What always attracted me to the LDS

[Jamie123]

(I'm not an expert on Mormonism, or on theology in general, so my apologies in advance if anything in this post is grotesquely wrong.)

 

Aspects of Mormonism I don’t really care about one way or the other:

 

1. Joseph Smith

2. The Restoration/Priesthood

3. A Living Prophet

4. The Temple

 

All of these things really hang together: the Restoration of the Priesthood and the Temple came through Joseph Smith, who was first of a line of “Living Prophets”. This intrigues me somewhat, and that it happened (or supposedly happened) during what historians would call "the Modern Period" lends it a certain credibility over things that were said to have happened 2,000 years ago. But my overall response is (as some would say) “Meh!”

 

Aspects of Mormonism I do care about:

 

1. “Man is that he might have joy”.

 

God is the literal loving Father of all humanity. He loves and desires the happiness of every human being living or who has ever lived, regardless of whether they believe in or even know about Him. Not everyone will necessarily achieve salvation, just as not every child of the most loving earthly father will necessarily live a happy life; failure to achieve happiness would not be due to any plan by the father. But there was never any person born for whom God did not intend salvation.

 

Contrast this with the view that God’s Fatherhood begins only when a person comes to Christ, and that a person can only come to Christ through God’s favour. There is no libertarian “free will”; individuals are “free” to act only as a clock is “free” to strike the hour. (Some people call this “compatibilist” free will.) Humanity is therefore divided between the Elect (those who have or who are scheduled to come to Christ) and the Reprobate (those who have not and will never come to Christ, and are therefore scheduled for eternal suffering).

 

This view is sometimes called “Calvinism”, though it is not (I believe) what Calvin originally taught*. Others would call it “Hypercalvinism”. It includes the idea of “limited atonement” – that Christ only died for the Elect. (What would have been the point of His dying for anyone else?) I’ve always had a deep-seated dislike for this idea, and you’ve no idea how it bugs me that it’s enshrined in the Articles of Faith of my own denomination.

 

You do of course have the alternative view of Arminianism – though I must confess I don’t really understand this: some would see it as almost identical to what the Mormons believe - with the proviso that God desires all come to Christ, and in doing so become His sons/daughters. But that's really not quite it: if I understand rightly it still includes the concept of perfect divine foreknowledge; that God knows in advance what path any individual will take. If God is omnipotent, and if He desires happiness for all, then why did He not program each individual to take the correct path? (This was of course Satan’s plan – but with libertarian free will ruled out what other path was there for a loving God – even if it would have made the history books rather boring?) The only answer is that He did not intend to – and thus we are back to Calvinism.

 

But what if God is like a Father – a loving perfect father – to all humanity? What if He hopes, suffers, fears, weeps for and takes joy in all His children.....guides them, but allows them to make their own mistakes? Then…well then there’s hope for everyone!

 

Could it be true?

 

* My knowledge of Calvinism and Arminianism comes primarily from having read The Lion Concise Book of Christian Thought (300 pages covering St.Paul to Billy Graham) so I can hardly claim to be an expert. But from what I understand John Calvin himself was never overly keen on the idea of predestination, and he's been somewhat unfairly "blamed" for it.

Edited June 18, 2015 by Jamie123

[Guest]

Jamie, I was Catholic before I got baptized LDS.

Your entire post is resolved in my mind because of a doctrine that is uniquely LDS missing in all other Christian faiths (as far as I know). The missing doctrine is that our intelligences/spirits are eternal - neither created nor destroyed in the same manner that energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed but simply transformed.

God, therefore, did not create our consciousness/intelligences. Rather, He gathered our consciousness - intelligences that are comparatively like newborn infants in knowledge - and adopted us into His Family. He created spirit bodies for us (from existing matter) in His image - literally - that we may grow in knowledge and be gods like He is. But, just like being given a car to drive, we first must learn how to drive - our consciousness need knowledge to "drive" our bodies. This learning - knowing right from wrong, good from evil, etc. - requires that we are faced with choices that our bodies may learn to act and not simply be acted upon.

God knows each and everyone of us and where we are headed because as we are, he once was. Therefore, whether we progress in knowledge to inherit His Kingdom or progress towards evil and be far from His Kingdom, is completely our choice. He gave us the path to knowledge that our infant knowledge may have the opportunity to be Gods as He is God.

This very simple doctrine of eternal consciousness (rejection of the ex nihilo doctrine) has such vast implications when it comes to the question of "Why did God create spirits destined for hell?", "Why does God allow evil in this world?", etc. etc.

