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These are good comments and I appreciate what has been said. I’m going to take some time mulling them over, now that I’m in a calmer more reflective mood. I think I’ve seen other threads and comments about the prosperity gospel and I want to review some of those. Thanks for your support. I served a mission in the days when we went to the mission home in Salt Lake for three days and then to the Language Training Mission in Provo. After a hectic and draining 3 days in Salt Lake, I looked forward to the lackadaisical wandering about BYU campus with my troop, spouting the occasional word of Spanish as I had seen when I was a freshman at BYU. So we got of the bus in Provo and we’re met by a fellow who passed out a schedule and rules of the lTM. I looked it over and laughed. What a funny joke. Then I looked around and saw everybody staring at me solemnly. Uh oh. Hoo boy! Well I could get through this. Everybody from my town did. Not sure I would go on a mission in today’s world. Dande48, Thanks for your comments. For some reason, the Book of Job pops into mind as I read them. Not because I compare my troubles to Job’s; I have not lost so much. And to some extent, that which I have lost has been restored, but not the time to enjoy it. But to compare myself to people in your parable, what I am saying is if I felt the way the first man in the temple felt, I wouldn’t have a comment, I would have arrived at my happiness. But I don’t. Rather I feel like the man who has done all he did, and am not happy with my lot. I don’t feel rewarded. I don’t feel like the second man either, although I wonder what he would think if he was informed that he had now hit the jackpot for his long suffering and could look forward to an eternity of home teaching people who did not want to be home taught! No, I want to start enjoying the payoff to my contract before I die and it’s too late to do the earthly things I have anticipated for so long. And so how do I go from where I’m at to where I want to be in the least amount of time and with the least loss of face in the Church? I guess that’s what I should have said. Wow, suddenly the word, HYPOCRITE pops into mind! I’ll need to think about that! Maybe after the venting subsides a little. Beefster (sorry about the initial misspelling): I think you are far better off for waiting until you are sure to marry than doing what I did. The only good thing that I can think of that came from my hurry was that I don’t think I would otherwise be with DW now.
Wow. what a picture. I remember driving through Vermont and New Hampshire about 25 years ago on conference weekend. In a small town, church was just getting out and a woman and a small girl were leaving a Protestant church and walking across a lawn, white gloves and all, looking like they very well could have walked right out of this picture by Loomis. What a memory stamped in my mind. This brought it back vividly. Thanks for posting it. Quote:Dande48 wrote: It all depends on where you’re going. It’s better to stand still, than to head in the wrong direction. They say if you’re ever lost in the middle of nowhere, you should STAY PUT; it increases your chances of being found.
There’s also the trouble of being focused on the end, rather than the here and now. Are we so distracted by promises of a blissful afterlife, that we don’t take time to enjoy the here and now? When we’re in such a rush to perfection, can we really enjoy our time here, imperfections and all?”
I am becoming increasingly dubious about a blissful afterlife especially in the Celestial Kingdom. People are saying (apostle people, mind you) that life there is the essence of the service that we are asked to do here in the Church. Well, I’m not sure I want to spend the eternities doing home teaching. What about having barbecues on the edge of placid lakes while children play in the background? What about building models and playing what-if scenario alternate history wargames? What about taking long romantic walks with DW?
And another thing, if this life is so short in the eternal scheme of things, how much progression can you really make in the ” blink of an eye”? And if we’re thinking about the eternities, why are we worried about standing still for a year, 10 years, 50 years?
There’s something out of wack here. The one club I can still see they have is the claim that you can always trade down, but you can’t trade up.
SamBee, You may very well be correct. After all, Peter Zeihan is denoted as a contrarian in at least one internet source. Regardless of how they unfold, the next 10-20 years are going to be something to watch!
There’s a couple of books out by a fellow named Peter Zeihan (The Accidental Superpower and The Absent Superpower) that claim that the world is going to hell, except the United States and that the best days of the United States are ahead of us, courtesy of super good geography, OK demographics and energy independence via the shale revolution. Mr Zeihan says that we are witnessing the end of an artificial bubble put into place by the US at the end of WWII (at Bretton-Woods), in which the US ensured the establishment of open markets and free trade, enforced by US military might, mainly the navy. Now that the Soviet Union has fallen, and the US is energy independent, we are about to lose interest in the rest of the world and enjoy a relatively comfortable self sufficiency, away from the troubles of the rest of the world. As far as moral quandaries in the general populace, don’t we always seem to have a sufficiency of those? I liked Sister Oscarson’s talk. I think she offered the millennial a way to be relevant, to make a difference. I think that’s one of the things they are searching for. Odd, but I noticed that when I saw President Uctdorf without my reader glasses he looked like he had a mustache, yet when I put on my reading glasses, I could see that he did not have a mustache. Other observations to come. For me, the genie is out of the bottle. If it ain’t canonized by the body of the Church, it ain’t a commandment. More: A bit more seriously, this discussion helps shine a light on several modern and older perplexities. For example, do you know that most of the radicalized youth in ISIS are middle class well educated and not poor illiterates. Also, many of the historic disrupters have been relatively well to do or connected youth who have not wanted to follow in their parent’s footsteps. Mohammad for one. Stalin for another. The Castros in Cuba. I think it is not solely secularization, but maybe something that shares the same traits, such as a point of non-sustainable economic complexity of a society (Tainter?). It is just too much to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s to get what dad or uncle had, and too hard to understand, so I will find a simpler ordered explanation and adopt some morality that will let me get what I want (or make me feel good about myself) in a more direct and less complex manner. So what can I adopt or make up that will do that? Luther, Darwin, Marx, altruism, eugenics, national and international socialism, climate change, one world order, ISIS, North Korean adoration of the Leader, disaster relief, Community service, diversity, safe places, justserve.org – lots of flavors to choose from. If the Church is finding a loss of utility of Nibley’s “terrible questions”, where did I come from, etc., then inviting people to volunteerism seems the ideal replacement to get in close. But if you’re fed up with being one of the 12 who do everything, what’s all this about added service projects? Just saying. This article helps with what is going on out there. It also explains the little bit of turn-about satisfaction I get when I discuss with people today how little you can actually confirm in realtime with the scientific method. To really apply the method in determining truth with any kind of practical question, you would starve to death long before making any useful conclusions. DancingCarrot, Thank you very much for your comment. Every now and then after puzzling over the implications of some concept or label, you stumble upon the precise exposition or definition you were looking for. For me, your comment on tolerance is such a discovery.
Amateurparent, Someday, that patriarch’s wife is going to have an Alma the Younger moment of truth with regard to the incident you related and it will shake her to her core. Maybe not for days like Alma, but very deeply. Personally, I have had such moments. Unfortunately, most of my moments have not been timed so that I could apologize to the person I hurt, but I would want to apologize if I could. In most of those cases – not all – where I could apologize in real time so to speak, I found the person I hurt to be very gracious and forgiving, which has been fortunate for me personally.
Her comment was more about herself than about you and your husband. Still, I am so sorry about the added anguish you had to endure, and at such a vulnerable time. Her position as patriarch’s wife adds so much more hurt to what she said than if she had been a person of little stature in our social structure. It’s like a thoughtless comment from a stake president or a mission president at a time of personal devestation. I hope you can forgive her for your own sake.
