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I read the entire essay. That seems like an important one for many people to read.

I have a question: I know of a guy who used to be gay and now has a wife and kids and is temple worthy and actually teaches at BYU. How do we explain his case?

My dad did his master’s thesis on the topic of therapeutic treatments for homosexuality back in 1990. I don’t recall whether he came to any conclusion as a result, but I know it was a question that bothered him because of the Gospel…I mean, the question of whether sexual orientation can be changed, because the guy I mentioned above was one of his close friends while he was growing up.

Most of my family lives in CA where in 2008 Prop 8 was a huge deal and the Church told the membership to support it. Both my brothers (who are straight, BTW) left the Church at that point, and I lost a piece of my testimony, as I thought the Church was supposed to be neutral on political matters. My parents were going around putting “Yes on 8” signs in people’s yards and my brothers were going around tearing them OUT. My brother told my dad that gay marriage would be just like polygamy, and just like blacks and the Priesthood: one day the Church would change its policy. My dad said if that ever happened, then he would leave the Church. So there you go. Fun times.

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Old Timer wrote:

Some people have speculated that the great visionaries of history have similar psychological frameworks – that they are “abnormal” or “”disabled” in some way – that they see things “normal” people don’t because they simply are wired differently. Schizophrenia, disassociation disorders, euphoria, etc. are fascinating conditions.

I think that might be true, and our tendency to diagnose and treat every irregularity now might be eliminating our visionaries.

I think that’s absolutely true in some cases. I’m inclined to assume that when an unusual mental framework is so extreme as to render the person unable to function as an independent member of society (can’t hold any type of job, can’t interact with others in a productive way, etc.) it might be best to consider intervention. But most of the people you cited don’t have problems of that severity. Van Gogh is one whom I wonder whether he might have been better off medicated (had there been a suitable med in his day), even though he produced amazing work and medication may have interfered with his artistic creativity.

There is another aspect of psychotropic medication of which I’m reminded: In a previous ward, a friend and I were discussing how many women in our Relief Society seemed to be clinically depressed and how many of them were taking prescription drugs to treat their depression. She expressed the possibility that having many of the women in a ward Relief Society on meds for depression, and thereby presumably “artificially” boosting their emotional states, might have a detrimental impact on the women who were struggling through difficult times and were experiencing depression or depressive-like states without the aid of medication, because the latter group might observe the former group’s seeming insulation against depressive moods and feel that they, themselves, were perhaps not handling their own depressive feelings very well, and feel discouraged and isolated. It would be virtually impossible to test whether or to what degree this actually occurs, but it seems like a probable scenario within some wards. I’m not sure what the implications would be. I certainly don’t want anyone to stop taking their meds if by doing so there might be a risk of harm to themselves or others.

Our modern interpretation of the Word of Wisdom includes discouraging drug use, but this doesn’t apply to prescription drugs, obviously, even though some drugs formerly used under medical supervision are now considered to fall in the category prohibited by the WoW (cocaine, heroin, etc.). Interesting to think about.

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LookingHard wrote:

I don’t know if the church “would not survive” but it would be a TINY fraction of what it is.

Yes. And that wouldn’t be conducive to “filling the whole earth,” so we’d be failing to fulfill prophecy.

Are we really the Horatio Alger of religions if we’ve had to compromise on what we’d previous claimed was God’s will (at least several times) in order to stay viable and keep increasing in membership? Why would God want us to do certain things only until we reach a point in time at which continuing to do them threatens church growth?

Protestants criticize us for flip-flopping and changing our rules like we do, but I feel like they are no less guilty. Visiting a few Protestant churches gave me the impression that many of the pastors (though certainly not all) were like circus clowns or cheap motivational speakers, trying to sell the Gospel like a used car salesman, knowing that the more people they can win over, the more $$$, and the more their pride will be boosted. LDS bishops, in my experience, never come across as used car salesmen, and I can think of several reasons for that, including that our bishops get no salary.

So I’m trying to find some way around what looks to me like two versions of the same problem: both Mormons and Protestants appear to feel that the highest priority is increasing membership, and that end justifies what appear to be less-than-pure means. Maybe it does? Maybe it’s so important to bring people to Christ that it’s okay if we are a bit like lawyers in our methods?

