Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Wuwei, sorry you are dealing with a difficult situation! Have you tried reassuring you wife that regardless of your religious views, you will always be there for your wife and son? It pains me and scares me when I see family members of others put the LDS church first instead of relationships with family and friends.
I imagine you could still read the Book of Mormon with your wife if it’s important to her. Maybe you could view it and other church activities as a bonding tool that you share with your wife on a regular basis.
As someone who didn’t grow up in the Church, I find your best friend’s Dad and his comments alarming, cultish, disturbing and creepy. I would of thrown him out of the room. I never make comments about my friends/relatives children. Not only is it none of my business, I’m busy worrying about myself. I’m just curious, did your friends Dad go on a mission and did all his male children? I give you serious credit for keeping your cool!
Thanks for the response Ray! I will admit, I have partially changed my view after reading your responses. Sorry for lumping in the soccer baptisms, I misread your response. However, I did find your point number 5 very interesting. I really believe that the vast majority of Mormons believe the 14 million mark. When I mention this topic to people at church, they view me as a heretic and tell me I am wrong. Just my experience.
Ray, I have to strongly but respectfully disagree with your statement regarding this is how all Church’s count members. When I was a member of the Episcapol Church, there were not 1000’s of people added to the church memberships via “soccer baptisms” in which many didn’t even know what was going on. Also, it’s very easy to get your name off the Episcapol membership list as compared to the LDS Church. I just had to send an email and it was done. There was no demand that I meet with a Bishop or Stake President to leave the church I no longer believe in.
In addition, the Episcapol and Catholic Church actually admits to loosing members. Unlike the LDS church, whose numbers never go down!
I don’t get this! If there are 14 million Mormons, where are all of them?
I would have to agree with Ray that the loss of members is significant. This is my belief based on how the LDS Church counts and considers members. If there is not significant loss of members in the Church, why does the church count dead people in their 100’s, people have not been active in years and people who were baptized and never went back? These are the same tactics The Church of Scientology uses to make its organization look main stream. In addition, U.S census reports and census reports from other western countries also list much lower numbers of LDS church membership.
I could care less how many other LDS members are out there, I just don’t like the church misleading individuals.
Ray’s three points were great advice. Due to the fact that your nephew hasn’t come out, I would pay particular attention to Ray’s first point about not proactively bringing it up with him. Maybe he is not ready or wants to keep it private? However, it’s would be pretty horrible dealing with being gay all alone in a orthodox LDS family. I support my cousin who is gay by just treating him like I treat all my family members, with lots of love and respect. I don’t feel like I have to do anything different. My scenario is different then yours because I am the only member in my family, so I might be commenting on a situation I don’t fully understand.
Best of luck to your nephew!
In LDS culture, I think you need to be very careful in regards to what you share about your personal beliefs regarding religion. Growing up a Protestant, I never felt scared to share my personal beliefs. It was just not a big issue. It is my personal opinion that among many LDS, religious transition outside of the faith is not acceptable. Therefore, you need to be careful. What I find fascinating is that many people in the LDS church want to share their crisis/transition publicly. Personally I think this is a mistake. Due to the unacceptability of a faith transition in LDS culture, I believe many people will find a bad backlash when sharing their new personal beliefs.
I think we need to make our faith transition and not worry or concern ourselves with what others in the church think. However, that is easier said then done!
May she rest in peace! I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to be married so long to a person and then loose them. I imagine President Monson’s faith will help him greatly in his time of sorrow. If someone wants to use an object to make them feel comforted, I say go for it. However, I do find pictures of Jesus in LDS homes and Church’s puzzling. In the pictures, Jesus looks very European and almost Scandinavian. I just find that a little odd. I believe if a young man or woman wants to go on mission or leave their mission early, they should make that decision based on what’s best for them and not what other people at church are going to think. As a convert, I find it interesting how much importance grown Mormons place on what others think of them. I would never let what someone else’s opinion force me to work for free. Old-Timer wrote:First, individuals, even individual leaders at the highest level, have different opinions about everything. This is a good example .
This is what I don’t understand! If these “leaders” are divinely inspired by the one and only God, why are they giving different opinions/views? To me, it’s proof that they are just human themselves. However, I find it scary that they tell people to obey and give them money because they are conduits of the Lord.
Old-Timer wrote:Quote:I would tell them that it is none of their business and they should worry about themselves.
Quote:We’re working on it.
Serious question, asked as a reflective exercise:
What are the benefits and risks of saying the first one rather than the second one?
I will totally admit that Ray’s advice on how to answer the question is probably nicer and more mature. After all, I have some anger issues so my advice might not be the best. However, I feel like saying “we are working on it”, gives the impression that a third person has the right interject themselves in your marriage and personal life. I didn’t grow up LDS and I just feel like privacy gets blurred sometimes at church.
Old-Timer wrote:Fwiw, I raised my oldest daughter “in this environment” – and she is an ultra-liberal, socialist-at-heart who now is serving a mission and absolutely loving it.
We tend to think in absolutes, even when we think we’ve gotten beyond absolutes – and that’s true of everyone, not just Mormons. Given that simple fact, the key for me is much more my children’s home environment – since I know their church environment won’t be constant throughout their lves, even if they remain totally active in the LDS Church until the day they die. If I help break down extremist, absolutist views for them (unless such a view is important to one or more of them), I’m confident they will figure our their own faith – whether it is more similar to or different than mine.
Thanks for sharing this Ray! Reading your post here gave me some peace. As a convert, raising children in the Church is something that is completely new for my lineage and I have been obsessing over the “absolutes”. It doesn’t matter to me if I have a kid who is conservative or liberal, I just want to make sure that if I raise a kid in the church that they will be able to march to the beat of their own drummer.
Old-Timer wrote:Quote:Two people who are endowed and not sealed cannot go too long without answering to authority.
It’s possible to skip the answering to authority, in the strictest sense, by just ignoring it or saying something honest yet deflecting like, “We’re working on it.”
It’s much harder to avoid answering to each other – and it’s much more crippling, as well. You already know that, obviously.
Again, all I have is a sincere request that God bless you in whatever choice you end up making.
Honestly, I don’t think you even have to say you are “working on it” in regards to getting sealed. I don’t see why your marriage is anyone elses business. If someone asked me why I was endowed but not sealed, I would tell them that it is none of their business and they should worry about themselves.
It is totally your call and I wish you the best of luck, but why participate in a ceremony you don’t believe in? It sounds like you want to participate in this ordinance in order to be close to your son. If you have to participate in a ordinance you don’t believe in order to stay close to your son, I think that makes the church look really bad.
