Upward Thought

I recorded a video in response to a YouTube comment some time ago. It was queued up for release in about a month, but I figured I'd release it today instead to try to get the most recent round of comments on money out and done with, so we can all move on to more important things. I received an email today (Feb 28, 2024) from a friend who asked me what I thought about a post Denver Snuffer had written recently about ministers receiving donations. Since I don’t keep tabs on what Denver’s up to, I didn’t know about it, so I went to read it. The first post I read was dated February 25th, and I highly recommend everyone read it. He makes some wonderful points that are much needed. It is always best to first give offenders the opportunity to answer your criticisms. You never know if there is a simple misunderstanding, or whether there is an opportunity for you to learn something beyond what you know. That being said, I do have disagreements with Denver about what the Lord’s equality lo

This is an email exchange from "Weak Men Make Monstrous Women." The email Hey Rob, That's a great video.  Thanks for the very helpful info.  I will be sharing this with my sons, with my wife listening.  I can tell you spent a lot of time preparing your thoughts and the slides. Where do you get this information from?  Is it personal experience or revelation or both?  It's incredibly valuable. I can see things I will stop doing NOW.  I have vented to my wife for a long time about issues at work.  NO MORE!  I couldn't see the effects.  I'm just letting off steam, I'm not asking her to fix anything.  Now, I know It makes me look weak and gives her future ammo.  She is not my emotional strength, she is not my support, I am her rock, not the other way around.  She's not my best friend.  I'm her husband.  She's not my mommy.   [I had a conversation with her about expectations in our marriage.] She has already made some changes. [She continues to make

A while back, I was wondering what more I could do to help my kids develop into their potential as adults. I was looking for another way I could share with them more of what God has taught me about the gospel and the scriptures, and I thought a good way of doing that would be to show them how asking questions was the next layer on the foundation of scripture reading and familiarity. I thought about what extra skills could be learned through this, from research to note-taking to essay writing. I decided I would experiment with having them spend their Sunday mornings between daily chores and lunch finding the answer to a question they cared about, then writing up an essay explaining the question and answer as they would to a stranger. I figured that spending a few hours each week thinking and writing, let alone about the most important things, would yield immense dividends for their lives. The initial work for us as parents was not negligible. Their questions were awful, so I had to spen

A while back, I saw this video recommended , and gave it a peek. The speaker's thesis is that alcohol offers absolutely zero advantages.  All-or-nothing perspectives are common on this and many other topics. It's much harder to deal with  sophisticated pros and cons. It's easier to tell an alcoholic to never set foot in a bar again than it is to teach them how to properly evaluate the cost and benefit of each opportunity to drink. Imagine how simple it would be to program a robot to do the first versus the second. And yet, how successful are the all-or-nothing lessons?  Here's the problem with oversimplifying sophisticated problems into simple problems: you have to lie to do it. And when anyone figures out that you are, they aren't going to bother to listen carefully to everything else you say in order to extract out what value might be therein. And that's a shame, because you might have some really good points.  I scanned the comments out of curiosity for how i

She says that women compare their current person to all the best qualities of the prior people she dated, and the more boyfriends a lady has before marriage, the less happy she will be and more likely she will divorce her husband. ...And she is right! Prior relationships are not experience. They are baggage.

Here is a crazy woman arguing several insane points: 1) A wife has a duty to initiate sex with her husband. 2) A wife who withholds sex from her husband is emotionally abusing him. 3) A wife who withholds sex from her husband is breaking her marriage promises. ...and I happen to agree with her. I also believe you can swap husband and wife in each point above and it holds true the other way. We need to start seeing the withholding of sex within marriage in the same light as other forms of sexual infidelity (e.g. pornography, affairs with others), because they are all forms of adultery.

A viewer of this video made this comment: "A question please.  Overall, I’m largely aligned with this approach and ultimately, do see what many provide as ‘charity’ as the wrong kind of benefit.  However, i get a different mental picture of some types of interactions with those in need versus what I have reading the scriptures about the poor. One such passage is in Mos 4:16-27 where it speaks of beggars and givers, and even tying it to retaining a remission of sins.  I’ve struggled with this balance of giving when I know the person asking knowing put themselves there(but many don’t).  Would it be wrong to state we owe the poor and needy much more than we think? I imagine we give far less than the savior would in our shoes in general. But to your point, you actually do more damage than good in some circumstances.  I’m left with the vague conclusion …it depends:)" Anytime we are vague about God's will, it's a good time to ask him some questions. He doesn't want us t

A viewer made the following comment to this video : "I can relate to the deep emotions that can open up through nature. Recently, I had a mini insomnia episode (due to life circumstances) and decided to go walking right before the sun came up. As the sun started to rise, I could see Venus piercing through the darkness. I was overcome and started crying. I tried to share it with two people who are dear to me with some relevant scriptures about the bright and morning star. The pictures from my phone couldn't do the scene justice." I wrote this reply, then moved it here to increase visibility: A long time friend of mine once told me that he hated when men cried in YouTube videos because he felt that they would only do so for effect and not sincerity, or because they were weak. Knowing he's seen a few of my videos, I said "shots fired!" But knowing him well, I said "you know that time I asked you if you had ever felt bliss--overwhelming joy, and you said yo

Comment People will hold onto internally inconsistent ideas - ideas that contradict each other - rather than putting forth the effort to reconcile the contradictions. If you point out the contradictions, it is almost certainly a waste of time. I know I have some of those contradictions myself. I have actively been working to resolve them, and over the years have been able to resolve many - or rather I have allowed the spirit to resolve them. The majority of people will completely reject the spirit if the truth is too uncomfortable or if it would shake their paradigm too much. People's paradigms need to be radically shaken, in general. And I don't see it happening until - just like a dog getting housebroken - their noses are forcefully pushed in their "accidents" while they get rebuked by the Lord. Reply I agree with your assessment of the majority of people. However, it is so important to try anyway, even though it is almost certainly a waste of time.  An unfortunate

The key to the chapters you don't understand is the chapters you think you do. Become a better person and the meaning of mysteries will more easily yield to your efforts to unlock them. A key: any remaining facets of a mystery you are trying to investigate are strong evidence that the part you think you have figured out is wrong. God solves the whole puzzle, and the more of the puzzle that remains, its geometrically more likely that you are further off than you think. This video had some related points.

I received an email from a donor asking when the new site will be up. Here's my response: Thank you for your support. We are rolling out features as we get them finished. We have a lot of ideas of how to make it better than what YouTube and a blog offer. Two of my sons are doing most of the development, volunteering an hour per weekday and more time on weekends. My primary concern is writing books, but I try to circle back weekly on the site progress, in addition to handling anything that no one else can do. Last I heard, the finishing touches are being made on the combined search (books + blog + videos), which will show you the matching text results (including transcripts of videos). But we are due for a check in. So any day now you should see a beta version of that, and if not, in another week or two. I have to check with the team, but I think the next highest priority is getting the first version of the integrated video comments and forum up. That will probably take a few more w

I came across a sermon by a preacher I'm not familiar with that I quite enjoyed. I've got it linked here from the point where I think it gets interesting . I highly recommend that all Christian men listen to it. I have a lot of points to share that overlap with this theme, but there are more important things in my queue. Suffice it to say that there are so many married Christian men whose ignorance or abdication of their role has enabled their wives to become quite monstrous and do terrible things. It's a huge problem.

Someone recently wrote me saying that they find the materials by others that I pass along helpful, encouraging me to continue to do so. This morning, I stumbled upon a series of videos from Jane Farrer directed toward wives. I think the material is quite good, and I recommend watching and sharing it with others. I made a playlist of the four parts.