how is conference?

[Danzo]

4 minutes ago, Gray said:

And for all the innocents that continue to suffer without relief?

Relief will come, for all.

I do not know why everything must happen, but I firmly believe John when he said.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

[bluebell]

6 minutes ago, Gray said:

And for all the innocents that continue to suffer without relief?

I don't believe that it is God's will that innocents suffer, but we live in a world where, if someone chooses to inflict suffering, God allows it.  It is not a fair world and it is often absolutely heartbreaking.  I don't understand it-it is above my abilities to comprehend and i get heartsick even trying to. 

As a mother I intimately understand, as all good parents do, what innocence is (i'm raising it).  The only thing that makes this world not a completely horrific place is knowing that God is in control and that every tear will be dried and every injustice and evil rewarded accordingly.  

My only answer to your question is the same one that Nephi gave a long time ago-"I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things."

[BlueDreams]

7 hours ago, JeremyOrbe-Smith said:

I find it incredibly fascinating that anyone can read the scriptures and manage to come to the conclusion that God is anything but a sadistic psychopath who is the supreme First Cause archetype of 'rage and mockery'. In the past few weeks, I did a reread of the entirety of the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, the D&C, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Qur'an. They are absolutely soaked in the bloodshed God commanded. The entire point of most of the writers is that God is the biggest baddest mofo around. 

To answer your fascination I would ask you to go back to a year or so ago (or whenever it was) that you had less of a jaded point of view and ask what worked with you then. Though it's probably flawed and didn't work for you indefinitely, it would at least begin a modicum of understanding. It's helped me when I've changed my beliefs about things. Obviously I don't find God a "sadistic psychopath" and the supreme "First cause of 'rage and mockery.'" It's been a long time since I've read the OT through (currently taking my sweet time reading the BoM in spanish as my current reading goal). And obviously I don't read it the same....even then. Ironically one of the examples you gave is also one of my favorite stories. I still remember reading a part where God, after all the smiting, states that this isn't what he would want this relationship to be like.   
 

I have my reasons, but considering the reactive tone that is currently omnipresent, I feel it would be fairly useless.

Quote

 

Meanwhile, I'm ever so thankful and grateful for the spiritual uplift provided during this Conference when the representatives of the One True Church claim that the little voice that talks in their heads is not an indication of schizotypal tendencies, but rather evidence that God took the time to miraculously find those precious, precious car keys, instead of curing the Ebola He gave to innocent children, so their broken bleeding bodies could function as an object lesson divinely-foreordained to teach others to have compassion. 

 

Oh really? So I had a client tell me of a tender-mercy keys incident and I believed her and felt that it was exactly that. Is she schizotypal for assuming God answered her prayer? Am I delusional for listening to her? Do you know how annoying it is to watch serious psychological disorders attributed to a fairly innocuous story and simple religious experience as a therapist? Religious experiences that I, and others here, have. Are we all borderline-schizo's now? 

I also find it a little irritating to keep pulling out Ebola as some trump card, particularly with the irony that the population most effected are also mostly religious/God-believers of some sort and wouldn't take too kindly for their experiences or their families as a means to bash their faiths.  Is that really respectful? Heaven knows my Nigerian father would not appreciate me using his stories as some way to dissuade others of God. It literally runs against his actual story and would be an act of hijacking his narrative for my own purposes. I am not saying that you can't say pain, in your heart, subverts the idea of a loving God. But I wish you would acknowledge and hear the many many voices who don't feel it as so...including the victims and their families who lived through ebola. 

 

I sense pain and reactionary tones in your words. And for that I am sorry, though I do not know what it is exactly that's caused it. But pain is not a good enough reason to throw broad generalizations about everyone who sees things differently. 

 

With luv,

BD

Edited April 4, 2016 by BlueDreams

[Jeanne]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Scripture is a human product. Depictions of God in scripture represent the ideals of the communities that produced the scriptures. Not all ideas about God expressed in scripture are well considered, and some require special interpretation. In most cases God is an anthropomorphic projection of the kinds of values held by those communities. 

God doesn't smite or cause famine or starvation. I think it should be obvious by now that natural law drives these kinds of things. 

