Resolutions and Religiosity

Even though I know that New Year’s Resolutions are rather popular in certain circles, I’ve never seriously made them. Of course we’ve all made a few, but then again, for me it was with the same energy that I paid attention to a few horoscope readings — it’s just things to we do casually.

I was intrigued when I read on Nine Moons about relating New Year’s Resolutions to a uniquely Mormon interpretation of eternal progression, except I was too hung up focusing on the “new year’s resolution” part and not on the eternal progression part (why wait until January 1st?)

But the central idea to this is that we can change…and that we are changing constantly. We don’t need an arbitrary time of the year or date to make these commitments.

…But I can agree to this without necessarily bringing any religion to this. I’m possibly negating the eternal part of eternal progression by doing this, but there’s no skin off my nose, right?

Questioning and dissension

What should people do when they have questions in the church? Doubts? Disagreements? I was reading this blog entry at Feminist Mormon Housewives (I do that a lot) (of a blogger who normally posts at the Liberal Mormon that Could, so I should probably shout out to that as well), and I was kinda interested.

As with most gutsy topics, you can see this spectrum of responses. There’re hyper-defensive, conservative, a range of  faithful approaches, more permissive responses, all the way down to responses that even I feel are radical. For a question about one who doubts, it seems simple to say, “Never speak ill of the church,” or, to create the illusion of a more permissive and reasonable approach, to say, “It’s ok to dissent inside, as long as your public face and public actions are unified with the church.” This seems to be a reasonable idea: don’t hang your family’s dirty laundry out.

But what I like about big topics like these that tend to blossom from group blogs is that you do hear the wide variety of opinions. So, I read something rather interesting indeed:

Purposeful limitation

I always wonder why Verizon Wireless purposefully limits its phones.

Verizon Wireless

I recall writing a post about Sprint before, but now I want to set my sights on Verizon. See, Verizon has a good reputation for call quality (yes, we can hear you now, after all) and they’ve won a few awards. The problem is that everyone also knows that Verizon has a dark secret.

They gimp most of their phones.

Gimp…what does urbandictionary have to tell me about this word?

a derrogatory [sic] term for someone that is disabled or has a medicial [sic] problem that results in physical impairment.

Oh, wow, that’s just terrible. Wow, I would never say that a person is gimped. But phones, inanimate as they are, can be disabled at the whims of their creators based on the specifications of what any carrier, like Verizon, wants.

Verizon has historically limited its phones in specific ways…for example, it has limited phones that have open GPS function so that they can only use their GPS with Verizon’s VZNavigator service. That’s actually kinda clever, because then Verizon can snag a better plan out of the deal if people so want GPS.

In truth, this isn’t just Verizon either. Most companies try to lock phones to their own service or at the very least encourage software with that carrier. To an extent, it can be seen as just good business.

But something that I don’t understand is how Verizon rips apart perfectly good hardware. HTC made a little phone called the Touch Pro, and it’s interesting to see how as it has migrated to the different carriers, they’ve made their own changes to the device. I have no problem with the fact that AT&T’s Fuze still has the diamond faceted back that the phone originally was known for, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with the fact that Sprint’s Touch Pro has a different keyboard layout than AT&T’s Fuze.

But when we come to Verizon, not only do we have these minor cosmetic changes, but Verizon has ripped out 96 megabytes of RAM from the phone! For Verizon customers, it essentially means that they aren’t even getting the same phone as Sprint and AT&T are — they are getting a veritably inferior phone.

Sorry, this one just isn't as good!

Normally, when companies want to differentiate, they add features to distinguish them from the competitor. Or, if they have to reduce features, they do so to cut costs (and perhaps lower prices). Not Verizon. I really wonder if anyone has an explanation of this perplexing phenomenon…it really baffles me!

In my sprint article, I think I made some kind of crazy analogy between Sprint’s behavior and the Mormon church’s — I think I’ve gotten somewhat decent at this. But every time I try to make a similar comparison, I come to this realization that the church just doesn’t do this.

Now, there is some “purposeful limitation” going on in the church…the church will rarely inform people of everything that goes on in the Temple before they actually go — but that’s because of a guise of “sacredness,” so I won’t argue against that too much.

When I think cynically about limitations of information or “features” from church members, it’s much more apt to refer back to Apple…which I’ve also written about. But Apple, unlike Verizon, does what they do in an oddly admirable way. Apple has amassed such a great fanbase of people who are willing to support any Apple product because Apple has successfully advertised itself. Apple is become its own kind of luxury good, so people are willing to buy things like Macbook Airs even though they are less functional than…most computers from a few years ago. The thinness doesn’t hurt either.

In a similar way is a good church. Good churches (not good in a theological sense, but in an organizational sense — I’m not touching theology) advertize themselves in a way that make people reluctant to leave. Sometimes, asynchronous information exchange is necessary to reach those ends.

Religious Conservatism

You know…I’ve never gotten why the Church aligns itself with the Religious Right.

Well, actually, that’s a bald-faced lie. Of course I know why; the church is a socially conservative entity and regardless of its attempts to distance itself from politics and say that faithful members don’t necessarily have to be Republican, in America at least, it’s going to take a moral stand on issues that will probably happen to fit into the Republican Party’s (or, at the very least, the socially conservative wing of that party’s) agenda. Out of all of the things the church could’ve spoken up about in the world, we have the church fighting against gay marriage. It’s really quite obvious and predictable.

