The "Just In Case" Philosophy

Given that we don't know that anything about life is real, it can be easy for people to have serious doubts as to whether God exists and whether our choices matter. Some people ask why we should bother wasting our lives, serving a God who may not even exist. My answer to that question is "just in case."

The way I see it, there either is a God, or there isn't. If there is no God, we can assume that there is no afterlife (almost all religions believe in both, if they believe in either), and even if there is an afterlife, it won't be filled with the eternal rewards or punishments we might expect to receive from a God. If there is no God, then righteousness would have no eternal rewards and wickedness would carry no eternal punishments. In essence, if there is no God, then what we do doesn't ultimately matter.

But what if there is a God? We haven't (and probably can't) prove the existence of God, but we haven't/can't disprove it either. If there is a God, then we can safely assume that everything matters. In that case, both sin and righteousness would have eternal consequences in addition to the temporal ones, making it of incredible importance that we keep His commandments.

To recap: If there is no God, then being righteous and being wicked would each have no eternal consequences, but if there is a God, the eternal consequences of our actions are significant. We may no be able to prove that God exists, and some people seem to be more than willing to take their chances, but I know that, without any conclusive proof one way or the other, there's a chance that God does exist and that what we do does matter. That's why I think it's wise to serve God, just in case He exists.

Hence, Faith

We're studying Rene Descartes in my philosophy class right now. He's most famous for his thought "I think; therefore, I am," but what's even more interesting is how he got to the point where it made sense for him to say that.

At some point in his life, Descartes became aware of the fact that some of the things he thought he knew turned out not to be true. This caused him to doubt some other things he thought he was sure of, and he decided to (at least temporarily) forget everything he thought he knew and see if he could find anything he could know for certain, starting completely from scratch.

This was no easy task, given how thoroughly he discarded everything that could be doubted. He decided that he couldn't rely on religion or science or even his own senses for information that was completely beyond doubt. He believed that everything he had been told and everything he was perceiving could have been just a large collection of lies and illusions.

He even questioned his own existence at one point, but he figured that if he was having all of these doubts, he must exist, because if he didn't exist, he wouldn't be able to think. Hence, ironically, his many doubts led to his first certainty: "I think; therefore, I am."

Now, I kind of get where Descartes was coming from with regards to his many doubts. Our professor opened the class by asking "How do we know that we are not dreaming right now?" and my answer is that we don't. Our senses could be deceiving us. We could all be brains in jars, receiving fabricated stimuli from a network of fraudulent machines, all designed to trick us into thinking that we're not brains in jars. Why anyone would set up such a system, I have no idea, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that we're not trapped in such a trick.

Hence, the need for faith. We may not know that the world is real any more than we know (really know) that God exists. Of course, we have seen signs and felt impressions, but those signs and impressions could, theoretically, have been falsified. It's entirely possible that we are all brains in jars right now and that it doesn't matter what we "do" in this simulation we're trapped in because nothing about this existence is real.

But we have faith that it is real and that it all does matter. We may not be able to prove that we actually have real bodies and that we actually live on a real Earth, but we have faith that we do. We trust God and our own senses enough to be confident that what we see and hear and feel in our hearts is real and that what we do on this Earth, because we trust that we are really doing things on a real Earth, will have eternal significance. We have faith that this all matters, even if we can't actually prove that any of it even exists.

Some Thoughts About Inciting Violence

I believe in personal accountability. Each person is responsible for their own actions. If someone does something, that's on them, no matter what anybody else said or did.

I also believe in freedom of speech. People should be allowed to share their thoughts and opinions.

This puts me in a tricky situation when it comes to the topic of inciting violence. I believe that it's immoral to encourage violence. In fact, I think it should probably be illegal, but I can't help wondering why I think that. If the responsibility for an action falls on the one who performed it, not the one who incited it, and if the inciter's only crime was saying certain words, then what is the moral justification of laws against inciting violence?

One person I know has argued that more than one person can share responsibility for a person's actions. The person who performed the action is responsible for their action, but so is anyone who encouraged that action. The actor may carry more responsibility than the inciter, but the inciter still carries some.

But should that be illegal? I'm wary of any law that opposes free speech because I believe that it's important for individuals to be able to openly share their opinions, especially on political topics. If any individual or party wanted to silence another, all they would need is an argument for how their opponents' ideologies could lead to violence, and they could abuse anti-incitement laws to silence their political opponents. I may be succumbing to a "slippery slope" fallacy, but I'm not certain that I am. Laws against inflammatory speech seem to be too easy to abuse.

Still, I am not okay with people openly encouraging violence. I believe that it increases the likelihood of people committing very serious crimes and sins. Crime and sin should be discouraged, not encouraged, so I feel that there should be some sort of punishment in place to disincentivize incitement.

There is still a question of what counts as "inciting violence" and what doesn't. If we can determine a clear, objective definition, that would make an anti-incitement law easier to enforce and harder to abuse. But, in the absence of a good definition, I'm almost willing to say that inciting violence (whatever that means) shouldn't be illegal.

I'm kind of on the fence about this. I should explore this topic further, and I probably will in my philosophy class, but for now, I just hope that we don't have to vote on any anti-incitement laws until I've figured out how I feel about them.

A Better Response to (and than) Fearmongering

In his General Conference talk Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf spoke against fear and fearmongering. As I listened to his talk, I couldn't help thinking about what happened recently in Charlottesville and some people's responses to it. Some people are afraid or angry, and some people want others to be afraid or angry. I give it as my personal opinion that God doesn't want anyone to be either.

The love of God can help us not to be afraid. There are those with dangerous ideologies and frightening beliefs, but God has given us the best weapons to use against such people, and those weapons, not surprisingly, aren't weapons at all. The tools to use against fearmongerers are hope, love, and truth. With truth, we can correct others' misconceptions and help them find better solutions to the problems in the world. With love, we can reunify and strengthen our communities, including our national and global communities. And with hope, we can have confidence that evil and hatred will never ultimately triumph over good and love.

We must fight against evil, but in doing so, we must not adopt the hateful or violent tactics of those we fight against. We must always be careful not to absorb the evils against which we fight. And we can ward ourselves against such evils by fighting off hatred with love. I know it sounds hokey, but peace is more effective than violence, and love will always trump hate. Violence is rarely the answer. Love always is.

