The Parable of the Bad Shepherd

There was a shepherd who had 100 sheep in a fenced in pasture. The shepherd fed the sheep and did his best to keep them inside the fence. A few of the sheep began to question whether the boundaries of the fence could be expanded, and some even thought they would be better off without the fence altogether.

A black sheep in the flock spoke with the questioning sheep and said that the fence, while imperfect, was overall good. She said that the architectural plans for the farm included the possibility of expansion in the future, but that for now, the sheep should stay in the fold.

The bad shepherd caught wind of this discussion and said that the pasture was perfect and that the design was unalterable. He took the black sheep, threw her outside the fence, and she was devoured by wolves.

When the other sheep expressed sorrow and concern at the fate of the black sheep, the shepherd said, "Yea, verily, the black sheep chose to leave the safety of the sheep fold of her own free will and is reaping her just reward."

What Battlestar Galactica Teaches Us About Faith and Prophecy

I love science fiction. It’s rich in allegory and can teach us many truths about life. In a way, I think that it can be our modern-day parables. I recently finished watching the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica (hereafter abbreviated as BSG). It’s a television show filled with deep and rich commentary on matters of spirituality, the human condition, forgiveness, diversity, politics, life, death, and the mysterious workings of the divine. One major religious refrain that is repeated throughout the show is “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.”

Today I’m going to talk about what BSG teaches us about the nature of faith and prophecy. In order to make this post comprehensible to someone who hasn’t seen the show, I’m going to be giving a great deal of background and detail. There will be spoilers in this post, but I’ve contained them all to after the jump.

I. Summary

For so persecuted they the prophets which were before you

I have gone on record explaining that the scriptures promise priesthood ordination to all followers of Christ, both male and female. God has promised that He will yet reveal "many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God" [1], and I firmly believe that extending the priesthood to all worthy members of the church is one of them. The restoration of the Gospel, which began in a grove of trees and is still ongoing, will not be complete until we have our latter-day Phoebes and our latter-day Junias. With that said, I have not at this point in time chosen to align myself with Ordain Women, mostly because my style is more to skip the middleman and go straight to the source - petitioning God directly.

I have many friends who have joined with Ordain Women, and their stories are heartbreaking. People, both to their face and anonymously on the internet, are calling them vile names, telling them that they are not welcome among God's people, and in some cases, even threatening them with physical harm. All because my friends, by bearing their testimony of the vision of equality the Holy Spirit has granted them, are obeying their baptismal covenant to "stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that [they] may be in" [2]. My friends are mourning that reality does not yet match this vision, and instead of their opponents obeying their baptismal covenant to "mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort" [3], they are persecuting my friends in the most un-Christlike manner. My friends are responding by turning the other cheek and showing grace in the face of adversity.

We learn in scripture that in the last days, our daughters shall prophesy. [4] We also learn that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy [5] and that we will be able to determine the validity of someone's actions by the fruits that those actions bear.[6]

Let's look at the fruits: My friends are following the scriptural tradition of the daughters of Zelophehad [7] by asking the prophets to seek revelation from God. They are being patient and kind even to those who mock and scorn them. My friends' opponents are following the scriptural tradition of persecuting the meek and humble followers of Christ [8] and are trying to cast my friends out of their worship spaces.

My friends' actions are the ones bearing good fruit. They are the ones demonstrating a testimony of Jesus by showing love.[9] Since their actions demonstrate their testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy, I would like to cheer them with these words spoken by our Savior when He preached the sermon on the mount:

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.  Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.[10]

May God soften the hearts of your persecutors, and may God rain down revelation on us all.

--
[1] 9th Article of Faith
[2] Mosiah 18:9
[3] Ibid.
[4] Joel 2:28
[5] Revelation 19:10
[6] Matthew 7:20
[7] See Numbers 27
[8] See Alma 32:1-3 for a description of the Zoramite persecutors casting the meek and humble out of the houses of worship.
[9] John 13:35
[10] Matthew 5:10-12

No manner of -ites

At baptism, we covenant to “mourn with those who mourn”, not “make people who mourn go away so they don’t make us uncomfortable”.

