- Chad Nielsen on “Being Man and Woman Both”: The Unfiltered Voice of a Pioneer Missionary Wife: “It is definitely hard on families. In some ways, the emphasis on strong, “forever” families was more a mid-twentieth-century missionary tactic that then looped back into making the Church more deeply focused on the idea. Back then, the millennial emphasis on converting people before Jesus returned took precedence. But it definitely left a lot of scars on families. While we put a lot of emphasis on the trek west in our storytelling in the Church, the most difficult things were often what came after. Not a cougar, I am a strong believer in candid discussion of what is both going well and what is wrong or difficult in the Church. But it does go against a lot of the culture to do so, particularly in Church settings. There is also the opposite end of things to balance against – i.e., becoming exculsively focused on what is wrong to the point that we distort reality. But, again, I personally find it to be healthy to be able to openly discuss issues and concerns.” Jul 13, 10:44
- on The Gospel and Entropy: ““So yes, the fact that God can overcome thermodynamics is huge, and glorious.” It’s not clear that God can overcome thermodynamics.” Jul 13, 03:42
- on What You Should Talk About in the Foyer (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 7/12: “Here’s a few of my thoughts in reaction to what I experienced in Church yesterday (7/12): One of the speakers re-told the story of Esther from the bible, reading a previously-written text. While I’m familiar with the story, it was different from the biblical text, and the speaker chose to focus on Esther’s courage. Even though very little was different from the biblical text, it still made me think about what we can get out of re-telling scripture stories (or General Conference talks, for that matter). Even when simply reading the text of the scripture aloud, the emphasis and cadence of what we read can provide a different reading from what someone else would do. Isn’t there value in re-telling the scriptures? For Elders Quorum meeting the chairs in the gym were arranged (as usual) in a circle, allowing everyone to see each other. But today it occurred to me that this arrangement actually makes the room seem smaller — almost like the proper size for the number of people we have. I like this arrangement because I think it feels more welcoming and encourages better participation from everyone there, instead of rows of chairs where no-one sits on the front row, and those in the back tend to shy away from participating. In contrast to this, after a talk that mentioned Elder L. Tom Perry, I was in conversation with a local leader who once attended a leadership meeting with Elder Perry. He was impressed that Elder Perry had chosen to speak from the front of the room, instead of up on the podium. That simple move makes the experience more intimate and less formal, again encouraging participation. I wish there were more times when it seemed appropriate to do that. We discussed the idea of “Enduring to the End”, and the teacher suggested that we shouldn’t think that we will end up exhausted at the end, like we had spent every last bit of effort to endure. This made me wonder where the ‘exhausted’ idea comes from—I suspect it’s related to the hero fantasy we often see in films, where the protagonist wins an epic battle to save everyone. Sometimes these tropes worm their way into our perception of the gospel with deceptive results. ” Jul 12, 17:12
- on “Being Man and Woman Both”: The Unfiltered Voice of a Pioneer Missionary Wife: “Jack, Hugh Nibley faced backlash and the potential of church discipline. He only survived due to high-placed relatives and friends in church leadership.” Jul 12, 02:24
- on “Being Man and Woman Both”: The Unfiltered Voice of a Pioneer Missionary Wife: “I like what Neal A. Maxwell said about Hugh Nibley’s criticism of the saints: “His commitment is so visible and so pronounced and so repetitively stated that that’s not even the issue. So then we can get on to what Hugh is saying.”” Jul 11, 16:43
- on “Being Man and Woman Both”: The Unfiltered Voice of a Pioneer Missionary Wife: “In response to Cougar, yes, we absolutely need to be honest and not only acknowledge negative experiences but also mediocre ones and “blah” feelings. Otherwise, good people seeking to gain, maintain, or strengthen testimonies may feel ignored, unvalidated, or unworthy–or that something’s “wrong” with them. Plus, how can the Church improve and grow if members are always happy and positive? Look at all the changes to the temple ceremonies over the past few years (let alone since the 1980s when I was endowed)–aren’t these due at least in part to leaders surveying members who asked sincere questions and provided honest feedback? No organization can survive if participants are indoctrinated or brainwashed to be “yes” men and women. As a relatively simple example, after a Women’s Broadcast several years ago I felt that one of the male speakers massively stereotyped and oversimplified women. A family member made a brief comment about her equally negative reaction and it was an overwhelming “Yes! I’m not alone!”” Jul 11, 13:20
