Joseph Smith and the Problem of Evil

[Calm]

17 minutes ago, the narrator said:

his life has become that of a shallow and inconsequential dispenser of aphorisms that few if any would have followe

I don’t see it that way, but see it’s a reasonable interpretation.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

This is what I meant with individual salvation with a nuclear family twist. Joseph's notion of establishing a kingdom of heaven on earth that would collectively attain celestial glory has been replaced individual families being saved and exalted. It's essentially individualistic salvation extended to traditional nuclear families (or polygamist ones for Oaks and others who believe in that)

I wrote a response to this, but disappeared with the submit, so will reconstruct later. 

[Calm]

35 minutes ago, the narrator said:

My point is that Jesus's ministry was very political. He didn't just share aphorisms about loving neighbors, and even those instances (such as his parable of the good samaritan) were directly criticizing the priestly class and those in power. The very act that the Gospels say directly led to his execution was a political act: His protest at the temple, where he explicitly emulated Jeremiah and accused the priests of turning the temple into a den of thieves was about as political as one could get at the time, and the stated reason for his execution placed above his head was explicitly political.

I am not saying that the Church is completely ignoring Jesus's mortal ministry; rather, that by repeatedly emphasizing his death as the thing that really mattered about his life but not acknowledged the reason of his death, his life has become that of a shallow and inconsequential dispenser of aphorisms that few if any would have followed.

To paraphrase the the theologian and priest Jon Sobrino, to understand who Jesus was we need to stop asking why did he die and instead ask why they killed him.

I think we need to ask both and probably much more.  Looking at someone’s life from only one direction will give us only limited understanding and probably significant misunderstanding. 
 

I do see Joseph Smith and Brigham as more involved in politics, by choice as well as being forced by circumstance imo.  Not sure about prophets after those two as much less familiar with them until Pres Kimball.  I would say since Kimball political involvement has become less in a general sense, I haven’t see any information packets sent out for social ills like we once had on gambling, pornography and two other things I can’t remember now (we had them on the shelf in our Calgary ward but they were out of date by the late 90s I became ward librarian).  In college the woman I babysat for was very involved in the ERA issue (she taught at BYU but I can’t remember in what except it wasn’t hard science or engineering; her husband was my psych prof).  My attendance ant church these days isn’t substantial enough to be sure issues aren’t brought up at the pulpit on occasion like they once were.  Part of this is I believe is because leaders are trying to be consistent across borders, different political climates may need fine tuning of speeches if they deal with specific concrete issues.  But there are likely other reasons as well (perhaps a desire to have unity in the upper quorums where political positions can vary).

Edited October 22, 2025 by Calm

[ZealouslyStriving]

6 hours ago, Teancum said:

CFR.  What a horrible idea. So five year old is kidnapped, raped and murdered and your god is a ok with that because all they needed was a body and five years or mortal existence. What a crock of horsepucky.

That wasn't the part of the comment to which I was replying- thanks for playing though.

[ZealouslyStriving]

5 hours ago, Teancum said:

In other words you have no good answer so just have faith. The biggest crutch and scam of religion from the dawn of human intelligence.

If that is what you want to call faith, I can't stop you.

[the narrator]

16 hours ago, Calm said:

But there are likely other reasons as well (perhaps a desire to have unity in the upper quorums where political positions can vary).

The main reason is regularly given by church leaders when they repeatedly say that the Church's concern is for the afterlife and not the present one.

[The Nehor]

19 hours ago, JVW said:

As the conversation has progressed on this thread I've been reflecting on how the problem of evil is inherently tied to trust in God, because there is no satisfactory explanation for this problem. As an addict I've been attending various 12 step meetings regularly for a number of years and the 3rd step of AA is "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him". The first three steps, summarized succinctly are: I can't, He can, I let Him. And the key principle in step 3 is to consciously choose to trust God. It is a huge step and a very difficult one to take, but one that every recovering addict needs to take in order to be completely free of addiction through the program.

