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On Comfort, the Comforter, and Being Uncomfortable

Just before going to Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus Christ reminded his apostles of an uncomfortable truth that they had yet to fully understand and accept. “I go unto my Father” (John 14:12), he said, in one of many warnings that his mortal ministry was fast drawing to a close. But if his disciples were discomfited or shaken by this truth, the Savior offered a compensatory promise, reassuring the eleven, “I will not leave you comfortless” (John 14:18). That promise of comfort in an hour of need and of the Comforter, who “may abide with [us] for ever” is operative here and now, just as it was anciently, so that we never have to endure the olive press alone, as he did that night (John 14:16).               Whatever our trials and temptations, we have been assured that the Savior can and will succor the faithful. “Sometimes,” Elder Oaks recently taught , “His power heals an infirmity” or removes a stumbling block, “but the scriptures and our experiences teach that sometimes he succors or
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Joy

When angels came to announce the birth of the Savior, they proclaimed “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10), and that spirit of celebration always ought to shape our declaration to the world of hope, peace, and love. The gospel of Jesus Christ, or the good news that he and his prophets have been commissioned to share with us, is a message of joy. On his deathbed, the ancient prophet Lehi spoke to his children, and he reminded them that the pursuit and attainment of joy is the purpose of our lives here in mortality: “Adam fell that man might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). We understood this to be the purpose and privilege of mortality from the very beginning: “When [God] laid the foundations of the earth . . . the morning stars sang together, and all the sons [and daughters] of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:4, 7). Lehi describes the Fall of Adam and Eve as a necessary prerequisite for our acquisition of joy because joy is, in the scriptures, closely associa
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Jesus at Harvard, Mormons at Waco?

In reading Marcus Borg's  Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time , I can't help recalling the last occasion when I met Jesus for the first time--the last time I saw Jesus of Nazareth with new eyes, as a foreigner, someone I didn't already recognize. Six months ago I finished reading  When Jesus Came to Harvard , in which Harvey Cox characterizes the Christ as a political operative. When Jesus teaches his Sermon on the Mount, Cox argues, it is with one eye on heaven and the other eye on Rome. "Blessed are the peacemakers," Jesus teaches, "for they shall be called the kingdom of God" (Matthew 5:9). These words, Cox argues, "were a direct challenge to the ruling Roman ideology. . . . The empire's main claim to fame and legitimacy was that Rome and Rome alone was the peacemaker. It sustained the  pax Romana  under the magnanimous auspices of Caesar Augustus, a divine ruler. One of the imperial titles of the divine Augustus was that of 'peace-b
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Rab-shakeh v. Micah, or We're All Fence-Sitters

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Rab-shakeh has long been my favorite Old Testament villain. When he shows up outside Jersualem to  threaten Hezekiah, King of Judah, he delivers a delightfully arrogant speech demanding immediate surrender. And because he speaks for the Assyrian army (which has just taken the kingdom of Israel into captivity), everyone knows that he can walk the walk. In fact, Hezekiah's military leaders are so worried that ordinary Jews within earshot of Rab-shakeh will flee to enemy lines that they plead, "Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and talk not with us in the Jews' language in the ears of the people that are on the wall" (2 Kgs. 18:26). Rab-shakeh is . . . not the sort of man to honor such a request: "Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?" (2 Kgs. 18:27). Then,
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Pre-Contact Amerindian Christianities?

As I recently read Eric Andrews's excellent new book,  Native Apostles  (Harvard UP, 2013), I was struck by his report that Native New England peoples who converted to Christianity identified their new religious beliefs as "a rebirth of spiritual knowledge that the ancestors possessed but had long been forgotten by later generations. An oral tradition taken down in the seventeenth century reminded audiences that far from introducing novel concepts and cosmologies, Christian missionaries were simply picking up where the ancients had left off. . . . Christianity was, according to this narrative, an ancestral Indian religion that needed to be revitalized" (36-37). As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who believes in the Book of Mormon as a largely reliable historical source, this was tremendously exciting, so I checked out Andrews's sources. Turns out Andrews was relying on the book  Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklor
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Today, I'm Thinking About . . .

Isaiah and Elder Bednar.
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Guest Post: The Mercies of Death

A brother monk shared this with me, and I simply had to share it with you. Enjoy! THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE: THOUGHTS ON CHRIST AND DEATH Even the smallest nudge can bring back the dead. Life tips easily either way, like the light around dusk. Neither death nor rapture, birth nor resurrection are as irreversible or permanent as we sometimes romanticize—this business of living and dying is infinitely more fluid. While it’s true that the smallest flick of a knife can lay open a whole throat, it’s also true a single centigrade of warmth deep in some winter dirt can trigger the vivification of a seed. I have sustained such a multiplicity of deaths already. I see a white cup on a table or the hood of a car covered in wet petals, and then I am startled to realize I have been dead for days. Dead to miracles, small impossibilities. Awakenings and resurrections may happen in an instant—in prayer, in traffic, while washing a plate. They may happen on the road to Da
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