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https://www.ldsdaily.com/personal-lds-blog/the-bold-road-to-true-spiritual-progress/ Lately, there have been a number of posts where we have discussed what heaven might be like and the meaning of earthly life.
In the linked LDS Dailey Blog post, Author Michael House makes the argument that “a God who doesn’t give us stiff trials and requires us to do hard things using our own initiative is the functional equivalent of a god who doesn’t care about us and can’t be bothered to spend the time and effort to teach us.”
He also uses military imagery and asks us to reimagine churches as forward operating bases and individual members as recruits/warriors called to “close with and destroy the evil that plagues you, your family, and the world.”
The post is relatively short and I find value in the idea that God wishes for us to gain fortitude, experience, and wisdom from doing hard things in mortality.
I was dismayed by the dismissal of competing schools of thought as “philosophy of Satan” and I fear that the call to “destroy evil” might be interpreted as a justification for violence.
:thumbdown: I didn’t care for most of it. Throughout the article, he mentions Christ’s love, but makes it sound like His love is supposed to be tough love. I liked the direction he was going in the middle. Being proactive and strengthening ourselves so that we can better live in the world. But he lost me towards the end.
Quote:We need to follow the Warrior Christ and engage in the fight. Don’t cower in a bunker. Don’t hide in a fortress. God has made you for so much more! He has called you to “close with and destroy” the evil that plagues you, your family, and the world.
My question is what does he mean by that? He makes a call to action without specifying any particular actions to take. Destroying evil sounds all well and good, but I’d like to know what he has in mind so I know whether I agree with him or not.
PazamaManX wrote:
Destroying evil sounds all well and good, but I’d like to know what he has in mind so I know whether I agree with him or not.
Right. I could be much more supportive if it was clear that he was talking about rooting out evil from our own hearts or something similar. Unfortunately, we have a political environment in the US were political opponents have been described as evil. I worry that some might take these words as a call to do something stupid in order to achieve a “greater good.” Even if nobody takes the most extreme step, the rhetoric still can have a negative cumulative effect.
Jesus was not a warrior. There is no reasonable way to read the Gospels and come to the conclusion that he wanted his followers to be warriors. Many people don’t want to accept Jesus, of Nazareth. They want to worship a warrior-emperor.
It is that simple for me.
I’m in the didn’t really care for the article camp. I subscribe more to the idea of church being a hospital for the wounded, but wounds not caused by God. I do believe God expects us to get wounded, but that Jesus Christ is the healer. Old-Timer wrote:
Many people don’t want to accept Jesus, of Nazareth. They want to worship a warrior-emperor.
One of the reasons Jews did not recognize or accept Jesus as Messiah is because He was not the great avenger that came down from the heaven to slay their enemies and set them free from their captors. That’s not what happened in a literal/physical/temporal sense, but it may have happened in a spiritual sense. I also believe Christians have set up a similar expectation for the second coming and believe many won’t recognize that either (for much the same reasons).
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