The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Ballard and Ballard (and Beck) – Birds of a Feather?

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When I read the “Breaking News” headline from the Salt Lake Tribune on Sept. 15, 2023 a few minutes after it arrived in my email inbox, even I was surprised:

In rare public rebuke, LDS Church condemns Tim Ballard’s ‘morally unacceptable’ behavior

At the moment I can’t think of another example of The Church publicly criticizing one of their members by name in the media. I’m rarely surprised by Church-related news anymore, but this definitely got my attention.

I already knew something about Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad, thanks to a video by reporter Lynn Packer that I’d watched a year or two ago, but I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. Suddenly a rabbit hole opened up in cyberspace, and I crawled right in.

I read The Salt Lake Tribune article, which can be found here:
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2023/09/15/rare-public-rebuke-lds-church/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_7736124BALLARDVICE

I watched some related videos by Lynn Packer (which I recommend) on an independent news website that was new to me, called American Crime Journal (which I also recommend), that can be found here:
https://americancrimejournal.com/exposing-the-sound-of-freedom-hoax/
https://americancrimejournal.com/utah-satanic-ritual-abuse-allegations/
https://americancrimejournal.com/our-the-lds-churchs-promotional-movies/
https://americancrimejournal.com/o-u-r-the-grand-jury-investigation/

And I searched for the name “Tim Ballard” on The Church’s website at churchofjesuschrist.org and found a talk by M. Russell Ballard (President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), titled “The Lord’s Hand,” that he gave in Worcester, MA on October 20, 2019. In it, he mentions Tim Ballard’s name twice, even describing a trip to Plimouth Plantation with two family members and “family friend, Tim Ballard.” This talk can be found here:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/multimedia/file/President-M.-Russell-Ballard—The-Lord’s-Hand—Transcript.pdf

Here is a list of some of the things I learned from the sources listed above. This is according to my own interpretation of what I read and watched:

– Tim Ballard’s public proclamations are more lies than truth. Whether he is more conscious conman or deluded dude with a messiah complex, he cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
– Operation Underground Railroad is more fraud than friend of children, and it has been used as a tool to promote and enrich Tim Ballard and to spread MAGA and Qanon friendly misinformation and conspiracy theories.
– The summer hit movie Sound of Freedom (a movie about Tim Ballard, which is still in theaters) claims it is based on a true story, but in reality is almost entirely fictionalized, well past even Hollywood’s infamously flexible standards.
– The criminal fraud investigation into Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad ended abruptly and suspiciously at a meeting in Salt Lake City, most likely under some mix of influence from Trump-friendly characters and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
– Doug Anderson, Director of Media Relations for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, issued a statement via email to Vice News, confirming that M. Russell Ballard was, but is no longer friends with Tim Ballard, because Tim used his connection with M. Russell to further his own interests without permission.
– This is not the first time M. Russell Ballard has become friendly with a character of questionable standards who has ties to child sex abuse. Although the charges may be unfounded, Lynn Packer’s October 22, 2022 video “OUR Op Ed No. 23 UTAH SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE ALLEGATIONS” explores the relationship of President Ballard and the church with advertising celebrity Gordon Bowen, who has been the subject of child sex abuse allegations in Utah. Whether the charges are true or not, Bowen’s past confirmed sexual indiscretions (with male prostitutes for example), his tortured and closeted sexuality, and his unusual views and writings on Jesus Christ, make him a head-scratchingly puzzling choice to be such a close friend and adviser to top church leaders.
– Elder Ballard worked with Gordon Bowen on a secret Jesus movie that may have cost The Church twenty million dollars. It seems that the movie may not have turned out so well, as it still has not been publicly disclosed. He has also invested in and encouraged various Tim Ballard ventures, possibly including Operation Underground Railroad and related projects, as well as a company called “Slave Stealers, LLC,” a company with the same address as Elder Ballard’s son’s office.

