Easter/Eternal
I had a joyful time singing songs about Jesus with the Primary children today. They are smart, insightful kids. We had a nice discussion about the tense and preposition shift in the last line of "Gethsemane" in senior Primary.
I appreciated the chance to share my prints from the Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU. I also brought the watercolor of The Garden Tomb that I bought in Jerusalem. I stared at that painting all through the months of Amelia's failure to thrive as I tried to get her to feed adequately.
Sacrament meeting included a great talk from someone I really like. At one point, he was talking about specific difficult parts of mortality that had been experienced by people in the room, including divorce. What he said was fine, but it made me think again about how often we talk about divorce in a misleading way. We talk about the tragedy of it, as if the tragedy were generated by the fact of the divorce. Make no mistake, the divorce process stinks. It's arduous and emotional and you lose some control of your life for a while. But here's the thing: divorce is awesome because the alternative is a hostage situation. And the tragedy that plays out in my children's lives right now is the result of the MARRIAGE, not the divorce. I don't regret leaving an unhealthy marriage where one person abdicated responsibility for himself. I do regret that I didn't grow up emotionally sooner myself and that my children were subjected to the marriage relationship that they experienced, and for as long as they did.
I suppose this relates to something else that has been on my mind lately: the definition of "eternal." In the Church we talk about things being eternal in a temporal sense, ironically. We talk about it meaning things that will go on forever and have no beginning. It's a quantitative concept, generally. I don't believe "eternal" is a quantitative adjective. I believe that it is a qualitative adjective. The scripture mastery verse I learned in seminary supports my premise, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). In this respect, an eternal marriage is not defined by a temple sealing. It is defined by how it brings us to know God and Jesus Christ. That's possible without a temple sealing. It's also possible NOT to be engaged in an eternal marriage even when a couple has been sealed in the temple.
That assertion sounds controversial, I'm sure. Let me also say that I do firmly believe in the power of covenants. If there is a couple out there with two people who are genuinely engaged in becoming more godly through their relationship, they can only be helped by the real power that comes through making and keeping covenants. It's just that I think there are some less-obvious ways people who have already made those covenants may be failing to keep them that make a qualitatively eternal marriage impossible.
I'll save my thoughts about what the celestial kingdom really is and about Christ's name I Am for another time.
I appreciated the chance to share my prints from the Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU. I also brought the watercolor of The Garden Tomb that I bought in Jerusalem. I stared at that painting all through the months of Amelia's failure to thrive as I tried to get her to feed adequately.
Sacrament meeting included a great talk from someone I really like. At one point, he was talking about specific difficult parts of mortality that had been experienced by people in the room, including divorce. What he said was fine, but it made me think again about how often we talk about divorce in a misleading way. We talk about the tragedy of it, as if the tragedy were generated by the fact of the divorce. Make no mistake, the divorce process stinks. It's arduous and emotional and you lose some control of your life for a while. But here's the thing: divorce is awesome because the alternative is a hostage situation. And the tragedy that plays out in my children's lives right now is the result of the MARRIAGE, not the divorce. I don't regret leaving an unhealthy marriage where one person abdicated responsibility for himself. I do regret that I didn't grow up emotionally sooner myself and that my children were subjected to the marriage relationship that they experienced, and for as long as they did.
I suppose this relates to something else that has been on my mind lately: the definition of "eternal." In the Church we talk about things being eternal in a temporal sense, ironically. We talk about it meaning things that will go on forever and have no beginning. It's a quantitative concept, generally. I don't believe "eternal" is a quantitative adjective. I believe that it is a qualitative adjective. The scripture mastery verse I learned in seminary supports my premise, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). In this respect, an eternal marriage is not defined by a temple sealing. It is defined by how it brings us to know God and Jesus Christ. That's possible without a temple sealing. It's also possible NOT to be engaged in an eternal marriage even when a couple has been sealed in the temple.
That assertion sounds controversial, I'm sure. Let me also say that I do firmly believe in the power of covenants. If there is a couple out there with two people who are genuinely engaged in becoming more godly through their relationship, they can only be helped by the real power that comes through making and keeping covenants. It's just that I think there are some less-obvious ways people who have already made those covenants may be failing to keep them that make a qualitatively eternal marriage impossible.
I'll save my thoughts about what the celestial kingdom really is and about Christ's name I Am for another time.
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