Adam-God doctrine explained

[JulieM]

9 hours ago, halconero said:

Julie, answer me this. I feel like I'm bringing it up ad Infinitum, but I'll personalize it a bit. My family are Jewish converts to the church of German ancestry. I had relatives, the Kölles, who were murdered by Nazis. My family was spared simply because my grandpa Friedrich moved to Chile in the interwar years. His sister, two brothers, and all their family? Dead. Murdered.

Flash forward to the Seventies. My uncles James and Stuart in Chile are members of their student Marxist group. Pinochet comes to power and members of their student group start disappearing. The ones that don't join the 40,000 desaparecidos (disappeared) eventually come back with fingers missing, toenails torn out, some of the women having been violated in prison by German Shepherds trained for that purpose. A Catholic priest hid my uncles in his parish during that time till our family could leave and get refugee status in Canada. Did he lie to the Chilean army soldiers looking for my uncles? Repeatedly. Was he honest in his convictions to God? 100% and he will be blessed for it.

I unequivocally do not believe in universalizing honesty in all situations. I'm not a Kantian. Virtue Ethics is probably the paradigm I use to gague honesty.

The question I ask then is if I were a Jew asking you to hide me, or a young naive university student asking the same, If you were a Hebrew midwife asked to slaughter newborns, or Samuel told to lie to the people of Jesse's village about my reason for being there to anoint his son over Saul, or Moses told to hide your knowledge of God and His Son, or some of the many other examples, if you were any one of these, or in any one of those situations, do you feel you could act in complete honesty with regards to your convictions and/or covenants to God, even while lying to your fellow man?

This is a great, eloquent post and I agree with it, but we're not talking about something as dramatic as your examples. You are advocating that it's ok for our church leaders to be dishonest with the members or not truthful about what they believe.  That's not the same as trying to save someone from being slaughtered.  

[CMZ]

19 hours ago, Tacenda said:

That I must donate my time, talents and all that I have to the church if need be. It becomes somewhat dishonest if they don't even tell you upfront before you swear an oath in the temple. No one tells you what you are going to promise to do before hand. I didn't get any literature on what goes on in the temple. Why even a contract gives you that. If I'd known that Adam was my God beforehand, I would not be in this church. If I had known that I might have to live polygamy with my husband in the hereafter, I doubt very much I would be in this church. Tell me when I was eight, how I was supposed find out these things? Tell how I was to know these things before I was endowed and married in the temple. 

Please don't get tripped up on issues with the Adam-God doctrine. At some point all will be clear to everyone. There's a concept in the gospel about awaiting further light and knowledge. As we learn we add new knowledge to the database known as our minds but this process also means that there will be times when we have unanswered questions.

Also, there will be no celestial marriages where any partner feels forced into them. Nobody is going to force you to share your husband. Nobody is going to force your husband to be with you or with any other woman eternally. People in celestial marriages are glorified, exalted beings who experience a fulness of joy. There will never be God or some other entity telling you that you are forced for eternity into some marriage arrangement that is unpalatable to you and then you just have to try to grin and bear it for eons. It simply isn't in the cards.

[Calm]

Spiritual confusion that leads to apostasy may not be slaughter, but the impact can be seen as even worse in some ways by those who believe attitudes take root in our soul and loss of the Spirit damages us in this life as well as possibly long after our death.

One loses one's life but is spiritually attuned even if not aware of much (my belief is we have very few puzzle pieces at this point)****, one is welcomed into paradise where learning can take place in the best of situations.  One loses one's soul (or rather one's control and direction), one may become a spiritual wanderer and not in a hood way, one's heart may harden and lead to abusing others for their faith, which then leads to more darkness and all a vicious cycle that to digging the individual in deeper and tighter into spiritual darkness where he does not desire to see the light and it will take much more effort and suffering for his heart and mind and soul to be open to the truth when he is finally in a place he chooses to listen, in this life or the next.

****the purpose of this life is, imo, to prepare us to learn truths, to create a fertile ground through learning to listen to the Spirit, learning to feel God's love and guidance and become an active conduit of his love.  We need to learn for ourselves the value of the eternal choices we will make, of what kind of people we are when we are not standing in the shadow of our Parents all the time, who can provide for all of us all the love and care we need (so why would we be driven to make sacrifices out of love when there was no need for them).  Once we learn the value of acting in love not only for others, but for ourselves, then we are ready to learn to take on other godly gifts such as knowledge.  But love and faith (in the older definition of commitment, bonding) are the foundation that all that gets built on and it is better in my opinion to seek after ways that builds those parts of our soul because that will open us up to true godly knowledge much more so than learning concepts we may have no current use for, though they may be fascinating now and needed eventually.  In the end it is a matter of priorities and focusing on what needs to be learned rather than all that could be learned.

[Calm]

Another reason for withholding truths (and I think it is much more likely ommision as opposed to falsehoods if it is occurring, it is all speculation imi) from teaching acroos the pulpit is that there may be some knowledge that can only be effectively used if one acquires it for oneself or in intimate settings with the Spirit.  And this knowledge and how we encounter it may vary over time based on our culture and how well it prepares us.

[Darren10]

On 9/27/2016 at 9:50 PM, JulieM said:

Nothing unless you consider the fact that a Prophet, President Kimball, disavowed those teachings and called them false doctrine. 

After they permeated as a possibility of truth within the Church's general belief system correct?