Who is most blessed?
Do not regard afflictions as judgments of God, but look upon them as giving you an opportunity to develop your own nobility of character.
It being Friday, another new article (this one a book review), has gone up in the pages (literal and virtual) of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:
“Examining the Origins of Temple Worship,” written by John Lynch
Review of Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2022). 556 pages. $39.99 (paperback).
Abstract: With the precision of a renowned surgeon, the finesse of a master politician, the insights of an eminent theologian, and the artistic skill of an eloquent poet, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw masterfully examines the influence of Masonic rituals and symbolism on the most sacred rites of Latter-day Saints as found in our holy temples.
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I have no idea whether the program at BYU tonight is “sold out” or whether nobody at all has signed up for the free tickets. It could go either way, or, most likely, fall somewhere in between. But tickets or reservations are required, unless you want to simply take your chances at the last minute. So don’t delay:
Witnesses: Movie Showing with Production Q&A (Friday, September 16; 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
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My wife and I and friends spent an enjoyable evening last night at the Riverside Country Club listening to Dambisa Moyo, who recently married into the family of a longtime neighbor and fellow ward-member of ours. That neighbor, left dissatisfied by the fact that, since her son and his bride were married during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, few of us had had a chance to meet her remarkable new daughter in law (of whom she is understandably proud), organized last night’s event to give us a chance to get to know her. Along with excellent refreshments, the program was mostly given over to an interview with Dr. Moyo that was conducted by one of her sisters in law, and then to questions from those of us who were there.
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Remember that infamous recent women’s volleyball game between Duke University and Brigham Young University in Provo during which the entire BYU fan section, by its silence, tacitly approved of racial invective directed at one of the Duke players? Remember how the women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina cancelled BYU from her team’s schedule in order to keep them “safe”? Remember how nobody has found any actual evidence that any such racial invective ever occurred at the game? Remember that BYU defeated Duke? (That fact seems to have been obscured a bit, in all of the righteous outrage and soul-searching that followed.) Anyway, some plainly haven’t forgotten the incident, or non-incident. And the beat goes on:
Meridian Magazine: “BYU-Duke Volleyball: More Healing or More Culture War?”
I have to say that, in my view, Dawn Staley’s position was adopted far too hastily, and that her insistence on sticking by her position seems more than a little bit perverse.
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B. H. Roberts was a remarkable thinker and writer, as well as a Church leader and defender of the faith, and this is one of my favorite passages from him:
“Then how blessed, indeed, someone will exclaim, must they be who are born to riches, who were born to titles, to dukedoms, earldoms, and lordships! How faithful must they have been who inherit these privileges and blessings! Whose life is one continuous summer, whose existence is as a sea without a ripple! Nay, I pray you, take no such view of it as that. This class that I have described are not the most blessed among men.
“When you would point to those who are the favored sons of God, and who enjoy the best and highest privileges in this life, you must take into account the object for which man came here. That object is to gain an experience. Hence, those are the most blessed who live in the midst of conditions that give the widest experience. The favored sons of God are not those furthest removed from trial, from sorrow, from affliction. It is the fate, apparently, of those whom God most loves that they suffer most, that they might gain the experience for which men came into this world. It is not the smooth seas and the favorable winds that make your best seamen. It is experience in stormy weather; it is the ocean lashed into a fury by the winds, until the fretted waves roll mountain high and make the “laboring bark climb hills of sea and duck again and again, as low as hell is from heaven.” It is when the lightning splits the clouds, when the masts are splintered, when the ropes are tangled, and all is confusion, that the sailor learns to control his fear and stand unmoved and calm in the midst of the threatening difficulties about him. Those are the experiences that make good sailors. And so the sorrows, the afflictions, the trials, the poverty, the imprisonment, the mobbings, the hatred of mankind are experiences that furnish men an opportunity to prove whether or not the material is in them to outride the storms of life, prove their right and title to that exaltation and glory which God has in reserve for the faithful.
“I take it that the life of Jesus Christ and these His words to the Prophet demonstrate the truth for which I was contending, that not those furthest removed from trials and afflictions are most blessed; but those who are called to pass through the thickest of afflictions are the most blessed; for the Son of Man hath passed through them all. O ye who are bowed down with sorrow, ye who are tried with adversity, torn perhaps from comfort and affluence to be plunged into perplexities and perchance into poverty, lift up your heads, I beseech you, and rejoice, for these things shall but minister to your experience! Do not regard them as judgments of God; they are not so in every case, I am sure; but look upon them as giving you an opportunity to develop your own nobility of character; as giving you an opportunity to stand the test, and prove yourselves worthy of the glory God intends to bestow upon the faithful.”
B.H. Roberts, “Priesthood and Trials,” in “What Is Man?” Deseret News (9 March 1895)