The challenging aspect of trusting God as an addict (speaking for myself) is that the root cause of my addiction is childhood trauma and I've had to wrestle with why God didn't protect me or prevent me from becoming a victim. In a way, I feel like God is the cause of my addiction because of what He let happen to me and for some other reasons that I won't go into here. Yet I'm supposed to trust God, who let me be hurt so deeply while in a vulnerable state, and let Him make decisions in my life that will supposedly free me of the bondage I'm in. It's not just a conceptual issue but a deeply emotional and painful thing to consider. It's taken me years to take step 3, and I know some people who have been in the program for over a decade who have still not taken step 3. And even after having taken the step, there are days when I step back and doubt the trust that I've placed in God. It's something that I have to work on every day. Life is hard.

And the general answer is often that it is general preparation for the next life.

This just makes me worried about the afterlife. If God thinks this kind of suffering is this valuable and instructive and good and prepares us for the next life what is heaven and/or exaltation actually like? What new instructive torments await?

[manol]

On 10/22/2025 at 9:19 AM, the narrator said:

This is precisely why I have argued elsewhere that most responses to the problem of evil are actually defending the existence of evil rather than the existence of God. If one decides to forego critical thought and instead fully embrace a shallow and simplistic view of God in relation to the world, then the need to counter and prevent evil becomes an unnecessary labor.

You've posted some pointed and thought-provoking observations in this thread and others. 

I get the impression that you have thought things through and arrived at outside-the-box conclusions.  If you are comfortable doing so, I would very much like to hear your "view of God in relation to the world", or however you wish to phrase it. 

[the narrator]

40 minutes ago, manol said:

I get the impression that you have thought things through and arrived at outside-the-box conclusions.  If you are comfortable doing so, I would very much like to hear your "view of God in relation to the world", or however you wish to phrase it. 

My view of God in relation to the world is best described in liberation theology. It's been a while since I've written or presented on it, but it was my focus for some years in the now-defunct Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. A good summary can be found in this Sunstone article of mine, which I had completely forgotten about: “WHICH THING I HAD NEVER SUPPOSED: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE PROBLEM OF MAN". From the end:

Quote

God’s response to the problem of evil is the Atonement. Not an abstract or soteriological atonement, but an atonement that confronts the historical and material sins of the world: poverty and suffering. God shows that his response to suffering is not to justify or understand it, but to confront and end suffering at its roots. When we understand this goal, we also understand our own identity and purpose as Christians. According to Sobrino: "Christian spirituality is no more and no less than a living of the fundamental spirituality that we have described, precisely in the concrete manner of Jesus . . . [T]o be truly a human being is to be what Jesus is. To live with the spirit, to react correctly to concrete reality, is to re-create, throughout history, the fundamental structure of the life of Jesus."

And here are a few more of my thoughts on the matter:

On sin, atonement, and liberation

“'What's Ragged Should Be Left Ragged': God's Problem of Evil"

"Christianity's Perversion" Zizek and Latin American Liberation Theology" (this was written for a grad school course, using Mel Gibsons' Braveheart and Passion of the Christ to discuss liberation theology without any Mormon context)

"'Would God That All The Lord's People Were Prophets': Liberation Theology and Scholars As Prophets For The Oppressed"

I haven't used scribd in a very long time, so I don't know how accessible they are now, so please let me know if the links do not work for you.

 

 

[marineland]

On 10/20/2025 at 4:11 PM, Calm said:

Maybe you could summarize what each of these mean in a sentence or two for those of us who can’t focus long enough on the article to get the meaning for ourselves, please?

I'm not keen on what appears to be solely philosophy. I don't see much scripture 
in what he said.

[manol]

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

My view of God in relation to the world is best described in liberation theology. It's been a while since I've written or presented on it, but it was my focus for some years in the now-defunct Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. A good summary can be found in this Sunstone article of mine, which I had completely forgotten about: “WHICH THING I HAD NEVER SUPPOSED: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE PROBLEM OF MAN". From the end:

And here are a few more of my thoughts on the matter:

On sin, atonement, and liberation

“'What's Ragged Should Be Left Ragged': God's Problem of Evil"

"Christianity's Perversion" Zizek and Latin American Liberation Theology" (this was written for a grad school course, using Mel Gibsons' Braveheart and Passion of the Christ to discuss liberation theology without any Mormon context)

"'Would God That All The Lord's People Were Prophets': Liberation Theology and Scholars As Prophets For The Oppressed"

I haven't used scribd in a very long time, so I don't know how accessible they are now, so please let me know if the links do not work for you.

