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Heber, I am with mercyngrace. The more I turn things in my mind the more I cannot accept this one life is it. For more, look at http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3613 You can love these people without standing next to them… and few of us are at the level of perfection that we can justify sacrificing out mental and emotional health to do so. It’s OK to realize your own limitations, IMO.
No you can’t make people change. 
Another thing that I did when my first business was doing very well was hire help. I know we think in this country that help is only for the super rich, but I reasoned this: I can pay someone $8 an hour to clean my house. When I work, I make $X.XX and hour. I am losing $X.XX an hour by doing my own housework. So it worked for me. But I suppose that logic only works if you are self employed and are the one who does your own housework. Or maybe if you figure the math for what overtime would pay and use those housecleaning hours to work instead.
But kids do need to learn responsibility or picking up their own crap. I am infamous for going around with trash bags and confiscating anything they haven’t picked up. They can’t earn it back without doing extra chores. And if they messed with someone else’s stuff or left another mess for someone else, I go and take the equivalent from their room. Don’t fight, don’t yell, just make stuff disappear. But you probably read that kind of tactic somewhere too. And yes you have to be always vigilant or it falls apart pretty easily. If I am extra busy or sick for a few days it’s a battled again. They never stop testing you. In which case you can go to your corner of sanity and try to live in denial for a while.
Legal question- if gay marriage was legal in all states… couldn’t the church be sued and judged against for taking action against practicing gays? mercyngrace wrote:Is this chemical? Is there any kind of legitimate treatment? Is it a structural dysfunction? What causes people to be so lost in their own heads that they lose touch with reality?
The really bad news… the chemical part is only a small part. There are some different medications that can take the edge off of it. But it doesn’t even begin to fix it really. Therapy for the most part is completely ineffective for mostly the reasons we outlined before. For one. they lie to the therapists and their version of the stories they tell are so very real in their mind the therapists cannot usually see through it. And the second the therapist doesn’t buy into their victim drama, they dump the therapist.
They CANNOT take responsibility for ANY of their behavior.
They change their memories, and the memory will become more and more real as time passes.
They are incapable of empathy.
My husband was at the point for a while where he agreed he had it. He was workable for a short time. Now he is reasoning that maybe he never really did have it and I just like to think I know things about psychology that I really don’t and psychology is a bunch of crap anyway. He also looks back on terrible things he did which he cannot deny, but won’t see himself for the abusive monster he was. He literally sweeps most of it out of his brain. Cannot remember it at all. He just thinks he” was a jerk.” But then he starts to justify by saying stuff like “yeah but everyone else was doing… A,B,C…. And you screwed up with A,B,C and your kids were bad because they did A,B,C…” And this is what a repentant phase looks like.
As everyone knows, the first step in fixing any problem is admitting you have a problem. And BPDs by definition cannot admit they have a problem. This is why it is sometimes talked about as the most untreatable mental illness currently known. There is a therapy known as delectable therapy. I don’t know a lot about it other than the person has to know they have the disorder, fully own it, and really really want to get better. And even then it takes YEARS and it usually is never a full recovery. The illness is that deep. And it sounds like your MIL is pretty far from even considering her problem- as most BPDs are.
Sorry.
I have had a couple of therapists tell me they don’t like to treat BPD because most BPD’s won’t introspect and let the therapist really help them. And most BPD’s quit therapy by the third session.
Yes you are absolutely right about this. However, sometimes BPDs find therapists who are rather clueless, like our first therapist, and they latch onto them and go to “vomit therapy” for YEARS.
