Don't Get Off The Bike

A few years ago, I picked up cycling to exercise and get out more. It's been amazing. I've really enjoyed distance cycling traveling far and wide on my bike. It’s given me peaceful time to think. I've learned a lot of lessons on my bike -- some of them about cycling, but most of them about Christ.

When I got on my bike, it had been many years since I last rode one. I didn't think much past pedaling and getting used to it again. I was sore, confused at the best way to handle some roads, and not well balanced but it didn't take long before it all felt natural. It reminded me of watching investigators in Armenia after baptism -- starting off a little unsure, finding some things are easier to get used to than others, eventually finding serenity and joy.

My new bike also came with features that were new to me: It used levers pushed sideways from the handles to switch gears that were much easier to use than the twist handles from my teenage years. The clank and crunch of moving into a new gear felt odd at first but learning to lower and raise my gears properly as I sped up and slowed down greatly enhanced my experience. This reminded me of service in the church, where giving myself over to a calling or assignment made church more intense and involved, like moving to a higher gear, but gave me greater fulfillment and satisfaction as a result.

For a long time, I just enjoyed my new commute. Eventually I wanted to bike long distances in different parts of the world. I began to train for touring on my bike, going on longer and longer rides until I could travel dozens of miles in a day. My training went well but I did not realize I was missing something very important. Most of the areas in and around Buffalo where I biked are very flat. The slopes are gentle and the hills are short. I would sometimes shift down a few gears to make the cycling easier during a tough stretch but never into the lowest gears. It didn’t seem necessary.

Eventually I went on my first touring trip to Prince Edward Island. My brother and I were cycling from one end of the island to another. Not very long or extremely challenging, but I was looking forward to the multiday trip.

On the very first day there were very heavy winds, but I would not be stopped. I had trained in heavy winds. Later in the day there was heavy rain, but I would not be stopped. I had trained in heavy rain. On the next day, however, there were hills.

These rolling hills were steeper and much longer than what I had gotten used to on my rides. The slope was not extreme but they took a while to get over and I grew tired quickly. My legs ached so badly that I didn't think I could take it. I did what every cyclist says to never, ever do on a tough climb:

I got off my bike.

I began walking my bike up the hill, and I realized very quickly the many good reasons I was cycling and not walking! Instead of the wind whipping around me and cooling me down, the sun beat relentlessly on my face. Instead of flying along to my destination, each step presented so little progress! When cycling, the bugs couldn't keep up with me, but trodding up the hill I was now easy prey.

Life had been better on the bike.

My brother rode up beside me and looked at me walking my bike up the hill. He looked down at my gears. He shook his head and said "Why did you get off your bike? You're not even in your lowest gear?" He was right. There were gears on my bike so low I'd never used them. I’d never had to. I would just shift to my lowest back gear and never touch my front one.

In my pride, I dismissed his criticism and waved him off.

The hills that day were miserable, and I was a worse cyclist for it.

As the world continues to struggle with a pandemic that drags on, it isn't the first or last long, hard hill that the world collectively and we individually will have to climb. There may be longer and steeper ones ahead. How will we handle them? When our faith is tried and our spiritual muscles ache, it becomes very tempting to get off our bike. In the hard moment, we become convinced that stepping away from our hard effort will give us relief. It’s tempting to think that not attending Sunday service, not serving in our calling, not ministering to others, not reading the scriptures or giving ourselves over to prayer regularly, will give us relief when we feel overwhelmed with the world around us.

But it will not.

The sudden instance of losing responsibilities may seem like a relief at first, but very quickly the sun beats down, the bugs catch up, and our personal progress slows to a crawl. In losing the struggle we lost the joy of the whipping wind and the road melting away behind us. We realize too late and deny in our pride the truth: It is never better to get off our bike.

Then, what to do? When our muscles ache and we can't continue? When it's all too much? We can’t pedal one more stroke. We're simply too tired to keep it up.

There are lower gears. I learned that I’d gone so long without using them, I’d forgotten they were there or wasn’t familiar or comfortable switching to them.

In lower gears, it’s easier to push the pedals. We may go a little slower during a challenging stretch, but critically it allows us to not get off our bike!

What are the 'lower gears' of the gospel in challenging times? It can mean leaning on counselors and helpers in our callings. It can mean sharing with our spiritual leaders the challenges we're facing. It can mean increasing, not decreasing, the time we spend in the scriptures and prayer even when that time is hard to find. It can mean reaching out to priesthood holders for a blessing of comfort. If you're not sure what it can mean to you, it can mean talking it over with your bishop to figure it out.

Yes, we need to preserve our own light to share with others, self-care matters, but ironically focusing too much on preserving our light over sharing it is what causes it to dim. We are forewarned: 'The first will be last and the last will be first.'

The Master taught this exact thing, to double down on the good work for relief: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matt 11:28-30

The next day on my biking trip, I swallowed my pride and dug down to my lowest gears. It made a world of difference and, most importantly, it kept me on my bike. I'm grateful for the chance I had to learn the ironic lesson. I could not give up the struggle, I too badly needed the blessings of the effort. We all do.

Doing the work in whatever capacity we can handle it, even a reduced capacity, is infinitely better than stepping away from the work entirely. Don’t get off the bike.

