Fifthziff

That was my point about despair. Despair is the loss of hope. An LGBTQ person should maintain hope of an eternal family and it will be worked out, most likely in the next life. The 13th article of faith states that we should maintain that hope for ALL things. The test isn't just abstaining from certain acts, it is also hoping for something that seems impossible and opposite of what the body desires while abstaining. The hope should be directed towards an eternal family as that described by the proclamation to the world. An LGBTQ person can find hope in that, if not, it is despair. Despair is the tool of Satan. He wants people to feel like things are impossible so why try?

We show the same compassion as we would with anyone who has become overwhelmed by the passions of the body. There was only one who overcame the passions of the body, that was Christ. All of us fall short of not letting the passions of the body drive our lives to some degree. The topic is a little easier to discuss when it comes to things like fame, love of money, pornography or alcohol or drug addiction but these are all passions of the body still the same, that can be contradictory to the spirit's influence. The problem is when the person receiving the "love and compassion" is in a state of despair over the idea that we should try to resist or bridle the passions of the body. This is the test of this life, to show what we desire the most, carnal things or spiritual things. The test is not easy and nobody passes on their own effort alone, except Christ. There is a point where one can be totally closed off from the influences of the spirit, that is a state of despair, a lack of hope. To be the recipient of love and compassion requires a small amount of hope or faith. You would have to be more specific about what the stumbling block is for those members. I don't see it as a major stumbling block for any faithful members I know.

Hasn't it already happened in the Garden of Eden? Or how about when Lazarus was dead for 4 days and stunk, meaning his brain was mush (not like he was on life support or in a coma), did Christ not create life in Lazarus that wasn't there?

These just all refer to the fact that by becoming man He is both carnal and spiritual, a dual being as the rest of us are in this life. To start his ministry he had to show that he had mastery over the carnal temptations and like Paul, he couldn't really get rid of the carnal temptations until it was overcome by death, the "thorn in the flesh" continues in all of us until we get through this probationary period of having carnal traits. Like you posted there ... "pain of body" we can have them and yet give them no heed.

All have the light of Christ. The sure way to find God is to forsake the carnal nature and listen to the spirit within and learn to distinguish between carnally minded thoughts vs spiritually minded thoughts. Over time, as one listens to the carnal influence more, they become deaf and blinded to spiritual influences to the point of hearing but not hearing, seeing but not seeing.

I like Elder Renlund's talk about choice, consequence and the learning process when he said; " Our Heavenly Father’s goal in parenting is not to have His children do what is right; it is to have His children choose to do what is right and ultimately become like Him. If He simply wanted us to be obedient, He would use immediate rewards and punishments to influence our behaviors. But God is not interested in His children just becoming trained and obedient “pets” who will not chew on His slippers in the celestial living room.3 No, God wants His children to grow up spiritually and join Him in the family business." I think there are many examples of things in our lives that require repentance but will have no immediate negative or positive consequences necessarily. If I repent, for example, of not reading my scriptures every day, there won't be some painful effect that I would necessarily link up with that omission to "help us remember that we do not want to repeat the mistake."

"Likeness" is sooooo vague. We are all created in the likeness of God too but some are 4 feet tall and some are 7 feet tall, some are 400 pounds and some are 75 pounds. There is a lot of room in between.

Im pretty sure its safe to say that what Christ could do as a premortal being is not necessarily what we could do.

What gender is to those who end up in the Terrestrial and Telestial Kingdoms may easily be a subset of what gender means to an individual in the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom. Even when one takes out the sexual reproduction part of gender means there could be plenty of distinguishing factors between the two genders. The pre-mortal gender designation may not have included any sexual or reproductive or attraction aspect at all, we don't know.

Sometimes "Satan" is just a reference to all things carnal or temporal.

Why are you assuming that "emotional cognitive pains" are non-physical? The human brain is physical. When someone underwent a frontal lobotomy (in the past since that isn't done anymore) and their personality changed, is that because the physical aspect of their being was disrupted or somehow the surgery cut into their spirit being? I am pretty sure Elder Holland explained in a conference talk that emotional pains and challenges can be just as physical as any other disease. Elder Holland, "However bewildering this all may be, these afflictions are some of the realities of mortal life, and there should be no more shame in acknowledging them than in acknowledging a battle with high blood pressure or the sudden appearance of a malignant tumor." He says in that statement that these cognitive related afflictions are mortal things.

