I shouldn't blog late at night-that last post makes me look incredibly arrogant. I'm not cool for the choices I've made-I just try to make the right ones like anyone else. I probably fail more than I succeed. But the whole point of morality and spirituality is that you have an ideal against which to measure yourself. You can't be a 'hypocrite' if you have no standards to betray.
This is getting too deep. My main point: I should stick to unicorn pictures.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The basis of testimony
Cousin Cory echoed a thought I had fairly often back in my 20s (which seems like a very long time ago):
Basically what this is asking is do you act the way you do because of expectations of friends/family or do you act that way because that's how you want to act? And if you suddenly found yourself completely separated from said contacts and were 'free to act' however you wanted, how would you act?
I've found myself in that situation a few times in my life. The first time was when I moved to SLC in 1997 and got my own apartment. I still had loved ones and friends but not physically living with me or seeing me on a regular basis. This was a very important time in my life where I really confronted that question-now that 'no one' is looking, how will you live?
Fortunately I feel I made the right choice and stuck with church and actually really dug into it and strengthened my testimony far greater than it ever had been before. This made it much easier to weather the next two times I was in this position which was when I moved to Phoenix for a few months and when I moved to Wisconsin for a few years.
It's a pretty interesting question and it's one that I think everyone needs to answer. Are you going along with the church because you think your family would freak out if you lived otherwise? Or are you living the gospel because you actually believe it's the best course for your life? Finding this out is really the time in your life when you take the training wheels off and see if you can remain standing. That's why I feel confronting this question is potentially of much greater impact on a person's spiritual foundation than a mission. Because on a mission you're constantly surrounded by extremely strict restrictions. It's pretty difficult to not choose the right on a mission, even if you want to. Weird, huh?
I often wonder what I would do if those around me who claim to know who I am suddenly disappeared and I was free to act without judgement.
Basically what this is asking is do you act the way you do because of expectations of friends/family or do you act that way because that's how you want to act? And if you suddenly found yourself completely separated from said contacts and were 'free to act' however you wanted, how would you act?
I've found myself in that situation a few times in my life. The first time was when I moved to SLC in 1997 and got my own apartment. I still had loved ones and friends but not physically living with me or seeing me on a regular basis. This was a very important time in my life where I really confronted that question-now that 'no one' is looking, how will you live?
Fortunately I feel I made the right choice and stuck with church and actually really dug into it and strengthened my testimony far greater than it ever had been before. This made it much easier to weather the next two times I was in this position which was when I moved to Phoenix for a few months and when I moved to Wisconsin for a few years.
It's a pretty interesting question and it's one that I think everyone needs to answer. Are you going along with the church because you think your family would freak out if you lived otherwise? Or are you living the gospel because you actually believe it's the best course for your life? Finding this out is really the time in your life when you take the training wheels off and see if you can remain standing. That's why I feel confronting this question is potentially of much greater impact on a person's spiritual foundation than a mission. Because on a mission you're constantly surrounded by extremely strict restrictions. It's pretty difficult to not choose the right on a mission, even if you want to. Weird, huh?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
That didn't take long
Any of you who were afraid of the BHO administration somehow succeeding can rest easy. This should expedite things nicely.
OK
...and now we stop messing with the banner for a while. Even though I can't seem to get my high-res version to display. But I've had enough banner redesigns for a while so there!
Monday, May 18, 2009
If you had to write that book, what would you do?
What a weird teacher I had at a new summer course tonight. He actually said this:
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