Do Justly And Love Mercy

Current affairs and the everyday human condition have left me thinking lately about the balance that Christianity aims to strike between justice and mercy. The fact that we are all in need of instruction on the point is evident in how poorly we often are at applying it.

I first remember dealing with the challenge of balancing mercy and justice in my mind when I began high school – before this time, all my exposure to views on the gospel had come from my French Catholic elementary school, and my Latter-day Saint Christian home and congregation. Personally, I came out of this with a fairly ‘justice’ focused concept of Christianity, focused on correlated consequences and behavior. I think this had as much to do with my personality as my background.

In high school I was introduced to a variety of Protestant friends, many of them from non-denominational congregations. Many of them surprised me with what seemed to me to be an extreme focus on the ‘mercy’ concept of Christianity. Not all, but some of them, placed a much lower priority on obedience to the commandments in favor of a theology that supported Christ’s forgiveness extending to us all in such a way that we would be saved through Him regardless.

Initially I considered these views cheap, developed for the convenience of the believer. How easy it must be, I thought, to follow a religion that placed so little priority on keeping the rules! While neither my nor their perspective really matched what Christ taught, nowadays I’m sad for the way that high school me didn’t give fair credit to the awe-inspiring teachings of love, mercy, and tenderness that they emphasized so heavily.

Still a fool but marginally improved now in my adult years, watching the news, I realize more poignantly how desperately needed those lessons are. The recurrence of white supremacy; The rise of Christian churches teaching intolerance; Political leaders that place kindness and compassion at the bottom of their priority list. On the other hand the ever-present desire to justify our actions; A need to blame other generations for the shortcomings of our own; The ubiquitous irresponsibility that is ignoring the poor and needy around us and the war-ravaged overseas – No balance of justice and mercy.

This isn’t a ‘new thing’ for humanity. It’s a fundamental human problem.

People have struggled with balancing mercy and justice for all of known history. Christians commonly do all of Christianity a disservice when we call ourselves ‘more new testament Christians’ or ‘more old testament.’ One of the most common phrases in the Bible explains that God does not change, that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Even when Christ was teaching, people mistook His words to be a proverbial changing of the divine guard. He corrected His followers, explaining that He had not come to destroy the prophets come before Him, but to fulfill them.

Why the apparent distinction?

Believing that the two testaments present different theologies is to misunderstand that Christianity is an extremely simple but challenging balancing act. To the justice-serving and unmerciful Jews of his time, Christ taught the need for mercy and kindness, just as through ancient prophets before him whose audience were a lawless people who followed no rule but carnal desire, He taught law and order. Context is crucially important when understanding any writing, and the Bible is no exception. Still, the master teacher did not make the mistake of overreaching, and in important moments he highlighted the necessity for obedience, self-mastery, and strictness of devotion to the laws of God.

What then do we take away from this?

How can we be the Christians that Christ teaches us to be?

As I was listening to an old talk given at BYU by Gordon B Hinckley, his paraphrasing from the oft-quoted versed in the book of Micah hit me like a ton of bricks. “Do justly, and love mercy.” I must have heard this phrase before but I’ve repeated it in my mind 500 times since, turning it over and trying to understand its amazing invitation better in the context of these thoughts. “Do justly, and love mercy.”

Do justly. Justice is not a tool to punish the sinner. Its purpose is not to separate the wicked from the righteous. In a sense, justice is less an action we take than an unequivocal foundation of reality. Actions have consequences, and they are inescapable. To do justly is to make choices whose consequences are desirable by the law. But justice can only be applied where a law is given!

Christ whipped the moneychangers not because it is Gods pattern to go out whipping people who don’t do what He likes, but because these men claimed to be His priests, to love God, to serve in His house, and then used a sacred responsibility to glut themselves on filthy lucre, robbing the poor to fatten their purses. In fact, God has indicated His preference for those that act contrary to Him and accept this over those pretend to love Him while harming others. The responsibility for acting justly is one we hold for ourselves and to ourselves. Those of us who make covenants believe that certain promises to be better, to work harder, and to give more of ourselves will bring greater happiness, greater peace, a knowledge of truth, in exchange for a covenant to live the law.

But to hate or persecute people who do not live God’s law but have never covenanted to do so is to punish others for not playing by the rules of your own game! This is true wickedness.

The human conscience, or as Latter-day Saint Christians refer to it ‘the Light of Christ,’ inspires all human beings to basic morality from birth. It is sufficient to teach the mentally healthy that stealing from others, harming the innocent, and disloyalty to family and friends is wrong. It feels wrong.

Religion teaches things that basic conscience does not. In the case of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this includes not drinking, not smoking, not having sex outside of marriage, marriage being between a man and a woman, and others.

Where conscience and the teachings of society would not instruct a person in the same way, then it is in fact wicked to believe that people should be punished or thought poorly of because they have done these things in the absence of any moral obligation to not!

The idea here is not to divide humanity into an ‘us vs them’ mentality – the rules are not a tool for dividing the devout from the destitute. On the contrary, when taught properly they are a simple 

invitation that is delivered without compulsion and brimming with love and hope: ‘learn of me… and ye shall find rest unto your souls’ ‘…whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.’

