it's all good

I was sitting in Sunday School and our teacher offered this profound insight: whether you're suffering through life (experiencing trials) or enjoying it (receiving blessings), in the end it's all good. I'd never really looked at it like that before, sure challenges are useful, they help us to grow, but stating that 2 diametrically opposed conditions lead to equivalent outcomes. Wow. And I agree with him. Double wow.

It's all there in the scriptures, a few of my favourites...

And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.
(Doctrine and Covenants 78:19)

we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things
(Pearl of Great Price, Articles of Faith 1:13)

Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.
(Doctrine and Covenants Section 123:17)

One day a long time ago I read about a quantum theory where someone postulated that every time the universe or one of its constituents makes a decision a new universe pops into existence (actually I may have been watching star trek). So there's a multiversal exponentially expanding animal out there tracking all of the different possibilities that could have happened ever. One of the problems with this theory aside from universes being created out of nowhere, was that different causes could lead to the same results. My memory's a little hazy but this affect may have been called "True Chance."(it was probably something else, but this will have to do for now).

The question is, with respect to blessings and cursings (or just plain hurtings), do we have a True Chance scenario operating here? Maybe, it could also be one of the many marvelous paradoxes which we face in life, even if it is True Chance with a slight rejig, purely to satisfy my own philosophical inclinations, this can be made workable in the real world. If we are to be grateful in all things, good and bad than a redefinition of the word blessing may be in order, the 'blessing' that I carry around in my personal lexicon states: instances where God dispenses good things in my direction and I'm ready and wise enough to catch them. It may need to expand to encapsulate anything that happens depending upon your response. It's possible that this generalisation has become so vague now as to encompass everything, but I don't think that diminishes it potency, mainly because we humans are strange creatures and operate differently from almost everything else in the universe. Intention is a powerful thing and I'm afraid I'll have to invoke the great Stephen R. Covey, peace be upon him: for normal matter there's action and reaction, for us there is a stimulus, a space, then a response. What we choose to do with that space is entirely up to us, the next time I stub my toe or someone pulls out in front of me in traffic (yep most of my 'trials" are pretty prosaic), I'll remember that we're here to learn from our experience and choose well. Instead of cursing I may be inclined to thank God for the blessing of this slight irritation which helped me to understand existence a little more and point me in his direction. It ain't much, but it's a start.

coming soon: an attitude of gratitude.

born again leanings?

Being saved is one percent perspiration (on our part) and ninety nine percent grace. And this is almost certainly understating the Saviour's role in our personal salvation. Obedience is an important part of the process but it's not the active ingredient in redemption.

Back in the good old days at the Hamilton MTC a guest speaker delivered what was for us, the missionaries, a somewhat polarising talk. He taught mostly from the Book of Mormon, things like whenever we do any good we are borrowing from Jesus or God, who is the source of all good, whose merits are mighty to save. Many of the boys preferred a works based interpretation of salvation. I can see where they're coming from.

However, I feel and the spirit seems to accord (name that apostle) that there is no actual eternal significance to dipping ourselves in water except that God deems it so. Christening could have been a valid method, but God chose another way. Obedience, keeping the commandments aren't what gets us into heaven, not exactly. Obedience is the language we use to communicate to Jesus that we accept his sacrifice, that we accept him as our Saviour. He did the real work. Our work is a nice gesture but our pitiful offerings pale in consequence when juxtaposed with the atonement. As I have said before we can qualify for exaltation, by adhering to the generous conditions that God has laid out, but that doesn't mean we earned it. "Salvation is free", because he paid the price, all we have to do is show up and collect.

My Favourite Church Song Ever

Why is God a fractal? The Aesthetic of God, Agency and a mishmash of many other things 2

Where was I? That's right, God's form and evolution.

We hold ourselves to be higher than monkeys (and by monkeys I mean the great apes, their relatives and ancestors). To address anyone ready to condemn us of being speciests, there are reasons for this bias, we allegedly have a few things that monkeys don't (a 1-2% difference in DNA!? for starters), large frontal lobes, language, culture, 5th order intentionality, maybe even morality (all these are somewhat debatable I suppose except for our brain size). On a purely superficial level we look and on occasion behave very differently from these creatures. As theists or humanists we seem to have inclinations, prima facie or otherwise, that humans have a unique position in the universe.


Thanks to the The Enlightenment we officially live in the age of reason. One consequence, is that we follow the evidence where ever it takes us and in this case, our ancestral trail leads back to the plains of Africa and a lady nick-named Lucy. Science tells us that we came from the apes, this is the reasonable thing to believe. The bible teaches that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." We take the scripture to mean that God looked like a man then and now and that we bear some resemblence to our spiritual progenitor. It would be blasphemy in most circles to infer that God is or was great ape either during his mortal life or now or that his ancestors were anything less than human(I think it was Xenophanes who said that if horses could draw, their gods would look like horses) . Although we often dismiss judgement of a person on appearance as shallow, we as (orthodox) mormons, have no qualms about zealously safe gaurding the sanctity of the human-god form from any would be iconoclasts. Right or wrong what does this teach us about ourselves? I believe hypocrite is an overused word, it relies too heavily on a strictly black and white world-view, things are often more complicated than that. What we can say for those who believe, and I count myself in this category, that in some ways image does matter. Who would have thought?

To Be Continued...

Next: more monkeys, as far as answers go I'm not making any promises.


side notes>>

• the church's official position on evolution is that it has no position on evolution (see "evolution" entry in The Encyclopedia of Mormonism).
• I don't really see how evolution can be reconciled with Genesis unless we severely restructure our interpretation of scripture to fit every liberal Mormons new favourite line: inspired fiction. I understand that as it is Genesis isn't a how to guide on creating an earth, but some of the conditions found therein are fundamental to our doctrine, like there was no death before Adam. If the fall is a fairy story, what does that say about the atonement, the pillars of eternity don't look so stable when their foundations are merely metaphorical. Personally I prefer a literal interpretation of scripture, mainly because of a spiritual witness I had once. Yet, I also believe evolution has merit. I think I just blew my mind.

**update** actually I just changed my mind, evolution is correct as far as we can tell, the bible isn't.

Why is God a fractal? The Aesthetic of God, Agency and a mishmash of many other things 1

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

Add to that list the gods and demons, in between all that there's a large spectrum of possibility. With this ample wiggle room to operate we can theortically touch on all aspects of the human experience. As I go about my business I sometimes wonder with all the variantions available why are certain options privelaged above others. I'm not advocating relativism just examining how and why the universe picks its favourites.


Ten fingers and ten toes help make up the mormon conception of the form of God. This is an astonishing doctrine. Because of this heritage we reverence our bodies out of respect for deity and treat them as temples. Why not twelve fingers and twelve toes? Why is God a fractal? The Mormons have a large healthy blogging community where (probably )this and many topics which I'm interested in have already been examined, I want to explore all these well tread "difficult issues" in the church. Well tread by others maybe, but I've never really explored the teritory myself, now is as good a time to start as any.


to be continued...next: evolution