Learning to Dance in the Rain

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Modern scriptures for the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints keep the King James Version style of ancient Biblical scripture in their latter-day scripture.  This can make understanding passages difficult sometimes.  By understanding a few writing habits used by prophets, several oft-quoted scriptural passages can be better understood.  In this post I discuss one of these: the use of the word "only".

Let me first propose that often the word "only" can and should be substituted with the word "except".  Let me give you some examples of where this will seem obvious if you think about it a bit:

Alma 38

  9 And now, my son, I have told you this that ye may learn wisdom, that ye may learn of me that there is no other way or means whereby man can be saved, only [except] in and through Christ. Behold, he is the life and the light of the world. Behold, he is the word of truth and righteousness.

D&C 89

  5 That inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father, only [except] in assembling yourselves together to offer up your sacraments before him.

D&C 104

  71 And there shall not any part of it be used, or taken out of the treasury, only [except] by the voice and common consent of the order.

D&C 121

  41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only [except] by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;

I hope these few examples demonstrate that sometimes a point is made in the negative, and then followed by the word "only" and a provision for a single allowed scenario.  In modern English we use the word "except" in these instances.  In fact a keyword search for the phrases "only by" and "only in" in the scriptures shows that when the word is found in this pattern, it always uses the "except" meaning. (At least in all the scriptures I could check out).

There is one instance in scripture that is similar to the foregoing examples, but I recently met someone who interpreted the word "only" in the scripture to mean its usual literal meaning (which would end up meaning almost the opposite of what I believe was the intended interpretation).  It comes from the Word of Wisdom:

D&C 89

  12 Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

  13 And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only [except] in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

Consider the meaning of verse 13 if you interpret the word "only" the way we typically use it today: that we should not only eat the flesh of beasts in times of winter, cold and famine but in other times as well.  But since this followed the negative-only-allowance pattern if we replace "only" with "except", we see that we should not eat the flesh of beasts except in times of winter, cold or famine.

As further confirmation that this "except" word was the intended meaning of verse 13, consider the two verses that follow it:

  14 All grain is ordained for the use of man and of beasts, to be the staff of life, not only for man but for the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and all wild animals that run or creep on the earth;

  15 And these hath God made for the use of man only in times of famine and excess of hunger.

This time the word "only" is not preceded by a negative phrase, and we keep the word "only" there. Since it is a grammatically simple sentence it is easy to see that God intends us to only eat the meat of beasts in famine or excess of hunger. 

As a side note, I think members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could live this commandment more faithfully than many of us do.  I enjoy my meat as well as the next Mormon, but I’m trying to be better.  I did have a friend who had done his research on the culture where people had the longest average lifespan.  The only unique thing in that culture that he could attribute the longer lifespan to was their dietary habit of eating a small portion of meat only once per year.

Once again, a barrel of laughs.

Where do smokers get the idea that they’re not subject to littering laws and decency?  We’re all taught not to litter, so how come every smoker I’ve ever seen discard a cigarette butt has done it on the ground instead of an ash tray?  There are some smoking areas where there must be hundreds of them on the ground.  Whether it’s from their moving car, at the bus stop, or outside their office building.

Come on, smokers.  If you’re going to injure yourselves and others through smoke and second-hand smoke, the least you could do is respect property and cleanliness.  Use an ashtray already!

In response to several requests for feature enhancements that I do not have time to provide and several requests for the source code, I have created the Ward Photo Directory project on CodePlex. 

The source code will be uploaded shortly, but the setup program for version 1.1 is already there for download.

Now as a personal request: if you download the source code in order to make a change, please consider contributing back to the project in one of the following ways (in ascending order of preference):

1. Add a comment here or shoot me an email with what you’re doing so I know what’s going on and how people are using the software. 
2. Add an Issue to the Issue Tracker for the feature you want to see fixed or added.
3. If you fix the issue yourself in a generalized way, please either send a patch back to me or ask to be added as a developer on the project so you can check in your changes to help everyone else who is using the program.

