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The Different Lives We Live


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and who knows if people even know to ask God for help, that I don't know in my relative's help and as I say I don't know what help came from God or why she just quit and gave up. Every year thousands of people kill themselves and we seem to know what we don't know than what we do know, like who knows what goes on in people's minds

I know that I think of ending my life daily lately, I won't and I'm working on getting myself out in the world etc. taking classes etc.  I would never go through with it.  But I do know people that did. My cousin's wife, she was talented and beautiful, had two sons, one an infant.  She drove to the Salt Lake airport and got in the trunk of her car with a bottle of whisky and a shotgun.  She shot herself. But she did suffer with depression so that played into it I'm sure.  I think there are people walking around that we would never think could end their lives.  Another person I knew personally was a guy in my ward.  The night before he committed suicide he came up to me and had the biggest smile on his face and we chatted, this at both our son's baseball game.  The next day he was gone, from a self inflicted gun shot.  He left a wife and 4 children.  The happiest guy you'd ever meet.    

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I know that I think of ending my life daily lately, I won't and I'm working on getting myself out in the world etc. taking classes etc.  I would never go through with it.  But I do know people that did. My cousin's wife, she was talented and beautiful, had two sons, one an infant.  She drove to the Salt Lake airport and got in the trunk of her car with a bottle of whisky and a shotgun.  She shot herself. But she did suffer with depression so that played into it I'm sure.  I think there are people walking around that we would never think could end their lives.  Another person I knew personally was a guy in my ward.  The night before he committed suicide he came up to me and had the biggest smile on his face and we chatted, this at both our son's baseball game.  The next day he was gone, from a self inflicted gun shot.  He left a wife and 4 children.  The happiest guy you'd ever meet.    

 

thank you for sharing that! it seems we are to be tested as Abraham as per DC 101, I think!, and some tests break people and I don't get it

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thank you for sharing that! it seems we are to be tested as Abraham as per DC 101, I think!, and some tests break people and I don't get it

 

If you don't test to destruction how is it a realistic test? All of us will have severe tests, and will eventually die. It is the life we lead(how we respond to our tests), that determines who we are.

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If you don't test to destruction how is it a realistic test? All of us will have severe tests, and will eventually die. It is the life we lead(how we respond to our tests), that determines who we are.

 

i guess but not everyone kills themselves or lives these tough lives, not that they wanted to but had to, and some people you wonder what their test even is?

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and who knows if people even know to ask God for help, that I don't know in my relative's help and as I say I don't know what help came from God or why she just quit and gave up. Every year thousands of people kill themselves and we seem to know what we don't know than what we do know, like who knows what goes on in people's minds

My words were meant for the believers. For those who don't believe and/or are ignorant, they will learn the gospel in the spirit world and will eventually come to be spiritually healed and comforted. Because the atonement of Christ is of infinite and eternal power, there is no bad and sorrowful thing that will not be reversed and made right in the end. All but the sons of perdition will live in a state of glory and happiness far beyond the fleeting joys experienced in this world. The restored gospel gives this hope to all who are willing to receive it. For those who lack faith to receive and believe it, God will continue to minister and work with them until they can finally find a place in their heart to willingly accept the healing blessings of the infinite and eternal atonement of Christ.

The sad part is there are some who seem to perversely enjoy mulling over the the injustices and misfortunes of this fallen world and would rather believe all things end poorly than believe all will be made right in the end. This self-destructive component of the fallen human nature will not win out in the end, except in the case of the sons of perdition who love darkness and misery more than light and life.

Edited by Bobbieaware
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I remember a conversation I had with a co-worker, while traveling. He came from a devout Catholic family but was an Athiest. He defended his atheism with the traditional comment "I can't believe in a God that would allow misery, poverty in the World".

 

He came from a well to do family. He had a very good job. He had a beautiful wife, and beautiful twin daughters. He wanted for nothing.

 

So I posed this thought question to him. Suppose, that our reason for being here on Earth  is to discover God.

 

Who has the advantage. The one who suffers in poverty and misery, who, in their desperation reaches out to find God, or the one who is so comfortable, that he has no need for him?

