Too long for facebook status

This was written as a facebook status, but facebook wouldn't take it because it was too long so I am putting it here ...

It looks like facebook got rid of their notes, or at least early this morning half awake I am not finding them. This is probably more fit for a blog entry than a facebook status, but oh well, I'm here and so are you. Oh by the way I did finally get the blog sort of up to date in case you are interested. Much thanks to Lexie for the encouragement and a significant portion of the writing through the summer.

I had my back go out a couple of weeks ago and have been in pain like I haven't been since my back played the same trick on me half way through my time as a missionary in Korea 14 years ago. I am confident that I will get through the pain in less time and more smoothly than I did then, but it still isn't easy. The experience is making me a bit reflective. I've been up since about 4:30 mostly looking at the ceiling and thinking. A project I hope to get to some time, but will forgive myself if I don't, which I have been designing in my head this morning is a "belief mirror". Being a life member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints and not ever really taking time to study other religions in any real depth, I don't have enough background to expand the project to the scope which I would like to get it by myself, but I think I could get a good start. The idea is to come up with a series of belief questions such as "Do you believe in God", "Do you believe God loves you" and so forth. Each question would allow a person a 0-10 rating to give them a range in answering. In my design the results would be private and the intention would be simply for a person to be able to make a snapshot of their current state of spirituality. While the results would be very interesting I would think it better to just leave it as a service that people could use as a way of exploring themselves rather than making the results anything to study or publish. It seems it would be nice to have a journal section on it and have people come back to it at a regular interval such as each year or maybe even each month to take a look at how their life view might be changing.

So as you might guess I have been running through some of those questions myself. With out the nifty little tool I have in mind writing someday I don't have a very clean picture of my results and as I put down earlier, I don't really intend to share the results or have the results shared. What I will share today as it relates to my current thoughts is that I am wondering about the purpose of pain.

I do believe in God as a creator. With that as a premise it follows that unless there was a design error, pain was intended. I have been going back and forth in my thinking as to whether pain increases one's sensitivity toward others or one's spirituality. My conclusion is that it can but it won't necessarily or automatically. I think it is as easy for a person to become bitter as to become loving, to become believing as to become agnostic. So I suppose in some ways it is simply accelerates the character development of an individual. On the other hand sometimes it seems that pain can be so overwhelming as in the cases when it leads to depression that it can just crush what would otherwise be a strong person. The same way there is not a level of physical conditioning that would prevent a person's physical demise if they were hit by a train traveling at 50 MPH it seems that there are levels of pain that could overcome a person at almost any level of "spiritual conditioning". I suppose a point of many of the stories in the scriptures is to talk about the people who didn't fail under stress, but does that mean there isn't an unpreventable failure point? I don't think I am anywhere close to that point right now, I've just been thinking lately that it is possible that one could exist. I really don't understand the combination of the church doctrines that "people are not tempted above what they are able to resist" and "no unclean thing shall enter into heaven". To state my confusion more clearly the New Testament teaches even thoughts can be sins. I know I have thoughts come to me even before it seems like I have a chance to resist them. It seems that I am pushed to unclean before the choice is even in front of me, or much in the same way that it would have been possible for the disappointingly too slow BYU cougars to beat TCU yesterday in the football game it didn't happen. In the same way there are a lot of times that I know it is possible I could have done something better, I just don't. I'm not sure where that leaves me with God. Then again, giving both teams an "A" game was it possible for BYU to beat TCU, should it have been?

Something slippery about the pain experience is that it is so easily forgotten. It is interesting as I have been going through these last experiences how many flash backs I have had to Korea. In some ways it has been reassuring. I have lived with some self doubt and still do with regards to my performance as a missionary. There were several days that I didn't even leave the house because my back hurt so bad. Being separated from the pain for a while I would find myself wondering if I was just weak and lazy at the time. Having my latest experience reminded me that indeed I may have been weak, but there really wasn't any other reasonable expectation of a person in the same physical condition. Pain will simply reach levels which are not tolerable and a person really can't even remember how bad they are unless they are in the middle of a similar experience. This forgetfulness of pain is well evidenced by the fact that there are several women who have more than one child, in fact if women do not average 2.1 children born a population will shrink in a modern industrial society. I am obviously doing a bit better now with respect to my pain as evidenced by the fact I am writing. In fact this episode has been different from the time I was in Korea in that the pain comes and goes. I have been able to enjoy some almost completely pain free time. Now I just have a slight headache which is just annoying and not worth the level of whining I'm doing now.

I'd really like to think I am learning something from my experience. It seems like too much cost to take on without some of reward. I feel like I am getting close to some sort of enlightenment, but not necessarily there. Writing sometimes helps clear things. As I have been writing an impression that returned to me that was part of my thinking along with my belief project was another project that I feel even more doubtful I'll ever get to, but would be nice... The project was to go through all of my facebook friends and maybe even a few of my friends who are facebook hold outs and give them a quick note to let them know something I appreciate about them. I do have some "friends" on facebook that I don't really know, but for the most part if you are reading this you are a person who has touched my life in a positive way and I give you a thanks for that from the bottom of my heart. The positive relations we are able to share with others are the most beautiful thing I have found in life. You are the wonderful part of my world. So as I said even though the chance of me overcoming my procrastination and personal inhibition of expressing myself to complete the project of telling you personally why you are meaningful to me is very low, know that you are and I appreciate you as a friend. Thank You!