You are right.  I don't blame God for everything..I just don't know if He participates much one way or the other. 

[Tacenda]

24 minutes ago, Jeanne said:

You are right.  I don't blame God for everything..I just don't know if He participates much one way or the other. 

I've wondered this also, and feel guilty for praying to find things, such as a lost wedding ring once.  And I found it!  I had a moment just now that told me, maybe He helps those that pray for it, in His own way.  I went to the movie "Miracles from Heaven".  In it the mother mentions she didn't know why some prayers were answered and some not.  She was just as bewildered.  But apparently hers were answered.  It's all a mystery.  And the only way I can accept the Bible story that Jeremy shared, is that it was a man made up story.  To get people to obey or play by the rules.  I guess they didn't have much confidence in a moral compass.  

[Sleeper Cell]

5 hours ago, stemelbow said:

We are very cultural.  I think Jeremy responded to this with good reasoning.  When I first read your response I wondered what you meant considering not only scripture but the general anger and mockery that leads out posts from others or that seems to emerge it's ugly head in Church from time to time.  I sense a great deal of frustration in Jeremy's posts, frustration which resonates with me.  And it doesn't sit well with me to dismiss someone's perspective as rage and mockery, especially considering his positions seem to come from a place of great concern and care for others.  I personally am far more comfortable loving others and hoping for the best for others than I am enjoying a rameumptum-type thank-fest. 

I prefer a rameumptum-type thank-fest to a rameumptum-type hate-fest.  I sensed far more “loving others and hoping for the best for others” coming from general conference, than from Jeremy‘s recent posts.  

Perhaps Bluebell would have been less inclined to dismiss someone’s perspective as rage and mockery, if that “someone” would have expressed less rage and mockery in his posts.  Just a thought.   

[bluebell]

29 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I've wondered this also, and feel guilty for praying to find things, such as a lost wedding ring once.  And I found it!  I had a moment just now that told me, maybe He helps those that pray for it, in His own way.  I went to the movie "Miracles from Heaven".  In it the mother mentions she didn't know why some prayers were answered and some not.  She was just as bewildered.  But apparently hers were answered.  It's all a mystery.  And the only way I can accept the Bible story that Jeremy shared, is that it was a man made up story.  To get people to obey or play by the rules.  I guess they didn't have much confidence in a moral compass.  

If we believed that God only cared about us when we were suffering the most-if we believed that we had no right to petition Him for help or comfort because someone else had it 'worse,' then no one could ever pray.

The mother of one child who was struggling would have no right to struggle or need help because there were mothers of twins who struggled more.  Likewise, mothers of twins would have no right because of the existence of mother of triplets.

The person who was sick with the flu could not feel the need to pray for relief because of the person with stomach cancer, who was suffering much much more.  

The person who was asking for intervention to save their own life but had no children in the home, would have no right to ask for such a thing because somewhere there was a person who was asking for intervention to save their own lives but they did have children at home to take care of.  

And of course, the dying person without only one child would have less claim upon the mercies and interventions of God because there were dying people who had multiple children....

It literally goes on and on and on.  There is always someone suffering more than the another but I don't believe that suffering or need is that relevant to God when it comes to getting answers to our prayers.  

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Of course scripture is a human product, and depictions of God represent the ideals of the community. The point is that if scripture is so inaccurate that it can directly state that the happy fluffy loving hippie-God of peace is actually a genital-mutilating, animal-sacrificing, pestilence-causing, natural-disaster-sending, racist, slave-owning, misogynistic, pyromaniacal, capital-punishment-using, homophobic, heterophobic, murdering, cannibalistic authoritarian genocidal dictator, then what gives us the confidence that there ever even was a God behind all the rhetoric? These people get literally everything else wrong; if they are so wrong on even basic points of human empathy, why should we believe that they ever had any contact with a Higher Power whatsoever?

