God Can Do Anything

When I think about the Priesthood and what we can do with it, I generally only think of a handful of things: ordinances, healings, and maybe a few other other types of blessings. I don't usually think about conjuring frogs or lice, creating darkness or fire, transmuting water into blood, or just straight up killing people. These sorts of powers might be ascribed to a witch or a demon-worshiper. But God is omnipotent, and He doesn't only have an infinite amount of power; He also has an infinite variety of powers. God has power over life, death, and the elements. He controls space and time. He can do anything He can think of. And He does it all through the power of the Priesthood.

God's power is incredible, not just for the sheer level of His power, but also for the scope of His power. With God's power, Moses did many things that I wouldn't have thought that divine power could do. However, just as with the cursing of the fig tree, the plagues of Egypt aren't an unthinkable use of God's power. God can do anything, even things we would never have expected Him to be able and willing to do.

More Fun than Fighting

I learned something interesting about myself while playing D&D today. Despite designing my characters to be skilled in combat, combat is not the part of D&D that I most enjoy. Case in point, in one game, our characters had just arrived at an interesting location. A huge underground cavern with a narrow bridge leading to a tall pillar with an empty throne. Obviously, this was a location of great importance, a location made all the more interesting when our Perception checks revealed that there were armed skeletons lying on the throned pillar. However, I found myself unsurprised and disappointed when the skeletons got up and started fighting our characters. Just as I was beginning to take in the scene in my mind and imagine who had constructed this place and for what reason, my immersion was broken by a roll for initiative, and the experience was reduced to a game of dice and numbers. And, sure, the combat was fun. I got to roll a lot of dice and add them up to some pretty high numbers, but the most enjoyment I got out of that encounter was finding a letter on the body of one of the skeletons, giving us a clue of who was behind some of the nefarious events that had taken place and a hint about which interesting location we would be exploring next.

Another example: In my Pirate-themed campaign, there were two combat encounters, and they were both fairly interesting. One of them involved fighting a naga at the bottom of a murky river, and the other involved fending off a swarm of giant wasps. Both of those fights were more inventive than a typical skeleton fight, and I again enjoyed rolling several dice and adding up big numbers, but after the battles and the gaming session were over, I was a little bit disappointed that the session didn't seem to do much to advance the overarching story. If this campaign were a TV show, I would have called this session a "filler episode." And, granted, there's not much wrong with that. Combat is fun, and after not fighting at all in the last session, it made sense, in terms of pacing, for us to do some fighting this session, but I learned tonight that I would rather have a story-driven game session with no combat than a combat-driven session with no story. I'll gladly take both when I can get them both, but when I can only get one, I've learned that I prefer story.

I can get into why I love story-telling another time, but for now, I just wanted to share this self-revelation. While I enjoy making characters who excel in combat and win tough fights, I have more fun crafting characters who make interesting decisions and have interesting things happen to him. My favorite thing about Krusk Bloodfist isn't how strong his is, how devastating he is with a greataxe, or how much better he'd be than anyone else in a fist-fight. My favorite things about Krusk are the terrible decisions he has made and the terrible consequences he'll face as a result. I love how torn he is between  the woman who may have betrayed him and the goddess who saved his life. Krusk has plenty of combat prowess, but he also is brimming with emotion, and I love the latter more than I love the former.

This knowledge might affect the way I create characters and the way I play D&D. I'll continue to try to make my characters competent in a fight, but that may not be as much of an essential feature anymore. If I make a character like the Dexterity-based Paladin/Rogue who was designed to add lots of d6s and d8s to his melee attacks, I will also make sure I delve into the question of how he reconciles simultaneously being a Paladin and a Rogue. There's a story there, and I want to focus more on that story than on what that adds to his damage rolls.

"The Priesthood is the Power of God

The purpose of the lesson I'm teaching my Primary class this Sunday is "To teach the children that the priesthood is the power of God." The more I think about it, the more incredible this truth seems. The Priesthood is the power of God. Literally. It is the power by which He performs miracles. It is the power by which He created the earth and everything on it. The Priesthood is the key to omnipotence. And He has shared that power with us.

Of course, He put some pretty heavy training wheels on it first. He doesn't give us unlimited power; there are several Priesthood powers we have not yet been given, but the amount of power we have been given is astounding. We have been authorized to perform sacred ordinances. We can bind souls together. We can even perform some miracles, mostly in the form of healing. The Priesthood is incredible. It's real-life divine magic. And what's most amazing to me is that God lets us wield it.

A Hypothetically Hardened Heart

According to the King James Translation of the book of Exodus, there are several instances where the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. While the Joseph Smith Translation explains that Pharaoh actually hardened his own heart, I found myself spending a few moments wondering why the Lord might have hardened Pharaoh's heart, assuming, hypothetically, that He did.

To understand why the Lord might have done what He didn't do, we have to consider the results of Pharaoh's hardened heart. Pharaoh continually refused to release the Israelites, with Egypt suffering plague after plague, until several innocent lives were lost, and Pharaoh ultimately relented. It could be that this period of time was meant to be instructive. It proved to anyone who was paying attention that God has considerable power. It shows that God is willing to bend heaven and earth for His people. And it shows that bad things happen to those who refuse to listen to the Lord. These are all important lessons for Moses and the Israelites to learn. They all needed to know what sort of God they were following before they all ran off into the wilderness. Of course, this instruction didn't seem to have much of an effect on the Israelites, but at least God had made it clear to everyone exactly whom they were dealing with.

