Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Start,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
William Wordsworth[i]
This is the second in a three-part sub-series on the Plan of Salvation.
Welcome to the World
“Color is good, and …” the sound of the baby’s first wail echoes through the room, “a good strong cry.” The midwife puts a swaddled bundle on Alice’s chest. “Here she is, Alice. Say hello to your daughter.”
Alice opens her eyes, takes hold of the infant, and looks at the small head poking out of the bundle. She smiles, and speaks in an exhausted voice. “Hello, Jennifer. Welcome to the world.”
We come into this world naked and screaming. Our autonomic reflexes kick in and keep us breathing and our hearts beating. We start learning things almost instantly. We learn that Mom is the source of food and love. We learn that Dad is the transport vehicle to take us to Mom.
By the time we’re two we’ve started to talk, and the word constantly on our lips is “Why.” Why is water wet? Why is the sky blue? Why is Daddy so tall? As we grow older, our questions begin to include the spiritual and philosophical as well as the physical. At some point, “Why am I here?” becomes the question of the day.
Why am I here?
In the previous article[ii], we discussed our pre-mortal development and touched on the plan to take us from spirit children of godly Parents to gods in our own right. Part of that plan sent us down into mortality with no recollection of pre-mortality.
Why did the path lead through forgetful mortality? Because there are some lessons you only learn when you are on your own. We come here to gain a body and learn to control it, learn to exercise our agency by being tempted and making choices, and to be tested. Additionally, there are specific ordinances which are required in order to return to our Heavenly Parents. All of this is designed to give us the instruction we need to be able to realize our divine potential.
Gain a Body
In our pre-mortal life, we were spirits. We saw that our Heavenly Parents had bodies, and wanted to be like them. To obtain a body, we came to earth. Once here, we need to learn to control our bodies. This means not only learning to walk and talk and control our bodily functions, but it also means learning to control the urges our mortal body is prone to in its natural state. This isn’t just referring to biological urges. Our mortal bodies attempt to dominate our spirits, tempting us towards less spiritual destinations than we are aiming for.
“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been since the Fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man”[iii]
A god cannot be swept along by passions. He or she must be in control, and make proper choices.
Exercise Agency
We are here to learn to make those choices. The underpinning of the Plan of Salvation is personal agency. We chose to follow Christ rather than Lucifer in our pre-mortal lives. Once here, we are constantly confronted with the same choice on a regular basis. Not every choice we are confronted with is between good and evil, but many are – if on a smaller scale than the one which triggered the war in heaven. The cumulative effect of these choices, however, is just as important. The choices we make here help determine what will happen after we leave mortality. The goal is to be like the people in this story:
John Taylor, the third President of the Church, reported: “Some years ago, in Nauvoo, a gentleman in my hearing, a member of the Legislature, asked Joseph Smith how it was that he was enabled to govern so many people, and to preserve such perfect order; remarking at the same time that it was impossible for them to do it anywhere else. Mr. Smith remarked that it was very easy to do that. ‘How?’ responded the gentleman; ‘to us it is very difficult.’ Mr. Smith replied, ‘I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.’”[iv]
Temptation
Both God and Satan tempt us. God, through his Holy Spirit, tempts us to do good, and make choices which will enable us to return to him. Satan tempts us to do the opposite. Satan’s goal is to make “all men … miserable like himself.”[v]
So, if Satan’s goal is to frustrate God’s plan, why does God tolerate his interference? There are a couple of reasons. First, if you don’t have multiple options, it’s not a choice. The Book of Mormon prophet Lehi knew this when he said: “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.”[vi] Second, God “give[s] the Devil benefit of the law,”[vii] and the law is that judgement cannot be rendered prematurely. As with all of us, judgement will be rendered on Satan at the final judgement, and he will be sent to his … reward.
Through trial and error, and based on instruction from parents and other respected adults, we learn to distinguish right from wrong and make correct choices. When we sin, and later repent, we learn about the costs of sin, and what forgiveness feels like. All of these things teach us to make correct decisions based on correct principles.
Testing and Obedience
“And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things the Lord their God shall command them.”[viii]
This life is a test. How will we use our agency? Can we be trusted to control ourselves? When faced with trials will we stick to our beliefs or will we abandon them if it looks like we can get out of our troubles by doing so? This leads us back to my earlier question about why we had to have our memory blocked. If we could remember the ages we lived in the presence of our Heavenly Parents, it would invalidate the test. The Devil’s temptations would be of no effect because we would remember what we had left behind, and would know the way back.
