For the benefit of my Evangelical friends who may be reading this, let me start out with some context. Mormons do not display crosses either inside or outside their church buildings or in their homes. They don’t wear cross necklaces or glue plastic crosses to their bumpers.

Many Evangelicals wonder why Mormons seemingly avoid the cross, and many even think of Mormons as un-Christian because of it. They may cite verses such as Matt. 16:24 or Mark 8:24 in defense of their judgement, but I would submit that they are misusing the passages. Jesus did not say, “take up your plastic cross necklace and follow me.” Obviously, the cross he refers to is a metaphor for the persecution Christians face in their walk, not an actual tangible cross.

Verses like 1 Cor. 1:18 get more to the point, but still shouldn’t bother a Mormon. Mormons claim to preach the cross; they simply don’t use the symbol of the cross in public worship or displays of piety.

The LDS Viewpoint

If you ask an LDS person why she doesn’t wear a cross, she may answer you with a question of her own: “If you had a friend who was shot to death, would you wear a little gun around your neck?” Mormons see the cross as a rather ugly symbol of Christ’s death.

Mormons will often claim that they would rather dwell on Christ’s resurrection and life than his death. Instead of crosses, their buildings are adorned with simple steeples. A steeple points to heaven, symbolizing, for Mormons, the ascension of Christ after his resurrection.

A Different Perspective

Something I never realized when I was LDS is that the cross is actually a symbol of Christ’s resurrection as much as of his death. Mormons reading this might ask how I can say this.

Evangelicals make a clear distinction between a cross and a crucifix. The difference is that a cross is empty, and a crucifix bears a disheveled little figure of Jesus. The crucifix is primarily used in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and some Anglican circles. I’m not sure I’m opposed to crucifixes (I’m not necessarily opposed to steeples, either), but I, like many Protestants, definitely prefer the empty cross.

The empty cross retains the best balance in what it symbolizes. While, I believe, the crucifix overemphasizes Christ’s death and the steeple overemphasizes his resurrection, the empty cross succinctly represents both. Christ finished the work of atonement on the cross, came down from it, and has ascended to heaven.

The bottom line, of course, is that a person’s use or disuse of cross imagery should not be taken as a sign that they are a true Christian. It is nonetheless an interesting, if trivial, point of discussion.

I’ve had an overwhelming (well, for me anyway) number of comments on the site recently. While I greatly appreciate these comments, I regret that, as a college student and a newlywed, I do not have the time to respond to them individually. While I feel that discussing these issues is vitally important, I also feel I have more important matters to attend to. Consequently, I’ve decided to make some changes in the way I handle comments.

My first inclination was to disable comments entirely, but I don’t want anyone to feel censored, and I appreciate the healthy discussions that have happened here already. I’ve seen some bloggers who disable comments on more trivial articles. I’d like to start doing that, but will keep comments enabled on those articles I feel would benefit from continued discussion.

To make better use of my time, I’ve also decided to stop responding to comments in the comments section of each article. If someone posts a comment that I feel deserves an individual response, I will start a new article in reference to the comment. I may still respond now and again in the comments section, but I will try to keep such comments as short and as to-the-point as possible. I may prefer, however, to email my reply to the commenter so as to keep things more personal. I’m hoping this will free me up to write more articles, keeping fresh content on the front page.

My biggest fear is that, given the sensitive subject nature of some of my articles, the comments will turn into heated debates rather than the civil conversations I intend for them to be. If it seems like I have become heated in any of my comments, please accept my sincere apology. As I have noted here before, I don’t believe debating is very profitable. In most instances, both parties will walk away more stubborn in their respective faiths than before. I would rather work toward open-mindedness — on my part no less than my visitors. There are debate forums all over the internet where Mormons and Evangelicals drive each other into the ground over trivial issues. I’d rather not see this site go in that direction.

Once again, thanks for your comments. Keep them coming.

I’ve converted my “Info”:http://joeyday.com/info page into a WordPress “Page” (I also added a new paragraph about the wiki). Converting it required me to build a new page.php template, but that was relatively easy. I had fun adding custom fields to my pages so that each page I build can have its own title and tagline, following my “-ation” word and definition pattern. I also use a specific body id on each of my pages to facilitate styling the navbar, so that was put into a custom field as well.

With the help of a “slick plugin”:http://ryanduff.net/wp-plugins/wp-contactform, I’ve also created a “Contact”:http://joeyday.com/contact page. I’m really getting tired of spam email, and having a contact page allows me to pull all my email addresses off the site indefinitely.

I must say, the dashboard in WordPress 1.5 is a welcome addition. I’m not sure what all the hype is about, though, since Movable Type has had the same thing for as long as I can remember.

I had a few quibbles with how it was originally configured, so I’ve made a few modifications to mine.

First off, those news boxes were butt-ugly. I commented out the CSS that makes them ugly in wp-admin/wp-admin.css, and they are now a simple unordered list.

Second, the information presented was drastically unbalanced. They give you 23 WordPress news links, but only five of your most recent posts and comments. Plus, the site stats box is simply too narrow. I again edited the CSS to make the box 40% wide instead of 27%, and tweaked the wp-admin/index.php file so I get 15 of my recent posts and comments. I don’t know about you, but 30 of my links and 23 of theirs seems like a better balance to me.

I’m upgrading the site to [WordPress] 1.5. I’ve hit some snags getting comments to work with the hacks I introduced in version 1.2. I’m trying to iron them all out, but in the mean time, please bear with me.

I may keep it set on the Kubrick theme (except when I’m testing things, of course) until I get my usual theme working correctly.