Christianity is based in a vicarious act, an act that was done for us with which we receive the full reward without having to reproduce the act ourselves. Yes, there is something that has to be done but we can be rewarded with something we did not do directly. The reward itself is that of having the ability to share glory. That means we get to share in the glory of something that we did not directly do, have all that God has. This is why loving our neighbor as self is a prerequisite to receiving such a shared glory. Is this not the story of the prodigal son? Even for the son that stayed. The desire we must have to receive a fullness of glory is that of wanting another's success and the desire to be one with the Lord and God.

Yes that was included in my brief statement of "the second estate test is done and completed"

If you take it back to what it would have been if it had been perfect, there was only one place where that was found, in the garden of Eden. So, then what you are saying is everyone will go back to the one copy of Adam and the one copy of Eve. Because after the Fall is when corruption entered the body and each generation went further away from the original creation with the exception of what happened during the flood. There was a reboot, so to speak, of the genetic drift. Like trying to photocopy something over and over on an old copier, the original is the only perfect copy. And then you have to wonder about the fact that Adam and Eve could not reproduce until they had corrupted bodies.

A degree of glory is obtained by passing the first estate test which all of us have. We expressed the desire then. In this life we have the choice to change that original desire to something more carnal and temporal during this life. After everything is done, the second estate test is done and completed and all sins are accounted for, we enter into a degree of glory based in how well we remembered or regained our original desire despite the temporary distractions (temptations) of this life. For example, the murderer who enters the Telestial Kingdom will not have the desire to murder once they enter into that degree of glory. I guess it depends on how strong one thinks the atonement really is, does it really completely pay for all sins, 100%, or not? Spirit prison is not an eternal state of being to my understanding.

Watching "A Dog's Way Home" movie recently, it is interesting how one human trait is to try to give other animals and species human characteristics that are not physiologically possible. At one point of the movie, I almost burst out laughing as the dog, narrating the story wonders if the mountain lion will remember her. In other words, the super-dog with human abilities was now trying to give them to another animal. .... Anyways, animals are not capable of having the same characteristics that relate to our eternal identity that humans have.

What Abraham 3:2-3 is referring to is unknown. We say the word "star" but we don't know what that is because we are told that the realm we are currently in is made of a different matter than those things that are spiritual. Which means they are of a, likely, different physics and chemistry and mechanics than what we are familiar with here.

Being fully "aware" requires a perfected body (brain). It may be that the body provides a mechanism to have charity and empathy that isn't part of our spirit being, we don't know exactly. But we do know that a Celestial level of awareness requires a celestial body, not just a state of mind. Christ needed a body to be able to be aware of everyone's sins, for example. Arriving at that location of being worthy of a Celestial body is done by taking a certain path, with gates along the way, covenants.

I think progression should be looked at as related to the level of eternal connection one has with other intelligences and not as an individual being's personal progression. Of course, one's personal progression relates to how connected one is to those around them. This is why it is important to love our neighbor as self. If one were to do that perfectly then there would not be a division between what considers a separate intelligence. ... we don't call the ocean a bazillion drops of water even though we could separate out one drop from the ocean. A perfect connection, i.e. - One God, is that level of nothing hidden from anyone else as one cannot hide even a thought from God which is what is found in the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom.

Organization is also useful for systems to work together and benefit each other. Like batteries lined up in an organized pattern does something different than a bag of batteries in a random pattern.

It happens to all of us almost all the time. The human brain makes up information all the time. That is the test we face, to discern promptings from the carnal mind vs promptings obtained from the still small voice. There are clues as to which is which but that discernment is the test we face in this life to see which one we will follow and which one we listen to. But even if one is an "expert" at that discernment, they still receive the human brain influences at the same time, that doesn't go away until death. Paul could not get rid of his "thorn in the flesh", or else he would be exalted above measure. There is no test unless we have false choices placed before us to give free agency. Overall, we rarely hear the spiritual promptings. This is, in part, why Moses said, he never thought man was nothing. Most of man's actions and reactions to the world around, including promptings and thought, is carnal in nature. We all have that.

