CENTURY 21: Life 2.0

“. . .Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. . . .” / “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God” (1 Peter 4:12, 17)?

It has often been said that ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’  A juxtaposition is in order, for it can just as legitimately be said that ‘Catastrophe is in the experience of the victim.’ Let us put a little perspective on our current catastrophe, the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Tragedy is not exclusive to any one time, or place, or people, or cause.  It does not need to reach a quantitative threshold or ‘tipping-point.’  The condition or situation or disaster does not have to affect a million or a billion people to be as painful, disruptive, shattering or life-altering as can a single incident to a single person.  The person who is hit and maimed or killed by a D.U.I. driver, the passengers who die at the hands of a terrorist shooter or bomber, the little human being who is aborted, the teenager who is duped into trying drugs and his or her altered life (or death if an overdose or suicide is the outcome) shatter the family left in the wake of their hopes and dreams of seeing their son or daughter, brother or sister go down. The community that is hit by a devastating tornado, or wildfire, or localized flood, or entire nation by a famine.  The scenarios go on and on.

It doesn’t take a world war, or an economic depression, or a volcanic eruption or a pandemic such as we are in now to tip the scales to a radically-altered life-style for the survivors.  

So what we come down to is Life 2.0—our personal or national or global status-quo being radically altered.  It will be for all people at some point in their lives or in the lives of the survivors who are left to pick up the pieces.  We should not “think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you. . . .” 

The thing to understand is that it will come.  Knowing or believing that, we should be as prepared as we can for whatever eventuality is likely to come to us.  We should have a supply of food, water, medications, medical supplies, tools and fuel on hand.  We should have some cash on hand.  We should, all along, make wise decisions regarding the food we eat, the daily exercise we should get, the things we do or have done that make us vulnerable to being taken down: things such as our hygiene practices, our skills (or lack of them) regarding first aid, of how to grow things, financial management, practices leading to sound emotional strength and resourcefulness.  We need fitness for living.

At least as important as any of these things, as you might guess if you are familiar with any of my perspectives articulated in these essays over the years (and the scriptural citation at the beginning of this piece), is the importance of having the knowledge of why these trials must come about to all mortals, and what we can do about them.  What are our spiritual resources to help us cope and understand? 

If people would not reject out-of-hand the assertion that there is a people who believe that there is a Prophet of God on the earth, right now, and His Church, who have some answers and are at peace with them they could likewise better cope.

But, of course, there are far more than the 17 million souls who belong to this Church, who don’t believe and would rather put their trust in science, or CNN or Fox, or their government, or themselves, to weather this storm, and the next, and the next. 

Well, good luck. 

“And when [Jesus]was come into his own country, he taught them . . . insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?  Is not this the carpenter’s son?  And they were offended in him.  But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country. . . and he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:53-58). 

LEAN ON ME

Let’s take this as a first thought—the need to belong to somebody. 

If we ever have, or have had, the privilege of becoming a parent we must know at the outset that the child we parent needs to know that they belong to us, at least for the first 15-20 years, maybe longer--that he or she can count on us until the time comes they must stand on their own.   As a parent we must be reliable.  We will provide for them, we will protect them, will care about them—will value them, won’t abandon them or abandon their other parent. And in some way, though they can’t articulate it, they intrinsically feel their parent needs them. In short, that they will love us and they can count on our reciprocation. 

Since we were all this child we have experienced this to one degree or another.

Take it one step back.  If we have the privilege of marrying, the same basic assumptions or expectations are in place.  Many marriage ceremonies have in them the language that the woman ‘gives herself’ to the man and vice-versa.  If it is less than that then a built-in instability or weak foundation will one day give way when faced with the stresses the relationship will inevitably have to face. Somebody will get hurt—and someone may likely feel they are adrift—that they belong to nobody. This is not true, but many feel that way. 

There are a couple of ways out of this. 

  

If we do not feel we are ‘number 1’ in somebody’s life, we will still seek to belong to somebody—even if they are ‘number 2—or 3’ or more. If we can’t find that ‘somebody’ as a substitute for an intrinsic family relationship or for most, the ‘programmed-in’ need for a marriage counterpart, the need will, probably less-satisfactorily be met by somebody or some organization or group or gang or something that in some way needs us.  It is a human imperative—this need to belong.