A "Heaven" for Those Unwilling to Change

After a good deal of thinking about it and some time spent talking about it with others, I think I've figured out at least one way it's beneficial to us for God to let us sin: It lets us be ourselves.

Granted, there's a big difference between being ourselves as we are now and being our best selves, the selves we could be, and the latter is definitely preferable. Furthermore, in terms of the extents of the blessings involved, qualifying for the Celestial Kingdom is far more beneficial than ending up in the Telestial Kingdom. But even the Telestial Kingdom isn't a terrible place to end up (apart from the opportunity cost), and qualifying for the Celestial Kingdom comes at a cost as well.

To become Celestial, we need to change. All of us are less than perfect, so to live in a perfected state, we need to be willing to change for the better, and some people aren't. Change is uncomfortable and undesirable to some people. Some people don't want to become perfect, and they probably wouldn't feel comfortable in an afterlife with people who do, so God made another place for them - a place where they could feel comfortable with being themselves.

Of course, it's entirely possible that this isn't actually a reason why God lets us commit sin. There may be another explanation for how God can allow sin to happen while "all that He does is for our eternal benefit." It's difficult to imagine an "eternal benefit" to committing sin, but if we take "eternal" to mean "lasting forever," and if we allow "comfort" to be listed as a kind of benefit, this explanation sort of works. It'd still be nice to find a better explanation, but I can be satisfied with this one for now.

But that doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with the way we are, not even "for now." We should frequently strive to improve ourselves so we can qualify for greater and greater blessings, as that would, in my opinion, be most beneficial to us. Still, there are some who feel that changing for the better is too great a price to pay, and for those who deeply, sincerely feel that way, it may be kinder for God to give them a lower kingdom to live in than to demand that they make the change.

How God Updates His Commandments

This afternoon, during a conversation with my brother, I shared a video about the Divine Command Theory of ethics, which video I've blogged about before. The video defines the Divine Command Theory as "The belief that what's moral, and what's immoral - is commanded by the divine." I subscribe to this theory, as does just about ever theist I've ever met. It basically means that God tells us what the rules of morality are. At the start of the video, the narrator listed a few of these rules, with many of his examples coming from the Law of Moses. Later in the video, he poses the question "How do we know what God commands? . . . How do we know which commands are binding and which ones God retracted somewhere along the way?" Thankfully for me and all other Latter-Day Saints, we have an answer.

All Christian religions look to the Bible for moral guidance, and most of those religions recognize that some of the commandments God gave His children were specific to particular people at particular times, with the Law of Moses being the most obvious example. To know which commandments are still binding and which commandments have been redacted, we need a version or source of the word of God that gets updated whenever God wants to update His Commandments. Thankfully, we have such a source.

Since the very beginning, God has given us prophets that relay God's word to us. These prophets have historically been God's mouthpiece when relaying information about new, revised, or redacted commandments. As long as there has been a prophet on the Earth, people willing to follow God had a person they could turn to for specific, up-to-date information on how they could do that. Ancient prophets wrote the Old and New Testaments, and they included many updates and revisions to many of the commandments that had been given before them. After the death of Christ's Apostles, there was a long period of time when the word of God wasn't being updated. No new scripture was given, and no new clarifications or revisions were made to existing commandments. (At least, no new clarifications or revisions that were sanctioned by God were made to the existing commandments.) But this period of spiritual silence, thankfully, ended.

Nowadays, we have prophets who can rely God's word, including any and all updates to His previous commandments, on a regular basis. Through modern revelation, we can know which commandments were specifically meant for others and which commandments are specifically meant for us. With modern prophets regularly relaying the updated word of God, we can know what God commands and which commands are binding and which commands have been redacted. We don't need to wonder which commandments do or do not still apply, because we get reminded about many of them (especially including the commandments we are to follow) every six months.

Some philosophers still see problems with the Divine Command Theory of ethics, and as I study it in my philosophy class, I may find some more questions or problems to work through, but so far, I haven't felt much need to reevaluate my stance on the subject of ethics. I've had answers to many of the questions that have plagued philosophers for centuries, and, not surprisingly, many of those answers have come to me through modern revelation.

Scriptural Discussions

This evening, in our family scripture study, my family paused a few times to comment on the scriptures we were reading. This actually happens somewhat frequently, though our comments are usually only a sentence long and don't often provoke a response. This time, however, our comments went further than usual. We talked about our readings, raised questions, and discussed possible answers to them. This all meant that it took us that much longer to complete our nightly chapter, but I think our discussions were well worth the time they took. They helped us understand and ponder what we were reading, rather than simply reading through it.

I think that's why it's good advice, at least in one's personal reading, to study the scriptures for a period of time rather than trying to read a given number of chapters or verses. If one focusses too much on reading a certain amount of scriptures, they may be tempted to try to get through the readings quickly, or to consider themselves "done" as soon as they've read the scriptures, whether or not they put any actual thought into them. When one instead allows themselves enough time and flexibility to focus on a particular verse or passage and ponder it for a moment, they'll get a lot more out of that passage than they would have if they had merely skimmed through it or read it just for the sake of reading it.

I'm pretty sure our family will stick to the pattern or reading one chapter from the Book of Mormon each night, but I hope that we'll continue to feel free to voice and discuss our comments and questions as we read our nightly chapter. I enjoyed the scriptural discussions we had tonight, and I hope we have more of them in the future.

Having Trouble Blogging

How did blogging get this difficult? I have thoughts that I think may be worth sharing, but I'm finding it almost impossible to put those thoughts into words that I'm willing to post on the internet. There are SO many thoughts I'd like to discuss, except that they're unpopular and politically-charged. There are a handful of half-baked thoughts that I would share, if only I could figure out how to express them. And, of course, there are countless blogworthy scriptures and Conference quotes, but none of them seem particularly interesting to me right now. I used to be able to find blogworthy analogies in everyday life rather easily. What changed?

It could be, as some suspect, that I spend too much time on entertainment and not enough time with spiritual matters, but I'm not sure that's the problem. I've actually been doing fairly well at keeping up with my personal prayers and scripture study lately, and many of my blog posts are inspired by the entertainment I follow. Perhaps it's not that I've spent too much time on my entertainment, but that I haven't spent enough thought on it.

This afternoon, I watched one of the movies I borrowed from the library the other day, and I'm sure that, had I been paying enough attention, I could have picked up a spiritual thought that I could have safely and easily shared in my blog post tonight, instead of spending half the night wondering why it was taking me half a night to blog about something.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try to keep my mind open to inspiration from any source, and I'm going to pray for the ability and courage to share it.

