Mormon Musings

If you wish to go where God is, you must be like God, or possess the principles which God possesses, for if we are not drawing toward God in principle, we are going away from him and drawing toward the devil. Joseph Smith

Our duty is to make the best of our present position. We have the Gospel of life and salvation, to make bad men good and good men better. We are to preach, exhort, expound, continue in our duty, be fervent in spirit, bearing and forbearing with our brethren, being filled with love and kindness; and we will yet, perhaps, get some of our froward connections into heaven. Jesus said, when the woman caught in adultery was brought to him, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." We are all sinners, and it is our duty to cast sin from us when we learn what it is. If we are a little good, become a little better; if we have a little light, get a little more; if we have a little faith, add to it; and by-and-by we shall be prepared to build up and beautify Zion, and to be exalted to reign in immortality and be crowned with the Gods. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 8:130

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A [mathematical] sum [incorrectly worked] can be put right; but only by going back till you find the error and then working it fresh from that point. [It will] never [be corrected] by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound.  C. S. Lewis,  The Great Divorce  (New York: Macmillan Co., 1973), p. 6

“When you climb a ladder, you must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the Gospel—you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all of the principles of exaltation.  But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them.  It is not all to be comprehended in this world ; it will be a great work to learn our salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave.” Joseph Smith , History of the Church, 6:306-7; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on April 7, 1844, in Nauvoo Illinois “We consider that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer a man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desir