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escott3564

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Posts posted by escott3564

  1. 4 hours ago, Antoni said:

    I totally agree with this Bishop. Today I saw far too many saints looking at non-church things on their pads/phones in all sessions. As YM 1st Counsellor the YM know not to use an electronic device during my lessons. It's amazing how their knowledge of and ability to navigate the scriptures has vastly improved over the last 9 months since using paper scriptures. Likewise they've learnt to use the Bible Dictionary and we're had all sorts of conversations about things in the scriptures like footnotes/cross references and the maps, which we never would have done using electronic versions.

    For those saying they "need" these devices (for themselves or others) that's just nonsense. You need to learn to focus on the more important things and likewise teach others the same. Taking a quad to meeting is no real challenge, I always do and so use that if I need to look something up. We also need to sometimes accept we might well be bored in a sacrament meeting. Honestly I was today during parts, but that's how it is. Life sometimes is boring and I'd rather be bored than succumb to culture of instant pleasure and gratification that invades our lives from sources that are not of God.

    I challenge those here to go to sacrament for 4 weeks without any electrical device and see if it's the unbearable burden you claim. 

    If I was ever called as Bishop I would instigate a similar policy I feel - it would stop the most frustrating thing which is when people use iPads or worse phones for their talk notes and we have to sit their for an age whilst they "sort out their technical hitch / or find their place (whilst scrolling up and down frantically)"

    My previous Bishop had a counsellor who used to spend sacrament meeting on his device, when I spoke to the Bishop about it he suddenly realised how disrespectful it looks (even if the counsellor was doing something that was related to his calling) and so made sure it didn't happen on the stand. That had a knock on effect on there rest of the congregation. 

    I suppose it links in with the whole topic of reverence. As a convert to the church of several years now, the lack of reverence and just common courtesy in meetings is still something that jars with me far too often. 

     

    Light, Love and Peace

    D

    Thank goodness you're not my bishop. You are not taking mothers and kids with special needs into consideration. 

  2. 8 hours ago, bluebell said:

    You would choose to miss out on the blessings of taking the sacrament rather than not use electronics for an hour?

    I'm a single parent. If I can't take my son with me, then yes. My son needs the iPad. Without it, he gets fidgety and we end up spending Sacrament Meeting in the hall. 

  3. On June 24, 2016 at 0:28 AM, bluebell said:

    I think if it were me, i would completely disagree with his decision, but still follow his counsel in sacrament meeting (not in the other meetings though).  

    I would simply stop going to Sacrament Meeting. I have all my scriptures and lesson manuals  on my phone. I see nothing wrong with referring to those during Sacrament. My son is autistic and having his IPad helps him concentrate better. I strongly disagree with the complete ban on these things during Sacrament. How will this be enforced?  Temple recommends being yanked?  Release from callings?


  4. It seems to me that this contains a lot of "I don't believe Heavenly Father would do this" instead of any information as to what Heavenly Father would actually do.

    Heavenly Father has done a lot of things that we find disturbing.  Why should this be any different?  I hate the "God wouldn't do that" argument.

    I don't find the preferences in your post particularly in keeping with the Gospel.

     

    It is certainly your prerogative to feel that way. 

  5. It is blatantly true that there would have been more children in the Church had polygamy not existed.  The point of polygamy was for children to be born through select lines.  For example, the wives of Brigham Young all bore children through his line.  This type of polygamy was a true throw-back to the Old Testament where EVERYTHING rested on lineage.  The more children you had, the larger your fortune, and the more prestige you were afforded.  That is why when the Lord said that Abraham would be the father of many nations, Sarah felt that she had no choice but to give her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham to wife since Hagar was fertile and she was barren.

     

    At least Brigham Young's version of polygamy made sense in mirroring Old Testament polygamy.  It still reduced women and children to being nothing more than possessions/pawns in a power play.

     

    I can't, in good conscience, believe that a loving Heavenly Father would sanction that.  Therefore, I think that there are some folks that are going to pay dearly for setting this into motion.  As others here have said, the devil is in the details.

     

    I do, however, feel that there is good in the Church.  Worshiping Christ is something that can be done well in any Church.  The LDS Church is as good as any other, particularly when one has grown up in it. 

     

    I read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover when I was in the 6th grade.  That was the first time I read it.  There are many beautiful teachings in it, particularly 3rd Nephi and Helaman.

