RELIEF SOCIETY ONE-UPS WOMEN’S MARCH

Who Needs to March When They Have the Relief Society?

In spite of the fact that the Women’s March assembled more than one million people in demonstrations around the United States and the world, all of those participants were reminded via posts on social media that the LDS Relief Society is better. Several posts that were shared hundreds of times spoke about how the Relief Society is the “longest-standing women’s organization in the world.” The posts proclaim the extensive service the group offers and assert that these women “march” twice a year to a meeting. While the posts often include a warm welcome to join, most also quietly affirm the organization’s superiority over the post-Inauguration march. Said one person who shared the post, “I love the Relief Society, I didn’t need to march, and my service leaves no place in my life for conflict, for questioning the status quo, for bad language, for playing the victim card, or the smug superiority of the marchers.” Another post exclaimed, “We humbly invite all to join a truly celestial movement!”

OFFICIAL MISSIONARY STATIONARY--THE MTC LETTER

FACEBOOK COMMENTS SPUR MASSIVE CHANGES IN LDS CHURCH

After this is sold, it will be 
the Central Building in New Disney DC Theme Park

Salt Lake City, UT—Recent Facebook comments about stipends paid to church leaders have led to massive structural changes in the Mormon church.

“The Church is happy to announce,” said spokesperson Andrew Kanell, “that in response to comments on social media highlighting how the current church differs from the one in the Book of Mormon or the Jesus movement in the New Testament, the church is making massive changes to make it fit those distant cultural contexts.”

The most damning social media comments highlight how Jesus’ original disciples traveled and taught “without purse or scrip.” Even though those teachers worked in a culture that placed a very high priority on hospitality norms and the proper treatment of strangers, norms that are non-existent if not nonsensical now, the church has decided that every member must travel and teach without purse or script.

“The scriptures say it, and we know that God doesn’t change or add or modify His commands ever, ever, ever, so we are getting rid of the entire missionary program as it stands,” explained Kanell. “From now on, if a young person wishes to go on a mission, that person should find a wise patriarch, ask for a blessing and anointing, and then go wherever the Spirit leads.”

Kanell followed up with, “you know, how could that go wrong?”

Church leaders who were previously getting stipends to cover living expenses and travel will no longer receive them. Most will now travel by foot, when and where they can, preaching spontaneously and, one would expect, in a rather limited geographical range.

“The church is also divesting itself of all resources and infrastructure, all of which will be sold and the proceeds given to the poor,” continued Kanell. “As the church will dismantle its humanitarian program, there is no plan for how to give it to the poor, so we’ll just pass the money around to whatever poor people we happen to come across instead of the large-scale and systematic program we used previously.”

Kanell announced that with the selling of churches, bishop storehouses, temples, schools, universities, and all other “infrastructure that does not match what a traveling preacher encountered two thousand years ago,” the church will shift from a world-wide organization with manuals, meetings, books, translations, choirs, and congregations “to an individual-, home-, family-, or tribe-based, lose organization of believers who will quickly develop widely divergent practices, norms, standards, and eventually beliefs.”

“We thank the many Facebook commenters,” concluded Kanell, “for showing us the error of having a twentieth or twenty-first-century organization to meet modern needs and demands. God bless you for shaming us into the truth of our wicked ways and God bless us as we become a pre-industrial belief group!”

With those words, Kanell lost his job and asked reporters from Zion’s finest news source if he could eat with them tonight. 

ORIGINAL IDEA ACCIDENTLY INTRODUCED DURING SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON

Picture vaguely related to article found on interwebs
and inserted to make blogpost more interesting.

Mapleton, UT—The Mapleton North 32^nd Ward’s Gospel Doctrine class experienced the tremendous shock of the accidental introduction of an original idea.

“So class was just going on, you know, regular, where the instructor asks a question we have heard a million times,” said class participant David Banks, “when all of the sudden, you know, right where we all expected that same answer, BAM!, suddenly there was a completely new thought.”

