On Job

My email .sig comes from the Book of Job, in the Old Testament.

The whole point of the Book of Job is trusting God can make more of you than you can of yourself. That's why it talks so much about Leviathan. But to me, this passage right here is the crux of the whole book:

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; 

  and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: 

  and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; 

  and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; 

  and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

Job's agony all along consists in not knowing WHY these things are happening to him. "On the one hand," he says, "I know God is righteous and just. I will not complain against him." But then, "On the other hand," he says, "I don't understand why this is happening! Haven't I done everything right? It would be nice if I could just believe my friends that I somehow brought this on myself through sin, at least then I wouldn't have cognitive dissonance--but why does a righteous God punish innocents? Because clearly he does." And the resolution comes when he finally "gets it," although since Job doesn't voice his epiphany aloud you don't actually understand what's happening unless you get it too. 

To an outsider it looks very random: Satan tricks God into punishing Job, Job's friends say he's bad, Job says he isn't, there's a lot of poetry, eventually God shows up and talks a lot about animals, and then suddenly it's over and Job gets his life back (although his original sons and daughters are still dead). No closure, no satisfaction. God never even says, "Sorry for letting Satan trick me." To someone who knows what is going on it looks very different, and in fact it looks a lot like it was actually God tricking Satan and not vice-versa, since after all he was the one who drew Satan's attention in that direction in the first place--and he must have known how predictably Satan would react. God doesn't explain precisely why he judged it necessary for Job to suffer these particular trials along his journey to exaltation (and we do know that no one can be exalted without enduring sore trials first), but it doesn't matter: once Job understands that this really, truly, is for his own good, he exclaims, "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes!" and is once more at peace. If mine own right hand cannot exalt me, shall I not trust in Him who can? He paid the price in his own blood and infinite pain.

And that's why it is in my .sig.

-Max

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Letter to Sister Br----

Tuesday, Sept 9, 2014

Dear Sister Br-----,

Hi! Congrats on getting your visa! I hope things are going well and that you're liking your companion.

I just recently left Wicresoft to come back to Microsoft. As part of having joined a new company, I've been doing a bunch of corporate training, and when I was doing my Legal 101 Training, the section on contracts struck me. Paraphrasing, "If you are in a position to sign a contract for Microsoft, it is important to know what agreements you are authorized to make, and which entities within Microsoft you are authorized to sign for." It seems to me that these concepts correspond in interesting ways to priesthood keys and priesthood stewardships, respectively. (Although technically, stewardships are actually a part of keys--a stake president has the keys for his stake. But you know what I mean.) Additionally, there are those who fulfill contracts which have been signed on the company's behalf--priesthood assignments from those who hold keys. The analogy isn't perfect, but I really do think it is useful to think of ordinances and the priesthood as a form of contract law.

As an aside, can I share a personal opinion with you? It seems to me that the temple endowment is pretty blunt about whom a priestess speaks for, in eternity, and it isn't her father. One thing that blows my mind about the whole Ordain Women movement (which has largely gone quiescent) is that they are seeking ordination to the wrong priesthood. (Of course, seeking ordination to the "right" priesthoods wouldn't make any sense right now either because those don't exist yet.)

Have you ever noticed how the sacrament, when it's covered, looks a lot like a body under a burial shroud? I'm sure that's on purpose. What do you think the difference is between the bread and the water? Here's what I think: blood is associated with mortality (Lev 17:14, Deut 12:23, and the fact that resurrected being have no blood). When I take the sacrament, I think of different things on different days (sometimes by drinking to the dregs I am covenanting to finish all of mortality, even the parts I hate because Earth life is stupid--like ninety-plus years of middle school) but most commonly the water (BTW wine is red like blood) reminds me that there is a price for sin, but that price has been paid, and that I can move forward and leave the past behind. I also think it is symbolically important that this happens AFTER I have just covenanted to take upon me the nature of Christ (bread = flesh, and "you are what you eat") in a covenant which is NOT tied to the mortal flesh but to "always" and eternity. ("That they may always have his Spirit to be with them" is not in the blessing on the water. Maybe I'm reading too much into that omission but it fits doctrinally: in eternity there is no blood, only flesh and bone, so the covenant of the blood doesn't concern itself with always and forever, only now. "That they do always remember him" is therefore an "always" meaning "continually," not "of infinite duration.")

One of my favorite things about dying is going to be when I talk to someone who actually KNOWS everything and ask, "So, which of these things [i.e. doctrines] did I get right? At least partially?" I remember how pleased I was one day when I discovered that President Joseph F. Smith shared my aversion to raffles, on the same grounds that I dislike them: gambling is the hope of getting something for nothing, and also taking without giving. I remember one time in high school how a girl I know was selling raffles for the school volleyball team; I bought some to support the cause, but she was quite shocked when I told her to keep the tickets. I hope she got something nice out of them.

Hope you're doing well!

Love,

Maximilian

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Dates In The Book of Mormon

[from http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/the-genghis-khan-effect/]

8% of the men in  Central Asia carry this y-chromosome, half a percent of all men. One of the authors of that study made an interesting mistake: Chris Tyler-Smith, in an interview, said "We don't think that Genghis Khan was the common ancestor, because our best estimate of the time when the common ancestor lived was a few generations before he was born."

Now that's silly, because are big error bars in that kind of TMRCA, not least when you're doing Y-chromosomes with STRs, the state of the art at that time. If you found a piece of trinitite at Alamagordo and came up with a date of  1943 from some kind of radioactive dating, forget it: it was July 16th, 1945, 05:29:21 MWT (plus or minus 2 seconds)...

It seems to me that this error stems from geneticists thinking that genetic data is the only real data: sloppy genetic time estimates trump precise historical dates.  In much the same way, people (using the old too-high mutation rate) estimated that the split with Neanderthals was ~300,000  years ago, even though the fossil record clearly showed hominids in Europe shambling towards Neanderhood half a million years ago.  The new, lower estimates of the mutation rate have reconciled genetic and paleontological evidence on the split time  – but the geneticists should have realized that there was an inconsistency.

Unfortunately other disciplines have the exact same problem.

I would include "Biblical scholarship" among disciplines that can have this problem. Biblical scholars often estimate the reign of king Zedekiah as beginning around 597 BC, and the birth of Christ at somewhere between 1 and 5 BC. For pure Biblical scholars, that's fine, but for LDS Biblical scholars the more precise dates are available and should be preferred: Christ was born 600 years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem and 92 years into the reign of the judges. While there is some uncertainty as to how literally to take D&C 20 when it comes to the date of Christ's birth, when it comes to king Zedekiah, the Book of Mormon trumps the biblical scholarship estimates: 597 BC is wrong. We know this because the Book of Mormon date is not reconstructed from multiple historical sources, they were tracking this specifically as the foundation of their calendar. Unless you think that Nephites were total incompetents at basic arithmetic, you have to take this date more seriously than the indirect arguments which result in the 597 general consensus.

-Max

--

Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.