Semper Persolvo

 Good news, I've found myself with I'm cheating on today's entry, this is an email I just sent to a "bloke" from England who's somewhat anti-Mormon, but is surprisingly civil. We've been engaged in a moderately productive back-and-forth for the past few months and I thought I'd start posting my replies to his emails.

Bobby,

Good news, I've found myself with a bit of time to answer a few of your questions. I'll keep it brief this time to avoid deleting two hours of work like last time.

Concerning the origin of Man. I believe that it started before this world was created, at least in a spiritual sense. I believe the reason God has such a vested interest in our salvation is because we are literally his spirit children. My main reasoning behind this is that, if we existed as nothing else but a notion in the mind of God until we existed spiritually, that would mean God created this Earth with the intent to eventually cause us to become in some cosmic way which we don't understand. In other words, why would he bother, what is God's motivation behind creating a bunch of people and putting (at least the first few) on an earth that he, in his omniscience, knew would eventually start to really suck. 

Why would he create beings to be put on an earth where they would suffer, be killed and persecuted, and hate if it didn't have to be that way? What is God's end game? In most theologies (as I understand it) If we do attain Heaven (which is only possible for the maybe 15% of these creations of God that have ever even heard the name Jesus Christ) we will be angels, or servants, or subservients to God, however one might call it. At any rate, I don't know of many religions that believe that God ever created us with the intent of ever allowing us to become "equals" with him. If that is the case, would that imply that this whole painful, troublesome existence is only an inspiration to get us to accept the sacrifice of God's son, so we can be saved and continue to live under his loving and all-knowing rule for eternity. I don't know, something in there just doesn't seem to add up. What do we get out of this? Happiness and peace? Yes, but by that same theology we could have had that without all the trouble, why didn't God create us into a world without the opportunity for sin. Why didn't he just create us right into that state of happiness and bliss that we're all striving for? Especially because, as many believe, Salvation is only through God anyway, why doesn't he just save us from the get-go and save us the trouble? He want's us all to reach Heaven right? He wants us all to be happy?

In my mind, and as I believe, the reason he doesn't is because this life is but a small part of our eternal existence, we lived with God in eternity before this life, and we are striving to return to him after it has ended. The purpose therefore of this life is for us to gain the experience we need, learn what we need to learn, grow as we need to grow, that we may have the beginnings as we exit this life of what we will eventually need to attain all that God hath. If God is the epitome of light, knowledge, and perfection, I can't understanding how a loving being wouldn't want us as his creations to be equally filled with the same attributes if we are capable of it.
I believe this life is equally pointless if all I need to do is believe in Christ, speak his name and accept him as our savior. If that were the case there would be no use for commandments, no need for a punishment, the only people who would believe that the commandments applied to them would also believe they were saved from the punishments of the commandments. I think it was against this exact attitude that Christ spoke when he said, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." I from this understand that even those who proclaim Christ as their Lord will not necessarily enter the kingdom of heaven unless they also do the will of the Father, i.e. keep the commandments. 

In summation, I believe God created us first as spiritual beings, and then so that we could progress and attain all that he has, he set in motion the creation, I personally believe (this is not LDS Doctrine, but is also not refuted by LDS doctrine) that the creation took place more in the manner that scientists now call "the big bang" and that the process described in the Bible is metaphorical. I believe that in doing so he set a sequence of events in motion that eventually allowed for tabernacles (bodies) that would be fit to house his spirit children and it was from that point (after the fall of Adam) that we began to be conceived naturally, provided with bodies, and enter into this mortal probation as we gain the experience necessary to progress in our eternal course.

Thanks again for your questions and answers, I look forward to having the time to answer more.

Alex Lystrup

Dē Excretiā

Take a look at the image I've attached to this post. If you don't see anything wrong with it (besides its being pervasive and making it harder for me to watch Season 4 Episode 6 of House) then maybe you should just stop reading now. If however you cringed after a second steely eyed read through, then you can join with me in complaining once again of the plague that is crappy grammar in society, because let's face it, mistakes like this one happen a lot more than they ought to.

So, for the sake of the world I've put together a little list of things people often spell or use wrong. If you make any of these mistakes, don't feel too bad, we all do. We do a lot more talking than writing, so while we know the sounds of the thoughts we want to express, sometimes we don't do so well at the execution. Most of these come to you courtesy of the 2009 AP Style guide. If you don't have one and you look to be doing any amount of professional writing in the future (even if you're not planning on being a journalist) I'd suggest you look into buying one.

