bluebell

I think the reaction to their release is kind of silly. I've also personally known endowed women who have been wearing them for a while (including a sister missionary in our mission here in wyoming) and I have no idea how they got access to them early. The old ones had about a one-two inch capped sleeve, so I don't see the excitement of having 2 inches more of your upper arm showing, but whatever. I have no negative feelings about the change, I just think the reaction to their release is a bit over dramatic. This is a sincere question and not meant to bait. Do you have equal feelings about the change to short sleeved and only going to the knee rather than remaining long sleeved and going down to the ankles?

Very true. The Hocus Pocus sequel was pretty bad

I actually think that we have more out now than we've ever had before. Or at least very close to it.

I just started Sharon Eubank's book "Doing Small Things with Great Love: How Everyday Humanitarians are Changing the World" and I am so in love with it. Her style of writing makes it so easy to read and you just want to go out and do something good when you read it.

I’m excited to see the sequel!

My 11 and 12 year old and I watched (re-watched for me) the Maze Runner trilogy. The books are pretty good if you like YA dystopian type stuff (they came out quite a while ago) and the movies are ok if you like teenage hero dystopian stuff. Lots of action, some 'zombie-esque' elements, not much of a love story but more about male friendship I guess. The worst thing about the movies are that, other than the first one, they are nothing like the books. So if you read the books first, you will probably be annoyed by the movies because they mangle the plot. If you watch the movies first, you'll probably find them entertaining and then also like the books if you decide to read them later (if you like that genre).

@smac97, are you checking in every now and then? We'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

None of this really makes sense. If Trump was going to use him, why didn't he use him? Ballard didn't need to be a senator for that to happen. Trump doesn't care what the news thinks of the people that he chooses to let into his circle, and Ballard remained pretty popular in conservative circles after Sounds of Freedom, even with the fallout. Nothing that happened to Ballard was a nail in the coffin for Trump's alleged plans. And if Elder Ballard is the amazing Christian that Tim is claiming, why didn't he stand up for Tim? Why remain silent if the press and the church is saying things about their relationship that is completely fabricated? That's not what a Christian man does, that's what a slimey man does. Tim is throwing Elder Ballard under the bus to save himself without wanting to admit that's what he's doing. And if the church is this corrupt, why does Ballard want to be a member?? Why did he fight his excommunication?

I'm really wondering if he has some form of mental illness.

His wife needs to get him evaluated.

I wonder if people are taking bets that he's the actual prophet. Also, if there are child sacrificing satan worshippers in the church, why wouldn't he have already exposed them?? What kind of crap person would keep that a secret to clear his name, especially one who trades on his personal mission to save children??

I think both definitions would be subjective.

There is a lot of evidence in support of the authenticity of the BOM, but of course evidence is not proof, and not everyone would find the evidence persuasive (and none of it would prove the theological claims).

That's how it's been for me too. The board has mostly be fine but I couldn't get notifications to load at all.

Speaking of empathy (I know this is a tangent to the OP, sorry), I guess there are three other types. Compassionate empathy: Compassionate empathy includes having cognitive empathy—being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes—although it is a bit more detached than emotional empathy. It often contributes to prosocial behaviors, such as volunteering to help a charitable organization. Affective empathy: This type of empathy involves having the ability to understand and share in another person's emotions without being emotionally stimulated yourself. Somatic empathy: This type involves having a physical reaction in response to what someone else is experiencing.8 For example, if someone feels embarrassed, you may also blush or have an uneasy stomach. I can't watch shows where something embarrassing happens (whether they are scripted shows or reality shows) because the secondhand embarrassment is just too much for me, but I don't think I've ever had a physical reaction in response to what someone else was feeling other than that. I can't really picture what that would look like though.

Very true. Knowing how someone feels, and actually feeling how they feel, are two different aspects of empathy that I had never really thought about before. I find great value in being able to know how someone feels or having someone know how I feel. But I don't see value in actually feeling the emotions that another is feeling. To me, that seems more like bringing a liability to a situation rather than being any help. But I say that fully aware that my perspective is largely due to my personality and just because I can't see the benefit of emotional empathy doesn't mean the benefits don't exist. My perspective is probably blocking my ability to see them. I feel bad for anyone who has ever tried to show me emotional empathy in the past because I probably dismissed them. Going forward I can work on doing better.

I think the question the interviewer asked that specifically said "what do you want them to know about how the Savior feels about them" when asking about people who see themselves on the margins, is reason we got the 'God loves you, pray to feel that love" answers there. With the issue about women, I loved that Pres. Oaks lead with stating that there was more work left to do in regards to women's roles in the church, and especially appreciated that he admitted that the church has not always done right by women. So much of what some women are struggling with right now are how changes were made without acknowledgement of why those changes were needed, and without acknowledgement of how parts of the church in the past (before those changes) was not always great for women and girls. I agreed that Pres. Eyring and Pres. Christofferson's answers were not specific on that topic enough to actually be answers. Though I appreciated that Pres. Christofferson ended with stating that we can only get close to the divine perspective, when women's perspectives are included.