If these are no longer good ideals, why do we spend so much money lugging them around and translating them and foisting them on others, claiming that their lives will be changed for the better, and then turn around and create a completely disconnected oral narrative to teach that God's character is the polar opposite of what the scriptures that the Church is founded on flatly state? If we were to actually 'follow the commandments' to 'become like God', we'd turn ourselves into psychopaths. The church rails against pornography, and then spends money publishing and distributing it in the form of the book of Ezekiel. The church says not to listen to songs with violent content, and then prints the book of Psalms, the sacred hymns sung in the Temple, in which God is praised for breaking the teeth of enemies, setting them on fire, and dashing them to pieces. 

The scriptures directly state that God causes famine and starvation. Indeed, the scriptures directly state that God gives His righteous followers the magical power to cause famine and starvation as well. God finally gets Joseph to 'translate' the Bible and correct the 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' verse (after innumerable witches have already been burned alive, of course), but leaves the ubiquitous genocides as they are. Meanwhile, Joseph claims that the one single good book in the Old Testament, the Song of Solomon, is not inspired, because it contains icky sex, but the much more entertaining books like Judges and Samuel and Kings he says not a word about, because clearly God inspired all the carnage after He asks His followers to utterly destroy every man, woman, child, and animal in sight. If God has the power to stop innocents from suffering at the hands of monsters and yet doesn't intervene, that makes Him a monster as well, which should already have been obvious from even a cursory reading of, say, Job. 

Just because we can rewrite the scriptures to conform to the modern morality which was won through secularism doesn't mean we've proved that a God of love exists behind all the genocide. I do think it is extremely worrisome if anyone seriously believes that this monstrous God who flat-out states that He sends famine and pestilence and disease to coerce others into bending to His divine will is actually talking in their heads across the light years. I don't think such people are 'delusional', but I think they have misnamed their own conscience and taken the unwarranted intellectual leap in assuming that their own best impulses cannot come from themselves, and must instead be evidence that an omnipotent creator is telling them what to do. 

And please remember that I was not the one who started the Ebola stuff. That was the explicit example used in Conference. If we claim that finding our keys and singing nice songs and seeing Missionaries survive a blast that kills others can in any way be construed as evidence that God intervenes positively in our lives, and then in that same Conference we claim that God stands by and does nothing to heal the frickin' Ebola virus, we have lost our minds. 

[Gray]

2 hours ago, Deborah said:

In the situation you describe you take care of the emergency first and then the other. But that has nothing to do with the bigger picture of people who may be suffering and don't have immediate rescuing. It's not that God can't but that he won't always intervene because it is a matter of faith, whether it's faith to be healed or faith to endure and learn of compassion or to allow others to give service and comfort. You really do have a limited view of the eternity if you think everything has to be resolved right now. 

Perhaps in my example, the child with a gaping head wound doesn't have much confidence in his parent, justifying him in not intervening. Is that an acceptable example of parental behavior? Or perhaps the metaphor of God as our parent has been stretched past the breaking point. 

I assure, many people with great faith have their prayers go unanswered. 

[Gray]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

This idea that when someone's prayer isn't answered in the way they want that it is a sign of God's neglect is so misguided. 

We believe that the purpose of this earth life is to have trials, to suffer sometimes, to go thru hard times, and to die.  And then we imply that if God does let someone suffer, if He does let them go thru a trial rather than remove it, if He does let them die, that He's being neglectful??  I'd say that that makes no sense but that's putting it too mildly.

Sometimes it's best for us to suffer thru the profuse bleeding-that is what our doctrine states!  It is the very basic backbone doctrine of the entire plan of salvation.

Sometimes bleeding profusely isn't what's best for us.  Sometimes it's best for us to find our teddy bear.  Sometimes it's not.  God always does what is best, regardless of whether it is a big thing or a small thing.  He doesn't decide what is best based on what it easiest, or based on what is best for someone else.  And thank goodness for that because He would utterly fail us as a parent if He did.

**and the person who finds their keys today is the same person burying their child, or going thru cancer, or dealing with a loved one in prison, or bleeding profusely, etc. etc. tomorrow.  Everyone goes thru their personal gethsemane.  Everyone.  God answering a simple prayer one day does not mean He doesn't say No to other requests.** 

I don't know bluebell. Are you saying people in the third world need more trials than those of us in the first world? It is very easy to come up with examples of suffering that serve no benefit - that leave victims weaker, not stronger, or that afflict victims who are not developed enough to understand anything beyond the suffering itself. 

