If someone gave you an opportunity to get riches, respect, authority, leadership and just about ANY sexual partners that you wanted, and as many of them as you could physically cope with, would YOU succumb to the temptation to actually do it?
To actually get those riches? To get the respect? To take that leadership? To have just about any and every sexual partner that you could physically cope with?
Well, yes, morally we would hope to say that we would not do any of those things.
But put it another way. If you could have anything that you wanted, anything that you desired and you knew that nobody would mind, nobody important that is, that you could do whatever you wanted to do with no possibility of any comeback, are you saying that you would be able to shrug your shoulders, smile and say: "No thank you!"
To be honest, I do not know if I could. And that was the dilemma that Joseph Smith found himself in.
But ultimately Joseph Smith found that there was a price to pay.
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I don't know if just any person could do that. I know I couldn't. Not saying that those things aren't nice and all, it's just I couldn't lie like that. I wonder if it was just a constant rush for him...
If anyone and everyone was as capable as pulling off what he did, there would have been a lot more of it. Even though we still see some still, cults and whatnot, but I think some people just want power in whatever way they can get it.
~Alison
(an Ex Mormon, now Pagan)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Fall-Nine-oClock-Service/dp/0264674197
Chris Brain, Church of England Vicar.
There's still a lot of it about, it would seem.
The key words here are "nobody important.".The true measure of a person's character can be found in how he or she treats those nobodies.
Indeed, yes, Alexis. You make a valid point.
The problem is that the people Joseph Smith considered as important, Brigham Young, etc, were part of the con and wanted to have what Joseph had. And they got it, too.
Those he considered as unimportant were those who said to him: "Mr Smith, you cannot have that woman, she is already wed, or is too young" and the like.
Such reasons as this is why he was persecuted so badly? But your also only remembering half the story...
If you could choose to be hated, to be tarred and feathered, to be beaten, chased, spit at, treated like an animal, taunted, thrown in jail, starved, torn from your family, taken from every comfort you've ever known, watch your friends and family die...for what? For riches? For fame? For sex?
For the very things that killed him? Well, men have gotten all of those things much simpler than Joseph Smith.
But I guess only Joseph can answer those questions. Not you, or I.
But I do know it gave me goosebumps when after all he suffered he simply stated, "How can we not go on in so great a cause."
These are the reasons why he was persecuted so badly. But your also only giving half the facts...
If you could choose to be hated, to be tarred and feathered, to be beaten, chased, spit on, treated like an animal, taunted, thrown in jail, starved, torn from your family, taken from every comfort you've ever known, watch your friends and family die...for what? For riches? For fame? For sex?
For the very things that killed him? Well, a lot of other men (and women) have gotten all of those things and lot more simply than that, let me tell you.
But it's not really for you or I to decide why Joseph did what he did. But for as much as he gained, he lost even more. And for that I admire him.
If you could choose to be hated, to be tarred and feathered...
But blah, Joseph Smith was tarred and feathered by fellow Mormons because, it is said, they had found out about the secret doctrine of polygamy. And were affronted when he desired carnal knowledge of their wives and daughters, even though he was already married.
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