Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I’ve never been in a ward that talks much about JS in December – thankfully. However I was in a ward that in Sacrament Meeting spoke about year supply on Easter. Like Amy, I’d just ignore it and throw it away. My in-laws are uber-conservative and often name drop the many GAs that they know and it makes me crazy. MIL often says deeply uncomfortable things to my kids like “the only Christmas present I want is for you all to be active in the church” while starting to cry. We all just smile and as soon as we are in the car we laugh it off. Maybe I’m too cynical but she has no sense of propriety so I figure it evens out. On a side note my sister bakes a birthday cake on Christmas Eve with one candle and they all sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. It’s kind of wacky but whatever works. Maybe I’ll suggest she bake a cake for JS also.
This is how I handled it, it may or may not be helpful. When my oldest son turned 11 I attended a pediatrician appointment with my son and my wife and I asked the Dr in front of my son if there is anything medically harmful about masturbation. The doctor said no. When we got home I told my son and my wife that as far as I was concerned there was nothing to worry about masturbation as long as it was private – the doctor even said so. I also told him that he’d be asked about it at church occasionally and that he had my permission to answer “no” to that question and if there is any sin involved with lying it’s on me. My son seemed ok with that approach although my wife disagreed but said it was a guy thing and wouldn’t challenge me.
Depending on the bishop there may be value in not antagonizing him or a counselor. My oldest daughter was dangerously sexually active in high school and experimented with drugs also – and it was a genuinely good bishop, not her parents – that helped her through it. I know that he didn’t ask detailed questions because he and I were very close friends at the time which made me feel at ease. If the bishop were a royal prick I’d probably sit in with my kid during the interview because I wouldn’t care what he thought of me.
This is an oversimplification, but for me what is unique and what “sells” the church is two things: 1) Eternal families 2) unique authority to create eternal families. This is a double edged sword and is a very “feel good” doctrine that works until you acknowledge the messiness of real life. It’s made worse when our leaders don’t announce new revelations to explain the messiness. There was a video in the 80’s and 90’s that missionaries often used, I think it was called “What is Real” but I might be wrong about the title. In this video a married couple was interested in the discussions until the missionaries taught about eternal families. Turned out that the family didn’t want to be together forever. The missionary answer was to heal the marriage so the investigators desired to be together. However, that doesn’t work in myriad circumstances as the original post expressed.
I think the answer is different that most have expressed here. We have to emphasize eternal families and authority to seal – but we have to accompany that with better answers than “it will all be figured out in the next life.” That answer rings hollow when we brag about living prophets and we’re no different than other churches. As Nibbler pointed out at some point the answer becomes “it will be sorted out later” but at a minimum it has to be more fair.
Just last week an older couple who was married civilly two years ago asked me if they could get sealed and I told the wife that she had to get her 1st sealing to her first husband, who is still alive, canceled. She was appalled and said she hadn’t seen her first husband for 30 years and he doesn’t have anything to do with the church and isn’t even a good man. However, the new husband is a widower and has no issues since he can be sealed to multiple women. Utterly unfair.
You are right – this class is intended for investigators and new members and therefore in theory the teachers would be used to difficult or blunt questions. So while difficult questions may be asked you may not get full answers – depending on the teacher. Full time missionaries or ward missionaries often teach the class so often you will get missionary type answers. Some teachers may be wonderful but others will gloss over difficult topics. If you’re not satisfied with Gospel Doctine give it a try. I taught Gospel Principles for two years and tried to give thoughtful honest answers.
This doesn’t answer your question directly but it may contribute to the discussion. I’m a musician so this “resonates” with me. 
In music, emotions are usually stimulated when a dissonant note or is resolved. The singer Adele is really good at this – before she sings a note she’ll sing a short off key note prior to the primary note, which resolves the musical conflict. I can still remember the first time I heard a particular hit that she sang and all the hairs on my arms and neck stood up. It moved me the first 50 times I heard it but now my body knows what to expect so I have to look for new songs to have the same effect.
Sometimes I wonder if our goal here on earth ought to be to learn to think scientifically instead of being guided by feelings or emotions. Science isn’t perfect either (because we’re still learning new truth every day) but sometimes I wonder if God is looking down on us and saying “just use the wonderful brain I gave you.”
Using that paradigm would turn the way we teach in the church completely upside down.
mom3 wrote:
On the baptism front – Our Stake had a “If you fill it. They will come.” program. For nearly 6 months, on the third Saturday of the month convert baptism or not, we filled the font with water. Had the missionaries all there with talks, hymns, the works.
Wow. What an incredible waste of time and resources. I can totally see this happening.
Snide remark, but a lot of truth: LDS are too busy serving themselves to serve others. That being said, I do know a few LDS who are quite involved in the community but never say they represent the church because they don’t want public recognition (think of the scripture that says to serve in private).
I strongly believe that a day of rest is a very good idea. To me that means a few simple things: 1) Reduce or eliminate making other people work. Other people also need a day of rest, although I realize this is impossible to do completely, so it’s really more of an goal to strive for.
2) Spending as much time as possible with my family. I swim on Sundays in my pool during the summer. Better than watching TV which is what we’d probably do otherwise. Game time with the family is (usually) tons of fun.