Trials
One of the age-old questions is “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” The answer is that He doesn’t interfere. Our Heavenly Parents are not helicopter parents. They allow us to make our choices, and then expect us to deal with the consequences of those choices. This doesn’t mean that when someone finds themselves in unfortunate circumstances they’ve made bad decisions, much less are evil. Sometimes, people get caught up in the consequences of other people’s decisions. For example:
During rush hour, a tractor-trailer driver misjudges the curve on a freeway on-ramp and winds up tipping over on an SUV in the next lane. The on-ramp is completely blocked. The SUV is totaled. The driver of the SUV escapes with minor injuries, and the truck driver walks away unharmed. Traffic in that part the city is snarled for eight hours, until they can get the truck off the on-ramp.
The only bad decision was made by the truck driver. Everyone else simply decided to be on that on-ramp at that time.
Ordinances & Covenants
An ordinance is a religious ceremony in which the participant makes a sacred promise, and God promises blessings in return. This promise is called a covenant. To achieve exaltation, a person must receive certain ordinances and make the covenants which go along with them. The specific ordinances are baptism and confirmation,[ix] the temple endowment,[x] and temple marriage.[xi]
Baptism is the familiar ordinance whereby the participant symbolically dies and is reborn. Baptism cleanses the participant of their sins, and prepares them to start a new life as a follower of Christ. In the Church, baptism is done by immersion, and not until the person being baptized has reached the age of accountability (the age at which they are responsible for their own actions) – defined as eight years old.[xii]
The confirmation is a blessing in which the recipient is confirmed as a member of the Church and has the gift of the Holy Ghost conferred upon them. The gift of the Holy Ghost is the privilege of having the influence of the Holy Ghost with you always, on condition of worthiness.
The temple endowment is a ceremony where members of the Church make a number of covenants with the Lord. “These covenants include obeying God and keeping His commandments, living the gospel of Jesus Christ, keeping yourself morally pure and virtuous, and dedicating your time and talents to the Lord’s service. In return, God promises wonderful blessings in this life and the opportunity to return to live with Him forever.”[xiii]
The temple marriage ceremony is similar to a normal marriage ceremony, but instead of being “till death do you part,” marriages performed in the temple are for “time and all eternity.” This is because the temple marriage ordinance also seals the bride and groom together in the eyes of God.[xiv]
Vicarious Work
As I mentioned above, these ordinances are required in order to return to live with our Heavenly Parents. That would seem to leave the billions of people who have lived on the earth without the benefit of the gospel out in the cold. This is accounted for in our Parents’ Plan for us as well. You may have noticed that the Church obsesses over genealogy and family history. The genealogical information is used as documentation for the vicarious work members do in the temples.
In the temples, members who have received their own ordinances perform those same ordinances as proxy for the dead[xv]. This does not force the dead into the Church. Force is not part of our Parents’ Plan. The work in the temple gives the dead the opportunity to live with our Parents again. The temple work in this life is paired with an ongoing missionary work in the next.[xvi] Those who never had the opportunity to hear the gospel (or heard it and rejected it), in this life will have the opportunity to hear and accept it in the next. Since they no longer have bodies, however, they cannot receive the required ordinances directly. Because of the proxy work being done in the temples by members of the Church, the dead will be able to accept the ordinances done in their names.
Exit … Stage Left
We enter this world naked and screaming, but we leave it in an infinite number of ways from the sublime to the ridiculous to the horrifying. At the end of the day, however, we all leave our mortal bodies and fortunes behind and enter the next world exactly as we left the pre-mortal world – with just our spirits.
[i] William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
[ii] And God Stepped out on Space
[iv] Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith p 284
[vii] A Man for all Seasons, Act I
[x] LDS.org About the Temple Endowment
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
– Mary Elizabeth Frye
I’ve had to try to comfort myself too many times with that reminder.
That’s beautiful. Thanks.
I use this one at need. The first stanza is the header quote for the next article.
Yes. “Gone Home to God” is the phrase I’ve heard Irish Priests use.
