Damage Done to/by the Church or the "church"

Someone on Twitter posted a complaint about a quote from the then-president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Ezra Taft Benson, in the October session of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Specifically, he said the talk did him and his a lot of damage -- misguided advice kind of damage, the kind that can be very hard to quantify and thus very insidious.

(Ezra Taft Benson was later the President of the Church. Wikipedia has an article on him.)

The talk in question was at the end of the Relief Society session of Conference.

Here's the quote, 21st paragraph if I counted it right:

It is a misguided idea that a woman should leave the home, where there is a husband and children, to prepare educationally and financially for an unforeseen eventuality. Too often, I fear, even women in the Church use the world as their standard for success and basis for self-worth.

Here's my response to the tweet, a little more carefully stated than originally tweeted, and without the artificial length limit on tweets:

I would say far more damage was done by leaders and teachers who failed to read the whole talk, who failed to pray while preparing and giving lessons – who would basically grab this one quote, present it to the class, and then spend the rest of the time talking about other things -- shooting the breeze about sports, cars, work, fashion, academics, laundry, cooking, ..., anything but the Gospel, all sorts of things that would lead the unsuspecting member to apply the standards of the world when interpreting even this one quote -- instead of hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit teach what it means.

Yeah, if you pass over the first part where Elder Benson acknowledges that many members have non-ideal situations, and then take the rest according to the standards of the world instead of God's standards, the quoted part will do damage. 

Any single part of the whole thing will do damage. It should be taken as a whole and read/listened to/parsed carefully according the Holy Spirit.

Truth is like that. Half-truths can do far more damage than outright lies. 

Follow-up thoughts, also a bit more carefully stated, and without the tweet length limits that make it impossible to converse coherently (I'm pretty sure that these follow-up thoughts will not be more palatable to some, for being more coherent):

1. The president of the Quorum of the Twelve is not the prophet as long as there is a living president of the First Presidency -- different callings, different blessings. The prophet has some specific blessings and restrictions about what he should say, especially at conference. Others, even the next guy in line, do not have the same blessings and restrictions, and may well speak to specific contexts. That is the case here.
   
   
2. You've heard it before, and you've heard that people use it as an excuse to quit listening at all and therefore say it must not be correct, but from Joseph Smith to the present, every prophet has reminded us to study and follow faithfully and prayerfully, to get our own testimony, to get our own instructions from God.
   
   It is true that the counsel we receive from God will not contradict instruction from the prophet, but it may well contradict what appears to be instruction and counsel from others besides the prophet. It may even appear to contradict counsel from the prophet, when the prophet gives counsel to people in situations not our own.
   
   Borrowing from the language of mathematics, when we start implementing things, context is very important. That's why we need that Holy Spirit to guide us in our implementation, and all the general counsel in the world is not enough to tell us every little thing about specific implementation. We need the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
   
   It remains true, and when the outward church – the social church – teases members for getting their own instructions because, oh my goodness, we can't be THAT different, the social church partakes of the spirit of the great and abominable.


3. What Elder Benson said was not exactly wrong. He mentioned, didn't he, that Adam and Eve labored together? Both labored. Together.
   
   Maybe he seems to have failed to emphasize enough that a man should not be leaving the home entirely to the woman, but at least he repeats and emphasizes the necessity for cooperation.
   
   In not just a metaphorical sense, neither one should be leaving the home.
   
   In a more literal sense, the woman will naturally and generally be the one to be more directly responsible in the home -- that is, in the statistically usual case. The general case is theoretical. Actual particular cases vary from the general case in different degrees, and variance from the hypothetical general case is not a sin in and of itself.
   
   But if either the man or the woman sets the responsibility for the home aside in trade for the things of the world, they are choosing the lesser thing. They are choosing the world over God.
   
   
4. So much of the semantic burden of the metalanguage Elder Benson uses here has since been turned backwards and/or upside-down by changes in common English usage.
   
   Specific to this case, interpreted according to current common usage, it may seem like he is advocating for self-forced subservience for women.
   
   But he says both parents should be sacrificing for the family. Not just one.
   
   And self-forced subservience is at total odds with the Gospel. God will forgive people who make this mistake concerning themselves, who try to force themselves into a subservient position, when they learn and accept the teaching that service is usually not really the best kind of service when it is subservient or forced.
   
   God will not easily forgive people who make the mistake of deliberating pushing others into subservience, especially into self-reinforced subservience. But if they sincerely turn back to Him, they can be forgiven, too.
   

Jesus explained something relative to this to the twelve when James and John asked to be allowed to sit on His right and left:


And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. (Mark 10: 44.)


I'm not making this up. It is repeated elsewhere in scripture.

If we understand this principle, it is easier to understand what Elder Benson is saying in this talk. If we don't understand that priesthood is not supposed to be about personal glory and pomp, it may well be easier to misread this talk, precisely because, in the meta-language of the world, priesthood is about aggrandizement and the trappings of power, not about service.


Too much of the outward social church accepts the metalanguage of the world, in spite of all the cautions we receive against that twice a year in conference talks.

Hey. Elder Benson cautioned about this very thing in at least two specific places in this talk.

I'm not saying anyone is to blame for misunderstanding this talk, although a man who uses it to try to put himself above his wife will be under condemnation from God for other reasons, if not for deliberately misunderstanding this talk. That may be why it was given in the Relief Society session instead of the general session, so that the men who wouldn't listen carefully would be less likely to be tempted to abuse themselves and their wives by it.

[Adding a bit after the initial post:] More to the point, it was in fact about this time that women in the Church began to be counseled specifically to prepare for the unforeseen. Not to "leave the home ... to prepare educationally and financially for an unforeseen eventuality", but to take advantage of opportunities to develop marketable skills in case something untoward happened. 

There is a reason for the timing here. The context of the "average Mormon" family during the sixties through mid-eighties was an unusually stable context. That stability started to crumble in the mid-eighties. [End of addition.] 

[It's after one in the morning here, I should be hitting the shower and getting to bed, but I think I need to add just a little bit more:] There have been several points of inflection in my life, where I could accuse myself of allowing outward/social church teachings to influence me to be lazy and take the easy way out, to the detriment of my (then-) future career, which have (theoretically) left me less able to be a "proper" bread-winner for my family.

One is when I let the understanding that rock concerts tend to be a type of idolatry, and the understanding that trying to be a non-idolatrous pop star would take more experience and wisdom than I had as a teenager in the 1970s, to influence me away from trying to learn an instrument and form a band. (Should I note the errors in logic in such thought processes? I'm sure they're fairly obvious.)

Another is when I chose physics over football in high school. (But, for the record, I think I learned much more important things -- for my own health -- by then filling the gap left by lack of football with modern dance. I'm still a fan of American football, but the things I learned from dance would not have been available to me in West Texas Football programs.)

Yet another is when I let my decision to serve a mission turn me away from attending MIT on scholarship in the late 1970s. My high school counselors were seriously frustrated with me on that point. (Again, what errors in logic are there in asserting that it was a mistake for me to go to Japan in 1979 instead of MIT in 1978?)

Many such inflection points.

The football decision may be a little easier to look at because it does not directly involve over-the-pulpit or by-the-book Church teachings. Each person makes trade-offs in the decisions we make on our way through life. Those trade-offs do us "damage", I suppose. But it would be more accurate to say that closing one door opens another. [End of second addition.]

