Frustrated Mind Dumping after my first day editing Wikipedia

Aughaghgahjk;ahj;kaghjk;aghj;k hkl'aertj'klauhj;ahjk;ater

Nowhere else to express my utter distaste, disdain, disgust, dis-everything. Dissing everything. EVERYTHING SUCKS. DO YOU HEAR ME, ANYONE!?

:::pant, pant, pant:::

So. Okay. I will compose myself and compose this post.

I usually get somewhere between .25-4 hours per day to spend doing something interesting on my computer, the only place where interesting things ever seem to happen. Or at least, the most interesting things. The mental playground.

Today I decided, with great hesitation, that I would venture down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia editing. Even though it pretty much goes against some of my most dearly held core values.

But some of those values conflict with each other, and in the end, the other side won.

Even though it meant losing all kinds of my precious, sacred, valuable, super-limited free time.

And now I'm ranting about it, but I don't really know what else I can do but rant on a blog. If I were to call somebody - nobody I know who I can reach by phone would be 1. available right now or 2. sympathetic. I am not capable of ranting to non-humans. I can set my little offerings out to the great void. I guess some people read this pathetic little blogičký bloggy blogíček.

PERSONAL VALUE A:
Being genuine. Sincere. Open. Honest. With all my heart. Feelings. Sometimes gushing. Sometimes obnoxious. Often obnoxious. Always obnoxious? Ugh.

PERSONAL VALUE B:
Dissemination of knowledge. Free. For everybody. Language should not be a barrier. Reverse Iron Curtain Is Stupid. #imsurroundedbymorons "This wasn't a page on wikipedia?! How is it possible that this was not a page on wikipedia already?!" Maybe I know some things.

PERSONAL VALUE C:
I never, never, never, never, never, never, never, NEVER want to find myself on Mount Stupid.

PERSONAL VALUE D:
But there is my journey on Mount Stupid, in plain view, for everybody to see, with my edits on wikipedia. Ughhghghghgh.

And I can't utter the phrase "edit wikipedia" without thinking of Weird Al Yankovic, which just makes me...

Cringe.

It makes me cringe.

And then I start to cry because perhaps this is the solution I've been looking for these past years. The solution for finding somebody - anybody - any human body - to...talk to.

aafds;jt 4h;iet4'tw4hjil/grkjldsf

What a lousy, embarrassing, frustrating, horrid, disgusting solution.

I know I was trying to keep this blog positive, upbeat, cheerful, happy - but that is not how I feel and I guess "Personal Value A" tends to overshadow all the others, being a well-practiced, needy type of person. I guess I could really have a hey-day writing the internal dialogue here, but I have actual stuff to do in the real world.

I don't want to write in a super neutral voice. I want to write in my own voice.

Or translate somebody else's voice. That is the contribution I really want to make.

But that will require 500 edits to unlock the translator tool for English, because English Speakers Suck.

There are some lousy work-arounds. But they really are pretty lousy.

And this tool has a learning curve. It's hard to figure out a new GUI. It's hard to figure out how to orient myself. It's hard to cringe every time I see the tracks I'm leaving that don't make sense. It's frustrating that I wasted a good three hours on this. It feels like a waste. Maybe it won't be. Maybe it will be really good for me. Maybe I should try to be optimistic. Maybe I will love this rabbit hole. Maybe it will lead to some great translation projects. Maybe Personal Value B will get some exercise.

Maybe this is just PMS. And I'm not actually kidding about that.

bleughghgh.

Why are children of gay couples not allowed to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

There was a policy change sometime in the past two-ish years that really upset some people both inside and outside the church. The policy change made it so that children of gay couples were not allowed to be baptized until they turned 18. 

There is a lot of reading in various places that you could do on this topic. Some of it is good, some of it is not. I hate wading through that crap so I am not going to find it and quote it, but instead I want to share my personal feelings on this topic.

