Tag: Fear

January 25, 2023

That Gateway We Call Death

I’ve spent the majority of my professional life in the acquisition of knowledge, wisdom and skill to treat illness and help heal disease. I’ve spent almost 30 years in the practice and application of that wisdom. That’s nearly 100,000 hours of my life, dedicated to health and healing of my patients.

My greatest foes over the years are and have been ignorance, disease, distress, anxiety, depression, disability, apathy and ultimately, death. I come in contact daily with those who are seriously ill facing the very real prospect of death. Of necessity, I have come to look upon death as a formidable foe to be fought. For all conscientious doctors, death’s gateway from life threatens us as the prospect of individual defeat.

I attended the funeral of a friend today who was only a few years older than me. His life was cut short. His passing has been weighing upon my mind, as similar events occurred in the life of my brother-in-law last year, my sister a few years ago and my father before that. I find myself re-reading the words and passages I wrote a number of years ago at the time of my father’s death. I re-post them again, partially for myself, but also for any who may be pondering the gateway we call death.

The famed scientist Madame Marie Curie returned to her home the night of the funeral of her husband, Pierre Curie, who was killed in an accident in the streets of Paris. She made this entry in her diary:

Madame Marie Curie

“They filled the grave and put sheaves of flowers on it. Everything is over. Pierre is sleeping his last sleep beneath the earth. It is the end of everything, everything, everything.”

BUT IS IT?

What is this thing that men call death,

This quiet passing in the night?

Tis not the end, But Genesis

Of better worlds and greater light.

O God, touch though my aching heart,

And calm my troubled, haunting fears.

Let hope and faith, transcendent pure,

Give strength and peace beyond my tears.

There is not death, but only change

With recompense for won;

The gift of Him who loved all men,

The Son of God, the Holy One.

(G. B. Hinckley)

This blog is intended to help those struggling with their health, in particular, weight gain, diabetes and the diseases of civilization. One of those diseases frequently affecting weight is the depression and fear that accompanies the death of a loved one. Often, the answers science offers are only cold and empty, and we are required to rely upon our faith. I share some of that with you here.Every patient of every doctor, if followed long enough will pass away.
The first rule I learned in surgery is that “all bleeding stops eventually.” The inescapable rule of life is that no matter how good your treatments are, all patient’s will meet the undertaker, eventually. None of us get out of this alive.

When this happens, and it happens to all of us, a sense of sadness naturally prevails regardless of the age or nature of the deceased.

If death is to happen to all of us, then why do we feel sadness at the death of a friend or loved one?

This sadness is caused by the feeling of loss tied to three age-old unanswered questions:

Did you and I exist before we were born, and if so, where were we?
Why are we here together and what is the purpose of this life?
Where do we go when we die?

Are there answers to these questions?

When science does not have the answers, I have found great hope and answers in hidden within the teachings of my faith. I share them with you, not to preach, but in hopes that you might find peace and solace in your life as I have in mine.

The spiritual leader Wilford Woodruff said “that if the people knew what was behind the veil, they would try by every means . . . that they might get there, but the Lord in his wisdom has implanted the fear of death in every person that they might cling to life and thus accomplish the designs of their creator.” (The Gateway We Call Death, Russell M. Nelson, p.96)

The Lord explained to Moses, “For this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39)

This work and glory is referred to by a number of names including The Plan of Salvation, The Plan of Redemption, The Plan of Eternal Progression, The Plan of Happiness and others.

I often speak with people that say to me, “I just want to be happy.” Or they question me asking, “Will I ever really be happy?”

Happiness is the object and design of our existence . . . and well be the end thereof if we pursue the path that leads to it. Along this path lies virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness and keeping the commands of our Creator. So how does this help us find happiness in the face of the death of a friend or loved one?

The answers are found in contemplation of the the three age-old questions. First, where were we before we were born?

The Old Testament prophet Job, one of the more ancient writers of the Bible, gives us some insight. The Lord asked him the same question: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where was thou when I laid the foundation of the earth . . . when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:2-7)

You and I must have been somewhere – the Lord asked us where we were. And, who were all the “sons of God shouting for joy?” Why were they shouting? Where were they?

The apostle, Luke, in the New Testament answers those questions years later as he lays out the genealogy of the human family. He starts at Christ and then names each subsequent father leading up to ” . . . Enos, which is the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.” (Luke 3:38)

The apostle, John, must have had some idea of a pre-mortal existence because of the way they phrased the question to Jesus Christ about the man who was born blind, “Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2) The question was not “could he have sinned before he was born?” but instead, “who did sin?” Christ’s answer implied that both were possible, but neither was the case in this situation.

Paul writes to the Hebrews, “Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of our Spirits, and live?” (Hebrews 12:9) We are also given instruction to open our prayers with a phrase like, “Our Father in Heaven.” Hence, He is the Father of our Spirits, our Heavenly Father, our spiritual Father.

We then are brothers & sisters in the spiritual sense, and Jesus Christ is our elder brother, being the firstborn spirit child of God. If this is the case, then all of us, including you and I, were among the sons and daughters of God who shouted for joy along with Adam.

The Lord explained to Moses, “I have created all things, of which I have spoken, spiritually before they were naturally upon the face of the earth . . . for in heaven created I them.” (Moses 3:5) In addition to this, we learn from Moses that a council was held in heaven in which you and I were present. At this grand council, the plan to create this earth, including the fall of Adam, and the Atonement of Jesus Christ was presented and accepted.

There was, however, someone who opposed this plan. Lucifer rebelled and was cast out of heaven with those who chose to follow him.

If all this is true, then it means you and I accepted this plan and here we are. Accepting this plan as described by the prophet Abraham is defined as accepting our First Estate.

So, the first question is where did we come from? We came from the presence of God, the pre-mortal spirit world, in the company of all our spirit brothers and sisters.

Second question, why are we here? Trying to wrap the whole of this question into a nutshell gives us the following answer.

First, on the eternal perspective, progression requires that we each have our own physical mortal body that has the capacity of becoming refined, immortalized or glorified through the process of death and subsequently resurrection.

Second, we had to be sent somewhere outside of the presence and powerful righteous influence of God our Father to prove ourselves, to exercise our own agency, and determine in this life the nature of our life to come – the life after death. One of the prophets, Jacob, tells us that Adam & Eve were expelled out of the Garden of Eden into a “lone and dreary world” and on a probation of sorts, where a person could chose from a myriad of different things that were either good or evil. It is necessary for man to taste the bitter to enable him to appreciate the good, is one way to explain it.

The ancient prophet Alma calls this a probationary state, a time to repent, to grow, to learn responsibility, and to prepare for the next life. (Alma 12:24, 42:4)

Said the Lord, “And thus did I, the Lord God, appoint unto man in the days of his probation – that by his natural death he might be raised in immortality unto eternal life, even as many as would believe.” (Doctrine & Covenants 29:43)

Obtain a Body . . . Prove Ourselves . . . Get Experience . . . this is your first estate.

