Prophets

I've pondered for awhile what the purpose of a prophet is. Those I taught on my mission had a hard time grasping what a prophet is. I would try to say it in concrete terms like, "A prophet speaks with God face to face." This is not really true and believed today. I started thinking recently how I am different than the prophet. What does the prophet have that I don't?

The LDS church says that the prophet is an "inspired man called to speak for the Lord." OK. Great. So, it's not that the prophet speaks to God face to face, but he feels the spirit and will tell us what the spirit will tell him. Does a prophet "know all" through the spirit?

Hardly. President Hinkley had the wool pulled over him by a scammer with the infamous "Salamander Letter." If we were to believe that President Hinkley was fully connected through the spirit with God, then he should have merely prayed to God and had it revealed it was a scam. Instead, we waited for months or years later for Mark Hoffman to murder a few people and his scams to come unraveling. So, it appears that the prophet doesn't necessarily have everything revealed to him, or everything that would be beneficial to the church, or how the church could help others (prevent these murders) revealed to him.

How about everything a prophet says is said through the Holy Spirit. Well, there are big problems here too. Bruce R. McConkie wrote Mormon Doctrine. He wrote:

Those who were less valiant in the pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed upon them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God and his murder of Abel being a black skin.... Noah's son Ham married Egyptus, a descendant of Cain, thus preserving the negro lineage through the flood....The negroes are not equal with other races when the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, particularly the priesthood and the temple blessings that flow therefrom, but this inequality is not of man's origin. It is the Lord's doing, based on His eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate.

This statement seems flat out wrong today in the face of civil rights. Even Bruce R. McConkie redacted his own statement:

Forget everything I have said, or what...Brigham Young...or whomsoever has said...that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. 

OK. Opponents say. Maybe it's just that we should only consider things scripture if it was said by the actual prophet instead of a member of the quorum of the twelve (technically, a prophet, seer and revelator). "I say to Israel, the Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as president of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the program. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so he will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty. God bless you" (Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, pp. 212-13; see also Official Declaration 1). However, Joseph Smith claimed from which he translated the book of Abraham to be written by him. However, it has since been found by Egyptologists that that papyrus was not written by Abraham and was a general funeral text of the day. The translation that Joseph Smith provided was wrong.

Brigham Young taught the Adam God theory from the pulpit during General Conference which has since been contradicted by the church. Wilford Woodruff said that the founding fathers, including George Washington, appeared to him and berated him for not performing their work for the dead. Their work had already been done by that time. Gordon B. Hinkley was fooled by a forgery called the Salamander Letter.

In the end, the church believes that prophets are fallible.

Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church. With divine inspiration, the First Presidency (the prophet and his two counselors) and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (the second-highest governing body of the Church) counsel together to establish doctrine that is consistently proclaimed in official Church publications. This doctrine resides in the four “standard works” of scripture (the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price), official declarations and proclamations, and the Articles of Faith. Isolated statements are often taken out of context, leaving their original meaning distorted.

—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Approaching Mormon Doctrine (May 4, 2007)

Apparently, the doctrine that we can consider "scripture" represents the four "standard works". General Conference addresses do not constitute scripture and must not necessarily be followed. This statement is contrary to Wilford Woodruff's statement above that the prophet will never lead the church astray. I suspect that Wilford Woodruff's statement will be removed from OD1 at some point since it is problematic and contradicts with the official statement today.

So, what are we to believe anymore? One "apostle" of the day said:

Wilford Woodruff said (of Brigham Young), "He is a prophet, I am a prophet, you are, and anybody is a prophet who has the testimony of Jesus Christ, for that is the spirit of prophecy" (Journal of Discourses 13:165)

 We are all prophets. We all have the right to receive revelation from God. Why do we need a lossy channel that is fallible and could tell us lies if we are all prophets? What value do we receive from having a prophet if the only time we know that they are not telling us lies is when they modify the standard works, which hasn't happened in generations?

Prayer

I used to have tremendous faith in prayer. One day, I read in First Nephi where Lehi describes the vision of the tree of life to his sons. I read that Nephi wanted to see the vision, and he had faith to pray to see the vision. Nephi then saw the vision. I was so inspired by this and thought, "Gosh! I know that God answers prayers. Nephi did it. So, I can do it." So, I prayed to see the vision of the tree of life. I went to bed with full assurance that God would give me the vision. I woke up the next morning disappointed that I didn't see the vision. I was troubled that I didn't have the faith necessary to produce the vision, but knew that couldn't have been it since I felt like I was following all the commandments.