I'm Trying to _____ Like Jesus

Many of us are familiar with the Primary song I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus. I sang a line or two of this song recently, and it struck me that we could replace the word "be" in that song's title with just about any verb to create a worthwhile, if somewhat confusing, goal. For example, I could say that "I'm trying to blog like Jesus." This would give me cause to reflect and ask myself, if Jesus were to write a daily blog post, what would He say in it, and how would He say it. This could help me improve the tone, if not the content, of my blog posts.

The same sort of reflection could be triggered by replacing "be" with other verbs. "I'm trying to drive like Jesus" could mean driving respectfully and in adherence to local laws. "I'm trying to sing like Jesus" could mean singing from the bottom of our hearts. "I'm trying to play UNO like Jesus" could mean forgiving your fellow players when they play attack cards on you and being as gentle as possible when you have to play attack cards on them.

Of course, this trick doesn't work for every verb or verb phrase. "I'm trying to steal like Jesus" doesn't work because Jesus wouldn't steal. On the other hand, it can still be beneficial to consider how Jesus might have done something that He probably wouldn't have. For example, I don't imagine Jesus as being a smoker, but if He did smoke, He would still be considerate of others, so "I'm trying to smoke like Jesus" could mean smoking downwind or at a distance from those who don't smoke.

Another weakness of this replacement trick is that it can be difficult to imagine how Jesus might have done certain things. I'm not sure what it might mean to shop like Jesus, except to live within one's means and plan for the future. "I'm trying to use Facebook like Jesus" could mean anything from using it to uplift others to not using it at all. One rule of thumb is that if you can't picture Jesus doing something, we probably shouldn't do it, but there are many things that He never had the opportunity to do, or was never depicted doing, so it can be hard to imagine how He might have done such a thing, or whether He would have done it or not. Hopefully, as we strengthen our relationship with Jesus and learn more about Him, we will gain a better idea of what He might have done and how He might have done it, giving us a better idea of if or how we should do it.

Ideally, everything we do, we should do like Jesus, whether those are things we do for work or for fun or for any other reason. If we do something, we should try to do it the way Christ would have done it, if we can figure out what that way is. It can be difficult to imagine how Jesus might have done certain things, but for everything else, doing things the way Christ would have done them will help us become more like Him. Essentially, making goals to do things the way Jesus would have done them helps us work toward a much greater, much simpler, and much more catch-all sort of goal: trying to be like Jesus.

Fantastic Advice (Pun Intended)

As I came home from school today, I stopped by the library to see if they had any interesting movies available for me to borrow. Among other things, I picked up a copy of a version of Fantastic Four in which Reed (Mr. Fantastic) asks Susan (The Invisible Woman) what she thinks her life would have been like had she not followed the chain of events that lead to her getting super powers. In response, Susan says "We can't change the past, but we can change the future."

There have been many messages that essentially advocate letting go of the past and focussing on the future instead. The past is meant to be learned from, not lived in. And while speculation can be fun, it's ultimately pointless to ask how things might have turned out had some things gone differently. The past is in the past. It happened, and we can't change that. But, with or without super powers, we can influence what happens next.

The past may not be what we want it to be, but the future can. No matter what lies in our past, we can build a better future on top of it, and we don't have to rewrite history to do it. We can move forward. In fact, to make any progress at all, we have to move forward, and that can be very difficult if we're constantly focussing on the past. Sometimes, we need to let go of the "what ifs" and focus instead on what is and what can be. We can't turn back time or do any of the "fantastic" things superheroes do, but we can learn to make decisions that influence the future. We can change things for the better, and that starts by making peace with the past and making plans for the future.

Philosophy, the Love of Wisdom

My philosophy textbook spends a chapter exploring why God allows evil to exist, so I look forward to looking more into that later. In the meantime, I want to share what I learned about what the word philosophy means.

As vocabulary.com describes it, "The original meaning of the word philosophy comes from the Greek roots philo- meaning 'love' and -sophos, or 'wisdom.'" Thus, philosophy implies a love of wisdom, which is something we should all have. Wisdom is the ability to use the knowledge we have to help us make good decisions. Knowing the commandments is knowledge. Keeping the commandments we know is wisdom. Wisdom is a trait that each of us should try to develop.

I'm not sure if this is one of the main reasons I decided to take a philosophy class, but it certainly applies to me. I know that I need to gain more wisdom in order to become more like God, for more reasons than one, and I hope that studying philosophy will help me explore my thoughts and develop greater wisdom. I know that philosophy won't have all the answers I'm looking for, but it will give me tools that I can use to work with the knowledge I have and hopefully come to some wise conclusions that match up with church doctrine.

If nothing else, my philosophy class is certainly going to be interesting, both in that it will make me think and in that it will give me additional tools to help me examine my thoughts. Thankfully, I have enough wisdom to know to be wary of "the philosophies of men," so I'll take any contrary conclusions I find in this class with a grain of salt. If I come up with a "logical" conclusion that contradicts church doctrine, I'll take that as a sign that I should check my logic again. But hopefully, this class will help me find answers to some things that confuse me about the Gospel and help me gain the wisdom I need to more fully commit to living it.

I seek greater wisdom, and a wise man once taught that what we seek is determined by what we love. So it seems to make sense to me to seek wisdom by studying a subject that literally (ostensibly) was built on a foundation of the love of wisdom.

Beneficial Sin?

In his General Conference talk, The Godhead and the Plan of Salvation, Elder Dalin H. Oaks said something that, upon reflection, I think is somewhat curious: "God the Father is the Father of our spirits. We are His children. He loves us, all that He does is for our eternal benefit."

This is not new doctrine. I have always known that God is our Heavenly Father, that He loves us, and that everything He does, He does because He loves us. At least, I've known it as long as I can remember. But it's that last part that makes me think twice about the quote. "All that He [God] does is for our eternal benefit."

I'm not sure how that could be true. There is one thing that God does that, to me, doesn't seem to work out for our benefit: He allows us to make bad decisions, including sins. I can understand God allowing us to make mistakes that we can learn from, as long as those mistakes don't have eternal consequences. But sins do, or at least can, have eternal consequences. Then, how could it work out to our eternal benefit for God to allow us to make them?

