True thanksgiving

Do you know why we celebrate Thanksgiving?

The latest comment on the first Prop 8 blog:

KatF said...

I am a Baptist Christian who lives in Georgia. I believe homosexuals can be Christians, and that they have the right to use the word marriage if they so choose. You spoke of double standards; what of your double standard that the homosexual community must conform to your way of life, but not you to theirs? Can they vote on YOUR marriage? Can society vote on how many children you have, or where you live or work? Laws exist to keep an orderly society. Things like murder and stealing have laws against them because of the harm they cause to other humans. Homosexuality would only someone's family, religion, or children if they let it happen. People spread fear because they themselves are afraid. What word usage are we voting on next? What happens when a group of people decide to put the definition of a religion to a vote? If we can decide whether or not someone can be married, what else can we decide about one another's lives? Funnily enough, my objection to Proposition 8 has nothing to do with my religious beliefs. Just because I may believe something is wrong does not it so. Christians have a habit of thinking they are absolutely right about things. To my knowledge though, Jesus is the only infallible person alive.
Monday, November 17, 2008 10:24:00 PM

Summer said...

Proposition 8 doesn't force anyone to live my way of life. It protects an institution. We are all equal under this law- no one can marry someone of their own gender. The only difference is that some people want to. That desire is not something we're trying to legislate. It is just something that, through normal democratic proceedings, the whole of society has (this time) chosen not to condone. It is how the government works with every issue.

Now whether or not you believe what you say you do- that's your business. If I were you, I'd figure it out before I affiliate myself with any church. Either you believe something is true, or you don't. "True for me, but not for someone else," just means you have no idea what you truly believe. Knowing Jesus was the only infallible person alive is a good start.

Your own concern is the very reason this Proposition had to pass. "What word usage are we voting on next? What happens when a group of people decide to put the definition of a religion to a vote?" You're forgetting that the "group of people" who decided to put this definition to a vote was the gay community. What happens when that community, and people like you, who don't know what they stand for, decide to put the definition of religion up for a vote? Irriligion. Our nation under God will be a nation denying God.

To any of you who have ever thought, “I won’t vote the way I believe because I don’t want to impose my beliefs on others, and that is the Christ like thing to do,” I ask for a reassessment of thinking. Imposing your beliefs would involve tying the hands of others on voting day. This system is set up so everyone has a voice- you included! If you don’t stand up for your beliefs who will? If you vote the way others would because of their beliefs, whose hands are tied now?

You read scriptures that talk about fearing God, not man.

2 Ne. 28: 31- Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Do you believe that?

Open your Doctrine and Covenants and start reading from page one.

For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.
Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments; and also gave commandments to others, that they should proclaim these things unto the world; and all this that it might be fulfilled, which was written by the prophets— the weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh— but that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world; that faith also might increase in the earth…

He’s talking about us! Today! Do you believe what He says?

Do you know why we celebrate Thanksgiving? It’s not only to commemorate the blessing it was for our forefathers to come to a land where they could worship as they believe, but to celebrate the fact that God has yet again extended mercy to us in our degraded state. After the civil war, President Lincoln instituted an official day to celebrate an already popular observance. He wanted his nation to give credit where credit was due.

By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln

We have temporarily staved off another degradation of our society. Now is not the time to stand idly by and let those who oppose God lead our loved ones astray. People have fought and lost their lives for you to be able to think for yourself, and make your beliefs heard. You've read the Book of Mormon. You know what happens when the righteous back down and whole of society is left to do what "feels good." The attitude of cowardice is becoming too popular, under the clever guise of “true Chrisitanity.” Raise your voice. Stand up for yourself. DO SOMETHING!! A good place to start? Count your blessings.

Prop 8: The aftermath of a race that came too close

Excerpts from A More Determined Discipleship
By Elder Neal A. Maxwell
Of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy


"We are now entering a time of incredible ironies. Let us cite but one of these ironies which is yet in its subtle stages: We will see a maximum, if indirect, effort made to establish irreligion as the state religion. It is actually a new form of paganism which uses the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of western civilization to shrink freedom, even as it rejects the value essence of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage.

