User:RobertC/Problem of evil/Maxwell

I plan to carefully analyze these quotes in the future. For now I'm just pasting some quotes (see links for footnotes--again, I plan to add these later).

Quotes

Richness of the Restoration

[Quotes from: Neal A. Maxwell, “The Richness of the Restoration,” Ensign, Mar. 1998, 8]

Evil and suffering do take a terrible toll in the world, and we certainly cannot give glib answers to cover every wrenching human situation. But, through the blessings of the Restoration, we can see things as they really were, are, and will be (see D&C 93:24; Jacob 4:13). We can then better walk the straight and narrow way, inspired and informed by “faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). However, these added understandings provided by the Restoration clearly do not exempt us from either temptation or from suffering. There are no immunities, only variations.

Latter-day Saints also know that God did not create man ex nihilo, out of nothing. The concept of an “out of nothing” creation confronts its adherents with a severe dilemma. One commentator wrote of human suffering and an “out of nothing” creation: “We cannot say that [God] would like to help but cannot: God is omnipotent. We cannot say that he would help if he only knew: God is omniscient. We cannot say that he is not responsible for the wickedness of others: God creates those others. Indeed an omnipotent, omniscient God [who creates all things absolutely—i.e., out of nothing] must be an accessory before (and during) the fact to every human misdeed; as well as being responsible for every non-moral defect in the universe.” 6

Of course, God is not “responsible” for our human misdeeds! How vital, therefore, the “plain and precious” truths of the Restoration are in order to see things as they really are instead of being puzzled.

Restoration correctives provide emancipating perspectives! The revelations, when “pressed down, and shaken together,” emphasize that man is, at once, an intelligence or spirit coeternal—but certainly not coequal—with God (see Abr. 3:18). Thus, doctrinally, we are positioned very differently, because “God is neither the source nor the cause of either moral or natural evil.” 7 God is thus the organizer of eternal intelligences, which can neither be created nor destroyed (see D&C 93:29). Furthermore, God will not coerce men since all intelligence is free to act for itself “in that sphere in which God has placed it. … Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man” (D&C 93:30–31).

In the Restoration, we further learn that, built into the existing structure of mortal life, there is “an opposition in all things” (2 Ne. 2:11). This doctrine is more than just a minor clue to life. It is a major divine disclosure! As Brigham Young University professor David Paulsen has thoughtfully written: “Without moral righteousness, there is no happiness; without significant moral freedom, there is no moral righteousness; without an opposition (opposing possibilities to choose between), there is no significant moral freedom. Thus, happiness and opposition are essentially related.” 8