All People Are Children of God

I just rewatched Elder Brian K. Taylor's talk Am I a Child of God?, and while his message was focused on the individual, reminding each of us that we are all children of God, regardless of anything we've done or anything that's going on in our lives, this answer also reflects another important truth that I plan to write about shortly: All human beings are children of God, even the bad ones.

There have been a lot of bad people in the history of the world. There are plenty of bad people alive on the Earth right now. There is a lot of wickedness in the world, all caused by bad people, but even the worst of those people are still children of God. Even the worst people have divine potential. Even the worst people can repent. Even the worst people who have ever lived can, after several major (but still possible) changes, eventually become perfect.

No one is irredeemably evil. In fact, I might go so far as to say that no one is evil at all. Wicked people do evil things, but I would not say that they themselves are evil. People are imperfect, many are wicked, and all make bad choices from time to time (some, frequently), but that does not make them inherently evil. All humans are human, and all of them are children of God.

Let's try to remember that when we have to deal with the "evil" people we encounter in life. Let's remember that they weren't born evil, and they aren't incurably evil now. Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to stop them from doing evil. Of course, we should try to persuade them to do good, and sometimes, force will be necessary to prevent people from harming others, but even when we must use force against others, we must also remember that they are still human and that they are still children of God. Even the worst people can still repent and become better and good people. So let's remember that everyone has divine potential, and let's do what we can to help them repent and try to achieve it.

Focus on the Purpose - Values and Choices

This morning, my mom and I were talking about my lesson and how I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to teach it. She advised me to consider the lesson's purpose. Each lesson in the Primary manual has a stated purpose, and those purposes are never about learning the history of events and rarely include finding role-models among the characters, two things which I had thought were rather important. Instead, the purpose of this lesson is "To help the children recognize how our values influence our choices." Looking at the story again through this lens, it started to seem a lot easier to teach.

Jacob valued his brother's birthright more than he valued his brother's well-being, so he only offered his brother some food on the condition of exchange, and Esau valued that food more than he valued his birthright, so he made the deal. Later, Jacob valued the birthright more than his integrity, so he used trickery to get his father's blessing. By that time, Esau came to value the birthright more than he valued his brother's life, so he made plans to kill him.

And here, I might add the story of Jacob working for Laban so he could marry Rachel, because that shows how much Jacob valued Rachel, but I probably won't go into detail on this point because it's the primary focus of next week's lesson.

Then, finally, when Jacob and Esau were reunited, Jacob valued his Esau's forgiveness (and his own life) more than he valued his livestock, so he offered Esau lots of animals, but Esau had also had a change of heart, and he now valued his brother more than the livestock, so he let Jacob keep it.

I'll tell the children that, at each major point in the story, each of the characters are driven, to one degree or another, by their desires. I'll probably also share a relevant quote from President Uchtdorf:

For what we love determines what we seek.

What we seek determines what we think and do.

What we think and do determines who we are—and who we will become.

I'll conclude by encouraging the children to value and seek the things that have eternal value, like strong, wholesome, family relationships. My hope is that, as the children learn what Jacob and Esau valued and what they did because of their values, those children will begin to think about what they value and what they ought to do. I'm glad that my mom reminded me to think about the purpose of this lesson. It really helped me figure out how to focus this lesson and pull some valuable moral lessons from it, which I can now share with the children.

A Tale with No Heroes

The tricky part of this lesson I'm going to give this Sunday isn't deciding what parts of the story I want to share or focus on, but deciding what to say about them. Of course, I'm going to cover the birthright-for-pottage trade (and I'll probably have to take a minute to explain what birthrights and pottage are), but what should I say about that exchange? I usually try to teach my Primary kids some moral lessons when I give examples of people in scriptures. I use scriptural figures to demonstrate behavior that they should or should not engage in. The trouble is that neither Jacob or Esau demonstrate exemplary behavior here. Esau was foolish and Jacob was selfish. Maybe they had good reasons for what they did, but it would take rather extraordinary circumstances to justify either of their behavior. I take some solace from the fact that we can learn for either kind of example, good or bad, but it kind of bugs me that there is no "good guy" here.

And the morality of this tale gets even murkier when Jacob actually receives the birthright by tricking his father into thinking that he's Esau. Jacob is being blatantly dishonest here, which is, naturally, very wrong. Perhaps one could say that he only did it so he could claim something that was technically owed to him, but I don't know why Jacob couldn't just tell his father, Isaac, about the deal he and his brother had made. Sure, Isaac would have been confused, and Esau might have lied about the deal they made, but Jacob could have at least tried to be honest.

But Esau wasn't much (if any) better. When he learned of Jacob's deception, he was terribly upset and made plans to kill Jacob. If lying to your father is immoral, planning to murder your brother certainly is. Luckily for Jacob, he was warned about Esau's intentions, and he managed to get away, but I'll want to be careful how I word that because he was warned by his mother, and she wasn't exactly a "good guy" either, since she helped Jacob pull off the deception of Isaac. In fact, it seemed to be her idea. We know that she was a decent person; we learned that last week, but she seems to be showing some favoritism here, and I'd rather not get into that. There's too much questionable morality in this story as it is.