 

Regards,

 

George Clay

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The worth of those six million lives is greater than the value of a political state for Israel 

 

The worth of those six million souls definitely was. In fact one of them was. Not so sure about the lives. Life has value but they also all end. Some seem prematurely to end and some seem to linger beyond all purpose.

Edited by The Nehor
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I was thinking the other day about my Great Grandma, whom i've never met.She did herself a mischief in 1934. She grew up on the frontier, her husband (my Great Grandpa) was arguing politics and dropped dead in 1925. She had two adult children die before she did. She just led a rough life, like most others at that time. I highly doubt she ever met missionaries or even know about the Church. We had her work done. Yet, I know a girl here in the Church and she was born into wealth. When she won 16 she was $250,000 in a Ford World Modeling contest. When she was a little older she married some guy from Utah who was a millionaire and not even 30. She has TWO vacation houses, one is her dad's and one is her husband's or theirs. I see on FB them going on trips and they have nice kids, clothes, restaurants and all this stuff, I can't see her wanting for nothing.There are obviously people who are far wealthier than she is and people who had it far worse then my Great Grandma. I don't get why would God place people in these situations were it's like the lap of luxury and another person their life just got worse and worse and worse until they just "rusted out" and just gave up. Suicide is a bad thing but I don't know if I blame my relative for doing it, honestly, given her circumstances. Why would God place people in these situations given he knows the end from the beginning and therefore everything in between, to me means he knew she would do herself in.

 

Doctrine and Covenants 38:

 

 25 And again I say unto you, let every man esteem his brother as himself.
 
 26 For what man among you having twelve sons, and is no respecter of them, and they serve him obediently, and he saith unto the one: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there—and looketh upon his sons and saith I am just?
 
 27 Behold, this I have given unto you as a parable, and it is even as I am. I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.
 
God admits that the allocation of resources in this life is unfair and he allows it. In the last sentence he also gives the solution. We must be One and solve the problem. We are pretty terrible at this. :(
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I remember a conversation I had with a co-worker, while traveling. He came from a devout Catholic family but was an Athiest. He defended his atheism with the traditional comment "I can't believe in a God that would allow misery, poverty in the World".

He came from a well to do family. He had a very good job. He had a beautiful wife, and beautiful twin daughters. He wanted for nothing.

So I posed this thought question to him. Suppose, that our reason for being here on Earth is to discover God.

Who has the advantage. The one who suffers in poverty and misery, who, in their desperation reaches out to find God, or the one who is so comfortable, that he has no need for him?

Regards,

George Clay

That's beautiful.
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The worth of those six million souls definitely was. In fact one of them was. Not so sure about the lives. Life has value but they also all end. Some seem prematurely to end and some seem to linger beyond all purpose.

 

The transience of life just makes it more valuable. 

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I was thinking the other day about my Great Grandma, whom i've never met.She did herself a mischief in 1934. She grew up on the frontier, her husband (my Great Grandpa) was arguing politics and dropped dead in 1925. She had two adult children die before she did. She just led a rough life, like most others at that time. I highly doubt she ever met missionaries or even know about the Church. We had her work done. Yet, I know a girl here in the Church and she was born into wealth. When she won 16 she was $250,000 in a Ford World Modeling contest. When she was a little older she married some guy from Utah who was a millionaire and not even 30. She has TWO vacation houses, one is her dad's and one is her husband's or theirs. I see on FB them going on trips and they have nice kids, clothes, restaurants and all this stuff, I can't see her wanting for nothing.There are obviously people who are far wealthier than she is and people who had it far worse then my Great Grandma. I don't get why would God place people in these situations were it's like the lap of luxury and another person their life just got worse and worse and worse until they just "rusted out" and just gave up. Suicide is a bad thing but I don't know if I blame my relative for doing it, honestly, given her circumstances. Why would God place people in these situations given he knows the end from the beginning and therefore everything in between, to me means he knew she would do herself in.

