bluebell

This is what the church teaches about the difference between a chapel and a temple. Temples are different than the thousands of Church meetinghouses located around the world. Meetinghouses are where Sunday worship services, youth gatherings, service projects, and other community events take place. All are welcome to join in these activities. Temples have a more specific purpose. They are places specially set apart for sacred service and ceremonies. They are designated by the Lord and dedicated to His purposes. Temples are the only places where some priesthood ordinances are authorized to be performed. These sacred ceremonies lift and inspire participants as they make commitments to follow the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. The bolder is probably the crux of the issue. We believe it is the way it is because we believe the Lord set it up that way.

The lesson is that it’s as wrong when it happens to someone you politically agree with as it is when it happens to someone you don’t.

There's a lot of national guard stationed there already (because they tend to be stationed where they live and lots of people are in the national guard in every state), so I bet they'll pull a lot from the people who are already local. But they might send it more if they don't have enough I guess.

You are right, they aren't secret at all. They've been published for years. Even two members who have been to the temple cannot enact or speak of certain parts of what goes on there, outside of the temple (and sometimes, not even outside of a certain room in the temple). Obviously, trying to keep information hidden has nothing to do with that, since the information is already known by both of them. It's not because they are to be only spoken of or done in secret. It's because they are only to be spoken of or done in a sacred space.

That's not my perception but you could be right.

It would take a while to get through 185 years, but maybe you could have group them by topic? I don’t know.

Most members don't know this, because they don't ever look around in the Gospel Library app, but if you are on the home page and you click on the Adults tab, it will take you to another page, where the top option is another tab labeled "Women". Click on that tab, and scroll almost to the bottom. There you will find At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women. There is definitely enough content to do Teachings of the Women of the Church, I just don't think we ever will due to our new focus on the Come Follow Him manuals. Which is ok, but it's sad that such a great opportunity was missed in the past.

(No worries! And I hope that this doesn't come across as arguing or in any way judgemental of you. ) I don't accept that either, and that's not what I'm saying (nor what I think that Calm is saying, but I'm sure she'll speak for herself when she's up again). Is there a more clear way to communicate than an angel appearing and telling you, point blank, God's will? (I can't think of anything but there could be something I'm not considering.). And yet, we have scriptural records of someone interacting with an angel, and later deciding that what the angel said wasn't actually true. If even the supernatural appearance of an angel saying specific words in your language can eventually be dismissed, then communicating clearly isn't really the problem. The problem is us. Even the most clear communication is subject to our fallen natures. God can communicate clearly with us, but that’s still no guarantee of anything I've heard people in talks using the analogy of a ham radio (or something similar). The signal coming to the radio is perfectly clear and unadulterated. But if the radio isn't tuned correctly. It won't pick it up very well or at all. Tuning the radio is completely within our ability (because of God's help), but (in my opinion) God is less concerned with communicating with us clearly than He is with getting us to a place where we can benefit from what He's sending. Sending the angel did no lasting good for the people who rejected its message, though the message was crystal clear. Clear communication is only half the equation I think.

I think that God can communicate with us in ways that we can understand, but I think that we can lose the understanding through our own actions or issues. I mean, God has sent angels before to people, and they still eventually decided that they couldn't trust that as a source of information about what God wanted them to do. I think that's what Calm is talking about. As long as humans are a part of the equation, there is always an ability to interpret the communication incorrectly, or change a correct interpretation into an incorrect one. The weakness isn't in God, it's in us. There's no way to get it out of us in a fallen world.

I agree that that analogy didn't really work, though I think the article's implications about the difference between trespass and consent is valid, even though the trespass in question was not literal. In this instance, it was a theological trespass, not an actual trespass. It would be more comparable to the WSJ seeking out someone who would tell them the secrets of the Catholic conclave so they could print them, rather than WSJ sneaking into the conclave itself. The intent (to get forbidden information) and consequence (having that information published to the world) is the exact same, though the route taken to the get the illicit information that will be shared is different. I guess the question is, is the route taken what determines whether or not a line has been crossed?

We definitely disagree about all of her motivations for the photo shoot and article. I agree. It likely is an explicit rejection of that authority. She's 'reclaiming her voice'. She's allowed to. That doesn't really change anything in my opinion. She used her voice to give power to a publication to be disrespectful and mock people who believe differently than she does. Some people are fine with that. They don't believe in respecting other people's sacred things. I disagree with those people. Because these are clothing that are held in common with millions of other people, her actions will lead to the derision of other members. The disrespect and mocking that those pictures have already fueled online is being aimed at the people who believe in the importance of those sacred clothing. The photos are not only of her, though she is the only one in the pictures.

I've started watching it.

I never go on reddit for anything, and the desire to go on there and look at latter-day saint topics is even less, but I saw this headline come up on a google search and it made me laugh. You just can't fight dumb.

