Tuesday 4 June 2013

Enough to Spare

Joseph Smith taught his tribe that the "earth is full, and there is enough and to spare".

The idea is based on a concept of God as a loving couple.  Made up of two parents with corporeal bodies. These loving parents created a world full of abundance, where their children could be "agents unto themselves" in the eternal quest to "fulfill the measure of their creation."

The actualized human (resurrected being) in Mormonism is one who has literally become the divine self.  The God/Goddess we are in our core, with corporal bodies inseparable from our spirits.  The deep good/best/truest self.

Mormonism uses Jesus as the ultimate and perfect example of one who walks on the planet as God.

If one behaves the way Jesus would if Jesus could, then that person is acting as a God and maybe in that moment even being one.

As the teaching goes, the Godhead -- God, Jesus, Holy Ghost -- created Earth with the purpose of populating it with their kids and providing them a sandbox/playground to break off all the rough edges of our humanity so that would could return to live with our Heavenly Family in what seems to be a really long and enjoyable life.  Joseph said we are all individual "rough stone[s] rolling" down a hill breaking off the pointing and sharp edges into a smooth and perfect rock.  The process is painful, but the reward is great.

We are here to both gain a body and work towards complete integrity of body, soul, spirit -- which is the definition of a resurrected being in LDS lexicon.  We do that by living a life that the Jesus would live and making the decisions Jesus would make if he had your station in life.

Since our Heavenly Parents love us, they want us to be happy and enjoy life.  They promise us that life will be hard.  The whole idea of a Savior presupposes that everyone will hurt and everyone will be hurt.  We will all abuse and we will all be abused.  We will all love and we will all hate.  In fact, the act of becoming a God is the process of understanding that you can't understand the sweet without the bitter, and then being able to eventually always choose the sweet ... not out of compulsion but out of love.  They loved us enough to allow for the Savior's atonement in part as proof of their love for us.  It is also a shadow of how much we have been given.  As the good book says, "Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?"

Blah blah, this means that the world they created (and gave us stewardship over) not only can, but DOES have enough to provide everyone more than enough.  In fact, Joseph taught us that God wanted us to have abundance -- polygamy I'm looking your way ;).

Our Heavenly Parents aren't trying to trip us up.  They have perfect senses of humor AND are benevolent ... They don't feel schadenfreude.  (basically, depeche mode kinda did start a blasphemous rumor with the whole "sick sense of humor" thing ... but i too "expect to find them laughing" but they will be more like "get it?"  my goal is to be able to laugh with them.)

I want to channel the musical prophet of the 70's but add just one verse -- not that i'd ever want to pretend like i could stand with john lennon on this front cuz obvious! but this was really in my heart , and i think he'd think it was cute so ... forgive me :)

imagine there's no hunger
its easy if you try
no starving children
bellies fully fed

imagine all the people
living with enough

imagine fairer neighbors
it isn't hard to do

nothing to kill or die for
so no more violence too

imagine all the people
living life in peace

YooHOO!!
you may say i'm a dreamer
but i'm not the only one
i hope some day you will join us
and the world will be as one!

enough is enough.  i've had enough of not having enough! i want to demand enough now!

plus, it not enough when my neighbor suffers.  then i just feel like a jerk OR ripped.  its really is all of us being one ... cared for the way we would ourselves.

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