Thankfully, the story has a happy ending. Jacob and Esau reconcile as brothers and they start to live in the same area again, non-murderously. There could be a lesson in forgiveness there. Plus, since both of the brothers are generous with each other at this point, that might be an indicator of character growth, which could contribute to a lesson on overcoming one's vices by learning from one's mistakes. Still, even with a happy and blogworthy ending, this lesson is going to be difficult to teach. There's a lot of behavior in this lesson that's not necessarily good, and I don't want to give my children the impression that such behavior is okay. I have to cover the events of the story, and I will, but but I'm not entirely sure how I want to portray them.

How Hungry Was Esau?

I read the scriptural account of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for some food, and I have to ask: What Esau really THAT hungry? Because if he was, Jacob was pretty horrible for demanding his birthright in exchange, and if he wasn't, he was terribly short-sighted.

Here is the whole exchange, taken from Genesis 25:

29 ¶ And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:

30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.

31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.

32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.

34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

So, the Bible tells us that Esau was "faint," and Esau says as much and then goes one step further, claiming that he is "at the point to die." If this is an accurate portrayal of Esau's condition, Jacob probably should have just given Esau the food. In fact, he probably should have just given him the food, even if he wasn't that hungry. We have a moral obligation to feed the hungry, but beside this, these two are brothers! Isn't it typical for most families to share with each other? I can honestly say that if one of my siblings asked for a meal, I would make them one, and I wouldn't ask them for much, if anything, in return.

But let's say that Jacob had some reason to believe that the birthright would be safer with him. After all, Esau clearly isn't a good steward of the birthright if he was willing to give it up so easily. Unless, of course, he was actually starving. Very few things are worth dying for, and a birthright you aren't going to live long enough to enjoy probably isn't one of them. If Esau truly was starving, he might have been justified in giving up the birthright in exchange for a life-saving meal.

But if Esau wasn't actually starving, he was a very poor judge of value. Not many people have traded something of that much value for something of so little value. And if Esau valued his birthright so little, he probably didn't deserve it.

So the morality of this situation hinges on how hungry Esau was. Was he starving, or was he exaggerating? What does it mean that he was "faint"? However hungry Esau was, Jacob probably should have fed him, and it's good that he did, but Esau's selling of his birthright for a single meal indicates either tremendous foolishness or great desperation. I wish I knew which condition convinced him that he should sell his birthright for a little bit of food.

Ethical Obligations

One thing that interests me particularly about ethics is the idea of obligation. We are, some would argue, obligated to act ethically, or at least to not act unethically, but what does "obligated" really mean in this context? If we're "obligated" to do something (or to not do something), and we don't do it (or we do it anyway), what happens?

Clearly, obligation does not imply a lack of options. One may have a lack of valid options if one is obligated to do something, but they remain able to choose an invalid option. For example, I may be morally obligated to help someone, but I could still choose not to. People break moral obligations all the time, which begs the question: if obligations don't literally force people to behave a certain way, what do they do?

Obligations like these may impose penalties. Arguably, certain severe infractions of moral obligations warrant some kind of punishment. For example, a person who breaks the moral obligation to not murder people is likely to be punished by long incarceration and/or death.

Yet, there are other moral obligations the breaking of which carry little in temporal punishment. Looking back at my example of not helping someone, I highly doubt that I'd be criminally punished for an infraction of such a minor moral law.

However, even minor infractions carry some penalties, such as restriction from the blessings and privileges we might otherwise have qualified for. In one sense, this is all capital punishment and incarceration are: restrictions from privileges, manly the privilege to live among normal society, or to live at all.

For the most part, I see the justice in this. God and society offer blessings to those who qualify for them by obeying their rules. Yet, I'm not sure that people necessarily give up their "inalienable" rights of life and liberty when they disregard their moral obligations. They certainly don't deserve all the privileges of a law-abiding citizen, but I'm not sure I'd count being allowed to live as a revocable "privilege."

Clearly, I need to do some more thinking on this topic, since I'm not one-hundred percent sure what moral obligations are and what we ethically can and should do to those who break them.

Now or Later

This Sunday, I'm teaching a lesson about Jacob and Esau, and this lesson is somewhat pertinent to me personally. The attention activity and much of the lesson focus on the contrast between temporary and eternal value. I struggle with this sometimes. I frequently make choices based on what I want at the moment rather than what I'll want later. I eat unhealthily. I stay up late. I watch too many Youtube videos before blogging. Too often, I neglect things of lasting value because I'm too busy seeking things of immediate value. This is, of course, unwise, as Esau eventually learned. As I prepare this lesson, I want to learn from Esau's mistake. I want to learn to look ahead and think about the big picture before I make decisions of potentially lasting consequence. I want to develop the wisdom to choose things of eternal value over the things I want in the moment.