My church sends this "army" of really nice men and women around the world giving away free books and doing all kinds of free service, sacrificing 1 1/2 to 2 years of the prime of their lives to try to convince people to renounce their previous lifestyle and become members of the restored church of Jesus Christ by being baptized. We don't spend that much time talking about what could prevent an investigator from being baptized, and I think a lot of people don't realize that you actually do have to qualify for baptism through an interview process. 

If you are married and your spouse does not agree with you getting baptized, you do not qualify to be baptized. 

I see this policy change with the children of gay couples as super similar; basically, the church is very, very pro-family to the point that if it will risk causing serious contention in important family relationships, church policy is that it would be better to temporarily not be baptized.

Remember, we have this doctrine that everybody in the entire world will get the chance to be baptized, either while they are alive or by proxy after they are dead! Remember that the great majority of God's children on the earth will receive this ordinance by proxy, so apparently, though the ordinance itself is essential, there might be conditions that make it worthwhile to wait.

Children who are not baptized are welcome to attend and participate in sacrament meeting, Sunday School, Primary, and later in the youth programs. Nobody is excluded from the social function of the church by not being baptized (though one will not be able to hold a church calling until being an official member - but there are lots of jobs in the church that are not technically "callings"). Honestly, the majority of people at church do not even know who is or is not baptized (or excommunicated!) around them at church. It doesn't come up particularly often in conversation. If a baptized member takes the sacrament, it is like renewing their baptismal covenants. If a non-baptized person takes the sacrament, it's meaningless. If an excommunicated person takes the sacrament, that's...well, that's not good.

In a way, this policy acknowledges that gay couples raising children together are family units. That is a much more progressive thought than it might seem at first glance.

I like that the church is trying to minimize and avoid feelings of contention within homes, even at the expense of delaying (note that delaying is not the same as limiting!) access to the gift of the Holy Ghost and church membership for some people. It is bittersweet, but it attests that family relationships are really the most important. 

Do I receive prophecies? Shouldn't I write them if I do? 1 Nephi 19:1

Do I receive prophecies? Shouldn't I write them if I do? 1 Nephi 19:1

Nephi describes how he made the golden plates as a place to write the record of his people, including the record of his father, their journey in the wilderness, his father's prophecies, and his own prophecies. 

My 2018 reading of the Book of Mormon I decided that I would write down my questions as they came to me but not worry about answering them until later. I was impressed several times with the thought that later, when I had time to try to find answers to these questions, I should also find a way to record and share what I am learning in a place where people will be able to read it. After a lot of thought and deliberation in my mind, weighing of various online options, and some (but probably not enough...) prayer, I decided that I would write my answers on this blog which you are reading and then cross post a weekly post with links to all of that week's posts. The day I decided this, I counted the number of questions. There were exactly the number necessary to take me from that day through the end of 2019 if I answered one/day (but I don't...I chunk my time differently; but that's immaterial). I took that as a friendly nudge that yes, I'm in the right direction. Certainly, there would be no harm in trying this, so long as I remember that it's always a bit vulnerable to post personal feelings of faith and testimony in a public place. 

But I felt this feeling so strongly so many times, over and over again in fact, that until I came up with this plan, I felt a bit restless and antsy.

So back to the question. 

I feel like a whole lot of this life is just parsing of semantics. Like, so much nit-picking. What does x word mean. Is a prophecy the same thing as a revelation? Is it a sub-category under a big fat umbrella called "personal revelation"? Or is it something that only a prophet can do? Does it necessarily mean foretelling events that have not yet happened? 

Because I know what I meant when I asked the question, I will answer that one instead. I was referring to personal revelation. Revelation is communication from God to humans, his children. Do I receive revelation? Well, yes! Of course. It's not angels or anything like that. More like this: 

Most revelations to leaders and members of the Church come through the whisperings of the Holy Ghost.

Quiet spiritual promptings may not seem as spectacular as visions or angelic visitations, but they are just as powerful and lasting and life changing. The witness of the Holy Ghost makes an impression on the soul that is more significant than anything we can see or hear. 

