On the Royal Line of Sinless Saviors (RLSS) in Mormon thought

Background

Mormonism’s Lorenzo Snow couplet theology suggests that Heavenly Father may have been a sinful mortal before becoming an exalted god. The clearest alternative position to this among Mormons is that Heavenly Father was a sinless savior for the previous generation of spirit children (our spirit-aunts and spirit-uncles). I have heard this referred to as The Royal Line of Sinless Saviors (RLSS).

Summary

According to traditional Mormon theology Jesus achieved a kind of secured state of non-exalted godhood in pre-mortality. Among the spirit children of our Heavenly Father, he was able to achieve a level of progression that the rest of us failed to achieve. Jesus enters into mortality not to learn from post-Fall inevitable sinful mistakes, but to sinlessly achieve his part in the plan of salvation. After his undeserved death and triumphant resurrection, he is able to be fully exalted unto full godhood, and presumably someday become his own Heavenly Father over his own spirit children, all without ever sinning.

Just as the future spirit children of Jesus would have a Heavenly Father that never sinned, some Mormons think that our Heavenly Father was once a sinless savior for a previous generation of spirit children. In this scenario, Heavenly Father would have, like Jesus, achieved a kind of non-exalted state of godhood in pre-mortality, to then play the role of a sinless savior on a fallen planet. He dies not due to any personal sinfulness. Rather, he dies an undeserved death in sacrifice for another generation of spirit children — spirit children that would essentially be our spirit-aunts and spirit-uncles — Heavenly Father’s brothers and sisters.

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An infallibility hard to swallow

Is the atheist throat big enough to swallow the implications of moral non-realism?

“If we reject the possibility of objective morality, then we must say that our own basic commitments are _never_ wrong (unless, of course, they are _always_ wrong, as the error theorist maintains)… Subjectivism’s or relativism’s picture of ethics as a wholly conventional enterprise entails a kind of moral infallibility for individuals or societies. No matter the content of their ultimate commitments, these are never wrong. This sort of infallibility is hard to swallow in its own right.” – Russ Shafer-Landau, “Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?”, p. 17 http://amzn.com/0195168739

Presence

Space is a place
To be near
Presence is a grace
To touch and hear

Pitter, patter
Creak
Thud!
“MOMMY, I NEED SOME HELP!”

Tip-toe, tip-toe
Slide
Tug
“Daddy, I want some milk.”

Shuffle, twist
Tweak
Turn
“Honey, can you please be still? I’m trying to sleep.”

We should play trains

“Daddy, can we play trains?” (John Caleb)

“Sorry buddy, it’s bed-time. We can play tomorrow.” (Me)

“Ohhh I don’t want to play later. I want to play right now. We should play trains the whole day. And drink chocolate milk. That would be the greatest, mostest best day ever. And I would love that. Oh please? Pretty pretty please?” (John Caleb)

Quickly deleting users from a Facebook group

(This is old. It probably doesn’t work on Facebook anymore.)

Facebook unfortunately requires one to first individually delete users from a group before one can effectively delete the group. If you have thousands of users, this is a pain. You can use the following bookmarklet (I’ve only tested it in Google Chrome) to quickly delete about 100 users. Unfortunately, WordPress.com does not allow me to have drag-and-drop bookmarklet links in my post, so you’ll have to follow these directions:

  1. Copy the text from here.
  2. Create a new bookmark in Google Chrome and paste the text into the URL.
  3. Go to the admin page that lists users from your Facebook group and click the bookmarklet.
  4. When you are directed to the next page of users, click it again.
  5. To speed up the process even more, use multiple tabs on different pages.

For those interested, here is the code (I minified it using YUI Compressor for the bookmarklet):

function confirmDeleteUser() {
	confirmButton = document.querySelector('.uiButton.uiButtonLarge.uiButtonConfirm input');
	if(!confirmButton) {
		setTimeout('deleteAllUsersInGroup()',200);
		return;
	}
	mouseClickEvent = document.createEvent('MouseEvent');
	mouseClickEvent.initMouseEvent('click',true,true);
	confirmButton.dispatchEvent(mouseClickEvent);
	setTimeout('deleteAllUsersInGroup()',200);
}

function switchPage() {
	pageButton = document.querySelector('.next.uiButton:not(.uiButtonDisabled)');
	if(!pageButton) {
		pageButton = document.querySelector('.prev.uiButton:not(.uiButtonDisabled)');
	}
	if(!pageButton) {
		return
	}
	mouseClickEvent = document.createEvent('MouseEvent');
	mouseClickEvent.initMouseEvent('click',true,true);
	pageButton.dispatchEvent(mouseClickEvent);
}

function deleteAllUsersInGroup() {
	/* I pick a random user to account for some quirks in the process */
	deleteButtons = document.querySelectorAll('a.UIImageBlock_Ext.uiCloseButton.uiCloseButtonSmall');
	if(!deleteButtons.length) {
		setTimeout('confirmDeleteUser()',500); /* Usually one last dialog to clear */
		setTimeout('switchPage()',1500);
		return;
	}
	deleteButton = deleteButtons.item(Math.floor(Math.random() * deleteButtons.length))
	mouseClickEvent = document.createEvent('MouseEvent');
	mouseClickEvent.initMouseEvent('click',true,true);
	deleteButton.dispatchEvent(mouseClickEvent);
	deleteButton.parentNode.parentNode.removeChild(deleteButton.parentNode)
	setTimeout('confirmDeleteUser()',200);
};
deleteAllUsersInGroup();

Why make a pilgrimage to John the Baptist?

Because the Messiah is going to clean house and purify Israel. Because they wanted to enter the true Promised Land, even though they were already in the Promised Land. Because they were still in bondage, even though they had left Egypt long ago.

“Like Isaiah surprised by the presence of the Lord in His Temple, who confessed both that he was a man of unclean lips and a part of a people of unclean lips (Isaiah 6:5), those coming to John for baptism were confessing both that theirs was a sinful, adulterous, and unbelieving generation (Mark 8:38; 9:19), and that they personally had participated in it’s sin, adultery, and unbelief. They were admitting that they were still under bondage in Egypt, though Moses had led them out of it so many centuries ago…

“By making the pilgrimage to the Jordan, those who believed John’s message showed that they wanted to be visibly separated from those under judgment when the Lord came. They wanted to be members of the future purified Israel. Undergoing John’s baptism helped them anticipate that they were not only God’s covenant people, but that they would remain in that covenant after God cast others out. In order to be assured that they would be included in the future forgiven Israel whose iniquity would be removed, they needed to repent and ask for personal forgiveness now.” (Mark Hornes, Victory According to Mark, pp. 26, 27, link)