Calm

I completely agree with you, but also think there needs to be included compassion and patience and respect in understanding*** because our particular community creates a sense of belonging and stability in part through promoting faith in our leaders knowing truth. We value highly committed Position 2s, sometimes it seems more than position 9s (also I think people tend to be a mix of positions and it can be confusing if they are much more vocal when dealing with one position rather than all of them that they hold so they appear to be Position 2 overall, but are not). I personally believe that promise of truth from prophets needs to be applied in a very limited, though extremely important fashion, thus a true need for a personal witness, seeking personal revelation and above all a personal relationship with God. However, there have been notable leaders who have limited the necessity of personal witness and revelation to confirmation of what has been taught by prophets or at least who can be easily interpreted to mean that (meaning in part they focus so much on confirmation of the truth it can sound like they believe prophets will never err, especially since they don’t give much instruction for if that happens in significant ways, even if at times they admit error, such as what was said in 1978 about forgetting anything contrary to the new revelation). Same with the idea of a personal relationship with God, which got very confusing for awhile. In many ways, we are requiring our own to rise above our culture—which has been in part created by various teachings of very prominent leaders—in order to maintain a spiritual connection with our community. I personally think that is a good thing in the long run. Just believe there should be public recognition we haven’t made it very easy for each other (speaking generally as my mother and father made it very easy for me to see my faith as potentially having errors, but inherently structured to be open to change; the way my brain works also helps a great deal…even if it causes massive issues in the nonreligious sides of my life, lol). *** not saying you lack it, just that’s it’s not always included in these types of conversations as if this type of moving past old ways of thinking is natural and just happen without much nudging

“than has survived”, I think you mean (it may be confusing to those not familiar with the history, otherwise it’s a minor typo)

Which is what it should be, imo. If not daily life, then at crucial times when needed most. I don’t fault anyone who has not experienced this as not everyone is capable. The muted experience or complete lack of it may occur for a variety of reasons not a result of their own behaviour (genetics, environment they grew up in, medications required for physical well being and others) from what I have seen, learned, and personally experienced plus there is so much noise and external pressures (not talking just religious ones, but general behavior) these days, one’s internal experience may not be clear (many people have acted so long in ways they believed they should behave and were pushed to behave that once they recognize this persona is not who they really are, they have great difficulty figuring who they really are or what they want). I see this being discussed in communities of neurodiversity the most (probably because I visit them a lot these days), but every community, including and especially family, has expectations of its members and roles they are expected to play and narratives they tell that gets internalized and can end up being louder than the inner voice in some, maybe many ways.

My experience is our shared heritage is rarely discussed and it’s more the accusations that we are the ones who have gone into apostasy that we focus on. We generally don’t appreciate that, to say the least. Our emotional, cultural response is often very human, imo (the official one is pretty dry, either ignored and treated no differently than other faiths or in some cases their doctrine and relationship with their former offshoot faith needs to be examined before baptism is allowed). I think many of us feel we have more in common with creedal and other forms of Christianity than those who see themselves as the heirs of Joseph Smith rather than us, who stake the same claim of authority and authenticity as we do.

When religion gets used as a slogan to mobilize forces no matter what the causes are, it’s going to feel like religious persecution, imo.

I see that as the fundamental issue myself since I learned of the Catholic understanding of valid baptism. There is more possible wiggle room with most of the other issues imo due in part to the variation of belief among LDS that Rory refers to. Plus this is just so huge, it doesn’t matter if we get other stuff right in Catholic eyes, it seems to me.

We hope all will come together in unity, but being too familiar with certain mortal tendencies to force unity based not on God’s desires, but our own, religious pluralism protected by law is beneficial to everyone. A monarchy will be wonderful when Christ is King, but put a human in his place and things can go very wrong. Religious pluralism would be along the same lines as what Churchill said about democracy, imo. Though I will be open and say I love variety of religious thought. There is plenty of variation in LDS beliefs if one digs a bit, but there is great beauty imo in the many expressions of understanding about the divine. A very big part of me would miss that if we didn’t have it (I don’t anticipate missing it after resurrection because the ability to share ourselves and the universe will be so much, much, much more powerful and therefore endless variety of expressions of the beauty in the Divine will be present to revel in all with a fullness of truth in every way unlike the partial expressions we have now).

