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I have a friend who deeply believes that her and her mom were meant to be a mother-daughter pair. Her very improbable birth, undeterred by multiple birth control methods, seems to uphold that belief. However, I've never felt "destined" for my family. What defines my family's relationships is a combination of chance and effort, in my eyes. I think my mom disagrees, and deeply believes in an interesting combination of foreordination/pre-destination and choice. To each their own, I guess.

Roy, thanks for posting that excerpt. I definitely don't believe in it, but it's fascinating to see where leaders of the church land on different issues. It helps me gain more confidence in discovering the beliefs that work for me.

Curt Sunshine wrote: ↑

11 Jun 2017, 14:36

The idea that everyone chooses their trials too often is used to salve our collective conscience when we don't do enough to stop the pain and suffering in the world.

It is one of the best examples of a privileged worldview there is, since most people who create those views are in relatively good situations at the time. ("I deserve / earned this?") It also leads to judgmentalism, since it is easy to believe "they deserved their difficulties" as a punishment for their previous lives.

I absolutely agree.

It's hard to extract much value from teachings like the preexistence or reincarnation when a part of the premise is that we undergo a memory wipe and hence can remember nothing of our previous life. What good does learning your lesson do if you don't remember it? If there's a complete memory wipe one begins to wonder whether there's a difference between having an unremembered prior life and having no prior life at all.

And who would choose a life of hardships over a life of comfort? The spiritual masochists? Is the person that chooses a harder life gunning for more brownie points for the next life or does deity appreciate masochism?

Or is the person experiencing hardships paying the price for misdeeds in a previous life? As if the entity running the show is the universe's worst dog trainer, rather than disciplining immediately they wait until there's a complete disassociation between the misdeed and the punishment - making sure that lesson sinks in.

I think it's another attempt to ascribe order to chaos. There must be a reason behind the random things that cause sufferings or blessings in life.

We know for a fact that we DO undergo a memory wipe. This is so called infantile amnesia - basically under the age of three we remember little or nothing (I'm convinced I do but that is another matter).

What is the point of learning to speak or to walk if we can barely remember doing so?

It is a good thing perhaps we can't remember soiling our diapers or breast feeding perhaps or some of the diseases we caught. As for birth - the jury's out whether it can be remembered. It is a horrific experience.