Love mercy. Recently Elder Christofferson visited Buffalo and taught a wonderful principle of Christianity whose overlooking or straight ignoring by Christians has led to immeasurable death and suffering: “One of the most beautiful and freeing and liberating principles of Christianity is that we do not have to figure out who is good and who is not. Besides being impossible, it is simply not our job. We can simply love and forgive and leave the moral arithmetic to the only being in the universe who is qualified to perform it.”

He was teaching the simple principles of Christ: “I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men,” and “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

It is the baser part of human nature to try to apply justice to others in a pathetic attempt to make ourselves superior, to evaluate them based on moral criteria that place us above and them below. Such an easy trap to fall into! People are not generally evil, but this tendency absolutely is.

Christ invites us to forsake this inclination of the natural man and love mercy. If he teaches us to do good to those that hate you, love those that despitefully use you, to turn the other cheek, then how much more those that simply do not believe as we do?

I’m thinking particularly of people who’ve done others no harm, just lived a different lifestyle than the one we choose for ourselves, but it makes me think of Christ on the cross, in immense suffering 

and pain, looking up to a mourning Father in Heaven and, in the spirit of love and mercy that serves as the shining light for all of us to reference, and the final bastion of hope for all of us who sin, pleaded ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

Who did He say that for?

It would not have been for His Father – A perfect loving Father, God’s capacity for forgiveness and balancing mercy and justice towards his beloved children is beyond our comprehension.

It would not have been for Himself – He had only the night before performed the Atonement, in which He suffered the pains of all mankind past, present, and future, so that He could empathize and find mercy for each of us. He knows his Father will know whom to forgive.

It was for us. Like His entire life, it was simply an example for us. Even in the most extreme depths of agony, He says: ‘Love mercy.’ Love it so much you wish it for every person -- you desperately need it to be a possibility for everyone because you are one of every one! Those who are easy to love, those you just can’t bring yourself to love, and everyone in between.

This is not an easy thing to do. It is an incredibly hard thing to do. But Christianity is meant to be hard, and I can improve each day at doing it.

We will need that mercy ourselves, and when the day for it comes, every one of us will want it to be applied as liberally as justice will allow.

To this day, achieving this balance seems to be the hardest thing for Christians and Christian religions to do, keeping their covenants with justice while loving mercy for all their brothers and sisters, knowing that in doing so they will find mercy for themselves from Christ. Failure to accomplish this is the thing for which I see Christians most often condemned by others.

How can I challenge myself to apply the balance of mercy and justice exemplified in Christ in my daily life?

We do justly, following the covenants we’ve made, repenting when we fall short.

We love mercy, not seeking to judge others, but to love them as they are and hope they find it in their hearts to love us as we are.

We try with all our hearts to do justly, and love mercy.

8 Better Reasons Star Wars Ep VIII Was Badly Written

I'm going to go see Episode 8 again with my family over Christmas, and I'm looking forward to the experience of seeing it with tempered expectations and buoyed by my friends' enthusiasm. When I first came out of the film expecting something incredible, I wasn't bitter, I just looked over at my wife and said 'meh.' Honestly, I would enjoy anything that has Jedi swinging light sabers. But in an effort to express what I felt was lackluster, I wrote this blog post. Since then it has been discussed at length and I needed to reorganize my thoughts based on the feedback. Some of my points were completely proven wrong, some were explored, but some just could not be explained away. Also a LOT of people were upset I didn't name Oscar Isaac as an actor. Was not expecting that.

Based on those experiences, here's a new, more informed list: 8 Better Reasons Star Wars Ep VII Was Badly Written

