Message to Christian Churches

[OGHoosier]

7 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

You just made me think of Pres Nelson's General Conference address from six years ago:

 

This talk, and others like it, contribute to my continued conviction in the Latter-day Church of Jesus Christ. There are challenges to be found. This is the sort of call to struggle that resounds with me. I would also appreciate talks which address how suffering can be conceived as a refining good, or can be turned into one by the very act of viewing it that way. I feel that we have a lot to gain by using our theology to positively metabolize suffering, as opposed to regarding it as something to be endured if we must but avoided if possible. Only a faith that does the former will likely survive in the negative world. 

Fortunately, we have the precedent for that.

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

This talk, and others like it, contribute to my continued conviction in the Latter-day Church of Jesus Christ. There are challenges to be found. This is the sort of call to struggle that resounds with me. I would also appreciate talks which address how suffering can be conceived as a refining good, or can be turned into one by the very act of viewing it that way. I feel that we have a lot to gain by using our theology to positively metabolize suffering, as opposed to regarding it as something to be endured if we must but avoided if possible. Only a faith that does the former will likely survive in the negative world. 

Fortunately, we have the precedent for that.

What a world we live in where purported Catholics are appealing to Nietzsche as a source of truth. “Holy Envy” for those who throw off ‘slave morality’?

[Kenngo1969]

13 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

This talk, and others like it, contribute to my continued conviction in the Latter-day Church of Jesus Christ. There are challenges to be found. This is the sort of call to struggle that resounds with me. I would also appreciate talks which address how suffering can be conceived as a refining good, or can be turned into one by the very act of viewing it that way. I feel that we have a lot to gain by using our theology to positively metabolize suffering, as opposed to regarding it as something to be endured if we must but avoided if possible. Only a faith that does the former will likely survive in the negative world. 

Fortunately, we have the precedent for that.

President Spencer W. Kimball (bless his heart!  And no, I don't mean that phrase in the mocking way in which, sometimes, it is delivered: I mean it literally.  Bless his heart! ) once delivered a General Conference address titled, "Give Me This Mountain."  He described how Moses sent Joshua, Caleb, and others to observe the people and the goings-on in the Promised Land to determine whether it was feasible to believe that the Israelites could possess it.  While others came back with a discouraging report, Caleb's and Joshua's report was different.

President Kimball noted the discouraging report and its consequences:

Quote

 

Joshua and Caleb were men of great faith, and they joined in urging that the Israelites go immediately, to the promised land, saying:

“If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

“Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for … the Lord is with us: fear them not” (Num. 14:8–9).

But the faint-hearted Israelites, remembering the security of their Egyptian slavery and lacking faith in God, rejected Caleb and Joshua and sought even to stone them to death.

Because of their lack of faith, the children of Israel were required to spend the next forty years wandering about and eating the dust of the desert, when they might have feasted on milk and honey.

 

The scriptures recount what Caleb told Joshua after that forty-year sojourn:

Quote

 

“And now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old.

“As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me [at least in the spirit of the gospel and its call and needs]: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, … both to go out, and to come in” (Josh. 14:7–8, 10–11).

 

Then, President Kimball said:
 

Quote

 

From Caleb’s example we learn very important lessons. Just as Caleb had to struggle and remain true and faithful to gain his inheritance, so we must remember that, while the Lord has promised us a place in his kingdom, we must ever strive constantly and faithfully so as to be worthy to receive the reward.

Caleb concluded his moving declaration with a request and a challenge with which my heart finds full sympathy. The Anakims, the giants, were still inhabiting the promised land, and they had to be overcome. Said Caleb, now at 85 years, “Give me this mountain” (Josh. 14:12).

 

Near the end of his address, President Kimball, no stranger to challenges himself, said:

Quote

This is my feeling for the work at this moment. There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, “Give me this mountain,” give me these challenges.

In accord, one of my favorite verses in all of Latter-day Saint hymnody is the fifth verse of perhaps (if someone tied me to an ant hill, smothered my ears with jam, and forced me to admit it) my favorite hymn in the current Latter-day Saint collection, no. 85, "How Firm a Foundation."  Economic realities of extensive lettering on headstones aside, I would like this to be my epitaph:

Quote

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My Grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply!  The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design thy dross to consume ... and thy gold to refine!

 

[OGHoosier]

6 hours ago, The Nehor said:

What a world we live in where purported Catholics are appealing to Nietzsche as a source of truth. “Holy Envy” for those who throw off ‘slave morality’?

Yeah, strange bedfellows. 

Still, I think the point is sound. There is a distinction between the feeling of pity and the action of mercy, and actions motivated by pity are not always merciful. 

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Yeah, strange bedfellows. 

Still, I think the point is sound. There is a distinction between the feeling of pity and the action of mercy, and actions motivated by pity are not always merciful. 

I find most of the content unobjectionable until he turns to what an excess of pity looks like and here he turns from the Bible and the writings of the Church and veers directly into a modern bugbear that I can’t recall seeing in scripture. The idea that everyone will try to drag everyone down to their own level. Suddenly we get a variant of the gospel of Ayn Rand.