Anyway, yes, if you want to be saved in the kingdom of God, your testimony of the Gospel has to go beyond your testimony of the truth of your fellow members' testimonies. 

Just because everyone in the Relief Society or Priesthood lesson seems to agree that a particular conference talk means X does not mean that any member of the Relief Society or Priesthood quorum should accept X without prayer, especially when it runs against conscience.

What if you have doubts? What if faith isn't enough?

(This riff was a response to someone who posted in a faith group on Facebook, the question 

What if you have doubts? What if faith isn't enough?)

Of course you have doubts. Doubts in yourself, doubts about whether what you learned before is really enough, etc. And of course what you have learned up until now has just been enough to get you here. It may be enough to get you to the next step, but is not enough to get you to the one after. 

Growth is natural. Growth is necessary. 

Thinking faith isn't enough is misunderstanding faith. Faith in what you learned before is not faith. It's static belief. It doesn't save you. 

Faith is what moves you to face your doubts. Faith moves you to the next step. Faith got you this far, it is what carries you to the next step, and then to the one beyond, in one eternal round. 

Faith in what? 

Jesus' name means God is your friend (and mine, and everyone else's). Jesus name means we accept Him as our Christ -- as our anointed Savior. We accept His teaching, which is to believe that Father is not our enemy, and to keep learning to live a godly life, to the best we understand the attributes of God. 

Nothing doubting means doubting nothing that God teaches you.

This is the ultimate truth: Life is hard and then you die. It's supposed to be that way so that the imperfect you can be put in the watery grave and a better you can be reborn -- every day. 

(Not literal suicide, even if it feels like it sometimes, but sacrificing things that sometimes feel like they are more important than life, so you can learn they weren't really as important as you thought they were.)

If you let the hardness of life soften your heart and keep turning you towards God, that's what repentance is all about. Your conscience is your connection to your heavenly Father, and, to extent you understand your conscience and clear away the weeds that this world tries to plant around your conscience, that's how well you understand God. 

Focus your faith on Jesus Christ, and live the repentant life, and everything else either falls into place or falls away. The stuff that falls away is stuff you don't need, at least not right now. If you do need it, you'll come back to it later when you are more prepared.

You. We. Me. I was preaching to myself as much as to the person who posted the question. Maybe more to myself. 

J. Golden Kimball and the Straight and Narrow Path

J. Golden Kimball is known to many as a rebel among the early general authorities of the Church. He is often quoted to have said things like 

I may not have always walked the straight and narrow, but I try to cross it as often as I can.

I suppose I could dig up more interesting quotes and stories. I could also spend some time verifying whether there is substance to the story or not. But this quote serves the purposes of my present rant well enough.

Some people who interpret the priesthood of God according the rules of the power structures of human society tend to think he only avoided excommunication, or at least being demoted out of the Quorum of the Seventy, because of his father's influence, or, perhaps, in deference to his popularity. Such interpretations are completely unnecessary, and, I think, possibly indicative of essential misunderstanding of the reason the Priesthood of God exists.

Many people who know me personally seem to think of me as a straight-laced, by-the-book kind of guy. Then I dig deep into some gospel principle in their presence, and they started raising their eyebrows and questioning whether I might be apostate. 

I am no J. Golden Kimball. Not even close. He did a much better job of staying in the strait and narrow than I do, as nearly as I can tell. But I can sympathize.

Even back as recent as the late 1970s (two or three generations removed from Elder Kimball's time), the Church labored under the burden of a particular editing mistake made when Egbert Bratt Grandin (voluntarily) undertook the monumental task of editing the original edition of the Book of Mormon (without the computer-aided tools we would use today, no less).

I do not disparage his work. It was a necessary job and there weren't many people willing to undertake it, especially because of the generally critical attitude towards the book and the restored Church at the time. And we thank him for it. Overall, he did a great job.

But he did make a few mistakes. These were one: In a few places, where the scribes (under Joseph Smith's direction) wrote "strait" or "strait and narrow", Grandin substituted "straight" for "strait". 

It's an understandable error. "The straight and narrow" is still an idiom for living "the correct lifestyle" in many cultural contexts, and was a well-known idiom at the time.

The other (proper) meaning of strait -- "confining" -- is not nearly as commonly found in vernacular English, and especially not commonly intended in the idiom, "the straight and narrow".

Humans have this bad habit of thinking that the straight and narrow path they have found for themselves is the one-and-only path. And when we combine a scriptural phrase including "straight" with the mathematical (human mathematics) concept of the shortest distance between two points, we tend to reinforce such misapprehensions. 

Just One Way!

(You must always be careful when mixing human philosophy with scripture. It is not a safe thing to do.)

Think, for reference, of the Straits of Gibraltar. They are definitely not straight. There is no safe straight path through at all, and the safest path through for one ship at one season of one year will not be the safest route for another, or at another season of another year, even though most safe routes will include certain areas of passage and avoid certain others.

Life is full of straits. We do not want to try to take them straight through, unless we want to end up shipwrecked. Yes, there are specific points in the straits of life that we should avoid and certain points we should head for when we can. But permanently straight-on, never with any flexibility, is almost guaranteed to have very undesirable results.

I suspect that, if J. Golden Kimball actually said that about the straight and narrow (and, I really don't doubt that he did), he understood the difference between the "straight and narrow" and the "strait and narrow", even if he did not have the advantage we now have of the modern edition's restored wording of 3rd Nephi 14: 14:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life ...

Even with that rendered as "straight", it's talking about the gate, not the path. "Strait" is quite clearly the better grammatical fit in context. 

I recognized this while I was preparing for my mission. 

I had had a hard time with the common analogy of baptism and eternal marriage and the straight and narrow defining one single linear path to the Celestial Kingdom, and I had done a bit of moderately deep scriptural research on the subject. 

Even if the analogy is not taken to extremes, I considered Alma, son of Alma, and Paul to be proper counterexamples -- and I felt that the analogy itself was promoting the sort of self-righteousness typical of the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus regularly warned of results contrary to expectation in the New Testament.

There are several places in the Book of Mormon where "strait" is clearly correct and several where "straight" is clearly correct. And there are a few places where the current edition uses "strait", while certain scholars want to insist that "straight" works better.

You may expect me to join that argument, given the above. 

I won't actually join the argument, even if you think I am poisoning the well.

The path before us is strait. It is difficult. Life was not intended to be easy. We are distinguished from other animals by our trenchant for solving problems, and, if God designed us to be able to solve problems, He would have prepared a place for us where we would have plenty of very difficult problems to solve. And it appears that He has done exactly that.

A straight path in this sense is not a difficult path. That's why it is called straight. No twists, no sudden curves, no rough spots, no tests. Just gun those engines and go, go, go. Only interesting if you have high-octane fuel, high-acceleration drive train, high brake-horsepower engine, and a limited distance course: Quarter-milers.

That is not life for most of us.

However, we are to make the paths of the Lord straight. 

He is able to save us no matter how hard our case is, but there is no particular reason to make it more difficult than it needs to be, no need to give Him more twists than necessary. 

No need to feel so much guilt that we refuse to accept His help, but also no need to deliberately make it harder than necessary for Him to help us.