It’s the only sober thought that the Irish can muster at a funeral
(Those who have been to an Irish funeral understand this)
I think you’re talking about the wake.
Both from my experience.
They are far more jovial in their mourning
I’ve used this one a few times: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/over-the-range/
Last stanza:
Child, you are wise in your simple trust,
For the wisest man knows no more than you.
Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust:
Our views by a range are bounded too;
But we know that God hath this gift in store,
That, when we come to the final change,
We shall meet with our loved ones gone before
To the beautiful country over the range.
That’s on my father’s mass card. Crossing the Bar is on the back (he was a semi-serious sailor).
Excellent.
How do I locate part 1?
If you clock on Gadianton’s name in the “about the author” section you’ll be brought to a list of all articles that he’s submitted.
End note ii above
Thank you again. I continue to find these…apologetics? exegesis? of the LDS faith interesting.
You’re welcome. I think of them as presentations. Apologia — to me — implies a defense, and I think an exegesis would require a deeper explanation than I’m giving here.
Fair enough.
“Satan’s goal is to make ‘all men … miserable like himself.'”
Stands to reason that he’s Saul Alinsky’s idol.
Yeah, I had never thought of Satan as a prog before now.
Go back and look at the previous and re-read the section on Lucifer’s plan. He was a prog from the get go. He was going to force us all to do the right thing for our own good.
For our good and his glory. Sounds just like a prog.
Makes sense to me.
Man, this was your best one yet!
Thanks, G!
… seals the bride and groom together in the eyes of God.
Out of curiosity, how do LDS marriages hold up when compared with the rest of us sinners?
I’m glad you liked it.
It turns out that’s complicated. Based on what I found in the Quora answers, depending on your definition of “LDS marriage” we range from about 6-10% divorce rate up to the national average.
Our Heavenly Parents are not helicopter parents. They allow us to make our choices, and then expect us to deal with the consequences of those choices.
My earthly ones did the same.
As did mine. And look how we turned out. Oh… wait.
Yeah, my mom wonders, “What did I do wrong? He’s some kind of radical right wing nut.”
Lol. My mom is exactly the same way!
I just remind her about free will.
My moms is the same way too, just in a different way. Her and dad were hardcore Kennedy democrats. Then mom went hard neocon right. She can’t figure out this silly libertarian stuff. You kids still wanting to smoke that dope or what? We need to invade a few more countries so she can make some more t-shirts. Reference to the Desert Storm t-shirts she made all of us kids, lol. My dad is sort of mixed up these days. He couldn’t believe we elected one them darkies and something is wrong with Ron Paul, he’s on dope.
Her and dad were hardcore Kennedy democrats. Then mom went hard neocon right.
That’s not a huge leap given Berlin and Cuba. I wonder if Nixon would have made good at the Bay of Pigs.
I think all of us more mature folk grew up like that. You did something stupid and busted yourself up, it was seen by your parents as a necessary learning experience. Now, if that happens, it’s ‘someone’s fault’. Probably the government because they didn’t make enough laws to keep you safe.
May parents would have been billionaires or in jail considering how many bones I broke and how often I got in trouble…
Excellent as always, Gadianton.
Thank you.
Sorry for the off topic so quickly, but . . . .
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/pelosi-schumer-democratic-messaging-is-extremely-bad.html
Democrats Are So, So Bad at This
This is the headline of a political story on Slate the day before the election. Why oh why are Dems so bad at electioneering?
Someone has seen some polls that aren’t public maybe?
Democrats are doing OK in the polls—they lead on the generic congressional ballot by more than 8 points—but not much better than opposition parties typically do during midterms. An April Reuters/Ipsos survey, meanwhile, found that support for the Democratic Party declined among 18-to-34-year-old voters by 9 percentage points in two years, and the Democrats are in danger of losing six Senate seats they currently hold. The party’s leaders, rather than riding a wave of opposition energy, are fighting to maintain their positions. Pundits and lower-level elected officials routinely call for Pelosi and Schumer to be replaced, while the 56-year-old New York congressman who was considered the top candidate to succeed Pelosi lost his primary campaign to 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
PROG HARDER
Until Pelosi and Schumer are gone and replaced by some truly woke far left morons? It sounds really bad when you, as a right winger, have to say that the only thing keeping the democrats fairly sane are those two. But, just the same old shtick from the left. Everyone wants what we want, we just aren’t progsplaining it hard enough, you dumb rednecks.
