Response to sundry questions

A viewer asked the following tranche of questions, which I will address inline.

Q: "Please teach us why you do not capitalize Him/His when referring to God?"

A: I understand the reasons people have for capitalizing them. The experiences I have with him have caused me to find some things much more important to him than I thought, and others to be much less important to him than I thought. There are some cases where he cares about the outward show of reverence, and there are many where they are so pretentious that those who see them so cannot exercise them without mocking God. In at least some things, God would like us to place less emphasis on the outward to as to take away the temptation people incline toward of assuming that by filling their lives with outward shows of piety, they can excuse themselves for the lack of inward obeisance to him. If we capitalized him in our hearts, we would not find the need to do so in our writing. I don't know anyone who uses capitals who can say that they are free from sin, but a man or woman whose heart has been carved through repeatedly yielding it to every chisel stroke he saw fit to deliver has no doubt of his complete prostration to his master.

Q: "Will you please consider posting a video along with each blog post that is the place for us to comment about and ask questions regarding that blog post?  Just a 30 second blurb: "this is the place to comment on the blog post linked in the description." I find your posts to be as powerful as your videos and would love a place for discussion about them, as well."

A: I turned off comments on the blog some time ago. Here's why: We are partially responsible for the reaction to our portion of the light that flows into the world in the same respect as parents are partially responsible for the independent actions of their minor children. You shouldn't knowingly create situations where you make things worse. Because people view blogs at random times, it becomes a non-uniform experience depending on when people drop by. It became important for me to be able to react to incoming comments as they were posted, and I couldn't do that in a batch style that was necessary to avoid interruptions with other things of higher priority. YouTube gives me the ability to approve comments, and I use this as a worklist to batch responses when it does not interfere with other priorities in my life. It waits for me rather than making me choose between constantly checking and being on the hook to respond (some responses take hours) or leave something in a condition where I have made things worse.

I will not be turning on comments on my blog. However, the new site will have the ability to comment on both written and recorded postings. And to search both and books as well.

We (my sons are doing quite a lot of the work) are planning on a forum as well. There will be many opportunities for visitors to network and communicate with each other by design.

Q: "Does your wife ever plan on sharing her wealth of wisdom found in becoming a godly woman  because of marriage to you?  (I'm both teasing and serious.) I'd love to learn from her also, as I yearn for the female perspective in our journey, as well."

A: In general, I really would rather people not bring my wife into my public ministry. This is a broad-spanning topic, but to briefly touch on just a few points:

• I do not have the right to bring her into this. She has a right to privacy until she chooses otherwise, and my addressing questions and comments from others about her violates this.
• I don't know why, but people keep on assuming that when I speak about any topic related to marriage, it has something to do with my own marriage, or is somehow a commentary on my wife. I am not a subtle person. I do not hesitate to call people out when that is what I am doing. If I wanted to say something about my wife, you'd know it.
• There is a strong disposition for people to correlate the qualities of a husband and wife (in both directions). Maybe this is because churches so strongly push the idea of marriage as an equal partnership. The scriptures paint a much different picture. God says in Abraham that no two people are the same. Seemingly every marriage we know enough about to comment on in scripture features people of very different qualities. We have many examples where one person is much closer to God than another. Abraham and Sarah, Abigail and Nabal, and so on. In my case (look everyone, I am indeed calling out my wife here) my wife--like basically everyone else--has not yet repented of her sins, and is not therefore worthy to be considered a spiritual teacher: "And also trust no one to be your teacher nor your minister, except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments. "(Mosiah 23:14)

There is a lot of unfortunate misunderstanding when it comes to differences between men and women. One of these is a difference in the priority order of ways in which we learn and live the gospel. A good parallel to introduce this is how society says work is the same for women and men when it actually isn't. The masculine form is taught as the universal form. There is a feminine form, and women have a greater impact when they know and live it than trying to be like men--a task in which they will not likely perform any better than if the opposite were attempted. Likewise, in gospel learning, a woman's primary resource is not other people, but herself. God has filled the lives (and even bodies) of women with a constant stream of situations precisely designed to teach her the deepest and most important truths. The advent of nearly universal literacy, access to information, and unprecedented discretionary time should augment--not replace--the optimal framework designed by God. Women and men both have access to the voice of God within and the voice of his creation and his servants without. With all, the voice of God must be the unbroken constant focus, but the priority order for how we use the external resources is meant to vary between women and men. The primary external resource for women is not other women, nor strange men, but her husband. Where more than what he provides is desired, it is more likely they will find it in the public ministry of other men, and not women. There are good reasons for this. A man who has surplus has surplus because he has fully filled the capacity of his family situation and still has more to give. It is much less likely for a woman to have surplus (though examples exist, such as Anna the holy woman who blessed Jesus in the temple) because it is their own choices that tend to determine the maximum capacity for more in their family. A man's contribution to his family will be limited to the choices of his wife and children: there is only so much masculine contribution a family will be willing to receive. A woman's contributions to her family are a lot less likely to be capped by the decision of her family. For example, there isn't really a case where more nurturing would be rejected, and even simple homes and small families can present seemingly endless opportunities for female contribution. When there is a feminine surplus, it is almost always because limits of age, fertility, or finances limit more children.

Q: Do you have an update on your plans for regular live streaming?  Every so often and especially on Sunday mornings, my old habits of church yearn for some live human interaction and nourishment from, and to others.  I'd love to learn also if there are viewers and readers in my area?  I know you're working on this... Just wondering how that live and meet-up aspect of your ministry is coming along?

A: I don't anticipate this happening any time soon for various reasons. Those aside, one thing I hope people work on until the above-mentioned community tools are available is to let go of the following habit, which is bad: People have a tendency to replace the need for repentance with churchy activities. Nothing you do is more important than repenting, and no seemingly spiritual activity done in its place pleases God. He is quite done with people practicing the forms of godliness without actually repenting. That is not something that is going to be tolerated by him going forward. Any practices put into place that deviate from this will not receive his blessing. For my part, the new site will have features that help mitigate the tendency. The world does not need another mainstream church or busybody forum. There is no place for people who are ever learning and yet never repenting. As I will lay out in teachings about gathering, there is no point associating yourself with others if it is not for the purpose of obtaining and making corrections in your life to point yourself more towards Christ. You do not gather in order to repent. You repent and then you gather to learn more than what you previously had access to. This is not meant to be in the present forms of "if I just keep doing these things, maybe one day I'll actually repent." Those people cannot come up the mountain. Rather, the path of improvement will be laid out, and only those who actually improve will traverse it. In Moses' day, there was no reason to be confused about who was on the mountain. The fire and lightning and clouds made it obvious whether you were up there or not. The reason people think they are on the mountain today when they are not is because there is very little of God's glory and power in the religions of the world. There is an available alternative today.

Q: Also what is your Venmo tag that we can transfer donations to please?

A: Donations are not yet set up. I will publish the information once they are. My present expectation is that a crude version of the intended new website will be posted and feature a donate page with all the most updated information. It requires a lot of work to get video and blog posts serving in the way we want, including the tools we'd like to have there. The forum will take time, too.