So my previous post about how to generate a ward photo directory PDF in just a couple minutes has generated some great feedback.  I hadn’t realized the hard-coded values (like my ward name!) that was in the version I published.  I’ve just uploaded version 1.1 that allows some additional customization:

1. Change the ward name
2. Select which families get included

I also disabled the Upload to Ward Web Site button because it had code in it that is hard-coded for my old ward, and until I can get admin rights to at least one more ward I won’t be able to generalize it.

To download Ward Photo Directory v1.1, visit my previous post and make sure you follow the installation steps.  The link to download the app has already been updated to the new version.

All wards publish their membership directory in some form or another for their members.  Some wards (including student wards) very often publish a photo directory to help members get to know each other better, and to help a member recall the name with a face.  Creating ward photo directories has been a laborious task, but it doesn’t need to be any more.  I’ve written a program that can generate your directory for you!

Oh, and as a bonus feature, with just a click you can upload all your membership photos to your ward web site on lds.org.  Your photos are automatically resized as necessary.  What used to be a painful, tedious and slow process is now completely automated!  Yay!

All it takes is an MLS membership export and a directory full of member photos (sorry, you still have to round up each member family and get their photo).  It produces a nicely-formatted PDF with every family, listing phone numbers and address, and children’s names. 

This program is free.  Follow these steps to download, install, and use it:

1. Download and install the prerequisites: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft Visual J# redistributable, Microsoft Windows Installer.  These total 28MB, and I’ve never seen an MLS computer connected to the Internet, so I suggest you download it all to a thumb drive at once.
2. Download the program: Ward Photo Directory installer
3. Install the program and start it.  You should see a screen like this:
   
4. On this first "MLS Import" tab, you can either open a file exported from MLS or you can paste the data directly from the clipboard that was prepared by MLS.  Follow the directions at the bottom of this step in the wizard to prepare the data.
5. Under the "Photos" tab, choose the directory to import photos from.  The photos must be named by family name or head of household.  The program has some limited intelligence to figure out which photo goes with which membership record. 
   
6. Under the "Hide Details" tab, include the geographic information that is common to most/all ward members.  You can reduce clutter in the directory by leaving out obvious parts of addresses like the state and area code your ward lives in.
7. When you get to the "Output" tab, you’re done.  Just generate your directory:
   
8. Choose a PDF quality and after a few moments a PDF pops up.  Don’t be too discouraged by the progress bar during generation.  It does all its movement at the end (poor progress bar).  Here is a sample of what it looks like (blurred deliberately to protect the innocent):
   
9. If you want to upload your photos to your ward web site on lds.org, you can!  Just click the appropriate button on the last screen of the program.  It will prompt you for your lds.org username and password (as it needs it to go and upload photos).  It will likely take several minutes to do it’s work, but I guarantee the time ratio had you done it manually is at about 15:1. 

Where do I get "two minutes" from?  Well, once you have the pictures and are familiar with the program, you can regenerate your PDF in about two minutes from start to finish.  Once you see how easy PDF generation is, you’ll probably want to update your photo directory more frequently than you used to.  My last student ward likes to print out an updated copy each week for 2-3 weeks allowing members to pass it around and mark corrections on it.  Then the final prints out and they make copies for everyone.  It helps keep MLS updated too!

I hope you find this program helpful.  If you do, please comment on this post and tell me what your old process was like.  And hey, I take feature requests. :)  If you’re a programmer too and want the source, comment on that, too.  If I get enough interest in collaborative development I’ll consider open-sourcing the program. 

Copyright and license info: this software includes NFOP, an open-source product licensed under the Apache Software License. 

And this shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.

And after that, those who have thus been tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually; and this shall be a standing law unto them forever, for my holy priesthood, saith the Lord.

Doctrine and Covenants 119:3-4

Background

I grew up being taught to give 10% of everything I earned to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as tithing.  If I got a job and was paid $10, I paid $1 to the bishop the next Sunday in tithing.  Pure and simple.
Then I grew up, made a bit more money, and tracked it using Intuit Quicken, then Microsoft Money.  Living alone and making more money than I spent, I felt comfortable paying tithing in lump sums a few times a year rather than every time I made money.  This worked well for me when I was single.  Being married, making more money and having more expenses brought me back to paying tithing almost after every paycheck. 
I am a full tithe payer, and have been for all my life. I feel that God has blessed me with good jobs and low expenses (fewer broken down things) because I live the law of tithing.