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YES, I think it’s most useful to define mental illness as within two standard deviations of normal in a normal Gaussian distribution. Thanks for the curve graphic, Heber13. 🙂

nibbler wrote:

Normal becomes a trait we judge to be good and the things that serve as obstacles to developing that trait are the illnesses?

Maybe that’s the criteria by which we define “sin” rather than “illness”?

nibbler wrote:

As an orthodox believer I equated extroversion with righteousness and introversion as a sin (of omission). Hand on Bible I feel it was the result of the teachings and emphasis we place on things as a church culture.

Your experiences are familiar to me. I had a close fellow-introvert friend in one ward, and we used to discuss this very question: Is extroversion better, or more righteous, than introversion? Are we morally obligated to try to force ourselves to be extroverts? I am not sure, but I lean toward, “No”. Because while extroverts might be better at Home Teaching, introverts might be better at the Law of Chastity. Not joking. I think extroversion absolutely makes it easier to tick off the checkbox-type behavioral displays of “correct” behavior that members consider outward manifestations of righteousness.

I wonder whether the church unintentionally weeds out introverts. I mean, I wonder whether the retention rate is higher among extroverts, because the social aspect of being active is much more rewarding for extroverts, making them more likely to stay in the event of a faith crisis. If so, then introversion within the church (not within the broader society) may be rare enough to be considered a mental illness!

Roy wrote:

A grace filled understanding of eternal progression (Ray has described it simply as progression at the pace that is right for you until you insist on stopping) IS one of those bridges for me. It is not part of the dominant narrative that I hear at church. It is not something that my SS teacher, EQP, or Bishop will validate for me. However, the ingredients for this belief are found in our scriptures and the concepts are just as well reasoned, beautiful, and inspiring as any other teaching you may find.

For me, the concept of progression between kingdoms is useful. It is a tether that anchors the kite of my personal beliefs to the monolithe of Mormonism. It helps to keep me from floating away. I hope that answers the question.

Thanks. I’m adopting the grace-filled understanding of eternal progression. It is beautiful. It gives me hope. It’s what I imagine a loving God’s program to be like. It’s how I had reasoned things out as a kid. It made sense then; it still makes sense. It’s so cool to see quotes supporting it and to know others hold this view/hope, also.

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Our faith was finally authentic once we acquiesced and sacrificed our ideals to appease the government? That seems kind of sad.

Maybe Pres. Kimball’s 1978 decision could be interpreted the same way: We got to a point where if we held to our current policy we’d likely not survive, so we changed.

I assume garments are no longer ankle and wrist length because if we’d stuck with that we’d also not have survived.

This is making me sad, thinking of all these advances as happening just for the sake of survival.

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Thanks for answering my dumb question.

SilentDawning wrote:

Ward conference — the SP Counselor comes to a joint PH meeting. He is a lawyer by trade, so he turns the class into a court where an issue is placed on the table regarding lack of action in home teaching. He divided the room up into the people who do HT, and the “slackers” as he put it. The class was to be a debate between the two sides.

Someone in the class didn’t like his approach and said “SLACKERS??????”. Effectively challenging his use of language. He backed off and never did the exercise. But you can see the blatant disregard for the underlying issues.

The program is so broken, I wish we could revamp it. I know it could be made to work better. Removing the assumption-making of the Stake leaders would help. Making it possible to feel successful as a HT and leader, after people exercise theri agency would help. And letting families opt in or out of the program would also help.

SD

This one is just…wow. There are myriad reasons why a person might have a low reporting %. “Slacker” is only one possibility.

This makes me wonder if we are dragging someone’s % down by not having HTers. Maybe we DO have assigned Home Teachers and they’re just having to report a lower percentage because we don’t have them over.

I wonder what would happen if the percentage reporting was scrapped. What if the reporting was qualitative rather than quantitative? What if the focus was more on the individual members/families, not on numbers at all? So the goal is simply to make sure the flock is watched-over. And leave the implementation details up to the local leadership. HQ could implement it just for a year…just as an experiment. Like the experiment of not having 2nd hour on Sundays. (I wonder what happened to that!).

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nibbler wrote:

Is your dam strong enough to hold back those flood waters? Do you have a spillway to alleviate the pressure? Is there a backup spillway?