Encouraging our Students

I have the best coworkers. This afternoon, I heard one of them being super-positive and encouraging, saying things like "You've got this," "I have faith in you," and "I'm excited to see the final draft." (I work at a writing tutoring center, in case you didn't know.) I should be more like that. I sometimes admit when things might be challenging, but that's not always what a person needs to hear, even when it's true. Knowing that they're in for a challenge might help them prepare to face it, but making them believe that it won't actually be a challenge for them might be exactly what gives them the courage to face it. I shouldn't misrepresent the difficulties that lie ahead of them, but I shouldn't underestimate them, either. I should have more confidence in my students, and I should encourage them to have confidence in themselves as well.

Tools to Reduce Challenges

A few hours ago, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the dishes I had to do. There was a pile of dirty plates in the sink and another pile of dirty pots on the stove. But shortly thereafter, I had it all taken care of. The plates were in the dishwasher, ready to be washed, and the pots were in the drying rack, having been washed by hand. What had looked like a daunting job turned out to be fairly quick and easy.

I wonder how much of life is like that. Many challenges in life appear daunting, but perhaps some of them aren't.

Of course, doing all those dishes that quickly and easily wouldn't have been possible without the dishwasher. As with life, having and using the right tools can make all the difference. There are many tools that can make various jobs easier. Often, we just need to find the right tools and learn how to use them.

Life is full of challenges, but not all of them have to be as challenging as they appear. So, instead of getting overwhelmed by the challenges before us, let's use the tools we have available to us and see if they can make our challenges any easier.

The Unique Evil of Misdeeds

In this new system of D&D we used last night, one of the main mechanics is Shadow. The shadow of Mordor is spreading all across the land of Middle-Earth and into the hearts of many, including our characters. Mechanically, characters gain Shadow Points in various ways. If a character gains too many, they'll experience a Bout of Madness, and if they experience too many Bouts of Madness, they will go completely mad and probably get themselves killed. Characters can gain Shadow Points in four ways: by experiencing anguish, like a harrowing experience that reminds them of their own mortality; by coming across blighted lands, where the forces of shadow have done great evil; by taking hold of tainted treasure, like Smaug's hoard or Sauron's ring; and by their own misdeeds. In all of these cases, the character gets to make a Saving Throw to avoid gaining the Shadow Points, except those gained through misdeeds. In those cases, the character is not given a chance to resist the encroaching evil because they are willfully giving in to it.

While not the best system to represent the effects of evil, this system makes an interesting point about the unique evil of misdeeds. There is a lot of darkness in the world, and seeing too much of it can turn our hearts to evil if we let that evil consume us. When we commit sins or misdeeds, that's essentially what we're doing. Committing sin isn't just seeing evil, which can often be enough to harden one's heart, but doing evil, which directly hardens one's heart. We cannot resist the effects of the evil we do ourselves.

What we can do is resist the temptations to commit those sins in the first place. In D&D terms, we make our Saving Throws before the sin is committed, to prevent ourselves from doing it, not afterward, to prevent ourselves from having to face the consequences. Every sin carries inescapable consequences.

Yet, there is still a way to escape the worst effects of our misdeeds. We can repent, and if our repentance is sincere, we can be freed from the damning consequences of sin. But once we have sinned, that predicament is inescapable: Repent or be damned.

Thankfully, repentance is always possible, especially for those who did their best to resist the temptation to sin. The Lord knows that we are weak and imperfect and that we will sometimes sin, despite our best efforts not to. I've heard it said that the Lord has no problem with weakness; it's willful rebellion that He can't stand. Willful commission of misdeeds is more dangerous to our souls and more difficult to overcome than the other evils we face in this world, which is why it is so essential that we resist it rather than giving in to evil.

Better to Create than to Destroy

When I got to my friend's house this afternoon, I was all set to play a Barbarian. Well, "Slayer," technically. My friend had bought a few few books that described how a D&D group could have an adventure the the world of Middle-Earth, and this new system renamed and revised all of the classes a player could play in this version of D&D, including the Barbarian, which they renamed "Slayer."

Either name would have fit. I had given my character a miserable backstory, gave him all the reason in the world to be angry at the world, and prepared to unleash some of my stress and irritation on the world of Middle-Earth. This can be therapeutic. Many people have found it helpful to let out some of their negative emotions by punching punching bags or performing similar violent-yet-harmless acts. My Barbarian/Slayer was going to be violent, and since it was only a game, it was going to be harmless.

But that's not what happened. My friend had not yet completed his own or his sister's characters, and he hadn't planned an adventure. So, while he worked on their characters, I volunteered to create an adventure for us. I already had an idea, so all I had to do was try to fit that adventure into the new system. The new system, as it turned out, is pretty easy to use. I was able to read the rules and run them without much trouble. Thankfully, my friend and his sister were patient with me and kept their characters busy interacting with each other while I tried to figure out which part of the rulebook I was supposed to read next. In the end, the adventure wasn't quite what I had envisioned, but everyone had a great time.