Backtracking because they know the best they can hope to do is gain some seats in the house. The BLUE WAVE! won’t make it ashore and they are leaning forward on damage control. All the hyperbole about how this election was going to usher in a permanent majority is already being memory-holed.
Backtracking the day before the election. That’s an interesting sign.
I’m unsure of how to feel about this if we end up with a D house and an R Senate. Gridlock is good, we get a couple more years of the Fed government accomplishing nothing, which sadly is the best we can hope for. On a more visceral level I did want this election to be a referendum on all the progsanity that’s been continual since 2016 and have the R’s hand them their asses. It’s like watching a UFC fight where you don’t like either fighter and you are watching because you want one to lose more than you care about the other winning.
Liberty however will probably do better with a divided Congress.
Let them win the house and get in the spotlight while making complete asses of themselves for the next 2 years. Make She Guevara the star of the circus.Then you’ll get a red landslide in 2020, for better or worse.
have the R’s hand them their asses
While satisfying as schadenfreude, there’s a good chance the R’s would see that and yell “Mandate!”, then do a bunch of stupid shit.
Gridlock is probably the least-worst option.
Agreed. R’s are only ever effectual at accomplishing the very worst of their stated goals.
My local paper used the words Blue Tsunami about 6 weeks ago, so I predict the ham tears will be salty, even when Team Blue takes the house since “Tsunami” apparently means losing seats in the senate and winding up +10 in the House.
https://slate.com/business/2018/11/kamala-harris-big-policy-idea-is-even-worse-than-i-thought.html
And another writer trashing Kamala Harris’ Lift program.
Someone spiked the drinking fountain at Slate.
WarriorPoet
16 hours ago
Here’s my 10,000 word essay on how we need to get better at concise, direct messaging that even politically agnostic simpletons can connect with.
Yes: I never figured out what the central theme or conclusion was.
Moar marxism!
I think all of us more mature folk grew up like that. You did something stupid and busted yourself up, it was seen by your parents as a necessary learning experience.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard my dad say, “That’s what you get for being stupid,” I’d put them all in a sock, so I could administer some beatings with it.
This is the headline of a political story on Slate the day before the election. Why oh why are Dems so bad at electioneering?
“There is nothing wrong with our ideas, it’s just that we need to figure out how to package them in an appealing light to those morons out there in flyover country. We have their best interests at heart, but those dopey rubes don’t know what’s good for them.”
This started with Obama. Maybe not started, but it’s when I first noticed it. Which led to Obama hiring pajama boy and telling people to go to family holidays and harass their family about healthcare. Next thing you know, you have dimwits chasing people out of restaurants.
Well, we tried nudging them, but they wouldn’t listen! /the left
The smugness was always there but damn if they didn’t turn it up to 11 when the Condescender in Chief occupied the Whitehouse. I guess that’s when they decided they could drop any pretense of not talking down to the yokels.
In the Great War, the British had the The Order of The White Feather – Young ladies deputized by the MOD to harass and harangue men and boys into joining the Continental meat-grinder. Shameful and disgusting then, shameful and disgusting now.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/11/first-world-war-white-feather-cowardice
Hot young ladies, as I recall from my readings.
Essentially being a guy in high school and jeered at by the pom squad for not wanting to get your head shot off in France.
The Dems hired this guy in the 1990s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff#Political_significance_and_involvement
I think the obvious problem the dems have long term is that they have become somewhat of a cult. Everything is personal. What happens to any one of their ‘claimed constituents’ who get out of line? Do they try to somehow woo them back? No, instead they go after them and vilify them, you get:
Black guy: Uncle Tom, race traitor
Women: Not real woman, gender traitor
Etc, etc
They’ve already completely given up on whites, especially white men and are happy to just openly insult them and even wish for their extermination. Once they’ve lost any other identity group, no matter who they are, they’ll do the same. What happens when they’ve run out of almost everyone? Because I see it coming.
They did a huge heel-turn on their Blue-Collar base. Now they literally hate those people and want to replace them.
