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Most of my life the way I would try to learn a lesson was to argue with the teacher or my parents. I always got bored or frustrated “learning by rote”. Rote meaning: learning without understanding the underlying principles
or concepts. So, in my boredom, I would argue or present, what I thought was completely reasonable principles or conclusions.
This method works well in college where you were given the opportunity to present your ideas & thoughts as long as you
could back up your well thought out position with reason & clarity. In return, you had to be open to criticism & other
people’s thoughts & ideas. Now we come to my reason for this post: The Plan of Salvation.
This is the overview definition by the LDS Church. (Most of us know it by heart.)
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/plan-of-salvation?lang=eng The part that I have questions about deals with the need for the atonement of Jesus Christ.
I understand the need for Jesus Christ to come to earth and serve as an example to follow. To serve as a way to serve others. Etc.
My problem deals with the need & plan to have him die in such a horrific way. I have 2 sons & a daughter who I love very much.
I could never envision a plan of redemption for mankind that would include choosing one of my children to serve as a
sacrifice for the rest of mankind. Then watch as His plan is executed?
How does a loving Father do that? I think I’m missing something!
Minyan Man wrote:
The part that I have questions about deals with the need for the atonement of Jesus Christ.I understand the need for Jesus Christ to come to earth and serve as an example to follow. To serve as a way to serve others. Etc.
My problem deals with the need & plan to have him die in such a horrific way. I have 2 sons & a daughter who I love very much.
I could never envision a plan of redemption for mankind that would include choosing one of my children to serve as a
sacrifice for the rest of mankind. Then watch as His plan is executed?
How does a loving Father do that? I think I’m missing something!
My opinion has settled into that humans need the narrative that we (at least some of us) are “worth” suffering for – so we keep telling each other that story with the caveat that “God said so”.
Many people need to feel that God knows their struggles and pains, and a God who struggled and was pained even more than we do is comforting. It gives meaning to the suffering, especially if that suffering is severe. I am of a mind that Jesus built a following and a good number of them believed that he was a promised messiah that would free them from their oppressors in this world. That Jesus was executed was a stumbling block for that belief but then the narrative changed and now we have redefined the crucifixion (and resurrection) as the crowning achievement of Jesus.
It turns one man’s torture and death into a story of love and redemption.
Please read my signature lines for statements about how we humans search for meaning to our sufferings.
It still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Another principle that is difficult to understand has to do with coming to earth after forgetting the pre-existence and not being able to use what we learned there. I probably said this before, if I am
repeating myself please forgive me.
In this life, we learn more complicated principles after we learn the basics. For example, we develop basic math skills before
the more complicated problems are introduced. You have to know addition, subtraction, multiplication & division before you
understand algorithms, etc.
Aren’t the principles we learned in the pre-existence important to build upon the principles in this life? I know, we are supposed to
learn with faith. It just feels like we are repeating, in this life, the lessons we learned in the previous. Maybe in the next life, we
will forget what happened in this life? And on it goes throughout eternity?
I think a lot of you have worked this out for yourselves. I’m still trying to make sense of it all.
People find whatever meaning for life makes sense to them, and I see “theology” as whatever constructs resonate enough with people to last and spread. I have no idea, intellectually, if any view is “true”, but I love the special differences in Mormon theology – **as I understand them**. I like to call it “Christian Buddhism”.
:think: One apologetic that I’ve heard is that lessons learned during a preexistence period persisted through the veil in the form of our dispositions. Like if you learned patience in the preexistence, you’d be more inclined to have patience in this life, or something like that. You wouldn’t remember the lesson, you’d be predisposed to being that way.
That line of thinking may have ended up doing us more harm than good though because some have taken that as a starting point to arrive at dangerous conclusions. E.g. I have [more material wealth, the “right” skin color, more physically abled, charisma, etc.], therefore I was more valiant in the preexistence, therefore god put me in charge over you. Unfortunately we’ve seen that sort of thinking.
Maybe it’s like a cat using a litter box. I didn’t teach my cat that, it just does it out of instinct. Maybe things that occurred in the preexistence survive the veil in the same way.
I don’t believe in a preexistence, at least not in the same way as what’s taught at church, so I don’t get too hung up on it.
Having grown 2 babies before launching them into the cruel, cold world so that I got my lung space back (the uterus shoves the stomach up and the lungs are creatively left to fend for themselves) – I have some limited experience in the “spirit-body” transition. –
My children were unique. The oldest one liked to wake up at 5:30 AM with the first bladder run of the day and still grumbles about schedule deviations such as high school half days. The 2nd one launched herself outwards on time with the enthusiasm of an Olympic snowboarder being a cheerful, connective harbinger of chaos and change. –
I was not the same person both times. While pregnant with my 2nd child, I actually had panic attacks and anxiety. I was able to deal with the rigors of pregnancy better, just not the stressors of everyday life. My conclusion is that we don’t have the proper scaffolding of language to describe the mental/spiritual dimension created by the physical characteristics of the body (like the illusionary notes that the brain “hears” when a specific chord is played). When we say “Soul” or “Spirit”, we mean something like (and this is a really fuzzy “something like”), “the part of me that I assume I can control that is independent of my body”.
If I think about it at all these days, I think of it like transplanting a plant. If we are a plant, we absorbed nutrients and developed some traits early in our plant-dom from our environment. Trace amount of minerals might do one thing, a lot of sunlight over that first stage means more leaves at transplant time. For the most part though, the environment we get transplanted to is much more of an immediate influence then the ground we were transplanted from.
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