And there was hardly any violence. The party was chased by wolves at one point, and we held the villain at spear-point for a while, but no attack rolls were ever made and no weapons were ever used except for threatening the villain and destroying a rune. My Barbarian never raged and he never killed anything (except in his backstory).

He didn't need to. Neither in the game world nor in the real world was there ever a need for things to get violent to make me feel better. Turns out, hanging out with a few friends and creating a semi-epic story together was enough to do the trick. I feel a lot better now than I did previously, and I didn't have to "let my anger out" to get to this point. Harmless destruction can be therapeutic, but having a good time with friends can be even more so.

One Thing at a Time

You know that feeling when you wished you hadn't committed to so many things? I've got that feeling right now. I have a very busy next few days ahead of me, mostly full of meeting various people in various places for various reasons, and I don't really mind doing any of them. I'm actually looking forward to a few of them. What I mind is that they are mostly happening one right after another, and there's at least one other thing that I had wanted to do, but it conflicts with something I'm planning on doing. I'm booked, and I'm starting to feel swamped.

I believe that what's most important for me at the moment is to take these many obligations one at a time. Problems are overwhelming when you look at them together, but if you take them one at a time, they become much more manageable. So, that's my goal for this weekend, to focus on one event or meeting at a time. The only meeting that matters is the next one. If I face them one at a time, odds are that I'll be able to face them well.

I'm going to get through this weekend, and I'm going to do it by taking it one day, and one meeting, at a time.

Bad Ways to Respond to Problems

The world has a lot of problems, and it sometimes seems that the way people respond to problems only makes things worse. We see this readily in arguments, which seem to be occurring with increasing frequency. People disagree in a public setting, then they disagree strongly, and the conversation might begin to involve insults and/or raised voices, until everyone gets angry and become convinced that the other side of the argument is immoral and unreasonable. We should try to be better than that. We should try to resolve things peacefully and logically. To do otherwise runs the risk of turning people, including ourselves, even further away from empathy and reason.

I also saw a reminder of bad solutions in an Extra Credits video on "Unpleasant Design." Extra Credits usually focuses on video games and video game design, but they sometimes touch on more important issues, like the unnecessary armrests on benches that make it impossible for homeless people to lay down on them. Rather than addressing the problem of homelessness, our cities regularly invest money in making life even worse for homeless people to drive them out of the public eye.

Even vegetarianism and veganism can be bad solutions to the problem of animal cruelty, because many of the animals we eat have, over time with both natural and selective engineering, become entirely dependent on humans. Without humans continuing to raise them for food, their species would face certain extinction in the wild. So, even the most well-meant and seemingly logical responses to problems can cause bigger problems if we don't consider the bigger picture.

My eyes have been opened today. I've learned about a few problems that I hadn't considered before in the form of solutions that only make things worse. It makes me want to do something, but I'm not sure what. I'm certain that I shouldn't overreact. I shouldn't lose my head or get angry at anyone. That won't help. But it also won't help to simply cover up the problems or to try to forget that I ever learned about them. Solutions require action. Yet, that action must be considered carefully, from a variety of perspectives, and over a long timescale. It's unwise to let small, short-term solutions cause large, long-term problems. There are good responses to problems, and there are bad responses to problems. We can learn from each of them, but what we should learn from the latter is how to find and practice the former.

My Double-Standard

I have two sets of moral rules: one to which I hold myself and one to which I hold society. I think you can guess which standard is higher. I try to be a good person, and I try to obey the commandments, but I also understand that not everyone is always going to be "good" and that many people don't believe in God or care about His commandments, and I'm mostly okay with that. Not everyone has to maintain the same moral standards. I generally believe that people should have a good deal of freedom, so long as they don't use that freedom to hurt people. Just not hurting people is clearly a pretty low standard, and I try to hold myself to a higher standard than that, but I think it's about right for humanity in general. People have different religions and cultures, and what a person accepts as rules of morality are naturally going to vary from person to person. I think that we should tolerate that variance and not try to compel people to be as righteous as we try to be.

A Cure for Misdiagnosed Maladies

In Institute today, we read about Jesus miraculously casting out devils and unclean spirits and whatnot, and one thing that we picked up on is that some of these devils might not have been devils at all. With modern medical science, we have discovered that some people have epileptic seizures, and we have discovered some of the reasons these things happen and how we can treat them, but these advancements have nothing to do with devils or exorcism. In His time, Jesus was able to cure all sorts of maladies, including those that hadn't been identified yet and might have been misdiagnosed as demonic possession.

The main takeaway from this lesson is that God knows us wonderfully well, better than anyone else, even ourselves. When we have a problem, God knows exactly what that problem is, what caused it, and how we can treat it, even if we don't know any of those things.

Recently, I thought I was sick, and I probably was at first, but one of the symptoms of my sickness has lasted a lot longer than the other symptoms and may actually be a symptom of allergies rather than illness. Whatever's causing my congestion and occasional coughs, God knows what's wrong, and He knows what sort of medicine I would need to treat it.

