Tag: Spirituality

How I Approach Blacks & the Priesthood As a Believing Latter-day Saint

The biggest reason why most of my fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lose their faith and leave the church has to do with issues of church history. So I thought it would be interesting to tackle some of those issues, explaining how I’ve personally wrestled with them and why I still believe.

One of the biggest issues of church history is the priesthood ban, where blacks were not allowed to be ordained to the priesthood, or receive temple ordinances, until the ban was lifted with Official Declaration 2 in 1978. Is God racist? If not, why was His church racist for so long? How can this possibly be God’s true, restored church if it had such a blatanly racist policy for so long?

For a long time, this question sat on my shelf of religious questions that I could not answer. In LDS parlance, it’s common to use the term “shelf” to refer to how we set aside the things that might cause us to doubt or lose our faith, choosing instead to focus on our testimony or spiritual witness. Often, when people leave the church, they say their shelf just got too heavy and broke.

I’ve still got a handful of things on my shelf. I suppose that’s common for all people of faith, not just Latter-day Saints, since who can possibly have an answer for everything? But for me, this particular issue—blacks and the priesthood—is no longer one of them, because I’ve found an answer that fully satisfies me. Whether or not it satisfies you, I don’t know, but if you’ve wrestled with this issue, I think it’s worth considering. And even if you’re not LDS, I think you’ll find it interesting, because it’s made me rethink a lot of things about racism, religion, and American history.

I’ve been reading a lot about Christian Nationalism recently. If you’re conservative, you’re probably bristling a little at that last statement, since “Christian Nationalist” seems mostly to be a polemic term invented by the left to slander their opponents, just like how they call everything “racist” (or “white supremacist,” since the word “racist” has lost its power through overuse). That’s certainly what I used to believe. And while I do think there’s some truth to that criticism—certainly the left will say anything to slander Christian conservatives of any stripe—at the same time, there really is a movement on the right to blend politics with religion. And this Christian Nationalist movement (which also overlaps with the :Seven Mountains Mandate” and the “New Apostolic Reformation”) is supremely anti-Mormon, as we saw in the far-right evangelical response to the Grand Blanc mass shooting of the LDS chapel there. So while yes, we have a common enemy with conservative Christian Nationalists on the woke left, the next big front in the culture wars is going to be all the other Christians vs. the Latter-day Saints. Which is why I’ve been reading up so much on Christian Nationalism, since I want to be prepared.

I will admit, it can be hard to separate the signal from the noise, since most of the recent books on Christian Nationalism are attacking the movement from the woke left. But while I do find it hard to take accusations of racism seriously in today’s environment (case in point, all the drama surrounding the recent Karmelo Anthony murder trial), I do think there is a genuine racial element underlying the modern American Christian right. So please hear me out, my fellow conservatives. I’m not coming at this from a woke, white-hating, “everything is racist” approach.

From what I can tell, it all goes back to the colonial era, in the century following the English civil war. The Puritans who settled New England came from Cromwell’s faction, the “roundheads,” and the English settlers who built up Virginia and the southern colonies were mostly unlanded sons of the British gentry, who sided with the “cavaliers.” Because of this, the south was much more aristocratic, with a strong honor culture and class distinctions. Over time, as black chattel slavery replaced indentured servitude, class and race came to be synonymous: if you were black or mulatto, you occupied a much lower place in society than if you were pure white.

The United States was founded with a supreme contradiction, where our Constitution allowed for slavery while our Declaration of Independence declared that “liberty” was a God-given right. From what I can tell, the way the antebellum south rationalized this supreme contradiction was by inventing a theory of race that made blacks essentially subhuman. Yes, all men are created equal, and endowed with a right to liberty, but the darkies aren’t men like us. They’re really more like children, who need a strong, white, Anglo-Saxon pater familias to take care of them.

How does all of this tie in with Christian Nationalism? Because as the early United States experienced a series of Christian revivals (including the Second Great Awakening, which saw the beginning of the Latter Day Saint movement), the racism of the Antebellum South had a profound influence on the development of American Christianity. We can see this in the way that the major denominations split in the mid-1800s into black churches and white churches. This continued through the Civil War and Reconstruction, with the black churches and the white churches developing their own distinct cultures—and in some cases, their own distinct doctrines and practices too.

This distinction between black Christian churches and white Christian churches continues today, with measurable differences that show up in political polls and studies of both groups. Which completely blows my mind, since within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there really isn’t a distinct white subculture separate from the black subculture. Indeed, the biggest cultural differences for us are between the “Utah Mormon” subculture and the wider church, or perhaps between American LDS and non-American LDS.

Why don’t we have this same undercurrent of racial tensions and divisions that exists within mainstream American Christianity? From what I can tell, it’s largely because of the priesthood ban.