As abrupt and harsh as it may seem, there is no valid answer to your questions as long as they are asked within a framework that includes a benevolent supreme being.  To push the matter farther, each day over thirty thousand children die because of lack of food, shelter and medical treatment.  How could a loving god (yes, lower case) ignore the prayers and supplications of these children and their parents?  The answer for me is that there is no god.  The evidence for a god is almost non-existent.   I have been lurking on this board for almost 10 years, and I was on other LDS boards before this.  Beyond feel good feelings that are explained to me as a testimony, there is no evidence of a god or of a “true” religion or of a god for that matter.   There is not one major aspect of the history of this church that that can be positioned in a positive light without tortured, convoluted and to be frank, ridiculous spin job.   If the evidence of translation of the BoA was presented in a court of law in front of impartial witnesses, JS would be found wanting.  The same holds true for the practices of polygamy and polyandry.  There is a reason that the church hid this history for so long.  And it is not because it is faith promoting.   I spent 50 years as a faithful member, served a faithful two years and was married in the temple.  I also graduated from BYU which required that I take and pass a number of religion classes.  Not once in any of those classes were any of the troubling aspects of the church’s history discussed.   The history of the church is like a mushroom.  It can survive only in dark shadows, and will wilt and die if exposed to the bright light of honest scrutiny.   

 

I was a member of the church because I was born into it and was cultured in it in my early youth.  I suspect that most stalwart members today were also born into it or converted at an early age.  I doubt there are many adults with developed critical thinking skills, and who have access to the unvarnished history and doctrine of the church that would convert today.  I believe the latest conversion numbers back this up.

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The worth of those six million lives is greater than the value of a political state for Israel 

Perhaps so, although measuring the competing worth of lives seems a zero sum game.  What one rabbi told me, however, is that unmerited suffering is redemptive.  Thus, it is at least arguable, from the position of Realpolitik, that the State of Israel would not exist but for the Holocaust.

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........................................................

 I doubt there are many adults with developed critical thinking skills, and who have access to the unvarnished history and doctrine of the church that would convert today.  I believe the latest conversion numbers back this up.

I think that you are quite wrong on this point, not only because (1) I know of cases in which scholars have converted while under the tutelage of a Mormon intellectual, but also because (2) LDS members show a strong tendency to go against the general trend of intellectual-achievement-equals-less-religion.  One member of this board, Mark Bukowski, is an example of such a conversion.

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As abrupt and harsh as it may seem, there is no valid answer to your questions as long as they are asked within a framework that includes a benevolent supreme being.  To push the matter farther, each day over thirty thousand children die because of lack of food, shelter and medical treatment.  How could a loving god (yes, lower case) ignore the prayers and supplications of these children and their parents?  The answer for me is that there is no god. 

 

The idea that the horrors of life are a modern discovery discrediting God is a modern conceit. You present this as if it is evidence against God that NOW results in people not believing in God where in many respects life was worse in the past. The availability of painkillers was much more limited and infant death was much more likely? Why did people believe in a loving God then? It is not like humanity has gotten any smarter since then.

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Perhaps so, although measuring the competing worth of lives seems a zero sum game.  What one rabbi told me, however, is that unmerited suffering is redemptive.  Thus, it is at least arguable, from the position of Realpolitik, that the State of Israel would not exist but for the Holocaust.

 

Well, I don't think there are competing lives at stake - rather the lives of the 6 million vs the existence of one political entity. 

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I suspect that many people who seem to have everything, have all that because in the premortal realm they asked for the ability to help people. So God gave them the means to do so. I know some wealthy families who truly understand the meaning of consecration. Others, not so much.

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I figured out what "seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall receive, knock, and it shall be opened unto you meant" when I started seeking, asking, and finding.  As soon as I began asking seriously, I began finding, and it was members of the church who were doing the eager, willing sharing.  It has been obvious to me that the church contains all kinds of people.  Even bureaucrats, and people whose ideals and faith took them into CES and produced manuals and books, doing the best they could according their lights and resources.  I even found lots of good stuff in some of the manuals.  A member in England loaned me Nibley's An Approach to the Book of Mormon.  That experience snowballed for him into the rest of my life.  On one side, I basically accepted what I was given, and on the other, I eagerly sought on my own initiative. I found that the best informed members of the church have always been eager to share with other seekers.  And those who charge "spin" and "censorship" and all have never ever told me the whole story, and they have their own controlling ideologies.

