The Nehor

Accurate, the stranger danger panic combined with the Satanic panic and the Gay panic to spread a generalized fear about children and that fear never went away. Just the targets. Now you have to protect your kids from the evil queers who are “grooming” them or the immigrants or some other group that is out to get them. I am among the youngest Gen Xers and we went out and played on our own and we had places to go and experience things. We had hills to explore and treasures to find and rode refrigerator boxes down slopes into brick walls. We usually jumped off before hitting the wall. My youngest siblings didn’t fully get that childhood. My nieces and nephews couldn’t have that if their parents tried to give it to them. Except for when one of my brothers lived in pretty rural Alaska for a while. Then the kids roamed a lot. I was talking to a 20 year old whose parents panic if he turns tracking off on his phone. He is planning to bolt economically and socially from them soon. That sounds exhausting.

I love this. A bishop once said I would be good in the Young Men’s program. He said the boys would look up to me. I replied that I am at best a cautionary tale of some sort that I can’t figure out. No one should aspire to be me.

I didn’t learn it until I was in seminary. I was given a scripture chain “proving” it at some point but I don’t remember it. I have also twice heard apostles say that is how it works but it is hard to use that as evidence since they weren’t public recorded meetings and we are told not to use quotes from that type of meeting. I know it was taught in the Gospel Principles manual we used for Gospel Essentials. Every time I have heard it brought up it almost always ends up with discussions of degrees of spirit prison but that just seems to be a reasoned out thing and not something I can substantiate. I am not sure they can. The Book of Mormon talks though about the Lamanites being baptized by the Holy Ghost and not realizing it. I have no idea how that ordinance worked. I have heard it as a theory but I am not convinced either way. I suspect it wasn’t practiced and was developed later. I am not sure how much I believe the Church’s back-dating baptism back to the beginning of the world. Then it vanishes and suddenly reappears? Why? I don’t know either. I don’t think most people deserve that but the gospel seems to suggest most do. I don’t really like this aspect of the gospel much. I am not even sure what that means. It doesn’t sound like the God I want to worship though. At the mercy of laws that seem unfair to us (and Him?) and stuck with following them whether He likes them or not? True, but God also knows us humans and should be able to work around that to a degree. I have a hard time dealing with the idea that an essentially omniscient being can’t get His point across because His servants muck it up so much. I wouldn’t do it the way God does. I am not arguing for it because i like the idea. It is just what has been taught to me by those I am supposed to believe have authority. Maybe they are wrong. Unless it doesn’t work out and someone ends up in hell. In my experience being in torment doesn’t get that much easier just through knowing that it will end eventually.

And everyone else including yourself was laser focused on the original topic until I blundered in and went on a tangent!!!! How will I live with the shame?!?!?!?!

This comic is what happens when a parent sees a child as an extension of themselves.

John needs to stop seeing Bill as an extension of himself such that he is planning his child’s future based on what John thinks would be best. I’ve known parents that give gifts primarily to try to steer their children into some expected career path. They often end up estranged. Yeah, sometimes people give clueless gifts but those are easy to laugh off. The ones that are designed to press a specific outcome that the gift giver wants to steer the gift receiver towards are manipulative. You can’t just toss the gift aside. There is an implication that if you don’t accept the path the giver wants that you have failed them. Coming from a stranger it is easy to ignore. Coming from a family member or friend it estranges you.

Lazarus was likely very young. He lived with his sisters yet it is not referred to as his house and this was a patriarchal society so he was probably not yet of age. I think it is more likely Jesus used his name for a character because it would make the kid feel amazing to be in one of the parables.

Joseph Smith was wrong in a linguistic sense. The word translated as paradise refers to a kind of garden. It is a reference to Eden. In other words, a kind of paradise. Hades is in the Bible but not in that passage. Sheol is the final fate of the dead in earlier Judaism. It is not a nice place but there was no divide between paradise and prison. Everyone went there. There are hints of some having it slightly better there but it is not a happy afterlife. Sheol and Hades usually just mean where the dead go but neither of those are used when Jesus speaks to the thief. “This day shalt thou be with me in Hades” would convey what Joseph Smith suggests but it’s not the word used. Did Joseph have revelatory power to understand what Jesus actually meant in this specific instance? Maybe, but you won’t get it by learning Greek or Hebrew and reading the New Testament.