Some of us live 80 years, some of us live 50 years, some of us live 39 years, and some live only a brief few years on this earth. Will you and I be given as much time? There are laws to be learned and lived, ordinances to experience, and covenants to be made and kept, and faith and obedience to demonstrate in this life.

Third, where do we go from here? Where will I go when I die? Where have friends and family that have passed on gone to?

The penitent thief on the cross being crucified with the Savior, Jesus Christ, asked the Him the same question. The Savior responded with this answer, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

Christ died in the literal sense that you and I will die. He underwent a physical dissolution by which His immortal spirit was separated from His body of flesh and bones, and that body was actually dead. While the corpse lay in Joseph’s rock-hewn tomb, the living Christ existed as a disembodied Spirit. Where was He? We naturally assume that he went where spirits of the dead ordinarily go. He was in the disembodied state a Spirit among spirits. He went to the Spirit world.

righteous and repentant disembodied spirits between bodily death and resurrection. Another division of the spirit world is reserved for those disembodied beings who have lived lives of wickedness and who remain impenitent even after death.

“And the spirits of the wicked, yea, who are evil – for behold they have no part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord; for behold they chose evil works rather than the good; therefore, the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house – this is the state of the souls of the wicked, yea, in darkness, and as a state of awful, fearful looking for the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them; thus they remain in this state, as well as the righteous in paradise, until the time of their resurrection.” (Alma 40:11-14)

The Spirit World is therefore quite a unique place.

Another apostle and scriptural historian, Bruce R. McConkie, explains from the Savior’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus, “The spirit world is divided into two parts: Paradise which is the abode of the righteous, and hell which is the abode of the wicked. Until the death of Christ, these two spirit abodes were separated by a great gulf, with the intermingling of their respective inhabitants strictly forbidden.” (Luke 16:19-31) We know that Christ visited this spirit world because the apostle Peter’s biblical account tells us the following: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” (1 Peter 3:18-20)

When Christ visited the Spirit world, he also organized the affairs of this kingdom such that the righteous spirits began teaching the His gospel to those who had not heard it and those who were disobedient or wicked. Although, there are two spheres within the one spirit world, there is now some intermingling of the righteous and the wicked that inhabit those spheres; and when the wicked spirits repent, they leave their prison-hell and join the righteous in spirit paradise. Hence Joseph Smith said, “Hades, Sheol, paradise, spirit prison are all one: it is a world of spirits. The righteous and the wicked all go to the same world of spirits until the resurrection.” (Teachings, p. 310).

Life, work and activity all continue in the spirit world. Men and women have the same talents and intelligence there which they had in this life. They possess the same attitudes, inclinations, and feelings there which they had in this life. They believe the same things, as far as eternal truths are concerned: they continue in effect, to walk in the same path they were following in this life. (Mormon Doctrine, Spirit World, McConkie) The prophet Amulek said, “That same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in the eternal world.” (Alma 34:34) Thus, if a man has the spirit of charity and the love of truth in his heart in this life, that same spirit will possess him in the spirit world.

Family and friends who have passed away with the spirit of joviality and happiness will find it will carry them forward in the gospel and in the teaching of the gospel to many others on the other side.

When I leave this frail existence,

When I lay this mortal by,

Father, Mother, may I meet you

In your royal courts on high?

Then at length, when I’ve completed

All you sent me forth to do,

With your mutual approbation

Let me come and dwell with you.

(Eliza R. Snow, “O My Father,” Hymns, #292)

This post mortal world is a place to await resurrection. All will be resurrected. The Atonement of Jesus Christ ensures a universal resurrection. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor 15:22) Judgment will then, after the resurrection, be passed on all according to individual works and obedience while in mortality. The great prophet Nephi says, “For by grace are they saved after all they can do.” (2 Nephi 25:23) Said the Savior to His disciples, “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me because I live and ye shall live also.” (John 14:19)

Inheriting the glory that Christ has been resurrected into is conditional and is based upon the laws by which individuals choose to govern their mortal lives.

Said the prophet Alma, “The plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order. Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of man should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself.

“And it is requisite with the justice of God that men should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also as the last day, be restored unto that which is good.” (Alma 41:2-3)

The righteous who understand and live the truth will be resurrected to receive a glory in heaven referred to as Celestial and Paul refers to this as comparable to the glory of the Sun. In this celestial kingdom also known as the Kingdom of God, marriages and eternal family relationships are secured, eternal progress and progression is uninterrupted forever and ever.

And to the undisciplined, wicked, liars, sorcerers, adulterers, whoremongers, and the unrepentant who are shut out in spirit prison until the Savior finishes his work (D&C 76:85), they will be resurrected to a glory Telestial or that equivalent, as Paul puts it, to the “glory of the stars, for one star differeth from another star in glory.” (1 Corinthians 15:40-44) The remainder will become attached to Perdition, those who refuse any part of the Atonement of Christ – those that are cast off forever, as the scriptures say, into outer darkness.

What of those that have taken their lives prematurely when the Lord has said, “Thou shalt not kill”? Are they consigned to spirit prison and later a telestial glory?

Another of the Lord’s modern day apostles, M. Russell Ballard, recently stated that there are “some things we know, and some we do not . . . [the] judgment for sin is not always as cut and dried as some of use seem to think. . . the Lord recognizes differences in intent and circumstances: Was the person who took his life mentally ill? Was he or she so deeply depressed as to be unbalanced or otherwise emotionally disturbed? Was the suicide a tragic, pitiful call for help that went unheeded too long or progressed faster than the victim intended? Did he or she somehow not understand the seriousness of the act? Was he or she suffering from a chemical imbalance in their system that led to despair and a loss of self control? Obviously, we do not know the full circumstances surrounding every suicide. Only the Lord knows the details, and he it is who will judge our actions here on earth.” (Liahona, March 1988, Suicide: Some Things We Know, and Some We Do Not)

Said the prophet Joseph Smith: “While one portion of the human race is judging and condemning the other without mercy, the Great Parent of the universe looks upon the whole of the human family with a fatherly care and paternal regard . . . He is a wise Lawgiver, and will judge all men, not according to the narrow contracted notions of men, but ‘according to the deeds done in the body whether they be good or evil,’ . . . We need not doubt the wisdom and intelligence of the Great Jehovah; He will award judgment or mercy to all nations according to their several deserts, their means of obtaining intelligence, the laws by which they are governed, the facilities afforded them of obtaining correct information, and His inscrutable designs in relations to the human family; and when the designs of God shall be made manifest, and the curtain of futurity be withdrawn, we shall all of us eventually have to confess that the Judge of all the earth has done right.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 1938, p218)

When we are judged, the Lord will take all things into consideration: our genetic and chemical makeup, our mental state, our intellectual capacity, the teachings we have received the traditions of our fathers, our health, and so forth.

That is the plan. Those are the answers. Death, then, is a gateway.

Upon the cross he meekly died

For all mankind to see

That death unlocks the passageway

Into eternity.