• General spelling errors:
• I'm not even going to waste my time with all the commonly misspelled words, if you are flat out spelling out words that don't exist, you have a few options. You can stop using internet explorer (unless they've finally incorporated in-browser spell check, I haven't used it since IE6). Or you can learn how to spell (I know no one cares enough to actually cut and copy everything they write into a word processor, so I won't even bother.

• Accept/Except
• Accept is a verb "I accepted the polar bears peace offering, but I was reticent, polar bears are known for their subterfuge." 
• Except is usually a preposition (if you really understand it well, you can use it as a verb too, but don't get too crazy or you'll end up accepting things when you wanted to except them). "I drink any kind of soda, except Shasta, I haven't been able to look at Shasta the same since ... the incident."

*Please also note my use of ellipsis in the second example, that is how ellipsis are used, a space on either end with three sequential full stops.

• A lot:
• I can only imagine that the phrase "a lot" came from stuffy Brits who don't like using accompanying genitive nouns with adjectives. They don't say it was a field full of cars, they just say it was a field of cars. Subsequently, if it helps, when you say "a lot" think of a parking lot, or a vacant lot. When you say "a lot of candy corn" what you're actually saying is, "candy corn sufficient to fill a lot." Never say alot, it makes as much sense as "alittle" or "ababy".

• Definitely:
• It's spelled like that, so spell it like that. That is all.

• A note on apostrophes:
• Apostrophes serve two primary purposes:
• Showing possession.
• Representing omitted letters.
• If you're using an apostrophe, ask yourself, is something owning something? Am I taking a letter or a series of letters out? If the answer is yes, you'll most likely want to use an apostrophe. Exceptions are possessive pronouns, my, your, their, his, hers, its, our.
• If you write "it's" you're saying "it is". Why do you use an apostrophe? That's right! Because you're taking the "i" out. Likewise, when you write "let's" you're actually saying let us. Therefore you write it with an apostrophe if you're making a suggestion, and without an apostrophe if you're using the third person singular present continuous declention of "to let" "Hey! let's get out of here, old man Wilcox lets his dogs out in 15 minutes."

• And Finally Then/Than
• Then represents the flow or progression of time, you use it whenever you're giving a sequence of instructions, or when you want to name the result of an action or state of being. "Go open the cage, then run like heck, the koalas haven't been fed for weeks." or "If you like Jamba Juice, then you'll love Mamba Juice, it's practically the same thing, but ours has twice the snake venom."

*While I'm thinking of it, I'll throw this one out, animals are venomous, not poisonous. If it's poisonous, it means you can ingest it. Cyanide, drain cleaner and the stuff in the back of our fridge that no one is brave enough to take out, are poisonous. Snakes, spiders, scorpions and solendons are venomous. Their venom is poisonous though--food for thought.

• Than represents a comparison. "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" or " I would sooner have my legs broken than go on a date with you." On a side note, I've only ever had one of those sentences directed at me.

To wrap all this up, I'll list a few phrases that people just can't quite seem to get right, which, again, comes from our tendency to repeat general sound patterns without knowing exactly what it is we're saying.

• Supposed to: Not suppose to
• Used to: Not use to (this applies in both cases, "I used to eat glue" and "I'm used to getting the wrong directions to a party."
• Toward: Not towards
• Anyway:Not anyways.
• Couldn't care less: This means that what you've just been told is, in your opinion, as uninteresting as it comes. If you say "I could care less" you're saying that this is at least moderately interesting to you. The phrase becomes completely useless when expressed like this.
• For all intents and purposes: Please stop saying "for all intensive purposes". This phrase comes from 16th century English law, were it was originally, "to all intents, constructions, and purposes."

And there you have it, at least a few things that'll start cleaning up our grammar and making us look like we are indeed smarter than a fifth grader. If I may be so bold in requesting such; would it be too much to ask that we actually start trying to apply this principle of writing correctly whenever we put hands to keyboard? I know that there are plenty of correspondence that we don't deem worthy of the time and effort, but that's just the thing. The reason correct grammar and spelling seems so tedious to us is because we use it so infrequently. If we think in nothing but correct English, eventually that will be the way that thoughts naturally begin to be expressed on the page. I just hate the thought of our children and grandchildren getting even worse than we currently are. Or worse yet, I hate the thought of the way we communicate through text message and emails becoming the official English. What a terrible thought! Can you imagine 60 years from now a high school textbook showing the correct usage of "u" or "2" in a sentence? Or when it is or is not necessary to capitalize an "i"? I think the buck needs to stop here. I think we need to start writing clear, well formulated, concisely expressed sentences and get ourselves out of what it is we've been writing for the last few years which is, simply put, just a bunch of excretia.