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I am poor and I decide to sacrifice my family funds for food and other necessities so that we can all wear imported red silk pajamas. You see in my faith it is essential that you sleep in red silk pajamas to maintain a spiritual connection to god as you sleep. In fact if you die in your sleep it is imperative that you are in your red silk pajamas because there is not entrance into heaven without them. So I have sacrificed with months or years of working in the salt mines and leaving my family alone because I have been told and believe in the essential nature of owning red silk pajamas for my entire family. So is this really sacrifice in a divine sort of way? If I sacrifice for something that is really nothing what is the real benefit? Would I be blessed for obedience to a falsehood that I believed to be true or dammed for being so deceived and wasting my time?
I think it’s a facile argument (and was when TSM used it). Quote:So is this really sacrifice in a divine sort of way? If I sacrifice for something that is really nothing what is the real benefit? Would I be blessed for obedience to a falsehood that I believed to be true or dammed for being so deceived and wasting my time?
I don’t believe we’ve got a list of things we do that add up to blessings & cursings per sacrifice or disobedient act. I think eternity has to do with who we are, who we become in our lives. As to the story about this sacrifice, it’s a little too hard to tell what kind of person that caricature is, but that’s all that’s relevant to eternity. Is he basically a sign-seeker who thinks he can compel salvation through his actions? Is he someone who seeks approval of others? Does he abdicate responsibility for his own decisions and judgments to authoritative people? Does he feel an inner desire to serve God even at great personal sacrifice? Did his wife and family request that he do this? Did they consider it their own sacrifice? Was he trying to get away from them?
We can’t know because the story doesn’t tell us anything important about who he is.
All of us – every single one of us – sacrifices in some way that seems ludicrous and laughable to someone else. If I don’t believe something is important, it isn’t important in any practical way for me.
If I do believe it is important, it is important for me.
If I don’t believe it is important, I can choose to mock it and belittle it – or I can choose to disagree and honor the effort to live according to the dictates of his own conscience.
I’m MUCH more interested “spiritually” in how I respond to what I consider to be absurd than in the one engaged in the absurd – although I am VERY interested in the absurd on a purely intellectual level.
Again,
I fight the urge to view others and what I see as their “weird” beliefs in a way that is inconsistent with how I want others to view me and what they see as my own “weird” beliefs.That’s really, really important to me personally – actually one of my most fundamental efforts. Motes and beams and kettles and pots and all that jazz. The key here is whether the person finds the sacrifice meaningful in their relationship with God. If the answer is yes, then the silk pajamas is a wonderful way to show sacrifice. If it isn’t, then it’s just ridiculous. Some of the facets of sacrifice are that we sacrifice for…, because…, in order to get…, out of fear that…, etc.. The only person that might know why is the person him/herself and that’s not even a sure thing. The problem I have is when someone preaches to me that I should sacrifice for “the good of my soul” (my mom’s favorite), because God (the church) wants me to, in order to get “blessings” (the commercial transaction approach to faithfulness), or out of fear that I’ll be punished, my kids will end up on drugs or worse, not get into the “Y”. On the last one I remember at age 18 skipping sacrament meeting to go to a movie and then being certain that the next day I wouldn’t be able to get a job. Getting hired at the first place I stopped taught a lifelong lesson. Anyway, to paraphrase Lowell Bennion, to action only do we have a right but not to the fruits thereof. And what someone else thinks, getting back to the thread, is none of their damn business. IMHO. If I truly believe it is God’s will to wear silk PJs, then sacrificing time away from my family to work in salt mines to save for that can be rewarding to me and my family based on our faith. Happiness can come to me and my family because of it. Peace and confidence and strength, all can come through a sacrifice that others may look at and laugh and scoff. If the sacrifice leads to building character and devotion, then it would seem to be pleasing to a wise God. We may find that God tells us he could care less about silk PJs, but helps us realize who we have become because of our sacrifices. Others may build character and devotion in other ways, and so there are more than one way to please God and to progress.
I think many things in the church are silk pajamas. The “thing” isn’t of substance, but how we use it may be, and therefore is not a waste to sacrifice for, because the value is where our heart is, not in the clothing.
GBSmith wrote:Anyway, to paraphrase Lowell Bennion, to action only do we have a right but not to the fruits thereof. And what someone else thinks, getting back to the thread, is none of their damn business. IMHO.
:clap: +1GBSmith wrote:out of fear that I’ll be punished, my kids will end up on drugs or worse, not get into the “Y”.
For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why your kids would be turned away from the YMCA, just pay the darn membership fee!
😆 What is the meaning of life? Does anyone really know?
To sacrifice for something that is not the “true” meaning of life is futile in the ultimate sense. If life is in fact meaningless there is no point to any of it.
It would seem that people derive personal meaning in life. Perhaps the red silk PJs are representative of that personal meaning.
Should this poor family, possibly doomed to live on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, trade all sense of personal meaning for base survivalism? I can’t make that decision for them, it is hard enough to make it for myself.
In the end, we’re all relativists.
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