Old time marxism was about class warfare and splitting the people between the haves and have nots. It didn’t work out as expected and was taking too long to implement, so the enlightened credentialed elite invented that new fangled neo-marxism, which is all about identity politics and allows them to pretend they care even more. Now everyone is pigeonholed, and practically everyone that would be part of the lower class (have nots) in old marxism, is now the enemy of the good. Evil shit is still evil shit.
See the caravans in Mexico…
What’s the Matter with Kansas?
I remember my Step-Grandfather (a Clinton Democrat) had that book. Something changed with BHO as president. When I cleaned out his book collection after he died he had a bunch of Michael Savage and Glenn Beck books. I’m not sure what caused him to abandon the left in those last few years but based on his reading material he did in a big way.
They were never able to match the commercial success of Carry On My Wayward Son?
They went past the Point of Know Return.
Sprinkles and whipped cream with a cherry on top of a giant turd, is still you having to eat a turd. I know turds appeal to people that are envious of what others have, but shit, most people should take one whiff of that thing and go: pass.
Seems like everyone could use a good Polish joke.
https://twitter.com/notesfrompoland/status/1059076873001598977
How many Polish priests does it take to christen a shooting range?
A people like this deserved our support during the Cold War. Get bless the Poles
One of the pics I show in class every year: https://tinyurl.com/yaxsmyty
Solidarity — tradesmen unionizing against the worker’s party. The beginning of the end. But it wasn’t obvious then.
Except back then when the Poles chanted “We Want God” the Western media noted that it was a rebuke of the Soviets. Now, though, when the Poles chant “We Want God” the Western media says they’re Nazis who do not recognize the celestial authority of Brussels.
https://www.newsweek.com/poland-nationalist-rally-neo-nazi-slogans-calls-islamic-holocaust-draws-708984
A couple of weeks ago I said it was obvious that “jounalists” had their fingers on the scale and were trying to nudge the election in the right direction by putting out skewed poll results. And I said I thought they would change right before the election, because no one wants to be wrong (bad for future business).
So here we go.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-usc-latimes-poll-20181105-story.html
With the final polls finished, the last ads cut and well over 35 million people already having voted, political operatives in both parties expect Democrats to win back control of the House on Tuesday and make significant gains in state capitals even as Republicans keep narrow control of the Senate.
But as President Trump’s victory in 2016 showed, upsets do happen. And in this election, several factors exist that could change the expected results — in either direction.
Among the big question marks:
How badly will Democrats lose among blue-collar white voters, the group that forms the base of Trump’s support?
The Dems will get their asses handed to them by blue-collar white voters.
That’s because they are deplorables.
/progtard
I’m sure this has been posted before but this anti-mormon propaganda always makes me laugh. A friend of mine posted it on Facebook as a joke a few years ago and I had instant recall of this being shown in the fundamental baptist church I went to as a child.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a3eJC3qAFU
ROFL. That is a beautiful combination of truth, half-truth, and outright bullshit.
truth, half-truth, and outright bullshit
That sums up pretty much all the teaching on social issues and other religions I experienced in the baptist church. For people who claim to value Sola Scriptoria and Objective Truth they could be incredibly disingenuous.
To clarify, they weren’t above using half-truths and outright fabrications to warn kids away from the evils of alcohol, the Occult, The Simpsons, Rock Music, Tim Burton’s Batman, etc, etc.
Theologically I don’t have as many bones to pick.
I don’t know much about Mormons. All I know I’ve learned from the locals here. They have a temple down near DC that looks exactly like the tower in the Wizard of OZ, only it’s made of solid gold gold because the mormons are so rich. I’ve actually seen it. They say they made the gold by their wizard alchemists turning children’s blood into gold. What makes it even worse is that they vote for Republicans. No one can do anything about it because they’re so rich. And Mittens Romney, they say he’s the cult leader. And a Republican, of course.
So if it’s not the Koch’s what done it, its the mormons?
They’re all secretly united with the evul Zionist JOOS. Everyone who is woke, knows this.
We have a cultural crush on (((those people))).
’ Mr. Smith replied, ‘I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves”. Wonderful.
Gadianton, thank you for these. As I’ve mentioned before, my mother’s side of the family (minus my mother) were LDS. The times I spent with my maternal grandparents in a little town in central Utah are some of my best memories. While not a member of the church I always felt part of the community family. i never got into the theology but I could feel in the air the concepts you describe here about man’s relationship with God. I read these and I keep getting the feeling “so that’s what it was about”.