Your average faithful Mormon might assume the best of Elder M. Russell Ballard, and if they’re smart they might assume the worst of Tim Ballard, but maybe there are some ways in which they aren’t all that different, these two unrelated Ballards. See Lynn Packer’s 2020 video “Operation Underground Railroad and ‘The Covenant‘” for information about M. Russell’s Ballard’s past questionable business dealings of his own. And then of course there is that time Elder Ballard served himself to Church critics on a silver platter, when he said, during a 2017 Worldwide Face to Face Broadcast for Church youth:

“We would have to say, as two apostles who have covered the world and know the history of the Church and know the integrity of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve from the beginning, there has been no attempt on the part of the Church leaders to try to hide anything from anybody.” Thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers project, “we’re learning more about the Prophet Joseph; it’s wonderful we are,” Elder Ballard said. “Just trust us, wherever you are in the world, and you share this message with anyone else who raises the question about the Church not being transparent. We’re as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth. We have to do that; that’s the Lord’s way.”

His statement about the church leaders not attempting to hide anything from anybody is simply not true. From Joseph Fielding Smith’s hiding of the earliest First Vision account to M. Russell’s Ballards hiding of a secret Jesus movie, there are obvious examples of Church leaders hiding things from their members and the outside world. Elder Ballard is the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he should know what’s really going on, and so I can’t help but think that in the case of this Face to Face quote, he is either lying or delusional – or both

Kind of like Tim Ballard. No relation to Russell, and yet I have a feeling that they both felt they were kindred spirits right from the start.

It seems fairly clear to me that Tim Ballard is something of a charismatic conman with delusions of grandeur who has forced his way to fame and fortune at the expense of gullible, MAGA-minded Americans and the sexually exploited victims he claims to rescue.

But what does it say about M. Russell Ballard, chosen apostle and true messenger of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, that he has maintained such close relationships with people like Tim Ballard or Gordon Bowen, that he was involved in making a secret, failure of a Jesus movie with millions of The Church’s money, or that he has been involved in his own get-rich-quick style business dealings that smelled fraudish? What about the way that he publicly aggrandizes his own direct ancestors such as Hyrum Smith and Mayflower Pilgrim John Howland?

Or how about the claim that it was Elder M. Russell Ballard’s prayer, by the power and authority of his Melchizedek priesthood, that finally brought the rain to drought and famine stricken Ethiopa during his tour of the country with Glenn L. Pace in March 1985? A November 17, 2015 article on LDSLiving.com that described Elder Ballard’s miraculous trip to Ethiopa quotes Elder Glenn L. Pace saying that Elder Ballard “…commanded the elements to gather together, which would cause rain to come upon the land and begin to relieve those who had been suffering for so many years.” It also quotes Elder Ballard saying, “The land was burning up—it hadn’t rained for a year, and no crops had grown in three years…I knew that if we called upon the Lord to bless the land, the elements would be tempered.”

Tim Ballard saving children from sex slavery. Russell Ballard saving children from starvation. Miracle stories passed around to promote their own causes. Both of them taking donations. In fact, one of them will take 10% of your income for the rest of your life to help ensure you get into the highest degree of Heaven. It’s too bad they aren’t friends anymore – seems like they could be a pretty powerful duo, these two birds of a feather – just a couple of humble Mormon missionaries out to save the world.

Mormon Mouse Memes – r/exmormon Reddit 3-Pack

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A collection of three memes posted to r/exmormon Reddit in May and June of this year. I hope these each inspire their own longer posts here at some point, but for now, here they are – three in a row:

High on the mountain top, our banner is unfurled,
Ye nations now wake up, we’re taking o’er the world!
With Deseret’s industrious brands,
We’ve nearly spread throughout all lands,
That no unhallowed hand may stop
The fulfillment of God’s demands!

Search, ponder, and pray
Are the things that I must do.
But just for things that agree
With The Church’s point of view.

You’re either humble or you’re not,
But if you know it then your chance is shot.
And if you say it, that doesn’t ring true,
Or if you hear it when it’s said of you.
The truly humble don’t know that they are –
Just like the sun, our guiding star.

