Pride, Entitlement, and Resentment

Value Cultivation in a World Without Magic

Who do we want to keep in the church?

Lacking Celestial Motivation and a Thought Experiment
When we talk about the ideal world…the world that perhaps may only be realized in heaven…many of us take for granted that our ideal is the same as another’s ideal. Or, at the very least, when ideals differ, we might say it is because one or both parties see through a glass darkly. Many times, people assume that if only other people could taste, chew, digest and comprehend the truth from God, they would agree that what God wants is ultimately good. What heaven will be is ultimately desirable. But what if that is not the case? smallaxe has a great post at Faith Promoting Rumor entitled

Meaning never required God
I feel like I’ve just come out of the twilight zone recently…Mormon Matters had a discussion, “Finding Meaning in Suffering,” recently…and I guess this is a fair topic to discuss…but the various commenters (and even the author of the article) kept making these weird presumptions and assumptions that alienated me. Some quotations: If he wants to see meaning in his suffering is that a bad thing, even though it may be false?  Is it false? or Though I do not believe all suffering is meaningful, I would

What could be bad about hope?
From my religious discussion group, one time (it might’ve been two weeks ago, but I just haven’t gotten around to discussing it), we started talking about hope. My mentor insisted that in this religious harmony thing we’ve been trying to broker, believing in God and having a religion must be “better” than not beleiving or not having a religion. As I’ve written previously, however, if his or anyone else’s idea of religious harmony simply scapegoats atheists, then it isn’t very harmonious at all.

Does this audience really exist?
I was going through Internet Monk, as I occasionally do, and I came across this post: Curious Minds Want to Know: Does the IM Audience REALLY Exist? With some changes in nearly all the particulars, I think the message strongly applies to the post/ex/former/liberal/middle way/new order Mormon experience. Now, they/we know. There are thousands of us at a thousand different places in the evangelical wilderness. Our experiences in evangelicalism weren’t exactly what we originally thought. Given a place to stop, listen and talk, it turns out the

Another look at the success of strict churches
When I first read Laurence Iannaccone’s “Why Strict Churches Are Strong” (PDF alert), I was quite enamored with it. I guess I don’t know why I haven’t written a post on it (or maybe I have, but can’t find it). Anyway, I was reading an article from the St. Louis Today that referenced this research. Iannaccone compared churches along a continuum of strictnes