just nate – code is poetry, life is code

Some more texting history, this time with Spencer, who is one of my best friends. Oh billy.

I kind of have a stomach ache. I’m pretty sure that means I’m supposed to run for president. Are you with me?

Well i certaintly can’t argue with the prophetic nature of the stomach ache, so i guess i’m with ya.

That is, of course, assuming that all your administrations policies are decided upon using similar “ache prophecy”. If not count me out.

Background story: I thought I was falling in love with this amazing girl who had a stomach ache and decided it was a sign from God that we should not be dating anymore. I’ve been really bummed about it and then Spencer went and made me feel so much better. Love ya man.

I just watched Devil’s Playground, a 2002 documentary about the Amish rite of passage called “Rumspringa.”

Rumspringa begins for each Amish youth at the age of 16. They are released out into the “English” world, which is the Devil’s Playground, to experience electricity, drugs, sex, parties, and “English” clothing. This goes back to the origins of the Amish religion, which are based on the doctrine of original sin and infant baptisms. The Amish believe in accountability, but for adults, not infants. And so, when Amish children become mature and accountable (when they turn 16), they are free to fully educate themselves about their options. It might take months or years for them to decide whether to join the church or not. Apparently, a staggering 90% do decide to join the church in the end.

I was not aware of Rumspringa, but I really quite like it. I like a lot of things about the Amish people. They are industrious and peaceful. They have quirky traditions, like wearing a beard to show you are married. What I like about Rumspringa is that it at least gives the more adventurous children a chance to find out what they really want to do before they go joining a church. Obviously, the pressure to return to the Amish religion is very strong, from both a cultural and a social standpoint, and I imagine it takes a certain courage to leave.

Rumspringa is a perfect word to describe what I’m up to. My family and friends just don’t understand why I am not going to church. It’s because I can’t live my life based on a decision I made when I was eight years old! And what I’m doing is trying to figure out just what I really believe. I’m having my own personal rumspringa! And the pull of the LDS church I grew up in is incredibly powerful, but for all the wrong reasons. I don’t want to go back to church based on pressure from my family, or based on the fact that most girls around here want a Mormon Man. I have to really decide for myself, by myself.

I sat down to watch TV for the first time in about a year, and one of the first things I saw was a melodramatic moment with a woman who whispered, “do you believe in destiny?” I thought it was hilarious, so I texted it to a friend, and the following conversation ensued.

Do you believe in destiny?

Depends.. What is your definition of destiny

the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events.

I believe that there are things you are better suited to, but i don’t think anything is predetermined. It’s your agency

Good answer. I didn’t mean to start a deep philosophical discussion, but I’m not opposed to it. It was on tv, made me laugh, so I sent it to u

And Allison, we were definitely destined to be friends.

You guys tell me i’m not the best to have that kind of discussion with. Do you believe in destiny?

What!? I love discussions like this with you.

And no, I think the idea of fate or destiny is a total contradiction of reality and logic. But, maybe I’m destined to think that way

You’re such a nerd but i love it. Lol. I do think there is more to life then pure chance and determination though

So here’s a conundrum. If God is omniscient and has all time before him, can we through some decision act contrary to his knowledge?

It’s my understanding that God doesn’t see time as a line… He can see all time at once… So he knows the end and the beginning even if you change it midway

“Can omniscient God who knows the future find the omnipotence to change his future mind?” -Karen Owens

If God sees all time at once, doesn’t that mean he already knows the end? That he already knows what we will do? Otherwise he would have to see it as a line as we do

Another theory I like is that God sees trillions of branches of time, and every time someone makes a decision more branched are discarded

Why discarded and not created? Wouldn’t it have to go both ways

I see another contradiction in the branch idea, namely that it takes away God’s omniscience and makes him uncertain of which path is the future

Because if the branch is created, there is no need for a branch because it means he did not know it in the first place and has forfeited omniscience

The reason for the branches is to try to maintain the concept of omniscience

Just got your other texts. There is no end for god, having an end would put time on a line. i still mulling over the branches… It seems like a lot of waste

The question is, how can I make a decision contrary to God’s omniscience? And if he doesn’t know what I will do, isn’t his omniscience lacking?

You don’t, you can make a decision he wishes he wouldn’t but he already knows what path You’ve chosen

So you believe in destiny after all!

I had this conversation with a friend on facebook today.

Unnamed Friend at 11:41am May 30
“Hate no one; hate their vices, not themselves.” -J. G. C. Brainard

Nate Smith at 12:03pm May 30
question: what is a person, other than his values, beliefs, and actions? Don’t you think people are defined by their moral codes?

