The Mormon Monk

When Peter asked the Christ, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?" Jesus responded, "I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, until seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:21-22). Peter, likely familiar with the rabbinical teaching that you must forgive an offender three times, undoubtedly thought himself generous in exceeding the prescribed conditions of forgiveness, but the Lord taught him that our forgiveness should be unlimited. The number 490 represents a limitless and unconditional forgiveness because, as we read in the Doctrine and Covenants: "I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men" (64:10). The message of Christ's reply to Peter--that we must forgive as frequently as we take offense--is clear, but the numerical terms in which he expressed that message are also symbolic and significant.  Some weeks ago my brother, the esteemed Defender of Doctrine,...

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don't drink coffee. We don't drink it because modern prophets have interpreted the scriptural prohibition on "hot drinks" in Doctrine and Covenants 89:9 as a ban on coffee and black tea; we don't need any other reasons. But if you're NOT a member of the Church, here are two good reasons to delete your daily stop at Starbucks from the itinerary:  1) Coffee causes cancer. Okay, I'm exaggerating here. But while consumer safety advocates have warned for years that pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables could contain carcinogens, it turns out that "we ingest more carcinogens from a cup of coffee than from a year's worth of conventional produce."  In fact of the 22 chemicals in a cup of coffee that have been subjected to animal cancer trials, 17 caused cancer , meaning that you ingest 10 milligrams of known carcinogens in every cup of coffee. "Uh, make mine a leukemia grande. I...

You know that I love Eve , but the title of this post doesn't refer to her. I've been thinking, recently, about the reverence in which members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. During his tenure as prophet, Ezra Taft Benson declared that "Our Father in Heaven planned the coming forth of the Founding Fathers and their form of government as the necessary great prologue leading to the restoration of the gospel." Those founding fathers included "delegates [to the Constitutional Convention, who] were the recipients of heavenly inspiration." The Founding Fathers were inspired during their lifetimes, and they have, in turn, inspired Church leaders from the grave. As the president of the St. George Temple, immediately prior to assuming the prophetic mantle, Wilford Woodruff received a vision in which he saw many of the Founding Fathers, who demanded that he perform saving and exalting o...

Some months ago, I suggested that Jesus Christ's resurrection was a priesthood ordinance , and one that he received at the hands of the Father. What I did not say then is that all priesthood ordinances point back to the Atonement:  Because the Atonement is the means by which we are brought back into God’s presence, it “is no coincidence that all of the essential ordinances of the Church symbolize the Atonement” (Nelson, "The Atonement," 4). When we are baptized we are lowered beneath the water’s surface in imitation of Christ’s death, and we rise from the depths as he rose from the grave. When we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, we are blessed with the constant companionship of a member of the Godhead—that gift is made possible only because Jesus Christ voluntarily hung on the cross at Calvary in utter solitude, bereft of His Father’s supporting spirit when he needed it most. “[B]ecause Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so” (H...