We don’t teach from our pulpit or lesson manuals about other faiths for the most part, usually only where we agree (leaders and lessons might quote a nonLDS for insight or support), so my experience is there isn’t either an official or unofficial way to refer to them beyond using their names or speaking generally of any offshoots as apostate groups. I would prefer “offshoot” if I was sharing their beliefs and history. Might use “apostate” just out of habit from my youth, but hopefully I would limit that to if I was focusing on their opposition to the mainstream Latter-day Saint faith headquartered in Salt Lake. I would love to know how they would prefer us to refer to them when arguing where we are right and they went wrong.

Is this a problem? I use “claim” a lot, not because I think someone is misrepresenting anything, but because claim means to assert something is factual, truth, etc. Also, “they claim” is a good way imo to say I am reporting what others say. Maybe the connotation of intentional inaccuracy is strong for you because of how it might be used in lawyering? My perspective is more from science and writing… https://rmit.pressbooks.pub/researchwritingmodules/chapter/what-is-a-claim/ Tone is what will convey skepticism. Is there any reason to read that article as the author being skeptical? If he is a former member, he probably knows what we actually believe among ourselves, not just what we publicly claim. Is he challenging our claims at all?

Just because you (speaking personally and generally) may have some wrong doctrines and practices hardly means your faiths are all wrong and therefore valueless. There is no doctrine in the LDS faith that says there is no error in our own doctrines. We need continuing revelation for more than just filling in the gaps of our knowledge. There are weaknesses that can be strengthened and errors that can be corrected in our faith by the teachings of others. Speaking of gaps, while there may be members and possibly even leaders who believe those of the LDS faith have nothing to learn from other faiths, I certainly do not. I know many Saints who study other religions, not to learn where they went wrong, but to receive truth and wisdom. My mother was one of them, reading extensively in some of my earliest memories, looking for insights that gave greater meaning and better direction to her life. Of course, she was also studying LDS history and doctrine at the same time, but my memories mostly have her sharing nonLDS sources that enlightened her understanding of Christ’s work and the gifts that God had given her as well as what she was meant to do with them. Her shelves had many more nonLDS books on them than LDS.

Thank you, Smac. You itemized most of my concerns here about why I think it’s inappropriate.

And I would be there complaining if I worked in the military. I think it’s completely inappropriate for him to arrange for only his version of religion and not others. If I were Secretary of Defense***, I would ask for volunteers to run the other services and if no one was available, do it myself (or rather assign one of my people) and show up at least once to each version to show there was to be no favoritism…because as Secretary of Defense I would be representing the US, not LDS. If for some reason this was impossible, I would still arrange meetings if needed, but they would be in a private, not government facility and would not be heavily publicized. It would not be anything close to official or paid by tax dollars unless the identical opportunity was not only available, but used by other faiths. I would avoid any possibility that it looked like the LDS faith or any other had a favored status. ***I would never work for a president whose focus was on aggression rather than defense of our country, so most likely there would be a new executive order vacating the previous one restoring the primary official title to use everywhere…plus I believe Congress should get more respect from the Executive branch. Using executive orders to tailor the government to one’s personal taste is a presidential habit I hope gets broken soon. At the very least, it’s a waste of money and time and creates a mass of confusion if controversial and is likely to get reversed or placed on hold judicially.

So the movie is popular in my family. My son has a new 3D printer he’s playing with and yesterday I came down to what looked to me like a ball of poop with limbs on my kitchen island…I thought it was a Transformer that was mid change or something. My husband who had been gifted my son’s latest creation was mortally offended by my description of a walking ball of poop. Obviously it’s Rocky. Never seen a picture of Rocky so how would I spot that? Looking at the Amazon version, it’s quite accurate. And now my daughter has challenged me to a fist fight over my description of him as a ball of poop on legs. Debating whether it’s type 2 or 3 on the Bristol Stool chart now (oh, the things I do to distract my daughter from her discomfort).

Not on Reddit, just read it on occasion. Only stuff I signed up for was FB, YouTube, and this board and I never comment on YouTube and rarely FB. You guys get all my wisdom (unless you count answering questions sent in by email for FAIR).

Are you bothered by the lack of variety? It’s not like there are only white evangelical chaplains in the military. It’s in a government building, a government that is supposed to represent all its people.

