[wuwei]

It’s strange that as a teenager in las Vegas I hardly noticed when girls were dressed “immodestly”. But with all the emphasis on it here in Utah they just stand out. And we get conditioned to think she’s a “bad girl” which leads to bad thoughts…

But its not the (lack of) clothes causing the bad thoughts. Its the conditioning that only bad girls dress like that that leads to the thoughts

Also, I think is fair to say not all nudity is porn and not all porn is nudity. The line for me is when it becomes dehumanizing or degrading…

I always think the best test is ” would this bother me if this was my daughter”. If so… you should probably stay away since that *is* someone’s daughter…

Buy be that as it may, feeling hopelessly guilty over something isn’t healthy. I think the church uses guilt too much.

[wuwei]

I know what you mean. I was a Guinness man. Non alcoholic lagers don’t compare. Although I think Guinness makes an NA. Just doesn’t export it to the States. :thumbdown:

[wuwei]

Personally I feel like saying caffeine wasnt the problem was as first step in sort of walking back the emphasis placed on the WoW. My gut says it might take a while but I think the church will eventually take it back to when abstention was encouraged but not required for baptism or TR.

When I think about how many people I met on my mission that would have been awesome members if they didn’t have to give up sweet tea it’s crazy. And how many less actives were only so because of the WoW…

I just think is a hard line to walk. It started with prohibition when the majority of the country was doing it….and we just havent moved on…. But if the church stepped back from it tomorrow then how many TBMs would instantly become disillusioned. I know I’ve met people that were hit by the caffeine thing pretty hard. They feel like they’ve been denying themselves something for no reason. i guess they get a little taste of how we all feel about larger doctrines. Sort of a mini fc. It also eliminated their ability to be holier than thou about it though. I like that part…

Here’s to hoping the process gets sped up! :thumbup:

[wuwei]

If I could afford it I would drink Bundaberg rootbeer constantly. Unfortunately buying imported Australian rootbeer is for special occasions only. But I think tomorrow shall be one.

Crystal Light just released three new flavors: Margarita, Appletini, and Mojito. I’ve only tried the Margarita flavor one. Now usually I hate Crystal Light but love margaritas. This actually worked for me. Probably only because I haven’t had the real thing in 6 years…but I digress.

I also like most herbal teas. They are just really weak to me even with several tea bags thrown in. I also like Rooibos with cream and sugar. It’s the closest approximation to drinking regular tea I’ve found. Yerba Mate is a bit earthy for my taste but not bad with enough sugar.

I find non-alcoholic beer to be gross most of the time. But there are some that aren’t too bad. I also enjoy alcohol-removed wine occasionally. The only one I can find is called Sutter Fre. There’s a few varieties.

Another of my absolute FAVORITES is fresh squeezed lemonade made with fresh-picked mint.

Here in Utah there is a new thing called Crio. It’s basically cocoa beans roasted and ground like coffee and prepared the same. There are even a couple cafes that serve it exclusively and have almost the same menu as Starbucks just using roasted cocoa beans instead of coffee. The flavor isn’t the same but it’s a much closer approximation than regular hot cocoa and lends itself better to caramel macchiatos. It’s also becoming available in grocery stores around here. It’s brewed in coffee machines using the same filters and everything. It’ll be interesting if it really takes off.

[wuwei]

Also, I thought this needed a separate post.

Even 2005 and more recent my mission had a problem with missionaries going swimming with kids, late night baptisms, completely falsified baptisms, etc. There was also a big emphasis for a few years before I got there on preaching welfare (i.e. “if you get baptized the church will help pay your electric bill”). That proved to be quite the draw.

Also almost every missionary I met faked numbers. Every single number. I did for a while then I decided to see what would happen if I was honest. I got a talking to. My district leader tried to help me come up with “creative ways to count lessons”. I didn’t care. I just had “low” (read: realistic) numbers for the rest of my mission. Drove everyone around me nuts.

My perception of missionaries will never be the same… fortunately the incoming missionaries were too self-righteous to donate plasma twice a week to buy games for their x-box… or go to strip clubs… Or hide a box of porn up in the fireplace and leave it there after transferring and cause me to smoke out my apartment when I tried to light a fire that one time… :problem: The mission greatly improved over the 2 years I was there though. I have so many more stories but I don’t want to destroy anyone’s opinions of missionaries any further hehe. There really were great ones. And the bad ones learned a lot. And a lot of good was (probably) accomplished.