This is not the question we should be focusing on, especially because it's easy to listen to people tell us what is the socially acceptable straight path, and others simply can't see from our point of view, even when they think they are trying to.

There is a word in Japanese, 「本人」 (hon-nin), that means the person in question, or the person actually doing the job, him/herself. This is the only person who can ever see the path ahead, the person who must actually travel that path. (And you can only really see it if you open your eyes to what the Holy Spirit will show you.)

The socially acceptable straight path, if you missed it, is the wide, easy way that Jesus warns us leads to hell.

But Alma son of Alma, in Alma 37, talks with his son Helaman about the Liahona, the compass. He talks about the miracles that guided Lehi and his children as the journeyed through the wilderness and crossed the ocean. He says the way was easy and the course was straight.

In retrospect, it was easier to follow the compass than to ignore it. Ignoring it led to much more difficult paths, paths that led away from the destination, paths that required God's help to get out of. 

In retrospect, it was easier to listen to the Holy Spirit than to ignore conscience. Ignoring our conscience leads us to difficulties, to tangled paths that lead away from our desired course, into ways where we got lost and, again, have to have help to get out of.

Not just in retrospect. 

With the eye of faith, the strait path is the one possible path for each individual, uniquely tuned to that individual's needs, to that individual's state at any particular time. It is the path that leads forward. It is the straight path that leads us back to God. With the eye of faith, we can see that it is straight, even though, to the faithless eye, it may look quite tortuous.

Without the eye of faith, only the wide path appears to be possible, even though it leads in directions that we know we really should not go.

Without the eye of faith, the only straight and narrow path we have is the socially acceptable straight and narrow -- which is neither strait nor actually narrow, nor does it lead to heaven.

When our eye of faith fails us, when it is not perfectly single to the glory of God, we may not be able to see very far down the true path. 

But, if we reach out, God will show us the next step from where we are. And then, the next -- one step extending the previous until we can again look back and see that our Savior has, indeed, straightened our path for us so that we can again look forward with the eye of faith.

And we won't be inclined to look around us and question why the other guy is not on our straight and narrow.

Now, put J. Golden Kimball's comment about having not always walked the straight and narrow into that context. 

And it's worth thinking about why he would try to cross it as often as he could. I'm thinking it would have something to do with service, but that is another rant.

Does God Exist? Defining God.

As with everything I write, I do not intend this to be accepted as authoritative, only as a (hopefully) reasoned opinion.

Ground work first:

Doctrine & Covenants 93: 10 God was in the beginning, all things were made by God.

 -- vs. 23, 24 We were also in the beginning, our spirits, the core of truth that is the individual.

 -- v. 26 The Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of God

 -- v. 29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

 -- v. 30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.

If I understand this correctly, we are of the same stuff as God. But so are the animals, plants, and rocks, and so are the atoms and subatomic particles.

In fact, so are our engineering constructs, scientific theories, and mathematical automata, to the extent they are functional. So are our thoughts and ideas themselves, to the extent they are true.

Borrowing, for a moment, from computer science theory, I will use automata as the basis of a model of complexity. (Bear with me, there is reason to this.) Thus:

• Simple levers are an example of your simplest, context-free class of automata. A given input always results in a given output.
  
  Machines that implement such automata are usually fairly easy to design and test, although, if they contain enough levers (or the electronic equivalent, transistors), a thorough brute-force test might require a really long time.
  
  
• Push-on, push-off switches kind of sit at the boundary of the simplest class and the next class. Also, those one-button controls which, by pressing the same button, sequence through a series of selections (for example, bright/dim/night-light/off) are at this boundary.
  
  These can be harder to design and test. A current 64-bit CPU register, for example, cannot be sequenced through every possible combination before we expect our sun to shift out of the main phase. Perhaps I don't need to point this out, but the register itself will fail first.
  
  We generally use some testing strategy other than brute-force in such cases.
  
  
• The next level of complexity is where one or more inputs interact with the current state and the previous state to produce the new state. A laundromat washer controller which allows selection based on the number and kinds of coins and bills inserted to present a set of allowed selections would be an example.
  
  Again, the difficulty of design and testing increases. Even though some of the simpler examples, like the washing machine, can be fairly straightforward, it can be easy to discover failure modes in such machines that prevent further operation and even prevent further testing -- or even cause the machine to self-destruct.
  
  
• The third level of complexity is where you have an ordered memory (memory stack) that allows a machine to try to determine the correct response state by recording input, trying candidate states in some order, comparing them to the input up to a certain point, and backing up to try another if the current candidate state fails. Recursive descent parsers such as those used by computer languages are arch-typical of this class of automaton, although they usually cross over into the next class of complexity because of the complexity of language itself.
  
  For what it's worth, this is the class of automata where testing begins to be really difficult. Thorough testing of these automata generally requires more time than we have -- more than we have time-to-market, longer than we can expect the machine to remain functional, longer than known life of the universe.
  
  So we use test strategies in our designs, and we expect to find failure modes during operation.
  
  
• The fourth level requires multiple ordered memories and other features that can easily become impossible to design correctly, much less test well.
  
  All natural human language is in this class.
  
  If we analyze animals from the point of view of automata, animals are at this level or beyond.
  
  
• We do not know if there are levels beyond the fourth level.
  
  Our mathematicians seem to have proven that two memory stacks should be sufficient for anything we can describe beyond the third level, and we are confident of the math in the proof, but we are not fully confident in the assumptions.
  
  Anyway, we know that we, ourselves, are at the fourth level or beyond.
  
  The solar system, if analyzed from this point of view, is also at the fourth level or beyond. If it's meaningful to analyze the universe as an automaton, for us inside the universe, it is definitely at the fourth level or beyond. I'm leaving out even the high-level description of why we can think this is so, but I am confident of it.
  
  Any God that could exist and be really God must also be capable of behavior beyond our level of complexity, thus at or above the fourth level. Some mathematicians assert, probably in jest, that God must be at a fifth level.
   
• And (drum-roll): laws. The laws which we make to run our society, and the rules we make to live by, tend to start at the lowest level of complexity, and then quickly escalate into the fourth.
  

 

All of that kind of glosses over the differences between ideal automata and real machines, but I think it is enough for the present discussion. 

** Except. I must note here that computers are essentially very large first-level complexity devices into which structures which mimic third- and fourth-level behavior -- within certain limits -- have been constructed. Specifically, they contain memory which can be accessed in an orderly way, allowing stacks and other lists to be constructed. 

They have limits on the sizes of those stacks and lists, but as long as those limits are not exceeded, they can behave at the higher levels.

** Well, I should also note here, that our behavior, human behavior, occurs at all four levels of complexity. What we call deep, multi-dimensional personality is fourth-level complexity.

Put another way, fourth-level complexity tends to express itself as personality. There is a sort-of-equivalence, which I will offer but not prove here -- too much philosophy in one sitting.

** And one more point: Computer languages tend to cross over into fourth-level complexity for a very good reason. Mathematically speaking, there is nothing within the third level of complexity to assign meaning (semantics) to either symbols or language. This is why we can define, if we so choose, a constant called BLACK in a computer program which, when passed to a specific function, paints a white dot on a computer screen.

