The Nehor

Joseph Smith was wrong in a linguistic sense. The word translated as paradise refers to a kind of garden. It is a reference to Eden. In other words, a kind of paradise. Hades is in the Bible but not in that passage. Sheol is the final fate of the dead in earlier Judaism. It is not a nice place but there was no divide between paradise and prison. Everyone went there. There are hints of some having it slightly better there but it is not a happy afterlife. Sheol and Hades usually just mean where the dead go but neither of those are used when Jesus speaks to the thief. “This day shalt thou be with me in Hades” would convey what Joseph Smith suggests but it’s not the word used. Did Joseph have revelatory power to understand what Jesus actually meant in this specific instance? Maybe, but you won’t get it by learning Greek or Hebrew and reading the New Testament.

I am not sure if it is correct but it is definitely taught in scripture and in church materials. Generally it gets soft-pedaled when taught in Church classes and a lot of people start talking about degrees of Spirit Prison and the like. I have heard apostles and other church leaders teach this repeatedly. It is not a one-off thing in an online article. It is possible other ordinances filled this gap. LDS theology doesn’t really give an explanation for how baptism existed in the beginning and then appears to have been lost and only relatively recently been brought back. Doesn’t sound like just generic good people though. No idea. It seems like there really needs to be a space between the two extremes but we don’t get one. Augustine wasn’t gleeful at the thought of unbaptized babies being damned. He just couldn’t find a way around it. I can’t find another way around this. Be careful. Next you might wonder why God condemns queer people or argue that God’s justice is incompatible with all kinds of things. I don’t accept that the Bible was somehow pure when first recorded and then corrupted. We have to keep moving the goal posts to some brilliant moments during and after the life of Jesus where the pure gospel was present and then quickly lost. Compare to our dispensation with its “line upon line” reasoning and figuring it out as we go. Whole concepts have been tossed. Dynastic sealings, rebaptism, all kinds of stuff was found wanting and left behind. Yet we want to push some perfection on past dispensations from the start. Seems a huge stretch. I’ve read too much of the early Christians trying to figure out what Jesus meant to think that at one point everyone agreed on one understanding. It instead has the feverish feeling of a group of people following a messiah who seemed to fail on most of the required messianic promises so they were forced to move their fulfillment to some future date and trying to figure out what the messiah accomplished. It is messy.

That is still living rent-free in your head and annoying you?

You can borrow some of my clothes if you need some. 😉

Doesn’t have to. You can punch gracefully. Yeah, but some are obvious. I would if it came from someone close to me.

I believe you didn’t mean to say that but it probably comes across that way. And actions can convey things we secretly feel but would never say. I got called out on this once. It wasn’t pleasant when I realized why I was acting the way I was.

Or as a group of my friends used to joke: “Gift giving is an act of aggression” I mean it was half-jokingly. Some gifts we knew of were clearly outright attacks.

If you assume it is true that doesn’t make the approach effective.

My advice is to punch the bully. They might be genuine but the receiver has every reason to doubt it when it comes packaged like this. Imagine if someone sent you a gift that clearly demonstrated they are atheist and it included a handwritten letter bearing testimony that your religion is false. It also included a bit about how you are a good person somehow in spite of your faith and they respect you even if you stay with your faith. Which would mean what exactly?

They should punch the bullies instead. True, there are parents who can never be satisfied.

It is strange how victims are often given this advice but it is rarely given to bullies. Not saying that dynamic maps neatly onto this specific situation but the person doing the hurtful thing should be the one getting the correction. The reality is only the victim will ever take the advice. Oh, come on. No one would write that ‘I respect your choices BUT’ suggestion into a gift to a ‘faithful’ child. If that truly is our language of love we have much bigger problems. They often do this by disconnecting and getting some distance and then get to deal with complaints about not ever showing up. This reinforces the idea that the reason for the chasm is their disaffection from religion. The being if they weren’t disaffected they would be around more. Quite possibly true but the disaffection isn’t the reason they are withdrawing.

