In December 2020, I had a pointed post on how a religion teacher at BYU was teaching a false truth that God doesn’t change in a relationship with us. It related to his interpretation of the Bible Dictionary’s definition of prayer. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other In that post, I said

What would you do if I dropped all the parts to a contraption made in the early 1800s called a ‘spinning mule’ and asked you to restore it? What if there were no remaining pictures? What if nobody existed that had ever seen one? What if all you knew was that you could use it to cloth people of the early 1800s? How would you know that you had restored it?

A friend of mine shared a story when he and a buddy were at a bar eating their dinner. They started discussing how the beer machine worked. They wondered how the handle levered the internal system and how the beer poured out of the system so clean. The mechanics started to intrigue them, and they pondered the entire contraption. The wonder got the best of them, and they asked the bartender how the machine worked.

Community and the quest for the right path. What would you think I was describing if I said I wanted to talk to you about a group with dietary restraints, garment adornments, public behavior traditions, and leader fidelity? Some may respond, ‘cult’ or ‘religion’ with a bit of disdain for those fools that allow themselves to fall into those traps. Cults exemplify an extreme form of the above features that usually start with a heavy dose of leader fidelity.

Abraham J. Heschel is worth our reading time. He was a good friend of Martin Luther King, lost his family in the Holocaust, and taught for 27 years at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in Manhattan. I believe he is the one that coined the phrase most moved mover in describing God. His daughter explained that he and Martin Luther King used the phrase.1 I am reading Between God and Man which is a compilation of his writings.

What might it mean for a church to look at itself and discover that it has moved beyond Christ? I don’t think it is much different than a child of God looking at themselves and notice that they have strayed beyond Christ. In one of the more exciting dilemmas of Christianity, God invites us to move forward in a very tumultuous sea. We can’t just drop anchor and stay in the same spot.

So, I think that the relativized version of this is relativized to a being who has perfected his way of being relative to other beings.

James Faulconer

Stop and read that quote a few times and make sure you can see what Jim is saying. Do you believe there is such a thing as perfected relativity?

taking positions so dogmatic as to stifle the honest and thoughtful inquiries

Henry Eyring

Science and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in the ability of ‘honest and thoughtful inquiry’ to break through entrenched dogmas that define a community’s beliefs. However, both can succumb to respect for historical decisions to the point that ideas become dogmatic in that no other thinkers are allowed to question the status quo. If we all held to the status quo, we would still be on a flat earth, ignoring that Christ ever came. Sincere questioning and answering are needed to pull us out of our dogmatic beliefs.

We struggle to differentiate dogmatic arguments from reasoned arguments. In our struggle, we can succumb to fidelity tests in place of sustained reasoning. Every cult or ‘cult’ure has to face this struggle almost daily. Whether we depend on one person or a community to establish ’truth’, we face the overwhelming challenge to filter out the wheat from the dogma. Dogma thrives when we silo our reasoning into isolated echo chambers.

A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root.

The Old Testament is full of family-based small networks as examples of both the good and the bad that can come from depending on one person as the conveyor of truth. If we are not careful, we will look to the Bible’s experiences to justify letting one man tell us what the truth is at the expense of all other truth sources. If we examine the life of Christ, we will see in his example, a leader that taught using history, scripture, and logic to convey truth. He is also careful not to enforce his right at the expense of other’s agency. I appreciate the picture that I see in the gospels. How can we discern between those that speak the truth without succumbing to those that demand dogmatic devotion?¹

We have coined the phrase ‘social networks’ as primarily a set of apps and websites connected to the internet. Our national and religious leaders use this phrase to imply how we talk to people through our phones. There was even a movie given that title to represent the rise of Facebook. However, social networks have been vital in humankind’s existence since the fall of Adam and Eve. As humans, we build truth beliefs based on the social connections that surround us¹. God and Satan both know that social networks are how we find and learn the truth and use it to their advantage. I connect the latest in social network science with examples from our scriptural history and current environment to see that we build truth and lies on the same foundation.