A little history, for those of you who may be unfamiliar. Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all devout men who are in good standing with the church are ordained to the priesthood. It’s entirely a volunteer organization, at least on the local level; bishops (equivalent to pastors/priests) and stake presidents (equivalent to senior/regional pastor and/or bishop) are unpaid, and serve from the local congregation usually for about 3-5 years before being released and returning to the pews. In the 1830s, Joseph Smith ordained several black male converts to the priesthood, but in the 1840s and 1850s, Brigham Young established a policy of denying the priesthood based on the member’s race. This policy, known as the priesthood ban, continued until 1978, when Spencer W. Kimball received the revelation that was canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants as Official Declaration 2, which extended the priesthood to all male members of the church in good standing, regardless of race.

Why did Brigham Young enact the priesthood ban? Was he racist? Did he make a terrible mistake? Before we judge him too harshly, let’s consider a counterfactual where the priesthood ban never happened, and Brigham Young continued to ordain black converts just like Joseph Smith did.

With racial attitudes being what they were in the United States in the 1840s and 50s, most white members of the church would not have accepted a black bishop to minister over them. Therefore, as more black converts joined the church, they would probably start to form black wards and stakes—just like how all the other Christian churches were splitting into black churches and white churches. Over the course of the next century, these black wards and stakes would form their own distinct subculture, and the racist attitudes of the white wards and stakes would become institutionalized.

Would the Civil Rights movement of the 20th century led to an integration within the church? Perhaps, but the black and white subcultures probably would have endured. And with the race relations have become so heated in the last fifteen years, with the George Floyd riots and the rise of Black Lives Matter that very well could have led to an internal schism within the church—at precisely the time when missionary work in Africa is experiencing such phenomenal growth.

Imagine an alternate universe where the black half of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is splitting off from the white half, because the black members are demanding to have a black prophet and a quorum of black apostles. Or conversely, imagine an alternate universe where the church never fully integrated, and the white membership is splitting off from the main body of the church because of all these black African general authorities that have recently been ordained. It would be an absolute nightmare—and it’s not hard to imagine, because that’s basically the state of mainstream American Christianity today.

Put simply, as unfortunate and as racist as the priesthood ban was, I believe it was a necessary policy, given the racist attitudes common to members of the church at that time. It was unfortunate, but we simply were not ready to embrace our black brothers in that way—even though the Book of Mormon explicitly states that God “inviteth them all to come unto Him… black and white, bond and free, male and female…” (2 Nephi 26:33) But God had the foresight to know what would happen to His church, so He inspired Brigham Young to enact the priesthood ban, even though in an ideal world it would not have been necessary. Thankfully, we’ve repented since then, and are now fully integrated as a church in a way that would not have been possible had we split into a black church and a white church, like so many other denominations.

That’s my own personal take on it, at least. Which isn’t necessarily a comfortable answer, given how it gives rise to other questions like “how could God allow generations of black saints not to receive their temple blessings because of the racism of their brothers and sisters in the church?” and “how was it right that the church accomodated the racism of its members for so long?” Clearly, it’s not as simple as “the church is true, the book is blue, and God’s Mormon.” But neither is it as simple as “Brigham Young was a racist, therefore he wasn’t a true prophet and the church isn’t true.” Which is why I can say with confidence that this is no longer an issue on my personal “shelf.” The answers might not be comfortable, but the truth often isn’t comfortable either. If we had a pat answer to this difficult question, that would be a red flag too.

Of course, all of this leads to some other interesting questions, such as whether the main reason we don’t ordain women or practice gay marriage in the temple is because we’re just not ready for that as a church. But I’ll have to leave my musings on those subjects for some other time.

How I Approach the Problem of Evil As a Believing Latter-day Saint

The other day, it occured to me that it might be really interesting to write a series of blog posts where I explained how, as a believing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I approach various faith issues and questions. After all, I’ve wrestled with just about every reason people cite for leaving the faith, both the ones specific to the Church like polygamy, blacks and the priesthood, Book of Mormon historicity issues, etc, as well as the broader issues that make people lose their faith in God generally. I’ve heard almost all of them, genuinely wrestled with most of them, and after all of that, I am still very much a believer.

So to start this series off, I wanted to tackle what is, perhaps, the biggest reason why people lose faith in God: theodicy, or the problem of evil. Some people formulate it as “why do bad things happen to good people?” but it’s actually much deeper than that, and cuts to the very core of faith and religion generally. The way that I prefer to formulate it is: “how can evil exist if there is an all-powerful God who loves us?”

The Holistic Approach

First, I have to say that the best take I’ve ever read on this issue is found in the Book of Job. It’s kind of a difficult read, especially in the KJV, because so much is lost in translation. The best commentary on the Book of Job that I’ve read is Rereading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem by Michael Austin. I’m not sure I agree with everything in that book, but it did make me completely rethink a lot of things I thought I knew.

The TL;DR of the Book of Job is basically this: we will probably never fully know, in this life, why God permits evil to exist—and that’s kind of the point. We just have to struggle with it. And we must have compassion for those who are struggling with this, and not judge them harshly like Job’s comforters did.

If I were talking to a friend who was struggling with the problem of evil because they were going through a seriously difficult time in their life, I would not try to give them an intellectual answer, or debate philosophy, or anything like that. Instead, I would say something like “I feel you. That really sucks. I’m sorry.” And I would try to do everything I could to comfort them and make it easier.

