To commit sin is to willfully disobey God’s commandments or to fail to act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth (see James 4:17). (from lds.org) Killing becomes a sin, and thus murder, only when the life taken is contrary to the will of God. Abraham was ready to kill Issac, on God’s command. The act would not be a sin, and not murder.

Many questions were raised in this article, all worthy of discussion, which others are doing well. And, perhaps later, so will I.

One other observation, again inspired Mr. Yancey’s book. He follows the chapter on Job with one on Deuteronomy, where in Moses in his last message to his people outlines not just the blessings of entering the promised land but the cursing that will come on the people as well. Cursings that result, not so much because of the specific sins, but as a result of the BREAKING of the COVENANT.

He also observes that God praises Job in his honest questioning over his friends in their dogmatic assertations of Jobs guilt.

Note: I tend to refer to the writings of others because I am Dis-graphic (production side equivalent of dyslexia) and consiquently I am “not mighty in writing.”

Phillip Yancy, a wonderful author and meditater on the real life application of the scriptures, wrote a book called The Bible Jesus Read in which he explores the Old Testament especialy the tricky parts in the section on Job he includes the I think very relevant observation that the book of Job never really answers the question “where is God when it hurts?” Because the more important question is “where is JOB”.

I recommend reading the whole book I think its all there at Google books.

We will do nothing but go round and round, because we are not reading the same text. You are reading the one in front of you, and I’m reading the one in front of me.

Kind of like Bushman suggesting that there is a Catholic Bible and a Protestant Bible and that Joseph also had a Bible. Of course, the Bible itself doesn’t change. Same words. It’s the spectacles that change. If you think you’ve got the best pair of spectacles you can have, then I am no one to tell you different.

I’ve granted everything in your reading – that God is not just in these events, at least in the short term. What I don’t grant is that this leads necessarily to angst. I understand why it does, but have been trying to explain why, read from another perspective, it does not.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to clarify some things for myself. And God bless ya, brutha. ~

I’m sincerely very sorry for your hardships.

We are currently living far from our home, which we were more or less driven from. We sleep on an air mattress, in an apartment that is falling apart. I make a small fraction of what I’ve made in any year since 1997. If you count investors money lost in the last 18 months .. well, it is far far more than I ever made in a single similar period, that’s for sure. Every day was a financial horror for me for months, and the effect of that trial still lingers. At one point, shortly after the sale of our restaurant, I woke up to the realization that I still owed $12000 in sales taxes to the State of Washington. This is the end of weeks and weeks in which my bills were, every week, thousands of dollars above and beyond what the store, and then the sale of the store, could produce. At that point, laying alone in the couch in our front room, my body actually went into convulsions, and I couldn’t control my arms or hands which started pecking at the air uncontrollably, like chicken beeks, and I thought I heard the devil laugh at me. In short, I was toast.

During my time as that mom and pop business owner, I tried very hard to deal with my employees and customers in not only a just way, but a loving way. I paid my tithing. I worked in my few personal hours in a leadership position in my ward. I was as good as I could be. And yet God allowed all my material possessions to be taken from me, and allowed a couple folks who could probably be called enemies to mock me in front of friends and to seem to prosper at my expense. One can hardly describe how this failed to be what I took to be my due going in. It is _impossible_ in such a situation to not wonder about justice in this world.

One day, about a year ago by now, I was walking a farm road there near Puyallup – and it was a gorgeous day, and Mount Rainier, which I love like a brother, was out in full regalia – and I had an epiphany. A couple really. The first was that the world is very beautiful and life is a thing of depth and dimension that we really never guess. The second is that there is NO safety in this world. Good people are tortured in front of their family and shot in the head and left in ditches. Children are kidnapped from parents and sold into slavery in foreign countries. Whole nations are swept off in genocidal murder. Hatred and prejudices and horrors of all kinds thrive. It came to me, with force, that there was only one safe thing for me, and that is the covenants I’ve made with God. Every single other thing can and will be taken from me. And then, I felt full of love and I had no fear. And who can flipping tell me that it is better to have a house and a car and a business than to have no fear, and who is going to tell me that God isn’t in it??

There is another element. I’ve said this before. As things are slipping out of our fingers, at every floor we collapsed through, one thinks “here God is going to rescue us.” But no rescue came. And then, finally, the answer to me “things are going to get worse for you, you should find your strength in serving in the church.” I’ve said this before, but there is another thing.

I had been haunted by this scripture, in the Temple it had by whispered that this was meaningful to me, that I should pay close attention to it.

From D&C 19:

31 And of tenets thou shalt not talk, but thou shalt declare repentance and faith on the Savior, and remission of sins by baptism, and by fire, yea, even the holy Ghost.
32 Behold, this is a great and the last commandment which I shall give unto you concerning this matter; for this shall suffice for thy daily walk, even unto the end of thy life.
33 And misery thou shalt receive if thou wilt slight these counsels, yea, even the destruction of thyself and property.

What haunted me is that I was seeing the destruction of myself and property, and that deep down I knew that I was slighting these particular councils. Does this mean there is justice? No! It is not about justice. It isn’t about me slighting some councils that _everyone_ slights and therefore I _deserve_ awful things to happen to me, while other people get off with a free pass. It is about God blessing me with a perspective closer to His, and a greater ability to not slight these councils. One discovers, by and by, what is important. ~

At the risk of sounding like a broken record.

““chastening,” which is at least a pretty good synonym for punishment”

Strongly disagree for reasons already given.

“o, for your reading to work, it’s necessary for us to rather harshly judge people for being, well, people.”

Yes. People are not very good. But you still haven’t heard me because you still think that the justice of God shouldn’t come at the end, but at every event. It bothers me not one bit if God does things which seem unjust – or _are_ unjust – to us along the way, because it is not in the nature of this experience we are having to always find justice. This is my answer to your important question: what is God like? He is _not_ just in the time frame and on the terms you desire. But I have faith He will make things perfectly right at the end.

And, anyway, give every man according to his desserts and who shall ‘scape whipping.

“Second, what about the idea that God works with people who want to be good even if they aren’t perfect?”

I’ve already engaged the idea that God has abandoned people. I think He is very much working with the Missouri saint.

“Does he expect to build Zion only using already-perfected people? ”

Nor did He stop working with them to build Zion, nor has He stopped to this day. ~