     

    I also feel that family is not only forever, but everything.  I don't believe that Heavenly Father would purposely separate family by kingdoms, no matter how nice or paved with gold they are. 

     

    The whole point of entertaining the thought of life after death in my eyes is the hope that we can be reunited with those who we love who have passed before us.  However we choose to pay homage to a God who can make that happen is not a bad thing.  We take from the gospel what works and makes sense for each of us.

  6. Panel discussion on Family Members Who Left is going on now.

    Very insightful.

    The general consensus seems to be to do what you can to maintain a relationship, even if it means backing off from argumentation.

    And, in allusion to a thread about this of some months ago, no, there are no ex-Mormons on the panel. I continue to believe that unnecessary and potentially problematical.

    When you have the time, Scott, would you mind opening a separate thread about this panel and report on how it went in more detail?  I would be very interested in this.  Thanks!

  7. joseph smith will judge us one day? what is that based on?

    The one reference that comes to mind is from Brigham Young in the Journal of Discourses:

     

    “No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith…every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, Junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ are… [Joseph Smith] reigns there as supreme a being in his sphere, capacity, and calling, as God does in heaven. Many will exclaim”Oh,that is very disagreeable!…But it is true.”LDS PROPHET Brigham Young,JoD, vol.7,p.289-91.
  8. And my gosh, this is intended to be a parable of sorts. Why the rigid reading?

     

    Speaking of rigidity, the number of negative reactions to this film I posted on MDB kind of took me by surprise.  I knew there would be a few, but it really did surprise me how cynical the crowd was.

     

    Honor said something on my site, though, that kind of helped me understand.  He felt like the film was using a "heartsell" to basically "sell" the Church, and I honestly didn't view it that way.  I looked at it as a film that was demonstrating the importance of selflessness in marriage.  I see it as a "live action" parable. 

  9. I am baffles by the responses. Nobody wants to be useless. The story is about helping someone retain their independence. It is about helping someone continue in as normal a manner as possible. If I were permanently disables, I would not be comforted if my responsibilities were taken away; as with most, I would do into a deep depression. I would want my loved ones to help me continue as much as possible as I was before. It is a beautiful story and for anyone who has a loved who is disables, it is an act to be emulated.

     

    I liked Cal's post which kind of puts the story into "modern" perspective:

     

    Think of a husband working to provide his wife a laptop that allowed her to work in bed instead struggling to get out of it as an invalid, allowing her to stay connected to her family and world with dignity. Would it have better just to tell her not to worry about it and have her just sit lonely in bed doing nothing?
  10. Priceless. 

     

    :D

     

    I thought so!

     

    I think that it rang very true to me for a couple of reasons which is why I balled like a baby when I watched it.  My husband had heart surgery last year and I did a lot of home care for him while he was recouping.  Also, Elder Scott is a relative, and I remember when Jeanene got very sick with cancer.  He looked after her much the same way.

  11. do you need to be endowed to witness a sealing? When my older sister was married my younger sister wasn't endowed and she saw witnessed it

    ???  I don't understand how your younger sister was able to view the sealing if she wasn't already endowed.  You're saying that she had a limited use recommend for baptisms? 

     

    This is the first I have ever heard of this.  My daughter was married two years ago, and her sister actually did have a limited use temple recommend for baptisms for the dead, but was not allowed to witness the sealing.  Well, maybe she should have been allowed to, but I had no idea this was possible.  My father in law was the temple president at the time, and I'm sure he would have said something if that had been a possibility.

  12. I don't think there's anything new to announce that hasn't already been published.

     

    Is your friend in her late teens or early 20s? (See my post above.)

     

    She is 22.  She is a very bright girl, and I think that she is definitely a good candidate for someone ready for their endowments.  She has one more year at BYU and will have her degree in Mathematics.  She has already been accepted into a Masters program at Wake Forest University here in NC.  Since her sister is getting married this summer, I think it would be great if she could be in the sealing room for it.  It looks like everything is going to work out for her as far as the interview process with the Stake President is concerned.

     

    This is just the first situation I had heard of like this, so I thought I would throw the question out here!  :D

  13. One of the LDS young ladies I worked with during a show I just finished told me that she was going to be getting her endowments soon. I asked her if she was planning to go on a mission or if she had recently become engaged. She said, neither. She explained that the Church is now making exceptions and allowing young single females the opportunity to get their endowments if their bishop and stake president interviews them, and feels they are "spiritually mature" enough to handle the temple experience, and are temple worthy.