[Gray]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

I don't believe that it is God's will that innocents suffer, but we live in a world where, if someone chooses to inflict suffering, God allows it.  It is not a fair world and it is often absolutely heartbreaking.  I don't understand it-it is above my abilities to comprehend and i get heartsick even trying to. 

As a mother I intimately understand, as all good parents do, what innocence is (i'm raising it).  The only thing that makes this world not a completely horrific place is knowing that God is in control and that every tear will be dried and every injustice and evil rewarded accordingly.  

My only answer to your question is the same one that Nephi gave a long time ago-"I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things."

Great, so why is God intervening now in trivial ways but letting more important petitions go unanswered?

The answer is that God is not intervening at all. We do the work of God when we intervene - we are the ones capable of intervention. 

[Gray]

1 hour ago, Jeanne said:

You are right.  I don't blame God for everything..I just don't know if He participates much one way or the other. 

I think the idea of God as a human-like intervener is a projection of our own ego consciousness onto the universe. It's so easy to fall into the trap of creating God in our own image. 

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, Gray said:

Great, so why is God intervening now in trivial ways but letting more important petitions go unanswered?

Probably for the same reason that He sometimes interviews in important petitions and let's the trivial things go unanswered-a mixture of free agency, love for us, and His will.

Quote

The answer is that God is not intervening at all. We do the work of God when we intervene - we are the ones capable of intervention. 

That doesn't have to be the answer, it's just the answer that's easiest and requires the least faith and trust in God from us.  

Edited April 4, 2016 by bluebell
Edit to add the answer to your question and to make the post easier to read

[Gray]

19 minutes ago, JeremyOrbe-Smith said:

Of course scripture is a human product, and depictions of God represent the ideals of the community. The point is that if scripture is so inaccurate that it can directly state that the happy fluffy loving hippie-God of peace is actually a genital-mutilating, animal-sacrificing, pestilence-causing, natural-disaster-sending, racist, slave-owning, misogynistic, pyromaniacal, capital-punishment-using, homophobic, heterophobic, murdering, cannibalistic authoritarian genocidal dictator, then what gives us the confidence that there ever even was a God behind all the rhetoric? These people get literally everything else wrong; if they are so wrong on even basic points of human empathy, why should we believe that they ever had any contact with a Higher Power whatsoever?

If these are no longer good ideals, why do we spend so much money lugging them around and translating them and foisting them on others, claiming that their lives will be changed for the better, and then turn around and create a completely disconnected oral narrative to teach that God's character is the polar opposite of what the scriptures that the Church is founded on flatly state? If we were to actually 'follow the commandments' to 'become like God', we'd turn ourselves into psychopaths. The church rails against pornography, and then spends money publishing and distributing it in the form of the book of Ezekiel. The church says not to listen to songs with violent content, and then prints the book of Psalms, the sacred hymns sung in the Temple, in which God is praised for breaking the teeth of enemies, setting them on fire, and dashing them to pieces. 

The scriptures directly state that God causes famine and starvation. Indeed, the scriptures directly state that God gives His righteous followers the magical power to cause famine and starvation as well. God finally gets Joseph to 'translate' the Bible and correct the 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' verse (after innumerable witches have already been burned alive, of course), but leaves the ubiquitous genocides as they are. Meanwhile, Joseph claims that the one single good book in the Old Testament, the Song of Solomon, is not inspired, because it contains icky sex, but the much more entertaining books like Judges and Samuel and Kings he says not a word about, because clearly God inspired all the carnage after He asks His followers to utterly destroy every man, woman, child, and animal in sight. If God has the power to stop innocents from suffering at the hands of monsters and yet doesn't intervene, that makes Him a monster as well, which should already have been obvious from even a cursory reading of, say, Job. 