Problem

The problem is that I have found paying tithing to be necessarily much more complicated in recent years.  “No!” you say?  “It’s just 10%.  It’s only complicated if you make it so (perhaps to find loopholes).”  I beg to differ.  Allow me to explain.

Scenario P: the one you learned in primary

I used to calculate the tithing I needed to pay with this formula:

That worked well when my only source of income came in the form of checks in the mail or direct deposit.  Adding up the sum of a direct increase like that is easy.  If you keep your money in an interest bearing bank account, then you include that as income.  Same for gifts we receive. 
But this simple scenario can get more complicated:

Scenario 1: deposits that “jump” above the tithing line

You receive a check in the mail, you deposit it to your bank account.  A day or two later, before the check clears the bank and is posted to your account, you are adding up your income using a computer accounting program (like Quicken or Money).  The uncleared deposit may not show up in your account register if you download all your statements online into your program.  You sum up what appears though and pay tithing on it.  You add a line to your computer register stating that you paid tithing on that date.
By the time you next pay tithing, that deposit of yours has cleared and is added to your register — with a date that predates the time you last paid tithing!  When you add up your income from the last tithing date in your register the next time, since that check is now above the “last paid tithing” line, your eyes miss it, and you don’t include it in your sum of money to pay tithing on.  As a result, that money never gets tithed.
Now, obviously there are ways to prevent this from happening, including writing your checks as deposits into your register when you first get them.  But this is a simplified example to a problem that was a little harder for me to solve.

Scenario 2: Reimbursable expenses and resold possessions

You spent $10 to prepare for a church activity and the church paid you back with a check.  Do you pay tithing on it?  I’ll stick my neck out and suggest that you don’t.  It wasn’t income, it was a reimbursement, and put you back to where you started.  And this deposit in your bank account should be excluded from the sum of tithable income you calculate. 
You sold your kitchen table and bought a better one.  You bought the original one for $100 and sold it for $20 at your garage sale.  Do you pay tithing on the $20?  Again, I’ll stick my neck out and say no.  You paid tithing on the $100 before you bought the table.  To pay tithing on the $20 would be tithing that money twice.  To make this a little more obvious, say you returned the new table you bought to the store and got all your money back.  Do you pay tithing on the credit to your charge card?  Of course not.  If you did, then buying and returning a $100 table ten times would cost you $100 just in tithing.  That’s absurd.  Assuming you’re with me on this, that’s another line to exclude from your tithable income sum.

Scenario 3: owning a home

Now you own your home.  You purchased it at price $X and now it’s worth $Y.  Maybe the current price is higher and maybe it’s lower than when you bought it.  That doesn’t matter too much because you haven’t sold it — yet.  When you do sell, presumably you’ll pay tithing on the profit that you’ll hopefully make from an increase in real estate value in your area, or improvements you’ve made to your home.  Ah, speaking of improvements you’ve made, does that take away from the profit?  What if you’ve spent $10,000 building up your home and sold it for $15,000 more than you bought it for?  Do you pay tithing on a $5,000 profit or $15,000?  You probably have an answer ready to give me.  And I’ll bet 50% of my readers agree with you.

Scenario 4: private contracting work

You may take on an extra job that you can do from home from time to time.  Maybe these types of jobs form a sort of side-business for you that you buy supplies for.  At what point do you stop paying tithing directly on the income generated from your side job and only pay tithing on what you “take home” after paying your side-business expenses for your equipment/supplies? 
If you don’t believe that point should ever come, ask yourself whether FedEx would stay in business long if they paid 10% on tithing for all their income before expenses.  You’re not FedEx?  I know that.  But there must be a line between your side-business and FedEx which defines where you stop paying tithing until after your expenses.  Where is it?  I’m not here to draw it for you.  (sorry!)  But if your decision includes any expenses paid prior to tithing income at all, that complicates the math in your computer accounting program.