Later on, when I was in the MTC, there was a TV in the big auditorium that was out. I felt like I didn't get as much from the discussion since the TV was out and I left feeling discouraged since I didn't get the point of the discussion. I thought during the meeting, "I have faith. I can move mountains. I can certainly fix this TV." So, I prayed that God would fix the TV. It didn't happen. I know that God wants people to do things for themselves, but certainly, I couldn't have gotten up during that meeting, unmounted it, and tinkered around in the TV until it was fixed. Why is it better for the church to pay a repairman from its coffers to fix a TV, all the while, missionaries are not getting the maximum out of the discussion, than for God to just zap the TV and make it whole?

Lastly, on my mission, my trainer was going very fast on the bike, and I was right behind him. He went through a narrow pass in the bushes. I tried to follow behind him, but failed to pass through the bushes. I hit the bushes and fell, ripping my suit pants. I felt devastated since they were my favorite suit pants. I had only one other suit, and my first favorite suit would be unwearable with these pants ripped. I felt like I wouldn't be able to be as great a representative without the attire to go along with the job. I got back to our apartment and was devastated. However, I knew that God can work miracles. He's done many miracles in the past. I knew I was his faithful messenger. I felt like he should work miracles in my life. I prayed that he would mend my pants. I looked down and was disappointed that they were still not whole.

Over the course of my life, I find it very difficult to point to a time when God really has answered my prayers, despite me being true and faithful during those time periods. My companion and I would pray about what streets we should tract on. We would knock every door on the streets we felt impressed about, and nobody would hear our message. At one point, I had a companion that felt a deep urging to go to the house of a particular member. She wasn't home.

Why does not or has not God performed miracles in my life or answered prayers so that I can know that he really is there? Why can't God produce these explicit miracles in the life of a faithful follower that would undeniably confirm his existence, but also considerably bless the life of that follower (such as the vision of the tree of life)? If the answer is that prayer is merely meant to bring us closer to God and won't change his will and what he does on this Earth, then why are we taught to ask for things when we pray? I feel it get laborious to ask for spiritual blessings over and over again only to be denied those blessings.

Agency vs Judged On Actions

I have been questioning a lot of what I believe for awhile. I feel like I don't believe a lot of what the church tells me anymore. I'll probably write a sequence of posts about that and tag them the same.

I can't believe much that we are judged by our own actions and also agency. They seem like they are competing ideas.

Consider a friend I have. He went on a mission and did the whole Mormon thing. He was a very good boy. Then, he decided that he did not want to be LDS anymore. He stopped going to church and even started fighting against the church, bearing testimony to members, "I know the church is false." It seems to me that if his heart had just decided to up and stop working on his mission, he would have been saved in the highest glory of the celestial kingdom. Now, however, he won't. 

Worse, this could've been decided by some external party. Let's say that someone decided to murder my friend on his mission. Now, this person (a murderer) decided my friend's fate by not letting him continue to live. If the murderer kills him now, my friend will not be able to perform actions that he otherwise might have performed to bring him back into the fold of the church.

I hate that the actions of another can decide someone's ultimate fate. It seems so unfair to me. 

It feels to me like life is one big Markovian Process. There are two states--"If I died now, I'd go to the Celestial Kingdom", and "If I died now, I would NOT go to the Celestial Kingdom". Each day, there is some probability of switching between these two states. Our ultimate fate is the state that we are in when we reach a ripe old age and die. During life, we switch between these two states and indeterminate number of times. Given that we switch at least once, a murderer could have decided our fate by killing us before we switched.

We even teach in the church that we can affect others' eternal fate--hence the reason for missionary work. We teach that missionary work is saving souls. Why are those people that missionaries teach judged based on whether or not the missionary chose to serve, or even where that missionary decided to tract that one day (thus knocking on the right door or not), and not their ultimate actions?

The only way that I've been able to reconcile this is that we are not actually judged based on our actions. We are actually judged based on our disposition in the pre-earth life. That means that God already has a judgement for each of us that no manner of actions can change. If our actions do have power, then we run into this phenomenon where a person's ultimate salvation could depend on a murderer deciding the point at which they die.

Graduating

It has been so relaxing having graduated from college. It feels soooo good! :)

I've played through Neverwinter Nights. I tried playing through it when I was in High School, but I didn't like it too much back then. Somehow, it was easier to play through the game this time around. I think that my strategy worked a bit better.

Last time, I was a Paladin, and that didn't work out very well for me for some reason. I couldn't even really get past the first little bit in the game.

