I’ll leave you to suss out the details…

Any finite thing over infinity is exceedingly small, but that assumes the amount work to do is finite.

If the amount of work, too, is infinite, wouldn’t that mean God has one unit of power and the rest of us have less than one unit of power?

Doctrine & Covenants 121:36-38 uses “rights of the Priesthood” to mean Priesthood authority, and “powers of Heaven” to mean Priesthood power. Those verses make it clear that although one may possess Priesthood authority—that the rights of the Priesthood may conferred upon him—Priesthood POWER may still be withdrawn from him as he seeks to misuse it. Thus, “the heavens withdraw themselves” and “he is left unto himself.”

I bet steve could actually contribute to the discussion if he wanted to…

You bring up an interesting idea though– how opposing forces make work possible. (ie the necessity of opposition in order for there to be progression/growth).

I don’t mean to quibble too much again, but that’s the Theory of Relativity and not Quantum Physics.

There are forces at a distance which affect matter and energy which are a characteristic rather than a product of matter. (the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental forces)

It’s within these basic forces that the ‘work’ gets done.

Perhaps JM can assign gospel principals to each of the fundamental forces as well … just for kicks. =)

Your idea of energy is interesting. Quantum physicists seem to say that all matter is energy when you break it down to it’s most basic levels. (Interesting that light is energy and truth is light…Reminds me of something Richard G. Scott said in a talk about truth– that “truth is of little value in our lives if we do not apply it.” If we don’t apply that energy or capacity to do work, that energy is of little value.

Now you’ve got me thinking about potential energy and kinetic energy in terms of “the work”, our divine nature and how we both influence others through work and how we ourselves our influenceable (since we cannot be influenced by the Spirit if we are not conductive to the Spirit).

Thanks again for the thought-provoking topic. :)

Keeping in line with using physics definitions, I would define force as “An infuence that causes a mass to accellerate”. In putting a gospel spin on it, I see “mass” as being a person, group, program, teaching, etc… So, having a forceful effect would be one that causes movement, action, learning, progression, etc…

It really makes more sense if you start from Moses 1:39 like I did when I started to explore the whole thing. Doing do will cause you to explore two paths, the “Work” path and the “Glory” path.

If God’s “Work” is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, we need to understand what he means by work. I think the physics definition helps explain this the clearest.

I ended up using the following definitions:

• Work: Force producing movement in the direction force is applied
• Force: An infuence that causes a mass to accellerate
• Energy: The capacity to do work
• Power: Amount of work per unit of time
• Influence: To move or impell to some action

When we keep these definitions in mind, it becomes clear that to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, everything God does must be to that end. Any variation is something less than his ‘work’ (work being a noun and not a verb in this case I think).

To be work (or the correct result), the forces applied (temple work, missionary work, home teaching, sunday school, etc…) must produce movement in the direction they were applied. For instance, if the end result of sunday school is participants learning less about the gospel rather than more, that is not God’s work. It’s moving people in the wrong direction.

If our efforts, or influence do not bring us to action (cause mass to accellerate) we remain at rest and the force being applied is insufficient.

If we are unable to produce the work, we lack energy….

This is why I made the comment about missionary work. To be clear, I should have made the distinction between Missionary Work and Proclaiming the Gospel. Proclaiming I think of more like the act of sharing gospel knowledge, regardless of the audience. The old Missionary Guide specifically defined missionary work as “bringing souls to Christ through the ordinances of baptism and confirmation”. Still, when we use the term in out conversations / talks / story sharing time, we should use the term correctly. Missionary work means a very specific thing. If we are really doing something else (reactivation of less active members) then our force is not producing movement in the direction that force is being applied. An end result of missionary work, by definition, cannot be re-activation.

“Glory” is a whole other topic for a whole other thread. But I will say that when you mingle the physics definitions with the gospel definitions, it brings to ‘light’ (pun intended) a great amount of meaning and insight into God’s glory and where we fit in.

Some members become very casual in how they choose to define gospel terms. It usually ends up putting us off course by a couple of degrees and for me, that’s hard to be a part of. If our force is not producing movement in the direction force is applied, I really don’t want any part of it. I guess that’s why I have become so critical of lazy leadership. Something I still don’t know the correct response to. Like Elder Oaks said “when going about the Lord’s work and accomplishing His purposes, it is not enough that we get a good result, it must be done in the correct way”.

When JM mentioned force, I thought of it much in the same as what you mention in your second comment. I did no think of it as the context of making someone do something they do not choose to do.