I firmly believe that personal revelation is real and members of the restored church definitely do not have a monopoly on it. Anybody can receive it. This is how you can qualify to receive revelation even if you are not a member of the church:

1. Pray for guidance. In other words, try to talk to God in the best way you know how.
2. Be reverent, not snarky.
3. Be humble. Humility is genuine and sincere. It is being honest with yourself.
4. Keep the commandments. Some of the very important ones that seem a bit difficult for the world to keep right now are the law of chastity (sexual abstinence before marriage, complete fidelity after) and perhaps also keeping clean language (avoiding profanity, swearing, taking the Lord's name in vain, etc.)
5. Study the scriptures every day. This is something anybody can do with a swipe of their finger and a few taps of their thumb. We have the most amazing library literally at our fingertips. 
6. Take time to ponder. <-- this is something I have been doing a lot more of with this quest to answer the questions. The pattern so far has been for me to read my questions at the beginning of the week, search for answers in many places (including secular places, asking people, using corpus linguistics tools, and definitely reading the scriptures), and spend some significant amount of time just thinking it over in my mind. Pondering can be fun, but it is also more frustrating than other routes of gaining empirical knowledge.
7. Patiently wait for answers. They will come in their own time. 

If I "pray oft" will the Lord show great things unto me? 1 Nephi 18:3

If I "pray oft" will the Lord show great things unto me? 1 Nephi 18:3

Nephi says that he went to the "mount" oft[en], and prayed oft[en] unto the Lord, which is why the Lord showed him many great things.

My question is, if I do the same thing, then will I get the same results?

I think it is probably important to include the stuff Nephi does besides just praying. When it says he goes to the mountain, what I understand that this to mean the best substitute that Nephi had for going to the temple. We know that Moses received the detailed instructions for how to construct the tabernacle (the traveling temple) while he was on mount Sinai. 

Throughout the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, mountains are a symbol of a sacred place where the Lord teaches and reveals things to prophets. Here are some prophets who communed with God on a mountain: Nephi, Moses, the brother of Jared, Jesus Christ, etc. It's symbolism laced throughout the Psalms and Isaiah. 

There's nary a mountain in sight where I live.

Aaaaand the temple is a logistical puzzle with five kids (one who is breastfeeding) and a 2 1/2 hour drive each way. Yet, we have easy access to a temple compared to many millions of people, so I will not complain.

Back to the question. President Nelson answered this pretty clearly in his very first general conference address as the president of the church in April 2018. 

Answer: YES. 

The prophet also pleaded with us to increase our spiritual capacity to receive revelation by doing the spiritual work required to enjoy the gift of the Holy Ghost and hear the voice of the Spirit more frequently and more clearly. 

I urge you to stretch beyond your current spiritual ability to receive personal revelation, for the Lord has promised that “if thou shalt [seek], thou shalt receive revelation upon revelation, knowledge upon knowledge, that thou mayest know the mysteries and peaceable things—that which bringeth joy, that which bringeth life eternal.”

Oh, there is so much more that your Father in Heaven wants you to know. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, “To those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, it is clear that the Father and the Son are giving away the secrets of the universe!”

Nothing opens the heavens quite like the combination of increased purity, exact obedience, earnest seeking, daily feasting on the words of Christ in the Book of Mormon, and regular time committed to temple and family history work.

Qualifying to go to the temple, or in Nephi's case a mountain top (which might be even more beautiful and majestic than any other man-made place anyway), requires maintaining a temple recommend. This is not really something that can be done passively. It is daily living and walking by faith. I like that President Nelson also pointed out that we should be feasting on the words of Christ daily, especially the words in the Book of Mormon.