And I’m sure today the numbers are higher than ever! 😈

[wuwei]

On my mission I had 8 baptisms. This was about 1/3 of normal in my mission. I only had one that was baptized in 3 weeks. He’s just as strong today as the lady I baptised that had investigated off and on for 6 years. So it can happen. But what I take pride in with my mission is that all but 1 of my 8 are still active today. And that 1 I never really taught. I just got transferred into a baptism.

My mission had a monthly baptism goal of 100 (I’ve been home about 2 1/2 years). We hit it once. But the strange thing is that we probably baptized say…1500 people as a mission over the course of my 2 years and I don’t remember a ward splitting or boundaries being redrawn even once. That should say enough… We were taught to try and commit for baptism in the first lesson or even use it in door contacting. My first mission president wasn’t super into the numbers but he had pressure from his boss. His assistants more than made up for it though. My second mission president I don’t really like talking about….

I always got a kick out of those monthly reports because it was 50/50 that someone baptized on the first sunday of the month would still be around on the 4th. Ward directories were madness too. 1000+ people on the list and ~100 at sacrament meeting each week. 10% attendance is not good.

I remember in one town I was in–a town of 15,000–there were 1500 names on the ward list and 80-90 attending. So apparently 1/10 of this town was Mormon. Funny I never knocked into any. We tried to do roster clean-up and discovered that about 100 of those people lived in a KOA campground. Hmmm…… We could have easily purged 1/4 the roster based on non-existent addresses alone. The others…well…. one of the two times I had a gun pulled on me on my mission was by a disgruntled “less-active”. Thankfully they didn’t all have guns… But they were all equally uninterested in returning.

I figure on my mission I met 15-20 people that got baptized (I usually got transferred away before getting to see the fruits of my labors) but I met hundreds that wanted their names off the records.

When I hear membership statistics in GC I can’t help but roll my eyes, 🙄 laugh, :lolno: and then whatever this face is:

[wuwei]

I agree with the true repentance/complete repentance distinction as well.

I’ll admit I spent some quality alone time on my mission and even now that I’m married it happens. Rather than being mad at me for it I think my wife finds it….intriguing? I don’t know what word to use on this forum and stay kosher…

It was difficult on my mission because I had companions (read: just about all of them) who were obviously doing the same thing and it was killing them inside. I had felt like that before but I just decided to not feel guilty one day early on in my mission. It was extremely liberating. I never felt/feel like it takes away the spirit either.

The day I made the change was when I read the following story in a book about zen something or other. I don’t remember which:

Quote:

Two monks were on a pilgrimage. One day, they came to a deep river. At the edge of the river, a young woman sat weeping, because she was afraid to cross the river without help. She begged the two monks to help her. The younger monk turned his back. The members of their order were forbidden to touch a woman.

But the older monk picked up the woman without a word and carried her across the river. He put her down on the far side and continued his journey. The younger monk came after him, scolding him and berating him for breaking his vows. He went on this way for a long time.

Finally, at the end of the day the older monk turned to the younger one. “I only carried her across the river. You have been carrying her all day.”

This story has applied to me in many ways….besides being a metaphor for my relationship with my companions for most of my mission…

Often we do things that violate our “rules”. Whether is church rules, family rules, personal rules, whatever… We have a choice. We can accept it and try and move on, or we can let the thoughts/guilt/worrying consume the rest of our journey. In my mind, when these or any other thing become a problem is when they intrude on the rest of the journey. If we happen to carry a woman across a river, I think we need to let her go on the other side and continue on.

If the church guilt is keeping you from enjoying life then I would almost argue it is a bigger hindrance than the porn/masturbation. In my struggles as a teenager it would kill me because anytime I slipped up I just felt like my life was over, i was unclean, i wasn’t worthy, i figured everyone who saw me would just know because of my countenance what I’d done. All of those things… And since those things offer a temporary relief of sorts I would just turn back to them because i felt like it was the only thing that accepted me. That was addiction. And a horrible cycle that I’m sure you understand. If anything I think the guilt from talks about not “overworking the factory” is entirely counterproductive and just feeds the cycle.

