bluebell

I think you're right. It allows for a level of separation between the history of Christianity and the church a person attends.

She does feel kind of wasted in the role.

The Devil's Mouth It's free on prime or hulu or netflix...can't remember which one we saw it on. It's a very typical 'college kids' exotic vacation goes bad when something maneating appears where it's not supposed to be' tale. The director does not try to surprise anyone, the trope plays out exactly how you are expecting it to. You might hate the characters more than usually though because they are even more dumb than usual. I watched this with my 12 year old because it looked like a fun, mindless and harmless, scary movie and that's exactly what it was. I wouldn't want to spend any money on it but if you or your kids like nature monster movies then it could be a fun way to bond for an hour and half.

I think other posters have already said this, but most other churches don't believe they are the 'only true and living church'. They almost all believe that Creedal Christianity is the only true belief system, but that is different than what we claim. Many don't have leaders that claim to speak for God either. They claim inspiration and authority from God to lead (either through an extension of papal authority--if I understand that right--or through the priesthood of all believers and feeling called to lead), but that is another thing that is very different from what we claim. I don't know that we are more open about our history than most, maybe. Most Christian religions have the luxury of much older history for sure, and that does blunt its impact a lot. But our unique claims of authority and revelation mean that our history can hit differently, depending how someone interprets those claims. We just can't remove the obstacles that our history can present to people by pointing to other Christian churches. That's a chapter in the discussion but it's not the whole discussion.

Yes, but we don't always understand what we claim, and sometimes it's a faulty understanding that ends up being what hurts our faith. For example, if someone believes that claiming prophets and revelation means that the prophet has 24/7 access to personal visits from Christ, history such as Blacks and Priesthood become a huge stumbling block. That is what I meant when I said that our perceptions and expectations of scripture and our doctrine can make our history really painful. This is especially true when our perceptions and expectations began in childhood and were reinforced by locals leaders and parents. The faith crisis in those circumstances isn't from the doctrine or the history. It's from trying to reconcile perceptions and expectations of the doctrine with a newly discovered history. That's no small thing and I don't fault anyone for finding that a real struggle and not always being able to overcome it.

True, kind of. When the church has been around for as long as it has, starting to disseminate a more accurate history in the late 90s (being generous) isn't really 'a while'. It's the last 30 years (again, if we are generous). It's an awesome thing that I am so grateful for, but it's also fairly recent, all things considered. There are a lot of reasons that even the generous estimates for transparency don't always hold up. For example, before it was closed down for renovations around 2023 the Beehive House tour focused on teaching about FHE, trying to give away copies of the Book of Mormon, and testifying of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The tour guides followed a script that pretended BY had one wife and polygamy wasn't a thing. They even went out of their way to point out "BY's wife's" bedroom. When I asked (a very friendly and not at all contentious) question about how polygamy worked in the house (I was getting my history degree at the time and was legitimately curious) with just the one wife's bedroom, the sister missionaries had no idea what to say and tried hard to move on and sidestep the question. Thankfully my family was the only people on the tour so the sisters weren't embarrassed or anything. Also thankfully, we are a very active family and the sidestepping didn't impact any of our feelings about the church or the gospel it teaches. My opinion of its 'historical' tours took a hit though. I've heard that the tours are going to be historically accurate once it reopens to the public. Hopefully that is true. The reviews for the place are really bad on tripadvisor and yelp because the tour promised was not the tour that was delivered and being more open about the history will go a long way to fix that I think. But, it's still the case that if these changes do happen, they are happening in 2026. Again, that's not 'for a while'. That's recent. I think our leaders understand the need for more transparency now and are very happy to work on getting things right. The correlated materials now prize accuracy over faith-promoting and that's a very good thing. I agree that some critics of the church like to really focus on the church "lying" and refuse to acknowledge the information that did exist or the changes that have been rolled out over the years. Some also tend to not like to discuss how their own family dynamics growing up led to some (or sometimes many) of their issues with the church. But, we don't need to fall into the all bad vs. all good dichotomy. If a critic cannot acknowledge anything good from the church or the gospel then that is their own issue. We don't have to lay the other side of the coin on thick to counter them. We don't have to defend mistakes just because it's a critic pointing them out.

The Sheep Detective Super cute, stars Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, and a handful of other well known actors. It's about a shepherd that loves his sheep and he loves them. He would read them murder mysteries every night. One night he is murdered and the sheep decide that they are going to help the bumbling town cop (this all takes place in England I think) to solve the murder. It's very family friendly and a good whodunit.

They do now, which is a wonderful thing. I believe they have learned from the mistakes of the past on that issue.

Your interpretation of things makes your conclusions reasonable.

I think a lot of it comes down to expectations and assumptions verses realities of morality. We claim truth, prophets, revelation, etc. It sets the standard high naturally but if members also have assumptions and expectations about what the standard means that differ from what they find in church history, that’s no small thing.

