By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

Welcome to the inaugural installment of “Food, Intimacy, or Cars?!” The game where you, dear reader, must make commensurate the incommensurable! Here’s how you play: Various alimentary, hominid, and vehicular choices will appear below, grouped together in eight successive rounds. Since this is a politically and religiously correct version of the original game, all choices will be Mormon-relevant, and both genders will be catered to. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to decide which of the three selections in each round is the most desirable: the food, the intimacy, or the car? (“Intimacy” here means anything from a slow, romantic walk around the temple grounds to a NCMO at a BYU International Cinema screening, so nothing unseemly). Each round you choose correctly, you win one point. Here’s an example:

Jello Pudding?

Mitt Romney?

or a Minivan?

Which is more desirable? Obviously, the correct answer is Jello Pudding. You get the idea.

Later this afternoon I will post all the correct answers. Please note that the answers will be objectively true, having been established by the most level-headed, sober analyst I know (moi). So, while I encourage you to cast your votes below, the poll results actually mean nothing! It’s each partcipant’s declared choices in the comments section that matter. He or she who earns the largest number of points will win THE PRIZE, which will be picked by me and revealed only after the winner is determined. Okay, let’s start! Read the rest of this entry »

Six months is an embarrassingly long time to go without a single baptism. So when the Ward Mission Leader (WML) from an adjacent ward invited me (another WML) to attend his baptismal service, I couldn’t pass up his offer. It had been so long, I was beginning to forget how to run the services myself. Best to make an appearance, and see how it’s done. Presumably my own elders would also attend the ordinance. Maybe some magic pixie dust would rub off, and they’d be motivated to find good candidates of their own for a good dunking. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

I entered the baptismal room just before the start of the meeting and surveyed the scene. Up in front sat three investigators in a row, all dressed in white — two men and a woman, whom I’ll call “Peter”, “Paul” and “Mary”. Something about the way these three were sitting, the way they weren’t interacting with each other, their body language — to say nothing of their distinct ethnicities — made it obvious they weren’t a family. These folks clearly didn’t know each other. Here were three totally independent investigators, all of whom happened to be getting baptized on the same day. “Great,” I thought. “My missionaries can’t seem to find a soul; meanwhile, this ward has three separate people joining the Church in one service. How depressing!”

I took my seat near the back as the baptismal service commenced. Everything proceeded smoothly. When the actual ordinance portion of the program arrived, Mary was the first in line. A 30-something blonde with a big grin on her face, she was clearly happy to be there. She slowly entered the font, where an awaiting elder gently took her hand. He briskly lowered her into the water, said a few words, and then up Mary came. She wiped away the water from her eyes, clasped her hands together, looked upward, and then exclaimed in a booming voice: “PRAISE THE LORD!! PRAISE JESUS!! HALLELUJAH!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!” Mary turned to ascend the stairs to her changing room, but a look of pure ecstacy remained on her face. “PRAISE THE LORD!!! PRAISE GOD!!! JESUS BE PRAISED!!!” she screamed. Her outbursts continued, even as she exited into the back room.

I cringed. Read the rest of this entry »

As a 6-year-old, I liked to play outside with other neighborhood children my age. At any given time, I had lots of male and female friends living nearby to play with. Two of my local girlfriends were Shannon and Nanette. One fine afternoon, I headed out of the house and up the block, with the intention of kicking it with the both of them.

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Meet Ida. She’s a half-standard, half-miniature dachshund my wife and I adopted one year before the birth of our daughter. She is probably the most gorgeous dachshund you’ll ever meet. Really. Everybody thinks so. But don’t let her outer beauty fool you. For beneath her ravishing exterior is a demonic hound from Hell ready to growl at your slightest infraction, to rip your clothes, to sink her teeth into your hand if you approach her when she’s in a foul mood (which is always). Ida’s aggressive personality didn’t manifest until after our daughter was born, but since then she’s become a greater and greater menace. And the target of her ire is mostly yours truly. She rarely threatens my wife, but she exudes hostility at me constantly, especially if my wife and I are in the same room together with her. For a long time we took all the drama in stride, but eventually, we just couldn’t take it anymore. So several months ago we decided to give Ida to a Lutheran woman in our neighborhood who loves dachshunds, and who already had one of her own. Ida’s new digs really are ideal for her, and for us too. We are able to visit her regularly, but we no longer need to endure her aggressiveness on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, in recent weeks Ida has transferred the animus once reserved for me to her new owner. And it’s becoming a real problem. So a couple weeks back, the owner contacted us with a special request. She invited us to attend church with her in the Lutheran chapel across the street from our local LDS ward building, in order to observe her congregation’s annual “Blessing of Animals” after regular services. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever read one of Jonathan Stapley’s carefully crafted historical posts, and then said to yourself, “Sheesh, how in the world does he know all that?” Do you ever finish disgesting JNS’ latest analytical piece, only to proclaim, “Surely it is a sin for a man to know so much!” Do you ever read a Brad Kramer tour-de-force, and think, “Oh my heck, Brad probably forgot more Mormon history this morning than I’m likely to learn all year!”