Perhaps that was why He was able to cast out a particular devil, even when His disciples couldn't. Maybe they were applying the wrong cure. Maybe they were trying to cast out an evil spirit, when the actual problem was some sort of illness that Jesus was able to miraculously diagnose and cure. The disciples probably didn't know about seizures, except for those caused by demons, so when they saw someone who suffered from seizures, they probably treated them in the only way they could think off, by trying to cast out the "demon." But of course, because there was no demon there to cast out, their attempt to do so failed, so they turned to Jesus, who quickly identified and solved the problem.

We all have problems in life, and some of those problems are complex and/or misunderstood. But the good news is that God knows what all of our problems are and He knows how to solve them. If we follow Him, He can ultimately cure all our ailments, even the ones we don't understand ourselves.

One Thing I Can't Put on My Wishlist

Given that my birthday is a bit more than a month away and I hadn't updated my wishlist since before Christmas, I was prompted to get on that, and I've been having just a little bit of trouble with that. The problem is that most of the things I want are things that money can't buy, like more time and energy and better character traits. Yes, money can buy goods and services that save time and food that gives a person energy, but the most important thing I want, self-improvement, can't be bought. You can't order it on Amazon. You can't wrap it up and give it to someone. It can only come from within.

Fortunately, the key to self-improvement is simple, even though the method is tough. First, think of the trait you want, then think of how a person with that trait would act, and then act that way. Fake it 'til you make it, basically. It's a difficult task that requires a lot of diligence and will-power, but it can be done. Unfortunately, it cannot be done for you. Self-improvement is something that, by definition, you have to do yourself.

One can wish for many things, and people can buy many things for each other, but there are somethings that money can't buy, and some of those things, like Christlike attributes, are the most important things of all.

Going Back or Moving Forward

This afternoon, my brother and I finished a game that has two endings that ultimately boil down to a choice between going back or moving forward. One of the characters wants to go back because they had a good life with close bonds, and they want to get their life back, but they can't because too much time has passed, the people they knew have moved on, and there's no way to recapture what they've lost. Another character wants to move forward because they trust that whatever lies ahead of them is greater than that which lies behind them, but this is kind of scary, because no one really knows what lies ahead of them, so we have no way to predict whether it'll will be better or worse than what we've been through so far.

However, a little knowledge about the passage of time and a taste of the Eternal Perspective can make this choice between going backward or moving forward a lot easier. First, going backward is impossible. In fact, it's not even possible to forever stay where you are. Time is always moving forward, and it carries everyone along with it. Even if one can go back to the place where they once were, they can't go back in time, and since the unstoppable flow of time brings changes that are impossible to prevent, one cannot help but move forward, at least in time.

This truth can be frightening, but only if you don't know what lies ahead. Of course, no of us know what the immediate future holds, but we can know what our ultimate future holds, and we can know that every experience we go through on the way to our ultimate destination is a stepping stone that will help us get there. Good or bad, each event and situation gives us experience, which can help us develop the wisdom to become more like God. This means that we can move forward, knowing that, whatever our future holds, some good can come of it.

Though that doesn't mean that we should leave the past completely behind. We can't gain wisdom if we don't learn from the experiences in our past. We should regularly look back at the experiences we've had and the lessons we learned from them, but we shouldn't be too eager to go back into those situations with the intention to stay there. God intends for us to make eternal progress, and to do that, we have to keep moving forward.

The Ethics of Eating Meat

My ethics class has finally gotten to a topic I had been dreading: animals. I eat animals. I (indirectly) pay people to kill animals so I can eat them. I (again, indirectly) cause pain and suffering and death to creatures, when that pain and suffering and death didn't need to happen. Yes, those animals were just going to die anyway, and, when they don't need their bodies anymore, we might as well eat them, but we put animals through a lot that they just don't need to go through, and I can't really justify that.

Or can I? There are many justifications for why it's okay to eat animals, most of which are at least somewhat weak. Some say that it's natural. Many animals eat other animals, even when some of them could get by on other foods, so we should be allowed to eat animals, too, right? But animals don't seem to be quite as intelligent as we are. I'm not sure if ethical considerations even cross their minds. Besides, they're not the ones being tested here; we are.

Some people take the "lesser intelligence" argument and use that to justify eating animals. Some even go so far as to say that animals don't really feel pain or negative emotions the way we do, so it's okay to harm them because we're not really causing any harm, which is frankly bogus. Spend enough time with an animal, and you'll begin to see that they have feelings much like ours. That may take longer with animals like fish or insects, which are harder to read than mammals, but when it comes to cows, pigs, and chicken, it will soon become clear that their feelings are just as valid as ours.