There are others, though, many others, who can help.

Songwriter-singer Bill Withers died yesterday.  His song, ‘Lean On Me,’ inspired many that there are others, indeed we could be the ‘other’ in other circumstances, there to help.  Many of my generation and even much later remember his words: 

“LEAN ON ME”:

Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on

For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you won't let show

You just call on me brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

You just call on me brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on . . .

Be the ‘other’ that someone can lean on.  As you do, both of you can be made strong until the day you need “somebody to lean on”!

THEODICY

With the relentless barrage of tragedies and disasters, the current epidemic, acts of violence, even wars and rumors of wars, which we personally experience or hear of in the 24/7 news media,  people need to find some explanation of why these things are happening and who or what may behind them. 

This is a big topic, one addressed by philosophy and religion for millennia.  I hope you stay with me and take time to think it through.

Many explanations are tendered. Some people in our time blame it all on ‘climate change’ caused by the ‘carbon footprint’ which humanity leaves on the planet. Some blame it on some ‘ism’—communism or capitalism or some other ‘ism’; others blame it exclusively on the devil or  bad people concluding that man is inherently evil; others attribute it to sunspots or asteroids, on ‘nature,’ or on bad governments.  I concede that many of these things may be involved.  

Or, people may attribute our troubles and tragedies to God. I reject that view.  

It is to this attribution that I write this essay.

Theodicy is a word philosophers and religious scholars use to address the problem of good and evil (theo=God / dicy [or dike]= evil) and how God is related to it. It is the strongest increasingly secular (without God) or cultural objection to belief in a purposive and worthy-of-worshiping deity.  The basic argument of the secularists and agnostics is:  'If there is a god and God is "good" and all-powerful as "religionists" say,  why does he allow these atrocities to happen—especially to good or innocent people-- especially if he created them?'  A good question.

These are my answers and assumptions and premises as a Christian:
  

As one who believes in the Christian (and only true and revealed and universal) God, I am convinced He is real and He is good.  My belief in the Bible, its teachings, and in the credibility of its many witnesses (prophets and apostles and God’s firstborn son Jesus Christ) carries great weight.  Likewise my testimony of the truthfulness of other books of scripture, The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ and its many human witnesses (I have carefully read, studied, pondered and prayed about it; most critics have not) even more strongly supports this view, and the books of Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price, give strong Historical evidence and are available for examination for those who will look at them without bias. My own personal testimony by the Holy Ghost cements these other testaments (it follows that I also believe the Holy Ghost is real, as I do the divinity of Jesus Christ). 

·       The problem is, people do not exercise the faith to come to know the character of God; they do not know that His work and His glory is to "bring to pass the immortality and Eternal life of man."   God is grieved by these tragedies as are we. He did not cause the tragedies, but he does allow many to occur and play out to their natural conclusions. (And some, when we get the bigger picture, may not be the tragedies we think they are.)  The scriptures support this.

·        God may have the power to prevent tragedies and atrocities from happening but generally won’t intervene. One reason is that God, Himself, operates under divine pre-existing Law and Eternal principles; he cannot violate them and still be God. He may invoke some other law (yet undiscovered by man) which creates or allows 'miracles to happen, but these are clearly the exception because miracles do not create spiritual growth and spiritual growth is one major reason why we were sent to this earth.

     Another reason is because He sent us here to exercise our moral agency for good or for ill, to prove ourselves and ‘work out our own salvation’ in an environment of many options and conditions—from the best to the worst.  Work and even pain or other opposition is necessary to growth. Those who are not accountable and suffer (e.g., little children and the mentally or otherwise seriously handicapped) will be saved by the grace of Christ’s Atonement.  The rest of us will be ‘saved’ by obedience to the conditions of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—the plan of happiness—and the gift of His Atonement. All will be redeemed (made immortal) but not will be 'saved' in the Kingdom of God because of their choices. God is merciful as well as just. 