Our first counselor– the one who didn’t really want to diagnose my husband because he didn’t like labels, was like that. He was a good man and good at addiction therapy but didn’t know almost anything about BPD. My husband had been seeing him for about 5 years before we met to help him with addictions. OMG the therapist had no clue!! My husband would go there and just use the entire sessions to vomit all this untrue and twisted crap about everyone else,
and the therapist believed him!!And the therapist would tell him things like “maybe your girlfriend [me at the time] is so ungrateful because she has the welfare mentality… that it everyone’s JOB to do everything for her.” (Which is so opposite of me, but he had never met me.) Then my husband would latch onto those things and use those things to throw acid in everyone’s faces every time he needed ammo to hurt someone. (BTW in his case, It’s not enough to ever say thank you to him. He has to be on a pedestal. You have to say “thank you, thank you, thank you, you changed my life forever, you are the best guy I ever met in my life!” — every time he hands you something. You have to extol his virtues on a daily basis or you don’t appreciate him. This is why I am ungrateful, because I say thank you only once or twice after he takes me out to dinner or some such thing and because I only write him love letters once in a while. But I still get thrown in my face “Even Maurice [the therapist] says you are ungrateful because you think you are owed everything.” OMG it’s exhausting.) Anyway, after we were together for a while I demanded to meet Maurice and when he started hearing my side of the story, he couldn’t decide who was crazy, me or my husband, because everything I told him was so wildly different than he had ever heard. And he kept treating him, as I said, like a normal man, and he gave me suggestions on how to deal with him as a normal man. Since I didn’t understand the disorder at that point, I obeyed. And it almost killed me. I don’t remember how I learned about BPD, but it was such a relieving revelation. There was a quiz somewhere that outlined the criteria they use to diagnose. I don’t remember the numbers but if the list had for example 20 items, and if they exhibited 11 traits they were probably BPD, my husband had 19. And a half, lol! After I studied up on it, I KNEW he had it. It was like sunshine after years of darkness. Things finally made sense! I went to the therapist. He was little help. He still wanted to treat my husband like a normal man. But at least his eyes were opened somewhat at at that point and he started to look for clues. THEN, my husband’s sister came to live with us from Brazil. After a few months, she was breaking completely. I took her with me to see the therapist. She told him her side. Suddenly he believed it. And he felt completely duped by my husband… cheated, fooled and lied to. Everything he ever thought he knew about my husband was a lie. And then refused to treat him anymore. You know you are bad when your therapist dumps you, lol!
Later, we went to see another therapist. She was amazingly insightful. After one session with him and I hadn’t even told her my story yet, she came to me and said “He is the most BPD I have ever run across in my life. But you can’t tell him because it is too dangerous for you and he will never listen anyway. And I can’t tell him either because he won’t come back.” On the second session, she called him out on a behavior, because he was spewing his victim crap and she didn’t buy it. He refused to go back. But it was because she was a bad therapist. Of course.
To make a long story short, there was a point that we ended up in different countries and I had nothing to lose so I severed everything and told him all about his disorder. BPDs then do a hoover thing. Not if they are a sister or a cousin or an MIL usually. They will just blame you for being evil and end the relationship. But in the case of a significant other they will become suddenly repentant and promise to fix everything, saying they know it’s their fault etc. They are very convincing. They really seem capable of change. This is how they suck you back in, time after time. Hence the term “hoovering.”Anyway, it wasn’t until he owned the disorder and studied up on it that things even got marginally better. The thing is, now I have the power. We are back in the same country now but live in different houses. I have left a few times, and once out of state. He knows he can’t afford to lose my in any way. Physically, emotionally, financially and legally. Not only would he be alone, devastated, not able to find anyone like me again, but I built his businesses up from glorified yard sales in his part time to an international export and wholesale company. I am not just his secretary but his CEO, I am his legal counsel and defense, his accountant, his business manager, his property manager, his creative genius and all other parts of the business brain. He really really cannot afford to lose me or his entire life goes up in flames. So he stays in that somewhat repentant stage because he can’t let me go. However, it’s amazing that he still brings up “memories’ of things he believes, things I “did to him” that are complete and total fabrications. These people really truly invent their own reality. And how can a therapist change someone’s reality? It almost never works.