Unnamed Friend at 8:39pm May 30
Love thy neighbor as thy self. We may not agree with peoples morals, values, and beliefs but God has called upon us to love all mankind. As he does. Hate the sin but love the sinner. As a people we may not be completely there but we will be.

Because I am not out to start a facebook war, I did not add any further commentary on his wall. However, I should like to take a moment and explore what my friend was saying with his commentary.

Love thy neighbor as thy self.

I am not a fan of self-delusion. I do not believe in “loving myself” unless I have succeeded in living according to my own moral code. Of all people in the world, I am most able to judge myself, as I am the only person who has a window, every second of every day, into my thoughts, words, actions, and values. If I am to love my “neighbor” in this manner, I think this statement is calling on me to judge other people and love them according to the values they live. I submit that any man who finds himself unable to perform an honest self-appraisal cannot know whether he loves another man or not.

We may not agree with peoples morals, values, and beliefs but God has called upon us to love all mankind.

Why? When? You might talk to me of Christ, King Benjamin, or a host of other Biblical and Book of Mormon prophets. But in the same vein, the LDS church (to which my friend belongs) also claims that Christ is Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. If any man can read the Old Testament, and then say afterwards that God has called upon his people to love all mankind, that man is either delusional or illiterate.

On the other hand, I believe in tolerance. It is not my prerogative to specify another man’s religious or philosophical inclinations. However, that does not mean that I have to feel love for him: a love with no foundation, no basis, other than a mystical unconditional love that is not possible to honest men.

More to the point, I must argue that just because God has said something does not mean you must follow it. It is your responsibility and privilege to use your own brain to make your own decisions about what is right and what is wrong. If you abstain, do not ask me to walk so faithful a path.

As he does.

I completely disagree. In your very own religion, how many of God’s children (us) are going to live with him eternally? According to you, it is only those who are baptized in your church, and then perform a host of secretive ordinances within the walls of an LDS temple, then live spotless lives. You have 13 or 15 million people in the church, many of which have not performed all the necessary ordinances or who have not been living the way the church says. There are about 6.7 billion people on earth. So…one in 466 people is going to live with God, assuming every person on your church’s records is “saved”? Of course you provide provisions for people who never have a chance to hear the LDS gospel, that they can be converted after their deaths. But the point is that ultimately, there will be some subset of humankind that will NOT live with God because they did not live according to the commandments of your church. What I am trying to say is that any man, in accepting all men unconditionally (loving the man but not what the man does), is in patent opposition to the way that you say God operates. “God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.” He might be sad for his children who have gone astray, and love them as a father towards a wayward son, but he also feels wrath towards them. “And a place has been prepared for them.” How’s that for ominous? I certainly don’t find it motivating or inspirational.

Hate the sin but love the sinner.

How? A man is what he thinks, what he does, what he says. I could just as easily say, “hate the worm but love the apple.” I don’t see you eating an apple that is filled with worms, for the same reason that you say that God will only let “clean” people into his kingdom.

As a people we may not be completely there but we will be.

I don’t know what this sentence even means. My worth as a man is not measured collectively with other people! Are you saying that, while there are good people around us who merit our love, not everyone does? That was my point! And the “we will be” part is so ambiguous I considered not even addressing it. I think you’re talking about members of your church and assuming I am one of them. The idea that “we will be…completely there” some day just because we’re all in God’s church is laughable at best. Every man’s progression is individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain.

Some Rand for your enjoyment

“The person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.”
“You mean the person who says that there’s some good in the worst of us?”
“I mean the person who has the filthy insolence to claim that he loves equally the man who made that statue of you and the man who makes a Mickey Mouse balloon to sell on street corners. I mean the person who loves the men who prefer the Mickey Mouse to your statue-and there are many of that kind. I mean the person who loves Joan of Arc and the salesgirls in dress shops on Broadway-with equal fervor. I mean the person who loves your beauty and the women he sees in a subway-the kind that can’t cross their knees and show flesh hanging publicly over their garters-with the same sense of exaltation. I mean the person who loves the clean, steady, unfrightened eyes of man looking through a telescope and the white stare of an imbecile – equally.”

—

“The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.”

the end

Do not tell me that I must love all men. I am not capable of doing it, because I do not hate life, hate myself, or hate the greatest men I have met enough to lower my highest ideals to those of the slums, the insolent wastes of human life I have often seen around me, the sewers, the gutters, the garbage heaps of society. Because I am an honest man.