Sunday in Outer Blogness: Y Be Free edition!

The challenge to BYU’s accreditation has hit the presses!! Let’s see what happens! Theoretically it’s OK to be gay at BYU, but not everybody got the memo. In the meantime, FreeBYU has started posting profiles.

And what is the CoCJoL-dS up to these days? I mean, besides conference. Not what you might guess!

The top guys are still a bit wary of technology and the future. (Fortunately, now members are allowed to be gay on Facebook.) Doubts are the big danger to what the church offers: some big promises and lots of problematic answers:

Brandon proceeded to talk about prayer briefly and then said, “There are answers to questions that my church has…and that is a beautiful thing.” I can relate with Brother Flowers. “Answers to questions” is what I carried with me for two years in Argentina on my mission. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going after this life? As Mormons, we have the answers to ALL of these questions and we would like to come into your home and discuss them with your family!

[…]

For those who are suffering – the wife and three kids, the missionary’s family, the child’s parents – the answers can fall short and leave us feeling empty and alone or maybe even leave us feeling guilty for our sorrow. But those who have never suffered a similar tragedy, cannot understand the depth of grief, and the “answers” are not malicious but are truly offered to make things better. To solve the problem. To fix it. We have to come up with these unintentionally insensitive answers to make sense of tragedies.

Of course Christianity in general uses the strategy of negging you to snag you…

Have you been wondering about that film “God Is Not Dead”? Well, lucky for you, Alex watched it so you don’t have to! Surprisingly, he discovered a reality-based message in it:

Through the thick growths of religious vines throttling the narrative of God’s Not Dead, a simple and somehow beautiful message lies at the center of this clumsily-conceived story: So much painful stuff happens to these characters, and almost all of it is due to poor communication. We can learn from these fictional examples that when people don’t take the time to discuss their decisions, their expectations, their beliefs and their problems, they can expect things to get worse. Open dialogue, free communication and the mature exchange of opinions can facilitate the happy endings that so few of these situations achieved.

Mithryn has been quite active this past week, with a discussion of homogeneity and bias, comparison of the CoJCoL-dS with Joseph Smith’s church, contrast of good marriage advice with the church’s marriage advice, and a plan for an animated discussion of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

In scriptures, whatever happened to that new “translation” of the Bible that Joseph Smith did? The BoM war stories are getting stranger, not to mention the things the Bible says can get you sent to hell and other tips. You can believe the Bible is good if you cherry-pick, but, unfortunately some people really do take the whole thing seriously. But the parlor tricks hardly merit the veneration they’ve generated.

In interfaith interactions, an online sex chat morphed into a theology discusion. In life journeys, Prairie Nymph is going on an awesome pilgrimage and shared bit of poetic prose:

I will be in charge of my paintbrush today. The primed canvas smiles at me, daring me to do great things. My fingers itch. The rhythm of the music around me pulsates in my fingers and I begin.

And as a personal update from last week: playing transatlantic Minecraft with my little niece has been great fun! I’d actually like to be doing it right now — maybe I’ll get back to it…

Have a great week!