Perhaps God is counting on us repenting. If we repent of our sins, we can benefit from the experience by learning from our sins without having to endure the eternal consequences. But then, what of the sins that people don't repent of? What about the sins that consign one's soul to hell? Wouldn't it be better, more to our eternal benefit, if we hadn't committed those sins? Then, wouldn't it have been better for our eternal benefit for God to have prevented us from committing the sins of which He knew we wouldn't repent?

Perhaps not. I can think of two reasons why God might not intercede to prevent us from committing eternally-damning sins. The first is that the solution might be worse than the problem. Perhaps the temporary loss of agency is worse than the eternal loss of blessings. I doubt it, but it's possible that having our agency taken away from us, even for a short while, would somehow lead to a fate worse than hell.

The second, and more likely reason (in my opinion) is that the solution wouldn't work. Temporarily revoking the agency with which we would have committed sin would not change the fact that, had we had that agency, we would have committed that sin. And I believe that intent weighs more heavily in heaven than actual outcomes does. If I had to guess, I'd say that attempted murder is just as bad in God's eyes as successful murder, in terms of how heavily the sin would weigh on one's soul. If that's true, then attempted sin, or even intended sin, would be counted as being just as bad as committed sin.

If that's the case, there would be very little point in preventing the sin, while allowing the sin to be committed may still have some benefit. If a person sins, learns, and then repents of that sin, then the experience of that sin may prove educational, and thus beneficial, to the sinner, but that assumes that the sinner repents. If the sinner doesn't repent, then the education the sin provides would have a hard time counteracting the negative eternal consequences the sin provides. But any sin, repented or otherwise, creates a hardship for others, which hardship could be beneficial to those who are strengthened by the experience.

Then, perhaps God allows sin because it wouldn't have done the sinner's soul any good to prevent it, and having to deal with the sin and/or sinner may be of benefit to others' souls. Or perhaps there's another reason, or maybe I'm just reading too much into this. In any case, we know that God's actions are for our benefit and that God chooses not to directly prevent us from sinning. There must be some reason God doesn't physically stop us from sinning, and that reason must somehow work out to benefit some of His children in some way. It seems absurd, but if my logic is correct, there must be some kind of benefit in sin.

This can't be right. There must be something I'm missing. I'll have to think more about this later.

Countdown to Conference (Thankfully)

It has just occurred to me that August is more than half over, and then we'll only have one month left until next General Conference. I'm looking forward to it. I'm especially looking forward to the spiritual recharge I expect to get from Conference. I'll admit that I feel pretty drained right now, and I have low hopes for my Primary lesson tomorrow because of that. I hope that I'll be able to muster the spiritual strength to attract and follow the Spirit as I prepare and teach my lesson tomorrow. I need the Spirit's help to fulfil my calling and to get through my daily life. It's been too long since the last time I got the kind of spiritual recharge I get from General Conference. I can't wait to get revitalized by the next one.

Almost Forgot

In my getting ready for an overnighter camping trip, I almost forgot to blog.

Never get so caught up in the daily rush or the everyday distractions that you forget to do what's truly important.

Old Mission Stories

Because of a minor change of schedule, I will be teaching my primary class again next week. (My teaching partner and I usually alternate weeks.) This week, the lesson is about the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and other early saints being sent out as missionaries to proclaim the Gospel to all the world. The lesson manual shares several stories about these missionaries, highlighting some of the miracles and successes they experienced.

Yet, this subject matter doesn't really grab me, and I'm not sure how helpful it'll be in accomplishing the purpose of the lesson: "To increase each child’s desire to be a missionary and share the gospel with others." I can't promise that they'll see the same kind of success the first Apostles saw, and I'm not sure they'll even find the stories interesting, let alone inspiring. Maybe I'll be able to make the stories seem interesting, or maybe I should take a different approach altogether.

Since the purpose of the lesson is to help the children want to be missionaries, maybe I'll focus the lesson on explaining why they would want to do that. I could talk about the blessings involved, both for them and for those they'd be teaching. I could mention the possibility of success and miracles, using the stories in the manual as examples, but I'd also talk about the smaller miracles that they're almost guaranteed to experience, like gaining a stronger testimony, creating a stronger connection to the spirit, and helping extend the blessings of the Gospel to others. The future missionaries in my Primary class may not convert as many people as the early Apostles did or see the same kinds of miracles the early Apostles saw, but there are other good reasons to serve.

Of course, I will have to cover the history in the lesson, so I'll have to at least mention that thousands of people were converted across Europe, but converting thousands of people or getting people ready to be baptised within the first week in the field are not the main goals of missionary service. A missionary's purpose isn't to baptise as many people as possible, but to "invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel." If a missionary does that, they were successful, whether they baptised anyone or not.

In short, I may have to deviate from the lesson manual a little bit this time. I'm sure I'll use the manual, and I'll certainly cover the main points in it, but I'm just not sure how important it is for my primary kids to learn the details of these old missionary stories. I'll seek the Lord's direction as I prepare this lesson, and I'll try to accomplish the given purpose of the lesson. I just might not use all the stories in the lesson to do it.

Problems in Perspective

On my way home today, I got a flat tire, meaning that I had to either repair the tire on the sidewalk or walk the rest of the way home. I decided to walk. As I was walking home, I walked past a group of men who were gathered around a man who was laying face-down on the sidewalk. He wasn't moving, and a motorcycle lay at the side of the road nearby. Kinda put my problems into perspective.

Thankfully, the paramedics arrived and the man was able to communicate with them. He wasn't dead. But even if he was completely fine from then on out (which I'm not sure he was or would have been), he still would have had gone through an ordeal that put my inconvenience to shame. I might be annoyed that I had to walk a considerable distance and that I still have to fix my bike's tire tomorrow, but things could be worse for me, a LOT worse.

The same is true for all of us. All of us suffer, but there are many people whose sufferings are greater than ours. There are many people who have fewer blessings and greater hardships than we have. So, while we can always try to reduce our hardships, and we may even be justified in complaining about them, we should bear in mind that, despite our trials, we are still a lot better off than some people.

Everyone has problems, but we, as Americans, have many fewer problems than those who live in many other parts of the world. Things aren't perfect here, and we can and should try to make life more perfect here, but we should try to keep our grievances in perspective. Life is a lot harder elsewhere, and it's a lot harder for some people than it is for us.

