Last week I began to bore you with philosophy and the way a modern
group led by John Rawls, Princeton, Cornell and Harvard, obviously
qualified as a hard worker. Why, then would he want to take all the
challenges out of life?
Above are a bed of roses and an amusement park sky ride. Both get
you along, but with the sky ride you miss all the excitement you came to the
park to enjoy. A bed of roses, or in this case, rose petals, is simply a mess
when you get into bed.
Why would you want to live without challenge, growth and change?
Well, it all comes down to what is the purpose of life. John Rawls saw no
point in life and therefore we need to pass through as painlessly as
possible. (Some may disagree with my evaluation of his life philosophy, but
we are speaking about the motivation behind his idea in his teachings that
we should remove as many difficulties as possible from life.)
As a Latter-Day Saint, I take the Savior’s injunction in Matthew to be
perfect even as the Father is perfect as the why. This is repeated in
Romans 8 to become co-inheritors with Christ. See also Ephesians 4:11-14
as examples although you can see it in many places in the Old Testament
as well as New Testament. You will note that, to avoid pointless
disagreement, I have left out modern scripture. These above are sufficient
to support the point. There are more.
If, then, the point is not just to pass through life as if riding a sky tram
or wrapped in luxury with no need to change or grow, we deal with life as
we find it and problems show up.
Does this mean we seek out problems? Getting into bar fights for the
fun of it is the opposite of the Savior’s teachings. Problems will show up
suited to our capacities. My opinion, based upon promptings of the Spirit
and the teachings of the prophets, is that we do as much as we can and
the Savior’s grace will lift us beyond that point to return to Him and Our
Father.
As a result, turning life to mush by forcing everyone to be good is
counterproductive. And not possible.
Next week we can discuss that question.
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