The obituary for Elder Ballard says he is survived by seven children, 43 grandchildren, 105 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild. So at first glance at least one of the Elder Ballard’s children had as many children as Ballard and his wife did. The ratio of great-grandchildren to grandchildren is 2.4. What might that ratio grow to with future births?

I am not interested in Elder Ballard’s family per se, but I find it a case put in my lap of a faithful Mormon public figure, who had several children and whose children had several children, that I might use to ponder what the drop-off in fecundity may be for the current generation involved in having children. It is also a big enough family that individual cases of involuntary limited fertility shouldn’t throw off the population-scale picture.
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Hebrews 10 contrasts Christ with the Judaic priests. They have to sacrifice every year, whereas Christ did it once. The argument is that Christ’s sacrifice was obviously more effective. Are you really sin free if you keep sinning and need a new atoning sacrifice every year?

The yearly atoning sacrifice makes sense from the childish view of sin that it’s a question of debits and credits with the sacrifice periodically topping off your account. This forensic view is not totally wrong but it is badly incomplete.

Hebrews 10 talks about how the Mosaic sacrifice was meant to compensate for violations of the law but Christ’s sacrifice makes you holy.  The New Perspective on sin is that it is primarily a state of being. It is who you are. Sins are a reflection of your inward weakness and malice, and pay the price of your existing sins all you wish, if the inside of the vessel is not cleansed, you are still in sin.

Christ pays your debts, to be sure, but only incidentally. He spends freely to do something much more difficult and lasting–to make you the kind of person who is not a debtor.  We might extend Elder Packer’s old (and good!) LDS parable of the debtor in this way:

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Thereby have some entertained angels unawares.

For me, the best application of this scripture is to be open to reproofs from people who aren’t just echoing Great and Spacious Building propaganda.

All criticisms gratefully accepted.

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On the sweetness…

In your unusually quiet family ward sacrament, one young fellow abruptly stands on the bench and gives just one bellow.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-m-russell-ballard-dies

He was a window to an older Church run along family lines.

A founder of Spain’s rising anti-establishment party was shot in the face in an attempted assassination yesterday.

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I for one welcome our new Mongol Israelegyptistan overlords

https://nitter.net/BirthGauge/status/1720550649799077991#m

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzROOMRr0A7/

Quoted by Elder Oaks:

Mortal lifetime is barely a nanosecond compared with eternity. But what a crucial nanosecond it is!

-thus President Nelson

Infinities and eternities are mindwrenching when you really come to wrestle with them.  In comparison with infinite time, your  mortal life and the stillborn child’s life and Methuselah’s life are all 0.  A point on an endless line.  Infinitely small.

That is why mortality is so precious.  The  memories and associations and experiences you have here will be fresh in your mind, “before your face,” forever.  You will never, ever, ever again know what it is like to be a mortal under these skies.

one does not drive sin out of his life; he crowds it out with love of God and neighbor. Our lives do not then depend on the principle of avoiding sin, which is a tiresome job, but on living constantly in the climate of Divine Love.

— Fulton Sheen

Amen.  For me the principle discovery of our work with virtue sets was the difference between sin avoidance and holiness seeking.  Not away from, but towards.

I’m as manly as the next guy, but I have to admit I have a pretty vegan bedtime.  My sheets aren’t leather.  No animal products are consumed while I sleep.

I noticed some interesting teaching in passing about the afterlife.

After a period in which the disobedient suffer for their sins, which suffering prepares them for what is to follow, all will be resurrected and proceed to the Final Judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ.

–thus Elder Oaks

In a word, purgatory.  I had never  heard this before.  Spirit prison is a place of suffering?  Check.  But I hadn’t put it together that the suffering is preparatory

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The Great and Spacious Building has no foundations because he stove them in.

I have had this idea percolating in my mind for a few years now.  I am just not sure where it goes from here.

Colonies in space have been known to fail because of pirates, invading armies or ancient apocalyptic doomsday devices. There are spectacular stories that you hear of valiant struggles for survival.
But most of the time, when a colony fails, it is far more mundane, if just as intractable. There are personal conflicts, and toxic group dynamics. Adultery, stealing, fighting. Those kind of things.
But often times, it is harder to pin what the real problem is. And as in all things, there are experts with experience in that.

As the ship finished rotating out of N-space, the constellations outside the window snapped back into a physically familiar form. Anabraxis was not fond of travel, which was a strange thing for a man who spent every other month on a different world. He much preferred to have something solid underneath his feet. Even if it were an ocean world, of a gas-giant, or any of the other millions of permutations he had visited.

This particular colony was having issues. There are engineering challenges and social issues, but nothing they shouldn’t have been able to handle. And yet, the colony was on the verge of collapse. That happened a lot. That is how you got abandoned colonies like the Planet of the Chili Peppers. He was the Master Engineer they called to help fix their problems. And his wife, Lakshmi  was the Astrologer.

And she was a very highly renowned Astrologer for most of the Virgo Cluster.

Astrology, off Earth, is not trivial. You have to really understand a world and what is spiritually significant. You have to understand the people, the culture and the seasons, and timekeeping. And of course, the stars and constellations, the planets and moons, planetary rings, etc. Which of those are important? Some worlds with rings, you spent a great deal of time pondering the portents in the planetary rings. Some worlds, you focused on the winds and the clouds.

It is easy to say such things didn’t matter. But of course, that is how you end up with the issues you had here.

I am beginning to think that the strongest argument against sexual sin, is what cowards it makes everyone. If people feel guilt, instead of repenting of their faults, they are compelled to find more and more faults elsewhere. No matter how stupid. And if someone says something stupider than you, you don’t dare speak against it.

On a lighter note, perhaps we should convince people that ‘bird’ with a hard ‘d’ is racist. You now have to say ‘birb’. My main hesitation is that it might be completely successful.

US ornithological society says dozens of birds will be renamed

The Magellanic Clouds must be renamed, astronomers say