(Hymns, #184 – “Upon the Cross of Calvary”)

“The keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for he cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name.” (2 Nephi 9:41)

To live, to love, and to be loved are the essence of what is important in this life. Those we have known and passed on have lived great lives, they were loved and are still loved.

Mourning and tears are normal – in fact, they are a healthy reaction. Mourning is one of the purest expressions of deep love. It is a natural response in accord with divine commandment: “Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die.” (D&C 42:45)

By mortal standard time, it’ll be much longer than we like till we see our loved ones again. By eternal standard time – “We’ll see you soon.”

Until then watch. There are another set of hands you should look for, pierced at the palms and at the wrists. You will recognize His hands when you see them. You will recognize Him when you see Him. His hands are always open. The brightness of His eyes and smile will warm the darkest recesses of your soul. When you meet Him, touch his hands, feel the mark in his side, and bow at His feet. He knows you by name. He knows each of us by name. He will offer you the peace, the rest and the love that you seek.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born and a time to die . . . A time to weep, and a time to laugh, at time to mourn, and a time to dance . . . a time to get and a time to loose . . . a time to embrace . . . and a time to love.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

This death of which I speak eventually comes to all. It comes to some in childhood, to some in ripe old age, and to others in the prime of life. To some it comes by natural means, anticipated and expected, to others it comes without warning, unannounced. It may come quietly in the peace of the night, or it may come violently in the confusion of an instant, but assuredly, it comes to all.

To you my beloved friends and patients and family, remember His invitation. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

This yoke is a conviction, a way of life; it is called the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It does not take away challenges, disappointments, frustrations, pain or sorrow. But, when lived, it lifts burdens, lightens loads, and makes life bearable. It empowers you with light and strength from on high to learn and grow from experiences in spite of whatever life brings.

This is my conviction. This I know to be true. It is what brings hope in the battle against that inevitable foe, death. May it bring you the warmth of heart and the solace of soul that it brings to me as I ponder its meaning in my life and the lives of my family. May the knowledge of the Plan of Salvation bring you comfort in knowing that those we care about have passed through the gateway we call death to look forward upon immortality and the Glory of the Savior Jesus Christ.

January 12, 2023

Mask Wearing Has No Scientific Evidence Based Justification

Nearly three years after the start of COVID-19 in early 2020, people are still showing up in my clinic wearing single and double masks, with tremendous fear of getting an infection with COVID-19 or Influenza. As of the end of 2022, some “so called” experts started telling people in the public to wear masks again, and patients in droves are showing up masked to their medical appointments in the last four weeks.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the existing available data about respiratory viruses including influenza and various types of coronavirus showed no evidence or justification for wearing masks to prevent the spread of infection of a respiratory virus. The legitimate reason for use of a mask is during surgery to lend protection from blood and body fluid splatter between patient and providers or with specific types of filtration masks designed to specifically protect from certain types of bacterial infections.

Review of the Medical Literature:

Here are key anchor points to the extensive scientific literature that establishes that wearing surgical masks and respirators (e.g., “N95”) does not reduce the risk of contracting a verified illness:

Jacobs, J. L. et al. (2009) “Use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of the common cold among health care workers in Japan: A randomized controlled trial,” American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 37, Issue 5, 417 – 419. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19216002. N95-masked health-care workers (HCW) were significantly more likely to experience headaches. Face mask use in HCW was not demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.
Cowling, B. et al. (2010) “Face masks to prevent transmission of influenza virus: A systematic review,” Epidemiology and Infection, 138(4), 449-456. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/face-masks-to-prevent-transmission-of-influenza-virus-a-systematic- review/64D368496EBDE0AFCC6639CCC9D8BC05. None of the studies reviewed showed a benefit from wearing a mask, in either health care worker or community members in households (H). See summary Tables 1 and 2 therein.
bin-Reza et al. (2012) “The use of masks and respirators to prevent transmission of influenza: a systematic review of the scientific evidence,” Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 6(4), 257–267. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1750-2659.2011.00307.x “There were 17 eligible studies. … None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”
Smith, J.D. et al. (2016) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks in protecting health care workers from acute respiratory infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” CMAJ Mar 2016 https://www.cmaj.ca/content/188/8/567 “We identified six clinical studies . . . In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, (b) influenza-like illness, or (c) reported work-place absenteeism.”
Offeddu, V. et al. (2017) “Effectiveness of Masks and Respirators Against Respiratory Infections in Healthcare Workers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 65, Issue 11, 1 December 2017, Pages 1934–1942, https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747 “Self-reported assessment of clinical outcomes was prone to bias. Evidence of a protective effect of masks or respirators against verified respiratory infection (VRI) was not statistically significant.”
Radonovich, L.J. et al. (2019) “N95 Respirators vs Medical Masks for Preventing Influenza Among Health Care Personnel: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” JAMA. 2019; 322(9): 824–833. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214 “Among 2862 randomized participants, 2371 completed the study and accounted for 5180 HCW-seasons. … Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators vs medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
Long, Y. et al. (2020) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks against influenza: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” J Evid Based Med. 2020; 1- 9. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jebm.12381 “A total of six RCTs involving 9,171 participants were included. There were no statistically significant differences in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza, laboratory-confirmed respiratory viral infections, laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, and influenza-like illness using N95 respirators and surgical masks. Meta-analysis indicated a protective effect of N95 respirators against laboratory-confirmed bacterial colonization (RR = 0.58, 95% CI 0.43-0.78). The use of N95 respirators compared with surgical masks is not associated with a lower risk of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”

Conclusion: Masks Do Not Work

No randomized controlled (RCT) study with verified outcome shows a benefit for health care workers or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study in existence.

Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public.

If there were any benefit to wearing a mask, because of the blocking power against droplets and aerosol particles, then there should be more benefit from wearing a respirator (N95) compared to a surgical mask, yet several large meta-analyses, and all the RCT, prove that there is no such relative benefit.

No Evidence or Justification for Mask Wearing

Despite the news media with all their hype, all of the scientific studies done in the world up until 2020 demonstrated that there was absolutely no justification for mask wearing to prevent spread of respiratory illness including influenza and corona-viruses. The guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also showed that there was no need for wearing masks in the general public. The practice of wearing masks did not, and to this day, have any professional justification.

In 2020, the recommendation around the world for wearing masks suddenly changed without any new professional support to confirm their effectiveness against respiratory infection. The vast majority of studies during the pandemic suffered from very low quality and many biases.

Only Two High Quality Mask Studies Exist

Since the start of the pandemic only two high-quality studies have been completed, one looking at a population of over 3000 people in Denmark, and the other with over 342,000 adults completed in Bangladesh. The study in Bangladesh found some marginal benefit for people over age 50 years old, but overall both studies show that there is no significant benefit for wearing masks to prevent infection with influenza or the corona-virus specifically.

In fact, the results of both of these studies demonstrate that the wearing of masks actually may do more harm than good. In addition to these studies, several observational studies demonstrated that wearing a mask can cause headaches, concentration difficulty, shortness of breath, decrease in blood oxygen levels, increase in the level of carbon dioxide, bacterial contamination from the mask itself and the existence of substances suspected being carcinogenic as result of lack of regulations and the production of masks.