 

Evidence for God?  N. R. Hanson famously observed that "All data is theory laden."  When I read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian, and Freud's The Future of an Illusion, I realized that works for skeptics too.   I found my Mormon wine bottles wonderfully expansive and stronger than I imagined.  The God they didn't believe in was not the same as the God I did believe in.  I see wonderfully inviting evidence for God, a wide range, and often powerful, surprising, and not easily transferrable.  I've written a lot about much of what impresses me over the years.  I noticed that I could list lots of things that Riskas never addressed in his attempted Deconstruction of Mormonism.  Ian Barbour's Myths, Models, and Paradigms, I found, is a much better book.

 

I'm currently working on a response to Jeremy Runnells' friend Johnny Stephenson, who claims that all we have to offer is spin.  And he, of course, is immune to all of that, bravely facing the hard, facts.  The most damaging ideologies are the ones you don't notice, the ones that convince you that you see things as they really are, and therefore, place you beyond the reach of enlightenment.

 

Bad stuff happens.  My Dad had nightmares about his WWII experiences up to the end of his long life.  One night in 1978 on Redwood Road and North Temple, I had a .22 pistol alternately grinding under my eye and against the back of my head.  "Open the cash box," the young man said.  "I would if I could," I replied. "I don't have the combination."  On the third iteration of that conversation, with the occasional flying fist punctuating the situation, I thought... "This can't go on much longer..."  Was I ready to die?  Ready or not... we used to say, here I come.  And at 3 a.m. two cars came in.

 

So... what do you think?  Did God save me?  And for what?  And what about the ones God didn't save? My Dad had his life saved by spiritual promptings many times.  But of course, he saw many terrible things.  The thing is, there is more than one way to view such things, and not all of them require us to imagine that when an innocent child is taken from her home, raped, and left in an irrigation ditch down the street from my sister-in-law's house in West Jordan, that the whole meaning of that child's existence stays locked in that moment for eternity.  With an after-life, the story continues.  With an afterlife, when those parent's pass on, I find it both easy and comforting to believe that they will be greeted by that child.  How well will cynicism and bitterness weather the joy in that scenario?

 

That moment of my life at gunpoint was dramatic for a moment, but it is far from the most unpleasant experience I have endured.  But it also turns out that some of the most amazing and powerful and faith promoting experiences of my life have come as a direct consequence of my enduring the worst moments, hours, days, months.  I don't see that as random.

 

Well, some people explain it away as delusion and spin, but in doing so, they always demonstrate their own ideology and spin.

 

FWIW

 

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

 

Thank you for that, that was excellent! I was thinking too my Great Grandma's son, who was my Grandpa's brother survived all 4 years of the the First World War, I can't believe he did that but somehow he made it through. Other than that he didn't do much in life aside from being a simple farmer, got married and raised a bunch of kids. However one of his children, who isn't a member, got interested in Family History and research an absolute TON of names and so we've been doing those names at the Temple for a long time now. Was my Great Uncle spared in WW1 just so his son could do all this? who knows

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i guess but not everyone kills themselves or lives these tough lives, not that they wanted to but had to, and some people you wonder what their test even is?

 

It is all individual. You might call it your own Individualized Eternal Progression Plan. So a hard test for me may be easy for you and visa versa.

No one has to kill themselves. That is a choice. Most, but not all,  suicides are merely calls for help, when someone in severe depression can't see another way out. I'm not faulting them. I'm not their judge. Severe depression is a serious mental disease. However there are things we can do to help.

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Was my Great Uncle spared in WW1 just so his son could do all this? who knows

While I do believe there are people who are foreordained to accomplish certain things in life so the work can move forward, I also believe that maybe what the majority of the rest of us are supposed to do isn't some accomplishment in terms most people think of, but just the experience of feeling...learning what is important to us.

Perhaps your great uncle was spared so he could experience the crowning achievements of his own life and maybe those were just moments of intense joy and love triggered by a look he shared with his wife or being able to hold in his arms his children....something that others might look upon as insignificant, but have eternal significance because those are the moments that determine what we wish to become in our eternities.

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