The key for me was just to let go of the guilt. When I decided that masturbation was OK. Suddenly my urge to do it lessened and lessened. If porn crept in once in a while I’d just laugh at my humanity and move on with my life.

I guess I consider myself to have recovered from the addiction even if I’m an occasional partaker in the acts. I think that’s the best I’ll ever achieve. And I’m OK with that.

[wuwei]

Ann wrote:

I recognize that I’m on a hair trigger with issues about Joseph Smith’s credibility. But I really was very disappointed to read “Stand By My Servant Joseph” in the Ensign. Aside from a fairly perfunctory “no one’s perfect” paragraph, it’s about self-assessment and scoring where you stand on the loyalty scale – i.e., there is really nothing about Joseph that should hold anyone back from utter devotion. And if you’re not there yet, it’s your problem. I have to have psychological space to be a follower of Christ without profound admiration for Joseph Smith. And I honestly don’t understand the some of the connections he makes, like this one: “How grateful we should be that we are allowed to stand by Joseph with our own actions and testimonies of the Father and the Son.”

I hadn’t read this yet. Ugh…

Reminds me of a talk i heard in SM about how Joseph smith was like the Savior so we should emulate him too.

It’s all bunk to me….

In general I have good feelings towards Joseph Smith. I feel he was a seeker. I feel he was largely inspired. I believe God worked through him. I also think he made some huge mistakes… But so do I. It is this fallibility itself that actually makes him more accessible to me I think. I can understand his questions. It’s ironic that I feel most like Joseph Smith when I’m praying about whether or not the church he founded is true.

I think my favorite thing JS ever said was about not being limited by creeds. About how we should be ready to believe all truth wherever we find it. That was a principle that was really important to Joseph and is important to me. It’s also a principle that has been completely twisted–if not totally lost–in my experience. It’s become “look for truth wherever you can find it from these 15 guys”. Pure Mormonism to me equates the Father with truth and knowledge. So searching for truth and knowledge is a way of worshiping God to me. It shows that I desire to know who he is and understand him. Not just blindly follow leaders or emulate the examples of men.

But I guess from the author’s point of view and that of TBMs, Joseph’s colored past is true but not useful. For me it’s the opposite.

My love for my parents grew immensely when I realized that they weren’t perfect because I understood how hard they actually had to try to parent and do what was right. That’s how I feel about JS and a lot of the church in general. I can appreciate them so much more as imperfect people and an imperfect organization than I can as perfect ones. I only wish they’d stop the charade. And if they want people to stop calling the church a cult, they need to stop deifying Joseph Smith. I think we can remember and appreciate and study him without beatifying him.

[wuwei]

Old-Timer wrote:

wuwei, I have abstained from lots of things over the years with which I have little or no problem personally specifically in order to not eat meat with those who abstain from meat, and my wife is at the top of the list of people for whom I gladly make compromises.

If you haven’t read the following post I wrote almost four years ago, it deals with that exact issue:

“My Marriage as a Metaphor for My Church” (http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=238&hilit=my+marriage+as+a+metaphor)

Thank you for this.

I guess with this whole journey I have to be careful that going after things that might bring me to a higher understanding don’t take me away from my wife. Whatever else there may be out there would not be worth it if she wasn’t by my side.

At this point she’s much more important to me than my own desires or the church.

For now I’ll just consider it an act of devotion to my wife. Just because I accept that I can drink certain things doesn’t mean I need to run out and do it just to do it.

When I change my motivation to her it becomes something I want to do. Which is easier for me to live with then feeling like it’s something I have to do.

[wuwei]

Thanks to everyone that replied. Although a lot of these WoW threads end up about the same I think there’s value to it. If nothing else I feel validated personally. An I’m glad I asked.

Some things I’ve been pondering while reading are

1) I really don’t feel any guilt for having a TR or going to the temple. I feel like the experiences I have in the temple are from something greater than the church. For me the spirit of the temple experience feels like it belongs to something much greater, older, and wiser than the LDS church. I think there are a few things in the ceremonies that don’t feel right to me, but much like sacrament meeting you have to sift through the outer layers of church stuff to reach the inner layer of the gospel. I know it’s a complicated view. I’ve always felt spiritual impressions in religious buildings and services and each religion/building is different to me. I take these quite seriously. I know some could believe it’s in my head, but I know the impressions I get. I should probably post on this later…

2) I think the guilt that’s confusing me isn’t so much about the WoW as concern that my FC and this new journey is taking me to a place my wife might not want to go. We haven’t been married too long and we’re expecting a kid and i just don’t want to throw on her things like “I don’t believe the WoW as it’s taught now anymore” on her. Maybe in a couple years.