Sadly, my friends were mourning this week, and some of our fellow saints refused to mourn with us. It started out innocently enough, when someone carelessly implied that all Mormon women were married. After hearing the hurt this caused several single women, this person eventually apologized, but not before a huge dustup occurred where several of my friends were told by others (not the original person) that they were unwelcome because they were single. We were told that our pain at being excluded from our religious community was illegitimate and made-up, and that we should go and find a different place to be, so that they wouldn’t have to hear our pain.

This is not how we build Zion.

After Christ appeared to the surviving Nephites and Lamanites, they built Zion. The distinguishing characteristic of their society is that there were not “any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.” 4 Nephi 1:17 This doesn’t mean that everyone was suddenly the same. It means that despite their different backgrounds, they were united. The stratifications that exist in the world should not exist in Zion.

Our community has too many -ites.

How do we overcome our natural tendency to stratify? Chapter 1 of 4 Nephi describes a righteous and happy society. Verse 12 says that they met together often. Verse 15 says that there was love in the hearts of the people.

If we want a Zion society, we need to get out of our bubbles and listen to the lived experiences of those who are different. We can’t just dismiss them. The next time you’re at church, talk to someone who isn’t like you. And then listen.

Jesus said that all the law and the prophets hang on the commandment to love. This is the center of a Christian life. If we develop love in our hearts, we will develop a Zion society. Jesus also said that whatever we do to the least of society, we have done to Him. When we ostracize entire demographics, we are kicking Jesus out of Zion.

While the catalyst for this post was the exclusion and marginalization of the unmarried, those who aren’t married are not the only -ites. We have -ites of various racial or ethnic minorities, infertile-ites,  and the list goes on and on. In Zion, there will still be people of various races and ethnicities, people of varying family compositions, and people from all walks of life. But let’s not turn them into “the other”. We should have no manner of -ites among us.

Improving Grace?

Sometimes I'll catch myself singing hymns without spending too much time actually thinking about the words. Today at church, we sang hymn 240, Know This, That Every Soul Is Free. As I got to verse 4, I noticed a phrase that struck me as a bit odd.

Our God is pleased when we improve

His grace and seek his perfect love.

What does it mean to improve the grace of God? I've always viewed God's grace as perfect.

I did a search in the scripture section of lds.org, where I typed the phrase "improve grace" into the search box. I didn't get any results.

The only thing I can think of is in the context of real estate. A piece of empty land is said to be "improved" when a structure is built on it. So maybe what the hymn means is that when we have God's grace in our life, we should do something with it.

That's all I've got. Any other thoughts on what it could mean?

Logical Fallacies and the 9th Commandment

The most valuable course I took in my entire education was Introduction to Informal Logic. I took the class my second quarter of college simply because it fit in my schedule and didn't look horribly boring. I loved that class so much that I changed my minor to philosophy and almost decided to go on for a PhD in the subject.

When I taught freshman composition, I made sure to introduce my students to the logical fallacies so that they could identify and guard against them. They're pernicious and tend to crop up everywhere.While there are several logical fallacies, there is one in particular that I'm going to discuss today that is unbecoming a Christian.

That fallacy is the straw man fallacy. The straw man fallacy is where someone argues not against their opponents' position, but against a ridiculous, false, or weak characterization of their opponents' position. Wikipedia summarizes it nicely:

To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged, emotional issues. In those cases the false victory is often loudly or conspicuously celebrated.

Here is an example from real life:

True position: Feminists believe that men and women deserve an equal opportunity to develop and use their talents and gifts both inside and outside the home.
Straw man position: Feminists hate babies and want to become men.

See how they're not even remotely similar? But many people skip right over the true position and go knock down the straw man because addressing the true position is harder than defeating an argument that you made up yourself and that nobody actually subscribes to. It's bad logic.

It is also a sin.

The ninth commandment states "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Exodus 20:16. Going around misrepresenting your opponents' arguments in order to make them look bad is the very definition of bearing false witness. So, in the words of President Utchdorf, "Stop it."