It does so much as the carnal nature taken on by birth doesn't become part of our soul or spiritual character. It is possible to be in the world but not of the world. The "thorn in the flesh" dies when the flesh dies and the atonement allows that to be overcome and no longer a thorn in the flesh or carnal nature. The fallen aspects of our dual natured character resulting from the Fall of Adam are directly overcome by the Atonement upon our own resurrection. But if one loves their carnal nature to the point of taking it in as part of their spiritual character, being OF the world, then that would have to be overcome through faith and repentance. Those, for example, younger than 8 are not capable of taking in the carnal nature as self, so those flaws by way of being born into a carnal body are taken away by the atonement.

I think understanding the nature of God first would help you understand the answers to many of these questions. God finds His happiness and glory in the success of others, He obtains His glory when His children achieve immortality and Eternal Life. That glory is centered in love, just like when I am happy when my own child gets an A in class as opposed to some other child half-way around the world gets an A in class. The glory of God, in other words is based in vicarious experience. Jesus Christ demonstrated that power in the Garden of Gethsemane when He could experience all the suffering of the world before and after that time. Shared experience is God's glory. If one understands it that way then one can appreciate the need and desire to share everyone's experience. This is why the greatest commandment is to love God but also to love our neighbor as our self. If we learn to do that, then we can qualify ourselves for Eternal happiness as we would enjoy all the successes before us and after us and around us as if it was our very own, thus becoming one with eternity. If we could take on vicarious experience as Christ did and showed is possible, then one would not feel that anything that happened before their time was something separate from their self, they would call it one thing, as there is only one God. The only way to have many different types of something is when it is not whole or complete but 100% of something is unchanging and looks exactly like another 100% and so there is only one of it.

Thanks, I guess my point is that if there is perfect knowledge then there is no test of faith and so it is supposed to be this way while in this life. We should strive and desire for perfect knowledge and understanding but it is not a necessary part of this life, to have absolutes. Our ability to discern is very, very limited right now. I suppose it all depends on how far one considers we have fallen from our previous condition. For some reason, some think we haven't fallen very far from our previous level of knowledge and understanding. I believe we fell very far from that level, a level of understanding that occurs after living who-knows-how-long, in the presence of God until we were mature spirits. So the test we face is not in the obtaining of the knowledge but how we go about obtaining it. Do we turn to carnal methods or spiritual methods? Which one is our master? When the veil is lifted after this life, I think we will all clearly see how far down we are in our current level of knowledge and all that we had learned will come flooding back into our minds.

Our "thought process" is made through a brain that has been affected by the Fall of Adam, a corrupted brain. All you have done is to explain the situation we are in which is the need to discern truth through spiritual mindedness and not through the human brain. We cannot discern spiritual truth through carnal means or carnally mindedness. This is why this life is a test of faith. Our test of logic and reasoning was the first estate test. We all passed that test. There is no need to repeat that test again here. Here, we have a different test, one based in faith and our ability to focus on spiritual influences over carnal ones. Elder Bednar; "As sons and daughters of God, we have inherited divine capacities from Him. But we presently live in a fallen world. The very elements out of which our bodies were created are by nature fallen and ever subject to the pull of sin, corruption, and death. Consequently, the Fall of Adam and its spiritual and temporal consequences affect us most directly through our physical bodies. And yet we are dual beings, for our spirit that is the eternal part of us is tabernacled in a physical body that is subject to the Fall. As Jesus emphasized to the Apostle Peter, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). The precise nature of the test of mortality, then, can be summarized in the following question: Will I respond to the inclinations of the natural man, or will I yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit and put off the natural man and become a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord (see Mosiah 3:19)? That is the test. Every appetite, desire, propensity, and impulse of the natural man may be overcome by and through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We are here on the earth to develop godlike qualities and to bridle all of the passions of the flesh."