Just to be clear, I am not deriding the young man for not saying no after expressing his distaste for his parent’s plans for him. Just wondering why he didn’t given he had gone so far as to make the issues public in the way he did (which would have shocked me at the time for the strength or anger or desperation or whatever gave him the ability to do it, more likely to have been able to find apparent support these days as I have seen those who claimed to be formers members offering places to stay for kids who feel trapped into going…which scared me as the kids would be so vulnerable though no doubt many, maybe even all were sincere offers). That seems like a desperate, last attempt of a fading hope that his parents might love him for who he was. It does not surprise me in the least he disappeared from church afterwards. Maybe from the family as well, being that toxic. It is the only time I have heard of it happening and I am curious about the rest of the story. Maybe he did it to rid himself of the last sense of obligation to them. Hope he found a home for himself he could feel safe in, whatever it was.

Yes, we need to shed the conformity in thought image because this is actually a wide allowable range in most of the peripheral stuff. It’s not surprising we are seen as ridiculously high conformists given how our missionaries look and our WoW standards and a certain look at least in the past with hair and clothing among women, the clean cut look for men (the BYU look, is that still a thing?), but it’s unfortunate (especially when members start believing it as well and thinking of good, solid, faithful members as apostate because they differ in politics or evolution, errancy in leaders and other views.

My problem is when remembering our heritage begins and ends with Christianity. It too often ignores the depth and beauty and complexity of our heritage for a semi patriotic commitment to a particular ideology. Not saying Christianity shouldn’t be as valued or isn’t as beautiful, but it’s like listening to a solo of a piece written to be played by an orchestra or a piano version of a classic rock song and sometimes it’s a rather blah adaptation.

Remarkable what hairstyle and makeup can do. Rickman would not have been in the top 1000 actors I would have considered for playing Reagan. He pulls it off though. (Just saw a still, not the performance, knowing him I assume his performance was excellent) Just remember it’s very loosely based on a real man…sounds like his length of service . I get troubled when they take a real person and then stick him with massive troubles or personal weaknesses to make the film ‘more captivating’ because then too many people think they are getting insight into the real person. It is one of my pet peeves. Thankfully they don’t use the real guy’s name so hopefully people won’t assume such in this case. While I think teaching history visually is a great tool, I prefer documentaries to dramatizations as it’s so easy for fiction to replace the nonfiction in our minds because seeing something sticks so well.

Yeah, I get that. I just would expect someone who had the guts to speak up at church like that (I wouldn’t have) would have first considered the likelihood of being disowned for doing so and thus been mentally prepared to go…what he did comes across as much more humiliating to me than just not going with the drama played out behind closed doors…and second, if he hated it so much as to do that to his parents (not saying they didn’t deserve it), it just seems like he would have been angry enough to walk then. But maybe one thing good for him happened on his mission, he was away from his parents for two years (lot less communication back then) and he knew he could survive without them. I feel really sorry for that kid if it didn’t come across before. For any kid who feels they have to hide who they really are from their parents for more than a short time (because it’s likely all kids don’t want to disappoint their parents even or especially if it’s a loving and supportive relationship and it may take a bit to realize even with a very supportive, understanding parent that they would prefer one not to hide). We have taken in a couple of kids who had abusive parents when they were at the legally adult, but not quite ready to be on their own. It was heartbreaking.

He would have been an adult, could have walked out before if he was going to walk out afterwards when he wasn’t any more prepared financially surely. I am surprised he went with his burn the bridges behind him approach instead of declaring his independence right then and there. They could have disowned him for that if they were as bad as you say. Something like that, it’s smart to pack your bags beforehand, empty any savings account if it’s not your name alone on it and arrange with a friend to stay for awhile.

I think a lot have misconceptions about what scholarship is intended to do. Or maybe what the Church or Gospel requires?

He has been consistently saying this for a long time and I don’t see much difference from when he hung out here or other places I interacted with him.

Thanks for the warning. Something to look forward to…and dread a little, lol

Seen in a couple wards in Utah, my own and ones we visited….all in Utah County. Probably been ten years since last we visited except for my son’s ward as I barely get to my ward these days, not up to attending blessings and baptisms, etc anymore. Hopefully that will eventually change (pain levels much better now, hoping fatigue will eventually lift).