Wearing a mask for a prolonged period of time can become problematic because of the accumulation of carbon dioxide levels that may exceed permitted standards, might cause tiredness, blurriness, sleepiness and deficiency in judgment, as well as thinking.

Masks Adversely Affect Social, Mental and Emotional Health

An additional issue I personally found to be a problem in my office, masks create communication difficulty with people who have impaired hearing and need to read lips is a major factor. Additional studies demonstrated the negative effect of wearing masks on communication and especially with children’s mental and emotional development.

There are a few particular situations in which wearing masks is justified. In the context of medical treatment when a patient with a respiratory disease is closely examined by medical staff who will be spending prolonged periods of time with that patient, and certainly in the cases of active infectious COVID-19 there is justification for wearing a mask by both the therapist and the patient. However, research still demonstrates the spread to be very low if the contact is less than three hours in length.

As a physician who has practiced medicine for over 20 years, when the patient comes to me with leg pain there is no reason for him or for me to wear a mask. If a patient comes in with anemia, there is also no reason to wear a mask. In the medical encounter, the relationship that exist between the doctor and the patient has great significance. Masks interfere with that relationship and the empathy that should exist between them. Mask wearing when none is justified creates a subconscious barrier and changes the social and emotional dynamics between the patient and doctor. Currently, there is a directive for mask-wearing in medical, health and welfare facilities around the world in a number of countries and in a number of hospitals which actually has no scientific justification.

Untrustworthy Medical Journals and Bias

The medical profession and providers within this profession rely heavily on articles published in high-quality journals to provide evidence based guidance and direction for our decisions and actions. However, in the last three years, bias in these publications has been very significant and misleading in these leading journals. It has essentially made them untrustworthy.

Because of this, doctors have passed through a kind of brainwashing by the medical establishment. They have been receiving inaccurate, misleading and contradictory information from previously trusted sources now swayed by bias, political, governmental and monetary influence, so doctors themselves struggle to know what is right and what is not.

Perhaps most worrisome is the continued refusal to have open professional discussion, and the disdain for different positions backed by poor quality research and data not consistent with the norms of medicine and science. This has had long-term negative consequences for the medical profession and consequences that every doctor in the world should be concerned about.

As I mentioned above, no study exists that shows a benefit from any broad policy to wear masks in public. There is good reason for this. It would be impossible to obtain unambiguous and bias-free results because:

Any benefit from mask-wearing has only a very small effect, since undetected in controlled experiments, which would be swamped by the larger effects, notably the large effect from changing atmospheric humidity.
Mask compliance and mask adjustment habits would be unknown and impossible to account for.
Mask-wearing is associated (correlated) with several other health behaviors; see Wada (2012).
The results would not be transferable, because of differing cultural habits.
Compliance is achieved by fear, and individuals can habituate to fear-based propaganda, and can have fundamentally different basic responses.
Monitoring and compliance measurement are near-impossible, and subject to large errors.
Self-reporting (such as in surveys) is notoriously biased, because individuals have the self-interested belief that their efforts are useful.
Progression of the epidemic is not verified with reliable tests on large population samples, and generally relies on non-representative hospital visits or admissions.
Several different viruses and strains of viruses causing respiratory illness generally act together, in the same population and/or in individuals, and are not resolved, while having different epidemiological characteristics.

Unless you’re going in to perform surgery, please, for your health and mine, stop wearing a mask.

June 13, 2022

Living With Pandemics and Potential Nuclear Warfare

[Adapted from “On Living In An Atomic Age (1948), by C.S. Lewis]

Too many of us spend way too much time thinking about the global pandemic, economic collapse and nuclear war.

“How are we to live in this era of nuclear threat, escalating inflation and rampant viruses?”

I am often tempted to reply, “The same way you would have lived in the early twentieth century when the great depression hit, or like you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of tuberculosis, an age of paralyzing polio, an age of syphilis, an age of air raids, and age of railway accidents or an age of motor vehicle accidents.

In other words, don’t begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, you and everyone you love have already been sentenced to death before the threat of viral pandemics or nuclear warfare was ever invented: and a high percentage of use were going to die in unpleasant ways. You and I have a great advantage over our ancestors – antibiotics and anesthetics – to this day we still have them.

It is perfectly ridiculous to go whimpering about the day with long drawn faces because the great scientists of our time have added one more chance of a painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. None of us get out of this alive. None. Not one.

My first point in this monologue is that you and I must pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by a virus, skyrocketing inflation or a nuclear bomb, then let that destruction, when it comes, find us doing sensible human things like praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing golf (scratch that – I hate golf), chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of chess or darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep, thinking about viruses or nuclear warfare or gasoline prices. They may break our bodies (in my experience, any microbe can do that) but, they need not dominate our minds.

“But,” you will reply, “it is not death – not even painful and premature death – that we are all hot and bothered about. Of course, the chance of that is not a new thing. What is new is that the virus or the bomb or climate change may finally and totally destroy civilization itself. The lights may be put out forever.”

This brings us much nearer to the real point. Let me try to make clear exactly what I think that point is. What were your views about the ultimate future of civilization before the pandemic appeared on the scene? What did you think all this effort of humanity was to come to in the end? The real answer is clear to almost everyone who has even a smidgeon of scientific background; yet, oddly enough, it is hardly ever mentioned. And the real answer (almost beyond doubt) is that with or without viruses, nuclear warfare and economic collapses the whole story is going to end in NOTHING.

The astronomers hold out no hope that this plant is going to be permanently inhabitable. The physicists hold out no hope that organic life is going to be a permanent possibility in any part of the material universe. Not only this earth, but the whole show, all the suns of space, are to run down. Nature is a sinking ship, and we are but passengers.

Nature does not, in the long run, favor life. If Nature is all that exists — in other words, if there is no God, and no after-life of some sort somewhere outside Nature — then all stories will end in the same way: in a universe from which all life is banished without any possibility of return. It will have been an accidental flicker, and there will be no one even to remember it.

No doubt a nuclear bomb may cut its duration on this present planet shorter that it might have been; but the whole thing, even if it lasted for billions of years, must be so infinitesimally short in relation to the oceans of dead time which preceded and follow it that I really feel no excitement about its curtailment.

What the wars and the weather and the pandemic have really done is to remind us forcibly of the sort of world we are living in and which, during the prosperous periods before 1914 and 2021, we began to forget. And, in reality, this reminder is actually a good thing. We have been awakened from a pretty dream, and now we can begin to talk about reality.

We see at once (when we have been waked, no “woke”) that the important question is not whether a virus or a nuclear weapon is going to obliterate our “civilization.” The important question is whether “Nature” — the thing studied by the sciences – is the only thing in existence? Because if you answer yes to the second question, then the first question only amounts to asking whether the inevitable frustration of all human activities may be hurried on by our own action instead of occurring at its own natural time. That is, of course, a question that concerns us very much.