I’m glad they’re helping you make the connections.
Sorry to go OT, but I ran across this piece by Robby “To-Be-Sure” Soave. It’s impressive, if nothing else, for Soave’s sheer level of mendacity:
Another accusation, made by Julie Swetnick and attorney Michael Avenatti, should be regarded as highly suspect, at the very least, given that the accuser has contradicted her story….The Kavanaugh fiasco should serve as a strong reminder that the press must cautiously vet accusations, and that legal systems should operate in accordance with principles of fairness and a respect for due process.
This coming from the same guy who said on Twitter that Swetnick’s accusation itself should have disqualified Kavanaugh.
TOS should be renamed “The New York Times Addendum”.
Shika’s gone full Slate-level TDS. Not sure if the place was simply sold off to the highest bidder or if it’s a function of O’Sullivan’s First Law.
I can’t remember a time she wasn’t already there. TOS must be really desperate to maintain their I luvz me some diversity and muh cocktail parties to allow that hack to keep making a mockery of them.
It isn’t like there aren’t libertarian Indians. Maybe no female ones?
She is consistently bad.
I thought the “how we became libertarians” article was pretty telling. Less than 10% of the writers could even elaborate basic libertarian principles. Most of them are just their to pad their resumes in my estimation.
Glibertariat version of libertarian principles.
1. The NAP
2. Weed
3. Mexican Ass Sex
TOS version of libertarian principles.
1. MUH COCKTAIL PARTIES!
OT: I voted by mail today. Didn’t vote for most of the offices, shot down referendums expanding government power. For 2 races with truly despicable options, I wrote in Steve Smith and Zardoz.
I also witnessed a very vigorous debate in the break room between a person who indicated they have no interest in voting since they aren’t up to speed on the issues/candidates and another person who believes voting is a sacred responsibility for all persons, even those who admit they aren’t up to speed on the issues/candidates.
Highlight for me (who was just getting coffee and steering clear of the debate) was when nonvoter asked voting fanatic what judicial rulings helped them decide who should be on the state supreme court. Much sputtering ensued.
i bet “nonvoter” voted but didn’t want to discuss it and then finally had enough of voter’s bullshit.
Another accusation, made by Julie Swetnick and attorney Michael Avenatti, should be regarded as highly suspect, at the very least
To be sure, it may, in its particulars, appear phantasmagorical. However, its essence is credible.
STEVE SMITH WIN EVERY ELECTION.
ALSO HELP THAT VOTERS NO HAVE TO GO TO POLLS, STEVE SMITH TAKE YOUR VOTE RIGHT WHERE HE FIND YOU.
STEVE SMITH BRING POLL TO THE VOTERS!
AND BY POLL MEAN POLE.
I’m embarrassed that I missed that joke when I posted.
You should be… I saw that layup and felt let down when you didn’t dunk it.
I was expecting an ELECTION / ERECTION joke
I was thinking about going with POLE/HOLE or bringing back some terrible CHAD jokes, but I can stand beside (if not behind) what I wrote.
Great Satan
That’s a satire site, right?
Nope. That is perfectly consistent with past public statements.
One of the age-old questions is “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” The answer is that He doesn’t interfere. Our Heavenly Parents are not helicopter parents. They allow us to make our choices, and then expect us to deal with the consequences of those choices.
Respectfully, I disagree. Job getting cosmically shat on seems completely different from letting your kid fall off the jungle gym and get a bruise.
Personally, I find Augustine’s thoughts very insightful. Bad things happen to bad people to give them cause to repent. Bad things happen to good people to strengthen their faith.
It may not be the most satisfying answer, but it at least seems to evoke purpose where there seemingly isn’t one. I think the non-interference theory comes perilously close to sounding like “daddy just watches while hubby beats you because you forget to wash the dishes”
I have to see Job as symbolic to get past the wager between Satan and God.
As for why bad things happen to good people, I can accept that it is a faith- and character-building function. But I also think it serves other good people. For instance, someone needs a kidney transplant. Someone else selflessly offers theirs. The donor has the opportunity to serve his fellow man as he wishes. The spouse/caretaker of the recipient may grow in faith and love.