I’ve lead a pretty charmed life. I’ve never been in combat. I’ve never buried a child. I’ve never been raped or abused. Of course, I’ve experienced pain and heartbreak, but only about as much as I need to say that I’ve had a full life. All things considered, I’ve never really experienced the kind of evil that would make me question the existence of God.

I sincerely hope that if I did experience that kind of evil, I would have the faith to struggle through it, believing that something good would come of that struggle. I hope that I would hold to that faith, even if it turned out that the good would never come until after this mortal life. But maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would rail against God. Maybe I would lose my faith for a season.

So I can’t really judge people who do. At the end of the day, all I can really do is “mourn with those who mourn, and comfort those who stand in need of comfort.” (Mosiah 18:9) That’s much more important than trying to give a philosophical or theological answer to this problem.

The Intellectual Approach

But a lot of people who lose faith over this issue don’t lose it over what they’re suffering, but over what they see other people suffering, or over the idea of what they might suffer. So laying aside the holistic approach, here is how I approach the problem of evil on an intellectual and/or philosophical level.

If you formulate the problem of evil as a syllogism, it looks something like this:

  1. Evil cannot exist if there is an all-powerful God who loves us.
  2. Evil exists.
  3. Therefore, either:
    • A) there is no God, or
    • B) God does not love us, or
    • C) God is not all-powerful.

The traditional way most Christians attack this problem is by challenging point 2. What we perceive as evil is not actually evil, because God has a way of turning evil for good. In the fulness of time, we will see that everything in this world really works out for the best. We just need to have faith.

That argument became really difficult to make after all of the horrors and atrocities and genocides of the 20th century, especially the Nazi holocaust. For that reason, I don’t really buy it, though I do think there’s something to be said about the fact that the evil and suffering of this life are ultimately temporary, since all things in this mortal coil will ultimately pass away. More on that later.

As a believing Latter-day Saint, I think the better approach is to challenge point 1 and point 3C. Where most other Christians (especially Calvinists) assume that God is arbitrarily all-powerful, we understand that God is constrained by certain eternal laws, and that if God were to violate those eternal laws, he would “cease to be God.” (Alma 42:13, Mormon 9:19)

Personally, I reject the idea that God is the “unmoved mover,” or a being “without body, parts, or passions.” On the most basic level, I believe that God is a person, much like any of us—that when the Bible says that Moses spoke with God “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11), there’s something literal in that. Laying aside the question of whether Moses literally saw the face of God, what that verse really says is that God is the kind of person you can have a conversation with.

Furthermore, I believe that there is something literal in the phrase “Heavenly Father.” In other words, I believe that all of humanity is the literal offspring of God—that as premortal spirits, we were all born to heavenly parents before we came down here to Earth. Furthermore, I believe that God was once a mortal man like us, and that His ultimate hope for us is that we grow up and become like Him, same as any parent hopes for their children.

This is a theology that is unique to Latter-day Saints, and it gives us a very different take on the problem of evil. Because the only way for us to become like God and receive our exaltation is for all of us to come to this Earth and exercise our agency to choose good or evil. But because many of us choose evil, that brings evil into the world, and God cannot intervene to stop that, because agency is an eternal principle that God cannot violate.

But what God can do—and does do—is send His Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from from death and hell, and to make all things new. Jesus Christ saves us from death, because He has power over death. Because of Him, all of us will be resurrected and receive an immortal body, regardless of our choices in this life. He also saves us from sin, by His suffering and atonement in Gethsemane and on the cross. As a sinless man, He paid the ultimate price to settle the cosmic scales, not just for those who repent, but for everyone. His atonement is truly infinite.

Through His atonement, Christ also vicariously suffered all of our pains and afflictions—the evils that we experience in this life, not as a result of any sin or wrongdoing on our own part, but simply by the fact that we live in a fallen world. Because of this, He understands and can empathize with everything we go through. And through His power, all things can—and will—be made new. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

This is how I approach the problem of evil as a believing Latter-day Saint. Evil exists because of human agency, which God had given us because He loves us and wants us to become like Him. But ultimately, because of Christ, all evil will pass away. If we accept Christ and become His disciples, our suffering will “give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good,” because Christ has “descended below them all.” (D&C 122:7-8)

So how can evil exist if there is an all-powerful God who loves us? Because “God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17)

I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on that matter. Next week, I’ll tackle an issue that’s more specific to us Latter-day Saints: the question of blacks and the priesthood. My recent thoughts on the subject have made me reconsider a lot of my views, not just about my faith, but about racism, religion, and American history generally. So whether or not you’re a Latter-day Saint, I think you’ll find it interesting.

The Choice to Believe in Gunslinger to Earth

At its core, Gunslinger to Earth, the space-opera finale of the Gunslinger Trilogy, asks a simple but lifelong question: What do you choose to believe when the universe refuses to give you certainty? When Earth vanishes into an impossible anomaly—and later reappears transformed—no one can prove exactly what happened. The characters must decide for themselves what is true, what is worth fighting for, and who they will become in the face of the miraculous.

