I was riding in the car with my seven-year-old son on Saturday, and a great ZZ Top song came on (“Sharp Dressed Man”). I turned up the volume, and my son said, “Dad, could you turn that down?”

“Why?”

“Because the Spirit can’t be there when there’s loud music.”

Yikes! What is my son learning in Primary? Could it be that he is learning that all of my favorite music from the 1970s and early 1980s is “bad.” How dare those teachers impugn my music?

But the more I thought about it, the more grateful I became to these teachers (whoever they are). And here’s why: it is a good thing when your kids are exposed to different ideas that are in line with what the prophets teach.

Let’s be frank: a lot of the loud music I listened to (and still love) from my youth is simply inappropriate, especially if you listen to the lyrics. My favorite bands — Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, AC/DC — sing some pretty raunchy songs. I have heard them so many times that I stop listening to the lyrics. But a lot of the songs have curse words or are clearly just extended sexual innuendoes (ahem, “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin).

So, I am glad my son is hearing this in Primary.

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This is some great reporting by McKay Coppins from Buzzfeed. It turns out the the people behind the anti-Muslim video also run an anti-Mormon web site. You can read more here.

Steve Klein, one of the men behind the anti-Muslim video tied to riots in the Middle East and North Africa, doesn’t restrict his fervor to attacks on Islam: He also runs one of the most prominent anti-Mormon sites on the web.

Klein, an insurance agent and Christian activist from California, has become the face of the movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” promoting it in the press as movie’s director is, reportedly, in hiding.

His most recent foray into religious provocation though, was hardly his first. In 1977, Klein founded a group called Courageous Christians United, whose main focus is to expose Mormonism and Islam — both “false religions” and “cults” according to Klein — with protests outside their places of worship, low-rent media productions like the now-viral Youtube video, and SEO-efficient web properties.

By the way, I watched “Innocence of Muslims” on Youtube, and it is horrible, not worth the effort, highly offensive, disgraceful, etc. I’m sure the anti-Mormon web site (which we will not promote here) is equally as bad.

Elder Cook had a very interesting article in the September “Ensign.” You can read that article here.

Here is the highlight:

My challenge is that we join with people of all faiths who feel accountable to God in defending religious freedom so it can be a beacon for morality. We caution you to be civil and responsible as you defend religious liberty and moral values. We ask that you do this on the Internet and in your personal interactions in the neighborhoods and communities where you live. Be an active participant, not a silent observer.

So, the good news is that many people reading this have already taken the first step because they are on the internet looking at a faithful LDS blog that promotes religious liberty and moral values. So, congratulations to all readers.

But of course this talk also raises all kinds of questions, like what does Elder Cook mean by “morality.”
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I link this with very few comments. Wayne Alynn Root, the 2008 Libertarian VP candidate, has left the Libertarian party and is backing Mitt Romney. He says:

When I asked if he was now backing Mitt Romney, Root responded, “I am,” adding, “I don’t deny that Romney and Ryan aren’t libertarians, but Romney is a pro-business capitalist and Obama is a Marxist-socialist.”

“The economy has been trashed. This is about my kids’ future, it’s about my businesses,” said Root. “There is no hope for America if Obama is re-elected.”

Bob Barr, the 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate, also says he will back Romney.

Some of the more conservative churches have decided to reject a new translation of the New International Version Bible (Known as the NIV 2011) because of changes in how the Bible treats gender.

This story about how the more conservative Lutherans rejected the NIV 2011 is fascinating.

Here is an example of how the new version changes the language and an explanation of why this is not acceptable to the more conservative churches:

Genesis 1:26-27 in NIV 2011 reads: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind [collective noun substitution for “man”] in our image, in our likeness, so that they [the plural pronoun is in the original] may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind [collective noun substitution for “man”] in his own image, in the image of God he created them [plural pronoun substitution for “him”]; male and female he created them.”

In the first substitution of “mankind” for “man,” the particularity of the first man is made unclear. The rationale for this would seem to be the desire to emphasize that all humanity is created in God’s image, but the original text itself had made that abundantly clear already by paralleling “man” in the first clause of verse 26 with “they” in the following clause. In verse 27, the second substitution of “mankind” for “man” again undermines the particularity of Adam’s creation. Moreover, when coupled with the substitution of “them” for “him” as the verse continues, the progression of the verse is obfuscated. The original verse itself progresses from the particular creation of Adam-the one man who is father of all creation, created in God’s image, and in whom all will die through his sin (Rom 5:12)-to the male and female, which is paralleled to him. The original text then preserves both the particularity and universality which NIV 2011 undermines.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/lutherans-latest-to-reject-new-niv-bible-over-gender-language-81060/#k33p3jhF7MPLu2LV.99

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