Answers

I love communication. We are blessed to live in an era with miraculous devices that enable us to instantly communicate with people all over the globe. If you are reading this blog post, that almost definitely means that you have access to the Internet, which means that you can ask the world questions and quickly get thousands of answers. Do you want to know what the standard currency of Taiwan is? You could find out very easily with a quick web search, and countless other questions could be answered just as easily.

But, of course, there's a catch. Among the thousands of answers the internet will give you to any questions you could possibly think of asking, there are going to be some wrong answers. For example, if you ask the internet what happened in Charlottesville a few days ago, you are going to get a wide variety of answers. These answers differ because each person has their own perspective and set of opinions. Even if each person was being completely honest, they would all have vastly different stories to tell. Thus, the complete, unvarnished, objective truth of this or any matter can be hard to find on the internet.

Fortunately, while the internet is a good source of answers, we all have access to an even better source of Truth. Now, I highly doubt that God will tell or show any of us exactly what happened in Charlottesville, but He will tell us something that's even more important and an even stronger point of internet contention: what we ought to do about it. God won't tell us the standard currency of Taiwan or what sort of weather we can expect to see in Nebraska this weekend; we can turn to the internet for answers like that, but God is the best source to turn to for advice.

So, as we all try to determine what to say and how to say it and what to do and how to do it, it probably couldn't hurt to consult the internet, but we should definitely consult God, too. The internet is a wonderful tool, but it doesn't have all the answers. The internet can give us directions to the nearest restaurant or anywhere else on the globe, but God can give us accurate, trustworthy directions for life.

Important Conversations

There have been many important conversations today. I've taken part in a few of them. Thankfully, many of the conversations have been civil, but civil or not, they have all played an important role in forcing us to examine our beliefs and how strongly we believe in them. I have felt some of my beliefs become stronger, and I have felt some of my other beliefs begin to change. I trust that these changes have been for the better, and I hope that you have had or will have similar experiences in your conversations about your beliefs. It is important to examine our beliefs periodically, especially at times when we feel the need to fight for them. Conversations with those whose beliefs differ from ours can help us make the vital decisions of which beliefs to strengthen and which beliefs to change. I pray that we will all have the wisdom to make the right decisions regarding our beliefs, especially as it becomes increasingly important to discuss them.

Daily Devotions

In his General Conference talk, Whatsoever He Saith unto You, Do It, Elder L. Whitney Clayton spoke about the importance of "simple practices of faith, such as studying the Book of Mormon . . . paying tithing, and serving in the Church with devotion." I occasionally blog about the same topic, usually noting that I need to do a better job of consistently employing those practices. Tonight is same as usual. I guess that my problem is that I stay up too late blogging and watching Youtube videos, so my brother / roommate has usually gone to bed by the time I do, and I don't want to wake him and keep him up by reading a book, assuming I'm still awake enough to get anything from reading it.

However, it has occurred to me that I don't necessarily have to read the scriptures every night. I could read them every morning instead, and get that whole "'Ere you left your room this morning" thing going. I might still stink at blogging early, but if I read the scriptures in the morning, before even getting out of bed, I might pick up spiritual messages that I'll remember longer than it takes me to fall asleep at night. Those spiritual messages may even be blogworthy, giving me the opportunity to blog first thing in the morning, before the whole day evaporates.

I had thought that I should blog earlier so I could spend part of my evening reading the scriptures so I could find things I could blog about so I could blog about them earlier. Now, I think I had the right idea, except that my timing was just a bit off. Tweaking the cycle slightly, the new plan is to read the scriptures first thing in the morning (getting my day off to a good start), and then blogging shortly after I get out of bed (rather than shortly before I go to bed). I'll follow this plan for a few days, or as long as I can manage to stick to the plan, and we'll see how it goes. Elder Clayton made some pretty great promises to those who keep up their "simple practices of faith." Most of the Apostles have. Now that I have a slightly revised plan, I figure that it's worth another shot.

Tests of Strength

The purpose of my Primary lesson tomorrow is "To help the children understand that trials and tests of faith can strengthen us if we are faithful and obedient," so that's what I'm going to try to do. Toward the end of the lesson, I am going to testify to the strengthening power of tests. I'll compare these tests to exercise, noting that our bodies get stronger when we perform physically difficult tasks. Similarly, when we perform spiritually difficult tasks, like fasting, resisting temptation, and obeying the commandments, our spirits grow stronger. Going out on what turned out to be a "pointless" expedition and facing such great hardships without complaining must have been a great test of faith for Zion's Camp, and many of the men couldn't manage it, but those who did endure those hardships without complaining showed and developed great spiritual strength.

We need great spiritual strength in order to face the challenges of today's world, so it's more important than ever for God to test our faith and faithfulness so they can grow. The tests and challenges we face are difficult, and they cause some people to become bitter and angry, but if we are faithful, we can use these tests and challenges to develop our spiritual strength. We can view each experience we have and each choice we make as a kind of practice or exercise, with the purpose of helping us gain the strength to pass our next tests and overcome our next challenges. The men of Zion's Camp faced challenges that helped strengthen them for the challenges that lied ahead, and I'm sure that my Primary class will, too, so with this lesson, I'm going to try to help the children develop a positive attitude about tests and trials, knowing that these tests can help make them stronger.

Faithful Despite Trials

In addition to teaching in Primary this week, I will also go Home Teaching. Whether by tradition of according to counsel from higher up, the Home Teachers I've known tend to teach from the First Presidency Message found in the current version of the Ensign, and I see no reason to break that tradition, especially since this month's First Presidency Message goes very well with my Primary lesson.

President Uchtdorf began this month's First Presidency message by talking about a young woman who joined the church and served faithfully in it despite the hardships she faced before and after her conversion. This is similar to the behavior of the men who passed the trial that was Zion's Camp. They, too, faced hardships yet remained faithful. Like them, we should try to stay faithful to God, no matter what trials are going on in our lives, knowing that those trials will serve to prove and strengthen our commitment to God.

From first-hand experience, I can tell you that it's difficult to stay true to God when life gets hard. That's what makes life a real test, but I know that it's possible to pass it. If the people in these stories were able to stay faithful despite their trials, I am certain that we can remain faithful despite ours. My hope is that I can use the success of these individuals to inspire confidence in those I'll be teaching this Sunday (and in myself). We will all face trials in our lives. The true test is not if we can survive them but whether we will remain faithful despite enduring them.

