Sorry my reply was so short. But think about what your perspective would be if you lived ten thousand years. Assume this life lasts for a hundred out of that ten thousand.

How long, by comparison, is your experience? I’ve posted at length on the effect of perspective and time. I’ve been thinking about it since a friend of mine who is older remarked that washing her sheets once a week had gotten to feeling like she was changing them every hour and it seemed like Christmas was coming once a week.

Well, for a four year old, Christmas comes once every 25% of their life. At forty, it comes once every 2.5%. At 80 it is coming around rather quickly.

That, and Christ telling people that if someone wronged them and they did not forgive that person, in the victim was the greater sin. How can that be, unless the only true harm we suffer is emotional/spiritual harm that goes with us after we die and nothing much of this world is very important or significant?

I’ve seen the lifestyles of the super rich from a hundred years ago. I vastly prefer my own right now. Is God a hundred years ahead of us in technology?

Anyway, this jumbles things up, but in writing about the topic it took me several essays just to sketch things out.

But there is more to it than my “yes” answer, but I do believe the answer is yes, once our perspective gets a little longer.

“I also see in your words a movement toward a greater conviction of the goodness and graciousness of God” And in a strange way it’s filled my life with a greater sense of gratitude for those things.

and therein lies the agony and the ecstasy of Mormonism – and the core difference between us and every other Christian denomination of which I am aware.

Steve, please pardon the length of this comment, but I have been trying to figure out how to respond with anything of substance since I first read this post.

One of the central concepts of Buddhism was immortalized in the swashbuckling tale of love and adventure with these words, “Life is pain, Highness.” Christianity in general limits that to this life. Mormonism allows for it to be true eternally – and that is hard to understand and accept.

Have you ever tried looking at it in the following way?

You can say you understand the allure of Satan’s plan in a very personal way – and, hopefully, that recognition makes you more understanding of and charitable toward those who seem to gravitate to his proposed philosophy here in this life. I also see in your words a movement toward a greater conviction of the goodness and graciousness of God, since the glimpse of one extreme necessitates a glimpse of the other extreme. Perhaps you haven’t yet recognized it as such, but it’s there in your words.

In a very real way, those who had seen the most of God had to suffer the most with the removal of his presence. Joseph didn’t just suffer in the Liberty Jail; he broke. When his cup overflowed, he cried out asking where God was (just as Jesus himself did on the cross when His Father finally withdrew completely) – but he also set a condition on his and the saints’ future worship and praise. He asked for revenge; he begged for violent retribution.

He said, “Let thine anger be kindled against our enemies; and, in the fury of thine heart, with thy sword avenge us of our wrongs. Remember thy suffering saints, O our God; and thy servants will rejoice in thy name forever.” (D&C 121:5-6)

It is interesting to note that the Lord’s response was, essentially, to give him peace and remind him that it could be worse – and that the real issue was his commitment to endure pain and suffering to the end. The exact initial words were:

“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high.”

I believe strongly that one of the central purposes of life is to learn to endure the negative in such a way that we endure it “well” (that it becomes a positive in the end by changing who we are at our core) – and I think that means that we reach the state where we accept pain and suffering as an integral and important component of growth to such a degree that we choose suffering over ease – the life of God over the alternative proposed by Lucifer. We learn to value GROWTH enough to accept growing pains, realizing that the taller we grow, the more intense those pains.

That’s small consolation in the pain of the moment, but I think it’s important as we strive to continue to endure in hope and peace.

My one near-Gethsemane experience forced me to also examine what “it” all was for and to question why me and why do I feel so alone. In the end, I feel that our pain opens our eyes and then by opening our eyes we have the chance to have a more personal relationship with Christ which then allows us to become more like Him. Our pain is the essence of life – without it, life would be meaningless.

I think Ardis is right and I worried this might be too personal to generate discussion and debate. It was hard to post.

I appreciate John your link. Very nice. Brothers Karamazov is one of my favorite books, but I haven’t read it for many years. Maybe it is time for a reread.

smb, I’m working on a post that works off of a philosophical thought experiment (not mine, maybe it’s famous, but I just read it) about planet that has an alien race that believes it was created by a malevolent deity and their theologians wrestle with the perplexing problem of Good.

J. Nelson-Seawright the power asymmetries breakdown was very interesting. And these do from that light seem all over the place. To me they were experiential categories of how violence has played out in my life in various ways. I’m going to have to think about how power plays into these, and in general how power plays out in violence.

bfwebster I’m glad you brought up entropy. I see Violence as different in the sense that violence can be creative and add complexity to things.

Mark A. Clifford. I wish I knew what to expect on the other side. But we do seem to be being prepared for something other than harps and clouds.

Yes.