Even on a leaking ship that is known to certainly sink sooner or later, the news that the boiler might blow up now would not be heard with indifference by anyone. But those who knew the ship was sinking in any case would not, I think, be quite so desperately excited as those who had forgotten this fact, and were vaguely imagining that it might arrive somewhere.

It is, then, on this second question that you and I really need to make up our minds.

Let us begin by supposing that Nature is all that exists. Let us suppose that nothing ever has existed or ever will exist before or after except this meaningless play of atoms in space and time: that by a series of hundredth changes it has (regrettably) produced things like — conscious beings who now know that their own consciousness is an accidental result of the whole meaningless process and is therefore itself meaningless – though to us, it feels quite significant.

In this situation (in which the Oxford Handbook estimates 25-50% of civilized countries seems to believe is the present reality), there are really only three avenues of action:

(1) You might commit suicide. Nature which has blindly & accidentally given me for my torment this consciousness which demands meaning and value in a universe that offers neither, has luckily also given me the means of getting rid of it. I return the unwelcome gift. I will be fooled no longer. (I do not recommend this avenue.)

(2) You might decide simply to have as good a time as possible. The universe is a universe of nonsense, but since you are here, grab what you can. Unfortunately, however, there is on these terms, with inflation and gasoline prices so high so very little left to grab — only the coarsest sensual pleasures is really left. You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person, and of her character, are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behavior of your genes.

You can’t go on getting any very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is a pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it.

You may still, in the lowest sense, have a “good time”; but just in so far as it becomes very good, just in so far as it ever threatens to push you on from cold sensuality into real warmth and enthusiasm and joy, so far you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live.

3) You may defy the universe. You may say, “Let Nature be irrational, I am not. Let it be merciless, I will have mercy. By whatever curious chance it has produced me, now that I am here, I will live according to human values. I know the universe will win in the end, but what is that to me? I will go down fighting. Amid all this wastefulness I will persevere; amid all this competition, I will make sacrifices. Be damned to the universe!”

I suppose that most of us, in fact, while remain materialists, adopt a more or less uneasy alternate position between the second and the third attitude. And although the third is incomparably the better (it is, for instance, much more likely to “preserve civilization”), both really end up shipwrecked on the same rock. That rock — disharmony between our own hearts and Nature — the is obvious in the second. The third seems to avoid the rock by accepting disharmony from the outset and defying it. Yet, it won’t really work. In it, you hold up your own human standards against the idiocy of the universe.

That is, we talk as if our own standards were something outside the universe which can be contrasted with it; as if we could judge the universe by some standard borrowed from another supposed realistic source). But if Nature — in the space–time–matter system — is the only thing in existence, then of course there can be no other source for our standards. They must, like everything else, be the unintended and meaningless outcome of blind forces. Far from being a light from beyond Nature whereby Nature can be judged, they become the only the way in which anthropoids of our species feel when the atoms under our own skulls get into certain states — those states being produced by causes quite irrational, unhuman, and non-moral. Thus, the very ground on which we defy Nature crumbles under our feet. The standard we are applying is tainted at the source. If our standards are derived from this meaningless universe they must be as meaningless as Nature.

For most modern people, thoughts of this kind must be thought through before the opposite view can even get a fair hearing. All Naturalism leads us to this in the end — to a quite final and hopeless discord between what our minds claim to be and what they really must be if Naturalism is true. They claim to be spirit; that is, to be reason, perceiving universal intellectual principles and universal moral laws and possessing free will. But if Naturalism is true, they must in reality be merely arrangements of atoms in skulls, coming about by irrational causation. We never think a thought because it i s true, only because blind Nature forces us to think it. We never do an act because it is right, only because blind Nature forces us to do it. It is when one has faced this preposterous conclusion that one is at last ready to listen to the voice that whispers: “But suppose we really are spirits? Suppose we are not the offspring of Nature . . ?”

For, really, the naturalistic conclusion is unbelievable. For one thing, it is only through trusting our own minds that we have come to know Nature itself. If Nature when fully known seems to teach us (that is – if the sciences teach us) that our own minds are chance arrangements of atoms, then there must have been some mistake; for if that were so, then the sciences themselves would be chance arrangements of atoms and we should have no reason for believing in them.

There is only one way to avoid this deadlock. We must go back to a much earlier view. We must simply accept it that we are spirits, free and rational beings, at present inhabiting an irrational universe, and must draw the conclusion that we are not derived from it. We are strangers here. We come from somewhere else. Nature is not the only thing that exists. There is “another world,” and that is where we come from. And that explains why we do not feel at home here.

A fish feels at home in the water. If we “belonged here” we should feel at home here. All that we say about “Nature,” about death and time and mutability, all our half-amused, half-bashful attitude to our own bodies, is inexplicable on the theory that we are simply natural creatures. If this world is the only world, how did we come to find its laws either so dreadful or so comic? If there is no straight line elsewhere, how did we discover that Nature’s line is crooked?

But what, then, is Nature, and how do we come to be imprisoned in a system so alien to us?

Oddly enough, the question becomes much less sinister the moment one realizes that Nature is not the end all be all. Mistaken for our mother, she is terrifying and even abominable. But if she is only our sister — if she and we have a common Creator — if she is our sparring partner — then the situation suddenly becomes quite tolerable.

Perhaps we are not here as prisoners but as colonists: only consider what we have done already to the dog, the horse, or the daffodil. Nature is indeed a rough playfellow. There are elements of evil in her. To explain all that would carry us far back: I should have to speak of Power and Principalities and all that would seem to the modern reader most mythological. This is not the place, nor do these questions come first.

It is enough to say here that Nature, in her different way, is much alienated from her Creator, though in her, as in us, gleams and rays of the old beauty remain. Yet, they are there not to be worshipped, but to be enjoyed. She has nothing to teach us. It is our business to live by our own law, not by hers: to follow, in private or in public life, the law of love and temperance even when they seem to be suicidal, and not the law of competition and grab, even when they seem to be necessary to our survival. For it is part of our spiritual law never to put survival first: not even the survival of our species. We must resolutely train ourselves to feel that the survival of Man on this Earth, much more of our own nation or culture of class, is not worth having unless it can be had by honorable and merciful means.

The sacrifice is not so great as it seems. Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs. Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want Heaven must have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.

May 11, 2022

The Coddling of the American Mind: The Catalyst for the Anxiety Overwhelming Us Today

I have seen dramatic increases in anxiety, fear and depression in my practice over the last 20 years. I keep asking myself why. My amazing wife shared this video with me and I think Jonathan Haidt has the answer. (Thanks, Tiffini!!)

Watch the video below.

Are we being too protective of our kids as parents today? Do we let our kids do all the things we did as kids? Are we stifling childhood discovery and independence, even though we have the best intentions?

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business who has written multiple books exploring morality and society. In 2018, he authored the book “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure,” which delves into how overprotective parenting is leading to more harm than good, especially on college campuses. Jonathan has many thoughts on what parents can be doing to support students, without focusing only on their safety. Here are the Top 5 lessons we learned about being antifragile from Jonathan Haidt.

