Hopeless Quant; seeking zen

[nuclearfuels]

Seems like the scriptures support ranking of certain things like sins (murder, sexual sin, etc.), which to me seems to suggest a specific amount of suffering required by the Savior in order to satisfy justice and provide forgiveness.

And in prayer: seems like our ancestors whose Temple work we give them the option to accept, can pray with more faith and more power after we complete their Temple work and they choose to accept it. No?

Seems like service (operationalized in the form of callings) might also be rank-able and quantifiable.

(Perhaps framing it as an objective event like the Second Coming would help: "Wickedness will not hasten it. Righteousness will not postpone it." - since service is an eternal process not an event, though - gives me another disconnect...

It is confusing to me then to realize that callings are not ranked and the fact that none of us "advance" in callings but instead, we progress in a nonlinear, individual path. 

My wife said this is the case because we all come to earth to learn the same lessons but we learn them in different ways.

As a loyal spouse, I'm not allowed to question nor accept her advice on face value....but it seems to explain the disconnect my neurons so often confront.

Her ancestors who held callings for 20+ years, I suppose, simplified things: I was called to do x. That's what I'm doing until I'm released.

If any of you beautiful people could expound on these disconnects and my wife's wisdom, I'd be much obliged. 

 

[CV75]

27 minutes ago, nuclearfuels said:

Seems like the scriptures support ranking of certain things like sins (murder, sexual sin, etc.), which to me seems to suggest a specific amount of suffering required by the Savior in order to satisfy justice and provide forgiveness.

And in prayer: seems like our ancestors whose Temple work we give them the option to accept, can pray with more faith and more power after we complete their Temple work and they choose to accept it. No?

Seems like service (operationalized in the form of callings) might also be rank-able and quantifiable.

(Perhaps framing it as an objective event like the Second Coming would help: "Wickedness will not hasten it. Righteousness will not postpone it." - since service is an eternal process not an event, though - gives me another disconnect...

It is confusing to me then to realize that callings are not ranked and the fact that none of us "advance" in callings but instead, we progress in a nonlinear, individual path. 

My wife said this is the case because we all come to earth to learn the same lessons but we learn them in different ways. 

As a loyal spouse, I'm not allowed to question nor accept her advice on face value....but it seems to explain the disconnect my neurons so often confront.

Her ancestors who held callings for 20+ years, I suppose, simplified things: I was called to do x. That's what I'm doing until I'm released.

If any of you beautiful people could expound on these disconnects and my wife's wisdom, I'd be much obliged.

I think He suffered the maximum penalty for any one of us, for the potential for any one of us to commit all manner of sin. I think he may have even suffered for sons of perdition, giving Him the power to deny the blessings of His atonement for them and thus exact just vengeance.

We all pray – and serve – with more faith and power when we choose the right, no matter the calling or the length of time we are called to serve in any capacity.

We all come to earth to complete the same aim (become like God), and we learn the lessons to the degree we need to, choose to, and in different ways (think gifts of the spirit; Abraham 3:18-19; D&C 130:19).

His atonement actually makes all things “equal” and our choices are what give us advantages (or disadvantages) which may appear unequal but are nonetheless merciful and just.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

Seems like the scriptures support ranking of certain things like sins (murder, sexual sin, etc.), which to me seems to suggest a specific amount of suffering required by the Savior in order to satisfy justice and provide forgiveness.

And in prayer: seems like our ancestors whose Temple work we give them the option to accept, can pray with more faith and more power after we complete their Temple work and they choose to accept it. No?

Seems like service (operationalized in the form of callings) might also be rank-able and quantifiable.

(Perhaps framing it as an objective event like the Second Coming would help: "Wickedness will not hasten it. Righteousness will not postpone it." - since service is an eternal process not an event, though - gives me another disconnect...

It is confusing to me then to realize that callings are not ranked and the fact that none of us "advance" in callings but instead, we progress in a nonlinear, individual path. 

My wife said this is the case because we all come to earth to learn the same lessons but we learn them in different ways.

As a loyal spouse, I'm not allowed to question nor accept her advice on face value....but it seems to explain the disconnect my neurons so often confront.

Her ancestors who held callings for 20+ years, I suppose, simplified things: I was called to do x. That's what I'm doing until I'm released.

If any of you beautiful people could expound on these disconnects and my wife's wisdom, I'd be much obliged. 

 

To get back to your brilliant wife's encyclopedic understanding put into a few words, I agree completely but it has taken me years to figure it out and never in so few words.

