Searching For My Spiritual Gifts

Searching for my Spiritual Gifts No single test can fully verify “everything” there is to know about your spiritual gifts. Rather, the goal of this blog is to stimulate your thinking and make you more aware of God working in your life.

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Searching For My Spiritual Gifts

 Flipped: A Film Review

A lot of contemporary movies picture American suburban life as banal, hypocritical, and morally bankrupt — a deceitful place where manicured landscapes and plastic surgery cover up empty, desperate realities.

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Flipped: A Film Review

 Quran Burning is a Sacrilegious Slap in the Face of Christ

The extremes now seem to dictate the political discourse — extremists in caves who invoke their distorted brand of Muslim faith as they murder innocent people; and extremists in a Florida church who want to “send a message” to a billion…

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Quran Burning is a Sacrilegious Slap in the Face of Christ

 Throwing Out the Enslaved Girl With the Bathwater

So far, Craigslist isn’t explaining its dramatic decision last weekend to replace with the word “censored” its entire “adult services” section, a listing which activists and state attorneys general had protested as rife with the pimping of girls and women…

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Throwing Out the Enslaved Girl With the Bathwater

 Sunday School Lesson 36: Isaiah 1-6

Scriptural Background The Savior tells us, “great are the words of Isaiah” (3 Nephi 23:1), and he commands us to search them diligently. (Towards the end of Book of Mormon history, Mormon repeats that command: Mormon 8:23.) Nephi tells us that his soul delights in Isaiah (2 Nephi 11:2), but he also tells us that many of his people did not share his experience: “Isaiah spake many things which were hard for many of my people to understand” (2 Nephi 25:1). A good number of us have had the experience of Nephi’s people rather than of Nephi

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Sunday School Lesson 36: Isaiah 1-6

 Which Corporations are Buying Your Candidates?

The midterm election season is upon us, the first since the  Supreme Court’s January 21 ruling that allows corporations to spend as much as they wish on political advertising — as long as they disclose their involvement. It seems to me that corporate…

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Which Corporations are Buying Your Candidates?

 Craigslist Attorneys Threaten Georgia Anti-Trafficking Activists

Editor’s Note: What is behind Craigslist’s recent enigmatic, and dramatic, choice to replace (at least for now) its entire “adult services” section with the single word “censored”?  Is it a publicity stunt, or a genuine response to protests, by state…

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Craigslist Attorneys Threaten Georgia Anti-Trafficking Activists

 Jonah, overboard.

If you haven’t heard the story in Sunday School yet, you will shortly ( Jonah 1 ). Surprisingly, the combination of God and bad weather is still a potent force in the modern era — my stake was praying for rain earlier this year. But here is a more colorful Jonah-like account with sailors, storms, and witches from the 17th century

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Jonah, overboard.

 The Icarians

While browsing the Wikipedia entry on Nauvoo, I saw this: Nauvoo attracts large numbers of visitors for its historic importance and its religious significance to members of…groups such as the Icarians. I’d never heard of the Icarians before. So, continuing down the Wikipedia path, I found this: The Icarians were a French utopian movement, founded by Étienne Cabet, who led his followers to America where they established a group of egalitarian communes during the period from 1848 through 1898.

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The Icarians

 Sunday School Lesson 34: Hosea 1-3; 11; 13-14

The book of Hosea is an excellent example of a book that we often find difficult because we don’t understand “the manner of prophesying among the Jews” (2 Nephi 25.1). One of the most important of those ways of prophesying was the use of types and shadows

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Sunday School Lesson 34: Hosea 1-3; 11; 13-14

 Friday Links Round-Up: Awesomeness Reminders. Board Game Cafes. Conflict Minerals.

Here’s a round up of links from around the web you may have missed this week: Get a real person to call you every day and tell you how awesome you are . Does your language shape the way you think? At a Toronto café ,…

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Friday Links Round-Up: Awesomeness Reminders. Board Game Cafes. Conflict Minerals.

