Did We Really Choose Which Family We Would Be Born To?

[bu11fr0g]

Did some choose abusive LDS?

Did some choose failed abortion?

[Duncan]

don't know

don't know

[CASteinman]

Did some choose abusive LDS?

Did some choose failed abortion?

Maybe. Would it destroy your testimony either way? I would choose whichever answer bothers you the least.

[Gillebre]

Speculative answers won't help you receive the comfort you may or may not stand in need of. Only humble prayer will ease one's troubled spirit.

However, I will indulge your questions:

I think it would be more accurate to say that we were aware of what circumstances would accompany our life, and we agreed to them.

All in my opinion, of course.

[Stone holm]

Been batting the question of how spirits get associated with their physical bodies back and forth with Ahab on another thread. There is a lot of Mormon folklore that would suggest that Heavenly Father plays a role and that it is not just random, but I have yet to find much of what i would call teachings let alone doctrine on the subject. I have been arguing the same question about how certain intelligences become associated with their spirit bodies as well upon which subject there is not even any folklore.

[Stone holm]

Speculative answers won't help you receive the comfort you may or may not stand in need of. Only humble prayer will ease one's troubled spirit.

However, I will indulge your questions:

I think it would be more accurate to say that we were aware of what circumstances would accompany our life, and we agreed to them.

All in my opinion, of course.

I think I agree with your speculation

[bu11fr0g]

@Gillebre

Thank you.

[bluebell]

I agree with Gillebre.

[MDalby]

.

Edited April 4, 2013 by MDalby

[MDalby]

Find a GREAT GREAT little book by Carlfred Broderick, The Uses of Adversity. Here are a couple of excerpts.

When I was a stake president, the event occurred that I want to use as the keynote to my remarks, I was sitting on the stand at a combined meeting of the stake Primary board and stake Young Women’s board where they were jointly inducting from the Primary into the Young Women’s organization the eleven-year-old girls who that year had made the big step. They had a lovely program. It was one of those fantastic, beautiful presentations—based on the Wizard of Oz, or a take-off on the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy, an eleven-year-old girl, was coming down the yellow brick road together with the tin woodman, the cowardly lion, and the scarecrow. They were singing altered lyrics about the gospel. And Oz, which was one wall of the cultural hall, looked very much like the Los Angeles Temple. They really took off down that road. There were no weeds on that road; there were no Munchkins; there were no misplaced tiles; there was no Wicked Witch of the West. That was one antiseptic yellow brick road, and it was very, very clear that once they got to Oz, they had it made. It was all sewed up.

Following that beautiful presentation with all the snappy tunes and skipping and so on, came a sister who I swear was sent over from Hollywood central casting. (I do not believe she was in my stake; I never saw her before in my life.) She looked as if she had come right off the cover of a fashion magazine—every hair in place, with a photogenic returned missionary husband who looked like he came out of central casting and two or three, or heaven knows how many, photogenic children all of whom came out of central casting or Kleenex ads or whatever. She enthused over her temple marriage and how wonderful Life was with her charming husband and her perfect children and that the young women too could look like her and have a husband like him and children like them if they would stick to the yellow brick road and live in Oz. It was a lovely, sort of tear-jerking, event.

After the event was nearly over, the stake Primary president, who was conducting, made a grave strategic error. She turned to me and, pro forma, said, “President Broderick, is there anything you would like to add to this lovely evening?”

I said, “Yes, there is,” and I don’t think she has ever forgiven me. What I said was this, “Girls, this has been a beautiful program. I commend the gospel with all of its auxiliaries and the temple to you, but I do not want you to believe for one minute that if you keep all the commandments and live as close to the Lord as you can and do everything right and fight off the entire priests quorum one by one and wait chastely for your missionary to return and pay your tithing and attend your meetings, accept calls from the bishop, and have a temple marriage, I do not want you to believe that bad things will not happen to you. And when that happens, I do not want you to say that God was not true. Or, to say, ‘They promised me in Primary, they promised me when I was a Mia Maid, they promised me from the pulpit that if I were very, very good, I would be blessed. But the boy I want doesn’t know I exist, or the missionary I’ve waited for and kept chaste so we both could go to the temple turned out to be a flake,’ or far worse things than any of the above. Sad things— children who are sick or developmentally handicapped. husbands who are not faithful, illnesses that can cripple, or violence, betrayals, hurts, deaths, losses—when those things happen, do not say God is not keeping his promises to me. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is resource in event of pain, and when that pain comes (and it will come because we came here on earth to have pain among other things), when it comes, rejoice that you have a resource to deal with your pain.”