All we can know as individuals is what we individually know!   Like duh, right??  But many do not understand that and its implications

This insight is precisely opposite of the drive to quantify.

Quantification requires objective data which all can see.  I can repeat an experiment on the boiling point of water and get the same answer anyone across the world would get.  THAT is quantifiable!  It is objective precisely BECAUSE we all get the same answer.

So yes I can individually repeat the boiling water experiment and read the thermometer and get the same results adjusted for altitude, etc- as anyone else.

But we are sent here not to do quantitative experiments but to do things like LEARN to love and serve others.

Each of us need to learn that but it is not as easy as boiling water and getting an instant answer.   

Some of us were raised without love in our homes.  Others were raised with an abundance of love in our homes.  An analogy with the boiling water experiment might be someone raised in the Sahara desert who never found out the boiling point of water for lack of enough water to carry on such a silly experiment, the lack of a thermometer or a reason to do such an odd thing.

In short, he had personal reasons for not actually doing the experiment for himself and so did not get the results we got.  And perhaps such information was totally useless to him anyway, and irrelevant to his life

Religion is precisely about what is IMPORTANT and RELEVANT in our lives, and as your wife knows, each of us has our own conditions under which we were raised and find different things of importance

But certain non-quantifiable things are of  universal importance to everyone's life.    Having  a peaceful  and comfortable  home.  Having enough to  eat and drink.  Not being molested by the neighbors  or war or famine, hurricanes earthquakes etc

THOSE are universal needs but each of us needs to make our own "thermometers" to learn what is needed.

But then knowing  the boiling point of water really does not make anyone's life better, but how to live a peaceful life makes EVERYONES life better

So there you have it- probably a couple of hundred words to say what your wife said with

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...because we all come to earth to learn the same lessons but we learn them in different ways.

Women are like that- and  thank God my wife  is the same.

But that is sexism in our culture and we are not allowed to say that anymore. 

 

[Stargazer]

3 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

Seems like the scriptures support ranking of certain things like sins (murder, sexual sin, etc.), which to me seems to suggest a specific amount of suffering required by the Savior in order to satisfy justice and provide forgiveness.

Well, I know there are probably plenty of people who have and will disagree with me on this, but this is what I have garnered from pondering the Atonement.

There is no quantization of punishment for various sins.  Stealing is not +6 and murder +10.  Blasphemy isn't +9.  There is no scale, because disobedience in only one thing and only one instance of it is sufficient to kick us out of Father's presence and require the intervention of Christ.  If you were only accountable for five minutes before you died, and  in that five minutes you committed one teensy sin -- for example, you coveted your neighbor's stuffed toy bear -- then that was enough to do it.  And assuming that you didn't repent and rejected Christ, what is the punishment for that sin?  Why, the same one that Christ paid.  He did make it very clear that the punishment for unrepented sin is exquisite and hard to bear, so bad that even HE wanted to pack it in and give up.  And he makes it very clear that you must suffer "even as I" had to suffer.  This does not translate out to a *** for tat punishment.  How could it?  The atonement has to be Infinite.  And only the sacrifice of a sinless being could suffice to make it infinite.  It is that he had no sin to pay for, but still he paid the price of sin.  That is what gives Christ the power to forgive and make it stick. 

So, if you commit one more sin today, it does not add to Christ's burden.  If this was not so, then it would make his sacrifice additive, and not infinite.  

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And in prayer: seems like our ancestors whose Temple work we give them the option to accept, can pray with more faith and more power after we complete their Temple work and they choose to accept it. No?

No.  You do not pray with more power after your baptism.  Your faith is independent of the ordinances you receive -- even if your faith grows as a result of receiving them, the actions that faith inspires causes more faith.  

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Seems like service (operationalized in the form of callings) might also be rank-able and quantifiable.

So, apostles get more brownie points than stake presidents, who get more than bishops, and more than relief society and elders quorum presidents?

No.

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(Perhaps framing it as an objective event like the Second Coming would help: "Wickedness will not hasten it. Righteousness will not postpone it." - since service is an eternal process not an event, though - gives me another disconnect...

It is confusing to me then to realize that callings are not ranked and the fact that none of us "advance" in callings but instead, we progress in a nonlinear, individual path. 

Receiving forgiveness for sin is the outcome of faith, repentance, baptism and the holy ghost.  If you never serve in any calling but you've covered those basics, then you gain the terrestrial kingdom and Christ's atonement covers you.

