[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

Is it possible? I'll copout and say "sure, anything's possible." I don't find it likely, but handicapping God's involvement in each detail of the global universe is an extremely difficult task.

I give you just a couple of examples from modern-day apostles (paraphrased, because they're from memory) that illustrate my thinking.

Neal Maxwell used to have a presentation he'd use with mission and stake presidents where he'd start with a "photo" of the Milky Way galaxy on an overhead and explain that God is God over all those creations. Then he'd put up an image of a DNA molecule and explain that God created it too, and he'd say, "God is in the details of that molecule." Then he'd quote C.S. Lewis' "living house" metaphor and say "God loves you too much to leave you the way you are, so he provides for you 'defining moments' that are highly customized."

And then I once heard Boyd Packer (sorry, Arch) say once (again, paraphrased): "When the veil is lifted and we can see our lives in the grand scope of history, we will be stunned and amazed at how intimately a role God played in our lives on a daily basis and we never knew it."

Now I find it very difficult to believe that we believe in a God who is in the details of our lives, so much so that he provides "customized defining moments" to shape us; that we believe in a God who we pray to about every little thing: from what job to take, to how to handle a church calling, to which door to knock on as a missionary; that we believe in a God who is aware of the hairs of our heads, who clothes the lillies of the fields--and yet when it comes to his church and his prophet, he sits back and just kinda allows things to run their course.

I may be wrong, but that's not how I see it working.



I think that's about right.



Your first sentence reminds me that you are a lawyer.

As to your second, as I said ... I wasn't the one to draw that conclusion. I was just repeating it. although I do agree with it. But either way, somehow I'm not surprised you chose to take issue with something almost entirely peripheral to the topic.

How is it peripheral to the topic? You presented a false dichotomy that left out many other possibilities which could explain the issue we are discussing. I still have no idea what you are trying to argue, because you continue to hold fast to that false dichotomy (by saying you "believe it") while also accepting the possiblity that there are alternatives. If you accept that there are alternatives (and I think there are many, the one I noted being among them), then it doesn't necessarily follow that God isn't as involved in his church as we would like to believe.