Posted by:
athreehourbore
(
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Date: April 20, 2011 06:44PM
Welcome, welcome, mid-Sabbath afternoon!
My dearly beloved and peculiar brothers and sisters in the gospel…It is with great urgency and concern that I take it upon myself to announce that “All is NOT well in Zion.” And not just because 2nd Nephi 28 requires me to believe that.
I’m saying it because Dr. Denial C Peterson, founder of FAIR/FARMS, has told us so in a recent Mormon Times article. Perhaps his PhD in middle eastern languages and cultures which more than qualifies him to offer his special insight and understanding into a spiritual hierarchy comparable only to the Taliban.
Jared…[cue audio clip of a nebbish-sounding Daniel Petersen’s voice]
“We may have become complacent. Don't we send out full-time missionaries? Isn't that enough? Aren't we "the fastest growing religion"? Actually, we're not. Church growth has been falling for many years, and our current rate of missionary success is the lowest it's been for decades. The harvest is great, but the laborers are still too few. This need not be.”
No Dr. Dan, it doesn’t need be by a long shot. Not only does it need not be…it need be naught. For even as Schmelder M. Russell Ballard decreed in a BYU-Hawaii Commencement address in December 2007…
"There are conversations going on about the church constantly…Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the church teaches.”
Yes, SHAME on those critics who attempt to define what OUR church teaches, by pointing out what our founder and subsequent prophets, seers, and revelators have spoken in God’s behalf in General Conference and other official settings for the last 180 years!
Who do they think they are, to tell us what our leaders told us to believe! Only WE can tell ourselves what our leaders tell us to believe!
He goes on…
"The challenge is that there are too many people participating in conversations about the church for our church personnel to converse with and respond to individually."
This begs several questions…First of all, why do the Lord’s Anointed save all the good stuff for our pineapple-eating brethren? It’s bad enough they get the choicest island within 8 time zones of the choicest of choice continents…Thank goodness we have Dr Dan to fill us in on what we’re missing.
Secondly…Could this be another “sign of the times” that the world dwelleth in iniquity…when the Lord’s own servants in His own vineyard—as well as his servants’ servants, innumerable layers of middle-management servants, their Madison-Avenue PR Firms, and high-power corporate legal team—can no longer stand as the gateway of truth and filter, screen, and correlate all public discourse into the watered-down sound bites and thought-stopping phrases that The Lord in his infinite foresight chooses to use?
I say unto you…Yea. And for the record, that is a VERY UN-enthusiastic Yea…like a “Yay, I was just called to be Ward Janitor” yay. But this is where you and I come in. You see, Schmelder Ballard has asked each of us individual members of Christ’s anatomy to [quote] "join the conversation by participating on the Internet to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration."
I know that’s how I like MY facts…Simple. Clear. Pre-prepped, and uniform…just like my cup of sacrament water. Mmmm mmmm mmmm. And to sterilize, dry-freeze, and reheat our truth for us, Dr Dan recommends some of the hottest new sites in the Blogosphere: MormonScholarsTestify, MormonDoctorsTestify, MormonAthletesTestify, and other sites created by self-selected groups of people whose spiritual testimony is somehow more relevant and credible than the proletariat’s.
Regular, portly, uneducated members are encouraged to spread the word through the More Good Foundation, which, in addition to raising the bar for more better grammar, provides a laundry list of church-approved websites that appeal not only to those members of the church with no desire to hear alternative viewpoints or annoying little flecks of history, but also the nonmembers, too, who, for whatever reason, are interested in finding out more about the organization’s beliefs without having to wade through meat—when all they really want is a warm glass of gospel breast milk before bedtime.