I think when I wrote this question, I was kind of thinking more along the lines of skepticism that I will ever get the opportunity to see a vision like what Nephi saw. But why not. If I do my part and earnestly seek, someday (maybe not someday very soon, but someday) I might get to see those things, too. I believe that "eternal progression" means a journey towards fulfilling this sincere desire I have within my soul to literally know everything that is knowable. Gotta start somewhere, and that place is righteous living including prayer and regular temple attendance.

Who is "I" in this verse? 1 Nephi 20:3

Who is "I" in this verse? 1 Nephi 20:3

Asking this question actually leads to another question: Who is "I" in this verse? Isaiah 48:3

Nephi is quoting the book of Isaiah, which would have been about as new to him as the writings of Joseph Smith are to me. That is to say, they were recent scripture for him. They were relevant and quite obviously precious to him. And we share the book of Isaiah with all the rest of Christianity as well as Judaism.

I asked the missionaries this question, and for the first time in several months I got an extremely satisfying answer that made sense to me.

This young missionary (who was not a scholar, it should be noted) told me about an experience he had with reading Moses 1:3-8 where he had the question, "who was speaking to Moses?"

He told me about how he read this in the institute manual, and it is worth quoting directly:

The personage who spoke to Moses was the premortal Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. Being one with Heavenly Father, Jesus at times speaks as if He were God the Father (see Moses 1:6). This is known as divine investiture, whereby Christ is invested with authority to speak for and in behalf of the Father (see also D&C 29:1, 42, 46).

President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote: “All revelation since the fall has come through Jesus Christ, who is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. … He is the God of Israel, the Holy One of Israel; the one who led that nation out of Egyptian bondage, and who gave and fulfilled the Law of Moses. The Father has never dealt with man directly and personally since the fall, and he has never appeared except to introduce and bear record of the Son” (Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [1954–56], 1:27).

It's not like my question about "roles" of who is talking is new. Here is another article written by H. Donl Peterson, a professor of ancient scripture at BYU, that I basically just have to quote because it's so clear.

A few years ago a student in one of my graduate classes wished to write a paper clarifying the appearances of various celestial beings upon the earth. He proposed column headings such as “God the Father,” “Jesus Christ,” “Holy Ghost,” “Named Angels,” “Unnamed Angels,” etc. After a few weeks he came back very discouraged, concluding that “a person just can’t do that.”

I tend to agree with his conclusion. Trying to determine which heavenly messenger is speaking in a particular case is often extremely difficult. I do feel, however, that we can clarify the issue by keeping several things in mind.

He then goes on to talk about the nature of the members of the Godhead, their unique roles, their unity in purpose, etc. It is worth reading. But kind of long, so I will just add this last part:

This discussion of roles may help us decide which of the two is speaking at a particular time. However, because the Father and the Son are one in unity and purpose, and since Jesus is authorized to speak for the Father in the first person, distinguishing the two can on occasion be more complicated. “Lord God” is used to designate both the Father and the Son in the scriptures. (See Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed., p. 450.)
In fact, very few sacred titles are used exclusively for one or the other. We can ask, for example, “Who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?” We may think first of Jesus since the Father delegated responsibility for this earth to him. (See 1 Ne. 19:10 and 1 Cor. 10:4.) We must keep in mind, however, that some other prophets have understood this and yet they have designated God the Father as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (See Acts 3:15; Acts 5:30; and Acts 22:14.)

So I didn’t wonder that my student reached the conclusion he did. He discovered that with “divine investiture” positive identification is sometimes difficult, if not impossible. As he put it, “Sometimes it seems as if God the Father is speaking and then it seems to be Christ. Even angels speak as if they were Christ.” (See Rev. 22:8–9, 12–16.)
The prophets themselves probably knew to whom they spoke, but the identity of the messengers may have become confused in translation or transcription.

It seems to me, however, that as long as we are persuaded by the Spirit that the message is divine, we should not be overly concerned about the identification of the messenger.

I have really enjoyed highlighting my scriptures to try to find passages with references to Jesus Christ. I will continue to do this because it is fun and interesting for me. However, I feel a lot more confidence now that I know that a. I'm not alone in wondering this, b. divine investiture is a thing, and c. it is certain that I will not be able to fully disambiguate God in the scriptures, and that is okay.

