Just_A_Guy

Well played, sir.

It seems like the common explanation is that it was a “war of words”. The scriptural accounts feel like there was more to it than that; but it’s hard to say what, exactly, that may have been. But your quote above made me think. Revelation 12:11 makes it seem like “death” (or some analogue of it) was a real possibility for those who engaged against Satan and his followers. If we *do* take the “war of words” paradigm - one possible result of engaging in reasoned discussion/debate with an adversary, is that you may wind up being convinced to their point of view. Circling back to my first paragraph: how, physically, does one expel a spiritual being from a (presumably) physical location? If it can be done merely through invoking the name of the Son, then why was it such a struggle and why did it take armies of the faithful to do it? If it was merely a debating contest during a period at which hearts and minds might have been changed: how did God decide to say “enough”—to say that those who get bodies versus those who don’t will be determined by where people stand now as opposed to where they stood half an hour ago or where they will stand three hours in the future? Did God cast the rebels out, or did they choose to leave once they got to a point where they found His presence intolerable? And if the latter, might the function of Adam and his armies actually have been to engage Lucifer and the other avowed rebels one by one, and annoy/ goad them into choosing to leave? A sort of celestial “whittling and whistling brigade”?

[Tangent] I understand that one of the upper floors of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building has been converted for use by the Q15 in their weekly Thursday prayer circle meetings; a coworker of mine is friends with one of the subcontractors involved in the conversion. Not sure if there’s a similar space specifically dedicated for gatherings of the entire Q15/70; but I imagine Temple Square has several spaces that could do in a pinch (the JSMB’s Legacy Theater or the chapel in the old ballroom, for example).

One analogy may be the idea of a box that seems “full” of bowling balls, but then it is still perfectly capable of accommodating large quantities of a “finer” material such as sand.

This is something I haven’t contemplated a lot, but it just occurred to me: Would they, though? Does Satan really love suffering and despair and violence and brutality and hopelessness? Or does he just love the sorts of behaviors and mindsets (narcissism, shortsightedness, power) that inevitably yield those results, and then he dissociates between cause and effect when the chickens come home to roost? If the latter, it may well be that he has never shown his “true colors” more visibly or accurately than he is doing right now—and his acolytes are legion.

I very much agree. I’m a bit of a traditionalist; and I think that dressing well is a way of conveying respect (and while I recognize that conventions are loosening, I do think there’s a point at which someone’s clothing is pretty obviously calculated to convey an “expletive-you-all-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on” mentality). At work: On court days I stick to a two-piece suit, but I also usually walk from my office to court and in cold weather will wear a knee-length wool overcoat and fedora (fedoras/traditional hats are *very* underrated for cold weather) and black leather gloves that my secretary gave me for Christmas a couple years ago. Since I’m in a suit most weekdays, I like to do something a little extra to preserve some meaningful notion of “Sunday best”. So like @Vort’s son I typically wear a three-piece suit to church with handkerchief in my jacket and a pocket watch that my kids gave me in my waistcoat; I also wear a French-cuffed shirt with cufflinks to church (if I’ve had time to iron it). But I rarely wear an overcoat/ gloves/ hat to church in cold weather, because combined with everything else it just feels like a bit much—immodest, even. (Even though, for an old fat guy, I look pretty good in it all.)

Many revelations in the D&C represent Joseph Smith’s attempt to frame the will of God into a Voice of God, first-person declaratory statement, but they are still “after the manner of [his] language” (D&C 1:24) and Joseph always considered them subject to further refinement/editing. D&C 138 doesn’t even presume to use God’s direct voice; rather, President Joseph F. Smith is using his own perspective to try to interpret for the reader the vision that he was able to experience. His account is naturally going to be filtered at minimum by his vocabulary, and probably to some degree by his worldview. I think most Saints in any age would recognize that humankind is incapable of paying for their own sins to any degree; that salvation and redemption from sin comes only in and through the merits of Jesus Christ as part of a covenant relationship in which we consecrate ourselves to Him. At the same time, early LDS discourse (and indeed, scripture generally) is full of statements about punishment, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, the wrath of God suffered by the impenitent in the spirit world until they are purged of their sins, etc. That was just the rhetorical/linguistic water President Smith swam in; and we don’t need to be too worried if it shows up in his written accounts of the revelations he received. The scriptures are canon, but they are not a legal code in which one word always means the same single thing and in which a particular concept is always conveyed through one (and only one) specific word or phrase.

I do not know the native language(e) of Uganda, I am unfamiliar with either the legal history or the legislative process of Uganda, and on this topic—the number of people/media outlets I trust to accurately interpret and explain it all to me is precisely 0.

“Under capitalism, the wealthy grow powerful. Under socialism, the powerful grow wealthy.”