• The main crisis of the film is an 18 hour long spaceship chase at slow speed, during which time the empire never does anything effective to kill the rebels. They are flying with an armada and in this universe it takes ships a matter of instants to cross the galaxy. The entire remainder of their enemy sits in front of them. Presumably the Empire has an entire fleet that could warp speed to assist them. Why not warp some of the ships with you to the other side of the rebels and then turn them around? Scramble some mid size ships? Why can the rebels accelerate out of firing range from the empire's flagship but then only travel at a speed that maintains that exact distance? This isn't nitpicky, these are questions even a child would ask when you try to sell them on this premise. Even if Hux is the dumbest person in the entire galaxy, he's also traveling with the Supreme Leader so neither of them thought of this? Nope.
• Leia's survival is fraught with logical issues that are hard to dismiss, especially when they could so easily be resolved. Let's just say that at some point Luke did teach Leia to be able to force pull. Let's say he even trained her a bit. Let's say that her Skywalker blood made her super good at it with minimal training. There's still the fact that you lose consciousness in space after about 15 seconds, and she was just exploded with a rocket. To show the moisture of her skin crystallize and only then does she pull herself back in isn't plausible. Even if it were, am I the only one who noticed everyone open a door to *outer space* for her with no air lock? Everyone should have died/been sucked out immediately. The issue here is these problems are *easily solved.* Maybe a flashback of her being trained? Maybe not, Star Wars does few flashbacks. Maybe a voiceover of Luke training her? Maybe have her get in through an airlock? All of these very easy fixes would make this scene a lot less jarring.
• Maz, an expert in the criminal underground, tells Poe that there is absolutely only one person in the entire galaxy who could crack the security. Poe should not know Maz, since this movie started right after the last one and Finn met her for 5 minutes tops, but whatever. When they fail to secure this person, they are coincidentally placed in a jail cell with, I guess, the only other only person in the entire galaxy who has those exact same skills, who was sleeping off a bender in the exact same jail cell before they arrived? This happens during a fairly pointless jaunt to a casino planet. The evidence of poor writing here is in how *very easily* this scene could be modified to be better. Benicio del Toro could have grabbed the red flower pin off the gambler on their way out, 'I'll take this back,' and say he lost it gambling. He could have been the gambler himself, and the prison scene cut all together, with Benicio and the others escaping when they are noticed by casino security. More cohesion, less pointlessly mind stretching coincidences. Benicio of course goes on to 'rat out' the Rebels to the Empire, saying they're escaping in cloaked escape pods. Which he shouldn't know. And before you say 'Ah but he could have used his hacking skills to find that out.' Yes, he could have. But you'd need to show it. It's nonsensical to have people just assume it.
• Purple hair lady uses the hyperspace jump to kamikaze her large ship into the empire's largest ship, slicing it nearly in half. How? Let's say Kamikaze is a surprising and unexpected tactic due to the precious nature of large ships. (Still, momentum is mass times velocity so even the smallest ship that can hyperspeed would be capable of colossal damage if this tactic is possible.) How do ships normally hyperspeed without running into every star and asteroid? Presumably they automatically secure routes from point to point and avoid collisions. There's definitely not a big 'kamikaze' button on the ship and if purple hair is tech savvy enough to reprogram the ship to fly into things instead of around them in a moments' time, then she's savvy enough to turn on the autopilot before she does. Feels like a lazy excuse for a kamikaze. Any spoken explanation for why someone needs to be on there, rather than just saying they do, would have helped tremendously.
• Luke's use of the force to astral project to salt planet instead of traveling there is still weird from a writing perspective. Let's say that you want to take the movies in brand new directions, try exciting new things. I actually don't have that big of an issue with how magical it seems. It's not how I would do it, but fine. Still, why? You're going to confront your apprentice. Presumably you are aware of the strain required. From a writing perspective, death is the outcome either way. Why would Luke not travel to the planet? Why would Luke not confront him directly? I have to believe snarky Luke could annoy Kylo just as much in person as with a projection. Why would we not get a cool lightsaber battle here? Maybe seeing a body disappear would help Leia and the rest of the cast not casually shrug off the death of an entire trilogy's central character? 
• I *still* maintain that the film's title was a cheap marketing ploy and I suspect Abrams was behind it. Name the film 'The Last Jedi' so that somebody can say 'I won't be the last Jedi?' Come on. You can take a movie in new directions without abandoning all consistency. You kind of have to if you're going to be another entry in a series. Clones attack in Attack of the Clones. The Sith get revenge in Revenge of the Sith. Luke says he won't be the last Jedi in 'The Last Jedi?' Boo.
• We are supposed to believe that Luke instantly jumped to 'Better kill my nephew' even for a brief moment? I get that Rian Johnson has said this was just a momentary lapse to illustrate that even a Jedi master isn't free from the dark side. But this man's crowning achievement in his rise to Jedi master was when he refused to kill a supremely evil child-murdering dictatorial warlord because he thought he had a sliver of light in him! And now he's going to kill his own nephew being trained under him because he's turning to the dark side? That he would have the thought, maybe. That he would turn on his light saber? Luke's got to have him some trigger discipline. (It's worth noting Mark Hamill also disagreed with this direction, but went with it anyway.) Also, Luke, why are you standing over your disciples in the middle of the night investigating their minds with your lightsaber in your hand. Maybe do that in the day while you're all meditating. Weird.
• Supreme leader Snoke, an amazingly powerful Sith with all kinds of new Sithy tricks, was killed by being tricked by a man whose mind he could read. Now I get hubris, and I get that Kylo was veeery clever by turning both lightsabers at once and mirroring the situation so that vaguely reading his intentions could mess up. I get how he was also holding Rey in place at the time. But the man can connect minds over space. His power is portrayed as vast and unthinkable, then suddenly very limited. It's jarring. His complete lack of back story is also an issue. I understand that not much back story is needed, but we know way WAY more about the Emperor than we ever did about Snoke, who got maybe 2 minutes in the previous film and maybe 10 in this one. He was the big bad, and the problem with killing your big bad is that now Kylo is your big bad and... well he's an emo teen angst ripoff of Vader. He's a bad big bad, and now the dark side has no gravitas or fear whatsoever, which feels like bad writing. I mean, you completely abandoned 'The Knights of Ren' which had previously been established. I'm hopeful they'll be in IX because, sheesh, that's one weak antagonist. Conflicted, yes. Understandable, yes. But I feel no fear from him being around. Bad Sith.