My son is a handful, and sometimes I think, “Why did God think we were the best parents for this kid?” because we feel vastly inadequate. But I have grown far more patient with other parents with special needs kids.
I keep hearing lefties saying that Jesus was a socialist. God seems more of a libertarian if he is indeed allowing free will. Because if he were a socialist, wouldn’t all of our lives be micromanaged from cradle to grave for our own good?
That’s my least favorite Derpbook set of posts – “Jesus said take care of the poor, so all Christians should support welfare”. I absolutely can’t resist replying along the lines of “Jesus didn’t tell his people to get the Roman Senate to tax people to give food to the poor, he said give to the poor directly”. It never gets through, but I just can’t help myself.
I don’t even bother. The resulting shitstorm is not worth making the point.
Much like Prog-Jews, many erstwhile religious people embrace partisan politics as a religion first and their faith second. There is a very good reason that Idol Worship carries one of the strongest prohibitions in the Bible. Once you stop looking toward G-d for guidance and begin looking at corporeal things, you can be led to major atrocities.
Don’t get me wrong; religion has been responsible for a lot of atrocities too, but in the past 100 years, worship of government/people has caused many more.
Lev 23:22 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger: I am the LORD your God.
There is nothing new or interesting about taking care of the poor.
Yeah, a little bit of Bastiat would help.
You would think then that they would love the free market since it’s what cause extreme global poverty to be halved in the last twenty years since more countries have moved closer to it.
https://glibertarians.com/2017/06/jesus-and-the-gini-coefficients/
Assuming that Job was a real person rather than a morality play, your analysis would be correct. I have no evidence to cite for this belief, but I think that Job was a morality play. I’ll have to do a little (a lot of) digging, and see what I can find. This will wind up being a later article. The tldr; of what I understand is that God allows the wicked to act as they do so that His judgements will be just. I’ll expand on that in the article, and see what I find. Who knows, I may change my mind.
Gospel Doctrine a few weeks ago was about Job. Most were convinced it really happened, and that it was totes okay because God totally trusted Job to make his point to Satan. I put up a modest fuss, though. To my surprise, my mother backed me up,
Good for you. I’m in Gospel Principals, so that kind of discussion isn’t happening there. I think it’s a great story about enduring to the end, but it’s a story rather than a historical document.
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
Well the Calvinists figured that out: there are no good people.
Not just the Calvinists.
“The wages of sin is is death.”
True, but Calvinism emphasized the depravity of man.
Death is necessarily bad? Why? And if you have such a dismal terrifying view of death, you also have the same view of life, because the two are inseparable.
ALSO HELP THAT VOTERS NO HAVE TO GO TO POLLS, STEVE SMITH TAKE YOUR VOTE RIGHT WHERE HE FIND YOU.
WHEN STEVE SMITH SAY PULL LEVER…
He still wants to shoot a moose, and the USSC has hovercraft case again
“You may think a hovercraft is unsightly. I mean, if you are trying to get from point A to point B, it’s pretty beautiful,” Roberts, a conservative, told Justice Department lawyer Edwin Kneedler.
I’m all for ending federal ownership of land outside of D.C. myself. It’d be a good way to strip power from them.
surely
of course there’s constitutional bases for post offices, etc, but I know what you mean
I didn’t say they couldn’t have offices, just not own the land. I suppose exceptions *could* be made for the postal service and military, but I think having the land privately owned (or perhaps state-owned, if that’s the best we can get) would curtail the federal government’s ability to jack with states, because the ability to kick them off the land would add some consequences to federal action.
Fake News Brazil Style
“Bolsonaro’s supporters said the Brazilian media has a leftist bias and they have turned to social media for news about him.”
Well, golly gee, I wonder where they get that idea from? All the Brazil media do is parrot CNN word for word, 24/7. I don’t get what they are even talking about.
Fake news being spread on social media is leading to ebil nazi populists. /CNN
I kinda like Bolsonaro. Dilma was a communist who did time in jail for armed guerilla activities. She’s also a shameless thief.
If the Pachyderms do end up keeping the House, I’m looking forward to a lot more youtube videos of snowflakes and SJWs needing Lithium.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/dem-pollster-were-kind-of-just-in-the-bed-wetting-phase-now/
Entertainment value alone would make it worth it.
Always knew Q was secretly a fascist
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BrfCUGsIUAAaJcp.jpg:large
Oh my.
mein Gott !