Where the Idea Came From

The theme grew out of a major turning point in my own life. I started this book just after I began dating the woman who would become my wife and while I was reinventing my writing process to tell better stories. It was a season of uncertainty, hope, and change, full of questions I didn’t know how to answer. That personal crossroads naturally shaped the theme of the story into one about faith, conviction, and choosing a future even when you can’t see what comes next.

How the Choice to Believe Shapes the Story

Throughout Gunslinger to Earth, every major character is confronted with a moment where proof is impossible, but a choice is required. Rex must decide whether to trust Charlotte, whether to follow Sam and Jane, whether to cross the wormhole, and ultimately whether to stay in paradise or return to a mortal life with someone he loves. No one can make these choices for him—not Sam, not Jane, not Charlotte—because the heart of his journey is learning to choose his own truth instead of waiting for certainty that will never come.

On a cosmic scale, the entire plot turns on the same dilemma—an end-times science fiction mystery wrapped in the language of prophecy. The anomaly that swallowed Earth may be the fulfillment of ancient prophecies, or it may be an alien event we don’t yet understand. Mahijah may be exactly who he claims to be, or something else entirely. No lab test or political briefing can answer those questions. Sam, Jane, Rex, the empaths, and the remnants of Earthfleet all have to decide for themselves what they believe—and those choices lead them to the endings they earn. The story isn’t about proving the miracle; it’s about how people respond when the miraculous breaks into their lives—the heart of the choice to believe.

What the Choice to Believe Says About Us

We all live in a world where certainty is rare, where conflicting stories demand our loyalty, and where the most important truths—love, faith, family, hope—are things you commit to long before you can prove them. Gunslinger to Earth reflects that deeply human reality in a character-driven science fiction way. It suggests that belief isn’t about having perfect evidence; it’s about having the courage to choose who you’re going to be and what kind of future you want to build. At the end of the day, the world is shaped not just by what happens to us, but by what we decide to believe about ourselves, about others, and about the meaning of our lives.

Why This Theme Matters to Me

When I wrote Gunslinger to Earth, the closing volume of the Gunslinger Trilogy, I was learning to make those kinds of choices in my own life—about faith, about love, and about the kind of writer and person I wanted to become. It was a moment when I had to step forward without seeing the whole path. That experience shaped the story in ways I couldn’t fully articulate at the time, but I can see clearly now. This book matters to me because it’s ultimately about hope: the hope that even in chaos, even in uncertainty, we can choose what we believe—and those choices can lead us somewhere good.

Where to Get the Book

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Gunslinger Trilogy.

Return to the book page for Gunslinger to Earth.

Is Gunslinger to Earth for you?

See all of my books in series order.

We’re going to see a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming years

This is what you get when you get a religious revival in a collapsing postmodern culture that has lost its ability to create good art. As the revival takes root, the artists embrace it and give it voice in ways that we haven’t seen before.

As the Great American Revival continues to spread, we’re going to see a new wave of creative dynamism in the arts, driven by this new influx of religious conservatism. It’s going to produce some really wild and interesting stuff. This is just the beginning.

Fantasy from A to Z: P is for Prayer

What would fantasy be without religion? Probably much the same as us, when we don’t have religion: aimless, drifting, and lost.

Religion is more than just a useful aspect of worldbuilding. It’s something that lies at the very core of what makes us human—and thus, it’s something that any story needs to at least touch on if it is to be meaningful or important. Most likely, it won’t be meaningful at all unless the religious aspect is incorporated deeply within its bones.

But what is religion? For our purposes, religion is how we, as humans, relate to the powers that are higher than ourselves. It’s not about painting a cross on your cover, or a star of David, or a crescent, or an omh, or whatever else. It’s about how we act in regards to the cosmic and the transcendent. It’s about how we understand how to orient ourselves in this vast and terrifying universe, and find our own place within it.

I grew up in a time when religion was one of those taboo subjects that you never brought up in polite society. Politics, religion, and sex were all taboo like that. Granted, those taboos were already beginning to fray by the time I was old enough to hold an uninformed opinion on any of that, but even in the 90s, the post-war liberal consensus still held.

What was the post-war liberal consensus? It was the set of rules and norms that we all (or those of us in polite society, at least) agreed to live by, after the tumultuous catastrophe of the World Wars. From 1914 to 1945, more than a hundred Europeans died from political causes—and that was just in Europe. For thirty long years, the whole world was drowned in blood.

The wars ended with the invention of the world’s most devastating superweapon, which for the first time in the history of this planet gave us the power to literally annihilate our own species. So at the end of all that, our grandparents felt a very strong need to keep those weapons from ever being used again. Hence, they developed the post-war liberal consensus.

The greatest value of the post-war liberal consensus was tolerance—but they didn’t think of that as a value in itself. The idea was that instead of elevating the values of any one group over another, they would create a world where everyone tolerated each other. Everyone could keep their own culture and religion, along with their own unique (and often contradictory) cultural and religious values, so long as they didn’t try to impose those values on anyone else.

The trouble with that, of course, is that tolerance itself is a value. Which means that in order to maintain the post-war consensus, they had to be intolerant toward any culture or religion that threatened it. Which meant that they had to push their globalism and multiculturalism on everyone, superseding all of their own cultural and religious values. This gave rise to the global urban monoculture, which ultimately gave us the clown world we now live in. Which is currently falling apart.