There is some disagreement about how symbols and semantics get attached, even in the fourth level. Or, rather, we can talk about etymologies, traditions, databases and all sorts of mechanical stuff, but we ultimately are not able, within science or mathematics, to explain why and how words communicate meaning.

In our current milieu, for instance, the word "love" is variously given meanings that range from "lust" to "preference" to  "desire" to specific "desire for another person's happiness". What it means in any specific case is pretty much subject to both the intent of the speaker and the intent of the listener.

** And ,now, there is a question I must ask here:

The first two commandments of Mosaic law forbid the making of any god before God. What is that?

I'm going to leave out a lot more philosophical stuff here, but what we hold as our "gods" are the things we set at top priority in our lives -- the concepts, ideals, physical objects, people, etc., that we use to determine the rules which we choose to operate our lives by.

Hold that thought, okay?

The Devil

No one really likes to associate with habitual liars. Sure, they may be interesting for a while, but eventually you get tired of it.

But we need to know there is such a spirit, because not all spiritual influences are beneficial.

There is an influence that tries to convince us that deceiving others for fun and personal gain is a good thing. Talking about the devil too much is not productive, but it is important to note that that influence is real.

Among the common lies that the deceiver tries to get us to believe is that the devil is red of body, has horns and a tail, carries a pitchfork, and has all the fun. 

Now, professional magicians do not all follow the devil, nor do all accountants, lawyers, and burlesque performers. Some apparently do, but not all. Maybe not even most.

In fact, many self-professed devil worshipers only think they are following the devil, while they are, in fact, not. 

How does this happen?

The devil also has a particular habit of claiming that he is God. Then he might claim that God is like himself in some particular way. Then he might say, "But such a being is [fill-in-the-blank-negation]! It's stupid to believe in such a being. God does not exist!" 

Why would he do this? He is a habitual liar. Apparently, he thinks to make some gain by deceiving us.

I bring this up here because many of the traditional descriptions of God are from the deceiver. I see no need to defend those. Nor to worry about them, once we have accepted that they are wrong.

Why does the devil exist?

The devil does play an important role. Without opposite charge poles, electricity does not flow. Without the gravity well, water does not flow down, nor does evaporated water rise. 

Does that mean that we should pity the devil for taking that role and giving us necessary spiritual opposition? Not if it tempts us to follow the spirit of deception, at any rate.

With that background, here is my understanding of the identity of God:

The Progenitor: 

(Traditionally called The Father in English because of limits inherent in the language more than gender or any other reason I know of.)

This is the generative principle, the set of principles by which the natural universe around us operates -- the Grand Unifying Principles which many physicists and other scientists suspect is there, and some seek to discover. 

I don't know if there was a big bang, but, if there was, this set of principles would be the set of principles that formed the initial conditions at the moment of the big bang.

Does this set of principles have personality? Within the first few moments after the big bang, the universe developed enough structure to act as a collection of multi-stack automata, which puts the universe itself immediately right into that fourth level of complexity. 

So, yes, the universe itself must have a personality, of a sort.

Since we can say that the conditions at the time of the big bang are expressed in the current physical structure of the universe, we can suggest that the nature of the universe is an expression of the personality of God.

Our scientists now have evidence to assert that the universe is probably larger than even a very-long-lived human stuck on earth for as long as the earth exists could ever observe the limits of. And, in fact, if said near-immortal continued to live, but were confined to the remnants of our sun in that far future, tens and hundreds of billions of years forward, the speed limit of light prevents such a person from seeing beyond a certain limit.

If that is true, there is no way any human, nor any institution of man's making, will ever be able to fully comprehend the universe.

And, given the tendency we mortals have to die, and the tendencies of our societies to self-destruct, we must always expect our science to reveal things which we hadn't known before.

Therefore, God is far too great for us to comprehend, and, even if we can say that there is a God who exists as a personage, if we claim to own that God, we claim a false God.

This is very important in the argument about whether God exists, so I'll repeat it:

Any God that a particular mortal person or group of mortal people can claim is uniquely theirs alone is by definition false.

God must be far greater than anything we can imagine or even attempt to define, but that does not mean that God does not exist.

Now, if you are bothered that the idea that the great mean God that your preacher taught was breathing hell-fire at you every time you turned around might actually exist, remember, if your preacher claimed some unique ownership to that God, it was false. 

People get excited when they understand something new, and often forget that other things exists. That's part of the process of backing up on the memory stack and starting down another parse path. Preachers are no exception to this tendency, although some do try hard to remember that they are not yet perfect, as long as they are mortal.

We'll be kind to your preacher and assume it was your preacher's misunderstanding.

In mathematics, two functions which parse the same set of symbols and produce the same results can be considered identical within the context of the specified set of symbols. 

It does not follow in some logical causality, but it does help us understand that, if some immortal being were able to fully develop all of the personality and attributes of the Progenitor, that immortal being could stand in for the Progenitor in any interaction, and nothing would change.

That can't happen within a mortal lifetime, but the eternities are more than just a very long time.

Is there a specific Progenitor, with a personality and all? 

I know a couple of things: One, the universe itself has a personality. And, two, my understanding of the scriptures indicates that there is a specific being that fully has all the personality and attributes of the Progenitor, distinct from the pre-mortal Jesus, with oversight responsibilities for the creation of our solar system and life on this earth. Also, I think I have scriptural basis to identify Jehovah of the Old Testament with the pre-mortal Jesus. Thus, this other being would be, relative to our earth, the Father, the Progenitor.

(And I will point out that Greek and other myths seem to contain a perversion of these ideas. The Father and the Son would not fight each other, because they would be entirely unified in purpose. The Father is not the one in opposition to the Son when the Son is pleading for us before the Father.)

 

The Son:

If there is a progenitor, there is a child. Moreover, the child is able to grow to become like the progenitor, and, if the child does succeed in becoming like the progenitor, the child can fully represent the progenitor. 

Jesus asserted that He ascended to the Father after His death and resurrection. I won't get into the details of all of His teachings here, other than that I have scriptural reason to believe He did, and to believe He was therefore qualified and able to stand in for the set of principles by which this universe runs.

I will note this much of what He teaches -- repentance, or changing one's behavior to learn to be more like the Progenitor, falls rather neatly out of the understanding of the third and fourth levels of complexity. Part of the reason we have memory is so that we can back up and try other paths in our lives. Forgetting may be important, but so is remembering.

Oh, and I will refer you to the Beatitudes, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, or 3rd Nephi 11, 12, 13, and 14. These summarize much of His most important teachings, and are enough to give us confidence in the personality of God.

 

The Holy Spirit:

Remember that I mentioned that computer languages tend to cross over from the third level of complexity to the fourth, and that we still have trouble getting meaning into words.

In the Book of Mormon, 2nd Nephi 33: 1, we find this little morsel of wisdom:

... when a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men.

Since we have Ghostbusters and other jests which abuse the word "ghost", I'll use the word "spirit" instead, here.

This third member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, is that which is the medium of communication. Without some spiritual influence, it quickly becomes difficult to communicate. If a negative spirit pervades in a conversation, it can be very difficult to communicate anything positive. 

Turning our own heart towards a positive spirit, towards, for example, a desire for the happiness and well-being of the other person, tends to make it much easier to communicate with positive result.

I'm not going to get too mystical here, but this Holy Spirit also functions at the fourth level of complexity or above, and also fully expresses the personality of the Progenitor principles.

