Monday Musings

I have been planning on making my thoughts on God, Christ, and my relationship to them part of this blog.  My relationship with God is kind of like my relationship with books.  It is so ingrained into who I am and how I think, that often I don't think about it.  I think I need to reflect on it more.  So... whenever I am able to on Mondays I am going to muse a little about my thoughts.  I am active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and honestly have a deep faith in the teachings of The Church (as it is always said here in Utah )  

The reason I say I am active LDS is that if anyone is reading this (which I know they are not) and they happen to not be LDS, what I am about to talk about needs the LDS Church as background.  Tonight before going to bed I was reading in the Book of Mormon about the Atonement of Christ.  I was reading in Alma Chapter 42.  Alma is teaching his son Corihor about the necessity of an atonement.  We need an atonement made because there was a Fall of Man.  The fall of man was brought about by Adam and Eve when they partook of the fruit and in verse 10 it tells us that "Therefore, as they had become carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature...." Now, there is some great stuff that comes after that, but what stood out to me is this idea that the Fall makes us all carnal by nature.  Carnal has at its root the Latin word for flesh.  We became as an entire race and species fleshly.  I think both subject to the vagaries of having a fleshy body and the temptations and trials of that, but also importantly focused and dependent on the flesh.  We become convinced somehow that our bodies are more than they really are.  I have also been reading Radical Evolution.  I just finished the section regarding the "Heaven Scenario" in which various experts and optimists in the fields of technology paint a rosy picture whereby we are able to transcend our current limitations and becomes as the Gods.  It is interesting to me that it is not being able to live forever that makes people like Gods, but rather knowing the difference between good and evil and choosing the good.  Are we carnal by nature...seems so....that is why we need an atonement.