3)Sorting through motivations/emotions is hard.

I think for now I’m accepting that I don’t think it’s a sin to drink the drinks mentioned in the WoW. And that I feel I can answer the TR question just fine and it doesn’t affect how I feel in the temple. But doing things that I know will cause unnecessary trouble in my relationship with my wife is wrong. So maybe I’ll have one once in a while but I’m not going to drink them just for the sake of being different or start stocking up on green tea around the house. Although maybe i could try that Green Tea HP stuff that’s always advertised on the Church-owned radio station.

[wuwei]

SamBee wrote:

Yes, I was half joking when I wrote that but it is historical fact. Tea simply wasn’t widely available where Jesus lived, wine was. Water was often dirty, and grape juice fermented.

Along these lines of “WWJD?”, we can be fairly certainly Jesus wouldn’t drink mate or Mountain Dew, tequila or sake… but on the other hand he wouldn’t have eaten bananas, tomatoes, macadamia or brazil nuts or pawpaw either. Or quiche, pizza, burgers, pasta and lasagne. (At least not until visiting other sheep such as the Nephites)

Hehe I got it. I made a comment a while ago about how Jesus never would have worn a white shirt and tie to church. He wouldn’t be allowed to administer the sacrament commemorating his own sacrifice…

as for WWJD… What Jesus did do was disobey half the laws the pharisees had made up.

[wuwei]

SamBee wrote:

Jesus didn’t drink tea or coffee… he drank wine.

A drink which is explicitly forbidden in the original as opposed to tea and coffee which required clarification.

Gerald wrote:

I think you can observe your own motivations and decide what they are. “All things in moderation” is not a bad precept to live by. However, there will always be those who insist that the letter of the law should be observed. For some, this is what being Mormon is about, living a particular lifestyle that is obvious to the world. Perhaps you are comfortable living a lifestyle that is less obvious but still just as devout. I don’t believe an occasional cup of coffee automatically compromises you spiritually or physically. However, it may be something to adhere to as outward expression of your beliefs. I have a vague memory of L. Tom Perry (though I might have the wrong person) recounting a time he was at a party where a lot of drinking was going on. He wasn’t going to drink but he wanted to make sure that everyone else knew that he wasn’t drinking. A soft drink would still look like alcohol and so he ordered a glass of milk. That way everyone knew precisely what he was drinking. (I’ve tried to find a link to that talk but can’t find one so consider this story unverified).

In which case I wonder whether his motive was to be obedient to god or to be seen being obedient to god.

I appreciate the comment about me being able to observe my motivations. It can be complicated at times. I do believe that the motive is the difference in whether it’s wrong or not. The impetus for debating this is also that I want to largely give up soda because it’s very adversely affecting my health. The only time I’ve done that before was by drinking tea instead. I think tea is healthy. Especially green tea. So I want to swap an unhealthy drink for a healthy one but then I’m told that because I want to drink the healthy drink I shouldn’t go to the temple. And the temple is an important place to me.

[wuwei]

SamBee wrote:

Thoreau wrote:

SamBee wrote:

I feel my parents chose me. But did we choose the events?

That girl who broke your heart at 17, was that planned? That contradicts free will.

Could you expound on this please? I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around it?

Sure.

It’s hard to explain but my parents made certain remarks to me, especially my mother. She said she preferred having a boy with my faults than a boring goody goody (of course, on other occasions it was why can’t you be like X?) My father also intuitively understood things about me without me telling him. And there were other things which are too personal to be explained. They got some things wrong in my upbringing too of course.

Now to the second part of the quote (which I don’t agree with):

I’ve been told that we accept our trials in the pre-existence (PE). This means everything is a set up. Basically that girl – and you – agreed in PE to have that experience, but not to be sealed. You got dumped before you were born. Your wife on the other hand agreed PE that she’d marry you- “I feel like we’ve always known each other” etc. You agreed to have appaling acne, brown hair, bad eyesight and to be a good marathon runner and trombone player. And your grandfather died when you were twelve by mutual consent. Your neighbor became a quiz show star before being conceived. All of you asked to have a violent storm in 2005 in which your houses were damaged.