But more interesting than the motivations behind God's hypothetical hardening of Pharaoh's heart are the effects that might have had on Pharaoh's soul. People are accountable for the decisions they make, but, since hardening Pharaoh's heart unfairly manipulated his decisions, I don't thinking we could hold Pharaoh responsible for not releasing he Israelites sooner, if God was hardening his heart so he wouldn't. But even if the Pharaoh's soul isn't at stake, his mortal well-being was. If God hardened Pharaoh's heart, He also subjected Pharaoh and his people to plagues that they hadn't necessarily brought upon themselves. But what else is new? Life is full of suffering, both deserved and undeserved. Everyone suffers plagues and curses that they didn't bring upon themselves, largely because, again, this suffering is meant to be instructive. Perhaps Pharaoh and the Egyptians,as well as the Israelites, were meant to be strengthened by these trials.

However, some were not strengthened. In fact, many died. But again, what else is new? All men are mortal. All men die eventually. The Lord knows what time is best for each person, and if it just so happened that it was best that all those firstborns die at that time in that way, I can imagine God pulling a few strings (heartstrings, specifically) to make that happen if it wouldn't have happened otherwise.

While I find it a bit unsettling that God could manipulate us if He chose to, I can imagine a few good reasons why God might have manipulated Pharaoh and a few good things that would have come from that manipulation. Still, as the more modern and inspired translation points out, no such manipulation took place. The Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and the Lord responded appropriately. God doesn't need to manipulate us, and even when He has very good, ethical reasons to step in and take some control, he doesn't. He lets us make our own decisions and our own mistakes, just as Pharaoh actually did. The Lord didn't hardened Pharaoh's heart, but I can see some reasons why He might have considered it.

The Essence of Ministering

Over the last two days, many members of my Stake have heard a lot about Ministering, the church's new program method of reaching out to individuals and families who may need some help from time to time. That help used to take the form of monthly visits and occasional acts of service, but now it seems it could take nearly any form at all. Calls, visits, notes, small gifts, acts of service, or even just kind gestures could all be forms of Ministering. During a Questions and Comments section of one of our meetings, we explored many questions about how to Minister and what Ministering really means, though it all seemed pretty clear to me. It seems to me that the core essence of Ministering is being a friend. Everything a friend does is what a "ministering brother" or "ministering sister" ought to do. Friends show interest in their friends' lives and well-being, and that seems to be what Ministering is all about. So, don't over-complicate it. If you're called to "Minister" to someone, unless one of your church leaders tells you otherwise, I'd say that all you really need to do is try to be their friend.

Mid-Game Blogging

Right now, I'm playing a card game with family. Thankfully, I have my laptop with me, and they don't mind me taking a few minutes to type down some thoughts in the middle of our game, because they know that's important for me to blog every day. I'm grateful for my family, for the fun we have together, and for how loving and supporting we are (when we're not trying to beat each other at Phase 10). In fact, some of us have started working together and helping each other win together. It's great. This is how family is supposed to be.

Free Will: Essential, Even If Nonexistant

Some of the Youtube videos I watched today touched on ideas of determinism and the illusion of free will. According to some scientists and philosophers, there is no such thing as free will. In their minds, everything that happens, including everything we do, is part of a physical process that began at the big bang and will continue unalterably until the end of the universe. To them, the whole world and everyone in it is like a chain of dominoes, with each piece falling as a direct result of the fall of each piece that fell before it. The dominoes don't choose whether or not they'll fall and hit other pieces, and some say that neither do we.

However, even if this is true (despite revelation and our own insight telling us that it isn't), it isn't necessarily useful to acknowledge this "truth." As Hank Green pointed out in his videos on this topic, if people believed that their decisions were predetermined by physical and chemical events far beyond their control, then they likely wouldn't feel the need to take responsibility for their actions, and they would probably make poor decisions. Or, if they can't make poor decisions (because no one makes any real decisions at all), they still might be more likely to perform actions (voluntarily or not) that would cause more suffering than would have occurred if they believed they were responsible for their actions. For society and individuals to function properly, we have to believe in free will. That is largely why Hank Green said, "I choose, with the free will that I don't have, to ignore the fact that I don't have free will." So do I.

I believe that people have free will. In his discussion on determinism, Hank mentioned the possibility of "quantum fluctuations" making certain physical processes, including, perhaps, human behavior, unpredictable and I choose to believe that, even if this world is governed entirely by the laws of physics, our spirits might be somewhere outside of the physical world, pulling the quantum strings. But regardless of my pseudo-scientific explanation of free will, I choose to believe in it because of a) revelation, and b) basically the same reason Hank Green gave: Because if I didn't think I was responsible for my decisions, I would probably make worse decisions.

Free will is important. It is a vital element of our spiritual progress, and it's an integral part of our societal structure. In fact, free will is so important that at least one intelligent man has decided that it's wise to believe in it, even if it doesn't exist.