God loves us so that He gave us an opportunity to be like Him. This required that we learn what is good by knowing evil - Opposition. We knew that nothing unclean can dwell with God and therefore, having to be in the presence of uncleanliness as an opposition to cleanliness that is the requirement for exercising our free will, will require that we separate from God. So, in our pre-mortal life, we gnashed our teeth in agony because we wanted knowledge but we couldn't find a way to God if we separate from Him. As a baby learns to walk, he is destined to fall down before he can get back up and have mastery over his legs. We are, therefore, destined to fall as we gain knowledge and mastery over our bodies. And if we fall, we must pay the price of that sin. It seemed hopeless - because we don't have knowledge, we fall in the presence of opposition, to gain knowledge we must face opposition, if we fall we can't qualify to be with God as we do not qualify to pay the price of justice. Hence, Jesus Christ presented Himself to the Father to pay the price when we fall. He is one uniquely qualified to pay the price of justice as he is the only one that is not in debt. His Atonement, therefore, gave all of us hope that we can gain knowledge through the presence of opposition and have our sins - committed from the lack of knowledge - paid for by Jesus Christ himself, that we may be cleansed and enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus then took on our debts and He gave us a covenant that if we follow Him we can be saved from the fall. When this plan was presented to us, we shouted for joy.

Those who accepted Jesus Christ' covenant in our pre-mortal existence entered this mortal phase of our progression - where we are given mortal bodies in a place with opposition - that our consciousness/spirits may gain knowledge of what is good as we exercise our free will. After we made this choice to follow Christ, we were born here on Earth. Every single one of us on Earth - including Hitler, Stalin, the Unabomber, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. etc... all chose to follow Jesus Christ. There were those like Lucifer that did not follow Christ - they are not given mortal bodies as they rejected the Plan to gain knowledge and therefore, are not with us here on earth. This simple implication changes how we see our neighbors as Jesus Christ commanded us to Love our Neighbors as Ourselves - because even the least of our brothers and the most evil among us have chosen to follow Christ in our pre-mortal life.

[David13]

I thought I had learned in the Catholic church that the spirit was eternal, that is lived before this life as well as after.

My memory may be wrong, as it appears only Islam and Hindus also believe in the pre-mortal existence.

dc

[Guest]

I thought I had learned in the Catholic church that the spirit was eternal, that is lived before this life as well as after.

My memory may be wrong, as it appears only Islam and Hindus also believe in the pre-mortal existence.

dc

In Catholic teaching - life begins at conception. That is - spirit AND body are both created then. It is only eternal in the sense that it has no end.

The Holy Spirit, as a person of the Trinity - is eternal with no beginning and no end.

Edited June 19, 2015 by anatess

[Jamie123]

In Catholic teaching - life begins at conception. That is - spirit AND body are both created then. It is only eternal in the sense that it has no end.

The Holy Spirit, as a person of the Trinity - is eternal with no beginning and no end.

 

I find it a lot easier to imagine the future extending from now to eternity, than the past stretching back to eternity. This would mean that whatever point in the past we go back to there was always a "before that". The mind reels at the thought - we feel there ought to be a start - an origin. But the mind reels at that idea too; we ask what caused that origin? In other words we start demanding a "before that".

 

This reminds me of when I first read the novel The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle. (Hoyle, who was well as being a novelist was also a physics professor at Cambridge and co-originator of the "steady state" theory of universe. It was he who coined the phrase "the Big Bang" to ridicule other physicists who believed the universe had an explosive beginning; little did he know these "other physicists" would soon start using the phrase themselves!)

 

Anyway (*SPOILER ALERT*) in The Black Cloud Earth's Solar System is visited by a huge interstellar dust cloud which settles around the sun and causes the Earth to freeze. Scientists studying the cloud discover it is actually an intelligent living organism and find a means to communicate with it. The cloud-being is equally surprised to discover anything so bizarre as intelligent life on a planet, but nevertheless permits sunlight to return and humanity is saved from a frozen grave. The scientists question the cloud for some months, during which they ask it about its origins; they learn how the cloud-creatures reproduce, but when they ask how their species began the cloud disagrees that it ever had a beginning. The main character (a Cambridge professor and thinly-disguised fictionalized Hoyle) then does a metaphorical victory-dance over the Big Bang theory.

 

But of course it's now (almost) universally accepted that Hoyle was wrong; the universe did have a beginning and it was a Big Bang. Furthermore the very idea of time before the big bang is shown to be meaningless. But who knows? Maybe there was another kind of time which ended when our time began. Or maybe there is a kind of "Time" that transcends and contains what we know as "time" - that is occupied by Gods, Spirits etc.. 

