[Glenn Beck anyone?]

The first time I ever heard fo Glenn Beck was during the Terri Schaivo (sp?) thing. Back then he was only on the radio, I believe. I saw a link on some blog and saw that he had designed some t-shirts and coffee mugs with a picture of Michael Schiavo on them and it said something like "I killed my wife and all I got was this lousy shirt." Angry as I was about what was happening to Terri, and how, with the state's help, Michael was getting away with it, I did get a laugh out of Beck's blunt punditry on the matter.

I've watched his show a few times when he was on HNN (CNN part two), but have very rarely seen him on Fox news because the time slot just isn't good for me. I especially liked when he has Ted Nugent on. But I once saw Ted Nugent on the Jon Stewart show (back in the early to mid 90s, before he went political), and that was hilarious too. The "Nuge" is just good viewing entertainment, I think.

I like Beck's sense of humor. On the wikipedia page about him, he's quoted as saying that God "stalked him with a baptismal rifle", as a way of saying that he wasn't particularly interested in the Church at first, but God didn't give up on him and kept leading Beck toward the Gospel.

What I find really sad is members of the Church who hate Glenn Beck just because of their own political views. They let their politics influence the way they will talk about another member of the Church. Not to say it's okay to bag on someone who's not a member, but I would hope at least they could holster the guns for a fellow member.

It's just really sad that some people get so worked up about politics that they will spew hatred and venom all over someone they don't even know. If it keeps up, I can see Doctrine and Covenants 45:68 coming to pass. This rampant and wildly out of control animosity is going to tear this country apart.

["Embraced By The Light"]

Always wanted to read that one. It was suggested to me by a missionary once.

I own and have read multiple times a similar book called "Glimpses of Eternity" by Arvin S. Gibson. Unless the General Authorities come out and say that what is in this book is inaccurate or wrong, I am inclined to believe it. The author is LDS, and the people he interviewed were active LDS, inactive LDS, and people who had never been members. Almost every story was completely different, though some of them had some common elements. Some stories involved out of body experiences without death occurring, and there were some stories included that came from or referred to similar books by other authors. As a result, I was motivated to also read "Return From Tomorrow" by George Ritchie.

Reading these books has, I believe, greatly expanded my understanding of how things work on the other side of the veil, and strengthened my testimony as sort of a by-product. I would encourage anyone to read these books.

A word of caution though, there were a couple stories in "Glimpses of Eternity" that are not for the faint of heart. My wife finds scarey movies give her nightmares, and that's just fiction. When she decided to read my book, I put post-it-notes on the pages I thought might scare her. There were a couple of stories in the book where the person was attacked by an unclean spirit.

[Origins of Mormon Polygamy]

Having a testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ means you believe His messengers, who relay His words and will on to us. Either Joseph Smith Jr. was a prophet or he wasn’t. If he was, then the commandments, or callings, if you will, that he issued to select Church members to practice plural marriage were approved by God, if not actually coming from God Himself. Joseph Smith knew things he was not always able to share, and plural marriage was one of them. He was aware of the doctrine as far back as 1831, but only confided it in those he trusted not to freak out about it. I expect he found it an unpleasant idea at first himself, but he did what God asked him to do anyway, which is what is expected of all of us. Perhaps, like Brigham Young, he “wished for the grave” when he first realized he was expected to practice it.

Lest anyone assume otherwise, there is a difference between plural marriage sanctioned and commanded by God, and a harem or the activities of a philanderer. There seems to be a counterfeit for every noble thing God ordains, and it is always important to know the difference. There were some who sought to practice plural marriage out of lustful desires, but these were people like John C. Bennett. People who apostatized. People who were not so much interested in obeying God as in gratifying their own base desires.

Such cannot be said for Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, or any of the other Apostles, General Authorities, and just men and women who obeyed the call of God to practice plural marriage as instructed by the prophets.