    She has an older sister who is getting married in the Raleigh temple later this month, and was excited about the possibility of being able to attend.
     
    I was just curious if anyone else had heard of this.
  14. It might help to understand why these policies were instituted.  The one you mentioned(of a Priesthood member always having to be present during activities) was, as I remember, instituted when there was a problem with some of the sisters being attacked in the parking lots in some areas of our cities s a couple of brothers were assigned to see the sisters safely to their cars.  So once again in a hurry to cast aspersions, because of a lack of information you have erred.

    As far as the issue about a Priesthood member being present at all activities, I see nothing wrong with this means as a safety issue.  Pahoran was right.  I wasn't complaining about the particular practice of having the Priesthood present as means for extra safety.  I appreciated not being alone in a building that was on a questionable side of town when I was teaching seminary. 

     

    I do think that the practice can be carried a bit too far, but that is a topic for another thread.  My point of this thread really had to do with the irony of critics tending to display the same type of behavior that they complain about.

  15. Actually ERay, escott wasn't complaining about that practice.  (At least not here -- I haven't seen the thread on the Sty, and probably won't.)  She was protesting that Kishkumen, one of those "Well yeah, I'm a Mormon, but I'm much more intelligent than my stupid co-religionists, so you're safe with me" academic poseurs, was using that practice as an excuse to parade his imagined superiority.

     

    Regards,

    Pahoran

    I do need to make a clarification which I had misinterpreted.  Kish stated later on my thread that he did not mean his comment to come across the way it did.  His particular comment was a miscommunication on my part.  I have always had a good relationship with Kish and I take his correction at face value. 

     

    This is Kish's clarification:

     

    I should have thought that my praise of LDS women as "capable or even more so than their male counterparts" made my respect for their abilities clear. Regretfully, some still think it is possible to imply LDS women are stupid at the same time. Luckily, I am here to reiterate my respect for the abilities of LDS women and clarify my statement by adding more detail: the power of culture and freedom to choose is evident in the fact that most LDS women tolerate the infantilizing treatment their Church inflicts upon them.

     

    My observation, however, is still something that I hold to.  There have been other critics who have, indeed, acted in a superior mode for being out of the Church while complaining that Church members act superior to those who aren't members.

     

    The biggest example of this, in my opinion, is Scratch.  He constantly complains about how DCP supposedly gossiped about this and that or the other, and complains about how certain apologists supposedly keep "Internet dossiers" on people they want to get in trouble, and then Scratch turns around and engages in the same behavior against people he doesn't like, or is trying to destroy.

     

    I think that the whole superiority complex is something that people on both sides of the aisle need to be conscious of.  That was really my point.

  16. I started this topic on MDB and Geeks, and was interested in thoughts here as well.

     

    One thing that is commonly criticized by critics about members of the Church is that they give off an attitude that they are superior to everyone else due to their knowledge of the gospel and their belief in the plan of salvation. I am one of those who have criticized my fellow members for acting this way when I have seen this behavior because it is un-Christlike and prideful.

    I have, however, noticed an interesting irony among critics. The very thing that they criticize members for, they, themselves, engage in. Many critics of the Church think that THEY are the ones who are superior because they feel that the Church is a bunch of garbage, and they have been "smart" enough to "see the light" and leave.

    In the DCP thread on MDB, Kish made a comment about how he doesn't understand how the women in the Church can put up with the practice of a Priesthood member always having to be present during activities. It was almost as if he was saying, "those women are so dumb to put up with this". Now, I hope that is not what he meant. I am just pointing out how comments like this can come across...particularly from someone who is a current MEMBER of the Church. Well, Kish, as Beastie pointed out, this practice has been in place since 1976. If you think it is such an awful idea, have you, as a Priesthood member, come out and said to anyone in the Church that you thought it was a dumb idea? Or did you simply blame the women for putting up with it? Men can speak out on these issues as well.

    I'm just saying that I think that we all need to take a look at how we are posing things to one another, and remember that there are good people across all of the spectrum.