Well, you shouldn’t. In fact, I’m going to let you in on a little secret… With only a modicum of effort, exerted over the course of one evening, you can successfully feign erudition and scholarliness when it comes to Mormon history. That’s because all you really need to know can be summarized in 10 short statements:
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I failed miserably in my Hometeaching duties this past month. Fortunately, I won’t receive an email soliciting my monthly stats until sometime next week, and as I see it, “early February” is the new “late January”, so all is not lost. Thus my scrambling around this morning between church meetings, cornering my hometeachees, and inquiring whether my companion and I could stop by this evening. Strangely, most of my hometeachees weren’t available. Something about already “having plans,” or “family visiting tonight” or “getting together with friends at that hour.” Granted this is short notice, but how odd that nobody was available today. Hmmmmm.
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The country of Haiti is now facing an unprecedented level of death and destruction, as an earthquake measuring 7.0 has literally destroyed Port au Prince. Hundreds of thousands are believed dead, and what little infrastructure the country had (very, very little) has been wiped out. Calamities of this scope and magnitude are frankly hard to comprehend, and as the death toll rises higher and higher, as it surely will, many of us will find it difficult to grasp the enormity of the numbers. I find that individual stories of drama and survival bring home the reality of cataclysmic events better than grim statistics can.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing many riveting and heartbreaking stories out of Haiti as the days pass. For now, I thought I would share an email I just received from a Methodist minister cousin of mine who is intimately involved with a non-profit organization that works with a series of homes for boys and disabled children, both in Petionville (the “wealthy” area that we hear so much about on the news) and Jacmel (on the South coast).

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This post first appeared, in somewhat modified form, as a comment on an old T&S thread back in 2004.

“Bob” was a gentleman in his 80’s who attended my Los Angeles ward. He was an endearing old curmudgeon, famous for coming to church dressed in these frilly, over-the-top outfits that looked like bad promwear from the 1970s. Bob was even more famous for his strident, dogmatic comments during church classes which were so out of left-field that they were actually a source of comic-relief for the class, rather than a source of offensiveness. Bob seemed to enjoy the attention that his obnoxiousness brought upon him, so it was a win-win situation for everyone involved. A number of years back, Bob really wanted a teaching calling, and the Bishop decided to oblige him. He was made an Elders Quorum instructor.
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This post first appeared, in slightly modified form, at the now-defunct Sons of Mosiah blog on July 15, 2004.

There are sins you confess to God, and there are sins you confess to the Bishop. In the mission field, there are sins you confess to God, and sins you confess to the Mission President. Getting the repentence process right is important, so understanding the difference between the various types of sin is crucial. My first mission president – bless his heart – wanted to be as helpful as possible to the missionaries as we tried to comprehend the whole process….
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to a party next weekend! Specifically, my wife and I are throwing our annual Christmas Party next Saturday evening, and if you are a commenter or lurker at BCC, and you will be in the area, we’d love to meet you! Here’s the skinny:

What:

Aaron & Stina Brown’s 2009 Christmas Party

When:

Saturday, December 12, 2009, from 7:00 to 11:00 pm
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During a recent conversation among LDS friends, I bemoaned a certain type of LDS churchmember that I find deeply “annoying.” I used this word in a very specific sense. I described as “annoying” certain right-wing Mormons who seem unable to conceptually distinguish between their own deeply-held political preferences and the doctrines of the LDS Church. I know you know the type I’m talking about.

