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In all reality that saying doesn’t make sense. The church is made from people. If there were no people in the church, there wouldn’t be a church. So if people aren’t perfect and the church is made of people, that means the church isn’t perfect. At what point is there a line between the two? Prophets are people and prophets have changed things about the church, so it is not the same as it was when Christ was around. There are plenty of things that aren’t that great about the church that someone could argue is from people, but what those people enforce is now part of the church, so their point is invalid. Those are the things that go through my head about that saying. Is there any way to back out of giving the presentation at this point? That’s what I’d be trying to do. I know I’ve noticed the Spirit in places that are not LDS. And I truly believe non members can feel the spirit as well. I’ve seen some truly spiritual people who are not LDS and you can just tell they carry the Spirit with them. I sometimes wonder if the Spirit is just a good feeling that anyone can get from being in tune with a certain part of themselves. But then idk how to explain times when people were prompted to do things that saved their lives or led them to something that answered their prayers or something. I, for one, incorrectly interpreted what I thought was an answer to a prayer and it’s been a huge part of my faith crisis since the way the answer came was similar to many other answers from the past that I was sure were right. It’s made me question everything. And idk what to trust if I can’t trust the Spirit since I have grown up trusting it and relying on its correctness for my entire life. I much prefer when the leadership speaks with compassion and loving words saying that it makes them sad when we leave or things similar to that, that communicate genuine concern for people who are struggling with the church. It sounds a lot more Christ-like to me. Saying ‘I will not let you leave’ or that he doesn’t care what we’re dealing with, we should stay anyways, does not sound Christ-like whatsoever. Eta: he sounds so intimidating. After saying he wouldn’t let people leave then he says he wants to talk to any investigators afterwards and get them in the church, if I was investigator I’d be running for the doors!
@dark Jedi good to know! I am surprised that it’s more strict than BYU, that’s not what I would have expected! As my husband says, honesty is punished when it comes to the honor code. He went to BYUI and I believe they have the same honor codes and strictness? Forgive me if they don’t. I know my husband told me he saw people who were dishonest succeeding more than people who were honest. He knew someone who went to the bishop and asked for help with a pornography addiction. They kicked him out of school. He also had several teachers, idk if this is only a BYUI thing, who would let the students grade their own work and the teachers wouldn’t check it because they trusted you to be honest. But what ended up happening was the dishonest kids would get better grades than the honest students because the teachers just believed what the students put down. So the honest students had to choose between an honest lower grade, or lying a bit to pass the class. He started to feel like dishonesty was rewarded there. He learned to just not tell anyone anything that could get him into trouble. Here’s some speculation that isn’t really my current opinion, this is just going off of what the Gospel teaches. What if everything Satan says in the video is instead a partial truth and a lie as well to twist the truth to benefit himself? Like when he says, ‘if any of you fail to live up to the covenants you make here in the temple today, you will be under my power’, it’s partially true going off what we’re taught because if we sin at all, we’re giving into Satan’s temptations, so at that moment we’re in his power in a sense. Like if you do what someone says, you could argue that you’re under that persons control for that short period. But at the same time, the church preaches a lot about how we have power over Satan because we are God’s children and also that we can come back from any sin because of the atonement. So if we say that his statement about being in his power as a partial truth and a partial lie to benefit him: Truth: Satan is starting to influence us if we sin and can be tricky and sneaky so he may at least feel he has power over us when we sin.
Lie: we aren’t completely in his control like he makes it sound. We can always repent and go back to making our covenants, and we are always stronger than Satan if we choose to be.
Benefit to him: if we believe we are in his power, we may give up on trying to go back to our covenants. He may try and convince us that we have no way back so we will stay with him.
