The Nehor wrote:Unless of course the Patriarch actually communicates with God about the whole thing....but that's just ridiculous.
I don't doubt he may believe he receives communication from God.
The Nehor wrote:So now the attraction should be about people seeing you as a demigod of piety. Who would want to live up to that standard.
Obviously you don't understand your own theology. Or as the old saw goes, "he whom the Lord calls, he qualifies."
The Nehor wrote:I never said I disliked power. I like power. I have some. I'd like to get more. The better part of me wants it to use it to help others, to purify myself, and to seek out the mysteries of God to become like him. The worst part wants recognition, respect, and an easy trip through life combined with the ego boost that comes from manipulating people to my will. The former will get me exalted, the latter will get me damned. The latter must die.
And I am guessing you see these as being completely different things, but they are not inasmuch as both are desirable and both involve the exercise of power tied up in self interest to no small degree.
The Nehor wrote:I dislike your song and dance statement. I think there is a general feeling that any time an Apostle or Prophet confesses their imperfections it is a kind of false humility. Better people then I have told me that that is a lie. The more virtuous you are the more you recognize your remaining deficiencies. Good people know the power of evil because they've fought it and resisted it. They know what kind of person they are. Those with a more relaxed attitude to morality lead sheltered lives. They don't know much about goodness as they haven't made goodness a quest and they know nothing about evil because they don't fight it to the last and don't know how strong it is. I think when Peter, Paul, Hinckley, and Joseph confessed that they had sins and had wickedness within them they were not saying it in a kind of parrot humility. They are reporting the truth and they know it.
And the real twist here is that you have to be perceived as being more virtuous to know what this feels like. Until you are there, you will not know. And I am betting it is not all about self-flagellation. Song and dance? To me everything is about song and dance, and when I say it is, I am not leaving out our own convictions that we are somehow authentic people. The concern for authenticity is its own kind of ritual.
The Nehor wrote:Don't get me wrong, spiritual pride is one of the worst sins in existence. It's what makes devils. In my experience though, they don't last long in the LDS Church. Without the Spirit of God their proud professions of belief and self-satisfaction due to their imagined piety tend to lead them down different roads. There is a part of me very much in danger of going that way.
Funny. I see mountains of spiritual pride in Mormonism. Much of it intoned in the soporific speech of Mormon GAs. Until I see an LDS Church that actually lives the communal utopian society of the Book of Mormon, I consider the Church as standing convicted by its own text. What we see today is a glorification of wealth and success in the whited sepulchers known as LDS temples, stake centers, Disneyesque historical monuments, and tabernacles. All the while the actual commandments of Jesus to care for the poor go largely ignored, receiving only a token of the LDS Church's gargantuan financial power, and often under the condition that they sit through endless, lifeless meetings.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”