April 25, 2022

The Elk

(I was asked to speak in church yesterday. This is the talk I gave. For those of you that don’t mind pondering your spirituality, as the spirit so powerfully influences one’s health, I thought you might enjoy it)

The huge elk stood in the center of the dirt road. . .

The morning air in the pines had been crisp and clean. The sky was blue, not a cloud present. Other than the chirping of birds, the Alpine Forest was quiet and peaceful. I got up early for a morning run before I was needed at our scout camp. I took off at an easy pace and the ground felt good under my feet.

A mile down the road it happened. I came to a dead stop as I rounded the corner. He stared me down, snorted, then . . . he bugled. The sound pierced my head and chest, I felt it in my soul. He was a majestic beast transformed, standing taller than my horse. His antlered rack fully-formed, he towered over me, standing over 8 feet high . . . the hair at the top of his head darker, and hackled.

We stood face to face only a few yards from each other. He lowered his head and stomped his hoof, when our eyes met, and I instantly felt his temptation to head-butt me off the road down which I had been jogging.

For much of the year, male elk are indistinguishable from the female: bull and doe alike are antler-less. Yet each spring the males regrow their antlers…which in turn are soon covered in velvet.

And, then, finally they come into the “hard horn,” when the velvet is rubbed off from the battles and grind of the year, antlers polished and the bull is ready to mate. Once the rut is over, the bull’s antlers fall off… taking the bulk of the male’s testosterone with them. The bull’s power is in the horn.

This bull, with which I had come face to face had a full rack, the span of his antlers and easy four and a half feet. He towered above me in his grandeur. He was the biggest elk I’d ever seen. And, his doe was just off the road grazing in the pines. He looked at her, she at him, then back at me. I felt a chill from my head to my toes. He owned that road that day, I knew it, and he knew it. I will never forget that moment. This was his path and I was obligated to step aside.

Men Have Lost Power And Momentum

We live in an age when men have become essentially indistinguishable from women. They’ve lost their power, they’ve lost their momentum for life and the path. Men may have their own marks.

Yet, no size of beard, no amount of gym swole, no tattoo, no amount of bravado can hide the fact that man shed his rack–his essential POWER–a long time ago. For anyone with eyes, the truth is plain to see: The antlers have fallen off.

There Is No Safe Path

As I learned on that dirt road years ago, in this life there is no safe path.

Despite what the minions of the world and those of the adversary attempt to convince us of on a regular basis, there is no escape from the consequences of this life. That’s the reason that 1/3rd of the hosts of Heaven decided against receiving a mortal body and coming to this test tube of earth where there is no safe path (Revelation 12:9).

There is a noble path.

There is an honorable path.

But there is no safe path . . . and to be frank, in the premortal existence, you and I didn’t want that anyway. That was Lucifer’s modification to the plan – provide them a safe path and they all will make it back unbruised and unscathed so that he could take the glory (Isaiah 14:13-14).

Yet, civilization and society has created cities and communities of no consequence. Men and women have been deluded into thinking that if they walk into the street, the car will always stop, and the only result will be an angry driver. But, this is a delusion. Ride a motorcycle just once on the streets of Phoenix, and you’ll learn this lesson.

You and I live upon a telestial planet that does not freely offer mercy. When you live upon the land, when mother nature is your neighbor, there can be no mistakes. Despite what the CDC says, nature does not care. The river will freely swallow you if you can’t swim. The snake doesn’t care how much you love your children. And, the wolf has no interest in your dreams. If you fail to beat the current, you will drown. If you get too close, you will be bitten. If you are too weak, you will be eaten. There is no government that can save you. There is no congress that can legislate away the rattlesnake. There is no vaccine that inoculates you from the fangs of the wolf. This is what caused a third of the hosts of heaven to shudder when the plan was presented. This has been Satan’s pick-up line at the watering hole for millennia. The alure of safety is a lie. Yet, here you are. You and I chose to come. You and I got on that bus.

Who are you anyway? You and I, we are warrior stock. Every single one of your ancestors got a body, came to the earth, and kept your genealogical line alive for over 6000 of the historically recorded years to get you here, to this moment, today.

So, what makes you so sure you were built for safety? What makes you so sure that safety is the ultimate goal we should be striving for?

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

My childhood hero, John Wayne said, “Have you heard of some fellas who first came over to this country? You know what they found? They found a howling wilderness, with summers too hot, and winters ice cold and freezing. Did they have insurance for their old age, for their crops, for their homes? They did not. They looked at the land and the forest and the rivers, they looked at their wives, their kids and their houses. Then, they looked up at the sky and said, ‘Thanks God, we’ll take it from here.’ They were men!’ you and I, we come from real men and real women.

Coming to this earth was an act of courage. If you want adventure, you tell the truth about reality in your life, then you take action . . . that is the adventure.

Action Toward Goals Starts the Momentum

The very act of seeking out your goals takes courage and sets things in motion, it begins the momentum. Courage implies a risk. It implies a potential for failure or the presence of danger. Courage is measured against danger. The greater the danger, the greater the courage. Running into a burning building is more courageous than telling off your boss. Telling off your boss is more courageous than writing a really mean anonymous letter or reposting a meme on Facebook or Twitter.

Acts without meaningful consequences require little courage.

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. Satan and his minions have successfully turned our attention away from the promises spoken of in Matthew 13:17, the prophets desiring to see the things that you’ve seen, and hear the things that you’ve heard.

Just because millions of people share the same vices does not make those vices acceptable, the fact that they share so many errors does not make those errors true, and the fact that millions of people share the same psychological pathology does not make these people sane. Much of our society is on spiritual autopilot. . . the problem with autopilot is that you may be on the wrong plane. Many men spend their entire lives fishing without ever knowing that it isn’t really fish they’re after.

Something I’ve learned from my son while mountain-biking is that you hit what you focus on. But, you first must focus. And your focus must be on truth, not upon flawed reality. The very act of seeking truth sets things in motion.

President Nelson defined Momentum in his April Conference talk. Momentum is the motion of a body, equal to the product of the body’s mass and it’s velocity. it can also be defined as the force or energy exhibited by a moving body.” That elk that stared me down, though he was just standing in the road, had momentum. I felt it.

Spiritual Momentum Aids In The Journey Back Home

Momentum is the most powerful physical force you can have helping you or hindering you. Once you are moving, momentum helps you more easily reach the goal. Spiritual momentum aids you in your journey to exaltation and eternal life in our heavenly home. The speed by which you travel the road of life matters not as long as you do not stop.

For those of you who love to geek out on science stuff, Newton’s first law of motion states that every object at rest will remain at rest unless compelled to change its state, while objects in motion will stay in motion.

Simple actions in life are often the cause of momentum. Success often hides within your morning habits. Everything that happens in our lives is based upon a law of the universe and our adherence to or deviance from that law.

Focused attention on your intentions causes you to gain momentum. Thoughts are actually matter attached to energy. Our thoughts are made up of hope and dreams.