Sorry, my question was stupid. Never mind. SilentDawning had outlined it in the original post. 😳

It is frustrating because…

* The percentages are so low, meaning most people aren’t being Home Taught / aren’t doing their HTing. So why have a program designed so that it always feels like we’re failing?

* The above leads to Priesthood leaders who have to implement it getting frustrated because the numbers aren’t higher. Then they feel like failures for not ensuring that everyone does a better job.

* Unsuccessful attempts/efforts at it don’t get “counted”. So it feels like even if you try your best, your numbers may still look bad.

* Many ppl don’t want HTers. So those people try to avoid making appointments and make it hard for HTers to come over. (This is us! We finally just told them we didn’t want any, so now we don’t have any.)

* It feels forced (you’re looked down upon and/or you’ll feel guilty if you don’t participate).

Lots of things in our church are violations of agency, just like Home Teaching. It’s like, you can opt out, but it’s looked-down-upon.

Garments. Tithing. Accepting callings. Showing up to all your meetings. Visiting Teaching (except at least the women have the advantage of having failed efforts/attempts “count”). Word of Wisdom. …

I’d like to add another frustration. As a wife of a HTer with small kids, it is frustrating to lose your husband on Sunday afternoon/evening or other times during the week while he’s out reading to literate people from a magazine.

Question (hopefully less stupid, this time): If the family you Home Teach doesn’t want a visit and just wants an email/text/call to check on them, and they state that preference overtly, does that then “count”?

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Old Timer wrote:

To be clear: John wasn’t excommunicated for writing an essay. In the end, he was openly fighting the leadership and had no desire to remain a member. We here don’t agree unanimously about whether or not he should have been excommunicated, but it was a long, long, long time in the making.

Thanks. It is a little comforting to me if John Dehlin didn’t want to be in the church anymore when he was excommunicated. I guess I gathered from his essay that he did want to stay, but his feelings may well have shifted over time. It was sure a let-down to me, though, to learn that the person who had written that essay on how to stay, that helped me so much, ended up not staying.

Joni wrote:

I could actually see garments being a deal breaker for this kid. Assuming that something else isn’t.

It is hard, sometimes, navigating our own faith crises…and then there is this whole additional dimension of helping our kids navigate faith, as well. My parents were so hard-line while I was growing up. I have to consciously fight my tendency to default to what my parents did, in terms of my kids and their relationship to the church. My 11-year-old deals with depression, anxiety, and hearing loss. He told me recently that he thinks he is probably an atheist. I have no idea what role faith will play for him, long term. I just know that whatever happens, I want to be supportive and loving, not disappointed and angry. My heart goes out to you and your son; parenting a child with ASD involves tremendous amounts of stress – I hope that you and he find good solutions, and peace.

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Reuben wrote:

Also, in a recent 5th Sunday lesson here in Europe, one of our high priests remarked, uncontested, about how we all have exactly the same ability to choose. I suppose I could have contested it. Instead, I sought out and commiserated with the person I knew would be most negatively affected by such talk and the comments that followed: a single mother who has a few children on the autism spectrum that also have ADHD.

Nice move. I really need to do this after “bad” lessons – think of who else in the room may have been negatively affected and show them some love.

Heber13 wrote:

When behind closed doors and in private conversations with SPs and bishops…they have acknowledged to me that mental illness is a game changer…some things we don’t have answers for.

My bishop has acknowledged this also, but it was privately, as well.

Old Timer wrote:

Our Articles of Faith say there are many “great and important” things yet to be revealed.

Thus, I am fine with new light and knowledge contradicting previous scripture.

Makes sense.

nibbler wrote:

The people that were selected earlier in the day had more physical labor but less emotional labor, the people selected at the end of the day had less physical labor but more emotional labor. I think that relates in the case of mental illness or in cases where we each have our own unique weaknesses. If we had our choice in the matter we’d all want to be selected by the steward of the vineyard to have peace of mind to ensure that our meal ticket for the day was punched, but we don’t get that choice. We’re mostly stuck with our weaknesses.

I really like this interpretation – thanks.

Ilovechrist77 wrote:

I’ve been diagnosed with Autism, OCD, and a panic disorder.

As people have mentioned in this discussion, I can still live my life the best I can.

