

And they replied with this:

Thank you for contacting Lens.com.

I apologize for the inconveience (sic) this has caused. The handling fee is included in the subtotal. We are working on the website to have a specific line for the handling fee.
Sincerely,
Helen