Donald Trump, the Law of Chastity and the Atonement / Lloyd

Donald Trump’s profligate violation and disdain for marital chastity and consequent dishonor to God is the showstopper for me. Let me explain.

I have come to understand that the very Atonement of Jesus Christ is necessary because our Heavenly Father offered his children to progress from 1) Their state of individual spiritual men and women without physical bodies, dwelling in God’s presence to 2) The state of eternal husbands and wives with immortal physical bodies, again dwelling in God’s presence.

For that to happen he revealed to his spiritual children -- to all of us -- his Plan of Happiness, wherein he would create an earth, place his children on it in physical bodies made from the elements of earth, and test us to see whether we would obey his commandments and thereby qualify to return to his presence and continue to live as family, but with the privilege of having children of our own. After all, we are his children, children of Heavenly Parents -- who are themselves male and female.

It's my understanding that God provided Adam and Eve physical bodies the way we ourselves provide bodies for his spiritual children, our spiritual brothers and sister. That Heavenly parents, came to this earth, ate and drank food created from the elements of this earth, and created Adam and Eve in the same manner as we ourselves create children -- providing spiritual beings with physical bodies.

When Adam and Eve elected to disobey Heavenly Father and eat fruit that he forbade to eat, they transformed from immortal beings to mortal, subject to physical death -- the separation of physical body and spirit.  However, their transgression enabled them to obey the more important of Heavenly Father’s commandments to multiply and replenish the earth -- and that was the choice they wrestled with before disobeying His law. Thus the process of mortality began for the spiritual children of Heavenly Father. And we are the result.

I believe that not only are we spiritual children of God before entering mortality, our physical bodies also descend from God beginning with Adam and Eve. Although we are the race of God, we are in mortality with very limited capabilities to see if we will qualify to live the life of God, continuing to have children in eternity, or to be relegated to immortal life without children and recognized family bonds.  

We don’t require the super physical and intellectual capabilities that myth and fantasy would portray for children of God. In mortality our focus, the focus of the sons and daughters of God, is obedience to our Father’s law, and that requires sacrifice of our will and wants to conform to God’s will and wants for his children.

When we recognize the essential union of Heavenly Parents to create spiritual children and our opportunity as parents to provide mortal, physical bodies for God’s spiritual children on earth, only then do we fully appreciate the eternal importance and centrality of God’s Law of Chastity: Wherein the daughters of Eve and the sons of Adam have no sexual relations except with their husbands and wives with whom they are both legally (law of men) and lawfully (law of God) married. Our Heavenly Parents are not pagan gods -- prone to every kind of whim and debauchery that myth depicts of deities.  

From the beginning it was fully expected that in mortality we would learn from our experiences and choices including transgression of God’s laws. With the transgression of Adam and Even we are separated from the immediate presence of God in mortality.

Thus, even before the earth was created provisions were made for a Savior to atone and mediate the effects of sin -- separation from the presence of God and physical death. Jesus Christ -- initially a spiritual child of God with us makes it possible not only for fallen mortal men and women to overcome physical death through the resurrection but also to overcome spiritual death and return to the presence of our Heavenly Parents.

The difference between Adam and Jesus Christ, is that our Heavenly Father was the father to Adam when he was yet immortal, but to Jesus Christ in mortality. Accordingly, Jesus Christ became God’s only begotten in mortal flesh and thus endowed with godly capability to function as the Redeemer of all mortal men and women. When we live in accordance to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- we are saved from our sins.

Donald Trump’s profligate violation, verbal disdain, and continued unrepentant attitude toward marital chastity dishonors our Heavenly Father’s purposes for the creation of earth and our mortal probation and Jesus Christ’s Atonement to bring us back to the presence of Heavenly Parents. That is the showstopper for me in voting for him. Has any other candidate for President of the United States been so openly crass and disrespectful of women and family. Voting for him is voting for that. Who would do that?

Parental Affection Must Transcend Institutional Concerns / Lloyd

Recently a friend asked if a Facebook posting might not be part of a preface to an Abbott Family Chronicle. It wasn’t and I referred him to She Says, He Says to find our thoughts and experiences organized by subject matter. A quick review of our blog, however,  revealed a hodgepodge organized only by posting date.