In the scriptures, charity is the pure love of Christ, so maybe that's what blackstrap meant.

(to be clear, I'm spitballing here and thinking as I type. Same with my first post. Just me contemplating what you said and seeing how it makes sense to me...) First, it's interesting to me that you equated empathy with emotion. Not that it's wrong, but interesting because it's not where my mind goes when it thinks of empathy. I think of it as the ability to understand another person, because of your own personal experiences in similar circumstances. Emotion is there (because you can't have a human in the equation without emotions being involved), but not as the primary aspect. Not sure how to describe it so now I'm going to go and google it to see if I can figure out where I'm coming from. **Just returned from googling emotion and empathy and learned something new today! There are primarily two different types of empathy. Emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy is where you feel what the other person is feeling while cognitive is knowing how the other person is feeling, but not necessarily sharing those feelings. I've realized that I'm pretty good at cognitive empathy and not that great at emotional empathy. I also just learned that I don't value emotional empathy that much when applied towards me. I'd rather have someone knowing how I feel than feeling how I feel I guess. And that could explain why I'm not great at providing emotional empathy towards others, because personally it feels useless. Anyway, I would imagine that Christ has both kinds of empathy, but when I was typing my previous response, I was pretty much just thinking about cognitive empathy. When I said that I think that Christ can defend our actions without defending sin or lying (like some defense attorneys must have to do), I meant that I think that because He has the ability to know how we were feeling when we did something, He can find the part of it that made our actions seem reasonable in the state we were in, even if still sinful. I don't think that will be true for all of our actions. Some things we do, we do wiling, knowing they are wrong and there is no defense of them. For those, we must repent. We know they are wrong and when we know we are doing wrong, repentance is the only defense. In those cases, I think that Christ will use our repentance, and our turning to Him, and seeking help, etc. as His way of advocating for us. Kind of a "look, they did this bad thing but they repented so my Atonement has covered it" form of advocacy. But for the other stuff, the things that are sins but we never got enlightened enough to be able to repent of them, that's where the cognitive empathy part of advocating comes in (I think. Like I said, this is me coming up with this as I type because I've never thought of it before. So there are going to be some flaws in it). I'm really enjoying the discussion though!

He definitely does. That makes me think that him leaving out a quote from Pres. Oaks was a deliberate decision. I'd love to know the reasoning (maybe after hearing it I would even find it a reasonable one). Still not wanting to put much effort into watching his reels anymore though.

It makes sense to me. I think empathy is a good label. If Christ defends us (is our Advocate with the Father), but also looks on sin with no allowance and doesn't lie, He must sincerely believe our actions and beliefs are defendable. There's no other way for all those statements to be true. And it seems like empathy would be the key. His atonement makes it possible for Him to empathize with us, and then yoking ourselves to Him through our covenants allows Him to use that empathy on our behalf.

I don't know if he ever says it outloud in his video but his label is 'benjamin parks historian' so he seems to want people to know. He's popping up more often for me but I'm not sure if that's because he's suddenly getting more popular, putting out more reels, or if since I watched on once the algorithm is sending more of his stuff my way.

I annoys me when people trade on their profession to give their views more authority but then don't uphold the ideals of their profession very well. I don't know enough about this guy to say that applies here, but after this experience I probably won't watch many more of his reels when I come across them. He's created doubt in my mind about his ability to get beyond an agenda. Historians with an agenda can do a lot of damage.

I’ve got no issues with anything that you said. My issues were purely from an academic point of view. This man is a professional historian. I am not a historian and only have a degree in history but one of the very first things you learn is that you let people speak for themselves if you can. Primary sources are king. He had a primary source—he had exact quotes from that source about the topic he’s speaking on—and he ignored it. There’s a chance that the blurb that was shared is only a blurb, and that the guy went into more in depth in other blurbs. But just going on the reel that was shared, I did not see the benefit of him explaining the process while ignoring his primary source, which would’ve been the words of president Oaks himself. Maybe he’s not religious and didn’t want to touch that aspect of it, but with him being a historian that seems like sloppy work to me. He needs to share the sources whether he agrees with the ideology or theology behind them or not. (none of this is to say that I think he’s a bad historian or that his reels aren’t interesting. I’ve watched stuff from him before and thought it was helpful. But this does cause me to doubt the accuracy of his conclusions, now that it appears he’s willing to ignore sources he doesn’t want to deal with.)

Wyoming here and there were a couple days where it was really bad. It seems to have righted itself though.