“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good”

Many of you, no doubt, heard Elder Dallin H. Oaks’s remarks at the recent October 2017 General Conference of the Church:

“The Plan and the Proclamation”

With that in mind, you’ll perhaps find the headline to this article, by Fred Karger, as . . . umm, as remarkable as I do:

“Mormon Church’s Crusade of Hate Goes On”

I’ve received communications from certain observers who have described Elder Oaks’s talk as “a hateful rant.”  But hey, hateful ranting is what I supposedly do, day in and day out.  I like to think of Elder Oaks and myself as spiritually akin, and such people plainly agree.

If you’re in the mood for a much longer and more sneering view of Elder Oaks’s speech, however, you can read it here:

“The Mormon Church Has Reminded Us Again That We’re the Future . . .  and They’re Not.”

There is absolutely no room in the tolerant world envisioned by such folks for people who fail to agree with them.

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On the religious (and intellectual) freedom front, this article makes an important point about a major current court case:

“Cakeshop case is really about freedom of expression”

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Robert Boylan reminds us of an article that Kevin Christensen published in the FARMS Review back in 2004:

“Truth and Method: Reflections on Dan Vogel’s Approach to the Book of Mormon”

As any randomly-selected paragraph will easily demonstrate, those were the dark days — mercifully now past — when the Maxwell Institute, under my unholy influence, was incessantly guilty of unbridled viciousness and appalling ad hominem attacks.

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Hal Boyd, the opinion editor of the Deseret News, is one of that newspaper’s finest assets.  Here’s another thoughtful article from him:

“Vegas, Saints and the problem of evil”

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I’ve already commented a few times recently on the matter of the late Hugh Hefner.  And now Harvey Weinstein takes center stage.  Here’s a piece from the Deseret News:

“Hollywood, Hefner and hypocrisy in the sexual revolution”

And I append two related articles from National Review:

“The Left Stays Largely Silent on Weinstein Scandal”

“Harvey Weinstein, Fox News, and the Power of Self-Interest”

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He’s pretty good at writing potboilers, but I’m less impressed with the man as a historian or a social thinker:

“‘Da Vinci Code’ author Dan Brown: Our planet would be ‘absolutely fine’ without religion”

With Dan Brown in mind, here’s an article from Larry Pressler, formerly a United States Senator representing South Dakota:

“The LDS Church and modern times in India”

And here’s an article from a newspaper in Miami:

“7,000 ‘Mormon Helping Hands’ give labor of love to Floridians”

And here’s one from Texas:

“Mormon Helping Hands volunteers go to hurricane-ravaged areas”

And this one, about Texas:

“What Mormons do best”

And a report about Nevada:

“Mormons offering relief in many forms to Las Vegas shooting victims”

And another interesting item:

“LDS stake recognizes disaster cleanup platform for its role in Harvey recovery”

And yet another (which, alas, isn’t about me):

“Mormon blogger raises more than $9,000 for LDS Charities”

Others, it seems, are the future, while we’re not.  Still, in the brief time remaining to us, there is much additional evil that we can do.  Here are two places where you can join in:

Donate to Humanitarian Services

Just Serve

Writing about “love,” lust, and the new immorality many years ago, Truman Madsen remarked that the best way to “overcome fake fires that are omnipresent in our culture is neither with wet blankets nor cold water, but to burn with a brighter, richer flame.”

I think that wise advice, and not merely with respect to sexual morality.

Posted from Park City, Utah