Ultimately, a storyteller must blend logical consistency with emotional and thematic content. The logical consistency doesn't need to be the focus, but if it is absent then every victory feels cheap, since any solution could magically appear. In a world where space magic can solve *every* problem, then why would the audience be fearful of any problem?
Again, the film had many moments that I loved, and I get that some people don't care that much, but come on, this is Disney, Rian Johnson, and in an assistive role JJ Abrams. You guys can pull it together. You don't need to be lazy. Any of these problems could have been easily fixed for a much more cohesive film that didn't leave a significant portion of your audience confused. And you could have kept all the things people loved at the same time! You can diversify. You can do new things. You can introduce new themes. You can jettison old characters. But when you betray logic and established history in the name of cool scenes and the way you wish things were, then why call it episode VIII at all?

15 Reasons Star Wars Episode 8 Was a Bad Film

Episode 8 was a bad film. It just was. And it's not that there were things that I subjectively didn't prefer, it was plain bad story writing and film making. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy watching it -- I did! But it left me feeling at least a little betrayed. In an attempt to organize my thoughts on the subject, please review an extremely spoiler filled 15 reasons why Star Wars episode 8 was a bad film:

• Suddenly hyperspace tracking is available and this is never explained other than 'oh new technology.' Lazy writing. (A throw away easter egg reference in Rogue One doesn't count.)
• The main crisis of the film is an 18 hour long spaceship chase at slow speed, during which time the empire never scrambles any fighters to simply kill the rebels, which it is unbelievable to think their largest ship does not have.
• Leia, with no known training or experience, uses the 'force' as a Deux Ex Machina to save her life despite no establishment at any point in the series that such a thing is even possible with the force. Her survival goes on to ultimately serve no narrative purpose.
• Purple hair lady, for no good reason at all, decides to keep her plans a secret from her people, even when the plan is not dependent on secrecy and even when it is evident that the secrecy will lead to mutiny.
• Maz, an expert in the criminal underground, tells Finn that there is absolutely only one person in the entire galaxy who could crack the security. When they fail to secure this person, they are coincidentally placed in a jail cell with, I guess, the only other only person in the entire galaxy who has those exact same skills.
• Finn and token girl are to be executed surrounded by hundreds of troopers, when suddenly the launch bay they're in is exploded. With massive casualties and destruction every human has been either killed or thrown to another place entirely, except for some reason Finn and token girl.
• Purple hair lady uses the hyperspace jump to kamikaze her large ship into the empire's largest ship, slicing it nearly in half. Even with the cost of ships being what they are, if this genuinely works, how is this style of kamikaze large object bombing not used more frequently? Even at its enormous cost, it could be automated and used to destroy all kinds of massive structures. You could have started with hyperspacing those bombing ships from the beginning.
• Luke's use of the force to astral project to salt planet is weird, since it clearly was not an astral projection as it touched and passed on an entirely physical object to Leia. If the force is capable of this level of magic, which is an absolutely crazy extension of its power even in the collateral books and comics, this still would have been much more acceptable if at some point while training Rey, Luke used a small minor form of it and Rey says 'I didn't know the force could do that!' and grumpy Luke says 'There's a lot you don't know about the force.' Not hard.
• It is now evident that the film's title was clearly always a cheap marketing ploy used to superficially drive interest. No other star wars title has done this, it is cheap and unearned.
• The same goes for the social media hype generated around Rey's lineage. I have no problem with her parents not being important but the way the actors and directors teased about how significant of a reveal it would be is, again, cheap and untrue.
• We are supposed to believe that Luke instantly jumped to 'Better kill my nephew' even for a brief moment? This man's crowning achievement in his rise to jedi master was the moment he decided he would not kill a dictatorial mass murderer because he knew there was even a sliver of good in him! And now he's going to kill a child being trained because he's turning to the dark side? Makes no sense.
• Supreme leader Snoke, an amazingly powerful Sith with all kinds of new jedi tricks, was killed by being tricked by a man whose mind he could read. Also no back story ever being given him, he becomes a useless character whose existence is nearly unbelievable based on previously established Sith practices.
• Luke's death serves no narrative purpose.
• Rey's trip to the 'dark hole' on the island is meant to be reminiscent of Luke's trip to the dark cave, but also serves no narrative purpose.
• This movie begins immediately after the previous movie ends. Rey appears to spend multiple days on the planet with Luke then travels to the salt planet. But for the people on the spaceship, only 18 hours passes. The difference in time passage cannot be reconciled.

What more can be said? Some of these could have caveats and minor possible reasoning, but they are all indicative of poor writing or poor filmmaking from a company and individuals who have no excuse for so fully abandoning the most basic principles of their art to coast on the popularity of a franchise they purchased.

In the interest of fairness, here are things that, more subjectively, were pretty awesome:

• Rey and Kylo's battle royale with the scarlet guards was pretty great. The kung fu choreography wasn't the best but it made great use of cool trick moments, the most excellent of which was the thrown lightsaber that was switched on and off to put a hole through the one guard
• Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, and whoever playes Poe Dameron all did a fantastic acting job, so they were always enjoyable to watch.
• With what I said above, I don't mind Rey's parents being of no significance and I like the idea that it pushes: New powerful jedi are constantly being born and will always be around. Maybe that means there's a school of sith somewhere we don't know about yet? Oooooooh.
• Not everyone liked the little bird creatures, but I did. Cute.

Is gay marriage wrong?

A couple years ago I took a test "What philosopher are you?" I don't remember the name of the philosopher I was, but someone who did better in philosophy than I might be able to tell you because I remember what his main hypothesis was: All disagreement between people is due to miscommunication because of an inability to use the right words with a common understanding.