I am not sure if it is correct but it is definitely taught in scripture and in church materials. Generally it gets soft-pedaled when taught in Church classes and a lot of people start talking about degrees of Spirit Prison and the like. I have heard apostles and other church leaders teach this repeatedly. It is not a one-off thing in an online article. It is possible other ordinances filled this gap. LDS theology doesn’t really give an explanation for how baptism existed in the beginning and then appears to have been lost and only relatively recently been brought back. Doesn’t sound like just generic good people though. No idea. It seems like there really needs to be a space between the two extremes but we don’t get one. Augustine wasn’t gleeful at the thought of unbaptized babies being damned. He just couldn’t find a way around it. I can’t find another way around this. Be careful. Next you might wonder why God condemns queer people or argue that God’s justice is incompatible with all kinds of things. I don’t accept that the Bible was somehow pure when first recorded and then corrupted. We have to keep moving the goal posts to some brilliant moments during and after the life of Jesus where the pure gospel was present and then quickly lost. Compare to our dispensation with its “line upon line” reasoning and figuring it out as we go. Whole concepts have been tossed. Dynastic sealings, rebaptism, all kinds of stuff was found wanting and left behind. Yet we want to push some perfection on past dispensations from the start. Seems a huge stretch. I’ve read too much of the early Christians trying to figure out what Jesus meant to think that at one point everyone agreed on one understanding. It instead has the feverish feeling of a group of people following a messiah who seemed to fail on most of the required messianic promises so they were forced to move their fulfillment to some future date and trying to figure out what the messiah accomplished. It is messy.

That is still living rent-free in your head and annoying you?

You can borrow some of my clothes if you need some. 😉

Doesn’t have to. You can punch gracefully. Yeah, but some are obvious. I would if it came from someone close to me.

I believe you didn’t mean to say that but it probably comes across that way. And actions can convey things we secretly feel but would never say. I got called out on this once. It wasn’t pleasant when I realized why I was acting the way I was.

Or as a group of my friends used to joke: “Gift giving is an act of aggression” I mean it was half-jokingly. Some gifts we knew of were clearly outright attacks.

If you assume it is true that doesn’t make the approach effective.

My advice is to punch the bully. They might be genuine but the receiver has every reason to doubt it when it comes packaged like this. Imagine if someone sent you a gift that clearly demonstrated they are atheist and it included a handwritten letter bearing testimony that your religion is false. It also included a bit about how you are a good person somehow in spite of your faith and they respect you even if you stay with your faith. Which would mean what exactly?

They should punch the bullies instead. True, there are parents who can never be satisfied.

It is strange how victims are often given this advice but it is rarely given to bullies. Not saying that dynamic maps neatly onto this specific situation but the person doing the hurtful thing should be the one getting the correction. The reality is only the victim will ever take the advice. Oh, come on. No one would write that ‘I respect your choices BUT’ suggestion into a gift to a ‘faithful’ child. If that truly is our language of love we have much bigger problems. They often do this by disconnecting and getting some distance and then get to deal with complaints about not ever showing up. This reinforces the idea that the reason for the chasm is their disaffection from religion. The being if they weren’t disaffected they would be around more. Quite possibly true but the disaffection isn’t the reason they are withdrawing.

Okay, I had to ruminate a bit on this before I could respond intelligently as to why it came across badly to me. I am not trying to be mean but trying to deconstruct some of the likely emotions. When you put caveats and compliments around something while hinting that you want something more for someone it comes across as insincere. Stating that you love them for being “good” but implying they need more undercuts the compliment. Then you felt the need to say that you would respect them no matter if they went along with it or not. In other words you knew that there was a message that could offend and tried to acknowledge it to try to disarm it. It would be hard for many to feel good about this gift. It is laced with an appeal for them to change. That might be needed in many contexts but it is not a gift. It is a hook. It is hard to believe the compliments. They sound like you are buttering them up or preemptively using them so they will feel bad if they respond negatively. It is hard to take compliments that come that way as sincere. “You are good people living good lives and I have nothing but respect for you BUT………” That kind of appeal is emotionally exhausting when you are the target. You end up annoyed but it is hard to articulate exactly why. There are landmines throughout that the giver can use to try to rebut any expressions of frustration. Your wife is hurt and sad that they feel this way after giving them a gift that made them feel hurt and sad. She fired the shot and her daughters feel like they have been under fire for a long time. They are probably minimizing time around you if that is how they feel. People don’t react well to people trying to change them. It also means they are less likely to confide their problems or seek help or emotional support when things go wrong. I hope that wasn’t just a dodge to avoid having an awkward conversation. I would ask yourself how deliberately you are doing this. Is it something that just pops out or are you looking for opportunities to give backhanded appeals to their seeking out God for help. 1. This is impossible for anyone to answer who is not around the interactions. I don’t know if they are jumping at shadows assuming things that aren’t there or if they genuinely feel like they are being regularly judged or are under siege. 2. Definitely stop attaching proclamations of love or support to appeals to get them to change something. It makes them duck and cover when you want to express love. 3. It is not wrong but I would weigh the costs of the rule. If this is primarily a way of planting the religious ‘flag’ when they are present I would consider dumping this rule. 4. Probably has to do with how we socialize men to just ignore stuff like this that might offend them and socialize women to express feelings more openly. Could also be the way you approach religious topics with them. You might be showing more respect to the sons in a way they understand but not to the daughters. Is there a difference in your approach? In how you bring it up? It is also possible your sons are irked at this too and just don’t consider it worth discussing so just accepted it and processed their emotions about it in some other way. I think you are trying to help but I think the way you are going about it is alienating at least some of your children. The ‘playbook’ LDS use on disaffected family members isn’t nearly as subtle as many members believe.