The one justification I can use because I can't refute it is also another justification I can't use because I can't understand it. For whatever reasons, God said that eating animals is okay. Now, God must have had His reasons for allowing this. Maybe animals' lives aren't really valid because God didn't give them souls, but I'm pretty sure He actually did. Maybe killing animals is okay because, in the eternal perspective, any suffering we put them through is relatively short-lived, but then why would it be so important for us not to hurt each other? Besides, it's still preventable. Pinching someone who doesn't want you to pinch them is still wrong, even if the pain is brief and minor. So, maybe eating meat isn't terrible, but it's still kind of bad.

Even if eating meat is forgivable, God essentially told us to keep it to a minimum. In D&D Section 89, God advises us to eat meat sparingly, and mostly only in seasons of want:

12 Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

13 And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.

We're not stuck in situations like that. At least, not anymore. Several generations ago, sure, people would starve between harvests if they didn't eat animals during the winter, but we can get fresh(ish) spring and summer fruits and vegetables any time of year. Yes, we still experience winters, and it sometimes gets cold, but I think we all know that that's not the kind of situation God was talking about. We don't need to eat meat to get us through the winter anymore. We can go vegan and still live a long and healthy life.

So why don't we? I mostly blame akrasia. Meat tastes good, so we eat it habitually, even if we know we shouldn't. Ultimately, I think we're going to overcome this habit as individuals, if not as a society, in the next life, if not this one. I don't think they'll serve meat in Heaven, if they even serve food there at all.

Anyhow, I don't think it's a really high priority. Some sins are worse than others, and I think that most of us are guilty of worse sins than eating meat. We have bigger fish to fry. But still, we should eventually get around to frying that fish. The actions of the meat industry are unconscionable, and we shouldn't be financially supporting them, assuming that we are both physically and financially capable of doing otherwise. If we can afford to cut meat out of our diets, we should, and I believe that we will... eventually.

Anticipation

Earlier this week, I was under a lot of stress. I had several tasks and assignments due within the span of only a few days, concluding with a paper that was due this Tuesday. Once I submitted my paper, there was only one thing on my mind: playing D&D.

I play D&D with some friends on most Wednesday evenings after work. In some ways, D&D night has become the highlight of my week. It's a time when, for a few hours, I can get away from my regular life, hang out with friends, and have a hilarious and/or epic (albeit imaginary) adventure. It's a great time, and it rejuvenates me. Knowing that I'm going to get to play D&D soon helps me muscle my way through the stress of everyday life.

But, as it turns out, looking forward to playing D&D does almost as much good for my emotional health as actually playing it does. I know this because, this last Wednesday morning, I learned that D&D was canceled this week. Yet, I had already gotten some of the benefits of my weekly D&D game. Even just looking forward to the game helped get me through the papers I had to write, the exam I had to take, and the lesson I had to prepare. Yeah, not getting to play D&D this week kind of stunk, and I'm sure that I would've been better off in this latter half of this week if I had been able to play D&D on Wednesday, but anticipating playing D&D this week helped me get through the stress, just as looking forward to my next game is helping me now.

In some way, even just the anticipation of an uplifting experience can, itself, be an uplifting experience. I gain mental and emotional health benefits from looking forward to playing D&D, even when I don't actually get to play.

Similarly, looking forward to anticipated blessings can, itself, be beneficial. None of us are in the Celestial Kingdom yet, but knowing that we're heading in that direction can give us the encouragement we need to keep going. There are many blessings we don't have yet, but until we get them, we can look forward to getting them, and we can find joy in the anticipation.

The Wise Use of Technology

In President M. Russell Ballard's talk, Precious Gifts from God, he warned us against the overuse of technology. He said that "Too many allow themselves to almost live online with their smart devices—screens illuminating their faces day and night and earbuds in their ears blocking out the still, small voice of the Spirit." However, he followed this up by saying "Now, there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of the advances in the technologies inspired by the Lord, but we must be wise in their use."

It seems that, as with many things, the key to using technology well lies in moderation. Using technology too much is spiritually dangerous. Using technology too little is a waste of opportunities. God gives us many gifts, and He expects us to make good use of them, but it would be unwise to let any of them take over our lives. Even good things, when taken to extremes, can become bad things, and technology isn't always a good thing to begin with.

So, as hard as this advice is to accept or follow, we should be cautious about how much we use technology. And since the consequences of under-utilizing technology are far less severe than the consequences of over-using it, it may be best to err on the side of caution. Technology can be very good, and some of if, according to President Ballard, is inspired by the Lord, but if we use it too much or in the wrong ways, it can be very bad. So let's be cautious with our use of technology and maybe use it a little bit less than we currently do.

A Few Questions About Eternal Progression

Today, I worked a lesson on eternal progression into a Philosophy paper about the problem of evil. Many people wonder why the world is as bad as it is. My answer is "Because that's what helps us grow." We have experiences on our imperfect Earth that we could not have had in a perfect Heaven, and if those unique experiences help us develop essential traits, then maybe the imperfections were essential, too.