I'm a lawyer now

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12

I started law school in January 2005, fresh off my mission, with $77 in my bank account. Since I had no money and no job, I lived with my parents in San Jose. I was going to school in San Francisco. My daily commute was 2 hours each way. My dad dropped me off at the train station at 6:30 in the morning on his way into work, and he picked me up at the train station around 5:30 in the evening on his way home from work. It was thoroughly exhausting.

I kept that up for a year before I was fed up enough with the commute that I moved out. I ended up in Fremont, which was still a 45 minute train ride away, but it was much better. A few months later, my law school education was unceremoneously interrupted due to a whole bunch of bureaucratic nonsense that was out of my control. The day that I found that out, I also lost my job.

I spent the next two years working and trying to figure out what to do with my life, and then I went back to law school somewhere else. (At a school that was far better run and treated the students as respected colleagues instead of as obstacles.) Then I graduated.

Then I took the California bar - and failed it - three times. (Seriously, if someone reasonably intelligent with a law degree can't pass the [expletive deleted] test after three attempts, maybe there's something wrong with the test!) Then I decided that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So I took the Arizona bar in February. I found out in May that I passed it. In fact, I knocked it out of the park. It really was California and not me.

I've been waiting for my background check to clear, and I found out yesterday that it did. Most law schools have big ceremonies a few weeks after exam results are released where all of the alumni who passed the bar are sworn in en masse. Since I'm being admitted to the bar in a different state, and I'm being admitted off schedule, I don't get that.

I went to the UPS store on my lunch break today to get sworn in. So, nearly eight years of toil and effort was culminated by signing a piece of paper in front of a notary and dropping it in the mail. I'm practically allergic to ceremony, but it still felt a little anticlimactic.

Prison Chaplain - Part 2

This is part two of a three part series on what it’s like to be a prison chaplain. In Part I, I explained the background of how I got involved with prison ministry. In Part II, I’ll address some frequently asked questions about the work.

1. What is a typical day in the life of a prison chaplain?

Many religious groups have a full-time chaplain who is an employee of the prison. However, there isn’t a full-time LDS chaplain at San Quentin. Instead, there are four of us who volunteer on a part-time basis. We divide up the responsibilities so that we’re able to attend to our respective employment, family, and ward obligations as well.

San Quentin is a men’s facility with a postcard-worthy view of the San Francisco bay. We offer services for mainline inmates (the general prison population), inmates in administrative segregation, and inmates on death row. In addition, we are permitted to visit the cell blocks to see inmates who are unable to attend services. I do services for mainline inmates approximately two to three Sundays per month, depending on the schedules of the other chaplains.

The prison has a chapel complex that contains five houses of worship: a mosque, a synagogue, a Native American chapel, a Protestant chapel, and a Catholic chapel. LDS services are held in the library of the Catholic chapel at 6:00 on Sunday evenings. The chairs are arranged in a circle, and there is enough space for about 12 chairs. Usually 6 or 7 people attend.

I conduct the meeting, and we begin with a hymn and a prayer. After the prayer, one of the inmates gives the lesson. The lessons come from the same Teachings of the Presidents of the Church manual that is used for Relief Society and Melchizedek Priesthood meetings in a typical ward. At the prison, we’re about two weeks ahead of my ward, so I get a nice preview of things to come.

Because of the small group size, there is a lot of opportunity for discussion of the material. Everyone has very insightful things to contribute, and I’ve learned a lot. I especially have been touched by the stories that the inmates have shared about how being a follower of Christ has helped them to turn the other cheek and better handle conflict with the other inmates at the prison.

After the lesson is over, we close with a hymn and a prayer. If there is time left over, we watch a talk from the most recent General Conference, since they did not have the opportunity to watch it when it was aired live.

2. Isn’t it dangerous?! It’s a prison!!

I’ve been volunteering in the prison teaching college classes for two years, and I’ve felt safe the entire time. In that time, there has only been one disturbance while I was present, and it occurred in a completely different part of the prison. If there is ever a threat, volunteers are escorted out of the prison to safety.