Mormon Mouse Poetry – For the Love of Strangers

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Here’s a little ditty I wrote and posted on r/exmormon reddit a couple months ago in the form of the meme-ish graphic above, and with the title “Does Russell Really Love Me?” I’d been having reoccurring thoughts about how both members and leaders in The Church can commonly be found telling people they don’t know that they love them.

Is it even possible to love someone if you don’t know them? No. You could say it depends on your definition of love and you could say it depends on context, but to that I could say that it doesn’t. It doesn’t depend, because not only can you not love someone if you do not know them, you cannot do anything to them at all which requires personal connection – in the real world, that is. In the completely subjective and imaginary world of ideas and thoughts and feelings however, you can do anything you want, and maybe that’s why it is such an attractive place for human beings to spend so much of their time.

But if it does depend on definition, then I would say the definition of love that I am talking about is one that defines love as actually acting in a way that shows you truly care as much or more for the welfare of who or what you love as you do for yourself. Talking is its own kind of action in a way, but just talking about it is never enough.

And if it does depend on context, then I would say the kind of context I am talking about is when a church leaders gets up in front of a large group of people and says that he loves them. This church leader does not know anything at all about most of the people in the audience – he does not know names, ages, faces, or anything about their life circumstances, except he knows they are members of the same church, of the same in-group as he is, and this gives him a warm feeling toward them, and therefore he declares that he loves them. And when he declares that he loves them, he feels he means it with every fiber of his being.

I will submit that in this context, the leader may in fact love the group if he acts in a way that shows he cares as much or more for the welfare of the group as he does for himself, even though he does not really love the individuals within that group individually. But the problem with this, in my opinion, is that some or all members of the group hear and feel the leader’s declaration of love as if it is a declaration of love for them personally, and not just for the group, leaving them vulnerable to emotional manipulation that can be harmful to their welfare if their leader leads them down the wrong path.

I also think that the leader himself probably really believes that he does in fact love everyone within the group individually and not just the group as a whole, and means his “I love you,” in that way, to each individual, as is evidenced most clearly in the Dallin H. Oaks quote from April 2022 General Conference in the picture above:’

“I love you, my brothers and sisters, I love all of God’s children.”

But what’s the big deal? Why do I care to comment in this way on the fact that leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not to mention many members of The Church (as well as leaders and members of many churches and organizations of every kind), regularly declare an impossible kind of love for people that they do not know? I care because I feel that if every single one of us human beings is continually engaged in the act of sensing elements of our bodies and environment and then symbolizing those elements with labels, if that is the thing that most makes us human, at which we are the best and of which we are the only practitioners we know of, then let’s take pride in who and what we are. Let’s sense and symbolize accurately as often as possible, but particularly if and when we share our personal experience with others, and especially when we are using the personal truth of our private experience to exert influence and control on others who may or may not share our feelings.

People who love in theory but not in practice, but who have convinced themselves and others that they love both in theory and in practice, can be dangerous to society in ways very similar to those who do not love at all.

In the library of human experience, if we’re going to have sections at all, let’s have them and their contents be accurately labeled as often as possible. Let’s have the fiction in the fiction section and the non-fiction in the non-fiction section. Let’s not confuse fiction with history, or religion with science or politics, or biography with autobiography – at least not if we can help it. Why? Because in a system built on symbolic thinking, and in a system built on the ability to communicate via symbolic thinking, the more false symbols there are the more likely it is that the system itself will become false, in which case the system will eventually be cancelled and completely useless. Now there’s a certain point of view from which that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but in the meantime, I’ll appeal to our selfish natures instead – don’t we all want things? And wouldn’t it eventually be impossible to know if we got what we wanted if we cannot trust it to be what we think it is?

Someone might say, who cares if we actually get what we want, as long as we truly think we get what we want, and to that I would say – well, what would I say? I guess if we truly think we have what we want, then that is good enough, isn’t it? Yes – until or unless it’s not…

For the Love of Strangers
Never trust I love yous
From those you do not know.
You must know someone to love them,
For the Bible tells me so.