Religion should not be off-limits, especially for good storytelling. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that stories should bash you over the head and try to convert you to whatever church the author happens to belong to. Indeed, some of the most religious stories aren’t about any particular church or creed at all. 

An example of this is Epic: The Musical. Beyond the old Greek mythology that runs through the story, the religious view is that the universe is utterly unpredictable, the gods (or higher powers) are arbitrary and capricious, and that the ends (getting home to Penelope) always justify the means. Indeed, any means that aren’t justified by the ends are immoral and wrong. Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves. How do we sleep? Next to our wives.

Those aren’t the religious views that I subscribe to, but those are deeply religious views. How? Because they show us how we stand in relation to powers that are higher than ourselves. In the 19th century, it became fashionable to throw out religion, and reverence man himself as the highest power in the universe. Where did that get us? It gave us the 31 years that killed 100 million Europeans and drowned the whole world in blood.

G.K. Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Now, more than ever, the world needs religion. 

Of course, one of the nice things about writing fiction is that you can explore all sorts of religious ideas that may or may not have a direct counterpart in our world. Indeed, that’s part of what makes fantasy so rich. Tolkien created a whole race (the elves) that is bound by magic and immortality to this earth, contrasting with us humans, who are “strangers in a strange land.” In fact, Tolkien’s entire oeuvre is rich with religious elements, not just in the worldbuilding and the mythology, but in the Christian symbology—and he does it so subtly and so deeply that it draws you into his world, rather than kicking you out. It’s all in service to the story.

There’s a reason why the best stories in the world are in the Bible (and most of those are in the Book of Genesis). Which is one of the reasons why I’m drawing on the life of King David for the fantasy epic that I’m currently writing (The Soulbound King). But I’m also drawing on symbology and mythology as well, to make sure the religious elements aren’t just skin-deep. There is so much fascinating tree-related symbolism within the Jewish/Christian tradition. So much rich and wonderful stuff to draw on for creating a fantasy world.

Don’t be afraid to play with religion in your own fantasy stories. After all, on the deepest level, creativity itself is something of a religious act.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Fantasy from A to Z: I is for Immortality

Immortality is one of those fantasy tropes that shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. Vampires, elves, gods, liches, ancient dragons hoarding gold through the centuries—we’re fascinated by the idea of beings that can’t die. Sometimes they’re terrifying, sometimes noble, sometimes weary and wise. But always, they strike a chord.

Why? Because they brush up against one of our deepest human anxieties: death.

Death is one of those universal aspects of the human experience. Everybody dies. And compared to the lifespan of things like mountains, or forests, or stars, the human lifespan is remarkably short and fleeting. Some of us live a long and a full life, and are ready to go when the time comes, but many of us are not. Tragedy can strike us at any time. No one knows when the reaper will come for them.

This is why, in fantasy fiction, immortality often comes wrapped in awe and mystery. It’s a mark of otherworldliness, a symbol of something beyond the ordinary cycles of birth and death. Sometimes it’s a gift. Sometimes it’s a curse. Often, it’s a little bit of both.

Personally, my favorite fantasy author who captured this complexity is J.R.R. Tolkien. His elves are perhaps the most iconic immortal race in all of fantasy. They don’t age or grow frail. They don’t die of disease. They are not eternal in the divine sense, but their lives are bound to the life of the world. When they are slain, their spirits travel to the Halls of Mandos, where they can eventually be re-embodied. But they are still bound to the world. They don’t pass beyond it. They don’t get to move on.

That’s the heart of their tragedy.

Elves in Tolkien’s legendarium aren’t happy fairytale creatures dancing in the moonlight. They are ancient beings with long memories, deep sorrows, and wounds that don’t always heal. They remember battles and betrayals that happened millennia ago. They carry the weight of history like a cloak that can never be removed. And for all their beauty and wisdom, they are fading. Slowly, subtly, inevitably. Their time is passing, and they know it.

In contrast, humans are mortal and thus are not subject to this curse. As Tolkien writes in The Silmarillion:

“And the Doom of Men, that they should depart, was at first a gift of Ilúvatar. It became a grief to them only because coming under the shadow of Morgoth it seemed to them that they were surrounded by a great darkness, of which they grew afraid.”

That’s a remarkable insight. Mortality, which we so often view as a curse, was originally a gift. The elves envy us not because we die, but because we get to leave. To move beyond the world. To have an end.

And yet, we don’t often treat it like a gift. In fact, we go to absurd lengths to avoid it.

You don’t have to look far to see that our obsession with immortality isn’t limited to fantasy stories. In Silicon Valley and other corners of the tech world, there’s a growing movement of wealthy futurists who are pouring money into the dream of defeating death. Some want to reverse aging at the cellular level. Some are working on brain-uploading technology, convinced they can digitize the human soul. Others are experimenting with biological “enhancements,” anti-aging therapies, or even transfusions from younger people in an effort to extend their lifespans.