Okay, I had to ruminate a bit on this before I could respond intelligently as to why it came across badly to me. I am not trying to be mean but trying to deconstruct some of the likely emotions. When you put caveats and compliments around something while hinting that you want something more for someone it comes across as insincere. Stating that you love them for being “good” but implying they need more undercuts the compliment. Then you felt the need to say that you would respect them no matter if they went along with it or not. In other words you knew that there was a message that could offend and tried to acknowledge it to try to disarm it. It would be hard for many to feel good about this gift. It is laced with an appeal for them to change. That might be needed in many contexts but it is not a gift. It is a hook. It is hard to believe the compliments. They sound like you are buttering them up or preemptively using them so they will feel bad if they respond negatively. It is hard to take compliments that come that way as sincere. “You are good people living good lives and I have nothing but respect for you BUT………” That kind of appeal is emotionally exhausting when you are the target. You end up annoyed but it is hard to articulate exactly why. There are landmines throughout that the giver can use to try to rebut any expressions of frustration. Your wife is hurt and sad that they feel this way after giving them a gift that made them feel hurt and sad. She fired the shot and her daughters feel like they have been under fire for a long time. They are probably minimizing time around you if that is how they feel. People don’t react well to people trying to change them. It also means they are less likely to confide their problems or seek help or emotional support when things go wrong. I hope that wasn’t just a dodge to avoid having an awkward conversation. I would ask yourself how deliberately you are doing this. Is it something that just pops out or are you looking for opportunities to give backhanded appeals to their seeking out God for help. 1. This is impossible for anyone to answer who is not around the interactions. I don’t know if they are jumping at shadows assuming things that aren’t there or if they genuinely feel like they are being regularly judged or are under siege. 2. Definitely stop attaching proclamations of love or support to appeals to get them to change something. It makes them duck and cover when you want to express love. 3. It is not wrong but I would weigh the costs of the rule. If this is primarily a way of planting the religious ‘flag’ when they are present I would consider dumping this rule. 4. Probably has to do with how we socialize men to just ignore stuff like this that might offend them and socialize women to express feelings more openly. Could also be the way you approach religious topics with them. You might be showing more respect to the sons in a way they understand but not to the daughters. Is there a difference in your approach? In how you bring it up? It is also possible your sons are irked at this too and just don’t consider it worth discussing so just accepted it and processed their emotions about it in some other way. I think you are trying to help but I think the way you are going about it is alienating at least some of your children. The ‘playbook’ LDS use on disaffected family members isn’t nearly as subtle as many members believe.

This teaching has been partially repudiated. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2014/03/faithful-parents-and-wayward-children-sustaining-hope-while-overcoming-misunderstanding?lang=eng I think it is a bit disingenuous for Elder Bednar to suggest that “some” have “misconstrued” the doctrine. The Church leadership were the ones pushing the teaching. Same thing they did by trying to make everyone think it was self-evident that women exercise priesthood power and suggesting it should have been known by all. This kind of revisionism annoys me.

That question was designed to catch people practicing plural marriage or some form of spiritual wifery or some other variant. The question originally included the full name of the Church to make it explicit that you were lying if you claimed to follow it and adhered to the beliefs of a different restorationist faith. The description in practice is so broad that taken literally it keeps you from doing anything with almost everybody. Even joining a political party would be verboten. Some book clubs would be forbidden.

Generalizing a specific case to everyone alive? Sounds fun. Why are you hiding your bisexuality from the world? You should get that ADHD treated. Also learn to pay attention in church meetings you easily distracted weirdo. I love this. I talked to irony and he said he just can’t engage with this. It is just too blatant.

I just don’t think that being in a place that is called Spirit Prison would be indicative of a loving God. You could still potentially reason your way to one but I don’t think it would be intuitive. Jesus did not minister in person and being clothed with power and authority may be just as visible there as it is here. In other words most people can’t tell. We clothe our missionaries with power and authority but most don’t notice. Possible it is different there. Just not much information. I am not really looking forward to it when it comes. Assuming it is how we describe it. Could be better. Could be worse. Could be nothing. Maybe. I am cynical and pessimistic though. Maybe death makes people think more clearly? I have to talk to people I don’t know? I really am in hell! Kidding…..mostly. I got the idea from the apostles. I don’t particularly like this teaching. Here is the church’s gospel topic bit on paradise: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/paradise?lang=eng It is short. I will just copy it here: Bolding mine. Also Joseph Smith’s claim that that is a mistranslation doesn’t make any linguistic sense. It might be a more accurate description but the Greek doesn’t refer to a world of spirit. The word is almost certainly used to compare it to Eden. Did every dispensation know of resurrection and redemption? Even if they did I am constantly being taught about redemption and resurrection even though I have heard it before. Also if somehow the unbaptized are in paradise surely the faithful saints would have tried to teach them? Maybe. I suspect it was a small crowd compared to the volume of people in the spirit world. It is even possible that some of them were morose or unmotivated. It talks about them seeing their lack of a resurrection as a form of bondage. Maybe they weren’t well organized or weren’t sure what they should be doing. Joseph Smith taught that John the Baptist went there as a forerunner for Jesus again. No idea what that means. I am going off what the Church teaches. I would like to think the unbaptized can go to paradise. I’d kind of like everyone to go there. Except Frank. That guy can burn for eternity. Mostly because the three kingdoms didn’t make it into the Bible. Hard to blame them for not knowing. I hope what I suspect about how things work is wrong. Nope, no problem with the names themselves. Just seems an odd grab bag of people to choose across various elements of society when the Founders were said to have impressed their names specifically. And yes, everyone does need to be baptized. I was taught it was urgent because it allows these people to escape prison. Like, when you did it they could opt to get out. Again, I don’t like this teaching. I just don’t see a way around it. Most attempts to reason around it are appeals to compassion and the love of God and ‘God wouldn’t do that’ reasoning. It is also offered as a kind of comfort to grieving families and to avoid people worrying about people they love being in unhappy circumstances. I am sympathetic to those arguments but the teachings don’t seem to back up this soft-pedaling.

