If you are likely to be offended by a Christian oriented post, don't waste your time.
Regarding January's First presidency message. (Uchtdorf)
It is a bad practice to shoot an arrow at a blank wall and then paint the target around that.
Likewise, it is bad practice to lay hold on an exciting or interesting doctrine, and then centralize it. Then base the rest of our spiritual perspective on that.
This solution lies in the target already existing. The target can be, and has been defined in the words of the great commandments, love God, and love your neighbor. He even says, to hang all the law and the prophets on those. i.e. It is the gauge or the target for which all our efforts must fit. So if a new perspective does not fall within that gauge simply
(remember Okhams razor, the more suppositions or exceptions we try to weasel in to make it fit, the less likely we are to be accurate in our theory)
then it is likely time for a re-evaluation. But not to feel bad for making the change. According to Elder Bednar, (titled: converted unto the lord) conversion is a lifelong effort spent aligning our motives, beliefs and thoughts to that of the Lord. And per C.S. Lewis, it is a very sensible thing to do, to turn a clock back if it has gone wrong. Progress may very well mean turning around in order to get back on the right path.
So are my beliefs that God will bless me with what I want bad?
That may simply be a bad question.
Real question may be: Are my desires, thoughts, beliefs and motivations in line with God's? Some of them are. Which ones? Time to bury weapons of war.
Interesting thought on burying the weapons. (Book of Mormon reference)
Did the holes already exist? Prolly no. They likely had to be dug with primitive tools that aren't as robust as the shovel we would get from Walmart. Work, sweat, and even the hassle to repair the tools can be compared with how inconvenient and/or difficult changing our own paradigm (or rather letting it be changed) can be.
Final thought.
How much of the recorded New Testament time did Christ spend being angry, or practicing "righteous indignation"?
Like, what? 10 minutes out of 34 years? So, as Christians, do we shun a sinner or even a jerk, or do we go to them individually and minister? Show a better way, or simply be kind.