·       The earth itself, as were all people, as the Bible tells us, was created good by God (actually ‘organized’ pre-existing matter, not created ‘ex nihilo’—meaning ‘out of nothing’).  The earth and all things placed upon it, however, ‘fell’, or was removed, from the direct influence of God by the consequence of broken law (for all broken laws have consequences) but could, in their own time, be redeemed by Christ (through the resurrection commemorated on the day we call 'Easter').

·        As to the present ills caused by man himself, or the nature of Nature—the earth itself, its geology and entropy over time—the Atonement of Christ, in congruence with man’s obedience to the Law which covers all things, became the remedy to all of man’s temporal and spiritual challenges—even those caused by natural processes or by other people. But remedies are not always painless until healing or wholeness occurs. 

     Evil is real. There is a real devil (not the cartoon variety) called Satan. Suffering is real and none will escape it. Even Christ did not. Suffering is not always (and usually isn't) a form of Divine punishment or even discipline. Christ did not live and die to end all suffering, but to end all needless (self-imposed or self-generated) suffering.  Sometimes we, like Christ himself, need to "learn obedience by the things He suffered." And Christ, unlike ourselves, was sinless.  

·       This life and this earth is not a playground, but is a laboratory and testing center.  We come to it by choice (we signed a ‘contract’ as it were) and we come with the preparations and attitudes we developed in our pre-earth life.  We knew that it was worth it to come—as difficult as it might be.

·        Notwithstanding the challenges, some of which are horrific, people can succeed with the help of Christ and the help of each other. Pain is not permanent. Death is part of the plan. Life is worth living.  “Man is that he might have joy.”  “All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection provided you continue faithful.” (Joseph Smith, Jr.)

·        Man is confronted with the bitter--there is much of it-- so he can appreciate the sweet--which will overcome all human tragedy and bitterness —and through trial and obedience come to know his Redeemer and Savior and thus receive a far more abundant life. 

Those are my thoughts what it is all about.  

THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS 2019

                                

In looking at my archives I think I tried to post these thoughts a few years ago, but I believe I made a mistake in editing them and they didn't post.  Let me try again today, Thanksgiving Day 2019.

I am an unabashed fan of Norman Rockwell, iconic American artist of the 1940’s-60’s.  It doesn’t matter whether you are 21 or 101, I am sure you have seen his famous Saturday Evening Post cover of a family sitting down to enjoy their turkey dinner. Although I don’t know for sure, I feel strongly that the artist implied that a sincere prayer of gratitude was offered over that meal as an expression of this family’s gratitude for the blessings of family, freedom, bounty, opportunity and prosperity.

I am afraid, though, that in many of our homes Thanksgiving may not be celebrated any longer as a significant religious holiday.  I think many of our observances have become celebrations of consumption rather than spiritual feast of of  love, gratitude, and sharing. 

It hasn’t always been so. 

The first community Thanksgiving in what to become America was celebrated by our Pilgrim forefathers at Plymouth in the fall of 1621.  Theirs was a celebration of gratitude to a Heavenly Father who had sent a bounteous harvest to that beleaguered little colony.  Almost half of Plymouth’s original 101 settlers had died during the severe winter of 1620-21, just 11 months before.  Most of the Plymouth Pilgrims had been merchants and artisans in England, and they were woefully unprepared to live off the land.  Fortunately, a bounteous harvest came in that fall and the native Americans shared with them what they had and a grateful and relieved Governor Bradford proclaimed a three-day period of fasting and then celebration. 

That celebration was at least partially borrowed from the admonition found in the Biblical book of Leviticus that provides:  “When ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord. . . and ye shall rejoice before the Lord, your God (Lev. 23:39-40).

That first feast and many subsequent celebrations of Thanksgiving focused upon man’s relationship with God, our Heavenly Father.  Our  subsequent forefathers understood well their dependence on God. President George Washington, in his proclamation establishing the 1789 Thanksgiving celebration, said in part,

          “Whereas, it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor. . . that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country.”  

In a book of scripture sacred to me, The Book of Mormon clearly taught the sacred origin of Thanksgiving when he proclaimed unto his people:

          

         “O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!  I say unto you, my brethren, that if you could render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, that that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another. . . . I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.”  (Mosiah 2:19-21)

Regrettably, with prosperity came false and humanistic notions.  People who once rendered thankful praise to their God soon came to praise their own industry and intellect and forgot their God.  In like manner even Christmas and Easter have been grossly distorted. 