Wow, THANK YOU!   And yes the links work for me.

Looking forward to these, and in particular I want to read the lead-up to the part you quoted.  I've copy-and-pasted it here for emphasis, as it doesn't show up when I quote your post: 

"God’s response to the problem of evil is the Atonement. Not an abstract or soteriological atonement, but an atonement that confronts the historical and material sins of the world: poverty and suffering. God shows that his response to suffering is not to justify or understand it, but to confront and end suffering at its roots. When we understand this goal, we also understand our own identity and purpose as Christians. According to Sobrino: "Christian spirituality is no more and no less than a living of the fundamental spirituality that we have described, precisely in the concrete manner of Jesus . . . [T]o be truly a human being is to be what Jesus is. To live with the spirit, to react correctly to concrete reality, is to re-create, throughout history, the fundamental structure of the life of Jesus."

[JVW]

4 hours ago, The Nehor said:

And the general answer is often that it is general preparation for the next life.

This just makes me worried about the afterlife. If God thinks this kind of suffering is this valuable and instructive and good and prepares us for the next life what is heaven and/or exaltation actually like? What new instructive torments await?

Indeed, you raise a good point. If we are meant to handle this much as mortals, what kind of trials may await us in perfect, impossible to kill bodies with unlimited stamina? I sure hope it isn't Chinese water torture for a trillion years, that would suck.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, JVW said:

Indeed, you raise a good point. If we are meant to handle this much as mortals, what kind of trials may await us in perfect, impossible to kill bodies with unlimited stamina? I sure hope it isn't Chinese water torture for a trillion years, that would suck.

But it will give us experience and be for our good!

[Calm]

11 hours ago, the narrator said:

The main reason is regularly given by church leaders when they repeatedly say that the Church's concern is for the afterlife and not the present one.

Then why would they bother with the extensive efforts that Welfare and LDS Philanthropies require?  I don’t think you are addressing enough context.

[Calm]

5 hours ago, JVW said:

Indeed, you raise a good point. If we are meant to handle this much as mortals, what kind of trials may await us in perfect, impossible to kill bodies with unlimited stamina? I sure hope it isn't Chinese water torture for a trillion years, that would suck.

I always got the impression when this argument was used was that the endurance to come was us tolerating the sufferings that our spirit children would go through without stepping in and ruining it for them like helping butterflies out of cocoons, we would know that it would work out for them in the best way possible as it had for us. (Which is rather circular…we suffer so we will let our kids suffer…and they suffer so their kids can suffer….).

[manol]

I lack the intellect, wisdom, experience, and/or spirituality to have a good "working hypothesis" that resolves the problem of the existence of evil. 

However I am encouraged by the accounts of near-death experiencers who don't find the existence of evil to be a conundrum.  At the risk of being overly simplistic, based on their testimonials, I believe there is a resolution that makes sense, even if it's not something within my experience and understanding.

By way of example, here are some excerpts from the near-death experience account of a woman named Chantal who happens to have an LDS background, taken from her responses to a questionnaire on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation's website.  She doesn't directly address "the problem of evil"; rather, she describes a perspective from which it's apparently not the ominous and potentially faith-negating dilemma it can seem from our perspective:

"I remember knowing everything. Not so much from an intellectual point of view. I knew what it was like to be a flower, to be an animal, to be an insect. All the knowledge of the universe was inside my being. I no longer felt as a separate individual. I felt as if I was part of a collective consciousness. I sense[d] billions and billions of beings and we were all One. The feeling of oneness on the other side is amazing!"

"I sensed that everything alive and that had ever lived was part of this consciousness. It retained the experiences of each being in its collective memory. This is why I knew everything; the knowledge of this collective became mine. It is a different kind of knowledge though. It is not intellectual but experiential. Furthermore, it was not limited just to human experiences; I ‘knew’ what it felt like to be a flower and to be a stone." [emphasis manol's]

"I stopped thinking in terms of ‘I’ and started thinking in terms of ‘we,’ we the collective consciousness."

"When trying to explain this collective I usually use the following analogy: Let's pretend you are the water in a glass of water. You are contained in a glass. Then someone pours you, the water in the glass, into the ocean. You still exist, every particle of you still exists but now you are part of an ocean where there are billions and billions like you. You are now ‘one’ with the ocean. You are all One. On the other side you are a soul, a very old one, magnificent, wise, powerful soul and you are One with a collective. The sense of unity is amazing. There is no sense of separation like there is on this side."