All or Nothing

However it happened, somehow, there has been this black and white or all or nothing mentality that has surfaced within the church. Things must be absolutely one way, or the other. What’s an example? Well…let’s read:

To hear someone so remarkable say something so tremendously bold, so overwhelming in its implications, that everything in the Church—everything—rises or falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and, by implication, the Prophet Joseph Smith’s account of how it came forth, can be a little breathtaking. It sounds like a “sudden death” proposition to me. Either the Book of Mormon is what the Prophet Joseph said it is or this Church and its founder are false, fraudulent, a deception from the first instance onward.

That’s not from just some random guy off the street. That’s from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, and in actuality, he’s going back even further back to an even more legitimate source: that “someone” who is saying something “so tremendously bold” is President Ezra Taft Benson.

What’s interesting is how in the very next line Elder Holland says “not everything in life is so black and white,” but then he affirms that this is one issue that decidedly is.

Christmas

Ah, it’s that time of year. The time of commercialism and gift-giving. The time of holiday cheer and good tidings for all.

A lovely Christmas scene

Yes, Christmas. There are a lot of things that annoy me about Christmas though. Even though it’s just a few days before Christmas, please, hear my rant. Yes, the iconic Christmas television programs are really annoying (everyone seems to love A Christmas Story, but I despise it). Caroling is almost worse. And eggnog…uggh. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just overreacting, but eggnog is disgusting. And people want to drink an alcoholic version of it?

Writing in journals

You know what people just don’t seem to do these days? Write in journals. I’ve asked a few people if they write in journals and invariably, the answer is a no. And a weird glare. Who would do something like that?

Journals -- Do you write one?

It’s something that has been emphasized by the church, but I can’t say that I began writing because of what the church said. However, it’s interesting to read about other members who write journals because they are heeding prophetic words. Hmm…I wonder what it was that led to the original fervor about journal-writing? It seems like such a strange thing to advocate.

Service missions

When I had heard about service missionaries, I was intrigued. It’s not talked about a lot in the church, even though I suppose it is an option. Since I know utterly nothing about how it officially is set up in an LDS capacity, my mind races to create all kinds of rumors and hypotheses that I have no way of validating. Part of me wants to believe that service missionaries are for those members who are worthy, but in some way physically limited from doing regular missionary work.

But that hypothesis quickly makes no sense to me. I don’t know why I assume that things out of the norm are automatically due to worthiness problems — I think that’s a throwback from mormon gossip culture.

It’s all speculation.

But when I had heard about service missions, I thought it was this tremendous idea. I was ready to champion the cause as what the model mission throughout the church should be.

Imagine this. Two guys (or girls, or a guy and a girl, or whatever) are walking in the neighborhood in nice clothes (or perhaps more casual clothes for working, but still something that distinguishes them). They stop by you at your house, and you freeze. You know what to expect…they say, “Hi, we’re Elder (name) and Elder (name)…and we are representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Now, while you might be wincing, trying to escape what comes next, they say, “Can we help you with anything?”

Oh. Well, you do have some heavy things that you have to move…but what’s the price? Is this some gimmick?

No, they say. They just want to cultivate a loving attitude through selfless service. No strings attached.

Love One Another

I was meaning to link to Tim Wade’s blog sooner or later…not for any devious reason or anything, but I had read an article by him suggesting that “Mormons are better Christians” in certain distinct ways. And then as I read his blog, I saw that he talks about Mormons a lot. He’s not a member and never was (so he has a different outlook than I ever could), but precisely because he’s not a member, he provides interesting insights.

I was looking at what I could talk about with his article here…and I realized that these weren’t necessarily good topics for me to discuss, because many of them hinge on the stuff I never cared about. Sanctification? It’s good for an theological discussion — sometimes — but I really don’t care. And although I recognize that missionary work is just one way the church becomes an impressive organization, I am wary of the spiritual goals of it, and I am outright disturbed by Mr. Wade’s vision of a Southern Baptist Convention — 60 million strong as opposed to the LDS church’s mere 13 million — adoption of two-year-full-time missionary work. Dealing with enough Baptists already, I shudder at the thought of what it would be like if they were called to be missionaries, when many are already annoyingly forward with their religion already.

He had a newer article, though, called From Protestantism With Love…and of course, I was intrigued by this idea of love as a signifier of personal character (which improves the persuasiveness of a belief).

Faith of my Father, part 2

This is a continuation of an earlier entry in a series.

My dad was always concerned for me. He only let me learn certain things later on, but he was worried about my beliefs. I had never been a “true” believer, but when I was growing up, it didn’t necessarily feel worth it to say I didn’t believe, so I never did. It seemed better to go with a status quo of following along with what everyone else was saying and doing.

And I thought: I should be allowed to slide! Other kids in the ward were doing all sorts of stuff to wipe out their temple and priesthood worthinesses, but I was golden. So, if I didn’t have a testimony but I lived properly, while these other guys with testimonies lived terribly…who came out ahead? (It’s almost as if belief has no impact on one’s actions…)