Not So Fast There Darth J

[_Buffalo]

D&C 105: 6
6 And my people must needs be chastened until they learn obedience, if it must needs be, by the things which they suffer.

We are suppose to learn from our experience. When you are committed to solving a problem you do not give up after the first attempt. You try everything until you discover what works.
Or you end up proving how very little you cared from the outset.

And what did the murdered toddler learn from his experience?

[_Nightlion]

Let's look at something Jesus said to explain to us the nature of our Heavenly Father:

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

Your theodicy turns this on its head: God is less moral than we are. (Or He is more moral than us in a way that we can't comprehend, but He endowed us with a conscience to make Him appear amoral or arbitrary to us.....just for fun!)

Let's imagine the SWAT team coming into a house because a woman inside is being raped and tortured. As they stand there and watch, listening to her pitiful screams and watching blood and other fluids flow from her various orifices, a bystander wanders into the house and asks why they don't stop it. They're the SWAT team! And the SWAT team responds, "Oh, well, she didn't dial 911. So if we let it happen this time, then the next time she gets raped and tortured, she'll have learned the lesson that she needs to call 911 for help."

Or, alternatively, the SWAT team is there, and the woman sees them and pleads hysterically for help while she is being beaten, violated, degraded, and maimed. The bystander walks in and again asks why the SWAT team isn't stopping it. She's asking for help! The SWAT team responds, "Sure, she's asking for help, but we don't think she's being sincere enough."

(The SWAT team is God as described by Nightlion, in case that was too subtle.)

I am not certain I get what you mean from that scripture so far as God being less moral that us.
What you are not getting is that the good gift is not a rescue. It is a new life with Christ in God.
Since you are a stickler for analogies using a rescue operation for God falls flat. God is not in the business of rescuing us from our human condition. I had precisely the same condition with my family before and maybe even worse after I was visited of God and born of him. No rescue.

God's problem with evil requires a single solution and that is a resumption of oneness with God. Independent intelligence CANNOT become one with God of their own accord. Not by discipline or learning or sheer will and gumption. They need assets only a conception by the power of the Holy Ghost can conceive within the souls of men. Only those who can become one with God are precipitated to be saved in the milling process of mining raw intelligence.

You want God to save all or he is amoral. That's not your call. That is the oldest gripe of all. A full one third of billions fell for that gripe. New world-same gripe.

[_Nightlion]

Sorry about all the intervening posts ignored as yet. I have to finish with Darth J's exhaustive treatise. I hope he has not already put up another. Lawyers!

[_Nightlion]

There are sufficient camps where all epic fail can abide and distill some something. My Mormonism does not confine them to a dead end eternity. There is always the potter's grind, the Second Death, another round of the bases.

Pretty sure that reincarnation is not a widely-accepted doctrine in any denomination of Mormonism.

With this one it is. I am not a defender of any other.

[_Nightlion]

The problem of evil is usually thought of to include random natural disasters, diseases, and other forms of apparently pointless suffering, too. You can talk about God doing it Himself instead of outsourcing it to mortal criminals if you want.

You called for a unique Mormon answer to the problem of evil. You revile it but you must admit it. No?

No.

Perhaps I should have specified that I meant a unique SOLUTION to the problem of evil, not a unique way of compounding it.

Oneness with God is the only solution. I gave a fair account of why evil is and how God remains good. That accounts for my theodicy. Thanks for a robust exchange Darth J.

[_Nightlion]

You mean, that which does not kill us makes us stronger?

Yeah, there was a guy from Austria who already thought of that.

He wasn't a Mormon.

You are leaving God out of it which defeats my intent.

[_Nightlion]

Nightlion, here is a song by Amy Grant that is about surviving sexual abuse. It describes exactly what you are talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuscFAQWL2k

Amy Grant is not a Mormon. Yet she arrived at the same conclusion you did.

I appreciate your experience, but it is not unique to Mormonism.

Not even Mormons understand the gospel I am talking about or how to go about getting it. You can say as much but I seriously doubt you have a grasp of what I am talking about either. Certainly Amy Grant would be lost on it as well. It is not just about surviving sexual abuse.

[_The Mighty Builder]

Ah, the arguments of the physically/mentally/emotionally/spiritually feeble.

So you all understand God HATES all men regardless of their state. Natural man, Exalted man, Working man, Man man, every man.

Simple reason, all men are competition for hording women. And as we all know Mormon man God loves the Women.

[_Darth J]

God is not in the business of rescuing us from our human condition.

That what the problem of evil is, Nightlion. God has the power, the knowledge, and the love to save us from our human condition, but He doesn't.

Soul-making, "everything will be super in heaven," and free will have all been done. These ideas about the problem of evil were contemplated before Joseph Smith was born, and they have been contemplated since them independent of Joseph Smith or the religious movement he started.

Tell me something that the Restored Gospel brings to the table that nobody ever thought of before.

[_Nightlion]

God is the one who created me as a natural man and then blames me for what He did.

He can't change you until you allow it. We all begin at enmity with God. God is set to fix that.
It is an eternal problem that requires an infinite and eternal solution. The atonement of Jesus Christ is that solution which provides a means for God to intervene and alter our make up so that we are no longer in a state of enmity with God. This is being born of God, conceived his son or his daughter. The concept has been milked out by the uninitiated into a circus of clown acts, none of which is owned by Christ except that which IS his. All clowns put on an appearance the real deal come by power with the certain knowledge of God.