As for service, to qualify for the Celestial Kingdom (which is a step above the Terrestrial, as you know) you must be"valiant in the testimony of Jesus."  That's what it says (see DC 76). The holding of certain callings is not mentioned, and there is no "cursus honorum" in the gospel.

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My wife said this is the case because we all come to earth to learn the same lessons but we learn them in different ways.

As a loyal spouse, I'm not allowed to question nor accept her advice on face value....but it seems to explain the disconnect my neurons so often confront.

Her ancestors who held callings for 20+ years, I suppose, simplified things: I was called to do x. That's what I'm doing until I'm released.

If any of you beautiful people could expound on these disconnects and my wife's wisdom, I'd be much obliged. 

My opinion is this: all human beings who are born upon this earth are candidates for exaltation.  There is not one human born who was not pre-qualified in eligibility in the pre-existence.  Many of us will disqualify ourselves in mortality, or in the Spirit World, but all of us had the potential.  Our mortality is the final proving ground -- that is why, as it is written in Job, that we shouted for joy at the news.  We were joyous because we had been judged as worthy to take the test.

Some say that we were sent here to learn, and it is written that we will have an advantage in the next stage if we learn as much as we can here.  But, in my humble opinion, one who is baptized and the next day dies has just as much potential for exaltation as someone baptized at age 8 and dies at age 100.  It may be that the one living longer gains more knowledge and experience, and the one living shorter has more work to do to get to the same point, but my point is: we can do it.  The only thing remaining is: do it.

Edited May 8, 2018 by Stargazer

[Eek!]

9 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

My wife said... we all come to earth to learn the same lessons but we learn them in different ways.

This is brilliant.  She gets it. 

By the time humanity has run its course, I think we will collectively have learned all the lessons in pretty much all the possible ways.

(See my avatar picture over there on the left?  That's me about to learn a lesson the hard way.)

Edited May 9, 2018 by Eek!

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

Seems like the scriptures support ranking of certain things like sins (murder, sexual sin, etc.), which to me seems to suggest a specific amount of suffering required by the Savior in order to satisfy justice and provide forgiveness.

And in prayer: seems like our ancestors whose Temple work we give them the option to accept, can pray with more faith and more power after we complete their Temple work and they choose to accept it. No?

Seems like service (operationalized in the form of callings) might also be rank-able and quantifiable.

(Perhaps framing it as an objective event like the Second Coming would help: "Wickedness will not hasten it. Righteousness will not postpone it." - since service is an eternal process not an event, though - gives me another disconnect...

It is confusing to me then to realize that callings are not ranked and the fact that none of us "advance" in callings but instead, we progress in a nonlinear, individual path. 

My wife said this is the case because we all come to earth to learn the same lessons but we learn them in different ways.

As a loyal spouse, I'm not allowed to question nor accept her advice on face value....but it seems to explain the disconnect my neurons so often confront.

Her ancestors who held callings for 20+ years, I suppose, simplified things: I was called to do x. That's what I'm doing until I'm released.

If any of you beautiful people could expound on these disconnects and my wife's wisdom, I'd be much obliged. 

 

Other then murder, adultery, and whatever Corianton was up to (possibly adultery) there isn't a ranking system of sin. I am not sure if that changes how much the Savior suffers.

All we know is that temple work allows progression. I have no idea if temple work influences the strength of their prayers.

Service is probably not rankable and quantifiable.

The assumption that Apostles or Stake Presidents or whatever get greater blessings for serving is also explicitly denied by our leaders.

Your whole conclusion seems based on a faulty premise.

[Stargazer]

9 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Other then murder, adultery, and whatever Corianton was up to (possibly adultery) there isn't a ranking system of sin. I am not sure if that changes how much the Savior suffers.

All we know is that temple work allows progression. I have no idea if temple work influences the strength of their prayers.

Service is probably not rankable and quantifiable.

The assumption that Apostles or Stake Presidents or whatever get greater blessings for serving is also explicitly denied by our leaders.

Your whole conclusion seems based on a faulty premise.

My take on the "ranking" of sins is this: all sins are equally bad, and in committing one you have shot your wad and no matter how small or how big you need Christ's atonement for any or all of them.

The difference between them is this: some sins are easier to repent of than others, because the consequences of some are greater than others.  Repenting of murder is vastly harder than repenting of shoplifting -- even though both of them takes you just as far out of Father's presence.