I would suggest that our task today is to reconnect to the sacred principles of the past—to proclaim with joyful hearts and voices that the Gospel of God has been restored to the world, that this land of America, identified by God as the choicest and most favored land above all others is our land and that we respect it, will protect it, and not defile it, and that we serve our brothers and sisters more than we do and resolve to never take more than we give.  

Remember always that it wasn’t our intellect or our acquired abilities that enabled us to be here today.  May an attitude of thankfulness to God always be with us, and not just in the time it takes to listen to a blessing on this lovely Thanksgiving feast we remember in Norman Rockwell's painting or on our own table would be my hope for people of all nations.  

CHECK YOUR SOURCES !

I copied the following entry from a Google search I did yesterday, Oct. 26, 2019:

        Daylight Saving Time 2019: A Guide to the When, Why, What and ...

         https://www.livescience.com › 56048-daylight-saving-time-guide

        Search for: What date do we turn the clocks back?

                      What day do the clocks go back 2019?

        Daylight saving time ends on Sunday October 27 in 2019, which means that clocks are going back this weekend. The time changes at 2am Greenwich Mean Time October 27, meaning that 2am will then become 1am GMT instead – and yes, it also means that on Sunday morning you can hopefully enjoy an extra hour of sleep.1 day ago"

What is wrong with this information?  

What is wrong is that it is wrong! 

What is wrong with me?  It is that I believed it without confirming it; moreover it is wrong that I did not give heed to my feeling that it did not sound right when I read it but that I went ahead anyway and changed all my clocks and ended up going to Church at the wrong time and missed a good chunk of my meeting.  It is wrong because I looked at the first source that came up on my computer (www.livescience.com) and the url sounded plausible so I went ahead and used it. 

What is the conclusion that should be drawn from this?  It is that I didn't check the 'evidence!'

 What is the other side of the coin?

It is to not automatically dismiss, out-of-hand, new information that is presented to you if it comes from a source that you already have some experience with and that you trust.  If the information received from this source has proven creditable in the past, and if it may be of some value to you if you pursue it further,  and if that evidence supports the new information, it may prove to be of great value to you.

Too many people reject new information or ignorantly assume that if they didn't already believe it, it must not be true.  Many people thus miss out on what could be a great boon to them because of their prejudice.  

In support of this, I draw your attention to a verse from the Bible (naturally, as is my custom) that reads, "prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it" (Malachi 3:10).  A further verse regarding discernment reads, ". . . by their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20).  

Since some of my readers, I am sure, do not believe (yet) the tenets of Christianity I end by submitting an ancient secular caution to those who do not take the time or effort to find out the truth of a matter: "Ignorance of one's own ignorance is the malady of the ignorant" (M. de Montaigne).  

Before accepting or rejecting sources, check into them; ignorance of our own ignorance keeps us from doing this.  

GETTING FIRED --GETTING HIRED

The next two paragraphs have been copied from Dr. Jim Tunney’s most recent weblog posting from his The Tunney Side of Sports (“What Do I Do Now?”, September 9, 2019).  Jim Tunney, who has been called the Dean of National Football League (NFL) Referees, lives in California and works out at the Resort where I work.   I would recommend his inspiring (in a non-religious way) and motivational thoughts as worthy of your consideration.  This posting was generated by the reality faced every year around September 1^st when 500-600 aspiring college football stars get cut from the tryout rosters of the 32 NFL teams.

“Have you ever been cut or fired from a job? If not, you are missing out on one of life’s most personal challenges. One of the first things that comes to mind when that “grim reaper” appears is: “What do I do now?” Friends and loved ones will tell you: “When one door closes, another one will open?” Yeah, but when your world collapses, you struggle to keep positive. However, begin to look for that next door to open – and it will! It may not open when you want it to, but, as has often been said: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

“Hopefully, the person making the decision to fire you is someone who will look you straight in the eye, explain the decision and point out other opportunities – in and out of whatever your current job happens to be. You hope that person making that decision will wish you well and leave the door open for you to call if they can help further. It’s never easy. If, however, you are the one in-charge, be sure you express those feelings to those you are releasing. After all, you did hire/employ that individual and felt at the time it was a good decision. Unless the firing is for egregious behavior, you still are releasing an individual with whom you had confidence.”