This hunger for immortality is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, but today it wears a lab coat and calls itself “biohacking.” The names have changed, but the impulse remains the same. We want to stay. To cling to life. To hold onto what we have, no matter the cost.

But is that really such a noble goal?

Fantasy offers us a counterpoint. Again and again, stories show that immortality comes at a price. Vampires lose their humanity. Liches surrender their souls. Gods become detached from the world of mortals. Even the elves, for all their grace, are caught in a long decline.

Immortality often brings with it a kind of existential exhaustion. Without death, there is no closure. Without loss, there is no growth. Without time running out, nothing truly matters.

Mortality, by contrast, sharpens everything. Because we are mortal, our choices matter. Because time is a scarce resource—indeed, perhaps the only resource in our world that is truly scarce—our relationships carry weight. Because we will one day die, every act of love, courage, sacrifice, or faith becomes immeasurably precious.

And that’s something that fantasy, at its best, understands better than any philosophical treatise or TED Talk ever could. Again, Tolkien writes:

“But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.”

The elves call us guests. Strangers. Not because we are lesser, but because we do not belong to the world in the same way they do. We are pilgrims passing through this world—strangers in a strange land. Our road leads elsewhere, and that elsewhere—whatever lies beyond the circles of the world—is part of the hope that makes us human.

In my own fantasy, I like to play with this idea. My characters all live in the Mortal Realm, but there is an Immortal Realm that lies beyond the bounds of their current existence, and the veil that separates the two can sometimes grow quite thin. In The Sword Keeper, there is a Void between the two realms that Tamuna must cross in order to confront the evil that afflicts her world, and to find the lost spirit of her father. In Bloodfire Legacy, when Lord Arion is assassinated in the first chapter, he temporarily gives up the indescribable glory of the Immortal Realm in order to linger as a ghost and help guide his orphaned daughter. 

All of these characters are bound, in time, to pass from this Mortal Realm, but that isn’t a curse—it’s a gift. There is far more to this life than the bounds of our material existence. There are more things in heaven and in earth than we can comprehend with our mortal understanding.

In the end, fantasy doesn’t just explore our fear of death. It teaches us how to find meaning in the brief time we’re given. So the next time you read about some deathless sorcerer or ageless elf queen, remember: you have something they never will. An ending, and a beginning. A home beyond this world. A story that can reach its conclusion.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Yes, Brandon Sanderson has gone woke

By his own admission, in his latest blog post: On Renarin and Rlain. He says the post is addressed “toward my more conservative readership.” However, he also calls himself “an ally to LGBT+ people” and boasts about writing the “first openly gay men [in] the Wheel of Time.” When discussing Christianity and his own Latter-day Saint faith, he makes repeated appeals to “empathy” and “respect,” without addressing the Bible’s clear condemnation of sexual sin. He also does not mention the Family Proclamation, which clearly lays out his own church’s position on homosexuality, transgenderism, and gay marriage.

In other words, Brandon basically told his conservative readers “I hear you, but you’re wrong.” He implies that any conservative Christian who has concerns with the gay romance in Wind and Truth is lacking in empathy and respect. He also implies that by voicing their concerns, they are dividing the world into “us” vs. “them” and betraying a key tenet of their own Christian faith.

If Brandon genuinely wanted to allay the concerns of his conservative readers, he would have acknowledged the Family Proclamation and Biblical standards of sexual morality. He would have discussed the gay romance of his latest book in the context of such standards. Then, he would have presented an argument similar to Andrew Klavan’s: that conservative art is not the same as conservative life. Good art must provide an honest and truthful representation of life. It should not glorify or promote those aspects of life that are evil. Brandon starts to make the first half of that argument, in discussing how Tracy Hickman portrayed gay characters in his books, but he fails to follow it up. He doesn’t explain how making a gay romance essential to the plot of Wind and Truth serves the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Brandon doesn’t seem to trust his conservative Christian readers to be able to separate the sin from the sinner. He also refuses to acknowledge the lived experience of his gay and lesbian readers who have chosen to live morally pure and faithful Christian lives. Like Brandon, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of the most inspiring members of the church for me are those who struggle with same-gender attraction but still live true to their testimonies. I imagine it must feel pretty lonely at times like this, when their brother in Christ has chosen to side with those who preach the false gospel of pride, equity, and self-worship, instead of the gospel of the One who declared “Father, Thy will be done, and the glory be Thine forever.”

Has Brandon denied his faith? I’m not Brandon’s bishop, nor am I his eternal judge. It’s important to remember that the church is not a place for perfect people. I do think there ought to be a place in the church for self-described LGBT+ allies, so long as they sustain the leaders—and the doctrine—of the church. But if he hasn’t crossed the line, he’s certainly standing a lot closer to it than I ever would.

My personal testimony is that the Family Proclamation is inspired of God, and that the men who wrote and signed their names to it are prophets, seers, and revelators. It teaches true principles about the family and sexual morality. We are all children of God, gays and lesbians included, and that makes us all brothers and sisters regardless of how we choose to live. At the same time, Christ didn’t suffer and die for us so that we could continue in our sins. If the Family Proclamation is true, affirming homosexuality is not an act of love, no matter how empathetic it may be. Christ had empathy for the woman caught in adultery, but because He loved her, He also commanded her to “go, and sin no more.”