I am not convinced that the existence of an afterlife is proof that there is a God. Unless something changes I am not sure that this will make preaching the gospel easier. Claiming that Jesus lived is not likely to be that convincing. Others can testify of any number of deities. I expect new religions will pop up and flourish there. Also I don’t see how a knowledge of life continuing after death lessens agency somehow. So kind of alone. That assumes there is some divide between the two that is locational and not a divide of some kind of status. John Adams didn’t get baptized. That is the requirement. Catholics went through some contortions to explain how the thief didn’t need baptism. Then again our own church did some cute dodges. When I was younger there were quotes from conference speakers about the word Jesus used for paradise in that verse meaning ‘world of spirits’ which is just wrong. It is easy to see why they did it. They had to explain how the thief got in without baptism. If it was just the world of spirits that works. The word used means an enclosed garden. It is also used to describe Eden. I don’t think you can get in without baptism. Also we have the story from Wilford Woodruff when he was President of the St. George Temple reporting that the signers of the Declaration of Independence came to him and asked him to do their temple work and he did the work for them and all the dead U.S. presidents (with a few exceptions such as still perhaps being annoyed at Martin Van Buren blowing off Joseph Smith’s request for help to recover property in Missouri). They also picked a bunch of notables. The list of those baptized is interesting. Napoleon III? Marie Antoinette? Stonewall Jackson? Frederick the Great? Jane Austen? Okay, what is the rhyme or reason here? Here is the list: https://josephsmithfoundation.org/wiki/eminent-spirits-appear-to-wilford-woodruff/

You got enough xp to level up beyond mortality.

I liked my branch president in the MTC. One of his counselors though was a racist weirdo.

For almost all.

That is true of this world as well yet God doesn’t tell the people here how to be there when someone dies or is born. Maybe God communicates more in the Spirit World. But maybe He doesn’t. So some will die and just be alone? Wouldn’t John Adams go to Spirit Prison? That story seems to imply otherwise.

A lot of this assumes that time functions in the Spirit World the same way as it does here. Also they may not know it is coming.

To avoid the punishment of God we must compel righteousness on others? Huh, sounds like a good idea. It is actually a bit mindboggling that no one in mortality or premortality ever advanced a plan like this before. If they had we could look at history and see how it worked out for them.

Not really. It is a microstate. No one is born a citizen of Vatican City (they don’t have a hospital to be born in) and you only live there by invitation. The whole nation is less than half of a square kilometer in size. Last I heard about 800 people lived there. That is actually a lot for such a small space but they are all church officials and their staff.

The Electric Universe can’t just ‘fill in the gaps’. It wants to take whole sections of physics out and replace them. It has to account for all the data. It doesn’t. Saying it works in the spaces we can’t see means it is meaningless. This isn’t an elementary school science project. We already have the data to compare to the EU model. It doesn’t work. It is settled for the Electric Universe theory. It doesn’t work. Pretending there is some ongoing tension as to which model will be shown to be right is ridiculous. The Electric Universe has crossover with the Flat Earthers. It is conspiracy theory drivel. It suggests that the ‘hidebound mainstream science’ is hiding things. All of them. Across multiple nations, languages, and institutions. It is a big conspiracy in service to some nefarious purpose. They aren’t scientifically minded. They are theorycrafters. They don’t go to the data. They look for plausible sounding gobbledygook that sounds scientific. Yes, you have people with degrees that chime in but no one is publishing any of it because no one can make it work with the data. That is why you can’t get it published. However internet blogs and YouTube videos aren’t fact checked so you can say whatever you want. WHY? Why are these scientists conspiring? Why are they all so invested in the current model that they have all collectively agreed to dismiss the TRUTH? And the appeal to pity. Why can’t they just be NICE and try to gently correct while not making people feel bad? They don’t because it doesn’t work. You don’t reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. Also believing in pseudoscience has real world consequences. See anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. With pseudoscience about repressed memories we got things like the satanic panic. A grand conspiracy theory of witches got a lot of people killed in the pre-modern period. Blood libel got Jews killed. Also pseudoscience undermines the credibility of experts so when we have situations where we need expert advice people start out poisoned against it. This gets people hurt and/or killed. It is not innocent. And yeah, pseudoscience doesn’t add value to society. Those who distribute it are doing harm. It has to be fought against. If that hurts the feelings of the people doing the lying I won’t lose any sleep over it. Why do they do it? The thrill of being in on the secrets of reality? Burning resentment that they aren’t scientific luminaries? Just wanting to be contrarian? Probably a mix for most people. Not innocent motives. Yeah, sometimes someone gets taken in innocently but unless they live in a bubble they don’t innocently stay there. It doesn’t though.