Amen. :clap: I’m starting to think that’s kinda what it all comes down to, regardless of doctrine.

Roy wrote:

I also HIGHLY recommend checking out this old thread on mercy and grace. Especially page 3 where I found the following quote:

Quote:

There is a judgment, a final judgment, and you will have been prepared to meet it successfully before you are presented at the veil. It is an individual presentation and you must have been taught everything that you need to know before arriving.

http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2288&hilit=wins&start=20

This thread is incredible. I have NEVER heard that we can move up through kingdoms as we progress, so that one who is assigned initially to the Terrestrial Kingdom can make it to the Celestial. Is that for real? I am still reading through all those old quotations on pg. 4! Mind: blown. I so badly want that to be true. I don’t want anyone left behind. “We’re all in this together,” like Heber13 said. What good is a Celestial glory that left some of us out? I would maybe prefer to be in a lower kingdom to help anyone who is confused or hurting.

SamBee wrote:

I feel that we have built soulless cities roundabout us, and that it really affects us. In this sense, it is not our will but someone else’s which has done this to us.

If we have built the soulless cities, maybe we can put the soul back into them again?! Although I feel like it would take going out and talking to strangers and I have way too much social anxiety to do that on a daily basis. 😆 Ok, that’s not funny, just frustrating, and perhaps yet another manifestation of subtle mental illness that affects Agency.

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Why does it cause conflict and frustration?

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Well, I don’t feel qualified to say how effective the program is in its current incarnation, but in our previous ward my husband and I made adjustments from the bottom. We told our HTs that we would like to get together monthly as families and do dinner or some other activity, in lieu of the traditional setup where your HTs show up on your porch and read to you… And we requested no magazine message, please, unless it happens to come up in the course of natural conversation. It worked well from our perspective, and our HTs seemed to really enjoy it, too. We did the same thing with the people my husband was assigned to Home Teach, also, to the extent possible. I don’t even know if that counts as legit HTing, but my husband is like Teflon about church policy stuff. He considers it to be mostly made up by old white men and he doesn’t care about numbers or percentages. He just believes in helping people out where we can. When he has been assigned people to Home Teach who clearly didn’t need anything, he hasn’t done anything for them, so I’m sure his reported numbers looked bad sometimes.

I figure the tracking of numbers and statistics is just to adapt it for the people who are motivated by quantitative feedback. The people motivated more by qualitative stuff maybe can just ignore the data and focus on what Jesus would do for a certain person, and try to do that.

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Beautiful! This forum has done for me what that Conference talk did for her.

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Thanks, everyone.

Old Timer wrote:

Agency is one’s ability to choose what to do. It varies in extent from person to person – and we teach that people will not be condemned for things they can’t control – areas where they aren’t completely free.

Do you think that the fact that individuals possess different amounts of agency contradicts scripture? Or is there a way to reconcile it against scriptures like these?:

2 Ne 10:23, “…ye are free to act for yourselves–to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.”

Helaman 14:30-31, “…whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free. He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you.”

D&C 58:27-8, “…men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves.”

D&C 93:30-32, “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light. And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation.”

SamBee wrote:

Agency is relative. Can we stop breathing by choice? No.

ydeve wrote:

I don’t have the agency to go out tonight and run a 4 minute mile…

Good point. No one, it seems, possesses a fullness of agency.

SamBee wrote:

As an observer of humans, I certainly think that many of us do NOT use our free will as much as we might and are instead swept along by the currents of animal instinct and society.

I’d like to think that’s true, also. Does more diligent adherence to Gospel principles increase our ability to exercise our free will, do you think?

Heber13 wrote:

For example, with bipolar…the person’s thinking may be impaired. That may make them impossible to deal with, and the person with bipolar can’t see it to choose to think differently about things. […] But they have a choice to fight against others trying to help them, or give in and accept the help and try to have a fairly normal life.

They might have a choice to fight versus give in…or they might not. But it sounds like you’re saying that even when some degree of agency is stripped from us, we still (arguably) have some degree of agency remaining, and that is the portion by which we are judged. That would be fair. And maybe we have to also grant that there may be some whose physiology is so thoroughly messed up that they literally have zero agency. (For some reason, severe lead poisoning comes to mind.) I wonder whether there are more of those cases than we tend to acknowledge. I just feel like in the church we’re all under the assumption that, granting a few obvious exceptions, different people kind of all have the same capacity for agency. Do you think so? Maybe that’s just my misperception.