Just because we can rewrite the scriptures to conform to the modern morality which was won through secularism doesn't mean we've proved that a God of love exists behind all the genocide. I do think it is extremely worrisome if anyone seriously believes that this monstrous God who flat-out states that He sends famine and pestilence and disease to coerce others into bending to His divine will is actually talking in their heads across the light years. I don't think such people are 'delusional', but I think they have misnamed their own conscience and taken the unwarranted intellectual leap in assuming that their own best impulses cannot come from themselves, and must instead be evidence that an omnipotent creator is telling them what to do. 

And please remember that I was not the one who started the Ebola stuff. That was the explicit example used in Conference. If we claim that finding our keys and singing nice songs and seeing Missionaries survive a blast that kills others can in any way be construed as evidence that God intervenes positively in our lives, and then in that same Conference we claim that God stands by and does nothing to heal the frickin' Ebola virus, we have lost our minds. 

Can I suggest a couple of podcasts for an introduction to a very different view of God and scripture?

http://mormonstories.org/rabbi-ted-falcon-on-progressive-judaism/

http://mormonstories.org/three-interfaith-amigos-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-religion/

(The other interviews with the interfaith amigos are good too!)

I would suggest that thinking of God as a person is the problem. For some that's a model that works. It doesn't work for me, and it looks like it doesn't work for you either. 

Magic isn't real. But that doesn't erase the value of spirituality. You can have spirituality without the superstition. 

[Bobbieaware]

2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I've wondered this also, and feel guilty for praying to find things, such as a lost wedding ring once.  And I found it!  I had a moment just now that told me, maybe He helps those that pray for it, in His own way.  I went to the movie "Miracles from Heaven".  In it the mother mentions she didn't know why some prayers were answered and some not.  She was just as bewildered.  But apparently hers were answered.  It's all a mystery.  And the only way I can accept the Bible story that Jeremy shared, is that it was a man made up story.  To get people to obey or play by the rules.  I guess they didn't have much confidence in a moral compass.  

One of the reasons why God doesn't answer all prayers in the same way is because if he did it would destroy the whole purpose of earth life. In the end, when from an eternal perspective God reveals how he always does what is in the eternal best interests for each of his children, we will know it's for a wise purpose that he intervenes at times and doesn't at others.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Bobbieaware

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Thanks, Gray, I'll take a listen. 

[Bobbieaware]

12 minutes ago, Gray said:

Great, so why is God intervening now in trivial ways but letting more important petitions go unanswered?

The answer is that God is not intervening at all. We do the work of God when we intervene - we are the ones capable of intervention. 

So based on the above, I would imagine you don't believe any of the hundreds of miraculous divine interventions recorded in the scriptures ever actually took place?

[consiglieri]

The talk about the Atonement by the non-apostle GA was poignant, talking about his daughter who died of cancer a year ago.

But the upshot seems to be that Mormons have officially relegated the healing power of Jesus to something that does not occur in the here-and-now, but is relegated to the afterlife where we are assured that all will be healed of their earthly afflictions upon their resurrection from the dead.

 

[Gray]

6 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Probably for the same reason that He sometimes interviews in important petitions and let's the trivial things go unanswered-a mixture of free agency, love for us, and His will.

That doesn't have to be the answer, it's just the answer that's easiest and requires the least faith and trust in God from us.  

It's the only answer that doesn't turn God into the monster that Jeremy describes. The God who helps privileged people find their lost belongings but lets babies suffer on and on in horrible agony until they die. It's a terrible problem, and there is no satisfactory answer for those who think of God as a being who intervenes. But, I find most people don't seem to think through the implications of a God who intervenes. 

This is an issue that creates thousands of atheists each year - they're reacting to the logical problems that result when positing a very specific idea about God. And while I reject the same sort of God that atheists reject, it makes me sad to see them rejecting spirituality as a whole. There is so much more to it than just the binary issue of God as literal celestial parent vs no God at all. 

[Gray]

4 minutes ago, Bobbieaware said:

So based on the above, I would imagine you don't believe any of the hundreds of miraculous divine interventions recorded in the scriptures ever actually took place?

I wasn't there, but I suspect these are "just" stories. In most cases these stories were written down long after the fact, by people who weren't there. 