This teaching has been partially repudiated. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2014/03/faithful-parents-and-wayward-children-sustaining-hope-while-overcoming-misunderstanding?lang=eng I think it is a bit disingenuous for Elder Bednar to suggest that “some” have “misconstrued” the doctrine. The Church leadership were the ones pushing the teaching. Same thing they did by trying to make everyone think it was self-evident that women exercise priesthood power and suggesting it should have been known by all. This kind of revisionism annoys me.

That question was designed to catch people practicing plural marriage or some form of spiritual wifery or some other variant. The question originally included the full name of the Church to make it explicit that you were lying if you claimed to follow it and adhered to the beliefs of a different restorationist faith. The description in practice is so broad that taken literally it keeps you from doing anything with almost everybody. Even joining a political party would be verboten. Some book clubs would be forbidden.

Generalizing a specific case to everyone alive? Sounds fun. Why are you hiding your bisexuality from the world? You should get that ADHD treated. Also learn to pay attention in church meetings you easily distracted weirdo. I love this. I talked to irony and he said he just can’t engage with this. It is just too blatant.

I just don’t think that being in a place that is called Spirit Prison would be indicative of a loving God. You could still potentially reason your way to one but I don’t think it would be intuitive. Jesus did not minister in person and being clothed with power and authority may be just as visible there as it is here. In other words most people can’t tell. We clothe our missionaries with power and authority but most don’t notice. Possible it is different there. Just not much information. I am not really looking forward to it when it comes. Assuming it is how we describe it. Could be better. Could be worse. Could be nothing. Maybe. I am cynical and pessimistic though. Maybe death makes people think more clearly? I have to talk to people I don’t know? I really am in hell! Kidding…..mostly. I got the idea from the apostles. I don’t particularly like this teaching. Here is the church’s gospel topic bit on paradise: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/paradise?lang=eng It is short. I will just copy it here: Bolding mine. Also Joseph Smith’s claim that that is a mistranslation doesn’t make any linguistic sense. It might be a more accurate description but the Greek doesn’t refer to a world of spirit. The word is almost certainly used to compare it to Eden. Did every dispensation know of resurrection and redemption? Even if they did I am constantly being taught about redemption and resurrection even though I have heard it before. Also if somehow the unbaptized are in paradise surely the faithful saints would have tried to teach them? Maybe. I suspect it was a small crowd compared to the volume of people in the spirit world. It is even possible that some of them were morose or unmotivated. It talks about them seeing their lack of a resurrection as a form of bondage. Maybe they weren’t well organized or weren’t sure what they should be doing. Joseph Smith taught that John the Baptist went there as a forerunner for Jesus again. No idea what that means. I am going off what the Church teaches. I would like to think the unbaptized can go to paradise. I’d kind of like everyone to go there. Except Frank. That guy can burn for eternity. Mostly because the three kingdoms didn’t make it into the Bible. Hard to blame them for not knowing. I hope what I suspect about how things work is wrong. Nope, no problem with the names themselves. Just seems an odd grab bag of people to choose across various elements of society when the Founders were said to have impressed their names specifically. And yes, everyone does need to be baptized. I was taught it was urgent because it allows these people to escape prison. Like, when you did it they could opt to get out. Again, I don’t like this teaching. I just don’t see a way around it. Most attempts to reason around it are appeals to compassion and the love of God and ‘God wouldn’t do that’ reasoning. It is also offered as a kind of comfort to grieving families and to avoid people worrying about people they love being in unhappy circumstances. I am sympathetic to those arguments but the teachings don’t seem to back up this soft-pedaling.

I am not convinced that the existence of an afterlife is proof that there is a God. Unless something changes I am not sure that this will make preaching the gospel easier. Claiming that Jesus lived is not likely to be that convincing. Others can testify of any number of deities. I expect new religions will pop up and flourish there. Also I don’t see how a knowledge of life continuing after death lessens agency somehow. So kind of alone. That assumes there is some divide between the two that is locational and not a divide of some kind of status. John Adams didn’t get baptized. That is the requirement. Catholics went through some contortions to explain how the thief didn’t need baptism. Then again our own church did some cute dodges. When I was younger there were quotes from conference speakers about the word Jesus used for paradise in that verse meaning ‘world of spirits’ which is just wrong. It is easy to see why they did it. They had to explain how the thief got in without baptism. If it was just the world of spirits that works. The word used means an enclosed garden. It is also used to describe Eden. I don’t think you can get in without baptism. Also we have the story from Wilford Woodruff when he was President of the St. George Temple reporting that the signers of the Declaration of Independence came to him and asked him to do their temple work and he did the work for them and all the dead U.S. presidents (with a few exceptions such as still perhaps being annoyed at Martin Van Buren blowing off Joseph Smith’s request for help to recover property in Missouri). They also picked a bunch of notables. The list of those baptized is interesting. Napoleon III? Marie Antoinette? Stonewall Jackson? Frederick the Great? Jane Austen? Okay, what is the rhyme or reason here? Here is the list: https://josephsmithfoundation.org/wiki/eminent-spirits-appear-to-wilford-woodruff/

You got enough xp to level up beyond mortality.