Scenario 5: stock market — gains, losses, and dividends, oh my!

Add to the last scenario a stock portfolio with several stocks and mutual funds in it.  Maybe you are only investing into your retirement and won’t sell until you retire or maybe you are shooting for short-term capital gains and plan to buy and sell stocks throughout each and every year up to retirement.  Now add a VUL life insurance policy.  Don’t forget the traditional and Roth IRAs and 401k.  You may have stocks that pay dividends. 
When do you pay tithing, and on what?  Do you pay tithing on the money you make before you invest it in your retirement?  When do you pay tithing on the increase you earn (each day, each year, whenever you sell)?  What if you lose money when you sell?  If you are successful in your investments, you may sell your investments 40 years from now at a 800% profit — which earnings you didn’t pay tithing until for 40 years.  Is that a problem? (rhetorical question)
The stock market is the most complicating element to the story, and the one that forced me to rethink how I calculated tithing.  Not everyone is in the stock market.  Those who aren’t probably don’t get salaries or (good) benefits at their jobs or else they’d at least have a 401k plan.  Some feel the stock market is no better than gambling in Las Vegas.  That argument is beyond the scope of this article. 

Finding the solution

These scenarios, all of which were true for me, made it difficult for me to feel comfortable that I was paying a full and honest tithe.  I wanted to find a new formula for calculating tithing that would fulfill these goals:

1. Provide the sense of a full and honest tithe.
2. Protect against paying tithing twice on the same money.
3. Ensure that all money that should be tithed would be tithed when it should be.
4. Flexibility in determining what is tithable income and what is not.  (thus making the solution applicable whether you pay on gross or net income, or whether you claim other “exemptions” such as reimbursable expenses and other such items I discussed earlier.)
5. Simple enough that you can explain it to your spouse (if you have one) and have him/her be comfortable that he/she is a full tithe payer with you.
6. One you’d feel comfortably justified in explaining to the bishop should he ask you about it.

As tithing settlement was coming up in a couple of months, I said a prayer on my way to a recent Stake Conference that the Lord would inspire me with a solution that would suit Him and me (and my wife). 
What I ultimately came up with I believe was simple and inspired, although to you it is by definition nothing more than heresay because I do not have authority to receive revelation for you.  You may agree or disagree with the solution I share with you here.  That’s ok.  I’m hoping that you will either feel good about this solution and apply it to yourself, or that you will be inspired with one that is correct for you. 

The solution

Here is the new formula to calculate tithing anually:

So simple.  Why this formula?  Well doctrinally it seems to be the most literal and correct interpretation of the scriptures: “pay one-tenth of all their interest annually.”  Let’s break the equation into bits to see how it works with the scriptural law of tithing. 

• “pay one-tenth of…” gives you the “0.10 *” part.  In math-speak, of is translated as multiplication.  I doubt we have any problems understanding this.
• “…all their interest…” where interest has been interpreted to mean increase by modern-day prophets.  It’s fair and accepted to define increase as the amount you have now that is more than what you had before.  No criteria of “money” is expressed or implied here.  It includes money and everything else you possess.  As examples:

  Before	Now	Increase
  Broke and homeless	Broke and homeless	None
  Broke without a car	Broke with a car	Car
  $10	$100	$90
  $10	$90 and a new book	$80 and a new book

  We don’t pay tithing in kind (oh wait, maybe we do!) typically, so this table needs to be updated to replace the things with money values.

  Before	Now	Increase
  $0	$0	$0
  $0	$0 + $500 (assuming car is worth $500)	$500
  $10	$100	$90
  $10	$90 + $10 (assuming book is worth $10)	$90

  See how this reveals increases both in kind and in money?  In words, this means that I owe tithing on money I made and saved, and on money I made and spent.  Fair enough, right?  Every dollar you made, you either saved or spent, right?  Simple. 

• “…annually” means you are accountable to the Lord for your increase exactly once per year.  Not once per paycheck, not once a month, but yearly. 