Anyway, I don’t say any of this to distract the attention of this thread. I hope I don’t come across that way. But I saw some things in mercyngrace’s post that I thought “same thing/ different package” and I thought maybe I could help at least one person. How I long to be in a position to help more people. I am rather locked in a tall tower with little resources to help anyone. Anyway, that’s an aside. But as I thought about your post, mercyngrace, I thought about what you said about her going to so much therapy and about her claiming her husband has BPD. And more and more lights went on. She probably found therapists that she could suck into her delusions like mine did, and did all sorts of vomit therapy and ammo gathering like mine did. If a therapist ever got wise to her she would move on. And BPDs are sooo good at projection. Whatever crazy things they think or feel or do, they truly project onto the person standing next to them at that moment and really believe it is what that person thinks, feels, and does. It’s a dissociation that I cannot understand but it is so real for them. They have an evil thought, for example, and somewhere in them they know its an evil messed up thought. But they are the victim, the martyr, the Holy Mary Mother of God. It cannot be them. So they project it to the nearest bystander. Now they can still think they are pure and still be the victim. It is truly, truly crazy. But where I am going with this is that through projection, I have no doubt she truly believes her husband is doing these things and she is innocent. She probably went to therapists who she was able to manipulate by only sharing her side, and ones who really don’t get the disorder. The BPD delusion is SO REAL to them, they have the talent of being able to make other people actually see it. And if a therapist catches on, they dump them. Because they were bad therapists of course!
You are right, She will never leave her husband. For one, the entire disorder means she cannot be alone, and also she will lose her scapegoat. And I am willing to bet that 99% of the stories she tells the family about her husband are not even close to true. But she really really believes them. A few of the stories may be based on some truth. But I have learned that these people can induce crazy behavior in people around them. You can only take so much and sometimes you break in desperation and do things you are not proud of. And then it’s further evidence for them that you were the crazy one all along. There is no way out here. You are damned either way.
afterall wrote:Maybe it’s something genetic (anxiety or something) that keeps them from allowing themselves to feel discomfort in order to progress.[/quote}
Yes, from what I read there is a genetic component. But there seems to be an “activating factor” in the environment. It’s like it lies dormant and can either develop or not depending on the family and social structures. In the US it is more common in females. In Latino cultures it is more common in males. After looking at my husband’s family structure and their issues etc, I can totally understand how he got to be that way. Everything makes perfect sense. but in some cases, you really can’t tell what happened to these people to make them this way. I read about twin studies in different environments. Twins’ parent was BPD but raised in two different households. One twin had it, the other didn’t. It does tend to run in families, but doesn’t always develop. If that makes sense.
Oh featherina, believe me… if you ever lived with a true borderline you would see they are never just a little of this or a little of that. Normally I would be on the same page as you with labels but while some people may just have borderline tendencies, borderlines are quite extreme. They are not a little bit or even a fair share of anything. If you really want to see black and white thinking and behavior- its all extreme. The first counselor we saw together was of the same line of thinking. He didn’t like labels either. But that is because he did not understand borderlines at all. He in fact made things dangerously worse because he kept trying to treat my husband as a regular man. It was very bad and scary times. The only way we made some progress at all was for my husband to own the label. As far as therapy goes, counselors who understand it (and most don’t) say it is the worst of the mental illnesses to treat, even worse than schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And many will refuse to treat borderlines at all. Believe me, there are reasons why! I was told that the church would recognize the marriage of a muslim who has four wives as long as it was according to the laws of his land and he lived in that land. Does anyone know for sure? This would then have interesting implications for gay marriage and the church in the US wouldn’t it? InquiringMind wrote:
I get a little comfort from the fact that the divine safety net was probably never there; it was always an illusion, and I have still made it to this point OK.Well, InquringMind, at least you have that. I hope you can do good things with that.
I am so far very healthy, especially for my age, other than the stress has caused fibromyalgia that flares on my really bad days or weeks. My kids are also healthy. These blessings are indeed huge to me. But other than that, Life has not been very nice to me so far. It seems at least 3 times a week some major disaster strikes. It is too unreal to believe. If I was a paranoid person I would think that I was on some twisted reality show that I don’t know I am on and “the people behind the curtain” are creating monsters just to send them to torture me, like in Hunger Games or the Cabin in the Woods. Nearly every problem I have at this point can be traced to who I am tied to and so I keep thinking if I can just find a way out of this TV show I will be able to breathe, yet though I have tried so many times to escape just to have the invisible forces steal my tools, blow up the bridge and send me right back here.