This really rings true with me. Even if you ignore the obvious variable meanings between words like 'bad,' 'good,' 'happy,' and 'sad,' each of them containing a plethora of sub meanings, very simple words such as 'apple' carry the weight of history. A symbol of traditional america, sexuality, purity, or any number of things, when and where you use apple can be a tricky issue for such a simple fruit.

This is particularly applicable to a question being dicussed a lot right now:

'Is gay marriage wrong?'

I believe this is a bad question. I feel that this question in particular is subconsciously used and perpetuated because it sets the entire tone of the conversation to favor one side and discredit another. 

1. The meaning of 'gay'

People on both sides of the issue have been frustrated with the use and application of the term gay since it came into popular use. Originally meaning happy, it then became associated with men who sleep with other men, and then a common pejorative term. Sometime after that it became less but still somewhat associated with men in particular, and then under a civil rights movement that acknowledged the inhumane ways gay men were treated, the pejorative use of the word became unpopular as the other central definition began to spread out and encompass many things surrounding 'gay' culture and people attracted to their same gender. This is common etymology for many words, they mean more and more as they become more commonly used. Most recently this term could be used to describe: men who have sex with men; men who are attracted to men; men who have sex with/are attracted exclusively to men; bright floral shirts. And here there's a huge problem because being attracted to something and acting on that attraction are very different things, but when you call them the same then you influence people to believe they are. So, gay, loaded word.

2. The meaning of 'marriage'

A somewhat simpler term, marriage has two main possible meanings. In one sense it is a civil union performed by a government indicating that two consenting adults are living together and enjoy certain rights as they relate to taxation, hospital visitation, acting in one another's name, etc. In the other sense it is a sacred religious covenant by which two people are joined by a person holding divine authority to do so, usually for the purpose of opening the door to sex and children. However, even these two meanings have myriad possible submeanings based on what government or religion is performing the marriage, and in many countries which combination of the two. Mormon marriage and catholic marriage and muslim marriage are all different. American marriage and Chinese marriage and French marriage and Canadian marriage are all different. Also to complicate things people often confound the two meanings into one single mass regardless of whether or not they are religious.

3. The meaning of 'wrong'

Woof, the big one. Synonyms for wrong: Bad, Untrue, Mistaken, Goofed, Miscalculated, Misconstrued, Mishandled, At fault, Defective, Imprecise, Not working, Perverse, Spurious, Unsatisfactory. All of those words mean significantly different things but they could all be suggested by the word wrong. Of course, many words have many definitions and we usually rely on the most common ones. The two most common understandings of the word wrong are Bad and Untrue, but these are two extremely different things. I think the misuse of the word wrong in our society is responsible for many children's tears who are taught that shooting someone in the face is 'wrong' and playing a G instead of an F while playing chopsticks is 'wrong.' Obviously, aggravated violence and the incorrect piano key are not the same thing, and I don't think it helps much to say one of these is 'less wrong' and another is 'more wrong.'

4. The false dichotomy

I understand that it is simpler to classify the world into two camps but that's not how any reality works. (Sorry, American political system) When it comes to yes or no questions, I feel like the only place for them is when you need to know 'Is 21 a prime number?' or 'Have you been to Georgia?' or 'Do you know who the Queen of Macedonia is? Do they have a queen?' These things can be answered yes or no, but questions on religious governmental contracts and how they should be implemented in modern society is not a yes or no question.

So, put all those together, and I don't know what you're asking me when you say 'Is gay marriage wrong' but I hope you see how I could feel like you're setting me up for failure by presenting a complex question with hundreds of implied meanings into a false dichotomy with one demonized side. To clarify, here's what you *could* mean when you say 'Is gay marriage wrong?' and my answers to each.

Q: Should a government be allowed to condone civil marriage between people of the same gender?
A: Yes, a government should be allowed to do anything with the people's support.

Q: Are sexual relations between people of the same gender disallowed under the teachings of Christianity?
A: Yes, along with plenty of other things, including sex with anyone beside your spouse.

Q: Should the requirements of religious marriages in my religion be imposed on civil marriages performed by the government?
A: No, separation of church and state exists for a reason. Let the people decide.

Q: Are gay people bad?
A: No, unless I'm going to call every human being who's not keeping all the commandments as I know them to be bad, which would make everybody including myself bad.

Q: Should gay couples have the governmental rights afforded to married couples?
A: Yes, I can't see a strong civic argument why not.

Q: Should religions accept gay marriages?
A: Religions should teach what religions teach and those teachings should be independent of the opinions of the people. The whole difference here is that government is from man and religion 'should' be from something higher. If you find that you can no longer agree with your religion, please see my post 'Disagreeing with Religion'

In summary -- bad question. I have spent a lot of energy in my life seeking inspiration and knowledge to develop my beliefs, which state that a loving Father gave us a set of instructions and promised that if we followed them we would be happier than if we didn't.

These instructions include having sex only with my wife, and many other things big and small, like not drinking or smoking, donating to the poor, being honest, and serving others.

