Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

Stiff-Neck vs Steadfast and Immovable


Recommended Posts

On 8/6/2018 at 4:26 PM, Jeanne said:

From someone getting older...if you are steadfast and immovable...you are going to have a stiff neck.😋

Yeah, I don't know Jeanne.... I think my stiff neck comes from hunching over too much with my head stretched out while on my steadfast and immovable equipment. 😛

Link to comment
On 8/7/2018 at 8:23 AM, changed said:

Tossed by waves = fear

 

how merciful the Lord has been unto the children?  I do not see this mercy - I see 65 million refugees, I see 15,000 children who die each day from hunger, I see the commercial sexual exploitation of children, children who are denied education, ... ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true... if ye shall look with your own eyes ye will see the truth of it... the same today and tomorrow, the world has always been full of suffering.  ... to one is given starvation, to another abuse, to another war, to another disease, to another ignorance, to another floods and fire and earthquakes... even as long as the world has stood.  ... despair cometh because of the laws of nature, despair cometh because there is no justice, because there is no balm, there is no refuge for most victims.  

I have no faith - cannot force myself to have faith - as much as I would love to see a rosy picture and ignore all the suffering in the world that does not refine - it would not be honest to pretend all is well in the world... 

how do you force yourself to have faith?  just ignore the reality of the world?  

Three things that I believe comprise the purpose of mortality:

1.  Agency-- The opportunity to choose between good and evil.

2.  Suffering-- Our opportunity to experience suffering and the ability to view life as a metaphor of Christ's suffering for us.

3.  Faith-- Finding faith in Jesus Christ, including faith that He will sort out this mess after this life is over-- including compensating those you spoke of who never had a fair or reasonsble chance to make a choice between good and evil.  Their lives were ruined by the evil from the very beginning.  

Here's the thing-- the early Saints were driven West, threatened with extermination.  They suffered unimaginable hardship, freezing and starvation, burying their dead along the way.  In the midst of it, they sang "Come, Come ye Saints, no toil nor labor fear.  But, with joy, wend your way.  Though hard to you this journey may Appear, Grace shall be as your day."  We've experienced that kind of suffering as a people, and as individuals.  Yet there can be a joy in it and confident hope for a bright eternal future. That experience was foundational for the Church and made the early Saints steadfast and immovable.

You are most certainly right.  The suffering and sorrow runs deep for probably the majority of people on the earth at this time.  I see it as a war between good and evil.  The Western world has been blessed with good men who formed a government based on Godly principles. This country, America, became foundational in sending missionaries into the world to teach Christian values of love, service and individual freedom.  We have also exported free enterprise.  The Church has been a pioneer in microloans, helping people start businesses in third eorld countries by helping them get a few pigs or chickens, or tools for a handyman business. The world is improving in many places due to the influence of America.  After every war, America has helped those countries rebuild and embrace values that bless their citizens, if they choose to embrace them.  There used to be an iron curtain between East and West.  It is largely gone.  Religious freedom has a foothold in Russia, China and other places formerly ruled by despots.

The troubles of the world have been caused by greed and free agency, stripping countries of their resources and human life energy for filthy lucre and selfishness.  It's awful what has been done.  There are lessons to be learned from all that suffering.  God will dry every tear because this life prepares us for a wonderful future.  I think it helps to have a faithful, positive and philosophical view.  God has a plan.  Mortality is only part of it.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for.  And faith in Christ, and His abundant solutions, is real.

President Nelson gave a wonderful talk on joy and spiritual survival in the Oct. 2016 General Conference.  It's been helpful to me:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/10/joy-and-spiritual-survival?lang=eng

Edited by Meerkat
Link to comment
2 hours ago, Meerkat said:

Suffering-- Our opportunity to experience suffering and the ability to view life as a metaphor of Christ's suffering for us.


In his first sermon after attaining enlightenment, the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths which form the foundation of belief for all branches of Buddhism:

  • All of life is marked by suffering.
  • Suffering is caused by desire and attachment.
  • Suffering can be stopped.
  • The way to end suffering is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path.

