Here we are at the last Sunday in Outer Blogness of 2015! Naturally, this means it’s time to start reviewing this past year and passing out the awards!! Nominations have already begun for X-Mormon of the Year — add your nominations here! And nominations for the Brodie Awards will begin this coming week, probably Wednesday.
Is it just me, or is the imaginary-persecution “War on Christmas” getting a little old? It’s just more and more painfully obvious that the only ones who repressed Christmas in the US were Christians. I just learned from this amusing review that Kirk Cameron saved Christmas (in his movie of that name) from another Christian who wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about the grotesque bacchanalia of consumerism that is our modern Christmas celebration. I had just assumed he was saving it from a cabal of atheists and Jews who were forcing people to say “Happy Holidays”, but nope! It turns out that if you are a Christian who prefers a calm, spiritual Christmas celebration, then you are the problem, and Kirk Cameron needs to save Christmas from you.
Visiting family for the holidays has been awkward for some of the non-believing, but it gets better. This season can be a time of embracing those who are different. Even LDS Inc. wishes you a Merry Christmas!
In other fun, ’tis the season for Santa Claus apologetics!
I imagine many of you are spending your holidays watching the new Star Wars film with your families, but let’s not lose sight of what’s really important: eternal Star Wars families. Finally Darth Vader has been baptized for the dead:
In a solemn ceremony performed at the Salt Lake City Temple on Monday, 12-year-old Kyle Whiteler was baptized by proxy for and on behalf of Anakin Skywalker, who is dead.
“I feel good knowing that whatever sins he committed during his life—blowing up Alderaan, cutting off Luke’s hand—Darth Vader will have the opportunity to accept the gospel in the afterlife now,†said Whiteler.
Surprisingly, some discussions from the past few weeks didn’t center on Star Wars or Christmas! Alex shared his exit story. This podcast examines the claim that Mormonism is a distinct religious tradition rather than another denomination of Christianity.
In the Book of Mormon, we learn that you’re really not doing people a favor by proselytizing. Also, the Jesus-as-ransom thing is problematic.
Well, that’s it for this week! I hope you’re having a lovely holiday season — and please start gathering up links to all of your favorite blogs posts, podcasts, books, songs, poems, comics, etc., of 2015 for the upcoming Brodie Awards!!!
Tech note: We have had some intermittent server problems. It was actually a problem at the data center hosting my server. It appears to be fixed now, and I hope it stays that way…
“Jesus-as-ransom” points back to here
@1 Thanks for catching that! I had put in two links for that sentence because I had at first thought there were two different cartoons on “Good Reason”, and I forgot to clean it up.