I, for one, was inspired by Dr Peterson’s call to action to CRY REPETENCE TO THE INTERNET…
“to promote positive, accurate content [in that order] about the gospel produced by those living it every day. It's time to reclaim the conversation about us online, to dispel misperceptions, to use the Internet for the gathering of those who will hear the Savior's voice and come unto him…”
Folks, this is more than just taking the conversation back from the hands of the fair and balanced. It is that we do consecrate ourselves, our family time, our internet connections, and everything with which the Lord has blessed us, or is currently blessing us, or with which he may bless us, or that which we secretly desire but have foregone that we will have received even more blessings in the pluperfect tense, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, [echo] for the building up of the Kingdom of God on the earth [super echo] and for the establishment of Zion, Zion, Zion, zion, zion…All arise.
For this reason, I have taken it upon myself to get involved in our sacred duty to present our message to the world in the best possible light, avoiding non-useful truths as necessary—which turns out to be a lot. A quick look-see on the Google Machine revealed that we have already flooded the earth-wide web. In order to magnify my calling as a part-time Missionary in the Peter North Ward, Tube Stake, I knew I was going to have to raise the bar.…but with so many Mormon-approved sites already parroting the same party line and canned, word-for-word testimonies…how could I, Mahonri Christiansen, possibly make a difference?
What happened next, brothers and sisters, was an extremely secret, er, sacred, experience. The Spirit of the Lord struck me suddenly, like an Angel with a Flaming Sword, and revealed to me my sacred mission—to reclaim the wayward members of our church from the menace of those so-called “New Order Mormons” who canker the virility of Christ’s body from within, like a inflamed prostate.
These secular, rational, moderate Mormons grasp at straws for some way to stay in the church after their testimonies are LOST from reading the wrong version of our history. What these confused, wayward souls have learned makes them more dangerous than the exmormons (who we all know cannot be trusted with their so-called “empirical evidence” and “uncensored history” and “logical phalluses”). Every member in good standing knows that church history websites are like the cups of Christ at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…drink from the wrong one and you’ll age faster than _____.
I’m sorry to say that even one of my own children has begun to think in ways that are independent of how we have sacrificed, modeled, and programmed into her through countless repetitions of “Follow the Prophet.” She calls it “critical thinking.” I call it the thinking of CRITICS.
For as the Capitan de Correlation himself, Harold B Lee decreed, “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” There is no more room for fence-sitting, now that the premortal existence is over. There is no room for moderation in the gospel—only all things except the gospel. There is no more “middle ground” or “middle way” between The Lord’s Way and The Highway than there is a third sexual orientation besides heterosexual men…and heterosexual women.
As for me and my house, I will reach out my hand to those sheeple of the fold who are perplexed with perceived inconsistencies between what the Lord has told us through his leaders…and what critics of the church have told us about our leaders. Consider this a labor of love out of Christlike concern. And while I may bear the cross of interacting with those whose teachings are not in harmony with ours for the purpose of dispelling falsehoods, I refuse to cast my pod before swine. Our critics may laugh…they may mock…they may even reach emotional homeostasis, sufficient levels of autonomy, self-esteem, healthy boundaries in their lives…but when it’s all said and done, they simply don’t know Shiz. Or Corintumr. Or Zoram, Zenos, Zenock, Zeezrum or anyone else in the Book of Mormon with a really made-up sounding name.
In closing, it is with immense humility that I gratefully grasp God’s grocery list and set out on The Lord’s Errand, to lead you…guide you…podcast beside you, and help you find the way. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nay, I am not ashamed to unabashedly bear both my solemn testimony of our current fundamental beliefs AND delve into the historical mysteries of the Restored Church of Christ.
After all…ALL THINGS testify of Christ. Not just bearing testimony, but yes…even facts, history, and empirical evidence. As we learn from the Book of Mormn, “Yea, even the bearth, and call things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its dmotion, yea, and also all the eplanets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”
Even our beloved founder’s polyandrous dalliances with other mens’ wives somehow testifies of Christ, too. If you can’t see the connection you either trust too much in the arm of the flesh…or you’ve been blinded by the Spirit of Masturbation. Same thing, really.
We’ll be right back.