Still, I kind of wonder why God didn't make us perfect when He first created us. I think He could have. If these Christlike attributes we're trying to develop are so important, why didn't He create our spirits in such a way that they would already possess those traits. Again, I think the growth may be important, though I'm not quite sure why.

I still have many questions about eternal progression, such as whether or not God is still progressing, and, if so, in what ways, but very few of those questions are actually important to us in the here and now. We know that we're not perfect, and we know what we need to do to progress from here. We know enough. Our task now is to grow and progress as God intended so we can eventually learn more.

It's Okay to Be You

I know I'm months if not years late to this conversation, but I recently became aware that some people (presumably white people) have posted fliers (probably without permission) stating simply "It's okay to be white."

This was met with some backlash.

Some have said that the fliers are racist. Saying that "It's okay to be white" supposedly implies that it's not okay to be non-white.

Others have argued that the fliers are simply incorrect. According to some, no, it's not okay to be white, because "white" is a shorthand for "racist."

I think that both of those responses are wrong.

It's okay to be white. It's okay to be black. It's okay to be brown or red or yellow or whatever color you happen to be. All races are okay.

I think that those fliers were made because many Americans seem to have lost sight of that fact. Many Americans seem to put race first and think that certain people are better or worse than others solely by virtue of their race, but while race may be a factor in some genetic traits (like skin color), I don't think it's a big enough factor to make a significant difference to a person's value or importance overall.

I would be happy to post "It's Okay to Be White" posters on my campus (assuming I got permission first). I would be happy to post "It's Okay to Be Black" posters. To save time and be inclusive, I would be happy to publicly post fliers that say "It's Okay to Be YOU."

As a sidenote, I would say "It's okay to be you" rather than "It's okay to be yourself" because even though the latter is more grammatically correct, it also seems to speak more towards a one's personality, while the former speaks more towards one's personal identity. It's a subtle difference, but "be yourself" is more narrow advice than "be you."

I would hope that fliers that say "It's okay to be you" wouldn't offend too many people. I hope that it would instead inspire then to come to some level of acceptance with who they are on a personal level, regardless of who has said what about them or members of their group. Personal identity is important to a lot of people, and I want to tell those people, in case they don't know already, "It's Okay to Be You."

A Good Thief

I just watched a movie in which the main character, the hero, turned to crime to raise the money he needed to support his family. This reminded me that morality is tricky. Some actions are good for some reasons and bad for others. How do these reasons balance out? It's difficult to say, especially in general. Personally, I'm glad that I'm not the One who has to swing the gavel at the Final Judgment.

A Slight Tweak to the Standard Plan

In our Primary class, it's customary to have the children read the stories from the scriptures, both for accuracy's sake and to give the children an easy way to participate. This time, that's going to be difficult.

The stories I'm going to cover aren't actually explained very well in the scriptures. The writing is hard to follow, several details are left out or tossed in when they shouldn't've been, and it's basically just far too confusing for 8-10-year-olds. Heck, even many adults struggle to follow the stories as they're written in the Bible.

So, instead, I'm going to summarize the stories to the best of my understanding from the scriptures, lesson manual, and seminary and institute classes, and I'll invite the children to participate by asking them questions about how they would've felt or what they would have done, or how they thought Abraham probably felt and what they thought he was going to do.

Of course, I'm going to try to incorporate the scriptures as much as possible. Some of the scriptures are clear enough to describe the situation without adding too many confusing details, and I can use those scriptures as a framework for teaching the stories, but I'm still probably going to lean a little more heavily on asking questions than I normally do in these lessons.

In any case, I hope I'll have the Lord's help as I teach this lesson. A lot has been on my mind lately, so I haven't prepared as well as I should have, and this lesson seems a bit trickier than normal anyway. If I teach this lesson well, it'll be a miracle.

How Can Destruction Show Love?

Sunday's lesson is about Abraham's love for Lot and God's love for everyone, but it includes an event that doesn't necessarily seem terribly loving: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The lesson manual prompts the teacher to ask how the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah shows God's love for His children, with the given answer being that "He destroyed the wicked to protect the righteous from their evil influence," but that's only half of the answer. I want to know how the destruction of those cities showed God's love for those whom He destroyed. Surely, He loved them, too, right?

My answer to this puzzle is that God didn't want the Sodomites and Gomorrahites digging themselves any deeper into the pit they were digging themselves into. They were sinning terribly, with no hope of repenting in this life. By destroying them, God could move them into the Spirit World, where, with a little bit of Eternal Perspective, they might have become willing to repent. At that point, they might be grateful that God stopped them from continuing in sin for the rest of their natural lives. The sooner God stopped them, the fewer sins they'd have to repent of and the sooner they could get to a position in which they would be willing to repent.

Perhaps God's love for those Sodomites and Gomorrahites was shown in their destruction by protecting them from themselves. Or maybe God's love for them was overwhelmed  by His love for others, and He destroyed them mainly to protect the rest of the world from them. Either way, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was one of the rare cases where violence was the most loving possible response.

