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Some background for those of you unfamiliar with the term. From LDS.org:

This term arises out of Rev. 12:7 and refers to the conflict that took place in the premortal existence among the spirit children of God. The war was primarily over how and in what manner the plan of salvation would be administered to the forthcoming human family upon the earth. The issues involved such things as agency, how to gain salvation, and who should be the Redeemer. The war broke out because one-third of the spirits refused to accept the appointment of Jesus Christ as the Savior. Such a refusal was a rebellion against the Father’s plan of redemption. It was evident that if given agency, some persons would fall short of complete salvation; Lucifer and his followers wanted salvation to come automatically to all who passed through mortality, without regard to individual preference, agency, or voluntary dedication. The spirits who thus rebelled and persisted were thrust out of heaven and cast down to the earth without mortal bodies, “and thus came the devil and his angels.”

The story we teach children and that missionaries teach people investigating the church is a little simpler…

Before any of us were born, God presented a plan for us to come to Earth, away from his direct influence, where we could make our own choices and learn from the consequences. Think of it as college life for God’s spirit children. So we’d live here for a while, learn from our various life experiences, then we’d die and return to God, having grown and progressed through what we experienced and learned.

Well, Satan heard this plan (he was called Lucifer back then), and he thought it was terrible that people would be given the option to make bad choices. I guess he didn’t understand the notion that “you learn from your mistakes.” So he suggested that God change the plan to force everyone to only make good choices.

Jesus then jumped into the argument and rallied support back toward the original plan. The “War” was just the great debate between the two sides. God and Jesus’ side obviously “won,” as there are now billions of people living on the earth.

Now, if the Mormon crowd reading this is paying attention, they’re probably going, “Wait, Brandon! You missed an important part! On top of Satan wanting to take away agency/choice from people, he also wanted God’s glory!”

Except I didn’t miss that part, as I’ll now explain.

When I talk to neophytes and children about the War in Heaven, they always emphasize what was emphasized to them — that Satan wanted God’s glory, and they might remember the bit about agency. But they only understand the simple meaning of the term glory — they just think that Satan wanted to become God. And there’s some truth to that, but I think it’s missing the real point. The glory of God, as we read in Moses 1:39, is to bring about eternal life for his children, which can only be done if we are free to choose and we make good choices. The real glory of God, in the context of the War in Heaven, is the gift of free agency.

I propose to my fellow Latter-day Saints that when we teach people about the War in Heaven, we de-emphasize Satan’s glory-seeking and emphasize God’s Plan and the fundamentally necessary element of the Plan — the freedom to choose.

I returned home from my two-year long vacation to Japan in mid-2006. Since then, my Japanese reading/writing/conversing skills have severely deteriorated. I was a bit embarrassed speaking to Nobuo Uematsu a couple weeks ago at MAGFest when I randomly ran into him walking through the hotel, because I forced myself to speak with him in Japanese, but… I had a hard time remembering words. Add to that the idea that Ashley and I keep throwing around the idea of “some day” taking a long vacation (unfortunately not two years long) back to Japan — possibly/probably in 2013 — and I’m like, “Jeeze, I need to relearn some 日本語.”

A couple days after MAGFest, I busted out the kanji flash cards I had made myself while I was living in Japan. To be considered fully literate in Japanese, you’re supposed to know close to 2,000 of these characters. On my mission, I tried to learn about five new ones every day. By the time I left, I could read about 1,800 and write around 500. Two weeks ago, the numbers were probably closer to 150 and 50, if I had to guess. Now I’m trying to speed-relearn them, so I’m going through 20 a day.

Here’s my method. I have four piles: Learning to read, learning to write, review weekly, review monthly. I put 20 new cards in the “learning to read” pile every day, and I just go over them until I have them all down. In the following days, I continue to review cards in the “learning to read” pile until I feel pretty confident the character is actually learned. So, some cards (the numbers, for instance) stayed in the pile for a day. Others have been there for over a week. Once I have the reading down for a card, I move it to the “learning to write” pile. I then work the card through the same process. Once I feel I can remember how to write the character, I move it into the “review weekly” pile. To make sure I’m not just keeping the readings and writings in my short term memory, I review all my “learned” cards every Sunday. I’ve only been doing this for about a week and a half, so only a handful of cards have made it to the “review monthly” pile so far. This whole process is pretty similar to how I studied kanji in Japan, though I didn’t emphasize writing nearly as much, and I took it a lot slower.

However, if I can keep up this pace, I should be back to my post-mission kanji level in 3-4 months. Then I’ll probably start reading some Japanese novels to relearn vocabulary and grammar. And then I won’t feel like a moron when I talk to Japanese people.

Wish me luck.

I saw a bunch of movies this year and they all pretty much sucked. I can’t even think of five movies* that I’d consider putting into a list to call “top.” Sad times.

To take a break from my regular, yearly “top 5″ list, I’m just going to say this: there were only three movies** worth seeing this past year: Rise of the Planet of the Apes***, Drive****, and Hugo*****.

* I’m going to give a favorable nod to Super 8, because I enjoyed it. It just didn’t blow me away.

** Some movies can’t be on this list, because I didn’t see them (yet). But I recognize they have the potential to be on the list: The Tree of Life, Moneyball (though I’m skeptical), Warrior, and on a long shot, War Horse. I’m right to not include a certain Gary Oldman film, Tinker Tailor Snore…

*** I was very surprised that I liked this one as much as I did. But I really liked it.

**** Mom, don’t see this movie.

***** I suspect Chloë Grace Moretz will join the ranks of Emma Watson and Natalie Portman in a few years. And don’t call me a creeper, because you were all thinking it. I just had the guts to say it.