There are a few of us that would believe outlandish lies. People have differing beliefs on Big Foot’s reality, whether we landed on the moon, or if COVID-19 is a health pandemic. What makes the belief of those concepts different from believing in God the Father? The fascinating relationship between all of these beliefs is humanity’s inability to comprehend rare occurrences. What we often refer to as possible outcomes instead of probable outcomes is hard to imagine.

Our western society has been diverging quickly on the understanding of knowledge. Some feel that it is our personal liberty to know what we want to know and that our individual freedom allows us to ignore experts that have spent a lifetime building up knowledge in a domain. Others argue that all deference must be given to experts and that we are not justified in criticizing experts as our understanding is too limited.

In 1993 then Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shared a moving General Conference address titled Constancy amid Change. As I have discussed my ideas about Truth’s ability to progress from D&C 93:30 (post 1, post 2), I think some of my friends hear that nothing is constant. President Nelson’s talk helps me clarify a few points on Truth’s progression. In his 1993 address, he shares a conversation with Ruth and John, where they asked, ’What can we trust?

Nephi’s Story: In 1 Nephi 4:10, Nephi starts his truth reasoning about what he should do with Laban after finding him passed out drunk as he planned to obtain the brass plates that he was commanded to retrieve. And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man.

True and Living (D&C 1:30) In Doctrine and Covenants 1:30 the Lord says through Joseph Smith And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the church collectively and not individually

Two posts ago, I talked about truth progressing where I put forth the idea that truth changes in time. I want to take a little more time on this topic and make sure it is clear truth exists and that it is not relative. However, it is relational with us in time, and we must all work together to progress into greater truth. When I hear President Nelson say that “We’re witnesses to a process of restoration” 1, I think I hear progress into greater truth.

Under a timeless model of God, many LDS quote Doctrine and Covenants 93:24 as a statement of truth never changing as it is ‘knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.’ There are 24 conference references to this verse alone. Many of the references to this verse emphasize truths as never-ending facts that are timeless1. Below are two examples from general conference that highlight how verse 24 is referenced.

The semi-annual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is happening this weekend. The time when all LDS can justify staring at a big screen for 8-10 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. My ears perked up when President Dallin H. Oaks shared a talk on what our life will be like after death. Early in his message he quoted Brent L. Topp, I believe a BYU religion professors article on this subject had it right when he wrote, ‘When we ask ourselves, what we know about the spirit world, from the standard works.

Having responded to a few people that have posted on my blog, I got up the nerve to comment on another Latter-day Saint’s blog. Dennis Horne is the author of that blog, and he has even published a book on LDS doctrine. I think I was direct and clear without condemnation. Dennis was also relatively cordial to me, but not to Terryl Givens. It looks like Dennis and Terryl represent a significant fissure that exists in the LDS faithful.

In June 1883 The Chautauquan magazine asked, “If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings, would there be any sound?” 1 This is one of those philosophical questions that can create a lively conversation if asked among the correct group. Today, I have a similar question, “If nobody understands the truth, is it still a truth?” I know that I may have already made half of the eight people that read this blog stop reading because they don’t want to have this lively conversation.

Having previously finished a book on timelessness (see my previous post) and a book about perceiving truth through metaphor and physicality (see my ‘Oh say, What is truth?’ post), I have been pondering the words that are used by God in scripture. In Doctrine and Covenants 93:24 the Lord says, ‘And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;’ which is often quoted with Jacob 4:13.

James E. Faust shared a devotional at BYU in 1993 titled, The Voice of the Spirit. Mormon messages used this talk to create the following message. Elder Faust shares an impactful quote about light (or truth) being part of our very essence. Signaling that truth is much more than facts. You will not be able to travel through life on borrowed light. The light of life must be part of your very being.

According to John Sanders, the concept of truth has multiple meanings. There are three main theories of truth in Western thought. The correspondence theory: This theory holds that truth is that which corresponds to a state of affairs or fact of reality. The coherence theory: a statement is true if it fits (coheres) with a set of other statements accepted as true. The pragmatic theory: an idea is true if it is fruitful and workable in relation to our experience.