Peace like a river.
Author: Adam G.
Husband, father, soldier, lawyer, reader, writer, gardener, dreamer. Adam co-founded Times and Seasons in 2003, and blogged here from 2003 to 2009. He currently blogs at Junior Ganymede and sometimes cross-posts at Times and Seasons.
Helpless as a Baby
This is the time of year for Christmas devotions. This year my thoughts have been on the impulse to serve the needy that we have at Christmas. We don’t have it at Easter. My thoughts have also been on the Christ child. The religious significance of the grown Christ, on the cross and in the garden, is obvious. But what did Christ do for us as a bare baby?
The Doctrinal Problem of Evolution
The scriptural problem of evolution is well understood. The creation accounts in Genesis and other scripture are not obviously describing speciation through natural selection.
One Christmas, Everlasting
Merry Christmas from Christmases past!
The Slaughter of the Innocents
After the wise men came, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.
Tithing Settlement 2008
Tithing Settlement is a great part of the Christmas season.
Holding the Messiah
On the sweetness of Mormon life.
Christmas Devotional 2008
President Uchtdorf said that the angels came to the shepherds, the poor, not to the rich. At one point in my life that would have bugged me. Today I realized that the rich should want it that way. If you’re wealthy and still looking for something, you don’t want to be told that your wealth is all there is.
Why Bread and Water in the Sacrament?
Why does “communion sweet” in the sacrament require both bread and water?**
The Myth of Evolution and the Myth of the Fall
Noah Millman concedes that the science of evolution is not incompatible with the truth of Christianity. But, he argues, the myth of evolution is incompatible with the myth of Christianity. I think science does have implications for the persuasiveness of specific religious doctrines, simply as a psychological matter. And I think evolution through natural selection is extremely uncongenial to the central Christian story about the nature of sin and evil in the world. Why? Because the Christian story has the entry of strife into the world come about as the result of human sin, whereas the core idea behind evolution by natural selection is that our existence – and the consciousness and ability to sin that comes with it – is a product of strife. Put bluntly: natural selection is not the mechanism that the Christian deity would use to create man in His image. Or, if it is, I’d like to see the explanation.
The God We Hold Hostage
[Revised from the Archives.] The Garden of Eden story doesn’t have a point.
Why Did God Give Contradictory Commandments?
The temple treats the Garden story as a universal story. Whatever the reason for that, you can make a good case that in some sense each of us has been in the Garden and fallen. In fact, as we’ve discussed here before, making the Garden story a universal story can make sense of the contradictory commandments God gave Adam and Eve.
The 6th Day of Christmas
On the sweetness of Mormon life. Some child behind me started yelling during a really good talk about charity. Because of the talk, perhaps, I remembered not to turn around and gawk. Later I peeked behind me and saw a young mother with three small children who had slipped in late. Her husband is a good man but he doesn’t believe and won’t come and he works on Sundays anyway, so she and her children are usually late. Sometimes they’re so late they don’t come until the very end of sacrament meeting. But they almost always come.
Revelation Made Flesh
Christ was uniquely part divine and part mortal. The Almighty was his father, the woman Mary was his mother.
Naked, and ye clothed me
When Christ says to Mary and Joseph– I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me –they will not ask him “when?”.
Favorite Christmas Posts
Reading bloggernacle Christmas posts each year is one way I observe Christmas.
“Falls, Gardens, Death”
From the archives. This Christmas season I’ll be reposting a few favorite Christmas posts from the past. This first one is from December 18 of 2005 and may not make sense as a Christmas post until a later one I put up. I would appreciate that any substantive comments be left in the combox of the original post. I’m leaving this combox open for any technical comments or for comments on this introductory paragraph. (more…)
The Feast of Saint Tithing Settlement
If Mormons had a liturgical year, the distinctively Mormon part of December would be tithing settlement, not a limp dutifulness like Joseph Smith’s birthday.
From the Archives: Millennial Children
Over time I’ve discussed various reasons to think that we’ll have the pleasure of raising kids in the Millennium. For convenience I’ve collected all those reasons and shortened them down, with links to the longer original versions.
From the Archives: Pioneer Children
A week has passed since Pioneer Day. We remembered it here. In my sacrament meeting, where the speakers reminded us of President Hinckley’s meditation on the shade cast by the trees the pioneers planted and the “long shadow” they themselves cast in which we still find some shelter from the heat of the times.