So why is this solution so elegant?  Well, hopefully you can reason with me that it’s fair.  It’s a full and honest tithe based on simple and apparent scriptural interpretation.  And as you’ll see next, actually implementing this formula is much easier in the complex scenarios described above than just trying to pay 10% on dollars as you earn them.

Implementation strategy 

With the old formula of 10% of everything you earn that you learned in Primary, you could calculate exactly how much tithing you owed every time you made money.  With the new formula you can calculate exactly how much tithing you owe exactly once per year.  I discuss how to pay tithing more frequently below, if you’re interested.  There are several questions that came to my mind as I began implementing this method of tithing calculation that I have found answers to, and I include them in this section below. 

How to calculate your net worth

Mathematically speaking, net worth = assets – liabilities.  In concept, net worth represents all that you own, minus what you owe.  If you had a bike yesterday and today you have a bike and a scooter, your net worth increased by the value of your scooter, and your total net worth is your bike and scooter together.  Taking in all the complexities of the above scenarios, net worth is the sum of your bank accounts, your house’s market value, your car, your investment portfolio, the cash value of your life insurance policy, and subtracted from that would be your credit card balance, whatever you may owe on your home, student loans, etc.  If you’re in a lot of debt, you may have a negative net worth.  If you own a $100,000 home and have 5% equity in it, you would have a net worth of $100,000 – $95,000 = $5,000 considering only your home. 
The easiest way to calculate your net worth is to let your computer accounting program figure it for you.  Microsoft Money does this in the Account List view if you look at the bottom line “Total Account Balance”.  Another way of course would be to go through each of your assets and liabilities and add them up by hand.

How to calculate your annual spending

Annual spending is how much money you’ve spent that is no longer reflected by your net worth. 
Key to calculating spending correctly is to exclude money transfers within your own accounts.  So if you write a check to move money from one account to another, that’s a transfer and not “spending” by this definition.  Likewise, if you are paying a mortgage, the amount of what you pay that actually reduces the loan’s principle is a transfer of money from your bank account into the liability account that represents your loan.  The loan interest that you pay is “spending”.  The reason we don’t include mortgage principle portion of mortgage payments is that “transferring” money to your liability account is moving your net worth from your checking account to your house, but your net worth is actually the same.  If I have $100,000 in cash and a $100,000 house in which I have 0% equity, then I really have a net worth of $0.  If I put $50,000 of my cash into my house to give myself 50% equity, then my net worth should not have changed as a result of just that money transfer.  But if you considered that “spending”, then that’s $50,000 of spent money, plus you “magically” got $50,000 of bonus equity in your house, resulting in a net worth increase of $50,000 when you didn’t actually earn anything. Considering mortgage principle payments “transfers” in your computer accounting program makes this all work out for you.
A very easy way to get an accurate spending sum is to categorize each expenditure you make, and reserve a few categories for non-spending purposes.  Some examples include “Reimbursable expenses” and any categories you use for transfers between accounts.  When you generate your spending report using your accounting program, you should include all expense categories except for these special categories that aren’t “spending”.  Also, be sure that any returns for prior purchases show up as a credit to your account under the same category as the expense did.  That will reverse the “spending” amount calculated for that purchase and you won’t be paying tithing twice on the same money.

What about when you buy/sell a car?