With me, as I mentioned, in my case, there were not just perceived promises but ones that were actually issued out of the mouths of people who were supposed to speak for God. And in the case of my patriarchal blessing blessing, it WAS in writing. Yet as I hold this contract to the heavens no answer comes, and as I try to figure it out I am essentially being told it’s OK– those people are allowed to make whatever promises they feel at the time, even in writing, but it never meant anything and if I have a problem with it I should just get over it.
I keep going on the hope that God will actually reach through this world and send me the white knight He promised speckled throughout these contracts. He is long, long, overdue. And I still try to work on finding a way out of here on my own. But is it so wrong to realize that sometimes we can’t do everything on our own? Is it so wrong to be trying so hard and climbing mud walls that collapse while my fingers bleed to wish and wish that someone would just hear me, that God would just open a freaking door that I can’t??
Really if God does not promise to provide anything in this life, I really just wish His messengers would teach that and not be allowed to make so many promises that will never be honored all in the name of good fun. I am not finding this fun.
Yes, InquirngMind, you know you and I have had the same troubles here. It can’t be just us. I was born and raised in a TBM family. I grew up every single Sunday listening to feel-good anecdotes where time after time God tested someone but always came through in the end. A magic check, a spontaneous healing, a miraculous healing etc etc. Still as an adult, every single sacrament meeting without fail preaches them. Every single testimony meeting is full of nothing but them. The Ensign articles, our home and visiting teachers, and our missionaries. The story is always the same. You may go through some stuff that seems to suck at first. But at the last minute God will save you if you follow the rules. There are blessings in disguise. God won’t let your children starve. God will keep you baby from dying. God will be there for you and physically affect this world to make sure that everything you go through is something you can handle and you will be better for it. I never thought blessings/consequences would be a 100% cause and effect, as it wouldn’t take humans long to figure out the pattern and pretty soon people would be doing the right thing for the immediate pay-off and to avoid the immediate punishment. We would be essentially forced to do the right thing. That was Satan’s plan and if God allowed that it would remove our agency and God would cease to be God. But I did believe that over all, tests would come and go but there would be sweet reprieve now and then as God tempered the good with the bad, and would be there to call off the wolves if we had already done everything we could do and could stand no more. And especially in my case, when I was holding on so much to specific blessings I had been given through the years through father’s blessings, priesthood leaders and my patriarchal blessing. And they turned out to be all false. I even made terrible choices based on these blessings that cost me so dearly. I knew there was “fine print” in blessings, but my conscience is clean- I know I did my best. And the blessings were so clearly NOT meant for the next life, and the wordings were too specific that I “interpreted wrong.”
What do you do when you realize that all these stories were just fairy tales? All of the blessings that ever were and could be given to you with revelation on a personal level could be nothing more than spoken wishes? It is a terrifying place to land. You realize you really are alone in the universe and the cosmic safety net you thought was there does not exist. You feel how suddenly helpless you are against all of the evils out there that can tear you apart. You realize how little you are in the grand scheme of things. You see that the dreams you dreamed about what your life would hold may never come true, because you know with your mortal limitations, only some things depend on you, and the doors you thought He would open after you did all you could would now only open by chance, if at all. There is no divinity watching out for you, protecting you from the dangers you can’t see and helping you when you really can’t take another step. It’s just you. Alone. And people are given stuff they can’t handle all the time. And many break. Why even listen in sacrament or read the Ensign anymore? MOST of what we hear in church are the happy anecdotes of divine intervention. There is very little other ‘Gospel” taught there… it’s mostly the stories!
So when you get to that point, you think: The people at the top MUST know that it does not work like this. They HAVE to know that sacrament meetings are full of the teaching of untrue concepts in this way, They HAVE TO know that most priesthood blessings with personal revelation are not accurate. Why don’t they stop it? But wait… the GAs themselves perpetuate these things in General Conference all the time. And the church is the one who is printing these articles in the Ensign. And they DO know what is being passed down to missionaries who then teach to new members. How can they not know what this does to people? And if they know how can they not put out an official proclamation for us to STOP? I think that these “blessings”, either the ones we were directly promised like I was, or the ones we thought we were supposed to receive
because that is what we were led to believehave probably broken way too many hearts and destroyed way too many testimonies. I can’t be so alone in thinking this. I don’t have an answer right now. I think the church must let the fallacy continue because there are too many people who need to think the consequences are more immediate because if they don’t think that, they won’t do the right thing. Just like 3 year olds. But then does that mean the end justifies the means? The church should continue to teach a false principle because doing the right thing for the wrong reason is better than nothing?