This is what I mean by God, or these three are the Godhead that I worship. These define my intended priorities, and, to the extent that I am successful at implementing my intentions, my actual priorities. To the extent that I understand them, they define my behavior.

I do not own them. If I could, they would not be worth my worship. 

I am trying to learn to be like them, but I am fully aware that I will only see, at best, modest, small successes at that in this life. 

I have faith that, if I learn in this life to keep repenting when I find myself not following God, to keep learning more about God through studying the teachings of the Son, listening to the Holy Spirit, and to keep changing my life, behavior, and heart to conform to the attributes of Godliness to the best of my understanding, I will be able to continue in that path and stand with confidence before them after I die, and join in their work in the world to come. 

If I fail to do that, what I will be able to do after I leave this mortal world will be limited.

I should provide scripture references to each point in the above, but my time is limited. More importantly, I don't want people to think I'm any sort of expert in this philosophy. Everyone needs to develop their own understanding of God, or, if they need to, of cosmology and the purpose of the universe and themselves without a God who has personality.

He that is not against us is on our part

Mark chapter 9 has a bit of scripture that seems appropriate, relative to the last year or so of politics in the US.

Verse 40: 

For he that is not against us is on our part.

We'll pick up the thread at v. 38, not because what comes before is less useful, but because I want to focus on what's in v. 40. (When you finish reading my opinions, go back and read the whole chapter. Get your own revelation.)

And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us.

But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.

For he that is not against us is on our part.

Now, compare this to Peter's reaction to one Simon, who practiced sorcery and thought he could buy his way into the group, from Acts 8, starting around v. 18:

And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money

Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.

But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.

Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.

Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.

On the one hand, Peter comes down pretty harsh, with "Take your money and die." 

On the other, Simon responds well. I think Peter was justified, even if he might have found a softer response. Or his response might have been precisely what Simon needed.

We don't know the rest of the story. We can hope that Simon learned to pray for himself, and to understand the difference between sorcery and priesthood. (A few important clues to the difference can be found in Mark 9, in the verses I skipped over. Start from the beginning of the chapter and pay special attention at v. 35.) 

I think we can be confident that Peter didn't just turn his back on Simon, since he didn't stop with "Take your money and die!" He explained, "Your motives and intentions are wrong, so you don't belong with us!"

We might use Peter's response to justify rebuffing people who don't fit our preconceptions.

I hope we do not. That does not fit in with what the Bible teaches.

If we are worried about letting the riff-raff in, we can be somewhat reassured by the example shown in Acts 19, of what happens to the riff-raff. (I personally think I have reason to hope that the sons of Sceva also eventually found repentance, but that is between them and the Lord.)

See also Doctrine and Covenants section 64 verse 8 (and the rest of the section):

My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened.

As Christians, it is not our business to create divisions. The divisions will, unfortunately, naturally occur. 

Our business is to reach out to try to find ways to heal the divisions as we can.

 

Gospel vs. Culture

Recently, someone I apparently follow on Twitter popped up with the following context-free quote attributed to a popular therapist in the Salt Lake Valley area:

Examples of the Gospel are faith, repentance, baptism, forgiveness...

Church culture examples are women wearing skirts to & men wearing white shirts and & ties to Church, discouraging tattoos & piercings, defining immodesty as showing knees, stomach & shoulders, encouraging women with children to stay at home, expecting men to provide & preside, primary songs, green jello, specific primary songs, certain instruments aren't allowed in sacrament meetings, the format of our Church meetings, the way we sing hymns, calling the congregation leader "bishop", the specific temple recommend questions, bishop's interviews, worthiness interviews, ages of serving missions...

Since I don't have the original to pin it to, I'm not going to pin it to the twitter feed, either. 

When you discuss a quote of a quote without reference, you can always know that whatever you contribute to the discussion will probably not help communicate. But it is a fashionable topic. And the quote, as is, serves as a springboard into inquiry.

That's how I intend to use it here.

Before I start, I want to point out that it's a false dichotomy, to try to discuss what comes under the domain of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and what comes under the domain of culture.

Why do I know this?

The Gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses all truth. 

See, for instance, Joseph Smith, here, or Brigham Young, here, on this. Or Dieter F. Uchtdorf, here. Or pretty much any of the prophets, modern or ancient. 

If we had the writings of Adam, I think we'd know that he never questioned it. We can even imagine Cain asking his father to teach him how to raise wheat, and, while they were out in the fields studying, Adam telling Cain something like, "You know, if you ask God, He'll teach you about this, too, much better than I can." (Which is ultimately the only truly useful advice I can give anyone reading this rant.)

Given this, what is really being debated in the question of the Gospel vs. Church culture?

In the general Christian context, "gospel" is understood to be the "good news". (Or, for some, "God's news".) (Check the etymology in almost any dictionary.) 

Specifically, it is considered to be the good news that Jesus died and was resurrected for us.

He suffered for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane, and He laid His unblemished life on the alter for us on the cross. 

Had He not permitted it, there was no power on Earth that could kill Him. But He also had power in Himself from His Father to return to life after having died, and He did. 

(Technically, He was the only mortal who ever lived on this earth for whom the grammar "He resurrected." would be correct, but this rant is not about grammar riddles.)

We can say that He opened the way across the gulf of death for us, both for physical and spiritual death. The good news is that we need no longer fear physical death -- and if we will learn to turn our hearts toward His Father, who is also the Father of our spirits, we need no longer fear spiritual death.

And that means, if we will just learn to listen to and follow the Father's answers when we pray, we don't need to be afraid to live any more.

You should want me to back this up with scripture, so I will.

See, for instance, 3rd Nephi chapter 27, particularly verses 13 to 16. Also, the Fourth Article of Faith.

Now, how do I reconcile these two points of view on the Gospel? 

Doctrine and Covenants 6: 9 has an important clue: 

Say nothing but repentance unto this generation; keep my commandments, and assist to bring forth my work, according to my commandments, and you shall be blessed.

Yes, I know I'm cherry-picking, but, if you understand the background of the section, you know I'm not, really. This is an echo of Mosiah 18, verses 18 through 21:

... Alma, having authority from God, ordained priests; even one priest to every fifty of their number did he ordain to preach unto them, and to teach them concerning the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

And he commanded them that they should teach nothing save it were the things which he had taught, and which had been spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets.

Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people.

And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.

I want to bring Bible scriptures in, but that will look even more like cherry picking (to those who don't read the Bible in context of Jesus' teachings).

Okay. Let those who think it is cherry picking think so:

Matthew Ch. 3, Here we see John the Baptist, preaching the basics in preparation for Jesus: Faith in Jesus, repentance, baptism by water for remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost:

1 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judæa,

2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

...

5 Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judæa, and all the region round about Jordan,

6 And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.

7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

...

11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:

...

13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.

...

16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Then, in Matthew 4, Jesus also begins to preach repentance:

17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Continuing in chapters 5 through 7, we see the details of what repentance means. These are known as the beatitudes, and they consist of instruction in how to live a repentant life -- a Godly life. 

It is a good idea at this point to reconsider the meaning of "repent", because, after reading what Jesus preached, it appears not to be simply doing penance. 

