I’ve been following Bob’s recent exaltation thread from afar. More interesting to me than the different positions being taken on either side is that there is a discussion at all.

I first wondered what difference it would make whether or not exaltation were a gift. Would the answer change my testimony or how I live my life? How? I was about to write a post asking what would happen if it came down from President Hinckley himself (or we had whatever we might consider an authoritative answer) that, say, exaltation could not properly be thought of as a gift. (In fact, I might still ask that question.)

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I haven’t heard it quite as much in the last couple years, but at least as recently as a 2000, President Hinckley often said things like “I say to those of other faiths: ‘You bring all the good that you have and let us see if we can add to it.'” (here’s one instance, about a third of the way down.) He may still say it for all I know, but whether he does or not I have no reason to believe that it doesn’t fairly accurately portray his views, and I’ve been thinking about the idea lately.

What “good” do you think Prez H means? What good do we add to that of other faiths? Maybe the answer is that we have the “truth” and that we can offer salvation. If so, my reply is: Salvation shmalvation.

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I know it’s a few weeks old by now, but I found this Newsweek article very interesting.  It talks about how even though women are doing a lot of amazing things professionally, as they become mothers they find that both jobs and motherhood are both full time endeavors.  According to the article, many, many women are being driven crazy trying to do both well.

I’m not sure what can or should be done on a societal level to fix this problem.  For all I know, it may not even be much of a problem.  But if it is I am deeply skeptical that the solutions are the things suggested by the article’s author (who actually wrote a book on this same topic) like government-provided daycare and "progressive tax policies that would transfer our nation’s wealth back to the middle class".  (Just because we’re liberal Mormons here, it doesn’t mean we’re all on the left politically.)  Of course, a discussion on public policy isn’t what I intend with this post.  The thing is that my wife and I will one day have kids.  Is she doomed to be one "of the mothers [who] appear. . . to have lost nearly all sense of themselves as adult women"?  Does being Mormon offer any insights into this issue?  Maybe the Proclamation on the Family affirms that this is just the lot of women.  (I sure hope not.)

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Our Church is wonderful for many reasons and it does many things well. I have not found teaching spirituality to be one of them. Developing our capacity to understand things of a spiritual nature is an important aspect of our growth as human beings both on Earth and eternally, yet it is not uncommon to find examples of very intelligent and capable people in the Church expressing difficulty in learning how. Certainly there are those in the Church who have learned very well how to interpret spiritual things. But I doubt their skill has very much to do with any instruction they’ve received in the Church.
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For my #4, I thought I’d redo a fairly recent post of mine.  I think it relates to John H.’s recent post about doubt and faith.  It’s my own take on some of the seeming inconsistencies in the Church, or at least in my testimony:

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