My most humble apologies readers, due to my recent lack of bloggage. March has been a busy month and it doesn't look like it's slowing down any time soon.
The highlight of my month so far has been the successful registration of yours truly in the inaugural IronMan St. George for next year. Overall I'm excited about it, but every so often I get a faint glimmer of sheer terror - What have I done?!?!
There has been much work, both at the day job and for the home business. Much training, some sickness and reasonably successful attempts at being a better husband and father. Far more improvement is needed in that last area, but overall, I would have to say that the direction of improvement is still positive in nature.
I'm going to try and be a better blogger (at least on this blog) in the weeks to come, but for now, let me leave you with a thought I had yesterday...
As part of my responsibilities at Church, I sat yesterday in a class of 12 and 13 year olds, listening to the guy I teach with share a lesson (It was his week). The topic was the 2nd President of the LDS Church, a fellow by the name of Brigham Young. Mr. Young was largely responsible for the founding of Utah, at least by the Mormon Pioneers and the establishment of not only Salt Lake City, but 350+ other settlements within the state and surrounding states. He was a phenomenal worker, exceptional businessman and probably the kind of no-nonsense type person that you really want to be at the helm when undertaking something like the founding of a new state.
With that said, Mr. Young was by no means a perfect Man of God (At least not in my opinion). He did much to propagate the practice of polygamy, in and of it self an evil practice, he would also have appeared to somewhat of a power hungry, ego driven person, the unfortunate other side of the coin to the leadership abilities previously mentioned. He mishandled the travesty that was the Mountain Meadows massacre and was the originator of the flawed doctrine that those of African American descent are somehow less worthy in God's eyes than those of European Descent.
Books could and likely have been written exploring both sides of Mr. Young's life, character and personality. He accomplished much good and much bad, and it brings one to the question of how to you treat the legacy of such a man, and as someone who is raising children within the LDS Church, how do you teach this type of stuff to your kids in good conscious.
The epiphany I had yesterday (and I've kind of had it before) is that it's not about the man. He may have accomplished great things, and taught true principles, and these should stand on their own merits. As soon as you take your focus from the search for truth, and based it instead up faith in another human being, that is when you move onto dangerous ground.
It's not about the man, it's about truth. If the man teaches truth, then that's great, but it's not truth because it came from the man.
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