If someone says “I love you”
And they do not know your name,
They’re loving an idea,
In a goody-good mind game.

“I love you” should be special,
Not for those you’ve never met.
And saying it to strangers,
Means you really want to get.

You want to get salvation
And you want to get ahead,
To do this life one better,
And win a big prize when you’re dead.

Saint Andrew of Snohomish – The Universe Tree

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This one’s for Uncle Alan. My favorite philosopher, the late, great Alan Watts, sometimes spoke about Jesus as “the boss’s son” and what an advantage he has over the rest of us mere mortals. He is also known for his ideas about how the universe grows people in the same way that an apple tree grows apples, and other related ideas. I thought of Neil deGrasse Tyson with the last line about “the stuff of the stars.” I think I learned about how we are made of stardust from him, but it might have been Richard Dawkins too…

The Zen Buddhist flavor of this little rhyme is also attributable to Alan Watts, from whom I also learned that although we can improve, we cannot improve ourselves, as that would be like trying to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which I am still an inactive member, great emphasis is placed on self-improvement. In fact, we’re taught that’s why we’re here on Earth in the first place – to be tested, to prove ourselves by improving ourselves. We’ve got to make ourselves clean and acceptable for God, or he won’t be able to let us move back in with him after we die, and we won’t be able to inherit the family business and become Gods ourselves. Church doctrine is infested with this kind of thinking, that human beings can and should improve themselves, and that God will hold accountable those who do not. This is all very well and good for those who are blessed with the genetic and environmental influences conducive to growth and “improvement,” but I can see now, thanks to Uncle Alan, that this is an illusion, this idea that we can change ourselves on purpose. If we could, wouldn’t more people improve themselves more easily and more often?

The Universe Tree
If we all should become like the boss’s son,
Well that would be no fun.
Even worse if he’s perfect, for how would that work –
We’d be finished before we’d begun.
It’s all right, he might say,
Just keep trying each day,
And when you fail please admit that you’re wrong.
Then feel really bad, and be sure to be sad,
And I’ll forgive as you’re failing along.
And maybe someday when you’re dead he will say,
“Come unto me, ye blessed,”
I’ve prepared you a place in a heavenly space
Where you will worship me and adore my face,
Now that you’ve passed my test.

But should we find out who we really are,
Well, that could get us far.
We could find and face facts to help us relax,
And shine on like those billions of stars.
We could know and accept how perceptions have kept
The truth hid in so many places,
And feed ourselves then with helpings of Zen,
That help us to see through all of our faces,
And bring ourselves back where we started again.
Then when we’re awake we’ll be able to see,
How there really is nothing we really must be,
Apart from what we are –
The self-conscious fruit of the universe tree,
That grows from the stuff of the stars.

Mormon Mouse Memes – r/exmormon Reddit 5-Pack

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A collection of memes posted to r/exmormon reddit in April, which have not been posted here yet. I may return to write about these at some point, although the Harold B. Lee one goes with my 02/23/2023 post “The Hand on the Head of Harold B. Lee,”: which can be read here, and the one with Jesus, Joseph, and Oliver goes with my 12/14/2023 post “D&C 124 and the Mask of the Lord,” which you can read here. But anyway, for now, here they are, one after another:

Mormon Mouse Memes – Unjust Justice for Jesus

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I created this one in memory of a post I made on January 19, 2022 called “Unjust Justice for Jesus,” and you can read it here.

There is a wee bit of a problem with the whole concept of the Atonement of Jesus Christ that the faithful don’t seem to have a good answer for, other than to have more faith and not worry about it . If Jesus was all-good and “perfect,” as is commonly taught in the LDS church, then that makes him innocent, which makes his crucifixion and suffering for sin unjust, assuming, that is, that you agree that punishing an innocent person for something he didn’t do is unjust. Yet, in The Church of J.C.o.L.d.S. at least, the Atonement of Jesus Christ is often described as “answering the ends of the law,” or, “satisfying the demands of justice.” But an unjust act (Christ’s suffering, torture, and death for sins he did not commit), cannot satisfy the demands of justice any more than a handful of dirt can satisfy your appetite.