Who is the "Almighty God"? 1 Nephi 17:48

Who is the "Almighty God"? 1 Nephi 17:48

Laman and Lemuel are swift to do iniquity but slow to remember the Lord. This is depressing to Nephi, who tells them to repent. They are really angry at him, and are about to throw him off the boat, when Nephi says, "In the name of the Almighty God, I command you that ye touch me not, for I am filled with the power of God, even unto the consuming of my flesh; and whoso shall lay his hands upon me shall wither even as a dried reed; and he shall be as naught before the power of God, for God shall smite him."

I wanted to know if Nephi is referring to Jesus Christ or Heavenly Father in this verse.

'The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith' cites this verse, which is interesting to me. 

My hypothesis is that it is a reference to Jesus Christ because almost everything that we *do* is done in his name. Like, we address God the Father "in the name of Jesus Christ" in our prayers, for example. 

I think would have to study this more to be totally sure. It would be interesting to compare the instances of the use of the word "Almighty God" throughout the scriptures. I am still not sure if it would lead to any definitive answers. Since this is basically the exercise that I have been engaged in for the past 4 months (disambiguation of references to God in the Book of Mormon and now in the New and Old Testaments), I am going to wait to truly answer this question with the depth it deserves.

What should you do when you have questions?

1. Seek understanding through divinely appointed sources. What higher source can you have than that of God himself?

2. Act in faith. Trust that the Lord will reveal answers when the time is right. Live by what you already know. Adam and Eve offered sacrifices after they were cast out of the garden of Eden. They did not know why. Later, it was shown to them. This is a recurring pattern throughout the scriptures: God requires obedience and then later explains why. Consider when Abraham was required to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar in the same disgusting manner of the wicked people in the place where he grew up who frequently engaged in ritual human sacrifice of their children (!!! ughhh). Why is this the pattern? We are supposed to learn faith. Faith is an action verb.

3. Keep an eternal perspective. Look at things from a long-range eternal perspective, not a myopic what's-best-for-the-bottom-line perspective. Considering things from the point of view of Heavenly Father's plan of salvation, a whole lot more things make sense, like how ordinances that Christ requires of us (like baptism) can even work as the one way by which salvation can come when so many billions of people never had access to that ordinance. Cough cough temple work cough cough.

Was Nephi involved in being rude? 1 Nephi 18:10

Was Nephi involved in being rude? 1 Nephi 18:10

Nephi's family is on a boat. They are sailing to the promised land. Nephi's brothers and the sons of Ishmael and their wives are starting to be merry, dance, sing, and speak "with much rudeness." 

Nephi says that he, "began to fear exceedingly lest the Lord should be angry with us, and smite us because of our iniquity, that we should be swallowed up in the depths of the sea." 

I noticed that the pronouns here seemed to include Nephi in the rudeness. However, in the previous verse, he did not explicitly say that he himself was rude. He also does not mention rudeness of his wife, his brother Sam and his wife, his parents Lehi and Sariah, and probably Nephi's sisters - I am sure he had them, even though they are obnoxiously not mentioned by name.

We had the missionaries over for dinner and I let them look at my questions ("Wow, we would be so overjoyed if some investigator came and asked us these questions because it would mean they are really thinking about the scriptures!"). They were not able to answer all of my questions, but they both agreed that they think that the answer to this is no. 

No, Nephi was probably not involved in the rudeness, at least very much. It would be totally out of his character.

I wonder how this idea ties into that of "innocent bystanders." Like, if people are being generally wicked in an area, and the Lord decides to send a plague or a famine or a war (or whatever) to smite the wicked, does it include the righteous who are there? My intuition tells me yes, it does. That doesn't bode very well for my country, and the prophecies that state that we will be blessed inasmuch as we as a people are righteous. Actually, it's downright scary.