 

Interestingly though, as for any future "end of time" the evidence of cosmic inflation is against it. It was once believed that the expansion was slowing down - that it would one day reverse and end in a "big crunch". But not a bit of it - the universe is not only expanding but it is expanding faster all the time. It would seem that time had a start, but will never have an end.

 

So it would seem....but who knows. I wonder whether cosmologists will still be saying the same thing 100 years from now?

 

P.S. Another really great novel by Hoyle is Inferno - in which the cloud-beings also make a brief appearance.

Edited June 19, 2015 by Jamie123

[Guest]

I find it a lot easier to imagine the future extending from now to eternity, than the past stretching back to eternity. This would mean that whatever point in the past we go back to there was always a "before that". The mind reels at the thought - we feel there ought to be a start - an origin. But the mind reels at that idea too; we ask what caused that origin? In other words we start demanding a "before that".

It is easier for me to understand alpha and omega rather than just an omega... Remember the Thomas Aquinas issue you brought up? If everything has a beginning, then what is God's beginning? And if one has a beginning, then how can it not have an end? That question to me is harder to reconcile.

Rather, I have no problem accepting the law of conservation of energy where energy is neither created nor destroyed - it just transforms. And so I can apply this observable and quantifiable scientific law to God and Consciousness and think of them as forms of energy going through eternal change (progression).

[Jamie123]

It is easier for me to understand alpha and omega rather than just an omega... Remember the Thomas Aquinas issue you brought up? If everything has a beginning, then what is God's beginning? And if one has a beginning, then how can it not have an end? That question to me is harder to reconcile.

Rather, I have no problem accepting the law of conservation of energy where energy is neither created nor destroyed - it just transforms. And so I can apply this observable and quantifiable scientific law to God and Consciousness and think of them as forms of energy going through eternal change (progression).

 

I think what bothers me most about the "no beginning" thing is that if I always existed, why do I not remember anything before my own birth?

 

Now I know that Mormonism has an answer to this; that a "veil" was pulled over my pre-mortal memories. But let's suppose we go back to before that time (or forward to the time when that "veil" is removed) what would I remember? Would I not have an infinite number of memories? Would that make me an infinite being?

 

If not, then I can only suppose that while existence may be eternal, memory is not. Perhaps memories fade with time (or whatever serves as "time" outside this earthly existence). And the upshot would be that even God does not remember the entirety of His own existence!

[Jane_Doe]

I think what bothers me most about the "no beginning" thing is that if I always existed, why do I not remember anything before my own birth?

 

 

I don't remember my own birth, but I definitely existed.

 

 

 

If not, then I can only suppose that while existence may be eternal, memory is not. Perhaps memories fade with time (or whatever serves as "time" outside this earthly existence).

 

 

In our current state, memory is housed within an imperfect neural network.  This neural network can be degraded (like Alzheimer's) or improved (like memory training).  

 

I do not know how God's memories are stored, but since His being is perfect, chances are His memory storage is likewise. 

 

[Blackmarch]

I thought I had learned in the Catholic church that the spirit was eternal, that is lived before this life as well as after.

My memory may be wrong, as it appears only Islam and Hindus also believe in the pre-mortal existence.

dc

Actually quite a few old world religions do, or at least originally did.

As for christianity pre-existance concepts pretty much got purged between 2nd and 5th centuries. If I recall right ancient judeaism also had it but lost it somewhere along the way.

[Jamie123]

Actually quite a few old world religions do, or at least originally did.

As for christianity pre-existance concepts pretty much got purged between 2nd and 5th centuries. If I recall right ancient judeaism also had it but lost it somewhere along the way.

 

There is also Platonic pre-existence.

 

I once read a book by an LDS author (I forget who - it might possibly have been Gordon B. Hinckley) which argued that William Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality was an attempt to express the truth of pre-existence which he instinctively felt: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting..."

Edited June 19, 2015 by Jamie123

[David13]

 

I don't remember my own birth, but I definitely existed.

 

 

That is somewhat my problem right there Jane Doe.  I always sort of felt that I knew things from the past, or brought something with me to this world when I came.  More of a feeling than a knowing.  I guess another aspect of it is feeling like you were born too late.  Maybe it's just that I know and appreciate things of the past.  But it always felt like more than that.

I did used to have memories of my birth, dreams about it.

dc

 

[Guest MormonGator]

: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting..."

 I always liked that quote. 

Edited June 19, 2015 by MormonGator