How are the things we learn useful?

[chase]

Deeper question here, never really addressed.

If you take a class and learn how paint works you are preparing for a career in bridge design and maintenance.

Study dirt and you are preparing yourself for construction, architecture, or engineering.

In almost everything we learn we can see how it has practical uses for the future.

But the important aspects of the gospel, living how Christ would have us live, how does that ultimately help us? We learn how to love, then die - how is that ever actually put to use? Practicing and devoting our lives to a particular sport, then refusing to compete - what is at the end of that route of preparation?

What are the common threads of mortality? We get a physical body and that's about all that we have in common. How does all of this work? Why are some given really easy assignments - "you are to go down, get a body, then die 5 minutes later and you're all done and are guaranteed eternal exaltation with no questions asked" and others get really hard ones - "you will be born, live a life of painful social alienation, you will never experience love, friendship or any aspect of social comfort and will live until you are 100 with a gradual and painful deterioration of your mind and body that you can see coming decades in advance with no way to stop it until you die alone in a nursing home flooded by a hurricane". Why the different lessons? How can both be relevant to where one gets to end up in the eternities?

We look upon our lives with different eyes than God does. The test is exactly the same for every single person. If it were not, God would be unjust. We have the handicap of seeing only this life. On top of that, we see it from only one perspective. Somehow we think that that is the only part of the test and that there is none before and none after (sure we pay it lip service, but we don't really believe it). As for knowledge that will rise with us? I doubt it has anything to do with worldly trivia that we study in our ridiculous educational system. I think it has everything to do with coming to know God in the way Moroni describes in Moroni 7:48. This knowledge isn't gained in a Sunday school class. It is learned through pain and trial and suffering...and not just that suffering that is common to man, but that suffering which is done in similitude of Christ. Perhaps those who have it easiest are those who are most easily damned (in fact I think this is the case). If you have a really easy life of comfort and are popular, rich, successful, and confident in your salvation...you are probably on the road to hell. There are plenty of very good people in Africa who are starving and struggling who are closer to heaven than many of us "blessed" Americans...even members of the Church, if I may be so bold. I know a girl from Sudan who wants nothing more than to go back. But she must be happier here in a land of great wealth, prosperity, and opportunity mustn't she? Our perspective is so messed up. We're satisfied if we can drive ourselves hard enough into the ground to save enough money that we can just sit around and watch TV for the last 20 years of our lives. Salvation indeed.

[g_luv_style]

I liked the way that C.S. Lewis explained it - paraphrasing, he said that God always knew how each of us would turn out, but we still had to go through the process to become it. Somewhat like knowing what kind of food a certain recipe will make, but you still have to go through the process of mixing the ingredients, baking it at a certain temperature for a certain time...there is probably a degree of truth in both views.

:ymapplause: Thanks for sharing this quote! It says a lot.