For me, the difference is in the intent and also the authorization. When someone does something publicly that they know can be (or will be) considered mocking, there is intent there. It's not just personal intent, it's public intent. They are intending to send a message, not just about themselves, but about the other party and to the other party. At that point, they have invited the other party into the conversation and the other party's perceptions are then, in my opinion, as valid as the person who committed the act. As for authorization, that's a more nebulous concept but I think it's still relevant. We are no longer authorized to wear temple clothing when we denounce the church. Sure, no one's going to take them away from us, and no one is going to stop us from doing whatever we want with them. But I think the lack of authorization still matters. It's not the best analogy, but it's a little like a husband and wife who have shared intimate photos, but then get divorced. Would it be disrespectful for either spouse to share those pictures in public in the act of making a public statement about the other spouse? I think so. They were once authorized to have them, but that authorization was revoked. Not to mention, they were never authorized to share them in public, and the other spouse would have never given such intimate things to them if they knew they were going to share them in public. The divorce means something in regards to those pictures, even if it's just symbolically. In terms of integrity and respect, revoked authorization creates lines that when crossed impact concepts of respect.

I thought of another way to look at seeking and finding. I thought of those iSpy books, or Where's Waldo, or the pages in magazines at doctors' offices, that contain pictures that are kind of hidden. Pictures that you can't see unless you look for them. The pictures are there, whether you see them or not. Waldo's always there. The toothpick hidden in the haunted house is always there. Seeking doesn't create the picture, it's just the mechanism needed to reveal it. Could this be another way to look at Christ's teaching that if we seek we will find?

I think she certainly has the right, and I believe doing so was disrespectful. I don't think that offense and sacrilege need to be the motive for something to be disrespectful.

In this case, I'm using disrespect to mean mocking (since mocking someone is disrespectful in my view). And I'm specifically speaking of photographing people wearing what we consider to be sacred clothing that is not to be publicly displayed as part of the article. I consider that mocking of what I consider sacred. I know that other people's opinions may disagree.

I assumed, given their other content, that they were probably a member. Likewise, I’m assuming that the person who wrote the article for the Wall Street Journal is not a member. A good thing to remember when evaluating that author’s positionality as well Do you disagree with Cunningham’s conclusions, that it’s not good journalism to disrespect the sacred things of certain religions?

That would be a good OP ED or letter to the editor

Be safe!

Interestingly enough, the WSJ article ran the same week as a Time Magazine OP ED article written by Pres. Nelson https://time.com/7315003/russell-nelson-dignity-respect/ His article was called "We all Deserve Dignity and Respect"

The title of the article is "‘Exmo’ Influencers Mount a TikTok War Against the Mormon Church" so probably someone on staff that got sucked into that algorithm on social media and decided it would make a good article. Just a guess though.

I'm not going to link to the article because it includes pictures of someone in a public park wearing only garments but if you search the topic it's all over. It's an interview of Ex-mormon influencers. Here is an article about the article, showing the pushback that the journal is getting. https://publicsquaremag.org/media-education/news-media/sacred-rites-double-standards-wsjs-ethics-fail/ Here's the first paragraph in the public square article: Thoughts?

Maybe the confusion is the idea that by not being skeptical, you have to treat all other claims as equal forever? I don't embrace the ancient greek gods because of my experiences with God and lack of experiences with Zeus. I don't embrace Islam because of my belief in Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and that belief comes from my experiences with Him and with the Spirit. I don't need to be skeptical and doubting to find truth about those religions. As I faithfully seek truth, what's not truth is weeded out automatically. I see seeking with faith ("seek and ye shall find") as the beginning of the process, that it is similar to Alma's teaching about planting the seed and then taking care of what grows, before you really know. Such actions shows faith on your part, because you are believing that the seed and the fruit will have worth before you actually know that they will. There's still room in the process for the fruit to be bad though. Having faith in the process doesn't impact the fruit or require the fruit to be good. It just makes getting to know the fruit possible. Being skeptical is to me, doubting the seed is any good before you've planted it, and so not planting it at all. Or planting it and then not taking care of it so that it dies before it grows. For me, doubt hinders my ability to find truth, and faith increases it.

I think my goal is to be predisposed to belief and not be skeptical. That goal isn't to maintain my current beliefs, and it is to find deeper truths. I think I view leading with doubt as a fault because it seems to predispose me to skepticism, and being difficult to convince is, from my perspective, what makes change impossible. If doubt actually was an indication that something is inconsistent or wrong, I would probably agree with your take on it. But that's giving a lot of power to doubt that I don't think it's earned. If we are going to assume that doubt always means that something is inconsistent or wrong, then doubt becomes nothing but bias. Relying on bias isn't a great way to move closer to truth. But if you think those artifacts and data are manipulated and untrustworthy, they won't challenge your worldview at all. They could actually cement your worldview in even deeper if you go to a source for information that you don't believe is trustworthy or can provide it. I saw in some of my philosophy classes that dealt with religion. I went to school in an area with a strong Evangelical presence and the classmates that went in skeptical of the teacher, never lasted. They challenged everything the teacher said and then eventually just dropped out. The ones that seemed to trust the teacher, were better able to deal with the information (it seems anyway, on the outside looking in). Without some faith in the source, everything that comes from the source that challenges a bias will be easy to dismiss.