Now, I do not want to suggest for a moment, nor do I believe, that God visits us with all that pain. I think that may occur in individual cases, but I think we fought a war in heaven for the privilege of coming to a place that was unjust. That was the idea of coming to earth—that it was unjust, that there would be pain and grief and sorrow. As Eve so eloquently said, it is better that we should suffer. Now, her perspective may not be shared by all. But, I am persuaded that she had rare insight, more than her husband, into the necessity of pain, although none of us welcome it....

In the second case I had a woman who came to me who was an incest victim—the victim of a terrible family. She was abused physically. Her mother was neurotic and stayed in bed all the time to get her daughter to do all the work, including taking care of the husband's needs when he was drunk. The daughter had been abused in about every way there was to be abused—psychologically, physically, sexually. Besides that she had to do all the housework.

She was not a member of the Church at that time, although this happens to members of the Church also. In high school she met a young man who was a Latter-day Saint and who started taking her to church with him. Eventually they married. He was gentle and kind and patient because she didn't come with very many positive attitudes toward men, marital intimacy, or many other things. But he was long-suffering and patient and loved her. They raised some boys.

Despite this, she had recurring bouts of depression and very negative feelings about herself because she had been taught by the people most important in her early life what a rotten person she was. It was hard for her to overcome that self-image. I worked with her to try to build her self-image. One day she said to me, "You're a stake president." She wasn't in my stake, but she said, "You're a stake president; you explain to me the justice of it." She said, "I go to church, and I can hardly stand it. When I see little girls being hugged and kissed and taken to church and appropriately loved by their fathers and mothers, I just have to get up and leave. I say, 'Heavenly Father, what was so terrible about me that, when I was that age, I didn't get any of that? What did that little girl do in the premortal existence that I didn't do so she is loved, so she is safe? Her daddy gives her priesthood blessings when she's sick. Her mother loves her and supports her and teaches her. What did I do? Can you tell me that God is just if He sends that little girl to that family and me to my family?" She said, "It's a good thing I had boys. I don't think I could have stood to raise girls and have their father love them because I'm so envious."

I would not have known how to answer her in my own capacity because that is manifestly unjust. Where here or in eternity is the justice in an innocent child's suffering in that way? But the Lord inspired me to tell her, and I believe with all my heart that it applies to many in the kingdom, that she was a valiant Christlike spirit who volunteered (with, I told her, perhaps too much spiritual pride) to come to earth and suffer innocently to purify a lineage. She volunteered to absorb the poisoning of sin, anger, anguish, and violence, to take it into herself and not to pass it on; to purify a lineage so that downstream from her it ran pure and clean, full of love and the Spirit of the Lord and self-worth. I believed truly that her calling was to be a savior on Mount Zion: that is, to be Savior-like, like the Savior to suffer innocently that others might not suffer. She voluntarily took such a task with the promise she would not be left alone and abandoned, but He would send one to take her by the hand and be her companion out into the light. I viewed that woman in a different way also, again realizing I was in the presence of one of the great ones and unworthy to have my hands on her head.

I think we do not understand the nature of ourselves. I think we do not understand who we are. Some people call the temple ordinances the "mysteries" of the kingdom. When I went to the temple, I thought I was going to learn which star was Kolob, where the Ten Tribes were, and other such information. But those aren't the mysteries of the kingdom; the mysteries of the kingdom are who we are, and who God is, and what our relationship to Him is. Those are the mysteries of the kingdom. You can tell somebody in plain English, but they still don't know in their hearts who they really are.

(Carlfred Broderick, “The Uses of Adversity”)

Edited April 4, 2013 by MDalby

[Darren10]

I think it would be more accurate to say that we were aware of what circumstances would accompany our life, and we agreed to them.

Well said. But there are those warriors who do battle on Saturday. I heard they chose which family to be born to?

[Stone holm]

Find a GREAT GREAT little book by Carlfred Broderick, The Uses of Adversity. Here are a couple of excerpts.

Great quote.

[thesometimesaint]

Speculative answers won't help you receive the comfort you may or may not stand in need of. Only humble prayer will ease one's troubled spirit.

However, I will indulge your questions:

I think it would be more accurate to say that we were aware of what circumstances would accompany our life, and we agreed to them.

All in my opinion, of course.

Agreed

[Questing Beast]

"Saturday's Warrior", no. Swedenborgian "soul-mates" searching for each other in mortality, no. Compulsion into a dreadful mortality, e.g. starving, abused kids in a war zone country, no. Born filthy rich by choice, no. Mom and dad and siblings selected before birth, no.

I believe that we are caught up in a "system" of learning scenarios, all bestowed upon each of us according to the "Grand Design of Joy", and we have no control over which of the myriad forms mortality will take. Yet we know each other as immortals, and sometimes we meet "below" and feel a kinship like soul-mates, often mysterious yet undeniable. You love who you love and you dislike who you dislike and it is atavistic or at least metaphysical. Dislike is more problematic, and I believe it stems from assigned "weaknesses of the flesh" and does not translate into immortal emotions, which I believe are naturally good-seeking. Only in mortality do we experience the opposition toward good because of assumed weaknesses that accompany our incarnation. Family is assigned just as inscrutably as our personal weaknesses....

