Is this a loophole?

[hiding in plain sight]

As mormons, we were taught about the laws of justice and mercy.

The law of justice required that all sins be paid for.

The law of mercy provided a savior to pay for our sins so we did not have to.

When the laws of justice and mercy were fulfilled in our lives we could then enter heaven and be with God forever. Yeah team!!!

D&C 19 teaches this:

16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

17 But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

So if I don't repent and ultimately have to suffer for my own sins, just like Jesus would have......

Didn't I just fulfill the law of justice? I paid for all my own sins.

And if I fulfilled the law of justice, don't I now get to go to heaven????????


And if not?????


If I have to pay for all my sins (fulfill the law of justice), but not be allowed into heaven, then isn't God now an UNJUST God??



Feels like a loop hole to me.




I am okay for paying for my own sins ultimately.




How much do I have to pay for that pilsner I drank a couple of weeks ago???

Oh yeah. Nothing since it is already approved by God in the word of wisdom and isn't a sin.

[Hagoth]

That's a good one, HIPS. It reminds me of the discussion on another thread about being beaten with a few stripes and then being admitted into heaven. A favorite guilt trip from my upbringing is the idea that every time you sin you are causing Jesus to suffer. But this says the opposite, by not repenting you are actually doing Jesus a favor by relieving him suffering because you're taking responsibility for your own tea drinking and multiple ear piercing.

Mormonism simply doesn't know what to do with Jesus. Does he redeem us or doesn't he? It seems like the preferred doctrine is the Not Even Once Club. You just live such a boring letter-of-the-law Pharisaical life so you don't need Jesus to redeem you from anything.

One of the more loathsome teaching that I grew up with is the one that says that if you repent you are forgiven of your sins via Jesus' atonement, BUT if you make the least slip-up all of your sins come rushing back and Jesus didn't really forgive you or redeem you from them after all. Its' kind of like that eternal hell you brought up, HIPS. Jesus just pretends to have suffered for your sins but he's just waiting to send them back at the first opportunity. Can somebody help me out here? Is this idea actually doctrine, and if so where did it originate?

[Corsair]

We can only call it a loophole if the rules supporting it are dependably true. The LDS rhetoric added onto Christ's atonement are not entirely consistent so personally depending on this loophole is not a good plan for Christian salvation. I admit that this is a tempting idea that you can just live a hedonistic life and just experience some penance in Purgatory before heading up to Heaven. But this is a poor caricature of virtually every Christian faith. It also is dependent on a philosophy of "keeping score" about sinful deeds and virtuous actions. This assumes that once your "debt" is paid then you can head up to the modestly priced divine country club.

The best religious teachers I have ever known (either in or out of the LDS church) are focused on helping people "become" something new. That's the point of baptism, after all. Your old sinful identity dies and you are resurrected symbolically as a follower of the Jesus Christ and his teachings. It's not about simply "not sinning". It's about transforming into someone who has no desire to sin. It's about become a genuinely Christlike person.

D&C 19:17 strikes me as hyperbole from Joseph Smith. He was trying to convince Martin Harris to fund Joseph's religious activities at that time so throwing in a little fire and brimstone made the rhetorical points that Joseph needed. I don't claim to know how the divine universe is governed, but I simply don't accept that it is as poorly conceived as Joseph Smith's extemporaneous evolution that culminates in the King Follet discourse.

[Korihor]

Stop thinking.

[Batman]

Add this one to the long list of scriptural inconsistencies.
It seems that the more one looks, the more it all falls apart.

[alas]

Stop thinking.

This!

I have decided that simply to stop thinking is the only way to ever make any logical sense out of Mormon doctrine. Oops, there you go again, expecting dogma to follow the rules of logic.

[Zadok]

To a dumb emu's way of thinking, it just represents some doctrine that the correlation committee hasn't been able to mess with yet.

BTW, HIPS, our common friend, and a work associate of yours said hello. I'm doing well and will have a full report next Sunday during testimony meeting.

[Ghost]

If someone rejects Christ's atonement, does this mean that Christ was punished unjustly when suffering for that person's sins? Similarly, if the atonement was "infinite" but its purpose was to cover finite acts of sinners, does this mean that the punishment was excessive and at least some part of it was for no reason at all?

[hiding in plain sight]

To a dumb emu's way of thinking, it just represents some doctrine that the correlation committee hasn't been able to mess with yet.

BTW, HIPS, our common friend, and a work associate of yours said hello. I'm doing well and will have a full report next Sunday during testimony meeting.

Yesterday he introduced to me that we had you as a friend in common. Can you tell me what is his status regarding his faith journey? I didn't ask, since we were in a work situation.

Glad you have having a great trip.

[Zadok]

Yesterday he introduced to me that we had you as a friend in common. Can you tell me what is his status regarding his faith journey? I didn't ask, since we were in a work situation.

Glad you have having a great trip.

His wife and my wife are BFF's. As far as I know he is active TBM. If he has any questions and/or doubts he keeps them to his self. On the other hand he has had a long career in the Military and National Guard, so who knows.

[oliver_denom]

This looks good to me, and why not? When we're literally talking about eternity, the absence of an ending, going on forever and ever, then the idea of eternal punishment looks absurd. There's literally nothing you could do in this short span that couldn't eventually be resolved after a trillion years of torment, especially given that no one who's ever lived actually died, they're all spirits floating around until the resurrection. Even murder loses it's impact once everyone's resurrected, perfectly enlightened, and has a trillion billion years to get over their grudges. So sure, why not?

Maybe being punished for your own sins sucks so bad that you'd wish for non-existence and it's such horrible torture that after you've endured it for a trillion trillion years, that you break and go insane. But that's okay, because you have another billion trillion years in a perfect body to get over the experience, and if going through that makes you forgiven, then maybe God will heal you as a getting out of hell present. And maybe it wouldn't even take that long. Jesus was able to take on everyone's sins from the beginning of time to the end, possibly even for other worlds, all in the span of a couple of days.

None of this makes sense when no one dies and there's no such thing as an ending. From that perspective, everything eventually loses its significance.