Everybody is free to follow or not follow them, disagree with any of them they like, and long history shows that government should not be restricted by one man's beliefs but instead follow the voice of the people, so I take no issue with the SCOTUS ruling. I'm glad that my church was advocating for many rights for gay couples 'before it was cool,' even if as a religion they cannot condone marriage outside of the directions of God as they understand them and as a people have a lot of progress to make in understanding the LGBT community and their issues.

Sexism is in the LDS Church. And everywhere.

I went to St Antoine, a French Catholic PreK-8 school as a child. This was a time of my life filled with interesting, eye-opening experiences for an Irish Mormon kid. I was glad for the opportunity to learn another language and religion -- I still remember when I was chosen to play Christ in the Easter production and the principal chewed out the rest of our class for a 'Mormon' being chosen over them, all Catholics except for one atheist.

We had music class, but I guess the Southern Ontario diocese (?) didn't have enough money for a real Quebecoise music teacher, because what we got instead was Madame My-Sole-Obsession-In-Life-Is-Celene-Dione. We studied where Celene Dione was born, where she first performed, her discography, with very few mentions of clefs or notes. When we were given our first 'music' test, the first question was 'How many brothers and sisters does Celene Dione have?'

Frustrated, 13-year old me voiced loudly that I would not take this test, as it was silly. Madame asked me if I wanted to see the Principal, and I replied that I did. Surely he would see reason.

I sat in M. LaFontaine's office and explained that I was taking private piano lessons and that I didn't think music lessons about Celene Dione were worth much. After a brief silence, he asked what I would do with my time if I was not in music class. I told him I would rather do more math, my favorite subject. And so, for the rest of the year when all the other kids went to music I sat in our homeroom and did extra math for fun, like a nerd.

They gave me an A in music.

And I realized my leaders aren't always right and they know this.

Don't get me wrong, I care very much about authority. In fact, I'm big on authority, one of the issues in which my Canadian side wins out. In my life I have always had plenty of authority figures and they have generally, but not always, done the job delegated to them. But no, as people with individual faults and problems and strengths and weaknesses, I have no more respect for any of them than I do for my colleagues, each of whom deserves respect and esteem equivalent to their experience and efforts.

Madame Can't-Remember-Her-Name was a poor music teacher, by my estimate. This doesn't mean the school is bad or the structure is bad. It just means that I think she was a poor music teacher. Heck, maybe she turned out to be a good one, I didn't stick around to find out.

It is so well-known at this point that Africans and African-Americans weren't allowed to hold the priesthood in the Mormon (LDS) Church until the late 70s that it seems silly to me when people act like it's a taboo topic, as sensitive as it is for many. On occasion people inside or outside of the Church will ask why it took so long for a Church I believe to be led by God to allow people of a certain race to hold the priesthood, or why it was ever disallowed. My answer is simple and short.

Racism. Racism in the leaders and in the people. Racism that continues today in us all.

I don't mean to equate racism to sexism, as I believe they are fundamentally different issues, but the similarity is enough for this example. The important thing is that ultimately any organization is lead by people, but we do not belong to the organization FOR those people.

When it comes to sexism and social issues, I believe that any leadership is sexist, just like organization's members are sexist, the nation is sexist, and it's not good. It's something we're doing poorly, and it's worth discussing and working on.

But before we start calling out authority, we need to check ourselves.

If the measure of whether a person is 'good' is the amount of their personal time that they devote to selfless, charitable acts, helping others, and self-improvement, while denying themselves the opulence of worldly gains, then you would be hard pressed to find people doing better on that chain than people like the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve, Pope Benedict, the Dhali Llama, and a long list of other virtuous leaders.

If your goal is a simple, progress-driven discussion of social justice, then speak on. But if your plan is to take one aspect of the preposterously complex task of leading groups of people, say someone is doing just as poorly as a large portion of our society in that single task, and use that one perspective to defame them and paint them as foolish, unqualified, or a 'bad' person, then the game has been rigged.

We're warned that some '...make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.'

The joke goes "Catholic doctrine says that the Pope is infallible but Catholics won't believe it. Mormon doctrine says that the Prophet is fallible but Mormons won't believe it."

In some measure I am sexist, racist, bigoted, and all other negative attributes.

The leadership of the Church is much less of all of these things than I am, but are still human and so will have them all to their own extent.

And ultimately, I'm not looking for leaders who don't have these things. My faith doesn't rest in my leaders, it rests in Christ. My leaders are other people whose faith rests in the same place, and I'm confident that with that in mind, we'll get where we're going together.

That is, so long as we all don't rip each other apart on the way.

Not All Beasts Are Beastly

In today's world it seems like we assume the world around us is cruel, is prejudiced, or bad in some way. I think there's less bad and more good than we give people credit for.

Today's our anniversary. Krista and I have been married for 5 years now, and we've known each other for 6. We're not celebrating today, because with a nephew living with us and a house we're trying to close on before we're obligated to vacate our apartment, time is in high demand.

No worries -- Krista's gift was a plane ticket to join me on my October business trip to LA where we'll stay late and soak in the West Coast.

Our anniversary causes me to reflect on the past, in concert with the present: I'm just finishing off 'A Year Of Biblical Womanhood' by Rachel Held Evans, and then there's the conversation and buzz that has begun to die off from the excommunication of the 'Ordain Women' founder, a Mormon woman who believes that the responsibility to officiate in priesthood ordinances and hold priesthood offices should belong to both genders.