I suggest that you include your car when calculating your net worth.  Create a “car” account. 
If you paid for your car all upfront, create a money “transfer” from your bank account to your car account so that the balance in your car account equals the price you paid. 
If you bought your car with a loan, create a car loan liability account as well as your car account and transfer the purchase price from your loan account to your car account to create the necessary deficit in the liability account and the value in your car.  This will keep your net worth from changing at all, which is good, since you haven’t earned anything, and you don’t really own the car yet as the bank really does.  For each car payment you make, split the payment into two categories (in Money one transaction can be associated to multiple categories through the Split feature), using one Transfer category for the principle payment into your loan account, and a Bank Charge category (or some other non-transfer, spending category) for the part of your payment that is for interest.
While you own the car, leave the value of the car as recorded in your car account alone.  It’s needless work to calculate reducing value with time until you sell it. 
When you sell your car, whatever reduction in value you suffered in your car should be recorded in your car account as some spending category that reflects car usage.  For example, suppose you bought your car for $10,000 and sold it a few years later for $4,000.  You essentially spent $6,000 of your car’s value by driving it.  The other $4,000 you recovered by selling it while it still had value.  Your car account should reflect this.  Once you enter your “spending” of the car’s value so that the account shows $4,000, record a Transfer of funds of $4,000 from your car account to your bank account (where you’ll deposit the check the buyer wrote to you) to reflect the transfer of money. 
By doing it this way, throughout the whole process of buying, owning and selling your car your net worth and your expenditure records accurately reflect the real world, and your tithing formula will accurately tell you how much tithing you owe. 
What is really happening to your tithing when you buy a car using this method?  Well if you buy the car outright, then you paid or will pay tithing on the money you purchased the car with in the same year you earned the money.  If you used a car loan, then you pay tithing on the money as you earn it and pay the loan off.  So you end up paying tithing the same time and amounts that you would by calculating tithing your old way.  But this way it’s implicit in the process and you don’t have to do extra work.

What about a garage sale or other small sale of things you own?

For each item that you sell, if you were including its value in your net worth, then you need to transfer that value back into some other bank account in the form of cash.  Read about the process for buying and selling cars elsewhere in this post.
For each item that you sell that was originally purchased just under a “spending” category in your accounting program and that was not included in your net worth after it was purchased, selling it and putting the money back into your bank account looks like a gain and the tithing formula will tithe you on that gain unless you either 1) spend the cash you earn without ever telling the computer about it, or 2) mark the deposit of that cash in some spending category instead of an income category.  Recording a deposit as an expense rather than an income category effectively creates a “tithing exemption” for the deposit, similar to a deposit for a purchased item that was returned to the store. 

What if you want to pay tithing more frequently?

Simple.  Estimate your tithing by multiplying your regular paycheck amount by 10% and pay that each time you are paid.  At the end of your yearly tithing cycle, you can use the tithing formula that is based on your net worth to calculate exactly how much tithing you owe for the whole year, subtract from that how much you’ve paid periodically, and know what your outstanding balance is.
The risk you run when paying tithing to the bishop more frequently than annually is that if you anticipate a large gain in your net worth and end up with a small gain or even a loss (if most of your money is in the stock market and it took a downturn) you may end up paying tithing that you don’t owe.  You can’t get the bishop to write you a “tithing refund” check like you can get the government to write you a tax refund. 
A safe way to avoid over-paying your tithing while ensuring that you have enough money to pay tithing with at the end of your yearly cycle is to set up a dedicated bank account (read: safe investment — not stock) and deposit your periodic tithing into that throughout the year.  When the time comes to pay your once-a-year tithing, you use the money in this bank account to pay it.  Since this bank account is part of your net worth, interest you earn on that account should be automatically included as an increase and will be factored into your calculations for tithing owed without any extra effort.

Picking your annual tithing reckoning date

Although the law of tithing doesn’t explicitly state December as the time for the annual reckoning, since tithing settlement with your bishop happens in December that may be the most natural choice.  Does it have to be the day of tithing settlement or the end of the year?  No.  You could pick July 1 if you wanted.  Every July 1 you would reckon your increase and would pay tithing on that increase based on your net worth on July 1 of this year as compared to your net worth from July 1 of last year, plus any money you spent during that same period. 
I will add that some arbitrary date picked to fall before a tithing settlement could possibly be scheduled may make it easier for you to declare yourself a full tithe payer.  (Imagine yourself declaring yourself a full tithe payer when you haven’t paid tithing that year at all yet, since you were waiting until Dec 31 at 11:59 AM to calculate your worth). It should technically work, but I think it would be awkward.

Net or gross?

I’ve actually heard “answers” given to “do I pay tithing on my net or gross income” more frequently than I’ve heard the question itself asked.  From what I am aware of, I believe the correct answer to this question is to merely quote the doctrinal law of tithing to the questioning party and leave it to him/her to interpret. 