I just know that I am alone now, and I am very scared. I don’t like this at all. For me, I have always tried to do the right thing because it was the right thing, not for a reward or fear of a punishment. I will continue to do that and teach my kids the same. But I never wanted to be so alone here. I needed to think that after I had done all I could do, that God would open doors for me that I could not, and that there were going to be certain temporal blessings that I could look forward to. I needed to believe the things that were told to me in my blessings. I needed those things in my blessings. They were all righteous and good things. How can I be OK knowing now that they were never really meant for me?
I am sorry kmullin. Sounds about right. The control, control. Projecting on him and everyone else. Probably one of the hallmark tips is “I even start to think I am the crazy one.” BPDs are very good at that! If she is saying its him, its all the more reason to think its her. Especially if you don’t see it. Your husband must be an amazing man to have grown up with that and not have crumbled! Its very very hard to deal with these people as you know! I hear you saying “projection,” “victim,” and “drama from nothing.” Sounds like you should read up on borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder. Most borderlines have also a huge HPD streak too, so check out BPD for sure. Just google it. Read the criteria, see if it fits. If it does, there are some measures you can take to protect yourself emotionally but you will have to be 100% vigilant in setting and keeping boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Your husband will have to stick by your side 100%, or you will find that you will become the evil one. You need him to do this with you. You will find all suggestions online lead you to the book “Stop Walking on Eggshells.” Get it, keep it, highlight it, re-read it. If you find the criteria fits, he might finally be able to make sense of some things, and it might help him come to a place of great healing. If that is what she has, I am so sorry. I have way too much experience with this, and I know how horribly exhausting it can be. Yes, absolutely kryptonite. I went through the same battery of tests, the same thought I might have lupus, and I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia after being with my BPD for 5 years. Yes, it literally makes you sick. Good luck!
Brown wrote:
Also, for some of the “older” women that haven’t married, I think that is a numbers game. Single men just don’t stay active in church at a very high rate like women do. If they are waiting for active LDS to marry, they will keep waiting.True for never-been-married-with-no-kids women. Not true in the divorced w/kids population.I was back on the 2nd market dating scene a only a few years ago. There were scads and scads of men desperate to get married again. Probably the law of chastity encourages that in any man who wants to stay LDS. Even though most of them end up screwing up, they do at least feel guilty about it and their solution is to get married again fast. Not all of course, there are lots of players. But there are plenty of men who genuinely are seeking to get married. My friends would always tease me that I always had a flavor of the week lined up. Never had a dateless weekend. And not a few of them were already looking at rings by the second date. It was crazy. Maybe it’s not everyone’s experience, IDK, but that was what my experience was. It also seemed there was a huge pattern of LDS men who were married for several years once and then they rushed into a second marriage that lasted a very short time– surely because they were too optimistic about the 2nd go around women and rushed into something. Sad.
I had a hard time because I didn’t really care to find a great looking guy. Most good looking men know it and focus on looks too much. Good looking men were available, would ask me out OK. But those were often the ones I felt were a bit shallow and I was afraid that as I aged I would lose my value to them. But some of the guys that actually had the personalities I was looking for were maybe intimidated by me? IDK. For me I would rather have had a guy who I could really connect with spiritually, who shared my dreams and have him just be very average looking, maybe kinda gray or baldish, maybe a few extra pounds. But maybe I am weird, IDK.
I don’t miss the dating scene at all. I hate the games and the lies, and I really hate that almost all dates end in rejection. Either you have to reject them or they have to reject you, because very few dating relationships actually lead to marriage. It’s a messed up world out there. It is not what most people romanticize in their minds when they have rough times and think about getting out of their marriage and dating again. I would very, very highly encourage anyone thinking about divorce, if your situation is AT ALL workable.. work it! Dating the second time around is not what you remember! The dating pool needs a heavy dose of chlorine!