In the scriptures we see that the problem with ancient men of God who practiced plural marriage was the ones who wanted more wives. This was the downfall of David and Solomon, for example, their good deeds notwithstanding.

I believe that anyone who has a problem with the Church’s past practice of plural marriage does not understand the difference between the law of eternal marriage in its fullness, as revealed to Joseph Smith Jr., and its counterfeit, the harems, fornications, and lasciviousness that we see in the world. The counterfeit appeals to the natural man, who is no more disciplined than an animal when faced with temptation. But just as there are appropriate circumstances under which to procreate, and there are inappropriate circumstances, there are also appropriate circumstances and inappropriate circumstances under which to practice plural marriage. When a prophet of God calls on one whom Heavenly Father trusts to honorably do so, practicing plural marriage is not only acceptable, it is a moral imperative.

The cynics believe to this day that the Church stopped the practice of plural marriage as a sop to the US federal government, to appease it while applying for statehood. This is a great misunderstanding, and an insult to all those who practiced plural marriage despite whatever difficulty it may have meant for them. Some had to reconcile themselves to the idea in spite of everything they had previously believed about marriage. Some had to suffer imprisonment, or the imprisonment of their husbands or fathers because of it. I believe the Apostles frequently begged Heavenly Father to allow the Church to discontinue the practice, and eventually He agreed. One of the reasons He agreed was that if the Church had been forced to continue the practice, all men practicing plural marriage would have been jailed and all Church property would eventually have been confiscated, which would effectively stop Temple work and basically ended this dispensation.

The Church doesn’t make mistakes, because the Savior is its Head. The Church acts on revelation directly from Him, and if any of His Apostles ever went astray from the orthodoxy He has and will yet proscribe, He would remove them from their office and fill it with one whom He could trust.

Plural marriage was not a mistake. It just went against societal conventions, and the stigma surrounding it comes primarily from that. God’s law is higher than societal conventions, mens’ laws, philosophies, etc. Let us not be so beholden to worldly thinking that we would leave the Church over something like the laws of eternal marriage or consecration. Our baptismal covenants require us to obey all of Heavenly Father’s laws, not just the ones we like. If He requires something of us tomorrow which again runs counter to society’s ideas, I pray we have the courage, or the sheer stubbornness to obey Him.

[Spanking]

I’m a convert, was raised Catholic, and am from the rural Midwest, so consider all this while reading my opinion.

That said, my opinion is that spanking is the proper way to go, unless the Holy Spirit directs otherwise, which I would consider an exceptional case, but the Gospel is filled with exceptional cases, and I think a wise person will keep an open mind and be prepared to do what God wants when they come, rather than stick to their own ideas. Hopefully I practice what I preach, but I digress.

My parents spanked me quite commonly as a child. Both parents. They usually used a belt, at least for as far back as I can remember. When I was young enough that my Mom still bathed my brother and me, she noticed unsightly bruises and marks on our backsides from my Dad using a flyswatter on us. Up to that point, his preferred tool was not the belt, but those steel wire flyswatters with a plastic mesh stuck on it. He just pulled the plastic off and used the wire part. My Mom asked him to stop and so it was only the belt from that point on. I remember getting a newspaper in place of a belt on one occasion and I preferred the belt.

Looking back, my complaint, flyswatters aside, isn’t that my parents spanked, but that they spanked too often. I felt that they tended to spank first and ask questions later. I remember Bill Cosby, explaining the perspective of a parent, saying “We don’t want justice. We want quiet.” As a kid I thought this was just morbid sarcasm, but as a parent, I notice that I feel the same way. It seems more important to have order and peace in the house than to take the time to listen to the complaints, hold an impromptu trial, and make sure that the punishment doesn’t in any way exceed the crime. My two oldest kids fight like cats and dogs, more than I have ever seen any children fight in all my life. The spirit in my home is adversely affected by all the screaming, crying, and shouting, and I feel driven to lay down the law quickly and uniformly, so I tend to tell them that if they don’t knock it off, they both get a spanking, no questions asked. I guess maybe I understand how my parents felt when I and my brother fought.

