Predication

I came across something that the Prophet Joseph Smith said in while reading D&C 130:20-21 during my personal scripture study this morning.

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

I understand the premise behind it: the Lord blesses us when we are obedient. It makes sense. We mortals seem to be motivated by reward and recognition and this setup acknowledges that.

I wonder though if Joseph Smith is speaking literally in this regard. When he says "any blessing", does he truly mean any blessing> Does he truly mean that we receive blessings only because we are obedient to laws to which those blessings are attached? Does he truly mean that God never blesses us simply because He loves us and wants to express that love in beneficence?

Minimalistic

I made a comment over at another blog regarding President Hinckley's challenge. Someone got ruffled by it and stated the following. Since there have been 45 comments since mine and it's been nearly a day, I thought I'd post my response here instead of threadjacking.

...your determination to popularize the view that President Hinckley has not asked us to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year rests on an extremely minimalistic and legalistic reading of his words.

After two and a half years, it seems my real-life reputation for semantics has finally caught up to my Bloggernacle reputation. It sure is nice to be recognised, even if it is with such an obvious statement. I think my new motto should be: superfluousness is for the birds.

Oh, and for the record, I am not sure I'd go so far as to say that commenting a month apart on two different blogs on this topic qualifies as determination. Okay. I concede. It may have been three blogs. I haven't been keeping track. It wouldn't be the first topic I've commented two or three times about. Perhaps this one must be unique.

Prayer

I must say way too many prayers.

I just finished saying a payer over my dinner, and then my office phone rang. I picked it up and said, "Dear Eternal Fath...[pause]".

Fired

Let's say you run a company. Sales are down and profits are going down with them. It's come to the point where you have to let go of an employee. You've narrowed it down to two. The first has been with the company longer than anyone else and has a larger salary. The second has been with the company for only a year and has a smaller salary. Everything else is equal.

Who would you fire?

Guess

Our little family has a contest going to see who gets the closest to when the baby's born. I put together a DHTML script that updates automatically showing how many days left till everyone's guess date.

Probably a little to the left on the cool scale, but on the scale nonetheless.

Oh, and shortly after the baby is born, the contest is gone. FYI.

Hypocrisy

There is a person in my ward who doesn't like i when I grow a beard. Last winter, when all my rehearsals were done for Papers, this person gave me a ride home from a meeting. On the way home, he asked me if I was going to shave my beard now that the performance was done. There were other such comments.

One of my counsellors works for him, and he asked my counsellor to stay late Thursday night, the night we have our presidency meetings. Even after my counsellor explained about our presidency meeting, he still insisted he needed him to stay late.

Does it seem odd to anyone else that he would make a big deal about facial hair, but then have no problems expecting someone to miss a presidency meeting?

Social Responsibility

Is it more important for universities (as educational institutions that create critical-thinking individuals) to put social responsibility over cost for students?

For example, let's say a university is holding a social for every student and staff member. This social involves food and inevitably also requires plates for each person to hold that food. Given that the plates are going to run into the thousands (what with people coming up for seconds and thirds and separate desert plates), the cost of such plates are going to be in the hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars. Compound this by the number of such events the university holds throughout the year.

Students protest increases to the cost of attending the university (materials, fees, tuition, etc), and a large part of that cost covers operational expenses (including plates for events). It would be within the university's best fiscal interest to get the cheapest plates possible.

At the same time, universities have a (if only expected) social responsibility. They teach equality, tolerance, respect and so forth for humans, animals and the environment. In this instance, it would be socially responsible for the university to use plates that are made from recycled materials. Better yet, they could use porcelain plates that can be washed and reused. Of course, both of these options incur a larger cost (more expensive to purchase, and in the latter case, staffing costs to wash them).

So which is more important? Cheaper or more socially responsible?