Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck asked us all to leave the LDS church.

Not in so many words, but that was the jist of it. Selected quotes:

Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they heard any preaching about social or economic justice because, he claimed, those were slogans affiliated with Nazism and Communism.

Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck’s own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in interviews that Mr. Beck seemed ignorant of just how central social justice teaching was to Mormonism.

The controversy began when Mr. Beck said on his radio show: “I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. “Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, said in an interview: “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. People endeavor with all of our frailties and shortcomings to love one another and to lift up other people. So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.”

Mr. Barlow said that Mr. Beck’s comments were particularly ill-timed because just this year, the church’s highest authority, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, issued a new “Handbook of Instructions” to church leaders in which they revised the church’s “three-fold mission” and added a fourth mission statement: care for the poor.

This should also give pause to many LDS folks who think that the word "socialism" is tantamount to slavery to big government. They want gay marriage to be banned, but won't support a program that helps lift the poor from desperate circumstances? I understand that we want people to choose to help the poor on their own, making the choice individually and in an amount of their choosing.

Why, then, is it ok for a global ban on gay marriage to occur but a global health care system for those who can't afford it such a violation of free agency? Either let the people choose for themselves, or don't. Either let people choose to marry their homosexual partner and let people choose to help the poor, or make laws that ban gay marriage and lift the poor. It's ironic that Christian conservatives are so vocal about their freedom to choose but feel that someone else's freedom to choose ends precisely when it violates Christian values. It seems they only want freedom to choose what they think is right. It's a hypocritical attitude that has rendered countless generation helpless to think entirely for themselves in the face of dogma.

Mistakes and bad choices are how we learn. Of course that doesn't give us the excuse to do any less than our best, but sometimes our best is awfully darn lousy.

A big "thank you" to those Christians out there who do practice the core beliefs of Christianity -- love, patience, forgiveness, and freedom to exercise the opportunity of repentance.