Why Not?

God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

Maybe not. What if God isn't benevolent? What if He is actually malevolent? Or just volent?

The question many people struggle with is why God would allow good people to suffer. I think the struggle with this issue of suffering comes with an assumption that God is nice; the disconnect is why a nice entity would permit bad things. But if God isn't nice, then there isn't a conflict. Suffering and malady is often explained away as an obstacle that God places in front of us so that we can grow spiritually. That is actually an integral part of Latter Day Saint theology, as I understand it. It seems like that perspective is a choice based on a desire for God to be good.

I don't desire God to be anything, but I find the opposite perspective interesting. There is plenty of evidence otherwise that God isn't nice. Take, for example, His chosen people, the Jews. There are other groups of people that have suffered, but I'm guessing not to the prolonged historical degree that they have. The Old Testament is one long record of their oppression and suffering.

This perspective then shifts everything else. If God is not good, and possibly even mean, all spiritual success is then solely incumbent on people. They succeed inspite of God. However, I think people, that spiritual success relies on, derive that success from a belief that God is good. I could be wrong though, maybe someone who thinks God is against them, would strive to acheive success to overcome that.

Lungile Sinandile

Mind If I Borrow Some Quiet?

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first of forty days of Lent. It is a time of penitence and fasting. I am going to fast from noise. There are a lot of ways I'm going to implement this in my life, a lot of them surrounding turning off the radio. Turn off the radio when I'm in the shower, in my car, at work when no one else is around. I'll also mute commercials on television, and not turn the television on unless there is a specific show I want to watch (no TV browsing). I'm going to try to keep my jibber-jabber to a minimum at work too; there really isn't that much that needs saying.

Last night after working out, I went to IHOP for a free short stack of pancakes. Interesting to me, the waitress I had is one of the spirit leaders for the Husker wrestling team (that sentence has some tricky cases in it). This fact, of course, increased her tip. We talked about the Big XII wrestling championships in Columbia, MO the 3rd of March. She has to leave at 4:30 Saturday morning to make the five hour jaunt. Wendy and I, however, are going down on Friday and are coming back on Sunday.

I'm going to ask this question now and have more on this in a latter post: Who or what is to say that God isn't nice and good?

A Taste of the Word Hoard

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, "Come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, "Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:1-9 NKJV emphasis mine.

Growing up, I was always taught that God confused language because the people blasphemed by building a tower so that they wouldn't drown in another flood; they had no faith in the Rainbow. Without going to any of the provided cross-references, my most recent reading of this passage reveals more ire with the gathering of people and the power they have when they can communicate clearly. (Generally, the passage seems a bit apocryphal too, but I'm not an authority, or even student enough, of the topic to make that judgement either.) Methinks God wanted to keep man down, and keep him separated too (cue The Offspring). Now there could be legitimate reasons for this like preventing disease, an excuse for circumscision in a desert environment, or populating all the corners of the earth. But it seems arbitrary to me, like the requirement of a blood sacrifice from Cain and Abel.

So, if God makes us impotent and separate by muddling our language, does clarifying our language empower and unite us? Speaking the same language sure would be a start to that end.

Don't get me wrong, I revel in the myriad grammars, phonemes, and lexicons. For example, there is a language that has a case that indicates the responsibility of an action. They have a different way to write the word for "I fell down." (and it was my fault) and "I fell down." (and it wasn't my fault). But what is so wrong about being powerful and united? I might forego some variety to that end. Sure someone said learning another language is like gaining a second soul, but what will I do with another soul?

What do you think?

Aftermath

So the Mormons were a half hour late last night. We talked some more about 2 Nephi, starting around verse 22. and how Mormons require transgression and God who commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, and also to not touch the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Nephi says that they had to lose their innocence to know joy and to have children. So God is commanding them to not lose their innocence and also commanding them to do something that requires their loss of innocence. I don't like this. I believe they were capable of procreation in their pre-Fall state. The Mormons also justify these conflicting commandments by saying He was giving them an opportunity to use their agency, and if they hadn't transgressed the plan of salvation, which was prepared before the foundations of the world, wouldn't be able to start rolling. I say that is victim fishing and that sin would have been finished with a "No!" by Eve's free agency with no need for the plan of salvation.

So that is where we were at then end of a half hour. As promised, I asked them what their goal was from meeting with me. They want what they always want, for me to read and pray over the veracity of the Book of Mormon. I told them I have already done that and I really don't want to, but I have it if I do have that hankering. They then asked me what my goal was in meeting with them. This surprised me, but I replied that I find it important to give people a chance to have their say, and paraphrased this quote from Keats:

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. -John Keats, poet (1795-1821)

That seemed to satisfy them and after closing prayer they were off.