San Quentin is a medium security facility, and most of the people I interact with are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. Although I’ve only been a chaplain for a short while, I feel the same sense of safety in the chapel as I do in the classroom. Prison culture has a great deal of respect for chaplains, and it’s considered socially unacceptable to mess with the “God people”.

Death row has its own chapel, separate from the main area of the prison. I’m not yet cleared to go there to perform services, but when I am, I feel confident in my safety there, too. It’s set up with the safety of the chaplains in mind.

3. Why do you do chaplain work?

As I wrote about in Part I, I’ve felt called to ministry from an early age.

Plus, the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:36-40 stuck with me. “‘I was in prison, and ye came unto me.’ Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we thee … in prison, and came unto thee?’ And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’”

Visiting those in prison and serving the people our society reviles is as much a part of the duty of a Christian as feeding the hungry and caring for the sick. I’m not very good at making casseroles for the hungry or the sick, but I can listen and I can preach, so I go with what I’m good at and leave the food to people who are good at that.

4. How can you be a chaplain, since you don’t hold the priesthood?

LDS military chaplains have to hold the priesthood because a large part of their service involves the performance of ordinances. However, LDS hospital and prison chaplains do not have to hold the priesthood because the performance of ordinances is not a regular part of the service provided. The service provided by hospital and prison chaplains is mostly pastoral care - a listening ear, a reminder of the love of God, the teaching of the gospel, praying with and for them, etc.

Per church policy, worship services in prison do not include the administration of the sacrament. Non-members are permitted to attend, but they are not permitted to receive the ordinances of baptism or confirmation. If any member of the group were to request a priesthood blessing, I would arrange for one of the other chaplains to come in to perform it.

On the ecclesiastical side, the high council for the stake where the prison is located sponsors me and certifies to the prison that I’m authorized to conduct LDS services for the inmates. Since I’m not a member of the stake where the prison is located, I imagine that they’ve been in contact with my bishop and stake president, though I don’t know that for sure, since my bishop hasn’t said anything to me about it.

On the institutional side, my liaison is the Catholic priest, who is a full-time employee at the prison. If I have any issues or concerns related to the operation of the program inside the prison, or prison rules/regulations, he can help me resolve the problem by working with the prison staff.

5. How can I get involved?

My initial involvement was fairly serendipitous, so I don’t know that there is necessarily a set path. If you live near a correctional facility (a jail or prison) and want to go inside as a religious volunteer, a good first step would be to talk to your bishop, stake president, or someone on the high council. They will likely be able to put you in touch with the right people. If you’re not in a situation to go inside a facility, there are organizations that provide pen pals for inmates. I haven’t worked with any of those organizations, so I can’t vouch for any of them, but I do know that the inmates love getting mail.

Beating my sword into a plowshare

But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it. . .and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Micah 4:1-3

During law school, I took a temporary job as the receptionist at a software company. I was very quickly promoted into a role in the HR department, and I continued to develop professionally until I was second only to the vice president. Around this time, the company was acquired by a defense contractor.

Prayer

A singles' ward in a neighboring stake has small FHE groups for the ward members. Back in October, one of my friends invited me to come to her FHE group so that I could meet more people. I decided to come, and I made some new friends.

In April, the groups got changed up, so I started going to a new group, but I still kept in touch with people from the old group. Yesterday, I went back to the old group because the group leader for the new group is on vacation for the next few weeks, so FHE got canceled.

At the end of the meeting, the person giving the closing prayer asked if there was anything in particular that we would like for her to pray for. One guy said he needed help finding a job. I said that I needed help with my toe healing.

On Thursday, I was at the beach, and I stubbed my toe on a rock. On Friday, it was still hurting, so I went to the clinic, and the doctor told me it was broken. He taped my toe and gave me a walking boot and told me to wear it for 4-6 weeks.

During the closing prayer, the person giving the prayer prayed for my toe, and for my friend's job. I got a call from the radiologist this morning, and it turns out it was a false alarm. My toe isn't broken. It's just bruised. I should be good as new in about 2 weeks.

Now I just need to wait to hear that my friend found an awesome job.