Heber13 wrote:

But, I believe our faith in the Atonement is that God makes up for the difference and so it becomes a level playing field for all.

This makes me think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son differently. Maybe the dad in that story knew that his younger son had an issue of some sort that prevented him from making the good choices that the older son made. That story always really bugged me as a young kid, because I was the oldest and the one who seemed to get punished when my younger siblings would get away with murder, haha. But if I’m honest, I think one of my younger brothers had mental and physical issues that actually did prevent him from doing what he should as easily as I could, and he was entitled to those “free passes.”

ydeve wrote:

I spent a number of years of my life under the delusion that I had more agency than I thought I did. “Just trying harder” did nothing to address symptoms of what I now understand to be anxiety and ADHD. Understanding exactly where I do and do not have agency has been the main “trial” in my life so far, and I’m still learning how to best work within those limitations.

I have had very similar experiences, and now look back and realize the degree to which much of that effort seems wasted. It is so hard to figure out where our agency begins and ends!

Reuben wrote:

Psychological studies have found that people will defend decisions they didn’t actually make if they thought they made those decisions. This suggests a model of decision-making where decisions are made subconsciously, and one purpose of conscious thought is to explain them.

Mindfulness and meditation have been shown to change basic desires and emotional states. (Most of the research has focused on reducing negative effects such as anxiety and intrusive thoughts.) This suggests that another purpose of conscious thought is to alter patterns of subconscious thought.

Cool studies! The results make me think that, even if 99% of our behavior is automatic, subconscious, performed on autopilot, the fact that conscious thought can influence and shift unconscious thought makes me believe that our agency consists of our ability to use the 1% to influence the 99%. I definitely notice that when I consciously select, for example, a book among hundreds at the library in which the characters are amazing/inspiring, that I’m often able to act a little bit more like those characters for a little while afterwards, without any noticeable effort on my part.

SamBee wrote:

Is this free will or not?

http://nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11811409

I think we cannot possibly know.

nibbler wrote:

This quote is about judgment, which is slightly off topic, but I think it relates because when we talk agency it’s often tied with how we’ll be judged by god or others.

Joseph Smith wrote:

… While one portion of the human race is judging and condemning the other without mercy, the Great Parent of the universe looks upon the whole of the human family with a fatherly care and paternal regard; He views them as His offspring, and without any of those contracted feelings that influence the children of men, causes ‘His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’ He holds the reins of judgment in His hands; He is a wise Lawgiver, and will judge all men, not according to the narrow, contracted notions of men, but, ‘according to the deeds done in the body whether they be good or evil,’ or whether these deeds were done in England, America, Spain, Turkey, or India. He will judge them, ‘not according to what they have not, but according to what they have’; those who have lived without law, will be judged without law, and those who have a law, will be judged by that law. We need not doubt the wisdom and intelligence of the Great Jehovah; He will award judgment or mercy to all nations according to their several deserts, their means of obtaining intelligence, the laws by which they are governed, the facilities afforded them of obtaining correct information, and His inscrutable designs in relation to the human family; and when the designs of God shall be made manifest, and the curtain of futurity be withdrawn, we shall all of us eventually have to confess that the Judge of all the earth has done right.

What a beautiful quote. Thanks. So, clearly, Joseph Smith understood that agency is limited for many, if not for everyone, on this earth.

DarkJedi wrote:

The message was about choice in the face of trials or adversity, that we could choose to “harden our hearts” and become bitter, etc., or “soften our hearts” and learn from the experience, etc. The analogy was putting an egg and a potato in boiling water though. The egg will harden and the potato will soften. The thing about that object lesson is that the egg and potato don’t have a choice whether they will harden or soften, it’s what happens to them.

Yes, sometimes we are more egg than potato, despite wanting and trying with all our hearts to be the potato.

