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Is god a mormon?


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6 minutes ago, 2BizE said:

God only exists in the minds of those who believe, and every person has a different concept of god.  So, for some he could be mormon, for others Sikh, for others Muslim, for others catholic, etc.

"All the god's, all the heavens, all the hell's are within you" is one of my favorite sayings. Basically, it's saying you're in charge of your own happiness, don't blame anyone else if your miserable, atleast that's what it means to me.

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4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Kingdom of God on Earth, and Russell Nelson is the President of the High Priesthood of that Kingdom as well as the President of that Church.  That Church is the Body of Christ.

There is a separate Kingdom of God in Heaven, which is a much grander kingdom.  Speculation on the mysteries is not advisable.

The Kingdom is a political organization.  The Church doesn't qualify.

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47 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

The Kingdom is a political organization.  The Church doesn't qualify.

The question is one of authority and keys:  Matt 16:19, "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

The LDS President holds those keys (and can distribute their use as needed throughout the Church), although the Pope likewise claims them.

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10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Depends on which god one has in mind.  The transcendent Judeo-Christian God, or the immanent God who weeps (Moses 7:28-29), and of whom it is said:  "This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39).  The true God not only yearns for followers, but it is His raison d'être.  He will literally give His life for the faithful, and has done so.

Nah, it is the same either way.

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On 5/28/2021 at 3:45 PM, Meadowchik said:

That's pretty much my attitude about religions and about any individuals claiming to speak for God to the world. What is essential to me is the values which would make God worthy of worship. Sticking to those is what matters to me. If there is a good God, I think that,--at least for me--that adherence to good values is the best course to approach God. I was a child born in the covenant and raised in the church. So now I am an atheist who still believes in the core values that made God worthy of my personal worship when I decided He was at about five years old.

So I think that religion matters much less than righteousness. If there is a God, I hope God is righteous.

What would happen, even in the face of doubt, if you decided to act AS IF there IS such a righteous Being, and do everything you could do to emulate those values such a Being would have?

I did that.

And then postulate that to actually BE such a Being, he or she would have to be able to communicate with his/her children, to coach them along the path to help them also be righteous?  

But He/She could not be too obvious in training the children, or it would not be meritorious for them to follow, they would be just little robots doing what they were told, while the ideal would be for them to be good on their own motivation.

So how would you communicate with them?

Perhaps just a still small voice, or a warm feeling would do the trick.

I tried it

And what happened changed my life.

Don't follow people, follow your heart and the messages from that Being.

 

Edited by mfbukowski
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1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

What would happen, even in the face of doubt, if you decided to act AS IF there IS such a righteous Being, and do everything you could do to emulate those values such a Being would have?I did that. follow your heart and the messages from that Being.

I hold those values regardless, without belief in such a Being.

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

And then postulate that to actually BE such a Being, he or she would have to be able to communicate with his/her children, to coach them along the path to help them also be righteous?  

But He/She could not be too obvious in training the children, or it would not be meritorious for them to follow, they would be just little robots doing what they were told, while the ideal would be for them to be good on their own motivation.

So how would you communicate with them?

Perhaps just a still small voice, or a warm feeling would do the trick.

I tried it.

I tried that too.

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

And what happened changed my life.

Don't follow people, follow your heart and the messages from that Being.

Trying that, I learned that it is easier to get confused. While people do find comfort and collective power when they anthropomorphize those values, I think the cost is too great. The cost can be those values, in full or in part.

Better to focus on those values directly.

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12 hours ago, 2BizE said:

God only exists in the minds of those who believe, and every person has a different concept of god.  So, for some he could be mormon, for others Sikh, for others Muslim, for others catholic, etc.

 

12 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

"All the god's, all the heavens, all the hell's are within you" is one of my favorite sayings. Basically, it's saying you're in charge of your own happiness, don't blame anyone else if your miserable, atleast that's what it means to me.

Sounds to me like a cop out.  More like the law of Yaha !!  8)

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2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

When a culture is imbued with such untethered values, it may carry through for a generation or two, and then will almost certainly become attenuated -- as it has for the secular Jewish community, for example.  It was Jewish religion and strict observance which carried the culture of high ethical and moral norms for millennia.  It was key to Jewish survival.  That powerful forward momentum has been carrying it as though it were a perpetual motion machine.  But that is an illusion.  Secularism has a very different end point, and good intentions are not enough to insure survival.  Humans need a vehicle, as bothersome as that seems.

Bertrand Russell recognized full well that there is no rational way to justify one set of values over another.  That has always been the problem with value judgments:  Anything can be justified.  We may as well look to game theory, or to sociobiology (a la E. O. Wilson) to resolve how best to live.  America's best minds tried that in the early 20th century and came up with eugenics, and Adolf Hitler ran with it.