"I became One with all life, part of a collective consciousness and I knew everything. It was not an intellectual knowledge, like knowledge you acquire from studying facts. I knew because I had experienced being everything."  [emphasis manol's]

"Little did I know that, when you get to the other side, the veil of forgetfulness is removed and you remember everything and know everything. You don't need to ask questions."

"In the state of total recall, you understand everything. Everything makes sense. Words like difficulties, challenges and hardships reflect a lack of understanding of the purpose of life. Those in the know, do not use these words." [emphasis manol's]

"The most meaningful [part of my experience] is remembering being part of the collective that created the solar system. We were so excited to do so! We all wanted to come to earth to experience mortality. NO matter how difficult it would be. During my experience, I had total recall, I ceased to be Chantal and I remembered who I really am: a very old and wise and powerful soul. This collective consciousness that I became part of is God, or that is the feeling I got. It is a state of pure energy and pure love. Everything is energy on the other side. The Oneness on the other side is amazing! You become One with all life. My being always existed. This life is a just a play I am acting in. A small part of me has taken physical form. Love and energy is what the other side is based on."

Here is the link:  https://search.nderf.org/en/experience/6428

From the perspective she describes, there doesn't seem to be a well-nigh-intractable problem of evil. 

(Why would I allow near-death experience accounts to inform my views?  "Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject." - Joseph Smith.  I believe these are people who gazed into heaven for five minutes.)

 

 

Edited October 24, 2025 by manol

[the narrator]

11 hours ago, Calm said:

Then why would they bother with the extensive efforts that Welfare and LDS Philanthropies require?  I don’t think you are addressing enough context.

I'm not saying that the concern for temporal welfare is non-existent. However, Church leaders regularly place that concern on a much lower tier than that of the afterlife--which stands in stark contrast to the inseparable, one-and-the-same level of concern that the early Church did. And this reason has been made explicit to philanthropist groups, like the Bountiful Children's Foundation, for why the Church does not do more with its vast wealth to feed hungry LDS children.

[JVW]

15 hours ago, Calm said:

we suffer so we will let our kids suffer…and they suffer so their kids can suffer….).

That's a lovely thought, Calm.

Edited October 24, 2025 by JVW

[JVW]

12 hours ago, manol said:

I lack the intellect, wisdom, experience, and/or spirituality to have a good "working hypothesis" that resolves the problem of the existence of evil. 

However I am encouraged by the accounts of near-death experiencers who don't find the existence of evil to be a conundrum.  At the risk of being overly simplistic, based on their testimonials, I believe there is a resolution that makes sense, even if it's not something within my experience and understanding.

By way of example, here are some excerpts from the near-death experience account of a woman named Chantal who happens to have an LDS background, taken from her responses to a questionnaire on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation's website.  She doesn't directly address "the problem of evil"; rather, she describes a perspective from which it's apparently not the ominous and potentially faith-negating dilemma it can seem from our perspective:

"I remember knowing everything. Not so much from an intellectual point of view. I knew what it was like to be a flower, to be an animal, to be an insect. All the knowledge of the universe was inside my being. I no longer felt as a separate individual. I felt as if I was part of a collective consciousness. I sense[d] billions and billions of beings and we were all One. The feeling of oneness on the other side is amazing!"

"I sensed that everything alive and that had ever lived was part of this consciousness. It retained the experiences of each being in its collective memory. This is why I knew everything; the knowledge of this collective became mine. It is a different kind of knowledge though. It is not intellectual but experiential. Furthermore, it was not limited just to human experiences; I ‘knew’ what it felt like to be a flower and to be a stone." [emphasis manol's]

"I stopped thinking in terms of ‘I’ and started thinking in terms of ‘we,’ we the collective consciousness."

"When trying to explain this collective I usually use the following analogy: Let's pretend you are the water in a glass of water. You are contained in a glass. Then someone pours you, the water in the glass, into the ocean. You still exist, every particle of you still exists but now you are part of an ocean where there are billions and billions like you. You are now ‘one’ with the ocean. You are all One. On the other side you are a soul, a very old one, magnificent, wise, powerful soul and you are One with a collective. The sense of unity is amazing. There is no sense of separation like there is on this side."