Summary

I hope this has helped you.  If you think of other scenarios, or if you have questions or comments, please add those comments at the end of this post.  I look forward to hearing how helpful or not this article has been.

Other Resources

Here are some articles I have found with interesting tips on tithe paying:

• Paying tithing in-kind (using stocks)

Faith Promoting Lie (FPL): a religious story posing as fact, but with little or no bearing on an actual event; written with the intent to teach a doctrinal principle, often drawing a strong emotional response.

Before I get into the detail of FPLs and how I came to realize their potential (for good and not-so-good), a little background in how I came to know of their existence…

As missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we shared the gospel by teaching the doctrine of Christ out of the scriptures and from the teachings of modern, living prophets.  The Holy Ghost would testify to our investigators of the atonement of our Savior and of the truthfulness of what we taught about His gospel.  We would also share our own experiences living the gospel and the effect it had on our lives and testimonies.

In my particular mission, many missionaries (including myself) would collect and share posters and stories that related to the gospel.  I ended my mission with two 3″ binders full of sheet protectors with stories, articles, illustrations and teaching aids.  Most of these were for my own enjoyment.  They either came from tear-jerker emails that my family and friends would print off and mail to me or other missionaries, who probably obtained them the same way.

Some of these stories were very touching stories.  One of the most well-known of which is entitled Seminary Donuts.  I cried when I first read the story.  Since then I have heard it read by several different people to mostly tearful audiences.  It is one of those email forwards that members of the Church love to forward to all their friends — not for seven years of good luck (like those really annoying forwards), but because they believe it’s the most touching and good story they’ve heard in a long time. 

Toward the end of my mission, after I had collected probably a whole binder’s worth of these stories, I realized that these stories are lies.  Please don’t misunderstand: the gospel doctrine they teach is often (at least mostly) correct, but their claim to be a true story is simply false. 

This claim of being a true story comes in a variety of forms.  Sometimes the story itself gives the state (usually not more specific than that), names, and season that the event supposedly took place in.  Other times it just starts the story without disclaimer that it is made up, and when the story is read over the pulpit (even by a high council speaker) people mistake it as a true story when no one (even the speaker) doesn’t know the source of the story.

Inevitably, and largely due to the anonymous nature of email forwards, these FPLs have no traceable author.  The name, if given, is just a first name, or even a full name that leaves no way to look the person up (since even a full name doesn’t help look up a person if you have no idea where they live).

“But wait!” I hear you cry.  “[your favorite FPL here] is true!  I cried when I read/heard it.  Surely no one would make up a story like that.  It happened!  The story even says where it happened…”  Surely we cannot be as gullible as to believe everything we read or hear.  Crying in reaction to a story does not mean the Spirit was testifying of the story’s truthfulness.  The story itself can be emotional enough to bring tears.  Perhaps (maybe!) the Spirit itself was even there to testify of the truthfulness of the principles taught in the story, but not the story itself.

FPLs, which I now group with “Mormon folklore”, I see as a bane to our religion.  Mormons seek after and hold to truth.  FPLs pose as truth and can mislead us if we do not discern them.  “What damage does it do to believe in an FPL if it teaches good principles?”  Teaching good principles is good.  Using a story to help get a point across is fine.  Even Christ used parables (stories that never occurred) to teach the gospel.  But when the teller claims that the story actually happened when in fact it did not in order to help make the story more powerful — that’s further than Christ went and I believe is damaging to the Spirit and the delicate faith of the Saints.  Also, as long as the story is made up there is no guarantee of the purity of the principles taught.  Scriptures make a much more sure source of truth.

Let us be watchful.  I am not suggesting that we become constant skeptics in our sacrament meetings or of missionaries.  But I am suggesting that people can innocently convey falsehoods that have nevertheless touched their lives and that they want to share with others.  If you hear a story that touches you that you want to remember and perhaps even share with someone else, please take a moment and ask the source for their source of the story.  If it is a personal story of their own, ask for permission to share it with others if you would like to.  If they got it from somewhere else, see how much documented evidence of the original source you can track down.  If it’s an FPL, you won’t get far.  And you’re better off teaching verifiable truth from the official Church materials.