That was a smart thing to say as his body would become a projectile capable of seriously injuring or killing any passengers in a bad wreck. I don’t understand the no seatbelt thing either. I’ve known three people who died or were forever disabled as teens in wrecks the otherwise would have probably walked away from. And any adult who doesn’t wear a seatbelt in a car with kids is missing some brain cells.

Every year it seems like Utah drivers are ranked worst in the nation and it's just weird. They aren't just aggressive and reckless, they are mean! They would rather you both die in a fiery crash than let you merge sometimes. One thing that I think causes some problems is the length of the yellow lights. They are really long, trying to get through as many people as possible I'm guessing, but it gives people a false sense of security I think. When people see one but are still a ways away from the intersection they often still continue at their regular speed or even start to go faster. I have been guilty of that myself. Wyoming (with much much less traffic) has really short yellow lights and when we first moved back we were constantly running red lights because we were still in the mindset of a yellow light meaning to speed up so you can get through, not prepare to stop.

If church history is ever an obstacle for someone in their faith I would highly highly recommend the Church History Matters podcast. They cover all the hard topics and they lay it all on the line. Someone somewhere once said that too often we too often make thick conclusions based on thin evidence. This podcast provides all the evidence anyone could possibly want as they try to figure out what our history means for our faith.

I don’t know where you live, but in Utah it’s actually pretty common. People push the timing of the yellow light way too long and end up going through when it’s already red. But, there could’ve been a medical emergency.

It’s sad that the death was so senseless. A stupid driving mistake and then him making a stupid choice not to wear his seatbelt. Such a blessing that the people that he hit weren’t more seriously impacted. It’s a huge loss for his family and loved ones

I love that movie. The book that Lovell wrote about the experience is really good too.

I don’t really know of too many people that are members of the church who believe that the garden story occurred 6000 years ago. I’m sure they’re out there. I’m just never run into One and got to have a conversation with them. I think mostly they just believe that the fossil record is a hoax somehow. I’ve enjoyed reading the words of Leaders in the church who accepted the fossil record as accurate, and also accepted Adam and Eve as a literal people. Those were the people that I was speaking about in my earlier post to you.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die The premise of the movie is this guy from the future who travels back in time to a random coffee shop and a group of people who he tries to recruit to go on a mission that night to save the world. He keeps traveling back over and over again to the same coffee shop, picking different groups of people trying to find the right combination that will lead to success. When the movie starts, he had already been to the coffee shop 117 times and was trying once more. The idea is really good in theory, but I don’t feel like it was executed very well. A lot of it doesn’t make much sense the further into the movie you get. I was disappointed because it has some really good actors in it and seemed like it would be fun if nothing else. It’s free right now on Hulu so you have Hulu you don’t have anything to lose, but I wouldn’t expect much.

Just saw this last night. I agree with your assessment. It was funny in parts, and I loved that it didn't take itself too seriously and knew it was cheesy as heck. But the CGI was a distraction, the dialogue was really bad (not in a good cheesy way), and the story line was way too predictable. You knew what was going to happen the entire movie. Casting wonder woman as the sorceress was a weird choice to me as well. Too distracting.

Could be.

If someone did equate the two, would it make sense for them to view your position as ironic? (I'm not using the question as a way to imply that anyone in this disagreement is right or anyone is wrong. I'm ambivalent on the subject personally. I'm just sincerely wondering if the disagreement is a difference of opinion or something else).

Such a fun topic! There is a series on the Church History Matters podcast that goes through all the iterations of LDS thoughts and beliefs on that subject over its history, and outlines different apostles and prophets ideas and beliefs on the subject. I love history and found the entire series fascinating! But my biggest take away is that there have been leaders who were pro-evolution and death before the fall and pre-adamites and leaders that believed that evolution was a 'damnable heresy' and both existed at the same time in the same quorum sometimes because of a difference in how they each interpreted scripture. So I think that's the answer to your question. With those topics where there has not been a revealed explanation, it all comes down to how someone interprets scripture through their personal ideas of reason and faith. (if anyone wants a link to the podcast just let me know. It has a great series on women and the priesthood and also one on the church and politics/slavery)

I think we give Satan too much credit for his ability to reason. In my experience, very intelligent reasonable people often do incredibly stupid and destructive things (to themselves and other people) because their hatred and anger override everything else. Unbridled hatred and anger turn even the smartest most reasonable person into an idiot.

The stuff about secret non-monogamy is pretty horrific. Therapy seems like it's getting scary, where not all every therapist has the goal of actually helping someone become better but rather, helping them justify their bad behavior. (Not all therapists of course! There are many wonderful ones out there)

It was kind of sad to see how many posters have stopped posting. I miss so many of them. Even the slightly obnoxious ones.