Chastening, again, really?

We find in the Book of Mormon--Another Testament of Jesus Christ, in the book of Mosiah (one of 15 sections in that book of scripture), 23rd chapter and 21st verse: "Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith."

Are you kidding me?  You're telling me that after all the malarky that I have to go through in this life from friends, family, work, school, etc. that The Lord Almighty can't see how and what I will do from that alone?  Now He's got to try my patience and my faith?

Hold on...  I thought that He was not only an all knowing and a benevolent God.  So, what's the angle with the "trying" and "testing"?

Wait, wait, young son...  God is not only Kind and Loving and Patient and Long-suffering, but He is also infinitely charitable and doing what He does out of Love!  For He has told Moses, "For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (1:39)"

In His love, we, His children don't and can't become all that we are to become without His testing-and-trying out of endless Love.  Not only do we have to meet a certain level of righteousness and spiritual stature and obedience through Christ's grace, but we have to know (not just a matter of confidence, but pure and unadulterated knowledge) that we can do anything with God's help; become anything with God's help; become like God with God's help.

That's what the scripture says, right?  Let's hear that again: "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."  In the Holy Bible it says something almost exactly like it: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."  Christ didn't give us any commandments that we couldn't do...  Did He?  Why even say it if He knew we couldn't do it?  Fact is: Jesus Christ never said or did one single thing that was inauthentic or misleading or deceitful, therefore, He knew that we could become perfect just like His and our Father--A God.

What?  Hold on!  You've gone too far...  Just wait a second...

But it says it right in the Bible!  Not only that, but in a verse of scripture read hundreds upon thousands of times by any bible-reading-person!

There it is...

JPS

The Golden Rule Revisited

Haven't we all heard the Golden Rule?  I mean, it has it's own special name that everybody (in the West [civilization--as opposed to the Eastern Civilization]) recognizes and understands and could tell it to you in some way shape or form.  The Eastern World says it differently than the Western World, I'm sure, but every person on Earth knows the same things because we were all taught them by the same Man or I could say God, or to pay homage to Søren Kierkegaard I could write, the God-man.  Every man and woman should love his neighbor as himself and herself.

Let's dig a little deeper though, into this phrase that is more often than not treated as a pithy fortune-cookie idiomatic phrase!

What would happen if everybody treated everybody else as themselves?  Would you get mad at yourself for your own poor driving down the highway?  Think about it...  Do you excuse others for the way they drive, reminding yourself that he or she might have had exactly the same poor night's sleep as you have, or telling yourself that when you have a headache your reflexes might not be as sharp as they would be otherwise.

Would you get do mad or even irate at yourself for having said that?  If you think you just might have, then you should be mad at yourself quite a bit more than you already are, right?

Another way to understand the rule is to know that the reason it is so easy and natural for you to "forgive" yourself every day (and all day long maybe...) is because you think you know yourself pretty well and know all the reasons, problems, tendencies, illnesses, history, education, and family that you have, right?  Well, why not treat others as if you are just as intimately acquainted with their reasons, problems, tendencies, illnesses, history, education, and family as you are with yourself.

Can't you give him or her a break at least as often as you wish someone would give you a break?

What would happen if everybody treated everybody else as themselves?  Let's think about it but then let's do it!  Who wouldn't like to be treated the same way that they treat themselves?

JPS