Lucifer's Lantern

When you grow up or live inside a system where your sexuality is treated like community property, you end up believing that your body, your desires, and even your curiosity belong to someone else’s judgment. It hits some people early. For others, it doesn’t click until years later, long after sitting in a small office across from a church leader asking questions no one should’ve asked in the first place. And it’s not just teenagers. Adults get caught in the same pattern, feeling obligated to confess things that should’ve stayed personal. I need you to understand this...   Your sex life is nobody’s business .  It's most certainly not the business of the  man holding a calling that makes him your “judge in Israel.” Turning your sexuality into something that needs review and approval doesn’t build integrity. It builds a culture where you learn to monitor yourself through someone else’s expectations. You stop listening to your own sense of right and wrong and start waiting f...

If Jesus came back today, he would not recognize what Christianity has become. The modern church is built on power, money, and influence. Whatever moral teacher he might have been, his message has been rewritten to fit the needs of institutions. The result is less a faith about truth and more a system for control.      The French philosopher Jacques Ellul explored this process in his book The Subversion of Christianity . (Affiliate Link) He wrote that the teachings of Jesus were too disruptive to survive unchanged. The early followers of Jesus spoke about compassion, humility, and equality. Those ideas had no place in an empire built on hierarchy and control. Over time however, Christianity adapted. It learned to cooperate with authority. What started as a small movement of the poor became the official religion of the powerful.      Ellul, who was a Christian, saw this as a betrayal. Every belief system changes once it becomes institutionalized....

Christians often ask, “Without God’s word, how can you know right from wrong?” The assumption is that the Bible is the ultimate moral guide. But if you actually read what the Bible says, the picture of morality it presents is brutal. Many of the things God commands or condones are the very things most people today see as evil. Slavery “If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself… And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges… and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.” Exodus 21:2–6 “Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids… And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you… they shall be y...

In a notable approach to celebrating the 183rd anniversary of the Relief Society (the womens organization of the LDS church), the recent worldwide devotional prominently featured Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as the central speaker. The Relief Society General Presidency- President Camille N. Johnson, Sister J. Anette Dennis, and Sister Kristin M. Yee also contributed messages during the event.