Repentance is the path to greatness. That is the path we have to choose.

We could also say it is our path to glory or goodness or heaven. All true. We were meant for greatness but we are not yet great. We are too illformed as yet. So we must change.

We can imagine someone who doesn’t need to be change to be great. They only need to develop further who they are inwardly. Christ was like that, I think. We are partly like that too. We were meant for greatness, the seeds are already there, we are just unfolding them. But for us it also means changing who we are. We have contradictions inside us.

Where we are, and where we have to go to get to our destination explains why ‘strait is the gate and narrow the way.’ We will all wander. But if we wish to arrive at greatness, eventually we are going to have to choose a path that leads there. “Why can’t I be saved in my sins?” is morphologically the same question as “why can’t I go to Paris without having to go to France?” (more…)

I don’t understand the reason Joseph Smith didn’t retranslate the 116 lost pages.  Since we are reading D&C 10 today, it is probably time to take the problem off the shelf for another look.

You wise ones, your thoughts would be much appreciated. (more…)

Mormon and Moroni 9 are the horror chapters of the Book of Mormon.

But they are necessary.

They show that God really does make us free.  We are free to choose for good or for evil.  Our choices matter.  We can make destruction happen if we choose.

No one prides themselves on not murdering, but in fact that is something you could do, it is something people have done, and it is to your credit that you don’t.  But only to your credit in a world where murders happen.

There is a place you can go.  You say hello to God, he says hello to you, then he hands you a list.  It is a list of all your sins.

You check off all the sins you are willing to repent of, then you hand the list back to God.

The name of the place is called “Judgment.”

My life began with childlike faith. After then going through the dark forests of positivistic science, to which I gladly gave myself for so many years, I was finally able, through contemplation of the whole, to emerge into the light of day with a view of things that is both visionary and empirical.

It is a view that has roots in faith, and from it builds bridges of scientific coherence towards a new kind of visionary faith rooted in scientific understanding. This new kind of faith and understanding is based on a new form of observation. It depends for its success on our belief (as human beings) that our feelings are legitimate. Indeed, my experiments have shown that in the form I have cast them, feelings are more legitimate and reliable, perhaps, than many kinds of experimental procedure.

It is in this way that I was led from architecture to the intellectual knowledge of God. It was my love of architecture and building from which I slowly formed an edifice of thought that shows us the existence of God as a necessary, real phenomenon as surely as we have previously known the world as made of space and matter.

-thus Chris Alexander, Making the Garden

Our feelings are legitimate.

I’m not always sure why you guys read this blog or what you find of value in it.  I don’t ask, because I don’t cater.  Folks sometimes volunteer that they like the little parables.

Me, I’m proud of my discovery of what glory is; of virtue charts; of the parable of the nest of thorns; of the world’s worst pun; of my Christmas posting; of the insight into how time and eternity are integrated; and a few others.  It feels good to reflect on that.

But it may be the most important insight I ever had is one I don’t take much pride in.  It’s too obvious.  Too many people already know it.  It’s the argument from meaning. (more…)

Now, repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment, which also was eternal.

(more…)

In the grove in the evening, the lion heard a great racket from a father robin and his brood and went to investigate.

“Friend Robin,” the lion said, “why do you make a fuss?”

“Look at this nest, O Lion. All my work on it is ruined.” The nest was a ring of thorns the robin had woven to keep the young away from the edge. But in the middle of the ring at the bottom of the nest there was little. The pine needles and other such stuff the robin put here had mostly fallen away.

“Do not fret, friend Robin,” the lion said. “As I walked here, I saw several empty nests. I will lead you to one. Then it will be as if your mistake never happened.”

“O Lion,” the robin replied, “what a piteous state would be mine if all my work for my brood were meaningless. I cannot bear that they go to another nest as if all my work had never happened.”

“Then you will have your brood sleep in this nest?” the lion asked.

“No,” said the robin, “they would fall. It is not fair to them to suffer for my mistakes.”

“And you see no way for the nest to be repaired?” the lion asked.

“Oh no,” said the robin, “I built it wrong from the start.”

Then the king of beasts took the ring of thorns and placed it on his own head. “Let your brood nest in my mane, walled in by you’ve the ring you made.”

Someone must bear the consequences.

The tragic vision of Mormon Christianity has four dimensions.

The first tragedy is that growth can only come through suffering and death.

The second tragedy is that free will means people can choose with finality to reject God and damn themselves.

The third tragedy is the tragedy that those we love can only grow through suffering and death and sometimes choose not to grow. Love holds us hostage to them, and it has to, or else it wouldn’t be love.

The fourth tragedy is that people miss out on growth that they are capable of, because they refuse to take the steps that would get them there. And perhaps nothing can be done about this.

That fourth tragedy deserves a little explanation. (more…)

When you think about the conditions that make choice meaningful, the need for atonement and the inevitably of damnation both pop out. (more…)

Here is a Mormon model of the pre-existence. Christ presented a plan for us to experience mortality and Satan presented an alternate plan. Christ’s plan allowed full scope for our free agency, so we’d sin, which He would repair by atoning for the sin. Satan’s plan restrained our free agency through repression and tyranny and disinformation/propaganda and who knows, so that we wouldn’t sin. We voted to accept Christ, but Satan and his followers wouldn’t accept the vote, like king-men. Consistent with their plan, like king-men they then went to war to get by force what they had lost by vote. They lost this confrontation too and were thrown out. But the war continues. It has become a bandit resistance campaign of subversion and sabotage.

The model is wrong. (more…)

There are many theories about the Atonement. All are at best analogies. What Christ did matters much more than our explanations about it do. Especially on Good Friday, we should probably spend more time at the foot of the cross instead of critiquing concepts and philosophies. (more…)

Here is a short theory of the atonement. (more…)