I would add to Jim’s remarks that any person who has shown enough self-discipline and worked hard enough to even get invited to try out for a professional sports team will have a great deal of what it takes to be hired to some other profession. Desire, determination, and discipline (not only on the field but in the classroom and in interpersonal relationships) are what it takes—and with it you can do almost anything. 

(OLD) BOYS AND THEIR TOYS

 In the late summer and early fall of the year a peculiar change comes over the Monterey Peninsula in California. With the arrival of ‘car week’ and the automobile races at the Laguna Seca International racetrack the sights, sounds, and even smell of the air changes as hundreds of exotic, classic, and collectors’ cars fill the roads, parking lots and even golf course fairways.  The sights of outrageously expensive and untouchable cars, the pervasive sounds of rumbling ‘on-the-cam’ or accelerating high-revving engines, and the smell of Castrol engine oil in the old sports cars brings back old memories to thousands of car enthusiasts (usually affluent people or wannabes’ who grew up in the 1940’s, ‘50’s, and 60’s) from around the world.

Even if you are not an enthusiast, you can’t be neutral about these things as you find yourself stuck in traffic, or hear the cars winding out from five miles away at the racetrack, or hope to find a parking place within a half-mile of your destination because of the many venues that are displaying these works of superb engineering and art.  The untouchables are suddenly ubiquitous.

And the prices the auctioneers get for these increasingly older and rarer pieces of machinery are staggering—most well over $100 k up to a million or more dollars.  As a minimal case in point let me share with you something I found in a file I had at home. I had written, in April of 1964 (you read that right), a for-sale ad to place in our local newspaper for the second car I had ever owned—a 1958 Austin-Healey 100-6 deluxe roadster with all the ‘extras’ such as a radio, luggage rack, overdrive and tonneau cover.  The car was in very good condition, engine just rebuilt, new paint job, 48,000 miles and I was asking $1,375 for it.  The same car in the same condition, but sixty years older, is now selling, at auction, for $55,000-$75,000 with some examples going up to $100 k. 

  

But let me go back to what precipitated what I really wanted to write about today about boys and toys.

  

Where I work at a local resort golf course I yesterday heard and saw probably a couple hundred Porsches, Ferrraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens and similar marques of 500-700 horse-power cars accelerating for hours in 2-3 second bursts of what a police officer once told me, as he stopped me as a 17-year-old in the aforementioned Austin Healey, for “exhibition of speed and power.” The officer thankfully gave me only a warning.  He had to explain the language of the law to me after he observed me ‘accidently’ lay down about a 7’ strip of rubber as I pulled out from a stop sign.  Of course my ‘speed’ only reached about 20 mph (hence the warning instead of the ticket) before I backed off and my ‘power’ only amounted to a little over 120 hp compared to the cars I witnessed today in their constant “exhibition of speed and power” of 0-50 or 60 in about 2.5-3.0 seconds flat.  My A-H could do about 10 sec. flat. 

Interestingly it soon became apparent to me as the hours rolled on was that the drivers of these cars really wanted was to have was people look at them and their car and the person sitting beside them.  That person was always an attractive woman from 20-40 years younger than the driver (who was a man typically in his late 40’s to his late 70’s). These exhibitionists typically drove in little packs of three to four cars. Onlookers were always first attracted by the sound of gearing down and then the air being rent by 2-3 second bursts of fierce acceleration. (The captive –but not captivated—women were rarely smiling.) 

Now here is the thing about these old boys and their toys:  Psychologists are virtually unanimous in saying that these rich old boys are simply trying, in their old age, to project a rather pathetic image of power and ‘manliness’ in their display of “look at me and what I’ve got!”  Probably all they’ve really got is a huge ego, a big bank account, insecurity and a need for attention and a heavy right foot.

Is it much different—except for the bank account and the age of the girl—than a 17-year-old boy and his (or his father’s) car? Not in my experience as a boy who grew up, and fortunately out-of-it, in the 1960’s.