Also… one more add…as Featherina and I covered, even if the woman is really pretty, make sure she knows its much more than that that you like about her. She needs to know you are attracted to her for sure, but if she is pretty she probably gets told that all the time. Unless you make her feel valued for who she really is, you will be just another guy.
With the official press release of “Caffeine not Evil” by the church I too have had this on my mind. I love diet Coke and even though I was raised to think it was evil, I decided in my 20’s that it wasn’t, as far as I could research at that time. But yes, many Mormons have thought it was. I even know someone who left their husband mostly over the fact that he wouldn’t give it up. Crazy but true. Sometimes rules taken wrong hurt people. When I was like 7 my friend gave me coke and I drank it not knowing what it was. When I found out, the guilt and shame haunted me for years. Guilt and shame are bad for people’s spiritual development. I think the WoW should include those things. As of late, my goal as been to take apart everything I ever learned and piece by piece build my own tower to God. After coming into a faith crisis for one thing, I found another and another and another that are just not true. I wondered how far it went. So I am just re-learning everything from a more objective standpoint.
The method I have decided to follow is:
1-Study it out. This includes the historical context, who said it and why. Assume that even prophets have their own prejudices, opinions and cultural brain-washings. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but consider all details.
2-Compare it to my experience and what I know/believe to be true.
3-See what I feel
So I did some looking into the WoW and the medical history changed my perspective completely. The problem is that everyone is trying to apply the medical knowledge of today against a backwards time when the world was a different place to justify the wisdom behind the WoW. So here is my take… (BTW I am not a church history expert at all by any means so if anyone sees any facts I got wrong, please correct me.)
1-The hot drinks of the day and culture of Joseph Smith would have referred to black coffee and black tea. They had other teas but just saying hot drinks really referred to the two. Consider the cultural context.
2-The current medical thinking of the day was that hot drinks and alcohol raised the temperature of the blood. In a balanced body, this would cause illness. In a body that was fatigued or afflicted with certain diseases, hot drinks were often used medicinally to “correct” the imbalance that was causing the illness. So it was medicine. So much like you wouldn’t use morphine if you were healthy because that would be bad, it would be perfectly find to use it if you had an injury where it became necessary. Many people used this as their health regime. It was thought that if you were healthy and you used hot drinks or also alcohol, the rise in temperature of the blood would not only make you susceptible to illness, but also “excited a man’s passions” so that it was much more difficult to control themselves, and their libidos in particular.
3-Also considering the medical context, hot drinks used as medicine were often laced with really bad poisons… thinking they were also medicine. Such as mercury. Mercur,y as probably most of you know, is a heavy metal that is VERY BAD for you. Your body can’t really clean out heavy metals. They just build and build. In the case of mercury, it actually causes insanity after enough exposure. Bad stuff.
4-Joseph Smith’s brother Alvin developed what most now think was appendicitis. Very fatal in those days. He was prescribed coffee laced with Mercury. He shortly after died. Of course it was the appendicitis, not the coffee, but you can see why this caused Joseph to start thinking that perhaps he should ask God what He thought of all these things.
5-People were trying to poison the Mormons with bad sacramental wines.
6-Emma Smith complained that she hated cleaning up the nasty chewed tobacco from the floor of the red brick store.
So… when Joseph went to God, his mental state MAY have already had a bias to what the answer might be. BUT even if he didn’t, God knew that alcohol in excess is bad. That coffees and teas were laced with stuff that was bad. And that tobacco inside the body was bad. So I can totally see why he would answer Joseph in the affirmative that yes, it is a good thing to give up all of that crap. But probably not for the reasons Joseph thought, nor any of the latter pioneers, nor us now. And keep in mind at this time, the WoW was very specifically given by Joseph as a
suggestion, not a commandment. He was very clear about that. THEN… I believe that there developing economic factors. After the saints moved west, it was ideal to cut off as much trade as possible with the outside world. Not only had the world “proved” itself to be dangerous to the saints, but there was much wisdom in reserving all resources to becoming a self sufficient, independent society. The saints couldn’t grow their own coffee and black tea very well. You can’t very well have caffeine addicts running to the dangerous outside world and doing trade, losing precious resources to the outside world now can you? And I do happen to agree that copious amounts of alcohol is dangerous to the spirit, and in a time when people needed to walk the fine line to survive, it’s better to abstain than to risk. So then it became a commandment.
