It's Elementary, My Dear Readers

Never wore this coat.
Or the hat.

Anyone who knows me knows I am enthusiastic about many things, but a couple of things in particular: Sherlock Holmes and all things relating to or similar to him, and accuracy, especially when it comes to grammar, spelling, and fact checking. In fact, you could say I'm a bit of a perfectionist and a fanatic in this second regard. Maybe even slightly OCD, but I'm not going to say more because I don't want to have to talk to another counselor.

Ahem.

I don't like it when people mis-quote things and take them to be the gospel truth. For instance, Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, my dear Watson." Never. Never never never never never ever. And yet I will probably have to correct multitudes of people before I die because that sort of thing is essential to their salvation or something.

My point is: I keep hearing a particular phrase, most frequently applied when a person wants to come to church in jeans and a t-shirt, or when they don't want to have to change from their sinful ways. Mostly they don't want to be judged by others. It is, "Jesus said, 'Come as you are!'"

False Stereotypes

Did he? When? Where? Seriously, though. Someone please show me where in the King James Version of the Bible, God or Christ says, "Come as you are." I've looked with Sherlockian scrutiny in the Bible as well as the other standard works of the Church, and I cannot find it anywhere. I imagine you might be able to find it in some other translation of the Bible, but let's stick with the most doctrinally sound version. Not a single reference.

The problem with this, 'Come As You Are,' mentality is that it makes God contradictory. He is like a germaphobe Father, and we are his beloved children. Jesus Christ is the perfect older brother who never got a speck of dust on him at recess, while we managed to get ourselves into all sorts of dirt and mud. We simply can't 'come as we are' in this state because God can't stand the sight of all this filth on us, and we would feel dirty, gross, and uncomfortable to be anywhere near him.

That's more like it.

But the confusion is elementary to understand when we look at the source material. You see, Sherlock Holmes did say both, "Elementary," and, "My dear Watson," but in two separate stories. And Jesus Christ does repeatedly tells us to come unto him. Like John 14:6, Isaiah 55:3, or 2 Nephi 28:32. There's even a whole Topical Guide section on it.

Fortunately, Christ loves us and has given to us freely a cleansing agent called The Atonement. It will take some soaking, scrubbing, and sometimes repeated washing to get us clean, but we can get there. In Moroni 10:32, we're told to, "... come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God." Christ intends for us to come unto Him by becoming like Him.

I really don't care if you come to church in a t-shirt and jeans. Coming to church is a step towards denying yourself of all ungodliness. I will just celebrate that you are there. So please come: Come to church, come unto Christ, come join with us!

And by the way, Queen Marie Antoinette never said, "Then let them eat cake!"

Why Do Some People Call the LDS Church a Cult?

The Short Answer: As Hitler said, if you're going to tell a lie, you have to make it huge to make it believable.

The Long Answer: Let me illustrate this with an example I learned from my advertising class. This particular company will remain anonymous as I can't remember what it's name was.

Once upon a time, there was an unsuspecting baby food company that only wanted to fill babies tummies with delicious fruits and veggies. Then one day, some person made the claim that this company worshiped Satan. How outlandish! They claimed that this company put Satanic figures in its logo, poisoned babies, summoned spirits, and did all sorts of horrible, nasty stuff. All of it quite obviously untrue.

For some strange reason, this caught the public's attention. The accusations were so far from the expected, that maybe they were right. I mean, no one would make this sort of claim without something to back it up. And so, the Satanic image of this baby food company spread like a disease and their sales plummeted.

Naturally, the company didn't stand back and just let it happen. They fought back with advertising campaigns to correct the misinformation and by charging the people responsible for spreading the lies. Unfortunately, when one person got charged with libel, someone else took up the cause and continued spreading the lies.

Eventually, this company realized it couldn't fight stupid, and it gave up. It changed its logo, apologized for hypnotizing babies, and promised never to worship Satan again. Basically. The company survived and eventually the rumors died away as most lies do.

"No, I'm LDS!"

Sometimes you just can't escape a negative image, no matter how hard you try, and so you have to go with it. For instance, we were called, "Mormons," as a derogatory term. And no matter how hard we try to say, "No, we're Latter-day Saints! We're LDS!" the term is already stuck. So we just embrace it, and now we have the lovely I'm a Mormon campaign, backed up by the, "It's just a nickname for our church, I'm really a Latter-day Saint," initiative to keep Elder Ballard happy.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a cult. That is a lie created so that people who don't like the church have a reason to hate it. I don't know of any other cult that is so secretive that it sends out thousands of missionaries to bug you and tell you all about it. We don't murder people, we encourage you to tell your friends and family that you're joining our church, and all of our doctrine is publicly available here and here. You can also read a bunch of statements from lots of other Latter-day Saints on how the Church is not a cult here.

Unlike the aforementioned baby food company, the Church will not back down or surrender to the negative accusations thrown at us. No matter how clunky the name sounds in our mouths when we try to say it quickly, we will always belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. No matter how much the world thinks we're strange, outdated, or peculiar, we will not change our doctrine.Christ gave it to us, and we will stick to it.

And remember: sacrificing babies is wrong.

How to Use the Interwebs Like a Mormon

I love to write (don't know if you can tell), and I have put some of my stories online. When I started doing that, I made the decision to only write clean, uplifting, or moral things. This applied to more sites than just Facebook. Wherever I am on the web, I want people to be able to say, "Oh, yeah, that sounds like something a Mormon would say."

Part of this reasoning comes from the fact that the internet is far less forgiving than our Savior. I found that everything that you want permanent online often disappears, and nothing you want deleted is ever permanently gone. Consequences of online actions can still haunt us long after we've repented.

The other day, I read this in Alma 12:14. "For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; we shall not be found spotless; and our thoughts will also condemn us; and in this awful state we shall not dare to look up to our God; and we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us to hide us from his presence." Every aspect of our lives will be judged, including our Facebook page. We cannot think that what we do online is an exception to this rule.

So here are a few guidelines that Sister Johnson uses.

1. Don't get in arguments online. Calm discussions are fine, but fights aren't fun and give you lingering negative feelings, even if you win.

2. Use uplifting language. Don't swear, don't tell dirty jokes, and don't post negative things about others. Let your permanent internet things be good things.

3. Monitor your pictures. Just like choosing to wear modest clothing, there is a way to present yourself modestly in photos. Does your picture say, "Cute," or does it say, "Sexy?" Be honest with yourself. Sexy is inappropriate.

4. Use your computer in a public place. If you would be embarrassed for your family or others to see what you're doing or reading online, you probably shouldn't be there. Use that to your advantage to protect yourself spiritually.

5. Put a name on what you say, even if it's not your real name. You may feel that what you do or say as an anonymous user doesn't hurt you, but this is a lie sponsored by Satan. A mask of anonymity often tempts people to do things they wouldn't normally do, like cyber-bullying. So make an account and sign in.

6. Follow church pages and channels so uplifting, edifying things will appear on your newsfeeds. All of the apostles have Facebook pages now, and there's a Mormon Channel on YouTube. The internet is cool now because you can see what you want to and not see what you don't want to.

Now watch this: Bullying: Stop It