On a personal level, I feel frustrated and disappointed by Brandon’s recent turn. I count Brandon as an early mentor—in fact, it was Brandon’s class that inspired me to pursue writing as a career. I haven’t spoken with Brandon in years, but I do still count him as a friend. If I could sit down with him I would ask him about the people he’s surrounded himself with. They seem to be leading him in a bad direction, since he seems to have grown out of touch.

Has he betrayed his conservative readers? Yes, I think he has, and that he’s making a big mistake by doing so. One of the things that set him apart until now was the fact that his books are very clean. His fans may argue that Renarin and Rlain’s romance is also clean, but as a conservative reader, it feels more like a camel’s nose peeking under the tent. In a world of drag queen story hour, pornographic gay pride parades, and genital mutilation of children, is it even possible to have a clean gay romance? I think not. To paraphrase Brandon, as much as we may long for the days where there was no slippery slope, maybe that world never existed. Maybe there will always be an instinct to divide the world into the “clean” and the “queer.”

So let me just say this: whatever the stories that Brandon wants to tell, I can no longer trust that they’ll be the kind I’ll want to read. He could still turn around, of course, and I genuinely hope that he does. But reading between the lines, it seems that this turn toward the woke is not a new direction from him. It seems to be something that he’s contemplated for some time. I’ll still read the rest of his secret projects and keep my signed copies of the original Mistborn trilogy. But I’m going to DNF the Stormlight Archive, and probably won’t buy his future books.

Brandon ends his blog post by saying that one of his primary goals in life is to be more empathetic. This is what motivates him to write: because it’s how he explores the world. I, too, feel compelled to explore the world through my stories, but my primary goal is to pursue the truth. Those two goals aren’t always in conflict, but when they are, I think the pursuit of truth should be higher. The pursuit of truth ultimately leads us to love one another more fully and more meaningfully than the pursuit of empathy does. It saddens me that Brandon disagrees.

Where Ezra’s Eagle Goes Off the Rails

So it’s November 6th, 2024, the day after election day. President Trump has won an astonishing election victory, marking the greatest political comeback in US history. For those of us who feel like we’ve been gaslit and abused for the last four years, it really does feel like things are starting to look up for the country.

At least, for most of us, that is the case. For others of us, the black pill has been so bitter that we’re almost scared to hope again. Last night, I was up until 2am, just because I didn’t want a repeat of 2020, where we all went to bed convinced that Trump had a lock on the election, only to wake up to burst pipes, boxes of uncounted ballots, voting machines behaving strangely, windows and doors boarded up against Republican observers, and other sorts of “election fortification.” So frankly, I don’t blame anyone for being on pins and needles until Trump actually puts his hand on the Bible and is officially sworn in as the 47th (or possibly 48th) President.

I’m seeing that reflected right now in my blog stats, where in the last 24 hours, I’ve seen hundreds of hits on my old post This Scenario Would Fulfill Ezra’s Eagle, which I wrote several years ago. For some strange reason, that post is now the #2 Google search result for the query “Ezra’s Eagle,” which makes me feel like it’s my duty to offer periodic updates to the situation.

But first, a quick explanation of the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy:

This video is a very good explanation of the prophecy, as interpreted by Michael B. Rush. The part I find most compelling about it is the sequence of rulers, which really does line up uncannily well with our last 16 presidents. Whenever Biblical prophecies start going into numerology, I always raise my eyebrows a bit, because there are lots of ways to twist numbers to make them appear to fit your own personal interpretation. But if you read the original source material in 2 Esdras 11 and 12, it actually lines up very well with what has (so far) transpired.

However, it’s where we get to Rush’s interpretation of the last two short feathers and the lion that I tend to think it goes off the rails. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I am not convinced that there will be a singular Anti-Christ figure in the end times. I know that a lot of Evangelical eschatology revolves around this figure, but the way they get there is through a rather selective reading of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation that leaves me scratching my head. When I read the Bible, I see a lot of passages talking about a spirit of Anti-Christ, but not a singular figure—and certainly not one with Godlike powers.

But the big thing is the lion, which Rush connects (correctly, I believe—assuming of course that the prophecy is true, which it may very well not be) with the remnant of Jacob in 3 Nephi 20 and 21. Latter-day Saint eschatology draws not only from Daniel (where we get the stone cut out of the mountain without hands), Ezekiel (where we get the stick of Joseph), and Revelation, but also from Isaiah, which goes into great depth about the scattering and gathering of Israel, and the return of the lost 10 tribes. There are also several other prophecies in the Book of Mormon that describe the latter-day gathering of Israel, which is central to the Latter-day Saint understanding of the end times.

Regarding the lost 10 tribes, within the Latter-day Saint tradition there are basically three possible views about what happened to them and where they are now.

The first is that they were taken to the north pole and currently live under the polar ice. This view was very popular in the 19th century, but almost no one believes it seriously now.

