Christmas Links

Grace and Christ's enabling and strengthening power
3 Christmas hymn origin stories, lyrics, and performance videos
When Bishop Monson saved Christmas
12 Christmas songs arranged by Mack Wilberg, performed by MoTab
Christmas Is About a Baby
Festival of the Nativity

God is Love

A couple weeks ago in Sunday School, one of the questions (I think from the manual) was Why is it appropriate to say that God is love? We had difficulty answering that question, largely I think because we didn't quite understand what was being asked. It later occurred to me that asking instead what does "God is love" mean? probably would lead to the sort of answers the manual writers were looking for. And I think that basically means that love is the defining characteristic of His character.

But during the lesson, as the discussion about that first question was going on, I thought of one of the questions asked of Christ during His mortal ministry.

But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting (or testing) him, saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. (Matthew 22:34-39)

And since we are told to be perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect, doesn't it just make sense that the greatest commandment is to gain the characteristic that John uses to define Him?

Tell me all your thoughts on God

Because now the chorus to this song is stuck in my head.

Anyway, a friend of mine linked to Mette Ivie Harrison's article Giving Up the Old God on facebook yesterday with the comment, "Some good thoughts! What is your view of God? Is it the real view?"

My response:

There are some good thoughts in there, but some of it doesn't feel quite right. I definitely agree that He is not an arcade game god who gives out prizes when I rack up enough righteousness points, and He doesn't make life a breeze for the good and miserable for the bad. But then in the third to last paragraph, she seems to me to be describing a much more hands-off god than I'm familiar with. Yeah, everything that happens in the world isn't because of His direct intervention, but if I pray for snow on my wedding day for some reason, and He doesn't have some reason it would be better for there not to be snow, then I figure I've got a decent chance of Him sending me snow. Because like she says, He loves us. He wants us to have what's best for us and wants us to be happy, and sometimes He'll directly interfere to help with that happiness.

I'm also not ready to declare that He never hands out tragedies to teach people lessons. I figure just letting the world proceed naturally does provide us with a lot of good hardships to learn from, but at the very least those plagues in Egypt back in Moses' day were from Him, and maybe He occasionally sends me a specially-designed trial. Elder Eyring definitely believes he was sent a trial from God after praying for one, according to his conference talk in April 2102. And I'm pretty sure there's reference in the scriptures to Him sending His people trials to humble them, which upon rereading that section might be closer to what she meant.

And as for whether my view of God is the real view, I have to conclude that my view is probably not complete, but I think I'm on the right track.