Well, yes. That’s why Rittenhouse had to be prosecuted. You’ll note that relatively few asked why any of his three separate attackers had the temerity to be out in public wielding weapons on a riot night. It was only (presumably) Republican Rittenhouse whose mere presence was a dead giveaway that the guy was obviously “looking for trouble”. The prosecutor almost gave the game away when he told the jury “everybody takes a beating sometimes, right?” What he meant, of course, was “Republicans—and merely normal people who challenge our rule—ought to take a beating sometimes, right?”

Interesting. Some of the usual suspects on Twitter are up in arms because Reese authored a letter last year defending BYU’s decision to shut down a program offering speech therapy to transgender folks. But, yeah. My earlier comment arose because a) the Q12 have hinted for a while that the GAs aren’t entirely happy with the direction that BYU has taken; but b) if there’s such a thing as a professional “swamp” or secularist/libertine “deep state” at BYU, Reese’s credentials suggest that he likely to be neck-deep in it. I would have expected the Q12 to bring in an outsider to clean house.

This will be . . . interesting . . .

I like DeSantis, but it seems like presidential nominees rarely wind up being the guy (or gal) who was getting all the buzz 15 months before the primary. I have a suspicion that DeSantis will peak too soon, and (assuming Trump implodes, which he may well not) some other dark horse will wind up with the GOP nomination. Ramaswamy seems to have some intriguing ideas, a unique background and perspective, and a lot to add to the national conversation generally; I suspect his candidacy will be a good thing overall. I don’t know that he (yet) has the administrative experience to be an effective government executive, and I tend to take a jaded view generally of young wunderkinds who meet certain “diversity” credentials, but . . . time will tell.

Yes, and this applies even if they are not healed in this life. See, e.g., 2 Cor 12:7-10.

While we are talking about pithy triads, the above reminds me of something a great-grandfather of mine commonly reminded his kids about public speaking: 1. Stand up, so you can be seen. 2. Speak up, so you can be heard. 3. Sit down, so you can be appreciated.

(Not arguing a point, just thinking aloud) This is a passage where punctuation (largely inserted by John Gilbert) influences how we read it. The comma in its current location suggests that “after the manner of the flesh” refers to “mother of the Son of God”. Without the comma, “after the manner of the flesh” could as easily refer merely to “Son of God”. In a larger sense, though: where are you going with this, exactly? Are you suggesting that if we aren’t willing to openly come out and say “yeah, God the Father had sex with Mary”, that we should quit using phrases like “Only Begotten after the Flesh”, “Firstborn”, etc? I’m generally comfortable with the way the Q15 framed “The Living Christ”—shouldn’t I be?

I, too, would love to hear @Carborendum’s approach. It’s probably worth noting that it was either Elder McConkie’s grandfather-in-law (Joseph F. Smith) or father-in-law (Joseph Fielding Smith) who was on-record as saying that God the Father sired Jesus through a . . . err . . . physical act of procreation. Elder McConkie’s perspective may have been somewhat influenced by those personalities, independently of what the scriptures explicitly say. I don’t know if the phrase “only begotten in the flesh” is scriptural, but “son of God after the manner of the flesh” certainly is (see 1 Ne 11:18). And “The Living Christ” uses that phrase and emphasizes Christ as well as describing Him as the “Firstborn” of the Father, which presumably derives from Colossians 1.

I think the scripture says that the Spirit overshadowed Mary, and I think that many LDS believe that Jesus was physically the product of DNA (as it were) from God and Mary. But exactly how that process worked (or whether it was “the Spirit” versus “the Father”* who was engaged in that process), is something far deeper than I think I’ve heard speculated upon either by my family growing up or in any ward meeting that I’ve attended. *Brigham Young ridiculed the notion of conception by the Spirit, saying that if that were the case, you wouldn’t want to confirm females after baptism lest they possibly become pregnant whenever the Holy Ghost fell upon them.

