I am not responding to answer the question, just saying thanks to you for asking it. It is a question I have often thought about asking but for the way to ask it. I will be very interested to see what responses you get.

I am not responding to answer the question, just saying thanks to you for asking it.

Alrighty then. And you're welcome.

I would venture to say that comfort can be found in the fact that it's always been the lot of the innocent to suffer -at least right now anyway. But then I don't know if I'm qualified to answer as I'm not really one of the 'Religious' of JU either.

If I understand your challenge here, you want to know how we have lived our beliefs, not just how we've preached or accepted them.

From the standpoint of purely temporal need, my particular brand of Christianity does pretty well.  We are not just taught to sit in church once a week and be "edified" by a sermon, or even the spirit.  We are taught that The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan of action, not just words.

Every week in our meetings, opportunities to help each other, and our communities are announced by any member who knows the details.  Anything from who needs help moving to civic events.  Those who want to get involved schedule their time so they can help.

We don't have a preacher or minister whose job it is to take care of the members of the congragation.  Our "Home Teaching" and "Visiting Teaching" programs give each of us the opportunity to fill that roll.  As home teachers, men of the congregation (usually assigned in twos) visit the families assigned.  One day a month they go to teach a lesson, but that is just the beginning of this calling.  Home Teachers are supposed to get to know the family, know there needs and challenges so they can be in a position to help (or find the resources available to bring help).  Visiting teachers are the women's program to do the same thing.  Because of this program, one or two people aren't trying to fill the needs of hundreds, many are there to fill the needs of a few.

We believe it is important for recipients to maintain their dignity and take an active part in their own welfare. Able bodied recipients are expected to provide some kind of service to "work off the aid".  This service is anything from working in the church yard to volunteering with local charities and civic events (kind of a pay it forward thing).  It usually doesn't matter what kind of service it is, or who it is rendered to, as long as it is discussed between the recipient and the bishop.

Our leadership ask us to fast on the first Sunday of the month.  The fast is supposed to last 24 hours, or two meals.  We are then asked to donate the equivolent of what those two meals would have cost.  Fasting helps us in a few ways.  In this context, it reminds us of what it is like to go without food, so we can better emapthise with those live with hunger pangs far longer than 24 hours at a time.  The money we donate goes to the LDS Welfare System.

Through this system, bishops can authorize money for rent, food, and other needs of the people within the ward boundaries (no, it isn't just for members).  It is often the home teachers, not the people in need who are the first to inform the bishop of problems the families are facing.  That is the welfare system at the local level.

At the Churchwide Level we have what has been reported as "the second biggest private welfare system in the U.S".  It is centered in Welfare Square in Salt Lake City.  The Fast Offerings provide the money needed to run it, but donations  of clothing, food, health and sanitation supplies, and other needs are processed and prepared to be sent where they are needed.

Our welfare system also run farms and orchards, canneries and processing kitchens where members donate their time and skills to produce food for families in need.  The donated items go out to the people of the world who are in need.

I've never been on a disaster scene where the LDS Church wasn't involved in the response and recovery efforts.

One of the callings in our wards is Employment Specialist.  This person keeps up on the employment needs of the people in the ward and the job openings available in the area.

As for myself, some of my oldest memories are of getting out while its snowing to shovel the driveway of people in my neighborhood unable to do it themselves.  In 83, when the Wasatch Mountains slid down into the valley because the winter snowpack thawed too quickly, morning after morning, we loaded into the backs of pickup trucks, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction.  We filled sandbags, dug out basements, restored neigborhoods and worked in the shelters.  In fact, it was those weeks that later led me to an interest in disaster recovery and emergency management.

To us, yes we are supposed to pray, preach the gospel, go to church, study the scriptures and other things to promote spiritual growth, but:

I hope that answers your question, and satisfies the terms of your challenge.

But then I don't know if I'm qualified to answer as I'm not really one of the 'Religious' of JU either.

Neither am I. But that won't stop me trying.

I would venture to say that comfort can be found in the fact that it's always been the lot of the innocent to suffer

In exactly what way is it a comfort to know that people and brute beasts alike have always suffered? If you're sick and miserable is it a consolation to know that millions before you have suffered, millions are suffering now, and millions will suffer in the future? If I was to find consolation in the suffering of anyone it would be in the suffering of the guilty, not the innocent. Much as Augustine did, when he told the Faithful that a part of their reward in Heaven would be the ability to watch the torments of the damned in Hell.

Such a position could easily be taken by a zealous Christian or a zealous Muslim - though not so easily by a Jew of any description since Jews recognize no Hell - so far as I know. So not only is there precious little comfort to be found in that position, but as a theological standpoint there's nothing to specify its theological origin within the doctrines to be found in the Book. As a point of view it appears most closely related to the dualism of the Manichees, which held that life, the flesh, the world were all alike a prisonhouse and a place of torment from which the only release was death.

And that, too, is particularly cold comfort.

Well...you know what they say. Misery loves company!

I hope that answers your question, and satisfies the terms of your challenge.