@night my answer was wrong. I received deadlines basically. The answer was these things will happen by these specific dates. Both things went past the deadline when I was told they would happen before those deadlines. I think it was a miscommunication between God and I. But the answer was so strong and felt similar to other revelations that I’d been given before so my trust in prayer answers took a big hit. Sorry to bump an old post, but I saw your comment on another post, Joni and your comment struck me about God not loving you. I don’t know how I would handle receiving an answer like that. I wanted to tell you, though, that I received an incorrect answer in the temple. It was a very distinct, clear answer and I received it the same way that I have received other revelations before. I have always based my beliefs on prayers. I grew up in the church and have ALWAYS had my prayers answered, or if they weren’t, I was able to reason why they weren’t and I could keep on believing. But this one was different. This one I received precise dates that two things were going to happen. Both dates passed and those things did not happen. So in my experience one can receive incorrect answers in the temple. It has shaken my faith in prayer because now I don’t know how to trust the answers I get. So I also understand why you don’t want to believe it could be an incorrect answer, because that comes with it’s own problems. I just wanted you to know that it is possible that it was an incorrect answer. My husband believes that sometimes our own emotions or biases can mess with what answers we receive from God or can seem like an answer from God when they’re not, which makes sense to me. That may have been what it was for me, but still, how can I trust my prayers if my own feelings can get in the way? How do I know that I am for sure open to God’s answer? Just thought I’d share my thoughts with you. I am so sorry that happened to you. I can’t even imagine how painful that would be. To your part about ‘worldly’ knowledge, I bet it’s okay for us to listen to BYU professors because I would imagine people think they only research things that move the church forward. I know GBH was big on educating yourself and going to school. It seems like ‘worldly’ knowledge is anything that the church disagrees with. That’s what it seems to be at least. And the church definitely doesn’t want us researching things that go against the church. I was thinking today too how the church has become prideful in some ways, maybe even many ways, but we’ll go with some ways. Today we talked about how prideful people don’t change a lot and aren’t open to new ideas and others ways of doing things. And when I read what you said about your ward talking about how much better the church is than other organizations at volunteer work, isn’t that the definition of pride? Believing you’re better than others. So that was a thought I had. I think there are people who are open to new ideas in the church but I do see a lot of people going on about how great the church is and how it is the best thing out there, and we don’t change things a lot in the church. Which sounds pretty prideful.
@nibbler I like your idea of us coming to a decision together of how often I can miss church. That sounds like something he’d be open to because he really likes us to both feel fulfilled.
@roy I have sometimes told him to get all ready to go, and then decide if he wants to go but those have only been times where I knew he would be disappointed in himself if he didn’t go. I think part of it is I tend to be more about what’s comfortable, so if my DH doesn’t feel like going or if he’s tired I tend to remind him that he doesn’t have to go or remind him that he has time off pay for work if he needs a break. My husband tends to be more focused on becoming better. He’s constantly trying to become a better person and trying to help me become better too and so I think for him, if I don’t go to church, he sees it as me being weak and he wants to help me become stronger, because he’s all into becoming better.Thank you for the input, everyone. It really helps having other ideas to think of. I’ll have to discuss my thoughts on this with dh soon and see what we can come up with to hopefully solve it
My husband knows, and doesn’t mind. I actually talk to him about some of the interesting thoughts brought up on here and he finds them very interesting. Is it possible that maybe it’s a cultural difference? In the scriptures there are many times where prophets would ‘cast their pearls before swine’ because there were several times where they preached to wicked people about God speaking to them. But now it seems more common for people to talk about making sure you keep your experiences sacred rather than telling everyone. I can also imagine it being awkward if only some apostles and prophets have seen God. Can you imagine if only some of the GA’s had seen God, so they were the only ones talking about their discussions with God? I would imagine it would make people doubt the GA’s who hadn’t ever seen God. It seems like it could turn into a competition for who’s the most holy GA. I don’t know if that’s why it is that way now, but I can see where problems could arise if they always told us when they had visions. Those were some of my ideas that came to mind Nibbler, geez, now I feel like an idiot :facepalm: I think I will delete my comment. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of those groups in the church being called the general boards. I think it depends on the type of person she is. I would wait until you’ve had several dates before bringing it up though. Then by that point you will have built your relationship a bit and she would probably be more understanding and wanting to give you a chance. Hopefully she won’t ask about your mission until you decide to bring it up. Eta: this is coming from a used-to-be TBM girl
Eta2: but I didn’t go on a mission
