The Little Lord of Small Concerns

December 26, 2022 by

My concerns are so petty.

Whenever I pause to pray, that’s almost always my first thought. Who am I to ask God for anything? He’s already given me everything. A warm home, a loving family, good health. So what if my baby won’t nap? So what if my puppy needs surgery? So what if I constantly feel overwhelmed by adulting? That’s called life.

Nearly all my petty concerns will resolve themselves, with or without divine intervention. So who am I to waste God’s time? Who am I to ask for mild creature comforts when so much of the world is suffering? I would genuinely rather God direct his energy to those who need it more. So my solution is often to just not pray. Some piece of me believes that’s a selfless act. I assume God’s energy, like mine, is finite. In a finite universe, I confess I’m not a priority.

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Filed Under: Advent, Anciently Revealed, Children, Comparative/Ecumenical, Doctrine & Policy, Family, Holiday, Religion, Scriptures, Theology, Theology, Doctrine & Policy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Seven Theses on Eternal Perspective

February 4, 2018 by
  1. Eternal perspective isn’t seeing the world through some transcendental eye, unfettered by human limitations; rather, our limited perspectives have eternal value because they ground our struggles to see the transcendental in each other, and those are what teach us to see as God sees.
  2. We often talk as though an eternal perspective will clear everything up, but what if an eternal perspective means perceiving people in their full messiness and finding beauty and glory in that?
  3. The idea of eternal perspective as clearing everything up depends on the wrong concept of justice, as one in which everything that seemed wrong in this life has now been brought in line with the ideal, but maybe justice means instead that everything painful has finally been met with overabundant kindness.
  4. This kind of justice is not at odds with mercy; rather, it suggests that injustice is a deficit of mercy.
  5. An eternal perspective means learning to see how badly the world thirsts for kindness and mercy.
  6. An eternal perspective means trying to sate that thirst, however and whenever you can—including when your failures to have parched your own mouth. Be kind to everyone, especially yourself.
  7. An eternal perspective is quiet, because kindness and mercy are manifest in silent presence at least as often as they are in speech.
Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: , ,

Justice and Mercy: A Rape Survivor’s Perspective

June 10, 2016 by

Today’s guest post is from Rachael.

I was sexually abused as a child and later raped as a teenager and again as an adult. All of these horrific experiences were at the hands of LDS priesthood holders. Of course, those who did these things were sinning and were not true representatives of Christ or His priesthood. It was relatively easy for me to separate out in my mind these evil men from what I knew God wanted.  But it was much harder for me to figure out how to make sense of the good men, bishops and stake presidents, who counseled me to forgive, to bury the past, to not hold my perpetrators legally responsible.  Because I believed that these men were representatives of God, I believed them when they told me that it was God’s will that I let my rapists (and abusers) off the hook.  And so I did.  I earnestly practiced the forgiveness that I was taught to practice, burying any hint of anger the moment it tried to rise up in me, and consequently, I believe, that buried emotion took on a life of its own, to the detriment of my health. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Current Events, Doctrine & Policy, Education, Family, Gender & Sexuality, General Conference, Guest Post, Mormon, Navel-Gazing & Poetic Observation, Society & Culture, Theology, Doctrine & Policy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,