"I became One with all life, part of a collective consciousness and I knew everything. It was not an intellectual knowledge, like knowledge you acquire from studying facts. I knew because I had experienced being everything."  [emphasis manol's]

"Little did I know that, when you get to the other side, the veil of forgetfulness is removed and you remember everything and know everything. You don't need to ask questions."

"In the state of total recall, you understand everything. Everything makes sense. Words like difficulties, challenges and hardships reflect a lack of understanding of the purpose of life. Those in the know, do not use these words." [emphasis manol's]

"The most meaningful [part of my experience] is remembering being part of the collective that created the solar system. We were so excited to do so! We all wanted to come to earth to experience mortality. NO matter how difficult it would be. During my experience, I had total recall, I ceased to be Chantal and I remembered who I really am: a very old and wise and powerful soul. This collective consciousness that I became part of is God, or that is the feeling I got. It is a state of pure energy and pure love. Everything is energy on the other side. The Oneness on the other side is amazing! You become One with all life. My being always existed. This life is a just a play I am acting in. A small part of me has taken physical form. Love and energy is what the other side is based on."

Here is the link:  https://search.nderf.org/en/experience/6428

From the perspective she describes, there doesn't seem to be a well-nigh-intractable problem of evil. 

(Why would I allow near-death experience accounts to inform my views?  "Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject." - Joseph Smith.  I believe these are people who gazed into heaven for five minutes.)

 

 

I +1 this Manol. I love NDEs, I don't care what religious background they're from, and I have experienced one myself. I must say that the experience, while it may have left me with words, the words do not adequately do the experience justice, and the perspective change... I wish there was some way for me to retain that, but the good news is that when we die we will all have it, that "experiental understanding of everything" kind of thing. Our bodies truly are designed to be incredibly limited, and I think the text you present here does a good job of trying to describe just how different our beings will feel after we pass on.

In a cruel sort of irony, when I was atheist I wanted to be dead because I looked forward to ceasing to exist. After my NDE I wanted to be dead so I could experience what I felt again. So my goal in life is now to try to make my life so good that I don't want to be dead.  (Yeah there may or may not be some CPTSD going on, but it is what it is.)

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, JVW said:

That's a lovely thought, Calm.

I get them from time to time, lol

[manol]

@the narrator, I've enjoyed reading your papers.  I had not appreciated that prophets are usually called from somewhere outside the mainstream, and their message usually includes pointing out the discrepancy between how God wants the poor and oppressed to be treated, and how individuals and/or the religious establishment are actually treating the poor and oppressed.  Thank you!

I think that an underlying (but not articulated) concept may be something like this:  Pursuing a superior outcome for oneself & one's family at the expense of others makes sense from a paradigm of separation ("we" are separate from "them"); whereas pursuing an equally good outcome for all, leaving nobody out, makes sense from a paradigm of oneness.  It looks to me like Liberation Theology embraces a paradigm of oneness, though I don't think you put it that way.   At any rate, I agree that we are not only to take upon ourselves the name (identity!) of Christ (King Benjamin & the Sacrament prayers), but we are to become in-this-life, here-and-now, manifestations of Christ (3 Nephi 27:27). 

If I may ask, could you clarify what you mean by the word "atonement", as used here:

"God’s response to the problem of evil is the Atonement. Not an abstract or soteriological atonement, but an atonement that confronts the historical and material sins of the world: poverty and suffering. God shows that his response to suffering is not to justify or understand it, but to confront and end suffering at its roots."

 

1 hour ago, JVW said:

I +1 this Manol. I love NDEs,

Thank you!

 

1 hour ago, JVW said:

I don't care what religious background they're from, and I have experienced one myself.

Was this the experience you've mentioned, wherein you were told that God does not hate you and does not want you to hate yourself? 

Have you considered filling out the NDERF's questionnaire?  Form Page: ShareNDE (nderf.org)

(By the way, I think the near-death experiencer quoted in my signature area, Jeff Olsen, is also from an LDS background.  No I'm not deliberately cherry-picking Mormon NDEers!)