I have traveled a bit - have spent time in South America, and in the middle-east, in China and Japan... In Egypt - people living in cemeteries, kids with worms in their legs - but they were happy - the happiest people you have ever seen.  

The happiest people I know were also the poorest people I know.  Those in South America - no electricity, no plumbing, sleeping out in the open in hammocks - they were happy, ate fresh food they caught themselves, made their own musical instruments - really musical - they were happy.  

Quite a few more people than the Saints who are happy... I would like the LDS religion a lot more if they did not claim to be the only "true" church.  Contention, strife, wars - that all comes when one group of people think they are better than others... but yes, there are some great stories in the LDS heritage as there are in many different faith traditions.  

Link to comment
On 8/7/2018 at 9:23 AM, changed said:

how merciful the Lord has been unto the children?  I do not see this mercy - I see 65 million refugees, I see 15,000 children who die each day from hunger, I see the commercial sexual exploitation of children, children who are denied education, ... ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true... if ye shall look with your own eyes ye will see the truth of it... the same today and tomorrow, the world has always been full of suffering.  ... to one is given starvation, to another abuse, to another war, to another disease, to another ignorance, to another floods and fire and earthquakes... even as long as the world has stood.  ... despair cometh because of the laws of nature, despair cometh because there is no justice, because there is no balm, there is no refuge for most victims.  

I have no faith - cannot force myself to have faith - as much as I would love to see a rosy picture and ignore all the suffering in the world that does not refine - it would not be honest to pretend all is well in the world... 

how do you force yourself to have faith?  just ignore the reality of the world?  

For me, having faith and seeing a rosy picture are two VERY different things.  In fact... I'm inclined to call them opposites of each other.  Just seeing a rosy picture... frankly I find that to be naivety to the many real complicated and hard facts out there-- it's Garden of Eden syndrome.  Real life is complicated, messy, and beyond sucks at points.  Faith is not naivety- faith is seeing the real dirty picture, and walking onward still, knowing that God is somehow good, even if we can't see it right now.  

Edited by Jane_Doe
Link to comment
17 hours ago, changed said:

there is quite a lot of omission in this world... it seems Christianity was created for sinners rather than victims.  Jesus saves sinners, saves abusers and convicts have peace and hope through the Savior - not sure that it works out so well for victims though.  Yes, Christ is supposed to have felt our pain, but what is the point of the pain for innocent children - do little children need to be refined?  does abuse refine children?  that is the Christian answer - "no pain no gain, refined in the fire - so... does abuse refine children?  sorry, I'm not seeing how it works out for victims.

Speaking a person who's been the victim of horrible abuse---

Christ is just as much for me.  Christ healed/heals my wounds.  Christ holds me and understand me when no one else was there-- when everything I was going through was a big secret and still today.  That companionship... when I say Christ is my Savior I'm not talking just about saving me from my sins, but also saving me from that disaster-- I literally would not be alive if it was not for Him.  No, He didn't send an angel to stop the abuse.  But He rescued me... He pulled me out of that darkness, a darkness that is so much more than the physical act of abuse.  Christ is for me.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, changed said:

Quite a few more people than the Saints who are happy... I would like the LDS religion a lot more if they did not claim to be the only "true" church.  Contention, strife, wars - that all comes when one group of people think they are better than others... but yes, there are some great stories in the LDS heritage as there are in many different faith traditions.  

I agree about happy people everywhere. I have a strong disagreement that the LDS people view themselves as better than anyone.  Many that I look up to and want to emulate are not members of the LDS Church.  Some are not Christian.  All live virtuous lives.

The LDS faith opens the door to every people and faith based on how they choose to live.  The Jewish faith is similar in that they believe in living in harmony with God's laws, regardless of a person's beliefs. I'm sure there are others who are similarly open.  There are many great stories among people of good will. The main difference between us and other Christian faiths, in my opinion, is the authority to act in God's name with regard to essential ordinances after death and teach them of Christ in the Spirit World.  And we will perform the required ordinances for all who will accept them.  