To rectify the tangle I gave each post a subject label and built a first cut index that readers can see as a pop-up on the right edge of the screen.  In that process I took time to read, scan and cull the 334 posts that started in Oct 2008 when we began our blog, and to a degree I relived our documented challenges and concerns.

observations

As a result of that review and reliving I have several observations and three questions.

1. Our struggle with California Proposition 8 for me converted a lifetime of close interrelations with gays and lesbians to an uncomfortable institutional confrontation between Mormons and the LGBT community.
2. As I worked through my theological framework since 2008 I've became more convinced than ever that a samesex relationship is absolutely at odds with an eternal family pattern, wherein Heavenly Parents (a male and a female) conceive us spiritually and earthly parents provide mortal, physical bodies for our spirits.
3. That physical chain began on earth with the conception of our first parents Adam & Eve. They were born to immortal parents and raised in a family setting until they were joined in marriage and given the opportunity to transgress God’s commandment. Through transgression, Adam & Eve gained the ability to conceive children of their own within a mortal setting.
4. So much more than resurrection and immortality, eternal life is the state of married men and women with immortal, physical bodies. With these immortal, physical bodies husbands and wives continue the conception of spiritual beings within a family setting. Immortal parents then provide those children a mortal experience to acquire physical bodies of their own and eventually live in an expanding eternal family.
5. Consistent with this theological understanding, I find the fundamental gay and lesbian variance to this eternal pattern truly overwhelming.
6. And I’m amazed at the many gay and lesbian children I’ve encountered in the Mormon community.
7. I’ve been even more amazed and dismayed at the knee jerk shunning and ostracizing of these gay and lesbian children born in the covenant within our religious community that throws them into the hungry and waiting arms of the most tragic and harmful elements of society.

questions

Now the questions:  

1. Why is this great Mormon Community finding it so difficult to put aside the institutional concerns and encircle our gay and lesbian members, especially our own children, in an interpersonal embrace that heals wounds and provides these family members optimum mortal development?
2. Is our theology so narrow that we can’t recognize the value and potential for contribution of family members whether or not they are interested in or bound toward eternal family life?
3. Can we admit to no common ground within a current family relationship whether or not a family member is in full Church fellowship?

perspective

I have been working with men and women in violation of the doctrine and principles that lead to eternal life since my mission in 1964. Actually, since I began home teaching with my father when I was a teacher and a priest. He showed me it was possible to engage members, and men and women generally, in interpersonal relationships of respect and service. He showed me it wasn’t my place to be judgemental or punitive.  He was absolutely realistic of what was, but he never let that get in his way of extending a caring outreach. And he accepted rejection without rancor.

Every day I work professionally in a maximum security setting to provide wellness and recovery support to incarcerated men who have broken every commandment. And with the fewest possible exceptions, mostly among the seriously mentally ill who are yet to stabilize on medications,  we have found common ground for safe, respectful, and productive relationships.

I’m not so naive to ignore the importance to safety of the highly structured security measures in place. However, I’m still surprised at the caring stability that can be achieved even with the men who were most dangerous and destructive when they lived outside of security. And actually, the goal and reality is that the majority of these men will eventually be released to the community.

Therefore, I really don’t understand our own people that seem so ready to jettison their own children who are caught in such an anomalous disconnect with eternity. How can we cut them off, those little children we ourselves conceived and bore with such hope and love, waiting for the institution to get things sorted out?

Conception Fires the Expanding Universe / Lloyd

Contemplate the immensity of the Andromeda Galaxy exhibited by the Hubble Space Telescope pictures released 5 Jan 2015. And realize that conception came first, then homes were needed for God’s spiritual progeny.

Relative to our Earth, under direction of our Heavenly Father (Elohim) premortal Jehovah, Michael and presumably others planned, modeled, and created a suitable habitation for a mortal experience.

After its mortal purpose is completed, Earth is endowed with its celestial character and moved back to the center of celestial space near where God dwells, inhabited by those individuals who qualify for life in a celestial kingdom. Other habitations of lesser glory are established for individuals who qualify for terrestrial and telestial kingdoms.

Those men and women in the celestial kingdom who qualify for eternal family life then generate through conception their own families and the process continues. Thus conception firers the expanding Universe.