If my challenge were to say "What is it you actually do, rather than say", then I would agree that you have. Certainly the LDS is of that brand of Christianity which finds its spirituality in positive action that helps others. But what if the aid needed was not physical and material but emotional, spiritual (mental, if you wish)?

Remember Job. His anguish had little to do with his physical condition, his affliction with disease, the deaths of his children and the loss of all his wealth. His anguish lay in being a virtuous man who had fulfilled all the Law and yet come upon a disaster that his faith taught him was reserved for the wicked. How would you comfort him? As his friends did, who were rebuked, and spared their lives only through the intercession of the man they had consistently tormented throughout his suffering with the accusation that it was all his own fault? Or what would you say? That the righteousness of the righteous man is as worthless before God as is the viciousness of the vicious man? Surely not, because the Book teaches throughout Old and New testaments that God is a righteous judge. So how would you comfort Job? With what spiritual reality would you console him?

I certainly recognise the many good works of the LDS, their care for their own and others, and the value of the spiritual principle which underlies it (without works faith is dead). But that wasn't the question I asked.

And no, this will not be an exercise solely in pointing out what I consider to be the weaknesses of the arguments of others. I have my own thoughts on this issue, thoughts that arose in the first instance as a reaction to the death of my friend. I intend posting them when I have them in my mind as a coherent whole, probably tomorrow, and I shall be happy to answer questions or criticism when I have done so.

This is as much a challenge to myself as to anyone else.

How would I comfort him? By being there for him. Sit with him while he vent, complains, or unloads on me however he felt the need. I would pray with him so He could get the answers he seeks from God. If what he needs is just to be alone for awhile, I would respect that too.

From what I have found though, when a believer deals with hardship helping them with the physical challenges that come with their hardship seems to be the most effective. Love, friendship and a willingness to voluntarily take on the challenge with them often bolsters them spiritually as well as physically.

Charity is the pure love of Christ. When it is given voluntarily out of love, to someone who truly needs it, there is no separating the two.

Love, friendship and a willingness to voluntarily take on the challenge with them often bolsters them spiritually as well as physically.

That's a better answer than was given to Job by his friends. And it's a kinder answer than the one given by God to Job, and certainly a more understanding and more human answer. Certainly charity is the pure love of Christ - if Christ is for you the source of divinity in yourself and others.

Your answer, as well as testifying to your own good nature as a man and a Christian, also testifies to a peculiar weakness which afflicts Americans generally, as well as those who are believers. It's intensely practical. Like Martha, you run around doing the good deed that needs doing, out of the love of Christ and charity to your fellow man. And unlike Mary you don't deduce the greater truth that can set men free in themselves so that they need not repine over their suffereings, or the sufferings of the other creatures that inhabit the earth with us.

What first struck me as I read the Gospels was the degree to which the words of Jesus spoke to the human condition; not to our immediate problems of shelter and food and warmth and security - which Jesus blithely dismissed by saying that his Father knows we need these things and will provide them, so we should have no concern for them - but to our fundamental condition as human beings. Which is one of doubt, confusion, and incomprehension. He spoke to that void, and into that void, and everyone who heard him was comforted by what he had to say.

I don't have the knack of saying such things as simply and as clearly as he did. But I know what he meant, and I intend to share what I know - when I'm done working to express it as simply and as clearly as I can.

And once again, while you've posted a very good answer, it isn't an answer to the question that I asked.

This may sound like a cop out, but I don't know if we can help others with doubt, confusion and incomprehension; at least not directly. Even Christ himself felt those during the Atonment. Doubt: "Take this cup from me"; Confusion and incomprehension: "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me".

Of course, he overcame them and fulfilled His mission in the end. I think it is only by accepting that fact we can't overcome them for ourselves. Humbling ourselves to the point of turning to Our Heavenly Father is the only real answer.

Wow, thank you!

Wow, thank you!

You're welcome. And I'm away to my bed.

Religion offers the greatest comfort of them all - hope. When the chips are down, that's all you really need to keep going, and religion is the oldest source of hope in the world.

Other than that it's meaningless.

NB: I'm not trying to say that hope is worthless; it's probably the most important thing a person can have. Without hope we cease to be entirely human. But that's all that religion can really provide.

I'm not trying to say that hope is worthless; it's probably the most important thing a person can have. Without hope we cease to be entirely human. But that's all that religion can really provide.

So what you're actually saying is that all those who believe do so simply because religion provides them with hope?

35 (partial) Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.
36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.
37 They were stoned[f]; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—
38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
(Hebrews 11).

Something to hope for there, don't you think?

How anyone of even moderate intelligence can convince themselves that the religious impulse, which is as old as humanity, persists because it's nothing more than a source of hope entirely escapes me. Most of those who suffer hope for relief in their present circumstances, not in some future lala land of bliss. Because life hurts now, or hadn't you noticed? And the three great faiths that draw their inspiration from the Book teach that there is no hope of relief in this life. No hope. What they actually offer to the convinced believer is pain, and travail, and persecution.

Oh yes, certainly religion persists because it has nothing to offer but hope.