If there were a “Mormon of the Week” award, this week while only half over would hands down go to Michael Otterson, head of the Church’s Public Affairs.

Recently, an evangelical Christian leader named, Warren Cole Smith, came out and basically stated that a vote for Mitt Romney or any other Mormon for president was a vote for Satan and was un-American.

In the past, the Church has normally not made any statements regarding such outrageous claims.  For instance, in the last presidential election cycle, when Mitt Romney was attacked, the Church was quiet about it.

However, this time the head of the Church Public Affairs office, Michael Otterson, personally wrote a letter in the Washington Post to Warren Cole Smith.
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On her Connections blog, Donna B. Nielsen notes that the term “break the commandments” means more than just disobey.  The word “break” is the Hebrew word parar, literally meaning the act of tossing grain on the threshing floor so the oxen may tread on it and break the hulls away from the grain. Literally, it is trampled upon.

As I read her thought, I wondered how often the Bible and Book of Mormon each use the term “trample” and in what context.

The Old Testament uses it twice: Isa 63:3, where Christ will “trod the winepress” alone, in Psalms 91:3, where God will trample his enemies.

In the New Testament, there is only one verse, which comes closer to the concept of parar:

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. (Matt 7:6)

So we really do not see much in the Bible regarding such a concept. However, in the Book of Mormon, we find the word “trample” nine times! These include Christ quoting Matt 7:6 to the Nephites, but most of the quotes regard trampling either Christ or his commandments under one’s feet.  Here are a sampling:

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My blog on New Testament Gospel Doctrine lesson 23,

“Love One Another, As I Have Loved You”, Luke 22, John 13-15

is now at my blog:

Read it there / Comment here!

Finally, an international commission, which included George Schultz has officially determined that the “war on drugs” has failed.  We’ve spent decades incarcerating users, invading other nations (Panama, Bolivia, Colombia), and the drug trade is stronger than ever.

Perhaps we need a new tactic that takes the violence out of the program? Rehabilitation is much cheaper than incarceration, even if we have to send a person to rehab a dozen times in just a few years!  And if we regulate drugs as we do alcohol and tobacco, we can use the revenue to pay for that rehabilitation.  As it is, we are deep in debt, and it is only getting worse with the drug war.

Daily Beast: War on Drugs

While on a vacation/road trip this week, I had the chance to hear lots of country music, etc.  For Memorial Day, the various radio stations focused on just a few “patriotic” songs written after 9/11.  These songs include Charlie Daniels’ “This ain’t no rag, it’s a flag”, Bo Diddley’s “We ain’t scared of you (my Eagle is pissed)”, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”, Martina McBride’s “Independence Day”, and a few others.

I started thinking on the difference between these songs and the older songs that speak of “O Beautiful for Patriot’s dream”, “My country tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty”, “let freedom ring”, “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

In these songs, war is not glorified.  We do not sing about the “statue of liberty shaking its fist”, “a day of reckoning”,  or how we’re going to destroy and kill and do it with a piqued pleasure.

Doesn’t it sometimes seem like what used to be of great worth to this nation has been replaced with a cheap nationalism?

Perhaps it is time for us to return to the real principles of America?