 An LDS View on Science and Religion

Continuing the conversation begun in my earlier post ( God and Science ), let’s look at the Encyclopedia of Mormonism entry titled “ Science and Religion .” It provides a good summary of what might be termed the conservative LDS position on the topic. The article opens on a positive note: “ Because of belief in the ultimate compatibility of all truth and in the eternal character of human knowledge, Latter-day Saints tend to take a more positive approach to science than do some people in other religious traditions who also claim a strong foundation in scripture

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An LDS View on Science and Religion

 Conference Announcement: “Embracing the Law: A Scholarly Conference on Doctrine & Covenants 42″

Embracing the Law A scholarly conference on Doctrine and Covenants 42 September 10, 2010 • Free Admission Session 1 9:00 – 10:45 a.m., Stonemetz Conference Room Jeremiah John, Southern Virginia University Law and Church in Section 42 of the Doctrine and Covenants Nate Oman, William and Mary Law School “I Give Unto You My Law”: Section 42 as a Legal Text and the Paradoxes of Divine Law Discussant: President Rodney K. Smith, Southern Virginia University 1:30 – 3:00 p.m., Main Hall 337 Russell Fox, Friends University “Thou Wilt Remember the Poor”: Liberation Theology and a Radical Interpretation of “The Laws of the Church of Christ” Robert Couch, Willamette University Consecration and the End of the Poor Discussant: TBA 3:30 – 5:15 p.m., Main Hall Ballroom Karen Spencer, independent scholar “To Teach or Not to Teach”: Three Possible Interpretations of D&C 42:12-14 Kristine Haglund, editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought “The Beauty of the Work of Thine Own Hands”: On the Possibility of an Aesthetic for Zion Joe Spencer, University of New Mexico “Remnants of Revelation”: On the Canonical Reading of D&C 42 Discussant: Scott Dransfield, Southern Virginia UniversityFortFor those who For those who are going to be in Virginia next week, Southern Virginia University in Buena Vista, Virginia is going to be hosing a conference on September 10th entitled “Embracing the Law A scholarly conference on Doctrine and Covenants 42.”  The conferences is being sponsored by the Richard L.

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Conference Announcement: “Embracing the Law: A Scholarly Conference on Doctrine & Covenants 42″

 Ripples in History

I recently finished Victor Davis Hanson’s Ripples of Battle (Doubleday, 2003), with the give-it-all-away subtitle How wars of the past still determine how we fight, how we live, and how we think . Generalizing a bit, not just wars but many major events and some small, unnoticed ones send ripples into the future, silently influencing future generations. Could the present, our present, have turned out differently?

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Ripples in History

 Arizona Reveals a Struggle Beyond the Courtroom and the Ballot

In light of recent events in Arizona, I propose we lead in our communities where national and global leaders lag behind on issues of human rights and love of neighbor. We know that the struggle in Arizona is one of…

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Arizona Reveals a Struggle Beyond the Courtroom and the Ballot

 How to Integrate Faith and Scholarship– and How Not To

My title here makes a false promise, obviously, on which I can’t deliver. But comments on my earlier post suggest I ought to try to say something on the subject (which may be of interest, I admit, mostly to religiously-oriented academics). And it’s a subject about which I’ve wondered from time to time

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How to Integrate Faith and Scholarship– and How Not To

 Brother, can you spare a symposium?

Mormon Studies could be headed for a rough patch, because the career paths that make professional study of Mormon topics at least occasionally possible are disappearing. While the field has had some exciting developments, its recent progress has largely consisted of increasing institutionalization: new programs, newly endowed chairs, new academic conferences, and new graduate students with an interest in Mormon topics. But all of these are exposed to the fallout from economic downturn on university budgets and donor portfolios, and they are particularly threatened by the collapse of academic hiring in relevant fields

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Brother, can you spare a symposium?

 The Fair Sentencing Act: A (Small) Step Towards Making Things Right

I want to tell you a story.  It’s a tale about drugs, prison, race, and justice (or the lack thereof). It starts in the 1980s.  During that decade, crime was rampant, and many believed they knew who the culprit was:  crack…

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The Fair Sentencing Act: A (Small) Step Towards Making Things Right

 Confession of a Primary Pianist

When my friend Craig Harline suggested a few months ago that I do some guest blogging on Times and Seasons, I was initially enthusiastic; but on second thought my enthusiasm waned. It became clear to me that I probably wouldn’t have much to contribute to this conversation.

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Confession of a Primary Pianist

 Times and Seasons Welcomes Steve Smith

Times and Seasons is happy to welcome as a guest blogger Steve Smith, who teaches and writes mainly about religious freedom, constitutional law, and jurisprudence.  His most recent book is The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Harvard University Press, 2010).  Steve graduated from BYU in 1976 before studying law at Yale, and he has taught at various law schools including Notre Dame, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan (as a visiting professor), Virginia (as a visitor), and the University of San Diego, where he is currently employed.  Steve’s wife Merina also attended BYU, and they have five children. An accomplished musician by most standards (not his), Steve’s biggest ambition, I happen to know, is to quit the rat race and rather than cultivate his garden become a bluegrass banjo player

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Times and Seasons Welcomes Steve Smith