Contention, strife and war are often the result of a charismatic despotic leader who seeks power over the people.  Also corporations and governments who seek control of resources.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, Meerkat said:

The main difference between us and other Christian faiths, in my opinion, is the authority to act in God's name

This is why I do not currently have a temple recommend - I do not believe the LDS church is the only people on earth with the authority to act in G-d's name.  I lost faith in that authority because of abuse - and those who put the abuser into leadership positions... 

This experience - I now believe part of everyone's journey happens within a religious community (whatever that community might be - might not even be a religious community, could just be family etc.)  and part of everyone's journey happens as an individual.  

I was leaning too much on the church - leaning too much on the arms of flesh, so that stable place was taken away from me - church is no longer a "safe" place to me.  Back onto my own two feet I've been pushed, but it is ok - no one is supposed to rely on any church, no one is supposed to rely on any arms of flesh, we all have to have our own testimony - no borrowed light.  

As I talk with others who have left or are leaving - that is what I tell them - when you find yourself not being able to rely on the arms of flesh, that is when we're all supposed to develop our own personal testimony.  

SBNA - Spiritual but not affiliated - that is what quite a few people are choosing right now.  

I sometimes go to church to be with family, but I now feel free to separate the wheat from the tares there - take some, and leave some.  No one should feel pressured to swallow every last bit of it - cafeteria Mormonism should be celebrated - line upon line, here a little there a little - no one has a testimony of everything, the better honest way to do religion is cafeteria style - take what the spirit leads you to, but also feeling free to not accept what does not sit right with your own conscience.  Not adding contention or arguing with what you do not agree with or anything, just giving everyone the freedom to be honest and authentic about what they believe, and what they do not have a testimony of.  

Those who have a testimony in LDS prophets, great!  Those who see them in a more organizational / administration role, who have some nice things to say, but don't always get it right and are just humans like the rest of it - that is great too.  

Whatever the higher power is out there - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu - I just pray to whoever happens to be loving, anything that is willing to listen... 

We all agree on the basics, and that is what is really important. - starting at pg 34: http://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/The_Abolition_of_Man-C_S_Lewis.pdf

Stiff necks vs. steadfast...

I'm just going to be steadfast to the general human morals everyone agrees to - to be kind, serve others, forgive, work hard, study, to seek goodness and happiness - that is what I can be steadfast to right now.

 

Edited by changed
Link to comment

Further comment on "stiff-necked":

Here is the portion of Exodus 32:9 where the term is first used:

Quote

 

And the LORD said unto Moses, "Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: 8

They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them:

they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 9

And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: 10

Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

 

The phrase "turned aside quickly out of the way" appears to me to confirm the commentaries I've seen that this is a herd-animal metaphor:  G-d is the Shepherd, but Israel is the sheep or draft animal that goes its own way instead of the way the Shepherd desires for the sheep/ox to fulfill the purpose His purposes.  And like the ox that wants to go back to the bard and the fodder in its stall and pulls against the reigns and ignores the whip or prod, Israel's desire is only to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt.

Thus the naughtiness of Israel in seeking a return to slavery and childhood has everything to do with stiffneckedness, and nothing to do with steadfastness and immovability.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:

Speaking a person who's been the victim of horrible abuse---

Christ is just as much for me.  Christ healed/heals my wounds.  Christ holds me and understand me when no one else was there-- when everything I was going through was a big secret and still today.  That companionship... when I say Christ is my Savior I'm not talking just about saving me from my sins, but also saving me from that disaster-- I literally would not be alive if it was not for Him.  No, He didn't send an angel to stop the abuse.  But He rescued me... He pulled me out of that darkness, a darkness that is so much more than the physical act of abuse.  Christ is for me.

 

I never did gain a testimony of Christ - tried to many times, but never felt anything... never gained a testimony of the BoM either.  I did feel the spirit for the plan of salvation - at least the part to know our birth was not our beginning, and that there were quite a few different worlds and kingdoms after this life.  

Reincarnation solves the problem of evil for me as much as Christ does - the chance to live multiple lives until you figure it out, for everyone to live and experience all that there is - rather than just one unfair shot at it... right now reincarnation makes the most sense.  

Link to comment
6 hours ago, changed said:

.  