In the Biblical Hebrew, according to some explanations, the word is a combination of feeling sorrow (nacham) with turning, or returning (shuv). (The Japanese translation of the word borrows from this: kuiru, to feel sorrow, and aratameru, to make a change or renew.) The Greek word in the earliest texts of the Bible is metanoia, which invokes the deep introspection required to change one's ways. In the Christian context, this infers turning one's heart towards God.

Which means, praying and listening and doing.

Thus, repentance is not just following some list of rules, it is an attitude of letting God change your heart, and letting those changes be reflected in changes in your thoughts and actions.

That should be sufficient for this little rant.

Returning to the quote of the quote above, what do we have?

Examples of the Gospel are faith, repentance, baptism, forgiveness...

So the idea is supported that there is a fundamental set of principles, and that the fundamental set of principles includes faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion for remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. 

And the idea that we should be focusing on these principles in our preaching is also supported.

-- and the idea that we should avoid preaching so many other things to each other that we begin to be contentious is also supported, per Mosiah 18: 21, as noted above. 

Just for good measure, see Matthew chapter 23, verse 13 to the end:

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. ....

There is a verse in Isaiah, that I think is important here, Isaiah 55: 6-9 in reference to our idealized understanding of the gospel:

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

I don't see Him limiting verses 8 and 9 here to the wicked and unrighteous. Quite the opposite, He is talking to those who draw near to Him and seek Him in those verses. I mean, seriously, what need is there to tell the wicked and unrighteous that their ways and thoughts are not on God's level? Their conscious is already hard at work telling them that.

We who claim to be trying to be righteous must understand that even our thoughts, not to mention our ways, are not equal to God's.

I should, I suppose, leave that second paragraph from the 4th-person quote to the interested reader as an exercise. Maybe I will.

Before I decide, however, I will offer a couple more scriptures that I think are relevant: 

Remember, when you are tempted to give someone advice or counsel, Doctrine and Covenants chapter 1 verses 19-21:

... that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh—

But that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world;

That faith also might increase in the earth; ....

This may help understand Matthew 7: 1-5, where Jesus said, Judge not, that ye be not judged. 

(You may have heard that He said, "Judge not unrighteous judgements ...." He said that, too. He said it both ways. While we are considering why, remember that righteous judgement is not stroking your own ego.)

And when someone offends you, the following is very useful:

From Doctrine and Covenants 42:

27 Thou shalt not speak evil of thy neighbor, nor do him any harm.

38 For inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these, ye do it unto me.

88 And if thy brother or sister offend thee, thou shalt take him or her between him or her and thee alone; and if he or she confess thou shalt be reconciled.

89 And if he or she confess not thou shalt deliver him or her up unto the church, not to the members, but to the elders. And it shall be done in a meeting, and that not before the world.

Yes, I know that I am cherry picking here, as well. I've linked it. Read it for yourself.

Oh, just a little bit more, and, yes, I'm going to cherry-pick again. 

In Acts 15, we have Paul and Barnabas teaching at Antioch, and certain members from Judea coming and adding to the preaching, telling everyone they should be circumcised. This causes contentions, and Paul and Barnabas, after trying to resolve the issue locally, go to Jerusalem to get the official word.

At Jerusalem, again, we have certain whom we might suppose have converted from among the Pharisees (a sect of Jews who seem to love detailed laws) expounding the virtues of the Law of Moses (which we understand to include all the detailed rules that were added since Moses' time, which Jesus Himself had warned had become a roadblock to faith, see again Matthew 23: 13). 

And Peter stands up and says, "Since we started, by inspired direction from God, to preach to the Gentiles, they have received the Holy Spirit without needing obedience to our traditional Law of Moses. God makes no distinction between us and them. What place do we have, making a distinction?"

Verses ten and eleven:

Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.

Then Paul and Barnabas get a chance to testify of the gifts of the Spirit that the Gentiles were enjoying -- without the supposed advantage of the Pharisaical laws. And James finally stands up and lays out a minimal standard that would be acceptable within their cultural context. And this becomes Church policy for them.

Read it yourself for the details. I don't want to spoon-feed anyone on this.

Concerning the detailed 4th-person quote I mentioned above, I don't have a right to attempt to lay out doctrine and policy, so I should refrain.

The Church has a handbook on-line and they continue to edit it, to adapt it more to the needs of the members of the Church all over the world. If you haven't read it recently, check it for the current real policies. If you have, you might want to re-read it.

There is also a Gospel Topics manual on-line which contains a lot of relevant material, and it is is also periodically updated.

Now, I'll add my personal opinions and comments from my experiences concerning those details from the 4th-person quote. Remember, these are my personal opinions and observations. Go to God for the real answers,

• women wearing skirts to & men wearing white shirts and & ties to Church, 

This dress code, definitely cultural, is specific to the modern culture of certain parts of Utah, USA. 

In Texas and certain other states, a bolo tie was usually considered plenty formal for church when I was growing up, probably still is. In Tonga and many other islands in the tropics, men wear something like a lava-lava to church with their white shirts and tie. In certain South American countries, white shirts and ties are not appropriate for Christian men. And there are places where skirts are not appropriate for Christian women. 

My personal preference would be for everyone to wear robes to church, but that would not be conducive to worship for many people.

And that's the real issue. We want to wear clothes that, at minimum, won't interfere with our own or other people's focusing on learning about the Gospel and worshiping God at church. That is a cultural question. Without cultural context, there is no basis for specifics like shirt color, accessories, and whether the leg covering is a skirt or a pair of trousers.

If you want more detailed information, read the handbook and consult with members of your local bishopric. There is some general discussion of dressing appropriately in meetings in the handbook, and some slightly more detailed discussion in the Gospel Topics manual under modesty. Not a lot of specifics. Do your own research.

And remember to pray before you go talk with your local leaders. Keep your heart open to the Holy Spirit (watching out to not accept unholy spirits, which do try to distract you) while you talk with them. And pray again after you talk with them. 

Doesn't have to be formal prayer, but you must keep your heart open to God, who loves you and wants you to be happy.

• discouraging tattoos & piercings, 

The gospel topics manual has a section on tattooing and piercings. It's not hard to find. It doesn't offer reasons. It also does not offer any justification whatsoever to people who want to judge others' appearance, whether to tease, bully, or simply offer unasked-for advice and counsel. 

Reasons for discouraging "tattoos and excessive body piercings" that I can think of might include the problem of undoing tattoos safely, the problems of finding a tattoo artist that practices proper hygiene and uses safe dyes, the deeper problem of decorating what doesn't need to be decorated, and the meta-symbolic meanings of tattooing. 

These problems are similar to the problems with using makeup, hair coloring, and so forth.

We really ought to be satisfied with what God gave us and try to build upon those gifts instead of effacing them to meet the standards of the world. 

But. 

What building upon our own gifts from God would mean, and what effacing them would mean, will vary from individual to individual. That's why, in the modern cultural context, when makeup is much safer than it used to be, and its use no longer tends to be generally interpreted as following the immoral practices of those old caste systems we're supposed to have left behind and such, the Church no longer has much to say about makeup.

The technologies of tattoos and body piercings are not quite at the same level at this point in time. Nor have they lost the meta-semantics to the same degree.

If someone asks for approval for their tattoo or body piercing, and you feel a need to tell them you can't approve, perhaps you can admit that you just don't like tattoos and body piercings, and it's something you're not qualified to offer opinions on. But do remember to tell them you won't let that interfere with how you feel about them as individuals.