Banks was not alone in registering the trauma of a different perspective or concept in the place of tired, clichéd discussion commonplaces. Said Kaitlin Collins, “well, I just could not believe it…still can’t! It was just…so new!”

It was not just those in attendance who were completely thrown off guard by a new line of thinking. The instructor, Peter Erikson, said that “I tell you it just came out of nowhere…and honestly I had no idea how to respond to it!”

While the astonishment caused by the accident of an original idea has not worn off, the jolt was apparently so strong and disconcerting that no one can recall what the new idea was.

MINI MISSIONARY LESSON: IS THE CHURCH RACIST?

With the lowering of the mission age, the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer is doing its part to help train young men for the rigors and blessings of doing God’s work. As part of this effort, Elder Kory Anton, who is hoping to clear things up and return to the mission field very soon, offers his insights to help others prepare.

Believe it or not, sometimes people ask missionaries questions that just seem so obvious that you might not know what to say. Never fear. Here are some tips for dealing with what some missionaries erroneously call “tough questions.” These are all pretty easy when you think about it. Today’s question is:

Pure and Delightsome against Dark and Loathsome,
and clearly not racist!

Is the Church Racist?

First, “racist” is a very ugly term, and if people think that the church is racist then they might not join. That means it is very important to help them see that the fact that God loves His children enough to only give certain opportunities to some people and not to others based on the color of their skin (or their gender, or their marital status, or their sexual orientation) is God’s infinite wisdom knowing how to wisely discern (not “discriminate”) how to bless people. God’s ways are truly grand, majestic, eternal, and beyond anyone’s understanding!

Second, the Book of Mormon is not ever at all racist either—that is just the simple, pure, plain truth. At times in that sacred history God punished people with darker skin as a curse and to make sure that there would be not mixing between the pure people with the white skin and the sinful people with the dark skin. That marking is actually more spiritual than it is physical. In those verses, God simply used the physical to reveal the spiritual, that way what you see on the outside allows you to understand and judge quickly. To put it another way, you don’t have to spend a lot of time talking or finding out; you can pretty much make a pre-judgment right off the bat. In that way skin color is like a lighthouse, warning you from far about different people. That is divine efficiency!

Third, missionaries should defend every church policy, leader, and member as part of one large, unified Kingdom of God. As the only true church, everything about it is true. So when a popular BYU professor explains the past, God is using him and his round-about and spiritually-understood views to fulfill God’s purposes, and clearly that is not racist at all. At all.  

Finally, let us never forget the October, 2013 General Conference, when Elder Soares talked about an African saint named Brother Moses Mahlangu. That should be a lesson to all of us. Brother Mahlangu learned patience and meekness by not being allowed to be in church because of the color of his skin, just one more example of a perfect organization doing God’s perfect work!

Some missionaries might be tempted by Satan to not accept the truths presented above. Such missionaries might allow themselves to think that some people and even some policies have been influenced by culture or even by personal bias backed up by inaccurate ideas about God and by privilege. Oh the wickedness of such failing servants of the Lord! These faithless, weak missionaries, when asked about racism in the church or Book of Mormon, may say things like “I don’t know” or “God’s church and people have agency and make mistakes” or “just come and see for yourself, and then, with eyes wide open, ask God if this church is where He wants you.” Instead of being Korihor-like cowards, missionaries who are true, valiant, stripling warrior missionaries, who are delightsome before God, will bear down in pure testimony that everyone has always been perfectly equal before God and in God’s church always and forever!

A pure, perfect, child-like faith knows the difference between what is pure, celestial, and temple-white and what is dark, loathsome, filthy, and would blacken the soul. Most missionaries can trace their ancestory back to those who landed on Plymouth Rock. Those missionaries know the Lord brought about the birth of this nation, that freedom has its roots in this land. Valiant missionaries have a dream that one day all will sit at God’s celestial table, clothed in the pure, white robes of divine holiness, well, except for those who are serving the food or maybe cooking in the back. Whatever you do, hold on to that dream, Elder!

All the best,

Elder Kory Anton