One of my (conservative) LDS friends interrupted me, conceded that this Mormon personality type exists, but insisted that “left-wing LDS members are no less likely to be “annoying,” as they are equally prone to the same vice.”

I strongly disagreed with this statement. I admitted that the existence of “annoying” left-wing LDS members is possible, but insisted they don’t really exist much, if at all, in the real world. And by this, I didn’t just mean that annoying liberals are rarer than annoying conservatives in sheer number — this is too obvious to dispute, since LDS liberals of all sorts are much rarer than LDS conservatives of all sorts, whether annoying or not. No, I actually meant that given an equal number of LDS conservatives and LDS liberals, you are likely to find the annoying quality I abhor in the first group in much, much larger quantity than the second.
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Like Kevin Barney, I sometimes bite my tongue at Church. A class member will make a bone-headed statement in Sunday School, or Elders Quorum, and I’ll look at my wife (or neighbor) and roll my eyes. But more often than not, I decide to keep my big mouth shut. After all, it’s just not worth it to counter every stray comment I disagree with. It might cause a lot of unnecessary contention to correct someone on a point that isn’t really that important at the end of the day. Or it might make the commenter feel stupid. Or it might make me look petty and combative for having uttered the correction. And yet, there are times when biting one’s tongue isn’t the correct tack to take, I think. Some comments aren’t just ignorant and silly, but downright pernicious if left unopposed. I’ve heard many a ludicrous statement in Church over the years that I know was recognized as such by the teacher, but that was met by a polite “thank you” rather than the tactful smackdown that it deserved. We don’t want to rock the boat, naturally, but we sometimes forget that when we acquiesce to nonsense being taught in our classes, we may well be sending the inadvertant message to some that noxious comment X, Y or Z is doctrinally kosher, or at least assented to by all those within earshot. And yet knowing when to open one’s mouth, and when to keep it closed, is tricky.

Oh, let me tell you how incredibly tricky it sometimes is! A year or so ago, I was sitting in Gospel Doctrine class when someone raised their hand and uttered a real doozy. A comment that, to my mind, was just awful. I disliked its tone. I disliked its content. I felt strongly that it misconstrued a gospel teaching, while playing all too well to misguided prejudices surely held by many in attendance. It was the sort of outburst that was screaming for a rebuttal, even if I had to choose my words carefully. It basically met the entire laundry list of criteria I use for determining when it is appropriate to pull out the big guns in Sunday School. But there was one small problem. One that I had not anticipated. One that I had never run into before…

The Commenter-That-Must-Be-Opposed was sitting right next to me. She was my wife.
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You are Mitt Romney. Or, if you prefer, you are an LDS politician running for the U.S. Presidency other than Mitt Romney. You are at a town meeting, fielding questions from the audience, and you’ve gone on record saying that audience members can ask you any question on any topic they want. Truth be told, you would rather avoid confronting questions that deal with the specific theological tenets of Mormonism, but you are nonetheless asked this question:
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I grew up in a good Republican family, in a wealthy Southern California community, in a ward with lots of good, right-thinking Republican churchmembers. As a youth, I recall occasionally hearing an argument that went something like this: “The Lord asks all his children to pay 10% of their income to his Church, regardless of whether they’re rich or poor. He did so in the days of Malachi, and he does so today. But the government levies a tax on U.S. citizens that rises higher and higher the more money you make. Since we know that the Lord’s ways are just and fair, the government’s ways obviously are not.” In short, the Church’s tithing system was a model that the government should adopt with respect to tax policy. Progressivity in the tax code is unfair, unjust, perhaps even evil.
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This post first appeared, in slightly modified form, at the now-defunct Sons of Mosiah blog on July 2, 2004.

There comes a time in every missionary’s Mission Training Center (“MTC”) experience when he or she would prefer to be struck by lightning than spend another day cooped up in the “missionary gulag” (Or was it just me?). You spend 8 whole weeks doing “SYL”, attending class 27 hours a day, and eating the same soggy brussel sprouts over and over again. Oh, to finally get out into the real mission field! But in the meantime, you’re stuck “on campus” and you’ve got to find some way to keep yourself entertained.
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The wife and I are hosting a Bloggersnacker this Saturday, October 13, at 6:00 pm. If you live or frolic in the Seattle area, you are invited to attend. We will be providing all food, drink and dessert, so please don’t feel the need to potluck it. Our address is: Read the rest of this entry »