 

Edited October 24, 2025 by manol

[the narrator]

3 hours ago, manol said:

If I may ask, could you clarify what you mean by the word "atonement", as used here:

"God’s response to the problem of evil is the Atonement. Not an abstract or soteriological atonement, but an atonement that confronts the historical and material sins of the world: poverty and suffering. God shows that his response to suffering is not to justify or understand it, but to confront and end suffering at its roots."

By recognizing sin as a material harm/injustice/etc, the Atonement is no longer an act of Christ suffering to appease a vindictive deity, to pay off a powerful Satan, or magically cleanse nonsensical cosmic taints for violating religious codes. Instead, the Atonement is the culmination of Christ's revelation of God on earth and the archetype of what it means to be divine and to become a vehicle for salvation--that is to confront and seek to eliminate these sins.

For much of Christianity and Mormonism, the importance of Jesus has been relegated to his death--to the point where we should ask why God didn't simply have Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds simply throw the baby Jesus off a cliff after he was born. This is why the the proposition by Ignacio Ellacuria (who was murdered by the US-backed Salvadoran military for his ministry for the poor), which I misattributed to his colleague Jon Sobrino above, is so important--that is, instead of asking why Jesus died, we should instead ask why they killed him. The former question treats Jesus's death in a vacuum, resulting in awful and nonsensical atonement theories and largely detaches Jesus from the world and human experience and leads to a theology that becomes more concerned with a 14 year old boy masturbating than children across the globe starving. The latter returns Jesus and his mission to his material historical reality and reinstates what it means for Jesus to be the revelation of God--that is, Jesus through his life, ministry, and death shows us what it means to be God.

This was the message of the beatitudes opening Jesus's sermon on the mount in Matthew 5--where he announces good news to the poor (v. 3), distraught (v. 4), powerless (v. 5), and starving (v. 6) who find relief in the material, immanent, and earthy kingdom of heaven by those who provide mercy (v. 7), for the right reason (v. 8), without violence (v. 9), and while risking violence to themselves (v. 10). Here, Jesus is announcing the good news to those who are the victims of the sins of the world (vv. 3-6) and how that salvation shall be achieved (vv. 7-9), all of which are exemplified in Christ as the revelation of God.

Hope that makes some sense. 

Edited October 24, 2025 by the narrator

[JVW]

3 hours ago, manol said:

Was this the experience you've mentioned, wherein you were told that God does not hate you and does not want you to hate yourself? 

No, while that experience was a powerful moment with the divine it was like a .0001 out of 100 in comparison to my NDE experience. It was in the same realm though with the subtle not-quite-human feelings present.

3 hours ago, manol said:

Have you considered filling out the NDERF's questionnaire?  Form Page: ShareNDE (nderf.org)

I've never heard of that before, I'll check it out thanks.

3 hours ago, manol said:

(By the way, I think the near-death experiencer quoted in my signature area, Jeff Olsen, is also from an LDS background.  No I'm not deliberately cherry-picking Mormon NDEers!)

My NDE is what caused me to no longer be atheist, so mine was from an atheist background. It isn't something I share very often.

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

This was the message of the beatitudes opening Jesus's sermon on the mount in Matthew 5--where he announces good news to the poor (v. 3), distraught (v. 4), powerless (v. 5), and starving (v. 6) who find relief in the material, immanent, and earthy kingdom of heaven by those who provide mercy (v. 7), for the right reason (v. 8), without violence (v. 9), and while risking violence to themselves (v. 10). Here, Jesus is announcing the good news to those who are the victims of the sins of the world (vv. 3-6) and how that salvation shall be achieved (vv. 7-9), all of which are exemplified in Christ as the revelation of God.

 

Note that this is precisely the committment that we see at the Waters of Mormon  in Mosiah 18:

Quote

8 And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;

9 Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life

The primary act that they are asked to commit to is to be "willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light." They are called to confront the material sins of the world, and it should then come as no surprise that a people who makes this commitment together find "the burdens which were laid upon [them] were made light" (Mosiah 24:15).

[Teancum]

On 10/22/2025 at 4:16 PM, JVW said:

How do I know we are all going to die and that God's responsible for death? Because I know that God exists and I know that death is inevitable and God is powerful enough to prevent it. I'm not quite sure what you're asking here.

No. You keep saying you do not know the mind of God and then you tell us things that you could only know by knowing the mind of God.