How tragic and short sighted that so many men and women in their mortal state so lightly treat the sacredness of the creative powers that reside within them. They completely disregard Elohim’s guidelines for Chastity that would have permitted them in the future, as intended, to conceive spiritual beings, children of their own, to people elements of a universe constantly expanding to provide eternal habitations.  

Without a major turnaround during mortality, they can never ever be principal players in this extraordinary eternal process.

Worlds Without Number for Mine Own Purpose / Lloyd

Pearl of Great Price: Moses 1:30, 33, 35, 38-39

And it came to pass that Moses called upon God, saying: Tell me, I pray thee, why these things are so, and by what thou madest them?  

. . . And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose  

. . . But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them . . .

And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.   

Comment

God reveals to Moses that his purpose is to bring to pass man’s immortality (body and spirit -- a unified living soul, never again to be separated in death) and eternal life (eternal family life, or continuing progeny without end).

If family life is the work and glory of God and the purpose of his endless creations, then our behavior and desires contrary to this end will necessarily require a Savior and an Atonement and an acknowledgement through personal confession that we have been at odds with our Father-in-Heaven’s purposes -- but no longer.

No matter what kingdom we merit as a result of mortality, resurrected beings may not exist in rebellion to Heavenly Father.

The Truest Meaning of Safe Sex / Lloyd

Los Angeles Temple -- June 1967

It’s utterly remarkable to me that this year Judy & I will have in our family 20 adults and, through birth and adoption, 40 grandchildren. For us all in this turbulent world safety is everyone returning home to Heavenly Father. That is the ultimate purpose of family--getting everyone home safe.

It’s a wonder to me that a man and a women can coax a being from the spiritual realm into mortality by offering a physical body to that son or daughter of God. Mormon knowledge is that through the Atonement of Christ and obedience to the process laid out by Heavenly Father, families can be sealed together in Temples--either by being married by designated authority and having children within that marriage covenant or by qualifying to be sealed as a family unit of parents and children. Then they need to live the rest of their lives appropriately.

In a very real sense the only expression of human sexuality that allows for families and members of families to return safely to the presence of God, our Heavenly Father, and enjoy the blessing of continuing family is within the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. And those marriages and sealings are performed by authority in Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Such is the truest definition and context of Safe Sex.

Neal A Maxell on a Universe Pulsating with Divine Purpose & Life / Lloyd

Elder Neal A. Maxwell through videos & quotes invites us to consider words of ancient prophets juxtaposed with the baffling scope of the universe.

As we consider the vastness of God's creations, it is significant to consider that we are the sole purpose of His existence: "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

We cannot possibly appreciate the majesty and the complexity of the ongoing duties of galactic governance that rest upon Jesus Christ; but as the Shepherd, He did not merely create other worlds and then abandon them.

Even so, as the omniscient Creator, He does not rush to tell us things about these other worlds that we neither need to know nor could appreciate. 

Instead, what He tells us is what we need to know, including that which can reinforce us in our spiritual determination.

As immensely important as the truths about the physical universe are, they are not now that which we most need to know. 

Nephi had the proper sense of proportion: "I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.

Does not God even describe the immensity of the galaxies, the planets, and the stars, in lovable as well as understandable ways? 

Though He might do so in sweeping technical and astrophysical terms that we could not even understand, He asks us to think in a familial way about faithful Abraham's posterity one day being as numberless as the stars in heaven. 

What is presented is beckoning rather than overwhelming.

Further, we are asked to view the cosmos as evidence of "God moving in his majesty and power," attesting that, in God's work, souls matter most!

God's work is unimaginably difficult work. It is very real, very relentless and repetitive. His course is one eternal round, He has said. 

But His work is also His glory. And we, His children everywhere, are His work. We are at the center of His purposes and concerns. "We are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand."

Moreover, in the Pearl of Great Price, we read that "millions of earths" would be just a beginning to the number of the Lord's creations. 

However, as Enoch beheld them "stretched out" into space, his awe did not spring from the numerical or spatial dimensions of God's creations but, rather, from the implications underlying those numbers.

Enoch responded movingly and with awe—but it was over God's attributes, not His "acreage": "Thou art there [actuality], . . . thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever [personality]"!

We cannot determine by using radio telescopes . . .  that there is a plan of salvation operating in the universe, helpful as radio telescopes are for astrophysical purposes. Salvational truths are obtainable only by revelation.

Please Note: All italics in text above are emphasis added - Lloyd