The second is that they were taken into space, and currently reside on another planet or in another dimension. While this may sound crazy, it does resonate with the scriptures we have that talk about how Enoch was taken into heaven, with the original city of Zion. This is the view that Michael B. Rush espouses, and he believes that the prophecies in 3 Nephi (as well as Ezra’s Eagle) will be fulfilled when the ten tribes come back down from space and liberate us from the Anti-Christ.

If that sounds a little too science fictional to you, you’re not the only one. Personally, I would love to read a novel where that’s how things turned out, but I don’t think those prophecies are actually going to be fulfilled that way—and here’s why.

The third view is that after the ten tribes passed out of our historical records, they migrated to the northern reaches of the Eurasian landmass, probably in what is now Siberia. There, they established a civilization, which was apparently still extant when the resurrected Christ visited the Americas, because He referred to them explicitly in 3 Nephi 17:

4 But now I go unto the Father, and also to show myself unto the lost tribes of Israel, for they are not lost unto the Father, for he knoweth whither he hath taken them.

This civilization probably continued for a while, perhaps for several centuries after the resurrection of Christ, but it eventually fell, probably due to a combination of the changing global climate (which was much warmer during Roman times, but went into a little ice age during the medieval era) and political upheaval on the Eurasian steppes. When China fell apart after the Three Kingdoms period, there was a massive depopulation as the survivors of those wars migrated westward onto the steppes, creating a cascade of violent displacement that ultimately culminated in the rise of the Hunnic confederacy and the migration period in Europe, which brought about the fall of the western Roman Empire. The ten tribes could easily have been conquered during this period, and their survivors assimilated into the Hunnic or Turkish tribes. Or perhaps they survived this era, only to be conquered by the Mongols in the 1200s. Either way, their culture was wiped out, and their descendants were assimilated into the cultures that conquered them and settled on their lands.

There’s quite a bit of evidence for this theory, including DNA evidence. There’s also some spiritual evidence from the patriarchal blessings of people from this region, where most of the people are have been blessed to belong to one of the ten tribes. The guys at Ward Radio discuss this at length in the episode above—Jonah Barnes actually served his mission in Siberia, so he has firsthand experience with this. Also, there is some pretty solid scriptural evidence in Jacob 5 and the allegory of the olive tree. When the branches of the natural tree are first scattered throughout the vinyard, there is a location that is mentioned once in verse 24, and never mentioned again. If this represents the lands of the lost ten tribes during Christ’s time, that makes sense, since their culture had not yet been wiped out—but after it was wiped out, and the survivors assimilated into the culture that conquered them, they were no longer a “branch” within the context of the allegory.

So how does this relate to Ezra’s Eagle? If the ten tribes are actually among us, and not in space as Michael Rush believes—indeed, if the descendants of the lost tribes are currently being gathered into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through the missionary work currently happening in central Asia—then the “remnant of Jacob” that will go forth as a lion is the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who gather to the New Jerusalem, either to build it or to migrate there after it has been built. Third Nephi 20 and 21 go into great depth about this.

But what does it mean that they will tread down their enemies among the gentiles? Does it mean that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will go all nationalistic, organize a militia, and go to war directly against the United States? Almost certainly not. After all, the twelfth article of faith states: “we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

But I could see a scenario where the United States collapses and becomes a failed state on the national level, with cartels, gangs, and local warlords stepping into the power vacuum under the veneer of what’s left of our democratic republic. Under that scenario, the church would step into the gap and help its members to organize and develop a strong, self-reliant community that could not only survive in such a post-collapse world, but actually thrive in it. In many ways, we’re already set up to do exactly that. And if the call comes during this time of chaos to build up the New Jerusalem, I could see us making a modern pioneer trek to Missouri, and prevailing over the gangs and warlords who try to stand in our way.

Under this scenario, the last two feathers of Ezra’s Eagle aren’t the Anti-Christ and the Beast, but the last two presidents of the United States, who attempt to restore the nation after the catastrophic fall of the deep state (represented by the three eagle heads) but who ultimately fail to do so. This is when the nation collapses, and we become a failed state on the federal level. Then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rises up to fill in the gap, standing against the gangs and warlords in the ensuing power vacuum, until we are called to build the New Jerusalem and fulfill the end-times prophecies contained in 3 Nephi.

To me, this is a much more plausible interpretation of Ezra’s Eagle than Rush’s view that the lost ten tribes will liberate us in some sort of extraterrestrial invasion of our planet, while a godlike Anti-Christ rules the whole world. But frankly, I don’t think any of this is going to happen—at least, not on the timeline of Ezra’s Eagle. President Trump won the election with a clear mandate, and I believe he will become our 47th president. With the way things are currently unfolding, I no longer believe that the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is true in a literal sense. It may have been an authentic vision of a possible series of events, but I do not believe we are on that timeline. After all, there is a reason why Joseph Smith never translated the Apocrypha—or canonized it, for that matter.

But I guess we’ll find out soon. After all, if anything happens to Trump between now and January 20th… let’s just pray for our country during this very uncertain time.

(And for the record, if the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is true, I still totally believe that Janet Yellen is the first eagle’s head.)

Happy Easter!

For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.

John 3:16-17