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Dropping General Conference

The last remarks of the final talk hung thick in the air, and all I could muster was, “I can’t do this anymore.” I was exhausted. After sitting through yet another 10 hours of the church’s semi-annual General Conference I sat and reflected on what I had just experienced and what I had gained. All I felt was a weariness that had saturated me; it was more than just the mental effort of focusing on so many hours of one somber talk after another. I was spiritually exhausted. I had not been spiritually fed… I was not inspired, uplifted, or edified. There were a couple of talks that offered brief glimmers of hope but were quickly extinguished under the weight of the rest. I was left spiritually drained. A few years ago, I would have blamed myself for not being dedicated enough. I would have placed myself at fault and held myself responsible for somehow failing to be righteous enough to end the conference feeling this way. Everyone around me always talked about how grea...

A Search for LGBTQ+ in Scripture: The Sin of Sodom (part 5)

The “sin of Sodom” has become synonymous with homoerotic sexual behavior in modern usage and was derived from an interpretation of the events described in Genesis 18. Even so, does the dominant modern-day usage of the terminology derived from Sodom (e.g. sodomy, sodomite, etc) align with how it was used in the Bible? What was the actual “sin of Sodom” as defined by the authors of the Old Testament and how was it used during that time? Taking a look a the story of Lot and his family, prior to the arrival of the angelic visitors, Sodom was already condemned for destruction. There are not many details in Genesis as to what the sin of Sodom was specifically, just that it was “because their sin is very grievous” (Genesis 18:20). Upon the arrival of the angelic visitors to Sodom, Lot invites them to his home. Later, the men of the city of Sodom surrounded Lot’s home and demanded that the visitors be turned over to the mob so that they may “know them” (Genesis 19:5) which was a euphemism that...

In Debt to Faith

I was in debt the moment I was born into this church. For more than four decades since I took that first breath, I continued to fall further and further into debt. In debt to my parents. In debt to God. In debt to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Expected to give everything that I have and am, even laying down my life if necessary, for the church. At least, that is what I was taught. “…knoweth that ye are eternally indebted to your heavenly Father, to render to him all that you have and are…” Mosiah 2:34 An eternal debt that could never be repaid. No matter how much you do, you are never out of debt. There are many types of debt. By far, the most commonly understood debt is of the financial kind, but there are others. In systems where there is an exchange of value in one form or another there is the potential of creating a debt; for example, technical debt in software development or emotional debt in relationships. With regards to the church, it has not been in fi...

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