The Plan of Happiness

As many of you may have seen on Facebook by now, one of our cats, Felicia, was struck by a car and died at about 9:20 tonight. As she was dying, I crouched beside her and pet her and tried to tell her that she was going to be okay. I felt a little bit silly for saying that. At the time, I didn't know whether she was going to live or die or, if she lived, how long or hard her recovery was going to be. I didn't know that it was going to be okay, and, by some definitions, it wasn't. But as my mom told me a few moments ago, there's more than one kind of "okay." I feel confident that Felicia is okay now.

I am very thankful that God's plan of happiness extends to all of His creatures. Thanks to the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are all promised an eternal afterlife, including our pets. Felicia is dead, but her spirit lives on, and her spirit and body will be reunited and made whole again in the Lord's due time. In the meantime, I am certain that God will see to it that she is made comfortable and happy. And I trust that, through this assurance, God will also bring some comfort and happiness to us.

We are going to miss Felicia, but, as cliche as it may be to say this, she's in a better place now, and we'll rejoin her when it's our time. One of the most important things we learn in this church is that families can be together forever. Felicia wasn't officially sealed to us, but I'm sure God could work something out. He has a plan. We just have to trust Him and follow His plan as well as we know how, knowing that, in the end, it's all going to be okay.

Resist and He Will Flee

The other day, as I was blogging about how the Holy Ghost respects our agency by not hanging around when we don't want Him to, I was reminded of another spirit that doesn't linger long after being asked to leave: Satan. James 4:7 reads, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." The question I have is why Satan flees from those who resist him. The Holy Ghost leaves us alone when we want Him to because He respects our agency (possibly among other reasons), but Satan most decidedly does not respect our agency. In fact, he is actively trying to destroy our agency. Then, why would he turn around and leave us alone so easily? James doesn't seem to be terribly clear on the matter, but I have a few guesses.

It could be that he gives up the fight so easily because he knows he can't win. Joseph Smith taught that "All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not." Perhaps that power extends to these temptation tug-of-wars we occasionally have with Satan. Perhaps his power to tempt us is not as great as our power to resist temptation.

Still, what has he got to lose? Let's say he tempts us to do something, and we say 'no.' What possible reason would he have not to ask again? In theory, he could ask us over and over again until we give in, so why doesn't he?

One possible reason has to do with the Experience systems in most role-playing games. Many role-playing games have a sort of point/reward system that give a player or character bonuses for defeating enemies. Each time a player defeats an enemy, their character gains Experience. Once a character has gained enough Experience, they "level up" and become stronger. Perhaps that is what Satan is trying to avoid. Perhaps the reason Satan doesn't offer us the same temptation over and over again is that he doesn't want to give us too much practice or experience so that we'll become too good at resisting his temptations.

As far as I can tell, Satan's greatest advantage isn't the ability to outlast us or to wear us down with incessant temptations. In fact, it could be that we have the advantage in those areas. Instead, I think that his greatest advantage over us is stealth. I recently watched a video made by a man who loves, and obsessively studies, Asian cultures. In that video, he critiqued a particular anime character who claimed to be a great ninja, comparing that character's tactics to that of a traditional, historical ninja. The critic's greatest complaint against the so-called "ninja"s tactics is that he stayed in the fight too long after he found out he was losing. Normally, ninjas use stealth to sneak up on and strike their targets and then get away before their opponents (or their surviving allies) can retaliate. This is what Satan does, or tries to do. He tries to catch us with our guards down, sneak in, strike us when we're weak, and then slip away before we can properly fight against him. By using subtle methods and only attacking periodically, Satan gives us opportunities to feel safe and let our guards down, giving him opportunities to strike.

Of course, it could also be that Satan leaves us alone when we fight him because he doesn't have a choice. Satan is our adversary, but he's God's adversary, too, and God has the power to make laws that Satan has to obey. It could be that Satan leaves when we fight him because God told him to. However, that explanation feels like a cop-out. It sounds like saying that things are the way they are "because God said so," when there's another, more logical, but similar explanation. Many General Authorities, including President Uchtdorf, have taught that "cannot exist in the presence of light." When we resist temptation, that may invite the Spirit, and when we have the Spirit with us, Satan cannot linger. It is, as I said, rather similar to the arbitrary rules explanation, but it makes a bit more sense.


In the end, though, the reason why Satan flees when we fight him isn't nearly as important as the fact that He does. Whether he flees because he knows he can't beat us, or because he doesn't want to give us practice beating him, or because he's being sneaky, or because he can't endure the Spirit's presence, or simply because God told him to, the fact remains that what James said is true: "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." As long as that works, it doesn't matter how or why it works. Satan may have any number of reasons for retreating when we fight him off, but as long as that trick keeps working, it may not be all that important what all of those reasons are.

"Unnecessary" Toughness

On Sunday, I'm going to teach my Primary class about Zion's Camp. Zion's Camp was formed in response to the Missouri mobs our class learned about last Sunday. The band of about 200 men plus some women and children travelled a thousand miles and faced many hardships, including a cholera outbreak that killed fourteen people, only to be called off and sent back less than two months after they had set out. Their goal had ostensibly been to help the Missouri saints gets their homes and lands back, but this didn't end up happening, which almost makes me wonder what the actual point was. If God knew that they wouldn't end up helping the saints on Missouri (which, of course, He did), then why would He send them out there just to face a bunch of trials and then come home?

The purpose, as the lesson manual makes abundantly clear, was to test the faith and faithfulness of the members of Zion's Camp. Their hardships gave them ample opportunities to complain and grow bitter, and some of them did. The others grew stronger, and many of them went on to be leaders in the church. These hardships, unnecessary though they may seem, actually turned out to be good tools for sorting the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. By facing these hardships, those men proved their character, one way or the other.

And so do we. In many ways, our life on Earth is much like the march of Zion's Camp. It's a relatively short period of time with a high concentration of tests and trials designed to help us prove our quality. Just like Zion's Camp, we set out just to face a bunch of trials and then go back home. That is, literally, almost the entire point of mortality. And the ultimate purpose is about the same. Our trials are meant to test and strengthen our hearts and souls. In life, we face hardships that exist mostly to give us opportunities to prove how we would respond to them. When we respond well, that shows that we can be trusted not to react badly when things go poorly for us. When we respond poorly, that shows that we have room for improvement. Those trials often seem pointless and unnecessary, but that's because the point of them is to test how well we can endure them.