Reincarnation solves the problem of evil for me as much as Christ does - the chance to live multiple lives until you figure it out, for everyone to live and experience all that there is - rather than just one unfair shot at it... right now reincarnation makes the most sense.  

I prefer the idea that by becoming one through Christ's Atonement, we will all be able to access each other's life experience, so it will be as if we have had the benefit of learning by living those billions of lifetimes while only actually having to live one (much less suffering for exaltation over all, even for those who have one horrible life...because they won't have multiple horrible lives as well as all those multiple wonderful ones and multiple blah ones). Think of the one life as providing us with the personalized key to a room full of every last experience; or another analogy....we learn in our life our unique password that gives us access to the encyclopedia of human experience, including God's.  Everyone has to have their own code that we get by willingly giving the whole of our own knowledge and experience into God's hands, but we all share in the final result that he combines for us in one coherent, eternal whole.

In essence, Christ lets us experience others as he had when he descended below all things...perhaps while protecting us from getting lost in the pain and suffering that sin makes us vulnerable to. (Total speculation, I admit, but it is logical to me based on the teaching of only one probation, but God is both fully just and merciful combined with the promise of being one).

Link to comment
22 minutes ago, Calm said:

Everyone has to have their own code that we get by willingly giving the whole of our own knowledge and experience into God's hands, but we all share in the final result that he combines for us in one coherent, eternal whole.

Interesting theory.  My take is that the code we get is our own suffering that gives us fellowship and understanding of Him, His love for each of us and what He saved us from.  The greater the pain, the greater the gratitude, as explained in Alma 36:20:
            "20 And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!"  I believe there is a great compensation to those who have suffered, as Changed pointed out.

I agree with Apostle Paul's letter to the Phillipians ch. 3 beginning at verse 8, which resonates with me on this topic:

"8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
            9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
            10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
            11 If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
            12 Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus."

Link to comment
Quote

My take is that the code we get is our own suffering that gives us fellowship and understanding of Him,

I was thinking the same thing...whatever it is I see it as something that opens our souls enough to him that it allows him to open it up allthe way, possibly immediately, possibly eventually.

An analogy...back when I was attempting to pick up gymnastics at the old age of 15, I took a workshop where I was supposed to learn how to do backflips.  We started on a trampoline, the idea is with its bounce and a bit of a backwards push on my shoulder and lift at the hip from a very strong spotter, I would experience a backflip and get a sense of how I should move, eventually be able to do it on my own on the tramp and then move to the floor.

But I resisted, went rigid no matter how hard I tried to trust and relax.  The guy trying to get me to flip got really frustrated.  I was the first one in decades he couldn't toss.  Everyone else as long as they trusted him enough to just give up a bit of control, 360s.  I wasn't willing in my gut, I couldn't put myself in his hands no matter how solid he appeared to me.  Self doubt, need to control, something wrong with my sense of balance, who knows, but that was pretty much the beginning of the end of any progression in doing gymnastics for me.

If I had just been able to trust him for 3 seconds, I would have experienced that backflip no matter how clumsy and perhaps opened my mind and body to possibilities I couldn't imagine on my own because of it being different from anything I had done before, simply through that shared experience of both of us working together to produce one basic flip.  As it was, I was convinced in my gut I would never move to the next level and I didn't. 

Another analogy I like is piggyback parachuting or whatever they call it.  All we have to do the first time is trust enough to leap from the plane with him and he does the rest, but we are experiencing the fall and float he is and this opens up the possibilities of future jumps, including ones we may take in fullself control, though of course at that moment of choice to turn ourselves over to him he is much more knowledgeable about what is going on.

So it all sums up to me as we need to experience something in our lives that allows us to trust him enough to put ourselves fully in his hands at some time in our progression.  And it is likely our own experience that gives us a peek into his world that allows us to do it, we gain enough knowledge from our experience to trust he knows all the right moves to guide us in our development safely and effectively.  Suffering may be a necessary experience because only something that makes us so vulnerable allows us to be so open and trusting (in the end...much suffering may lead to closing up to begin with, but moving through healing opens us up; others will respond to suffering by becoming humble and open because desperation pushes them to look for a lîfeline).

Edited by Calm
Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...