[Stone holm]

"Saturday's Warrior", no. Swedenborgian "soul-mates" searching for each other in mortality, no. Compulsion into a dreadful mortality, e.g. starving, abused kids in a war zone country, no. Born filthy rich by choice, no. Mom and dad and siblings selected before birth, no.

I believe that we are caught up in a "system" of learning scenarios, all bestowed upon each of us according to the "Grand Design of Joy", and we have no control over which of the myriad forms mortality will take. Yet we know each other as immortals, and sometimes we meet "below" and feel a kinship like soul-mates, often mysterious yet undeniable. You love who you love and you dislike who you dislike and it is atavistic or at least metaphysical. Dislike is more problematic, and I believe it stems from assigned "weaknesses of the flesh" and does not translate into immortal emotions, which I believe are naturally good-seeking. Only in mortality do we experience the opposition toward good because of assumed weaknesses that accompany our incarnation. Family is assigned just as inscrutably as our personal weaknesses....

My son takes his team of cross-country runners to a running camp he has set up each year up in Maine and they use a Swedenborgian camp which has a library that I browse while there as a chaperone, haven't run into their concept of soul-mates you want to elaborate?

[canard78]

Well said. But there are those warriors who do battle on Saturday. I heard they chose which family to be born to?

Saturday's Warrior. Probably the worst perpetuation of "false doctrine" for a generation! But wonderfully corny mormon pop-culture and I still enjoy watching it from time to time.

I don't believe we chose our family. I agree that it's possible that we were involved in selecting a set of potential circumstances which we considered to be the ideal environment for our life.

You might find this speculation on the subject useful:

http://manyotherhands.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-do-good-people-suffer.html?m=1

[tyler90az]

In the premortal world as we becamse ready to enter mortality we were put into a waiting list. Then when the next spirit was needed the first one ready would go. The ones who were sent to third world countries or difficult lives were more righteous then us. They have an easier path to return to Heavenly Father.

Just something to chew on, have not thought about this subject much.

[Calm]

They have an easier path to return to Heavenly Father.

Seriously?

[canard78]

In the premortal world as we becamse ready to enter mortality we were put into a waiting list. Then when the next spirit was needed the first one ready would go. The ones who were sent to third world countries or difficult lives were more righteous then us. They have an easier path to return to Heavenly Father.

Just something to chew on, have not thought about this subject much.

Assuming there was a plan and a pre-existence, I don't believe for a minute that bodies are filled at random by the next in the queue on a least filled basis.

I also believe that everybody's 'degree of difficulty' is level. That it's as hard for the 1-talent servant to 'double it' as it is the 5-talent.

No one gets a free ride.

At the end all nations will get the same judgement:

31 ¶When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matthew 25

[Stone holm]

Assuming there was a plan and a pre-existence, I don't believe for a minute that bodies are filled at random by the next in the queue on a least filled basis.

I also believe that everybody's 'degree of difficulty' is level. That it's as hard for the 1-talent servant to 'double it' as it is the 5-talent.

No one gets a free ride.

At the end all nations will get the same judgement:

Matthew 25

If nobody gets a free ride then what about our folklore concerning the severely mentally deficient ?

[BlueDreams]

If nobody gets a free ride then what about our folklore concerning the severely mentally deficient ?

I don't know if I would call being mentally deficient, often with major health concerns and shortened lifespans, and thus having a constant dependence on others exactly a free ride.

With luv,

BD

[CV75]

Did some choose abusive LDS?

Did some choose failed abortion?

I think the spirits that come into this world are voluntarily submitting to the Father's will, even though many who are already have subsequently decided not to.

[Questing Beast]

My son takes his team of cross-country runners to a running camp he has set up each year up in Maine and they use a Swedenborgian camp which has a library that I browse while there as a chaperone, haven't run into their concept of soul-mates you want to elaborate?

I am referencing the influences of Swedenborg upon JS's doctrine, asserted by others. It seems that Swedenborg's fixation on the "soul mate" ideal, originating in the preexistence?, culminated in heaven where the two are united forever. Do a Googly on Swendenborg. I instantly found reference to his expectation of uniting with the soul mate he IDed in mortality, but so far I haven't found anything on preexisting soul mates searching for each other in mortality, which is what has been emphasized as JS's model for proposing plural marriage to a number of young, impressionable women, e.g. notably Mary Lightner http://wivesofjosephsmith.org/09-MaryRollinsLightner.htm

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Did some choose abusive LDS?

Did some choose failed abortion?

There are the only 2 options you could think of?

Given those two options...no and no.

[Duncan]

if we did choose then I don't know why we didn't all choose to be into wealthy families