Saint Andrew of Snohomish – The Blows of Life

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If something hard happens to me and I somehow manage to get through it, does that experience make me stronger or better?

No.

I might become stronger or better before, during, or after the hard experience, but it is never the experience itself that makes me stronger or better, despite such prevalent sayings as “Adversity builds character,” and its many variants, or “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (cue Kelly Clarkson, who I’ve heard many times, or Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, which I’ve never read). Maybe these are just things people say to make themselves feel better about the suck parts of life. It has a sort of old-timey Protestant flavor to it I think – a feeling that everything has to have a purpose and ultimately be for your own good because it’s all part of the plan. So be sure to eat your vegetables and thank the Lord for your suffering. This is humanity’s way of putting some straight lines and right angles over the wiggly mess that is the reality of life, especially all the nasty bits that we don’t like.

If I get really sick and almost die but then I recover and later I feel stronger because of it, then it was not the sickness itself that made me stronger, The sickness made me weaker, which is why it almost killed me, and there is no good reason to be grateful for that, unless you believe that there is. Getting through a hellish health problem might show me what I’m capable of enduring, which might give me confidence, which could understandably make me feel stronger. But that would be a case of something being revealed to me about myself, and not of something hard helping me out.

When muscles are torn, they can build back stronger, and maybe that could be true of mental health as well – if an experience really breaks you up inside, maybe you rebuild better – but then again, maybe you don’t. It depends on who you are and what your circumstances are like at the time. Reinterpreting the hard stuff in a soft light can be a fun or comforting game to play, but that’s all it really is – a game. The totally sad stories about people who get knocked around by life until it knocks them right into their grave just don’t get mentioned as much, which is another part of the game – the game of counting hits not misses.

I started thinking about this whole concept more as my mind kept revisiting the question of whether or not the two year full-time mission I served for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was an unusually challenging experience, was good for me. Even with all the problems I’ve discovered about The Church I still kept thinking “Well, my mission was good for me, so I can’t really argue with that, and it made made me a better, stronger person in a way I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else, so I guess no matter what The Church does, I’ll always have to be grateful to It for my mission experience. But something didn’t feel right about that for some reason.

Eventually I realized that my LDS mission did not make me a better person and I do not owe The Church a thing for it. The experience wasn’t inherently anything in particular on its own, other than what I believed it to be.

Do I regret serving a mission? Yes. Do I feel like I learned a lot and had some very valuable experiences on my mission? Yes. Did I enjoy my mission? Yes. Did I dislike my mission? Yes. If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, would I choose to serve a mission again? No. Am I glad I went on a mission? Yes but it depends on when you ask me. Just like everything in life, it is what is is, depending on who’s looking, when, and where from.

The Church does not deserve my gratitude for my mission experience, I deserve theirs. I personally have done far more for The Church than The Church or any of its members or leaders have ever done for me personally.

The hard parts of life reveal who you are – like a sculptress revealing and refining more of her masterpiece with each strike of the hammer and chisel. But whether life turns you into a beautiful sculpture or hits you too hard and you crumble is not up to you. If it was, everyone would come out looking like Michelangelo’s David or Aphrodite of Knidos.

By the time you come out on the other end of a hard experience and are starting to interpret it in a positive way, you’ve already survived with what you already had going in. As Galen Strawson once said, “What you do follows from what you are.” If you survive the blows of life they can show you what you’re already made of, and while you may get better and you may get stronger, that is a testament to your own strength of character and not to adversity itself. There is no need to seek out adversity in the name of self-improvement – adversity will find you just fine, don’t worry. And there is no need to try and comfort yourself and others by putting a positive label onto every hard and hurtful thing that happens to you – unless of course you truly enjoy doing so, in which case be my guest and knock yourself out kid, you earned it I guess.