There is at least one paragraph in the manual about dress in meetings which specifically says members should not judge others by their appearance.

This is something that we really need to understand. When we go looking for answers in the handbooks and manuals, we should be looking for ourselves, not for others. Remember, Jesus said, Judge righteous judgements. Leave the details to them.

Love them -- which means wanting them to receive whatever happiness they are willing and able to receive. Think about how God loves us. He wants each of us to receive whatever happiness we are willing and able to receive. He knows that we can then receive more, and He is patient while we grow to be able to receive more. That's the love that we should feel for others. (This one, I will really leave to you for your own research. It's there in the scriptures, and looking for it yourself will be much more to your benefit than letting me point it out to you. You probably already have some ideas where to start.)

• defining immodesty as showing knees, stomach & shoulders, 

I have a friend, whom I have lost contact with, who is confined to a wheelchair. Her physical condition puts restrictions on what clothes she wears. Covering the calves, much less the knees, is not an option for her. 

Perhaps you will say, that's an extreme case.

It is not so extreme. We all have health issues. Some of those may require clothes that don't meet artificial standards. See my comments above about dress code. 

We should not be busy dividing the membership of the church into "us" and "them" groups.

•  encouraging women with children to stay at home, 

Yes, in the ideal scenario, both men and women work close enough to home that one or both will always be available to their children.

If you, yourself, have a choice between more money and a job that keeps you closer to your kids, I'd recommend the latter. If you don't have a choice that keeps you available to the kids and while making you enough to pay rent and buy food, usually, paying rent and buying food takes precedence.

Usually. But not always. 

Our ideals are not God's. Again, using a person's or a family's situation to judge them is not good.

• expecting men to provide & preside, 

Concerning providing, see above about women working. 

About presiding, for your own sake, learn what it means to preside. 

Jesus is our presiding high priest. When James and John, the sons of thunder, asked to sit at his right and left, He said,

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

in Matthew 23: 8. In fact, start from the beginning of Matthew 23 and keep reading until you get the idea. Presiding in righteousness is not about telling people what you think they should and shouldn't do. Nor should the woman expect the man to do so in her home, especially not without her help. See also Doctrine and Covenants 121, towards the end.

• primary songs, 

I'm not sure what the reference is here, at all. We as a church are expanding our choices of sacred music, now that the physical hymnbook doesn't put limitations on how many we can print. This is not a bad thing.

• green jello,

Surely we can forgive green jello.

• specific primary songs, 

I suppose there are certain of the primary songs that are way over-simplified in their descriptions of certain gospel principles, but this is like ideals. (I can only assume this is what is being referred to.)

Ideals are things we need. None of them ever come even close to God. (See my mention of Isaiah 55, above.) But we still use them as stepping stones, to help us gain understanding. 

Hymns are usually closer to doctrine than primary songs, but they are also still too short to encompass the whole Gospel.

We have to forgive each other for our choices in primary songs, hymns, and ideals. 

Oh. We do have the right to forgive other members when they like songs we find not so likeable, or even disagreeable, and this includes primary songs and hymns.

• certain instruments aren't allowed in sacrament meetings, 

This is much like the above. 

Our music should help both us and others to focus on learning the Gospel and worshiping God. If there are members of the congregation who don't find electric guitars and drum machines (for example) conducive to their worship, we should sacrifice our preferences for them for an hour or two.

• the format of our Church meetings, 

Yes, it changes. It changed from all Sunday to three hours, then to two, and now to home services for the coronavirus fuss, and it will change again. Anyone who is fussing about the changes just wants something to fuss about.

Sort of.

I can understand feeling a little lost when church has been the one stable thing in our lives.

But real worship is a personal thing, not a social thing. 

We are supposed to gather together to strengthen each other, but if we then go home and somehow don't continue our study and worship, we can't bring anything to church to help others with next week.

We need to find places in our days to squeeze in reading a verse or two or ten each day, think about them, and pray for understanding of how to apply them -- instead of taking them at whatever the community opinion of face value is.

• the way we sing hymns, 

More of the problem of helping others when we get together to worship.

Paul works through the question of things offered to idols in 1st Corinthians chapter 8. 

He talks about how the saints of Corinth understood that idols are nothing, and the foods offered to them are not (assuming equal hygiene, and absence of poisons and drugs) fundamentally different from things not offered to idols.

Then he points out that we have a responsibility to strengthen others, and if our partaking of the thing sacrificed to idols offends someone else, to destroy their faith, we still should abstain. 

This principle applies all throughout this list -- and any similar list.

And I've run completely out of time to continue this rant.

You've probably run out of time to read more anyway, if you've gotten this far.

Not probably. Close your browser and go to the scriptures. Turn to God for your answers, not to me or to others of the children of God. Give others support and encouragement, not roadblocks. 

(If you aren't so busy blocking others, you'll have more time to get yourself into where God can help you be happy.)

Why I Believe

People ask me why I believe in God.

Well, it's usually more like, "How can you believe in a God that is/does this and that terrible thing, or whose existence contradicts that famous person's theory of everything.

All too often, I try to answer the complaint instead of the question.

It goes something like this (in the abbreviated version):

Me: "That's not the God I believe in."

Them: "You can't redefine God."

Well, I'm usually not rude enough to say, "Why not? People have been redefining God to give themselves excuses not to believe for, well, most of recorded history." So the conversation stalls.

By the way, I am not redefining God. I am simply taking the scriptures literally.

Recently, I thought, well, with all the getting stuck on what God is and what God isn't, maybe I should put up a post about what/who I believe God to be.

That hasn't been working. I keep getting stuck in esoteric stuff -- like what it means to call God our Father.

It occurs to me now, I should answer the first question, instead -- how I came to believe in God.

So I will.

When I was approaching eight, and the question of whether I would get baptized or not was looming, I told my parents that I thought I was smarter than God. I didn't like the program He had set up, I didn't like all the rules, I didn't like going to a church where I couldn't seem to get along with the kids my age, etc.

My dad told me, "You gotta fight from the inside."

My response was something, "Why do I have to fight this fight at all?"

Don't get me wrong, I figured out why pretty soon, but, at the time, it didn't seem reasonable. It was good advice, but for later.

My mom's response?

"Okay, you figure out a better plan. Work it up. Write it down. Then we'll talk about it."

But they did say the decision was mine, whether to get baptized or not.

I kid you not. My mom does not remember telling me this, but she did -- tell a seven-year-old kid to write up a plan to compare with God's plan.

I was not excited about the writing part, but I started thinking about this alternate plan thing. I started actively researching the scriptures instead of just taking what the Sunday School teachers told me at face value.

Don't get me wrong. I did not turn into a scripture scholar or a straight-shirt believer overnight at eight. But I learned how to use the indexes and the concordances, and started learning how to look for meaning.

I discovered two things.

One was that a lot of what the people at church were teaching was not scriptural. These were not evil people, but people are human. And it still happens. When we run out of time, we often fall back on tradition, and tradition is often wrong.

The other was that there were things I didn't like that were in fact scriptural, that, even in my naivety, I could not think of better alternatives to. And I started seeing that could be reasons for those things to be.