Often, the difference between winning and losing is usually ones momentum.

People will pay any price for motion. They will even work for it. Look at bicycles. People walk into a bicycle store and drop five to ten thousand dollars for something that will help them gain motion.

Momentum Is Applied to Faith

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Faith then is the actual substance of hope. It is a substance to which action or motion can be applied. Much like a boat upon the water, when wind is added to the sails the boat begins to move. Once in motion that boat has momentum.

Joseph Smith tells us that the human mind and body would remain in a state of inactivity or at rest (based on Newton’s First Law of Motion) without action applied to the substance of hope, or without faith.

Benjamin Franklin reminds us to “never confuse motion with action.”

Most of life is routine – dull, grubby and repetitive. However, this routine is what keeps a man moving toward a goal. Routine is actually what creates the perpetual momentum.

Routine becomes hopeless if there are no goals clearly defined by you individually or in your family.

We experience almost all our hope in relationship to our defined goals.

Momentum arises in the routine day to day activities that move one toward desired goals.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream – CS Lewis

If people are to live together in harmony, there must be some overarching structure that unites you. What else is a family, if it is not an overarching structure that unites you?

Within the family there must be tolerance and even appreciation for necessary individual differences. Obviously there should be. But, that does not mean that there is a higher unity that the entire organization is striving for in some manner. Not just striving for, but pining for or even dying for.

The absence of that sense of incorporating higher structure is a felt sense of catastrophe on the part of members of the family. This is why family is so essential to the growth of the child.

How do you move toward the goal? You break it down into small steps. Steps small enough that even the useless can do them. . . and those steps are placed into a daily routine.

You’ll move toward the goal if you break the steps down small enough so that even a child will do it. This requires a fair bit of humility. The step you are resisting to take today is often so small that you may be embarrassed to admit it to yourself. So, then you don’t take any steps at all.

FIVE STEPS

President Russell M. Nelson, in the April 2022 General Conference, outlined Five Actions that perpetuate momentum.

First, Get On the Covenant Path and stay there – Renew your covenants every week. Don’t be afraid of covenants and or commitments. Do not be afraid of taking on responsibility. It is within that responsibility that you find out what sustains you in your life.

A lot of the things that people regard as traps are actually the means to their lives. Young people are often afraid of commitment because they fear it will prevent them from identifying something more valuable. You will never find something more important in your life than a committed relationship with someone that you love walking the covenant path together that sustains itself across time and in all likelihood produces children. That is life. Do not be afraid to try and fail. That is why we were given the ability to repent.

I have had a fascinating career thus far with up and downs and successes and failures. Yet, the most important thing in my life has been my intimate relationship with my wife and my family. Commitment is the igniter of momentum. Only committing to the “right thing” half way causes stress, fatigue, disease and dead pastures.

Second, Daily Repentance brings joy. Alma taught, “teach nothing but repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Mosiah 18:20). Tell the truth every day of your life. If you do this it will change your life. Stop cheating at whatever game it is you’ve chosen to play.

How will telling the truth change your life? You cannot adapt to reality if you falsify it. You cannot just lie to other people. What you say becomes you. The words you say are recorded by your subconscious and your subconscious then works to create the reality of what you say. What you say becomes you. We build ourselves out of our words whether those words are true or false, as a man thinketh, so is he. Well, if I lie, I can get away with something. NO you don’t.

In all of my clinical practice, I have never every seen anyone get away with anything, even once. You think the chickens won’t come home to roost? All that means is you are too stupid to see the cost of your lies, too blind or too self-deceptive. You just don’t see it. You don’t get away with anything. Nothing. It’s terrifying when we actually understand that. What if you can’t get away with anything? Well, that the old idea of a judgmental God. It’s an old idea for a reason.

Do you think you are someone who can warp the structure of reality with your words and get away with it? There may be those that say, well I’ve lied and got away with things. But look at yourself, is everything right in your life right now? Is everything just as you want it to be?

People eventually figure out who you are and you have to come clean or move on. No long term relationships can be formed, no love, no trust, no brotherly affection, no friends. No financial success, not in the real sense. Or maybe your are just too dim to see the consequences. Take it from someone who sees this on a daily basis. You can’t try to warp the structure of reality and get away with it. You don’t mess with reality. Eventually you have to pay the piper. It kills you. And, it may torture you quite a lot before doing that if you are particularity unlucky.

Again, this is why 1/3rd of the hosts of heaven didn’t even want to get onto the bus down here to this earth life. You violate your conscience and you will pay. That is hell.

Daily repentance, then is what fills the sails with positive momentum.

How do you start? Clean up your room. Attend sacrament meeting. Tell the truth. Applying just that little bit of advice changes your life. Don’t substitute the false for the real. The trouble is, you think you have time. Talk to your parents. Talk to your spouse. Talk to your bishop.

Third, Learn About God and How He Works. Learn to distinguish between the truth of God and the counterfeits of Satan.

“Pray always . . . that we may conquer Satan and escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work.” (D&C 10:5).

Learning about God is how you learn about yourself.

I see men ages 20-35 that are desperate for a discussion about responsibility, and fair play, noble being, God and working properly in the world. They are desperate actually hear the idea that their lives actually matter. That if they straighten themselves up and fly right that they’ll have a beneficial effect on themselves and their families and their communities.

The world is starving for those conversations. Our young men and our young women are starving for that knowledge as individuals. You in this room have that knowledge. Share it with them. Faith cannot be effectively exercised enough to move one on to life and salvation, or have the momentum to do so, without three specific things:

The idea that God actually exists
A correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes
A knowledge that the course in life you are pursing is according to God’s will.

Learn about God and your relationship to him and you will be amazed at the momentum it provides you. That will move you on to the fourth action.

Fourth, Seek and Expect Miracles. God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. . . The second is the source of peace and happiness.

Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith.

Few things will give you more momentum than the knowledge that God is helping you move a mountain in your life.

Chose to believe something good can happen. Expecting it to happen energizes your goal and actually gives it momentum.

Are you fully committed to your goal? Very few Americans are truly committed to a lifestyle. They don’t want to be called a fanatic. Are you all in? If you’re not all in, why are you surprised you haven’t had results or seen the hand of the Lord in your life?

My daughter has just returned from Missouri on her mission. I lived there while attending medical school. It was there that my wife and I were fascinated by fireflies. If God can make a bug’s bottom light up in the night sky, think of what He can do for you and me.

Fifth, End the Conflicts in Your Life. Matthew 6:14 – For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. See what’s getting in your way. Rectify the things in your life that need to be fixed. Look at yourself first to fix the problem. Listen to the other person. Unhappy is the man or woman who never faces adversity. For he or she are never permitted to truly prove themselves.

Seek the Top of the Mountain

You seek the top of the mountain. You’ve felt this longing for years.

There is a trail that leads to the top, but the path is long and narrow, it is perilous and often very hard.

You yearn for easy transport, for the helicopter to take you directly to the peak.

You search for the silver bullet, the magic formula, the push-button solution that will wipe your old life away and replace it with something far removed… something utterly transformed.