How you think it has been does not mean how it must be. I'm not at all surprised that such ambitions failed in the past, when their societies were still clinging to obvious moral failings, like racism and/or sexism, for example.

Religion does not solve the problem of tethering to real values. It tethers people to each other, but not necessarily to values. And so once the tether to values is broken, the people tethered together stray all the more efficiently.

Edited by Meadowchik
missing word
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1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 

Sounds to me like a cop out.  More like the law of Yaha !!  8)

Well, you're looking at it wrong Robert. When you're baptized, dont you invite the holy ghost to dwell inside you? If we keep the commandments we can rely on his influence to guide us. Also, there's the Spirit of God, communicating and influencing us on a daily basis. "The God's are within you"

    Everyone dreams and Wonders what heaven will be like. We spend hundreds if not thousands of hours throughout our lifetime imagining and creating mental pictures of what eternity will look like. "The heavens are within you."

    Depending on the choices we make, mentally, hell can be as small as a pebble or as large as a mountain while living here on Earth. It depends on how we view the world around us and how we react to it. Some people choose to put themselves in a constant state of "mental hell" always concentrating on the negative, allowing the positive to just pass them by on a daily basis. "Hell is within you". 

 

 

   

    

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4 minutes ago, AtlanticMike said:

Well, you're looking at it wrong Robert. When you're baptized, dont you invite the holy ghost to dwell inside you? If we keep the commandments we can rely on his influence to guide us. Also, there's the Spirit of God, communicating and influencing us on a daily basis. "The God's are within you"

    Everyone dreams and Wonders what heaven will be like. We spend hundreds if not thousands of hours throughout our lifetime imagining and creating mental pictures of what eternity will look like. "The heavens are within you."

    Depending on the choices we make, mentally, hell can be as small as a pebble or as large as a mountain while living here on Earth. It depends on how we view the world around us and how we react to it. Some people choose to put themselves in a constant state of "mental hell" always concentrating on the negative, allowing the positive to just pass them by on a daily basis. "Hell is within you". ..............................

Anarchic relativism (wild, self-serving speculation) is attractive to some, and even seems to have a sort of "objective reality."  Hope springs eternal, and humans love to create gods in their own image.  However, assertion is not fact.

The danger of a narrow focus and monomania is that it ignores everything else.  The Scriptures don't do that, and prophets such as St Paul always take into account the broadest possible array of issues.  Scripture must be taken in context and in toto to make any sense -- the opposite of what you are doing here.

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10 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Anarchic relativism (wild, self-serving speculation) is attractive to some, and even seems to have a sort of "objective reality."  Hope springs eternal, and humans love to create gods in their own image.  However, assertion is not fact.

The danger of a narrow focus and monomania is that it ignores everything else.  The Scriptures don't do that, and prophets such as St Paul always take into account the broadest possible array of issues.  Scripture must be taken in context and in toto to make any sense -- the opposite of what you are doing here.

Everything that is important in life happens within you. 

18 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Scripture must be taken in context and in toto to make any sense -- the opposite of what you are doing here.

No one can fully understand the scriptures or the truth Robert, that's why Jesus spoke in parables isn't it? The truth of God is to be understood spiritually. If you think about it, isn't our own individual reality a parable?

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16 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

"All the god's, all the heavens, all the hell's are within you" is one of my favorite sayings. Basically, it's saying you're in charge of your own happiness, don't blame anyone else if your miserable, atleast that's what it means to me.

I don’t blame anyone else. It just is what it is.

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16 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

Doesn't our doctrine teach that the priesthood is what we are baptized under? And I mean all of God's children, not just us here on this planet. I've always looked at as the "church" meaning the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is just the vehicle God uses to teach us universal truths that are followed throughout his kingdom and kingdoms of other eternal God's. Meaning, in a galaxy far far away could be a totally different organization named something besides our Church's name. The commonality being the priesthood. 

  So if true, that means when we get to heaven and meet our siblings from other planets we'll be asking them what the name of the church was on their planet. Maybe  something like, " The Church of Tyrone of Latter Day Saints" from planet Zerth. Could happen, never know 😁

Yes, I think the priesthood is not the Church, no matter what either may be called, when or where. As you point out, our Church is the earthly vessel that carries the priesthood ("the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth' -- D&C 1: 30).

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5 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I hold those values regardless, without belief in such a Being.

I tried that too.

Trying that, I learned that it is easier to get confused. While people do find comfort and collective power when they anthropomorphize those values, I think the cost is too great. The cost can be those values, in full or in part.

Better to focus on those values directly.

