The Mormon Monk

In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior offered a few directions as to how we ought to pray. Among other instruction, he told his disciples that "when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do : for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking" (Matt. 5:7). This divine injunction notwithstanding, my admittedly imperfect prayers are frequently riddled with repetitive phrases: "Help me be a better father"; "thank you that we arrived safely"; or "please help me find someone to share the gospel with." I've noticed that I'm not the only one with a tendency to use filler phrases--or at least phrases that so well-used that no one who hears them really thinks about them. I especially love hearing the phrase commonly uttered in prayers before a meal, "Please bless the hands that prepared it," because it reminds me of a sketch done by BYU's Divine Comedy. After an offstage explosion, a man with s...

In celebration of Mother’s Day, I wish to say a few words about our first mother, about Eve. This is not a new topic for me; I have dedicated a substantial portion of my graduate student career to examining the ways in which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English writers have portrayed her. John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, described her as a model of Christian charity. Anne Bradstreet, the first published North American poet, threw Eve under the bus and condemned her as a temptress. John Milton similarly hinted that Eve was a Pandora whose curiosity had brought misery on mankind. Jonathan Edwards, the most influential American theologian up until the Civil War, defended Eve vigorously and gave her a place of honor comparable to that traditionally awarded to Mary. I could give you other examples. Many of these writers have interesting and insightful things to say, but they all share a common problem: they have no knowledge of the truths restored to...

I was lucky enough to be asked to write the narration that would accompany our ward choir's musical presentation this Sunday. I would particularly recommend listening to a recording of three numbers: "Long Ago, Within a Garden," "Tenebrae in E Flat," and "Love is Come Again." They are beautiful pieces. This is what I was thinking about this Easter: For all Christians, the Easter season is one of joy. At Easter Christians around the world celebrate the voluntary sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the only perfect being ever to walk the earth, who laid down his life of his own choice on Calvary and then received it again on the morning of the third day. But for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Easter season holds special significance. Because we have been blessed with a restoration of the plain and precious gospel truths lost from the Bible and found in the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great ...

The 20th section of the Doctrine and Covenants is best known for its instruction to priesthood holders, but it is also--and perhaps more importantly, at least when it was written--the founding document of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. When the church was founded on April 6, 1830, this was the revelation that the Lord gave to Joseph Smith, the revelation that explained to him and the other five inaugural members exactly why a restoration was necessary. After acknowledging that He has entrusted the church to fallible mortal men, the Lord explains that the Book of Mormon contains "the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ" and that "those who receive it in faith, and work righteousness, shall receive a crown of eternal life." (D&C 20:9, 14). Having established that the Book of Mormon is the foundation upon which the new church will rest, the Lord explains that "By these things"--meaning the Book of Mormon--"we know..." and pro...

I'd like to share a passage from the book The Age of the Gladiators: Savagery and Spectacle in Ancient Rome that was introduced to me by my brother Jarrod: "Even the great Christian Augustine of Hippo was more worried about the effect the games had on the viewer than on the hapless men dying in the sand. He wrote about a young friend of his named Alypius whowent to Rome to study law. One day this virtuous young Christian met some pagan friends in the street after lunch. They were off to the Colosseum to watch a gladitorial combat and invited Alypius to join them. He refused, but they dragged him off with them anyway. Alypius declared, 'You can drag my body there, but don't imagine that you can make me watch. Though I shall be there, I shall not be there. In this way I shall have the better of you and of your show.' The group of friends found seats, but Alypius sat with his eyes firmly shut. Augustine takes up the story: 'In the course of the fight a man fell a...

The parable of the vineyard, found in Jacob 5, is one of my favorite sections of scripture. But now, after reading Outliers , by Malcolm Gladwell, I have an added appreciation for the Zenos's parable. According to Gladwell, rice paddies are a unique phenomenon in that the output of a given plot of land is directly related to the time that a farmer spends working the land. For most crops, this is not the case--once the weeds are gone, it doesn't matter if you continue to hoe your rows of beans; if you don't believe me, just ask Thoreau, who was more than happy to walk away from his beans when the necessary work had been done and who still reaped a bumper crop. For rice paddies, however, additional work leads to additional rice. This is because the plots of land that rice grows on must be perfectly level--the water with which the farmer floods the field must rise to a uniform height on each plant or else the yield decreases. Since no field is perfectly flat, there is always a...

Fear not, little flock (and I do mean little): I am your blogger; you shall not want for copious reading material. I write to you on the environment-friendly internet; your green pastures will not be polluted by paper waste products. I will restore your faith in my blog, if only for my name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of PhD exams, you should fear no blogdeath; my keyboard and computer will inform you. I prepare an overabundance of words for your consumption; your patience with my verbosity will run out. Surely my blog will haunt your inbox all the days of your life, and I will never stop writing. Ever. My PhD exams have kept me busy and prevented me from writing for the past month. A special thanks goes out to Uncle Dave, whose hand-turned tulip wood pen made my success (I passed!) possible; so that you too can have an idea of what it's like to read and regurgitate 200 books in a marathon nine hour exam, I've reproduced one question and answer from the ex...