Life is full of trials and hardships, and some of them seem completely pointless, but God always has good reasons for the hardships He asks us to face. It's just that, sometimes, the main reason is to see how well we will act when we face them. So, let's try to be patient with our "pointless" trials, because, sometimes, proving that we can be patient with our trials in the entire point of facing them.

A Draining Debate

Today wasn't as restful as I had hoped it would be, probably in large part because I spent much of the day debating a personal issue online. Now, I know that debates are important, but they are also emotionally exhausting to some people and spiritually draining. Some people, particularly those who debate such issues frequently, may have the stamina to debate often, but I think I prefer discussions over debates. I like it when everyone tries to understand other people's points of view instead of trying to persuade others to see things their way. Of course, I could have done a much better job of trying to understand others earlier, and perhaps, if I had, the debate/discussion would have gone much more smoothly and might actually have accomplished something productive. I think that we could all stand to become better listeners and the world would be a much nicer place if we did.

First Promptings

 The fourth tip Elder Rasband gave us for following the Spirit was "Fourth, we must act on the first prompting" (emphasis in the original). However, my concern with this tip is how reliant it is on the third: "Third, we must recognize the Spirit when it comes." I have some trouble with that. We all have thoughts that are originally ours, and we all have thoughts planted in our minds by the adversary. Doing the first thing that pops into your head, trusting that that idea came from God, can have terrible consequences. If we can't tell the difference between the Spirit's voice and the devil's voice or ours, perhaps it would be best to consider the morality and possible consequences of a course of action before we follow it.

Yet, Elder Rasband told us that "We must be confident in our first promptings:"

Sometimes we rationalize; we wonder if we are feeling a spiritual impression or if it is just our own thoughts. When we begin to second-guess, even third-guess, our feelings—and we all have—we are dismissing the Spirit; we are questioning divine counsel.

Those are strong words. I don't feel like I'm dismissing the Spirit when I try to confirm the origin of a prompting. I admit that I am, or at least may be, "questioning divine counsel," but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We are taught to seek confirmation for what we learn from the scriptures and the prophets. Then, why shouldn't we seek confirmation for promptings as well? When temptations can be disguised as spiritual promptings, I would think that it would be imperative to discern whether a prompting came from God or Satan before we decide to follow it.

It could be that I'm worrying too much. Perhaps the odds of a temptation posing as a prompting are smaller than I think. Within the same paragraph as the message quoted above, Elder Rasband relayed a reassuring promise from the Prophet Joseph Smith: "The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that if you will listen to the first promptings, you will get it right nine times out of ten." So, statistically-speaking, it makes sense to follow one's first prompting because it's highly likely to have been inspired by God. Ninety percent of the time, we will following divine counsel.

I still worry about what happens the other ten percent of the time, but maybe I shouldn't. We all sin fairly regularly, whether we're following promptings to do so or not. Accidentally following a temptation we thought was a divine prompting isn't going to make a huge difference, in the eternal scheme of things. Yes, it'll mean we'll have one more sin to repent of, but we already have more sins than we can count. Accidentally adding one more to the list every tenth time we try to follow the Spirit probably won't make that much of a difference.

This may be the wrong attitude to take on this matter. I would rather be careful and try to avoid any chance of accidentally committing sin. But God has a different perspective than I have, and the counsel from one of His inspired representatives is to take our chances with our first promptings. Maybe He feels that the benefits of urging us to follow our first promptings are worth the inherent risks. In any case, it's probably good advice to follow at least ninety percent of the time.

Burdens or Blessings

This morning, my Mom and I were given a thoughtful gift: a wagonload of largish rocks. These rocks had been sitting in a neighbor's yard for quite some time, and she was actually rather eager for an opportunity to be rid of them. But my mother and I, along with the rest of the family, have been working on a landscaping project which involves a considerable number of rocks, and we were grateful to get a few more. While it may seem unkind to pass one's burdens off on another, I consider it fairly kind of our neighbor to offer us her unwanted rocks. Those rocks, which were a burden to her, were a blessing to us.

I wonder if this phenomenon repeats itself elsewhere in the gospel. Sins are a burden, but I don't think Jesus considered it a "blessing" when He took our sins upon Himself. There are instances where something that is considered to be a burden turns out to be a blessing to those who bear them. For example, service opportunities can seem burdensome, but if we take advantage of those opportunities, they become create blessings for us, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. I wonder if there is something in the gospel that is an actual burden to one person, but that, upon transfer, becomes a blessing to another.

I currently can't think of any burden mentioned in the scriptures or the gospel that becomes a blessing for another person. Perhaps I'll come up with something and add it to this blog post later, but right now, I'm too tired and not attuned enough to the Spirit to come up with a good example. For now, I guess this is just a lesson on perspectives. Sometimes, something that's a burden for us now can become a blessing for someone else, including possibly our future selves. So, let us be patient when it comes to our spiritual burdens. We may later find that these burdens were intended to become a blessing, for either someone else or our future selves, so perhaps we shouldn't become too upset when we receive burdens. It's possible that those things which are burdens to us could become blessings to others, if only we have the courage to share.

Catching the Canary - Willing to Receive

In his Sunday Morning April 2017 General Conference talk, Let the Holy Spirit Guide, Elder Ronald A. Rasband gave us four pieces of advice regarding the Holy Spirit:

First, we strive to live worthy of the Spirit. ...

Second, we must be willing to receive the Spirit. ...

Third, we must recognize the Spirit when it comes. ...

Fourth, we must act on the first prompting.

Each of these tips deserve blog posts of their own, though some of them are self-explanatory or have been discussed to death in previous blog posts. The first tip in particular has been covered more times than I can count. We all know that we must be righteous, or at least repentant, to keep the Holy Spirit with us. What stands out most to me among these four tips is that we must also be welcoming.

I believe that a relationship with the Holy Ghost can only exist by mutual consent. The Holy Ghost doesn't stick around when He doesn't want to, but He also doesn't stick around when we don't want Him to. Similar to another spirit I should blog about sometime, if we push the Holy Ghost away, He will leave. Thus, it's important for us not to push Him away. Instead, we should make a conscious effort to welcome Him and His advice. While we must maintain our worthiness to ensure the Holy Ghost's willingness to remain with us, we must also maintain our willingness to receive Him.