This time, I was a wizard and got this dwarf monk as a little helper. The dwarf monk took care of most of everything, and I took care of all of the stuff that he couldn't (I helped by providing him buffs and took care of groups of people, along with helping him kill the really hard regular people).

It was fun. I really enjoyed it. I've had a VERY lazy weekend. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I also think that I'll enjoy going back to work this week. I have a few different projects there that I'm happy to work on. There are two bugs that I would like to track down. One of them entails threads in a server just stopping for some reason. It probably has to do with some race condition in the code or something. I don't know. The other one has to do with a race condition between two different servers. I'm excited to look for these problems. I think it'll be fun and interesting.

I'm starting my after-work MBA this winter. I'm really nervous about it. I'm nervous about the amount of time this program will take. I do think that it will pay off. I think that it will probably pay off and help me earn more money throughout my lifetime and maybe retire a bit earlier. At the very least, it'll help make Erin happier, I think. Erin seems like she likes to have little things that could be fun. For example, the other day, she said that she wanted a ski doo, and maybe go ski doo racing. I think that could be fun, but I want to make sure I can provide this for Erin.

I'm really nervous about doing this program. I'm nervous about not liking it, or it not being useful. I hope that it turns out all right. Everything looks like it should be good, but I'm nervous that it won't be. I think it'll end up being all right. I think it's an important step for me going and doing in my career.

Kevin Seppi

update.

So, I really want to finish up my thesis. I think I'm going to start
working until late for a couple of weeks in order to get the last bit
of my thesis going. I'd like to get it to Kevin by a couple of weeks
so that I can turn in the final version by July. Wouldn't that be so
great...? If I can defend by July 2nd, I get to officially graduate in
August. If not, it's not that big a deal.

Work is boring! I guess that I'm not really into my project yet. But, the documentation around here is terrible. There's no real documentation scheme. Because there's no real documentation scheme, there's no real instructions about how I can get going on what I need to do.

Erin is working so hard recently to get her school work done. Erin is such a trooper. She cooks, cleans and does her school work. I make her do all of that. I'm kind of a lamesar lameo. Though, she wouldn't let me say that about myself. Erin is so amazing. She works so hard.

Awhile back, Samantha decided to start freaking out at the entire family. It kind of reminds me of Auntie Eva and how we never had any type of contact with her. Samantha thinks that she's punishing us for something or another. When I think about it though, Auntie Eva wasn't punishing anyone. I don't think that anyone really missed seeing her after things got going. She's been acting soooo crazy lately.

Erin and I both agree on waiting awhile to have children. It will be nice to wait. We both like our apartment that we are in. Here, we can save quite a bit of money. However, our stove is not working very well (that's another issue). With the setup that we got going, we'll be able to save tens of thousands of dollars each year. That money will be able to compound throughout our entire lives and it will make us rather wealthy by the time we retire.

I love Erin sooo much! Erin is soooo amazing! I should think of more nice things to do for her because she's that nice.

fun things that i did in my absense from september to may

our first date was fun (even though erin got hit by a water balloon).

in october, i had mono bad. erin was bummed out, but waited to my every need.

christohpe was annoying that month too as he did not really understand what mono entails.

i had mono for halloween. so, we stayed home. we watched the scary episode of boy meets world. erin abandoned me adn left me agonizing in pain and watched a movie with her brother.

in november, we did thanksgiving at the wilcox house. we probably cuddled a bit much for everyone else's likeing, but we liked it. we went outside to cuddle because samantha and heather were like, "no touching!!!" erin felt kind of bad because samantha and heather were giving her a hard time about "stealing" me for christmas. we decided to not care about waht they think.

the day after thanksgiving extravaganza -- we went shopping for christmas presents. samantha, heather, and mom, we all circled things that we needed from different stores and we went around and bought them all.
side note -- don't get rebates if they're from tabletops unlimited. they don't send the rebate money back. we're still waiting on erin's rebate (will probably never come).

erin and i cuddled quite a bit at this time. we kind of sickened out a few roommates at times. but, it was way fun and good for us.

in december, we went up to see erin's family for christmas. erin and i were going shopping or something for gifts adn got lost in kennewick. erin doesn't even know her own town where she grew up. it's kind of embarissing.

griggs was so weird. they basically put up these things for sale. they were rather cheap, but you had no guarentee of getting it anyway. and in order to get it, you had to be there at the store on the hour. so, you had to spend your entire night there. i personally think that i coudl find better uses for my night than spending six hours saving 5 bucks on something i didn't even want anyway because the thing i wanted was taken before my number was called.

i really want to cuddle with erin right now.