For whatever it’s worth, I believe that spanking is the best way to go, in most cases. Of course, I believe that a child should be old enough first, and that it would be best to spank with a bare hand until the child is old enough that it isn’t effective anymore. And when a child reaches their teens, I think other methods need to be used.

I married a girl from the greater Phoenix area, and have encountered an uncommon degree of cultural conflict. I’ve noticed that out west, even in places where the people are politically conservative, there is a world view that seems leftist to me. For instance, the roles of men and women seem to be viewed differently. Among those cultural differences, there is a difference of opinion on what is the best way to discipline children. Where I’m from, even among members of the Church, we consider the aversion to spanking to be new age claptrap, an idea spawned inside the great and spacious building.

In addition to the cultural differences resulting from geography, I was raised Catholic. You never see children fussing in a Catholic Church, at least not where I’m from. I got in trouble from my grandfather once for passing out in Church (I had a fever). That’s the kind of reverence you can expect in a Catholic Church. Very stiff, very stern, very formal. But that’s how I was raised.

My wife doesn’t believe very much in spanking, though she is normally willing to not challenge my equality as a parent. She even spanks occasionally as well. But neither one of us seem to be having the level of success raising our children that we’d like. Our oldest seems to have some sort of cognitive disconnect. He’s getting better, but when he was younger I worried that he would grow up to be a crazy old man who sits on his porch and rambles a borderline coherent tirade against some unseen antagonist all day long. My wife says that spanking isn’t the best way to go with him because he “just doesn’t get it”. She may be right, but it’s all I know. If she comes up with a better idea, my mind is open.

You might be asking yourself how being raised like I was affected me. My parents were pretty strict about some things. My Mom made me take vitamins as a child that tasted exactly like vomit, and that’s no exaggeration. I wasn’t allowed to open a new box of cereal if one was already open, even if it was a different kind. There was a certain way everything had to be done I was expected to respect that. It was a bit of a drag as a kid, but now that I’m older I’m thankful that my parents raised me the way they did. I still got in trouble, and I suppose someone with less resilience than they had might have thrown their hands up in the air at some point and claimed it wasn’t working, but by the time I was a senior in high school, my idea of cutting loose and being wild was to skip school two or three times a year to go to the lake and hang out. I was taught to police myself, to anticipate discipline and avoid behavior that would incur it. I honestly believe that we’d have less crime if more people were taught to be considerate of others and behave themselves in such a way, and with respect for authority as well. That’s how I was raised and I love my parents for it. I shudder to think how I would have turned out if parents like some of the well intentioned but excessively mild people I know out west had raised me. Discipline made me a good citizen, and helped me to attain the mindset of one who respects God’s laws, and obeys them. That’s more than I can say for some people I know who were raised in the Church, particularly out west (especially in Arizona).

I’m not bagging the western states, mind you. I lived in Salt Lake City for a while and loved every minute of it. But I do tend to write off the opinions of people I perceive to be “cultural Mormons”, who feel that if you don’t have the right haircut, the right clothes, the right CDs and DVDs, and whatever else it is that means so much to them, than you couldn’t possibly have a strong and positive relationship with Heavenly Father. I frequently notice gaps in the testimony of those people, and see them as relying on their piety as justification for being prideful. I use mine as a tool to bring me closer to God. I wonder if that too is a product of how I was raised. At any rate, I would much rather face my judgment than that which awaits people who have criticized me for not looking like I came off an assembly line. And that goes for views on spanking also.

One last thing. Nothing I’ve said is meant to be “in your face” to anyone here. My frustrations may have been amplified here somewhat, and they have nothing to do with anyone here, so please take no offense or think I’m being uppity or anything. Just sharing a perspective that I see missing from the thread, for whatever it’s worth. God bless.