*Shrug* His internal motivations are his internal motivations, and to some extent unknowable by the rest of us. But the result of his actions seems to be primarily a) a demand that cops be more lenient with criminal suspects who are racial minorities than they would be with criminal suspects who are not racial minorities; and b) the demonization of ordinary Americans who were starting to suspect half a century after the Civil Rights Act and the end of government-permitted educational/employment discrimination, redlining, etc., that the lack of improvement in (and sometimes, deterioration of) the situation of the American black community in matters of criminal justice and economic, health, and social progress may be at least in part a result of ongoing attitudes and behaviors and life choices that have become common within the black community itself. Going back to the OP a bit: I think one of the problems of modern racial discourse is that the classical definition of “racism” (adverse treatment of an individual due to their racial/ethnic background) has been extended to people who quite naturally prefer that which is familiar to them in terms of culture/ values/ aesthetics; such that we treat a person who thinks cornrows look ridiculous on any kind of hair—or that maybe western-type linear thinking and competition are objectively conducive to innovation and scientific advancement—or that you shouldn’t have to like people getting up in your face all the time just because that’s how they, personally, were raised to handle conflict—as being Literally Hitler™ (or at least, George Wallace). We should be fair and open-minded and considerate and empathetic and thoughtful about possible new ways of thinking and doing; but we shouldn’t be afraid to sometimes (or even rather often) say “You know what? After careful consideration—I still think my way is better.” And people should understand that human nature is such that the more outlandishly you behave, express yourself, groom yourself, etc., the more likely your surrounding culture is to treat you as a bit of an outlander; and that while that may be unfortunate—it doesn’t put you on par with the SS, the Klan, or the Boogaloo Boys. It sounds like Kaepernik’s parents were sensibly telling him “look, if you make yourself look like a freak, you’re likely to be treated as something of a freak; and that’s not going to be fun for you.” Maybe they didn’t handle it well; maybe the underlying assumptions were even a little bit off—but it’s too bad that he (or his hearers) chose to punish “the people who helped him get there” by tarring them with the “R” word.

Indeed. I’ve been thinking lately about the rationale from the Declaration of Independence: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Are we seeing a “long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinc[ing] a design to reduce [us] under absolute Despotism”? What does it mean to exist under “absolute despotism”? And, notably, Jefferson isn’t saying that in such a case it’s our duty just to to raise a ruckus/engage in shooting until we see no more enemies to shoot. It’s our duty to “provide new guards for [our] future security”. In 1776 that meant declaring independence from a despot two thousand miles away and implementing geography-based self rule. What would that mean in 2023, when (assuming, for argument’s sake, that a cabal of would-be despots as envisioned by Jefferson is in ascendancy today) the would-be despots are all around us, rather than separated from us by an ocean?* Shouldn’t we be able to give at least a tentative answer to the question of “what, next?”, before we turn to violence? *(I just remembered Mel Gibson’s rhetorical question in The Patriot asking how being ruled by one thousand despots living one mile away would be better than being ruled by one despot living one thousand miles away.)

Well, and frankly, the point of a lot of us more institutionalist-leaning conservatives is “Of course Democratic riffraff are going to riot and steal and burn and maim and marshal the nation’s felons and ne’er-do-wells into the ranks of their shock troops; as they’ve been doing since the 1960s and as their Marxist ideological heroes were doing long before then. But we’re supposed to be the party of law and order.” And for those of us who see a religious/spiritual facet to our political agendas: we tend to look at divine favor and divine aid as a sine qua non for long-term success; which means we gotta fight clean and fair. It’s awfully hard to argue that God looked at January 6 (or the rhetoric and actions that led up to it, or the post hoc excuses and apologetics) with any degree of pleasure. Unless we are in a position where nothing less than all-out war becomes necessary to counter assaults on our personal liberty/safety (or that of our loved ones), we likely should be holding ourselves to a higher standard. And really, if widespread violence/civil war does break out, the Saints should probably be thinking about ways to extricate themselves from that social/ political/ geographical milieu and focusing on the spiritual and physical building up of Zion.

Can ChatGPT give you reliably accurate information about the RMS Titanic? No. No, it cannot.

@Carborendum’s answer here is magnificent, but I will just tack on the following: —Depending on the rhetorical/pedagogical needs of the moment, LDS speakers/texts may take either an “anything that isn’t perdition is a form of salvation” or “anything that isn’t exaltation is a form of damnation” approach. Both are, in some sense, correct; but the first approach is common when the speaker wants to build appreciation for Christ’s mercy whereas the second is common when the speaker is focusing on the necessity of action/ orthopraxy. —I may be an idiosyncrasy in the Church here, but I don’t think people get into the Telestial Kingdom without ever repenting. We are told that, at the last day, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ; and one presumes that that submission and confession will be genuine (else, what’s the point of it?). I am inclined to believe that the thousand years of “hell” for the telestial is not so much punishment for the sake of punishment, but a chance for the soul to experience existence without God’s light so that the soul finally stops fighting Him and understands the need to be reconciled to Him (including, His holiness and His law). Besides, the notion that people in the Telestial Kingdom are running around and continuing to do the things that got them there (lying, stealing, fornicating, exploiting, etc), throughout all eternity (or at least, trying to do so but stymied by a God who at the last has deprived them of their ability to act); seems . . . incongruous to me.

[Tangent] Moscow, as in, Russia? Are you still in contact with anyone there? I imagine it’s particularly tough to be an active Latter-day Saint there at the moment . . .

@Godless, I never would have taken you for a Justice Alito fanboy.