3) Giving my body physical rest. I enjoy exercise, but our bodies need a physical day of rest. I also try to sleep in on Sundays and it’s the only day of the week I get to.
Leaders asking us to keep the Sabbath Day holy while expecting hours and hours of meetings for some callings seems disingenuous to me.
Roy wrote:
…I find the worldview of the early Utah saints fascinating and scary fanatical at the same time.It appears to have been a hard life, polygamy or no.
Definitely. There was one story I think about Hosea Stout – but I may be mistaken – that made my cry for that poor family. He left on a mission to Asia and hadn’t heard from his family for months. When he arrived at San Francisco on the way home he found out from an LDS family that his wife had died. He went home, found the home he built for his family but someone else was living there and couldn’t find his children. He later found them living with another family member.
Scary fanatical is a good way to put it. As a read the book I realized there are echoes of this still today.
I think the short answer for many of us here is along the lines of “yes we follow what we consider to be the true teachings of the gospel.” gospeltangents wrote:
I had an interesting conversation with Anne Wilde on polygamy. (1) We discussed John Taylor’s uncanonized 1886 revelation supporting polygamy. I did not realize that Wilford Woodruff took a plural wife in 1897, seven years AFTER the Manifesto. Was that just a cover to get the government off the back. (Note Utah got statehood in 1896, so did WW think he was scot-free?)(2) There was a very interesting discussion about priesthood being separate from the church. It honestly reminded me of the famous Elder Poelman talk where he talked about the difference between the church and the gospel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_E._Poelman Can you lose priesthood with excommunication? (Anne says no.) What do you all think?
(3) Anne weighs in on whether the LDS Church is in apostasy. What do you all think?
https://gospeltangents.com/2017/10/25/taylors-1886-polygamy-uncanonized-revelation/ Sorry for so many questions, but it was a very interesting conversation, and I’m curious what you all think?
1) There were so many weird things happening with polygamy that I’ve given up trying to explain it to even a small degree. It seems like in one of Juanita Brooks’ books she stated that John Lee loaned one of his wives to Q12 George Albert Smith for a while and that G.A. Smith fathered a child with Lee’s wife. I cannot find the reference. The only explanation I can find is that they practiced polygamy because they could.
2) Who knows. But I contend that a stake president or bishop don’t have the necessary keys to break (through excommunication) a sealing that was performed in a temple by a sealer.
3) No comment except to say that the church today resembles to a small degree the church restored by Joseph Smith. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s simply not the same church and same doctrines. In the past two years I’ve heard this phase a lot “the restoration is not over, but it still continues today.” I think that phrase 30 years ago would be frowned upon.
All indications from where I sit are that rules to serve a mission will continue to get more stringent. On the plus side the youth service missions are also being promoted now more than ever. I actually really like the youth service missions. Live at home, attend school, perform service. Even date although that’s not advertised. I think one simple rule change would make life dramatically better for families and missionaries alike. Allow a once a month or once a week hour long call to mom and dad. Technology is such now that it’s cheap (free?) almost anywhere in the world. Some missions allow instant messaging already on p-days.
Missions are subject to leader roulette just like any ward or stake. My mission president expressly forbade us from fasting more than once a month for one day. He left the mission to attend a family member’s funeral (supposedly a big no no for mission presidents). He also told me he’d never send any missionary home for breaking mission rules unless it was sleeping with someone or a felony – although he reserved the right to make life miserable for disobedient missionaries. He also let me call home to register for college.
I have a different take on this some others here. I’m currently a youth leader currently, earned my Eagle as a youth, and my son just earned his eagle, and I am a Buffalo in Troop 1 (woodbadge). In other words I’m pretty much a scouter. To me it’s not that boys can’t go out and kill things any more – we don’t actually want them to do that any more and most of them don’t want to anyways. I disagree that it’s easier to earn your eagle scout awards. Maybe for LDS scouts that’s true because we only run 1/3 of the scout program as it’s intended, but it’s not necessarily true for traditional troops. I’d argue that is’s just different, not easier. When I was a scout the Cooking merit badge wasn’t required, now it is required and it’s one of the most difficult merit badges to earn. That one merit badge alone is a huge burden, and it’s only been required for about 3 years now.
This seems like an example of “when I was a kid I walked uphill to school both ways in the snow.” In some ways school was more difficult in the 50’s and in some ways it’s much more challenging. How many kids took calculus in high school in the 50s? It’s common now, but calculus is the same. In the 50’s most kids didn’t have cars and phones and nutrition the way we do now, so in that way high school is much easier now.
I argue that it’s the similar for scouting. Outdoor skills are simply not as important now and they aren’t as desired now. We are a more urban world. Back when few people had college degrees, eagle scout probably set apart those with high school diplomas. Now masters degrees are fairly common.
My take is that the boy scouts is declining is because it hasn’t found a way to adapt to the true needs and interests of the youth. Kids are busier now. Kids in my ward have school activities or club sports all year round with no time for church, scouts, or a host of other worthwhile activities. Sports are more demanding and you basically have to practice year round. Academics are more demanding with AP classes and IB programs. Scouts is declining among the youth for the same reasons the church is declining among Christian youth.
Relevance.