The question now becomes, is the WoW as we understand it outdated? Maybe. But the problem is that Mormons are a very die-hard traditional people and they don’t take to change very well. If it were to change, it would cause many people to fall away, because God is supposed to be the same yesterday, today and forever right? While He may be, us as people are not, and sometimes rules need to change to fit the people. But it is difficult for people to see it that way. So my guess is that it will NOT change, anytime soon, unless and until the potential people who will be kept away because of the WoW outweighs the number of people who will fall away because of the change. Also, it will not change unless one of the prophets goes to God and specifically asks. And why would they do that? It has worked so well for so long. And for both this point, and the former, consider how the blacks in the priesthood change was brought about and it’s effects. People still struggle with this. ‘Nuff said about that.
So can we as individuals them override what the whole of the church teaches, knowing these things? I believe that God is not as black and white as most people believe. I think He does allow for the individual and their specific growth patterns. I believe in now what I call the spirit of the perfect law. I think as we all try to attain perfection in all things it is OK to not always do everything perfectly all the time. It’s IMPOSSIBLE. Even for prophets. As with most commandments and moral suggestions in the church, there is some wisdom and there is also a spirit of the perfect law that we should eventually shoot for, but you won’t be sent to hell because you can’t or won’t do it all perfectly well right now at this second. The spirit of the perfect law of the WoW to me would basically be this: If you really, really got the concept that you are a true divine being, and your body was such a great gift to you, a divine gift from God, and every minute you spend on this earth is a divine gift you can use to do good and for growth and you need to be as healthy as you can to do that, you would NEVER DO ANYTHING EVER to defile it or hurt it in any way. Not only would this mean you don’t put unhealthy chemicals into it like caffeine or alcohol, but you wouldn’t eat that much meat, you wouldn’t eat carbs held together by fat and deep fried in fat and covered in carbs and fat. You wouldn’t eat twinkies. You would eat right. You would exercise. You would get enough sleep. You would wear your seat belt. If you were a perfect being, this is how you would treat your body.
But you are NOT a perfect being and guess what?? It’s OK! You are not supposed to be. Not right now. This is something that if you feel you can work on it right now, then do it! Yay for you! It will only bring you good natural consequences (blessings.) If you feel that you would rather work on something else right now, and you can only handle so much, then do it. Yay for you! I think as long as we are on a continual path upward, that is exactly where God wants us to be, and that is enough. (To quote Dori in Nemo… “just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”) As any of you know who have read my beef with the 3 kingdoms cutoffs, I do not believe in the time-limit-crap. Upward and onward is all that counts. Set your projection in this life and it will continue. Detours and slow times are expected. I think it takes some of us longer than others to make it, but I think none of us will be held away from God in the end because we didn’t get it soon enough. Time is a mortal illusion. It is not God’s limitation. So that is my soapbox there.
Moving on, abstaining from coffee and tea is a small sacrifice for many members, especially if they never got addicted in the first place. It may be a small thing but it makes them feel like they can do something right. I don’t see the harm in letting them keep it. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the item, but it’s a show of obedience. I am sure God likes that a lot- good brownie points. I don’t think the church will see the point in changing this. But it would be nice if they didn’t use it to judge people as unworthy and less. I don’t think God sees it that way. just try not to look around and worry about what anyone else thinks. Just between you and God. Lehi’s vision comes to my mind here, only in some cases the people laughing in the buildings are members of the church….
Inquiring mind – I was taking what you said as more of a caricature. But ray is right that really not what Mormon women want. Really it is less of what a woman feels about you and more of what she feels about herself when she is with you. And it can’t be fake. It has to be real. Which means you shouldn’t be something you are not. If you pretend, even if you do find someone it wont last. But there is some reason to understanding attraction and using it to your advantage. You may be doing something, not purposefully, that is not a true reflection of who you are internally but that is preventing you from connecting on the level you need to. Or something you are not doing. And yes it could be not you at all. But it doesn’t hurt to study up on the psychology side and see what behaviors might help you better. But as ray said you should not be putting on a show or trying to be someone you are not.