  17. And I have to admit, even though I am sure that women have never invoked priesthood when participating in blessings, they sometimes were the "mouth" or took the blessing itself upon them. When Eliza arrived in Morgan Utah to find a raging cholera epidemic, she started healing people --- people who instantly got better. It's fascinating, because she didn't invoke the priesthood (she saw it as part of her role as General Relief Society president).

     

    My understanding is that women who were endowed shared that Melchizedek Priesthood with their husbands and had the authority to act utilizing that Priesthood in certain capacities such as healing the sick.

     

    I would also like to see mothers be able to hold the baby in the blessing circle when babies get blessed.  It would accomplish two things.  It would allow the mother to be more involved in the process of the baby blessing, and, I can also guarantee you that the baby would not be as fussy during the blessing itself.  I have read nothing that would prohibit this practice.  Again, it is simply a matter of tradition, as is a lot of these types of things. 

     

    For example, I see no reason why callings such as Sunday School President couldn't be a calling served by a woman.  There could be a mix of male and female counselors as well.  When I was in the Institute program in California, our Institute Director called a presidency in charge of institute activities.  The President was male; the First Counselor was male; and I was called as the Second Counselor.  That was the first time I had been a part of a mixed presidency, and it was a very rewarding experience.

  18. We were looking through some old Relief Society manuals from the 1970s once, and marveling about the cultural/historical enrichment lessons. I wish we had things like that instead of the boring and heavily-correlated manuals we have today.

     

    JAHS: One important detail in President Smith's view on women and blessings is that they do so *with* their husband, not in his absence or instead of him. He was also clear that it is done by faith only and not with the authority of the priesthood. This is something that women-giving-blessings-today advocates always ignore when I ask. Even in documented cases of women giving healing blessings (I have some family examples of Eliza R. Snow effectively healing people in Morgan, Utah during a cholera epidemic, for instance), I have *never* found any evidence that they invoked the priesthood when doing so. I don't believe that *they* themselves thought that they were exercising priesthood authority.

     

    Can anyone produce even one documented example of women invoking priesthood when healing?

     

    I would have to look for documentation.  I have read of instances where women did give blessings to the sick by the laying on of hands, but do not know the details beyond the fact that they did use the consecrated oil.

     

    What I would like to see more of today is women administering in healing blessings WITH their husbands.  This is something that is perfectly appropriate in the Church today.  It has just fallen out of popular tradition. 

     

    I had a very interesting experience that taught me this.  (Mods, I hope it is OK to reveal this personal experience since it does relate to the topic.)

     

    When I was attending college in California, I was living at home at the time.  My parents were out of town for the weekend, and I was in charge of the household, looking after my little brother.  The night they left, I became very sick with a horrible flu.  I was really worried about being able to attend school that Monday, and I had a lot of studying to do over the weekend.  I called my grandfather and asked if he could come over and give me a blessing.  My grandparents came over and my grandfather anointed my head with oil, giving the traditional blessing of healing.  Then, BOTH my grandparents laid their hands upon my head and sealed the blessing.  This was the first time I had ever had a woman lay her hands upon my head.  Later, I asked questions about the blessing, and my grandmother, who is related to the Johnson family which Joseph Smith was closely associated with, told me that in the early days of the Church, this was a common practice.  She also explained to me that when I went to the temple, I would experience women laying their hands on my head as well.

     

    I think that there is a lot yet to be revealed about how the Priesthood is incorporated by both men and women, and that we need to be more open minded.

  19.  

     When Joseph Smith was organizing the Relief Society he told the sisters; “….all must act in concert or nothing can be done—that the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood…”
     
    I think he meant under it’s direction. I remember having to have huge bazaars trying to make money for the RS, no thank you. 
     
    The Savior prayed that we might be one even as he and his Father are one. It sounds like some of you are trying to move us further apart.  

     

    Those bazaars were organized by the RS, and, at least in my home ward, it was an activity highlight that is missed.  The bazaars have nothing to do with whether or not the RS is autonomous from the Priesthood.  All of the auxiliaries had separate money-raising activities (Primary, YM/YW, etc.).  Correlation changed budget processes.

     

    And no, what is being suggested would not move the men and women further apart.  What we learn in the temple is that the Priesthood is an entity that is shared by both men and women.  The man cannot reach his full potential without the woman; the woman cannot reach her full potential without the man.  What is being proposed is the RS being organized the way that Joseph Smith initially intended for it to be organized.

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