Jane_Doe

Personally: I believe both. That is contains truth and is Christ's only true church on the Earth. I also acknowledge that other's have different views.

My answer: ultimately a person should join because they find Truth in the Church and feel Christ calling them to join. Other reasons are subpar -- including to make spouse / family happy, because it's a good community, etc.

I'm sure that BYU officials are also looking at the community numbers EXTREMELY closely. (Note: I do agree with you on the "yes we should be more careful" note too)

Transmitted: yes. However, the chances of getting sick, requiring hospitalization, and death are all much lower for vaccinated people. So you'd want to manage a population differently if they have lots non-vaccinated-higher-risk people, versus majority vaccinated unlikely to get very sick people.

The fundamental issue here is that there's two definitions of love being used by many parties. One is affection and caring and reaching out, even while disagreeing with some major life choices. The other definition requires "if you love me, then you'll automatically be totally celebrating all of my life choices. If you don't, then you must not really love me.". I personally find the first one to be a healthier definition of love, because it respects the autonomy of all parties. The second one... doesn't and if more of a hostage situation. To be blunt, I know lots of folks whom I care for very very deeply, but I also need to acknowledge that they (in my eyes) make some majorly bad life choices. Me acknowledging that disagreement isn't me not loving you, it's me also having values/beliefs. I still love them and am here & vise versa. I'm going to acknowledge your beliefs/values & life choices, but I also deserve to have my beliefs/values & life choices equally acknowledged & respected. And all of that applies both ways (I have friends that also passionately disagree with me & my choices).

Mixed faith marriage here. Love your spouse first and foremost. Acknowledge how their faith makes them who they are, how they love it, and support them on their walk.

Your mom and SIL are jerks (though that's not a good fitting word for it). Most of the LDS Christians I know would have zero problem with what you describe and going, especially myself.

I usually see boundary makers try to spread out the haves / have-nots across different wards -- speaking in terms of spiritually, economically, stability, etc. Which frequently results in some very creative looking boundaries. And the effectiveness of things may or may not work over the long term as folks move, neighborhoods change, etc.

I think as mortals, we're really get stuck on the idea that "spiritual birth" equates to something like physical birth (9 months, big belly, morning sickness, dramatic bloody birth with lots of screaming, etc). We know pretty much nothing about the mechanics of spiritual birth, but I doubt it's like that because there's not a physical body being developed. Truth be told, we know pretty much nothing about the mechanics of spirits at all. A tiny bit we do know is that a person does exist before their spiritual birth as an "intelligence", so there's zero conflict with the fact that we are each co-eternal with God. Well, you can believe just about anything . I find it's well within reason to say "I know I believe in Heavenly Mother. I don't know much about spiritual birth, so I don't have a very strong belief/disbelief on that subject."

Hi! My "name" is Jane. I'm a LDS Christian, and a theology nerd. I love coming to better understand what different people believe, because it better helps me understand and love them. Additionally, it gives me new perspectives on beliefs myself, and helps consider things -- whether that's "that's an awesome way of stating things!" or "....no, here's a list of reasons why I passionately disagree with you." As a person who literally walks into different churches and asks what and why people believe as they do, I actually find that LDS Christians are the MOST encouraging of questions. Asking questions is foundational to faith development, and developing your epistemological methods is also encouraged. Other Christian churches... can be a mixed bag. I've been to some that are great, some that tell me "just shut up and believe this because I told you to". And frequent "I don't know what I believe, let me go get the pastor.". It's uncommon for me to visit a mainstream Christian church and have a person who's able to discuss epistemological methods with me ("I believe the Bible because the Bible says it is true" isn't a epistemological method in my mind). If it's a "hard" question (like "how are three persons one God"), I almost always get the answers along the lines of "stop asking questions and just believe it else you're burn in Hell".

The basic idea is having a congregation specifically set up for young single folks, so that their focus in life can be addressed (like college classes, finding job stress, and not things like "my kid is driving crazy"). And of course to help people meet each other and hopefully pair up. It is a good theory, even if the practice sometimes doesn't work. As to the gender distribution: yes, they can be very female dominated. This is a result of two factors: - women are more likely to be religious (this is true across all faiths) - Women are more likely to be involved in social activities, especially in the 20's (like most college clubs are very female dominated). As to people being awkward in dating: welcome to the twenty first century.

Yes, it automatically goes into the database, and somebody else can do the work. It is better though to, if you or a family member can't go, ask a ward member to do that service. It gives it a personal touch and connection, rather than some random person in Jakarta doing the baptism, Manhattan confirmation, San Paulo endowment, etc.

I'm a person who's in a part-member family. Between my side and husband's we have a variety of very orthodox LDS Christians, ex, anti, just generic Christian, atheist, etc. Friends are a likewise mixed batch. I'll speak to my answer in general, as I'm not on Facebook type places. I don't say everything I think to everyone-- that's a horrible idea. Whether faith, politics, science, or any other topic, somethings are best to talk with some people and not others. When it comes to spiritual matters, what I say is very filtered around my anti relatives. Some of the ex ones are totally indifferent with me talking about things, unless it's a view point they agree with and then they'll engage. Some folks just don't want to hear anything that doesn't echo exactly what they think and hence I keep my mouth shut at times (that includes some LDS Christians I know). The people I can be the most open with are those that we just have talk-about-anything relationships, and those folks include some generic Christians, some LDS ones, and a few atheists. So yeah... for my experience it's mostly an indicator of how open a person is talking about thing in general, more than their particular faith.

We've had full-in-person school for the 1st grader. It's different: masks, everything distant, no group work, changes to schedule, they're scrambling for subs, etc. But still a huge blessing. Kids adapt. She loves school, it gives her an outlet, and things are generally really good. The transmission / infection rate for those which are in the schools is actually much lower than the general community here (the general community is not very cautious).

Are you wanting practical advice here, or just being angry?