M. J. Sobran wrote recently:


“The Framers of the Constitution … forbade the Congress to make any law ‘respecting’ the establishment of religion, thus leaving the states free to do so (as several of them did); and they explicitly forbade the Congress to abridge ‘the free exercise’ of religion, thus giving actual religious observance a rhetorical emphasis that fully accords with the special concern we know they had for religion. It takes a special ingenuity to wring out of this a governmental indifference to religion, let alone an aggressive secularism. Yet there are those who insist that the First Amendment actually proscribes governmental partiality not only to any single religion, but to religion as such; so that tax exemption for churches is now thought to be unconstitutional. It is startling to consider that a clause clearly protecting religion can be construed as requiring that it be denied a status routinely granted to educational and charitable enterprises, which have no overt constitutional protection. Far from equalizing unbelief, secularism has succeeded in virtually establishing it. …

“What the secularists are increasingly demanding, in their disingenuous way, is that religious people, when they act politically, act only on secularist grounds. They are trying to equate acting on religion with establishing religion. And—I repeat—the consequence of such logic is really to establish secularism. It is in fact, to force the religious to internalize the major premise of secularism: that religion has no proper bearing on public affairs.”

Brothers and sisters, irreligion as the state religion would be the worst of all combinations. Its orthodoxy would be insistent and its inquisitors inevitable. Its paid ministry would be numerous beyond belief. Its Caesars would be insufferably condescending. Its majorities—when faced with clear alternatives—will make the Barabbas choice, as did a mob centuries ago when Pilate confronted them with the need to decide.

Your discipleship may see the time when such religious convictions are discounted. M. J. Sobran also said, “A religious conviction is now a second-class conviction, expected to step deferentially to the back of the secular bus, and not to get uppity about it.”


This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions. Resistance to abortion will be seen as primitive. Concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened.

In its mildest form, irreligion will merely be condescending toward those who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian values. In its more harsh forms, as is always the case with those whose dogmatism is blinding, the secular church will do what it can to reduce the influence of those who still worry over standards such as those in the Ten Commandments. It is always such an easy step from dogmatism to unfair play—especially so when the dogmatists believe themselves to be dealing with primitive people who do not know what is best for them—the secular bureaucrats’ burden, you see.

Am I saying that the voting rights of people of religion are in danger? Of course not! Am I saying, “It’s back to the catacombs?” No! But there is occurring a discounting of religiously based opinions. There may even be a covert and subtle disqualification of some for certain offices in some situations, in an ironic irreligious test for office.

If people, however, are not permitted to advocate, to assert, and to bring to bear, in every legitimate way, the opinions and views they hold which grow out of their religious convictions, what manner of men and women would we be?

Our founding fathers did not wish to have a state church established nor to have a particular religion favored by government. They wanted religion to be free to make its own way. But neither did they intend to have irreligion made into a favored state church.

Notice the terrible irony if this trend were to continue. When the secular church goes after its heretics, where are the sanctuaries? To what landfalls and Plymouth Rocks can future pilgrims go?

If we let come into being a secular church which is shorn of traditional and divine values, where shall we go for inspiration in the crises of tomorrow? Can we appeal to the rightness of a specific regulation to sustain us in our hour of need? Will we be able to seek shelter under a First Amendment which by then may have been twisted to favor irreligion? Will we be able to rely for counterforce on value education aided in school systems which are increasingly secularized? And if our governments and schools were to fail us, would we be able to fall back upon and rely upon the institution of the family, when so many secular movements seek to shred it?

It may well be that as our time comes to “suffer shame for his name” (Acts 5:41), some of that special stress will grow out of that portion of discipleship which involves citizenship. Remember, as Nephi and Jacob said, we must learn to endure “the crosses of the world” and yet to despise “the shame of it” (2 Ne. 9: 18; Jacob 1:8). To go on clinging to the iron rod in spite of the mockery and scorn that flow at us from the multitudes in that great and spacious building seen by Father Lehi, which is the “pride of the world” (1 Ne. 11:36)—is to disregard the shame of the world. Parenthetically, why, really why, do the disbelievers who line that spacious building watch so intently what the believers are doing? (See 1 Ne. 8:33.) Surely there must be other things for the scorners to do. Unless deep within their seeming disinterest... Unless... "