Of course, the real value of scripture is in the meaning we can take from these stories. There is no content in a story about a miracle if all you get from it was that a miracle happened to someone long ago. 

 

Edited April 4, 2016 by Gray

[bluebell]

15 minutes ago, Gray said:

I don't know bluebell. Are you saying people in the third world need more trials than those of us in the first world? It is very easy to come up with examples of suffering that serve no benefit - that leave victims weaker, not stronger, or that afflict victims who are not developed enough to understand anything beyond the suffering itself. 

No i'm not saying that.  We don't know why we each get the trials we do.  Sometimes it's because of the evil of others, sometimes the fallen world, and sometimes our own choices to distance ourselves from divine help and guidance.  We also don't know the benefit that trials provide or the help that is given because of them.  I have experienced benefits from trials and suffering that no one would be able to see from the outside.

I know i have a 14 year old son who (multiple times a day) tells me that something i'm requiring him to do is 'stupid' or 'makes no sense' or is 'the most insane stupid thing EVER!!' and that my making him do it is 'absolute proof that I don't care about him and never help him!' (that's an almost perfect quote from just a week ago actually).  This personal experience with the limits of maturity and knowledge makes it easier for me to not put so much stock into my own understanding of things that clearly require way more information than i have access to.

This does not mean i don't throw plenty of my own tantrums with God, that i'm above questioning or doubting Him or that i have no questions i want answers for.  But i'm slow to use 'this makes sense to me' as the litmus test for understanding God.

[Buckeye]

15 minutes ago, consiglieri said:

The talk about the Atonement by the non-apostle GA was poignant, talking about his daughter who died of cancer a year ago.

But the upshot seems to be that Mormons have officially relegated the healing power of Jesus to something that does not occur in the here-and-now, but is relegated to the afterlife where we are assured that all will be healed of their earthly afflictions upon their resurrection from the dead.

 

So ... not that much different from the healing we offer to LGBT people.

[juliann]

20 hours ago, JeremyOrbe-Smith said:

To those so incredulous that I would take the time to watch: the Church has millions of members. It influences public policy, as well as the opinions of my friends and neighbors. I watch all sorts of things I disagree with and comment on them; it's about trying to be informed. The Church broadcasts these talks to the world; the men speaking make the audacious claim that they are given inspiration direct from God. I will respect the ideas presented the moment they are worthy of respect; presumably, God's ideas should be able to withstand more than casual scrutiny. Claiming that God has the will and power to fiddle with the laws of physics enough to save the Missionaries of the One True Church from death but did nothing, NOTHING for the people who were blown into bloody pulp is not an idea worthy of respect. Read the list of terrorist incidents in 2016 alone, and tell me where the hell the God of Love was. 

I would have preferred Elder Oaks didn't say that so soon after the tragedy no matter how true it is. I don't have a problem with the OT violence because I think it is coming from a completely different worldview than ours. Gods were measured by their victories in war, those victories require death. I do have a problem when members today use those stories as a standard of faith by contemplating if they would kill if "God told them to."

My difficulty with your thinking (I am glad you can blow off steam here) is that nothing would change without God. Hypothetically, the same things would be occurring so removing God from everything really doesn't change a thing....other than removing a means of comfort and hope for victims.

As for the "losing keys" did I miss something in that talk? I don't remember the point being about finding his keys at all....it was merely a metaphor for priesthood keys. So why is everyone talking about praying to find lost keys??

[juliann]

27 minutes ago, consiglieri said:

The talk about the Atonement by the non-apostle GA was poignant, talking about his daughter who died of cancer a year ago.

But the upshot seems to be that Mormons have officially relegated the healing power of Jesus to something that does not occur in the here-and-now, but is relegated to the afterlife where we are assured that all will be healed of their earthly afflictions upon their resurrection from the dead.

 

???? There are countless conference talks that relate healing experiences through blessings and such. As one who lost a husband through cancer, there were many, many of God's tender mercies throughout the ordeal. Too many to be coincidence.

Edited April 4, 2016 by juliann

[rodheadlee]

Well the first thing we need to do to rid the world of suffering is get rid of free wiil. Then those terrorist never could have set off those bombs.