When I met Krista, she wasn't sure she'd ever be married, and she was fine with that and felt no inordinate pressure to go one way or the other. I wouldn't deny that this pressure exists in the culture of the Mormon Church, but Krista at least was unfazed by it. (Herein lies one of many huge differences between Krista and other women.) Working on her Master's in Library Science, she thought she would move back to the East Coast and be a librarian.

She never mentioned getting a few cats, but I assume that would have happened along the way.

Here was a zero drama girl I could get behind. Quick to smile and laugh, reasonable and measured approach to divisive issues, long brown hair and a love of books -- I was sold. I guess Krista saw something in me that she liked too, and we started our long walk together.

When Krista and I started dating, we began to get comments that bothered me. Much like Beauty and the Beast, Krista is beautiful, demure, soft-spoken, agreeable and accomodating -- I, on the other hand, am big, loud, aggressively enthusiastic and love problem solving. I had been told by society that this was a pretty normal difference between genders, so I didn't think much about it and neither did Krista. I knew, as I'd always been told, that I would need to quiet down, ask, and listen more to make sure I wasn't stepping on her toes or overstepping my bounds. She knew she would have to be assertive with me and communicate clearly when something bothered her. We did these things, and we fell in love. Acting as yin and yang, our personalities matched well.

Examples:
On more than one occasion, a rash of breakups would hit our friends and in the midst of so many new singles Krista would ask me 'Are we going to break up too?' and I would boisterously laugh at what seemed like a ridiculous notion to me and declare 'No, you and I are together for the long haul.' She would look at me and smile, letting my confidence lift her out of her tendency to worry.
On one dark evening shortly after we married, I was taken by a fit of depression. Whatever had seized my spirit felt like it was destroying me on the inside, and I laid on the bed sobbing uncontrollably, unable to identify the source of my sadness or how to solve my problem. My wife came and sat beside me, put her arms around me and sang to me soft hymns and sweet songs. Her voice was angelic, and her softness was just what I needed, and I was comforted.

Now Krista and I aren't the type to cause trouble or voice anger. She is soft spoken in nature, and I was raised in Canada, where the jokes about being polite are funny because they're true. We often laugh at the idea of raising our voices or arguing with each other, because there's a very regular progression of what happens when either of us gets upset: One gets upset, the other gets upset, then the first gets sad because they upset the other, then the other gets sad because they made the first sad, then we're both sad, so we cheer each other up. It never fails.

This tendency to not disturb or contradict others caused us to generally keep quiet and not talk out against a sentiment that it seemed like a lot of people shared, including family, that we found deeply offensive and disturbing:

Krista was a shrinking violet and I was an insensitive brute.

Because of her humble nature and my extroversion, some individuals who had 'studied the issues' and wanted to 'represent the downtrodden' placed us into bins they had constructed from their studies. In conversations that make relationships with some individuals hard to this day, there were even whispers of abuse, if not physical then certainly emotional and verbal.

I took these accusations hard -- I hate people thinking ill of me, and I've tried to always express love and concern to others. I brought them up with Krista over and over, dealing with a kind of paranoia that maybe my personality made it impossible for me to treat her, the woman I loved with all my heart, the way a woman like her needed to be treated. Krista has affirmed to me many times that she feels respected, and that if she's ever been disappointed or frustrated with me it's certainly no more than she would expect to be with any person that she was planning on spending forever with, since everyone makes mistakes. I make many more than she does, so she's mostly in charge.

Of course, these people haven't seen Krista disagree with her husband in the act of it. Let me tell you, she's no shrinking violet.

So we've rolled on, a beauty and a beast, for 5 years now, having our own little miracle, Jack, and praying for many more. We've never been happier.

The whole experience has taught me many things, but one of the most important is the error in taking the injustices we see in the world and projecting them to our immediate environment.

This is not an issue of what people thought of me and Krista -- this is only an example of why to be cautious, rather than overzealous, when trying to bring 'justice' and call out the 'evils' that we are told surround us.

There are many important issues affecting the world these days, and we must be careful not to assume that the real people we know are actually the oversimplified images that we see on screens.

I sympathize with your experience with emotional abuse, but we do not have that problem.

I realize you feel like your local church leaders are misogynistic, we do not.

I am so sorry that someone has robbed you of the ability to trust, but we do.

Yes, the injustices and abuses and failures and dearth of love are large and great and wide in a world of people trying to get by, but we have put tears and sweat and conviction and conversation and hours of prayer and deep thought into making sure they are scarce in the walls of our home. We continue to do so. So do not bring them here.

In order to fight something, you must know what it is you're fighting. By taking the people all around you and making them the enemy, you're disconnecting the problem from the cause and as a result making it impossible to fight, and making yourself seem crazy, seeing bigotry, sexism, racism, and many other places where it never existed.

As I mentioned, I love solving problems. It seems to me that one of the largest problems is that we are trying to decide what the world and our and others problems are from bloggers or news broadcasts or novelists or charismatic figures. That is not how I would recommend we learn what a person's problems are.

First, you love them.

Then, you ask them.

What are your problems?