Oh and you and me and everyone else on this board met up PE too.

Mormon predestination…

This is heading into the realm of false doctrine… but I’ve heard these sentiments from many members.

It’s hard to have false doctrine where there is no true doctrine to compare it to.

But as for speculation… I don’t feel I “picked” my parents. I do feel I was “sent” to my family for a reason. Kind of like my earlier tl;dr post, I’ve imagined it like my mission call. I told HF I’d follow him and go to earth. He gave me my call. I kept my promise and came here. And here I am. I don’t see that as violating agency in any way since it was my choice to come here and I submitted willingly to come to earth the same as I submitted willingly to go to Texas and speak Spanish after 3 years of German, 3 Years of Japanese, and 2 Years of French.

But you know what? I taught a lesson in every one of those languages on my mission. Go figure.

[wuwei]

mackay11 wrote:

johnh wrote:

Funny thing is the BofA got me into this crisis and now it is one of the smallest issues

This made me smile. I totally know what you mean. I nearly handed in my resignation letter 6 months ago over seer stones/head in a hat.

These days I’m driving home with the kids after church chatting about how the plates weren’t in the room, head in hat etc etc. Maybe I missed my chance and now the ludicrous seems too normal to do anything about it.

I’m at a stage where even if Joseph was improvising (or riffing, as someone on here called it) with some old documents, Joseph produced (in Book of Moses and Book of Abraham) two volumes that have some massive answers to the big questions of who God is, where we come from, what the Eden story teaches us about our own nature and why we are here.

The Book of Mormon teaches how to ‘be’ while we’re here. The PoGP teaches us why.

These were fairly radical departures for 19th C Christian received wisdom on the fall and God’s nature. Perhaps the 19th Mormons needed the dead prophets of Moses, Enoch and Abraham to be perceived to say such ‘big picture’ messages and to illustrate they were eternal, but lost, truths. A restoration not a first revelation.

What The God who Weeps does excellently (sorry, another plug) is to show that the ‘big, eternal picture’ of mormonism is found mainly in POGP and D&C (while the day-to-day living stuff is in the NT and BoM). Many of the ideas about where we come from/where we go etc have existed through the ages… They were often fringe thinking or heretics.

Might Joseph have been seen as a heretic for saying he was revealing what would have been seen as ‘new news’ when instead he could say he was translating the ‘old news’ that’s still ‘good news.’

Maybe Moses, Enoch and Abraham didn’t write the originals that Joseph claims to have re-visioned/translated. Maybe they’re mythological creations even in the OT.

But the big picture answers that the POGP gives of from where we are, who we are and why we are, still resonate with me as answers to life’s big questions.

+1 to all of this.

And +1 to the God Who Weeps.

[wuwei]

Having let go of my previous perception of Joseph Smith since my FC, I’m now assembling a different view of him.

Having had several experiences where I’ve felt inspired to write what I can only consider personal revelation I have a soft spot for the idea that Joseph didn’t literally translate the plates with fancy glasses while looking at them. A stone in a hat seemed fantastical the first time I heard of it (thanks South Park) but the idea of him receiving the whole book through inspiration doesn’t bother me. If anything i identify more with it. As to the necessity of the stone… That’s beyond me for the moment.

I see this form of inspiration/revelation as more consistent with Joseph’s other “translations” too.

I guess whether it’s a rock in a hat or magic breastplate glasses the process is still weird. And either way it would be the power of God doing the work. So why is one better than the other?

Of course this relies on a personal testimony that the BoM stories are real… I guess I’ve just decided they’re “real enough”. Sort of a “the names and places may have been changed but the stories are real” thing you see in a disclaimer before some TV shows.

I think I struggle more with the BoM because almost all the main characters fit a TBM mold. It doesn’t speak to me like the New Testament, PGP, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and even Plato do. There’s a whole obedience is more important than knowledge idea that doesn’t appeal to me in the BoM. A bright spot for me is Mormon/Moroni. Especially where Mormon writes Moroni about the light of Christ. But that’s just a few verses…

There’s another thread on here titled “some things that are true aren’t that useful”. For me the BoM tends to be that way.

[Author]

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