Yes, I'm being vague here. The details (the specific things) don't matter. 

Well, one does. This is not a perfect world, not in the way we humans think of perfection. Nor is it ideal. It was not meant to be so. In fact, the very purpose for which this world was made, to be a place where we could learn, would be completely undone if it were perfect or ideal. This was one of the things I learned sometime between the age of eight and nineteen.

This was my first experience with the Holy Spirit.

My second experience with the Holy Spirit was during my early teens. 

I had argued with my parents, apparently about going to something at church, I don't remember what. I ended up walking the two-to-three miles from home to church. The first mile or so was through the back allies, and I was in a rage -- crying and screaming. I'm sure more than one of our neighbors considered calling the police.

Much of my rage was directed at God for letting "this", whatever it was, happen to me.

I recalled one of the teachers at church talking about hearing the Spirit, and I wondered if God was going to reply to my complaints and accusations. And I felt an answer distinctly in my heart. I can't tell you what the answer was, it goes well beyond the power of human language. The general meaning was that my parents were doing what they could for me, and that I would survive, but that's just one prosaic interpretation.

I also heard an answer in my mind. I could tell you what that answer was, but I won't. I've since learned that it was the voice of evil spirits, attempting to hijack my experience with the Holy Spirit. It's a spirit of lying, and there's no need to give the adversary of our souls any further publicity.

Some of my friends and interlocutors will argue that this was all a figment of an overactive adolescent imagination.

Yes, the imagination can, indeed, masquerade as the Spirit. One of the four general sources we can get "spiritual" answers from is, in fact, ourselves. 

No, this was not the case here. It was not an answer I particularly wanted. It was not an answer I could have constructed for myself without help -- it included elements that I did not at the time have the experience necessary to make up for myself, and the conclusion completely exceeds the sort of conclusion I have been able to draw on my own.

(That answer contains, for instance, things that made it a lot easier for me to understand, among other things, calculus and abstract algebra when I encountered those in my academic career years later.)

You may argue that there is, within the human psyche, a function that can produce such epiphanies.

That assumes two things, one that what I experienced was no more than what current researchers describe as epiphany, and, two, that we do not have within us a gift from God that helps us understand truth.

Here, I will be point blank.

One: What current biomedical researchers call epiphany is the biochemical effect, not the cause, of spiritual experience, and what they generally record is from the other three sources I've mentioned above. God usually does not help us with our parlor games.

The other: the human conscience tends to get overlaid with all sorts of things, peer pressure, family expectations, social mores and ethics, tradition. But there is a core to the conscience that is nothing more nor less than a connection to God.

This is where it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. 

I'm not going to argue this point. Every human being has a connection to God within the self.

You can disagree for now if you need to. That's part of the point of being in this world, to experience what it is like to choose things.

Having chosen to recognize the workings of the Spirit, I have since had many experiences that I have recognized and can't deny. I have also had many ambiguous experiences. This does not bother me, because, as I just said, one of the things I learned was that God wants us to be learn how to handle freedom. That requires leaving us room to choose things for ourselves. It requires ambiguities.

This is not the only reason I believe, but it is a primary part of the foundation.

Theorizing the Existence of God

{No, this doesn't belong here. It belongs in my Random Eikaiwa blog. But I don't want to argue with people who will think it's "Mormon theology". 

It is not.

It's a very limited allegory, borrowing from themes and memes in the science fiction and speculative fiction genres, and from certain variations of the traditions in cultural Mormonism. 

Doing a full doctrinal treatment of the concepts touched on would consume quite a few more words than we have in extant scripture, and would invite the kind of argument that occurs when people jump to conclusions before properly reading and understanding even the first page of such a work.

It does contain some concepts that need to be discussed.

But it is not doctrinal.}

Ms. G: Honey, I'm bored.

Mr. G: Bored? What's to be bored of? We have this wonderful playground -- planets, comets, stars, black holes, galaxies, mmphff ...

Ms. G: Shush. I know we have an entire universe to play in. We've been playing in it how long?

Mr. G: Uhm, let's see. According to the time on the world in the universe where we grew up, what? Roughly a hundred million years?

Ms. G: More like two hundred million years.

Mr. G: And? It all runs perfectly, according to our blueprints and plans -- nothing out of sequence, nothing out of place, everything just as we set it up, and it will continue to do so forever.

Ms. G: Don't you think something's missing?

Mr. G: Let me look at the list. Uh-huh, yep, yep, uh-huh, it's all here, even the hyper-gamma white-bodies that the old scientists where we grew up wanted to call dark matter because they radiate too far above the spectra of gross thermodynamic reactions to be visible to the eye of the physical body. 

Ms. G: That last one is getting warm.

Mr G: Oh? Let me check the temperature. Yep. They are getting warm. Ouch. What was that for?

Ms. G: On the world where we grew up, when we had built a house, what was next?

Mr G: Move in? 

Ms G: (Clears her throat.)

Mr. G: That?

Ms. G: Yes, that.

Mr. G: But, sweetheart, if we do that, it will make a mess. Disorder. Chaos. Entropy and all that general thermodynamic stuff. And evil.

Ms. G: And Good. Can't have good without evil. You say so, yourself. What's the purpose of a house or a playground without children?

Mr. G: Children. Oh. Here it is, it's even in our plans.

Ms. G: Of course it is. You wrote it in.

Mr. G: With your hemphppffflp mmmm. Nice kiss. Help.

Ms. G: Uh, huh.

Mr. G: I remember our first baby in the world where we grew up. Quite a shock.

Ms. G: And you weren't even the one carrying her.

Mr. G: I did help raise her.

Ms. G: You did. You were wonderful.

Mr. G: You, too.

Ms. G: They should be coming for a visit sometime soon.

Mr. G: Sometime before the planets in this solar system begin to form.

Ms. G: One of those planets will be our first biologically habitable world.

Mr. G: I wonder if they'll stay.

Ms. G: We could use the help.

Mr. G: Are you sure you're ready for the changes?

Ms. G: The changes are already occurring. Do you think we should stop them?

Mr. G: That would not be good.

Ms. G: No, it wouldn't.

{Hmm. Somehow, that didn't go the direction it was supposed to. Maybe I'm writing too much romance. Let's try again.}

G1: I'm bored.

G2: Bored? What's to be bored of? We are the end product of millennia of biological evolution and we have for our toys the end products of millennia of technological evolution. We can do anything.

G3: Anything?

G2: What can't we do?

G4: I'd say we can do anything. We long ago learned to synthesize matter, including elements in the islands and continent of stability. We have intelligent robots that repair and improve themselves, we've defeated death for ourselves, what haven't we done?

G1: Made solar systems. Bootstrapped a civilized world in its habitable zone.

G2: We can't do that.

G3: Why not?

G4: They'd call us God or something. Yuck.

G3: I don't see that as a good reason.

G2: They wouldn't believe in us.

G1: So?

G4: They'd hate us, call us evil because life is hard and then you die.

G1: Hmm.

G3: Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. I say we go for it.

G2: Why?

G3: What else have we got to do?

G1: Not much that I can think of. What've we got to lose? At worst, they could only eventually become our equals in intelligence.

G0: After all, how did you guys come into existence? Was it such a bad thing that I/We made your world?

G4: Good point.

G2: Mmm, okay, let's do it.