In the world today, people turn to violence far too quickly, and for much baser motivations than love, but even when one live whole-heartedly by the principle of love, violence is still sometimes the best response. It's certainly not the best response in most cases, and I strongly discourage resorting to violence in most cases, but there are some rare cases in which even God Himself would use violence, though I'm confident that He would only even do so out of love.

God's Circle of Love

Despite the recommended Attention Activity being only somewhat related to the lesson I'm teaching in Primary this Sunday, I'm definitely going to use it because of its powerful message. The activity is to draw a bit circle on the chalkboard and call it the circle of love. Inside the circle, we'll write down some people we love, like our various family members, our friends, our classmates, et cetera. Then we'll explain that, as we become more Christlike, we'll begin to feel Christlike love for more people, including people we don't know very well, or at all, like our neighbors or people we see walking down the street, or at the grocery store.

Then we'll come to the ultimate revelation that Jesus Christ loves EVERYONE, even the people who hate Him. He even showed love for the people who killed Him while they were killing Him, but that's not part of this weeks lesson. This week's lesson is about Abraham and Lot, but I can blog more about that tomorrow. For now, I think it's enough to remember that every person who ever (or never) lived is within God's circle of love. God loves everyone. Friends, enemies, everyone. And as we grow to be more like Him, we're going to feel more love for more people, too, even the people we don't know or don't like. God includes everyone in His circle of love, and as we become more like Him, so will we.

Soul-Making

In Philosophy, there is a concept called the Problem of Evil. The idea is, if God is so good, why is there so much bad in the world? There are several answers to that question. One of them is soul-making. God lets bad things happen to good people because they can help make those people better. Negative experiences can have a positive impact on a person's life.

However, the operative word here is can. Rough experiences can make a person better. A lot depends on the person's attitude. Someone going through hard times might turn to the Lord and develop traits such as patience, faith, and empathy, or they might turn away from the Lord and develop traits like despondence, bitterness, and anger.

Hardships will befall everyone. It's part of why we're here. But how we respond to our hardships will largely decide what effects they have on our lives. The choice is ours. Soul-making is not a passive experience. We have decide whether our trials will crush our souls or make them stronger.

Difficult Moral Questions

Most of my blogworthy thoughts lately have been too heavy and/or too complicated for me to blog about with the time and brainpower I have left. I will say this, though: Life is complicated. Life is filled with difficult moral questions that tend to force people to think very hard about what they believe and which values they most treasure. Over the course of asking myself such questions, I find myself most valuing fairness and people's rights to make their own decisions, provided that they're not hurting others. Unfortunately, those guidelines only go so far in helping me determine what I think is right or wrong, and I doubt that God intends to give us all the answers. There are some situations that the commandments don't explicitly cover. In those situations, we have to use our moral judgment and answer those questions ourselves. Life is a test, after all. What sort of test would it be if it didn't ask us difficult questions?

"You Can't Miss Them All"

I, for some reason, am exceptionally tired tonight, but I'm not the kind of tired that makes it hard to keep my eyes open. I'm the kind of tired that makes it hard to think. I'm the kind of tired that made me misspell "chance and probability." And I'm the kind of tired that, when I tried to say "You can't win them all," had me instead say "You can't miss them all."

But that's kind of true, too, isn't it? Sure, it's possible to fail at every attempt at something, especially if you're trying something difficult. But the more attempts you make, the more likely it is that you'll eventually succeed on one of those attempts. And if you keep trying until you succeed, you will eventually succeed. Even a one-in-a-million shot is likely to succeed, on average, once per every million attempts.

So, take the shot. As long as you have even the slightest chance and nothing to lose, you might as well give it a shot. You might surprise yourself with how lucky you can be, and as you keep trying, luck will become less and less of a factor. You can't win them all, but as long as you keep trying, you can't miss them all, either.

Reading Notes

This has been an exciting General Conference, and I'm looking forward to learning more about many of the topics and announcements addressed in Conference, but for the purpose of this blog, it's basically business as usual. I'll review the talks and write about them one-by-one. The one thing I plan to do differently this time is checking my notes when I review a talk.

I've taken notes in Conference since I was little. I have stacks of Conference notes scattered all over the house, and I have dozens of files on my computer devoted to storing and organizing my digital notes. Yet, for all the notes I've collected over the years, I never study them, or even review them. They mostly just sit around, gathering dust. Granted, the computer files don't literally gather dust, but they don't exactly fulfill their purpose, either. Not if I don't read them.

This time around, I intend to at least skim through my Conference notes regularly. I've collected my notes from this Conference and put them in a special file on my Desktop, which will make them easier to access while I'm queuing up a Conference talk to blog about. Hopefully, the ease of accessing the notes will make it more likely that I actually do.

While taking notes can help one remember the messages one has heard, even if the notes aren't read afterward, I think that they'll be even more effective and helpful if I review them, so that's what I plan to do over the next five or six months. I want my notes to help me get the most out of Conference, and to do that, I'm going to have to actually read them.