I just gave a fascist salute.
With your penis?
Typing without using your hands?
Yes.
Yeah, but it was not my arm that went up…
Thanks Gadianton, you’ve got a talent to explaining things eloquently and succinctly.
I’ve thought a lot about agency in the past few years, starting with my mom’s terminal cancer diagnosis, through her death, dad’s remarriage, and all that crap. And while I don’t have many definitive answers, I’m pretty sure the biggest part about this life is to give us experience, good and bad, but all is for our ultimate good, as Joseph Smith learned in Liberty Jail (https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/122.7?lang=eng). God does not interfere more with our lives because those experiences, even the dark nights of the soul, are for our benefit and bailing us out time and time again does not get us closer to the ultimate goal of being like Him.
I’m glad you like them. I’ve spent a lot of years as a Sunday School teacher. Teaching the gospel to teenagers (and later to recent converts) helps you figure out what the doctrine is, and how to present it.
I told you so….
Y’all might’ve discussed this movie already, but… I saw Bohemian Rhapsody over the weekend. Not sure why the reviews haven’t been that good. I really enjoyed it. My mom got me News of the World as a gift when I was like 8 years old. I can only imagine that she knew I didn’t understand what the song, Get Down Make Love, was about (I didn’t) as I was jamming to it on my little phonograph.
the trailer looks really good. what’s been the big criticism? it’s not like they tried to paper over his ginormous horse teeth. it’s clear the actor is wearing prosthetic chompers.
I don’t really know. Rotten Tomatoes was like 58% before I saw it.
The majority of people that have seen it have given it an enthusiastic thumbs up. The usual asshats in the movie review circles have not like it because apparently it didn’t show enough ass sex so people would know Freddie Mercury was gay. I guess their problem is that the movie was PG and not XXX about gay sex (I mean who out there doesn’t know Mercury was gay? Especially after he died from complications caused by AIDS), and for that they will not forgive the producers.
There was plenty of PG type gay affection, for sure. His lifestyle and sexuality realization were covered in the flick. Maybe some peeps wanted this to be a 50 Shades type thing for gays?
Yes, that is the main complaint I saw from the reviewers. They were ticked that the movie focused more on music and people than screaming Freddie Mercury was gay, and here it is in your face. Fucking morons the lot of these people.
If true, that’s just sad.
Mercury was far more than just another gay dude. Must we all be reduced to our preferred methods of getting our jollies?
Yes, because for a sad, depraved segment of our society, their non-traditional sexual mores are the only thing insulating them from a haunting realization that they aren’t special, important, or even noteworthy in the grand scheme of things.
^^^THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS
If the movie is accurate, Mercury was one cool dude. His gayness was just part of the package, but as AiCT says, it’s mostly about the music. And duh, rightly so.
Polling: we know that we know nothing
Electorates mutate every two years. They get older, they get younger, they get browner, they get whiter, they get smaller, they get bigger. They respond to new candidates and shifting issue sets. Using past turnout patterns can be useful when modeling a universe of voters, but the polls cannot tell us with certainty what will happen . . .
But we know exactly what the weather will look like 50 years from now.
You mean climate.
Yep, it was definitely Trump who did that.
These people can’t be parodied. They fling shit at the walls, then say it happened because of someone else. Go fucking figure…
What gets me is how reflexively they do it. That toss-off comment wasn’t particularly germane to the thesis of the article, it was just tossed out there uncritically. I frequently get the impression that they don’t realize how steeped they are in their own bullshit.
It’s both sides!
Not if your beer is as poorly thought out as your political grandstanding…
“Hey, it works for Ben & Jerry’s…”
When your propensity for being a political asshole exceeds your business acumen.
“fascist scum”
Well, when all the accusations started to collapse it was a given that they came up with a new made-up rationale for opposing him
yep. RCP has VA’s senate race +18.5 for Tim Kaine but the most recent poll was from September 5-12th. yes, he’ll beat Corey Stewart who is about as inspiring as a stump, but it’s not going to be 48-30 with the Libertarian taking 22%.
The Va GOP can’t seem to nominate anyone electable.
they had a pretty good chance during the primary with Freitas but f’ed it up.
Yes they did on both counts.
Thanks again to all for your support.