How does one focus on a value when we do not internalize it, and how is the value not anthropomorphized once we internalize and practice it?

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My father had the gift to ruin his children in deep and lasting ways, skewing their judgment to the point where they became incapable of feeling reward from accomplishment.

17 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

Basically, it's saying you're in charge of your own happiness, don't blame anyone else if your miserable,

Tossing this principle at his kids would have been pretty sweet for him.

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56 minutes ago, CV75 said:

How does one focus on a value when we do not internalize it, 

Who says one focuses on a value without internalising it? And what do you mean by internalising a value?

58 minutes ago, CV75 said:

and how is the value not anthropomorphized once we internalize and practice it?

You tell me...how IS a value anthropomorphised once we internalise and practice it?

 

It seems like you're making some jumps from my statements to your own ideas. Probably best to clarify your ideas and/or how they relate to my statements before asking me to defend your ideas! ;)

 

In any case, my general point from above is that I find it better to not frame values as a Person, ie supernatural being. And even if I adopt a value and practice it and it seems like second nature to me, I think I would be reluctant to consider myself an embodiment of the value. That would seem a hazardous leap. I would hope to be open to the idea that I need to change more in order to better adopt the value.

 

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If God is not and will not be a “Mormon” then when Jesus reigns it is likely he won’t be then, either.  
I wonder what church will look like?  What traditions will be done away with and what we will be left with? What buildings we will meet in? 
And in response to the question, how can I not feel like I know God if I have read all there is to read about Him in the scriptures, I will reply that I have been married to one man for 30 years.  I have raised a family with him, have loved him, have hated him, have nursed him, have given all I have to him- and yet I can say every year that goes by I learn so much more about him.  At this point I realize I have much to learn still about him. 
The older I get the more I understand I’m limited in my human understanding and I need to remain pliable, especially regarding God.  I don’t relate to the assumption that I’m as simple minded as a follower of modern ideas of making God whatever we want him to be. 

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3 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

If God is not and will not be a “Mormon” then when Jesus reigns it is likely he won’t be then, either

Exactly. When Jesus returns he'll bring the gospel in its perfect form, the eternal gospel. Mormonism is a mix of the eternal gospel and ideas and teachings of the fallen man. I hope the Gospel is different when he returns.

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On 5/28/2021 at 7:19 PM, Scott Lloyd said:

The “victory for Satan” is cutting off the name of Christ from the name of His Church.

So was the I am a Mormon campaign a victory for Satan or not?  What is the difference is someone says "I am a Mormon" or "I am a Latter-day Saint?"   You can push away all you want but it was only an issue when what you label as prophetic wisdom more seems like an apostle who got to the head of the table and finally being able to do something about a pet peeve he clearly had for a long time.  Being called Mormon seemed quite fine with his two predecessors.  Why didn't they have this wonderous prophetic insight to make this nominal change?

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If God is a mormon, then which version is He?  The 1830 version?  The 1890 version?  The 1920 version?  The 1950 version?  The 2015 version?  The 2021 version?

The church changes often, in how we view things and how we do things.  I don't see how the God of the universe can be a member of a church run by people who 'see through a glass darkly', even with His help.   

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3 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Who says one focuses on a value without internalising it? And what do you mean by internalising a value?

You tell me...how IS a value anthropomorphised once we internalise and practice it?

 

It seems like you're making some jumps from my statements to your own ideas. Probably best to clarify your ideas and/or how they relate to my statements before asking me to defend your ideas! ;)

 

In any case, my general point from above is that I find it better to not frame values as a Person, ie supernatural being. And even if I adopt a value and practice it and it seems like second nature to me, I think I would be reluctant to consider myself an embodiment of the value. That would seem a hazardous leap. I would hope to be open to the idea that I need to change more in order to better adopt the value.

 

Internalizing values, to me, means a person lives by them. When they are more formally systematized, integrated and prioritized to the point of identity, they become personified, or anthropomorphized as oneself. So, when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life… the light…” etc., it means that He says that these things are personified -- anthropomorphized -- in or as Him.

Now it can also be said that these things originally came from His Father’s perfect human mind and life in the first place (or at least the best of what someone’s mind and life came up with for posterity to retain and emulate), in which case our values are anthropomorphic in that they are not real, or really human values, until they are practiced.

I think the reluctance you describe is a function of personal preference. For example, the hazardous leap may not be someone identifying as some level of expression of the value or system of values (as Abraham did when he identified as a rightful heir of righteousness, happiness, peace and rest – Abraham 1:2), but in their concluding that it operates without practice or in a vacuum apart from other values, or that they cannot become more perfect in understanding and practicing it (as Abraham did in the same verse).

This is  how and why "I am a child of God" is a personified value/identity.

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