Roy wrote:

Quote:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Yes, Roy, I completely agree! The problem with the Frankl quote is that it’s not universally true. How I wish it were. We’d like it to be, because it means there is at least a little power within each of us that cannot be taken, and that’s a comforting thought. And it may have been true for at least some of those employees. But after the experiences I’ve had over the past 2 years, I think it’s possible for even the last vestiges of power to be stripped from a person, if their suffering reaches a certain threshold; effort ceases to be part of the equation – the ability to exert any type of effort or will is nonexistent in the midst of the excruciating physical or mental suffering. Perhaps some of those who were able to give bread away in NAZI concentration camps were experiencing a lesser degree of suffering in their frozen and starved state than others. We cannot know. But we’d be wrong to assume that all those who were in despair in the camps could have chosen a better attitude.

Similarly, if Elder Bednar thought about it a bit harder, he might change his mind about being offended being a choice, universally. Certainly it is a choice in many cases, but who is to say in what % of cases? And we could also argue that that contradicts Matt 18:6 when it says, “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones…” (Although that’s maybe just a KJV semantics issue.) I can’t even…President Packer. :silent: But I wonder how they each would respond to your Michael Phelps analogy.

A few more thoughts:

My 25-year-old brother-in-law is severely autistic, basically non-verbal. He is cognitively at the level of a 2-year-old. My in-laws chose not to have him baptized, and some extended family disagreed with that choice, but I support them. How can he make covenants that he doesn’t understand? If you asked him if he wanted to be baptized, he would probably say yes, but it would probably be because he likes swimming and water. He likes the hymns and he likes to pray (with someone prompting him on what to say) but he shows no understanding at all of hypothetical constructs, so it’s doubtful that he understands the Gospel anything like an average 8-year-old would. But that made me think how much 8-year-olds differ in their various capacities to understand the covenants they’re making, and how adults differ in their capacity to understand temple covenants. Yet, these are choices that we’re taught have eternal weight attached.

I have a lot of friends who are Evangelical Christians because of the area in which we live, and because we homeschool and lots of Evangelicals homeschool, too. Their Christianity is the grace-based flavor, while ours is a combination of grace and works. Do you think a more grace-based Christianity, in which salvation depends on belief in Christ independent of your actual behavior, solves this agency problem? It seems to, in my mind. And I often think that if we are truly looking to Christ that our behavior will take care of itself; it will automatically be as perfect as it can be, given environmental constraints. So why in LDS theology is there such a heavy emphasis on agency?

I fully agree with Reuben and LookingHard that even if we don’t have agency, it is to our advantage to believe that we do. I actually gave a presentation with that very thesis in a Sociology class, once. The idea was pushed hard all semester that minorities and women in our society do not hold the same level of power held by white men. While that may be statistically accurate, spending much time/energy internalizing that on an individual level could hamper the ability of some women/minorities to reach their full potential.

While my mom was growing up, her dad became an alcoholic, her parents got divorced, and the whole situation really messed her up. As an adult she found books about the traits commonly found in adult children of alcoholics, and she related to them. She felt good having finally found explanations for some of her imperfections that she had long felt made her a bad person. I understand that there can be comfort in knowing that negative traits or poor behavior may be rooted in genes or environment that we couldn’t control. But even if I have certain traits because of my genes or because of my parents/childhood, I like to believe that I have a lot of power to change those things about myself that I don’t like. I recognize that I might be deluding myself, but I feel like if I maintain the delusion, I’m more likely to be able to change things than if I just accept those negative traits. It is a point my mom and I butt heads about periodically.

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Roy, thank you. It’s very true that some people take a lot of heat for openly expressing their concerns that run contrary to current policy, even to the point of excommunication. When I first started searching for a possible way to stay in the church with my new perspective, I Googled “how to stay LDS no testimony” and read this beautifully written, encouraging essay that gave me a lot of hope, and it was by a guy, John Dehlin; but I got discouraged again when I searched a bit more and learned that John Dehlin had been excommunicated after writing that essay. So sad. I’m pretty confident that that won’t happen in my case; my bishop is too cool to do that, and I’m not planning on suggesting that he pray about garments or anything. I’m just going to be honest and open.

I’m really glad you were able to baptize your kids.

You’re right, I need to just be casual about issues where I can’t get on board with the mainstream view.

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Nicely done!!! I need to follow your lead with this strategy more.

SilentDawning wrote:

[…] but that would’ve gone over like passing wind in the chapel.

😆

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