But, in your heart you know the truth: The fulfillment you seek comes not from tricks, hacks, or shortcuts, but from taking one step after the other until you stand there, at last, on the roof of the world, on the top of the mountain.

The fulfillment you seek comes from becoming the man or woman who climbs, the one who’s trodden the path, climbed the mountain.

So, do not ask for the helicopter. Do not ask to be taken out of yourself.

Live your life, instead, in such a way that your mind is transformed, that the miracle happens, so that the thought of traveling the path that fills other men with dread, fills you with soulful excitement.

Live your life in such a way that the utterly spent exhaustion of childhood comes back to you and you feel like a 12-year-old again.

Live your life in such a way that all traces of action-crippling ambivalence are seared away, that you may climb the mountain with joy.

The blinding thicket, the burning wind and lactic burn will never go away. It’s all still there.

Only now, those pains do not stop you, for you have chosen to be dauntless, lionhearted and valiant.

And what would seem arduous and unbearable to others who are not lifted from within, as you are, seems instead to you a privilege, an honor, and the greatest of adventures.

Because you are filled with hope, you are driven with honor, you have the momentum of the Spirit of God.

Be the one who waits at the bottom of the hill and holds the coats . . . or be the man or woman who climbs to meet the Sage on the mountain, who meets the Master.

There is one who already showed you the way. The choice is yours.

December 25, 2021

Joy & Love this Christmas

My wife and I were driving home from a Christmas Day visit to Grandma’s house this afternoon. On the street corner was a young man, probably in his early twenties, who was “tweaking” from what looked like a serious crystal-meth high. I was surprised to see this on Christmas Day in the sleepy suburban city of Surprise, Arizona. But, I realized that life has been hard on all of us, and it looked like It had been very hard on this young man.

Why would I be surprised? For most of us, this has been an awful year when so many around us have lost their jobs, lost their hope, lost their health, and lost their lives. Those of us that have survived are so angry and divided that we can barely tolerate our neighbor, let alone love him.

A few weeks ago, I created myself a Christmas playlist of music in an attempt to put myself in a festive Christmas mood. I’ve found myself torn this year between feelings of anger, discouragement, anxiety and stress, and feelings of hope, love and joy.

Listening to this playlist on repeat, I was reminded of the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and the lyrics. At the time this song was written, the world was at war in 1944, loved ones were apart. They were thousands of miles away, many of which were never coming home.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Let your heart be light,

From now on, our troubles will be out of sight . . .

From now on, our troubles will be miles away . . .

These lyrics were appropriate then and they are appropriate now. In light of all that has gone on this year, the lyrics to the song have retained their wistfulness and joy. The lyrics remind us that Christmas brings a feeling of expectant joy that may seem out of reach at the moment.

“Joy,” C.S. Lewis once wrote, “ is distinct not only from pleasure in general, but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” Every consolation we seek in life – love, beauty, money, pleasure, power, and even sex – is only a poor representative of something beyond Itself. Those who dedicate their lives to pursuing the symbol rather that’s the thing the symbol represents invariably end up disappointed – or worse.

The misery so many celebrities that people have known in their youth who wanted fame, worked and pushed and fought for it. Then, the moment they became famous, the wanted to take an overdose. The giant thing they were striving for, the fame that was to make everything OK, that was to make their lives bearable providing personal fulfillment and happiness occurred, and they found they were still the same person.

That thing we want, that thing that the riches of the world attempt to represent, that thing that seems so near and yet so maddeningly out of reach, is the love of God who made us in his image. It is the only real North Star of our life’s journey, the only true guidepost to become the person we were divinely made to be.

On the very first Christmas, that longed-for thing broke through the earthly barrier and arrived upon our earthly plain. When you and I celebrate this day, we are boldly declaring our faith in the reality of that event and the truth of It’s infinite meaning: God Is there for you and God Is there for me. We know within our souls that our yearning is not in vain.

Maybe in this year of anger, pain, death and sickness, when we all have to muddle through day by day, it would be good to remember the people that we disagree with most, the people we hate most, the people we want to throttle most are also desperately yearning and suffering this year. They, too, are striving for the thing they can’t quite reach. And, many of them do not have our hope and our Christmas faith.

The Savior, Jesus Christ, did not tell us to love our enemies, or our neighbors because he thought it would make them better people or make the world a better place. He told us to love our enemies so that we ourselves might “be children of our Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous.”

To love in that way, the way that Jesus Christ exemplified, is to experience within this vale of tears the vale beyond. The reality is that God loves you. Left or Right, black or white, straight or gay, He loves you, and you and I were made in His image.

So, this year, remember, that far-away joy is more real that all of our troubles. Remember, you are not alone. Have a Merry Christmas.

August 28, 2014

The Gateway Called Death

The life of a close friend and patient was recently taken. This has been weighing upon my mind of late, as a similar event occurred in the life of my sister a few years ago. I looked over the words and passages I wrote a few years ago, and for some reason, felt strongly that I should include them here. I write this blog to help those struggling with weight, diabetes and the diseases of civilization. One of those diseases frequently affecting weight is the depression and fear that accompanies the death of a loved one. Often, the answers science offers are not enough and we are required to rely upon our faith. I share some of that with you here.

I have spent the majority of my professional life in the acquisition of knowledge and its application in the relief of significant illness. My greatest foes have been ignorance, disease, distress, disability and, ultimately, death. I come in contact almost daily with seriously ill patients facing the very real prospect of death. Of necessity, I have come to look upon death as a formidable foe to be fought. For all conscientious doctors, death’s gateway from life threatens us as the prospect of individual defeat.

“They filled the grave and put sheaves of flowers on it. Everything is over. Pierre is sleeping his last sleep beneath the earth. It is the end of everything, everything, everything.”

BUT IS IT?

What is this thing that men call death,
This quiet passing in the night?
Tis not the end, But Genesis
Of better worlds and greater light.
O God, touch though my aching heart,
And calm my troubled, haunting fears.
Let hope and faith, transcendent pure,
Give strength and peace beyond my tears.
There is not death, but only change
With recompense for won;
The gift of Him who loved all men,
The Son of God, the Holy One.
(G. B. Hinckley)

However, every patient of every doctor, if followed long enough will pass away. The first rule of surgery is that “all bleeding stops eventually.” The inescapable rule of life is that no matter how good your treatments are, all patient’s will meet the undertaker, eventually.
When this happens, and it happens to all of us, a sense of sadness naturally prevails regardless of the age or nature of the deceased.

If death is to happen to all of us, then why do we feel sadness at the death of a friend or loved one?

This sadness is caused by the feeling of loss tied to three age-old unanswered questions:

Did you and I exist before we were born, and if so, where were we?
Why are we here together and what is the purpose of this life?
Where do we go when we die?

Are there answers to these questions?

When science does not have the answers, I have found great hope and answers in hidden within the teachings of my faith. I share them with you, not to preach or offend, but in hopes that you might find peace and solace in your life as I have in mine.