As with the issue of worthiness, it can be difficult to maintain a willingness to be led by the Spirit. The natural man within each of us doesn't take kindly to criticism, even when it's as gentle and constructive as the Holy Ghost's guidance often is. The natural man doesn't want to change, and it certainly doesn't want a pesky spirit constantly reminding it that it needs to change, so we need to want those reminders instead. We need to want to become better people, and we need to invite the Spirit to help us learn how we can do that. Without that invitation, the Holy Ghost may, respectfully, leave us alone. And it is NOT a smart idea for us to try to face the challenges of life alone. We need the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and He doesn't stick around long where He isn't wanted. So, if we want the Holy Ghost to remain with us, we have to really want it.

Spiritual Canary - Sin Detector

A blog post I read a while back reminded me of the practice of taking canaries into mines as a warning system against harmful gases. The idea was that if harmful gases were unwittingly released, the sensitive, delicate birds would become aware of the harmful gases and then alert the miners of the danger. Unfortunately, the canaries warned the miners of the deadly gases by dying. Thus, it wasn't a warning cry that alerted the miners of the danger, but the lack of "all is well" chirping. If a miner wasn't listening to the canary's chirping consciously enough to notice its absence, they might fail to heed the life-saving warning.

The Spirit works in a similar manner. Those of us who have been given the Gift of the Holy Ghost can have the Holy Ghost with us constantly, as long as we remain worthy. Thus, if we ever notice that the Spirit is no longer with us, we can take that as a warning sign that we may not be worthy of His companionship. Of course, the Holy Ghost differs from canaries in many ways. Firstly, He doesn't die. He wilfully departs because He doesn't stay where He isn't comfortable or welcome. Second, He sometimes does give us the warning alarms that the canaries only gave by dying. When we start to stray off the straight and narrow path, the Holy Ghost often warns us of that and encourages us to turn back before He leaves us to our own devices. Still, if one is sensitive enough to feel the presence of the Spirit and attentive enough to notice His absence, that alone can reveal to us that a little bit of repentance is in order.

Satan is subtle. In fact, his greatest weapon lies in his subtlety. It could be said that he can only win if we don't realize that we're fighting. Thus, we need to be vigilant and attentive. We need to watch out for the warning signs of spiritually-deadly temptations, and it would certainly help if we were attuned enough to the Spirit to notice when His reassuring presence has gone missing. It is difficult to maintain that level of closeness to the Spirit, but the benefits are worth the effort, especially since they include a direct line to inspiration and inner peace. Plus, when we are attuned enough to the Spirit to feel His constant presence, we can recognize the warning sign inherent when His presence is conspicuously absent.

Look Up

It's time I got back to blogging about General Conference talks.

During the Sunday Morning session of the April 2017 General Conference, Elder Yoon Hwan Choi gave a talk titled Don’t Look Around, Look Up! That phrase came from some advice Elder Choi's father gave him a few months after he was baptised. Elder Choi said:

One day, a few months after my baptism, I heard some members criticizing each other in church. I was very disappointed. I went home and told my father that maybe I should not go to church anymore. It was difficult to see members criticize others like that. After listening, my father taught me that the gospel had been restored and it is perfect but members are not yet, neither himself nor me. He firmly said, “Do not lose your faith because of the people around you, but build a strong relationship with Jesus Christ. Don’t look around, look up!”

This is good advice for many reasons. People aren't perfect, but Jesus Christ and His gospel are. People may let you down, but Jesus Christ and His gospel won't. We're not trying to be as good as or better than other people; we're trying to become like Jesus Christ. There are many reasons to "look around," like looking for opportunities to serve others and making sure they're okay, but there are many more reasons to look up. We look up for inspiration, for aid, and for instruction. We look up to see examples after which to model our behavior and to remind ourselves of where we're ultimately going. We should look up more often, and that probably means spending less time looking around at others.

Of course, I don't think that we should never look around, but I'm probably misinterpreting that part of Elder Choi's Father's advice, and regardless of what he meant by looking around, I agree with him that it's important to look up.

Absolute Evil

Last night, I wrote that Hitler wasn't completely evil as part of my argument that no one born on Earth ever was. This lead me to wonder whether or not "absolute evil" exists in anyone. Specifically, I wonder if Satan is 100% evil.

While we know that Hitler and everyone else who was born on Earth fought on God's side in the war in heaven, choosing to follow God's plan rather than Satan's, we also know that Satan fought against God. Whether that's inherently evil or not may depend on his motivations. If one fights against God out of ignorance, that's misguided, but not necessarily evil. Satan's motivations for fighting against God were selfish. He wanted a prominent position of glory and honor.

However, don't many of us want the same thing? Most of us are striving for exaltation, which involves a good deal of glory and honor, especially once we attain godhood. I don't know if that was exactly what Satan was going for, but it was probably something similar.

The evil of Satan's actions lies in how he intended to gain that position. He wanted glory and honor, but he didn't want to have to earn it the hard way, like we must. In fact, his plan would have fundamentally altered our role in the plan and would have rendered Earth life almost useless. Without agency, we couldn't make our own choices, so we would have had no way to earn the exaltation he was seeking. That's what was so evil about him: a complete disregard for others. He didn't care whether or not we would be able to progress; he just wanted to make sure that he would.

Of course, I'm not sure what's so selfless about following God's plan for our eternal welfare, and Hitler showed a rather strong disregard for the welfare of others as well (and that's putting it VERY lightly). Perhaps Hitler was pure evil after all, which would have been a shame since he had been on God's side at one time, as Lucifer had been before the war in heaven.

So, I'm not sure if there is such a thing as "absolute evil," or, if there is such a thing, how we might define it and who might have possessed it. Thankfully, speculation on the subject of absolute evil isn't important. What's important is for us not to become evil ourselves. Thankfully, we have some fairly (if not absolutely) evil examples to learn from, and the lesson, as usual, is love.

The way to avoid becoming evil like Satan or Hitler is to love others and seek their welfare, not just our own ends. Jesus was practically the embodiment of both goodness and love, and I don't think that's a coincidence. To be good is to love. So, if we want to be good rather than evil (and want to be blessed rather than damned), we should do the opposite of what Satan and Hitler did by loving and blessing others instead of using them or abusing them. Those two may or may not have been completely evil, but they're both certainly evil enough to provide a clear example of what NOT to do.