- on “Being Man and Woman Both”: The Unfiltered Voice of a Pioneer Missionary Wife: “Chad, I appreciate the post, and it coincides with something I’ve been thinking about lately. Is it culturally appropriate to share with other Latter-day Saints in a public forum stories about the “scars” we carry with us from membership and service in the Church. It’s been my experience that we Latter-day Saints don’t know what to do with experiences that aren’t really faith-promoting. What do you do with stories where a young man serves a mission and feels like it was a waste of time and an exercise in learning pressure sales tactics? Or a women who receives her endowment for the first time and has a terrible experience that causes to never want to attend again? Even when General Authorities tell stories from the pulpit that have a sad theme, they do their best to highlight the good that resulted even when you can kinda tell the outcome wasn’t particularly positive. We like to think that the gospel and the Church are forces for good in our lives, and often they are, but sometimes they aren’t and I don’t know that we as a Church are all that comfortable with vocalizing that. Thoughts?” Jul 11, 07:03
- on “Being Man and Woman Both”: The Unfiltered Voice of a Pioneer Missionary Wife: “My grandfather went on his mission to southern California during the Depression. He left my grandmother with five children. The family managed to survive the ordeal. But I only have my grandfather and my father’s version of survival. My father emphasized the importance of a cooperative farming effort my grandfather had with his brothers. This lightened the load on my grandmother. My father and several of his brothers were old enough to help on the farm. My aunt helped around the house. My grandmother was even able to send money for the purchase of a ragtop car. Grandfather called it Metholadum, because it was easy on the feet. Because it was during the Depression, many nonmembers did not have money for funerals. Grandfather would preach for free. He would slip in some Mormon scriptural quotes and use it as a subtle missionary opportunity. When grandfather got off his mission, he fathered one last son. Undoubtedly, he was a bit spoiled.” Jul 10, 22:36
- on “Being Man and Woman Both”: The Unfiltered Voice of a Pioneer Missionary Wife: “My great grandfather went on a three year mission in about 1916-18 to somewhere in the South Pacific Islands. My grandfather was born after he left and so his father did not meet him until he was three years old. My great grandmother took in laundry for money and kept the farm running all by herself while he was gone with her two children. His being gone when my grandfather was born and until he was three made it so he never bonded with my grandfather as his son, but he doted on the little girl he knew from before he left. There were scars from that damaged relationship that were still noticeable 50 years after the guys death. My great grandfather was killed a few years after that mission. It says a lot about how my great grandmother felt about most of her marriage being spent as a single mother, that after his death, she remarried to a non Mormon. Because he was from Missouri, they were hate driven out of Provo Utah. They moved to Nevada until he was killed and she returned to Utah with her 5 children. My grandfather was 12 when his step father was killed and he pulled a handcart of their belongings as they walked on that move back to Utah. Her children from her second husband were raised to be nonmembers, even though their older brother and sister were raised in the church and they were still really young when their father was killed. So, that kind of shows my ggrandmother’s feelings toward the church. She once asked my mother to make sure temple work was done for her nonmember husband and to have her sealed to him. She about broke my mother’s heart by saying she wanted to be sealed to her nonmember husband and not the guy who was my mother’s actual grandfather because that meant to my mother that she was choosing her second family over her and that first family. But it was obvious to my mother that she felt loved and cared for by her second husband but felt she had been abandoned by her first husband who put church over her and their children. So, I would say from my families experience that sending young husbands off on missions for three years was a bad idea if the church wanted families to be forever.” Jul 10, 12:45
- on The Gospel and Entropy: “I was a physics major for most of my time as an undergrad, and I definitely came away with the sense that entropy/thermodynamics is the final boss of physics. First, it’s so fundamental to reality as we know it. We can easily imagine a universe without gravity (it wouldn’t be very friendly to humans). We can imagine local violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (“Let there be light!”). But a universe that consistently ignored thermodynamics would be incredibly bizarre: “All the air molecules in your room decided to hang out in one corner today. Oh, you wanted to breathe that air? Sorry about that…” Second, it really feels malign. It extracts an energy tax from everything we do. It’s the reason nothing is 100% efficient. It’s the reason we can’t have perpetual motion machines. More broadly, it’s the reason the whole universe seems to be running down. Never mind heat death, just think through all the energy sources you know and recognize they’re all going to run out eventually. Applying that to the whole universe is pretty abstract, but the fundamental sense that everything is gradually falling apart is part of our everyday experience. So yes, the fact that God can overcome thermodynamics is huge, and glorious. And I love the idea that all the creation stories that involve overcoming primal chaos are echoes of that.” Jul 10, 10:36
