Skip to main content

Choice and Faith vs. the veil

Pres. Monson on Choice:

"Although in our journey we will encounter forks and turnings in the road, we simply cannot afford the luxury of a detour from which we may never return."

"I plead with you to make a determination right here, right now, not to deviate from the path which will lead to our goal: eternal life with our Father in Heaven."

"Ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you." (citing Moses in Deuteronomy)


Detours, deviations, turning to the right or left. The metaphor of the path chosen, and the consequences which inevitably accompany the choice can't be stressed enough. You pick up one end of a stick, you've also got the other end.


The problem is that with the veil in place (LDS terminology for necessary forgetting an immortal spirit goes through as part of the process of its coming to a test in mortality) all paths are necessarily blind ones. So how does one know what the consequences of any given path will be so as to make an informed choice?


The answer is that none of us are smart enough to FULLY realize ALL of the results of ANY of our choices. That makes the choice of path to eternity totally a matter of faith. And ENOUGH is given to us to get ENOUGH of it right to get us set off on the right path. Because causes DO have their effects, whether or not we believe in them, or understand them. The trick is to make it a goal to find out for oneself what path is the correct one. Once THAT testimony is acquired, it's a simple matter of acting as if it's true. The claims made about the results of righteous living can be tested quite easily.


If any man will ado his bwill, he shall cknow of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.


I have faith that God is ultimately a God of fairness. I don't know how it's all going to work out, but despite all the unfairness there seems to be out there in the world, I trust that He knows how to make sure each of us individually get an exactly FAIR judgment. That trust enables me to personally put up with a TON of static, because I can act as if ALL of it is ultimately only temporary, and that NONE of it is too much for me to handle. It also provides me with an explanatory theory for evil in the world: it's part of the test, some people choose wrong, and some innocent people suffer for it, but there WILL be, at some point, complete, total and ultimate fairness for both the victims and the perpetrators.


A lot of assumptions stacked on top of each other? Not really, just one: I assume Christ is who He claimed to be as is recorded in Scripture. The rest follows logically, as all truth will. My tests of faith have confirmed these truths along the way also.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beyond the term “identity”

I didn't want to become one of those grad students who takes forever to find out what he wants to study, so I entered the Masters program at PITT with an idea what I wanted to do as a dissertation: national identity in the Ivory Coast. It sounds like a straightforward enough concept, but I encountered an article while I was taking a history course which looked at several case studies of the construction of racial, ethnic, and gender identities over a variety of geographical locations and historical periods that made me radically re-think the entire concept of identity . It's a concept that makes intuitive sense to most people, I would imagine. It means who you are, right? The layperson could also probably understand quite readily that there seem to be many different levels at which our "identity" can be determined or constrained. A black person may feel more of a racial component to identity than a white person, for example. My religious identity takes primacy over my...
Post a Comment
Read more

Abortion "Complexities" and Morality

It's just not that hard, folks.  Unless we're dealing with the context of a justified war, there's simply no moral defense for killing innocent humans if there are any other options, let alone for the convenience of the living.  And while both sides may exaggerate to make a point, only one side of the argument does insane logical backflips to hide the true and morally repugnant nature of the acts, their numbers, their consequences, and the assumptions underlying their "justifications". Ever since the leaked Alito draft hinting that Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned, pro-abortion activists have had their day.  I suppose I can understand a certain need to defend against what they perceive as a threat on their liberties and rights.  So now that they've had their time to externalize their fears and put out ad campaigns, and fake being handcuffed at protests in unlawful locations, let's stand back from the emotions and just examine the core moral argument...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gas price "gouging"

Blogs are meant to be frequently updated, so I'm going to try to do a little (shorter) something every day even if it's not a complete treatment of the item in question. Today, I'm thinking that there's so much to get to with the PBS special that a radical shift of topic might be refreshing, so here goes… I recently had a liberal friend of mine forward me a canvassing email from www.moveon.org , a liberal political activist site, asking me to electronically sign a petition supporting an anti-price gouging bill that was in discussion in Congress at the time. The legislation, much to my dismay, was passed, but the email conversation with my friend would make a great cut and paste here. I have heavily edited the original email to refine my arguments, to take out elements that should remain personal, and continue to establish my own internet persona. If I decide to post his replies, I'll edit even more carefully so less personal and more generally useful arguments are m...
4 comments
Read more