manol

@Ether93, I'm just muddling through this life, hoping to be "part of the solution" more often than "part of the problem". So this will all just be opinion, informed by my own limited and highly questionable experience, and highly unprofessional musings. I make no claim that any of this will be applicable to anyone besides me, and it's just a snapshot of where I am at this point in time anyway, so none of this is "carved in stone" for me either: It seems to me that, however unpleasant they may be at the time, trials are among the things that give me experience and are ultimately for my good (D&C 122:27; see also D&C 90:24 and Romans 8:28). Perhaps my weaknesses are actually opportunities for growth (Ether 12:27). Trials can show me where my behaviors have created or contributed to the situation, and often they put a spotlight on a counter-productive behavior pattern that has been showing up in my life over and over again. Trials offer me the opportunity to react with fear, anger, victimhood, self-hatred, despair, or something else. I aspire to react with “something else”. Practical steps have to be taken and that may include accepting changes I'd rather not accept, but practical steps alone may not get at the root problem. For myself at least, I think my behaviors arise largely from my beliefs, and therefore counter-productive behaviors arise largely from often very deep-seated counter-productive beliefs and/or default modes. I think we can pray for insight and expect to receive it. And even if we never know the underlying cause of a counter-productive belief or default mode, I think we can deliberately choose (and begin to incorporate) productive beliefs that, over time, may even result in productive default modes. So – purely hypothetically of course! - suppose avoidance is my counter-productive behavior pattern that keeps showing up, presumably arising from a deep-seated counter-productive belief. So what I need is, a new belief that will “get me over the hump” of using avoidance in order to self-soothe. I can prayerfully request to be shown a new and corrective belief which I can consciously and deliberately choose and begin to internalize through consistent use. Suppose what shows up is for me to state “doing this [the thing I'd normally avoid] is where I go to feel love” whenever I'm tempted to indulge in avoidance of whatever it is that needs to be done. Maybe that sounds corny, but at least I don't have to tell anyone about it. And in my limited experience it's not the words themselves, but rather the feeling invoked, that can and does make the difference. I'm not sure the words are even necessary, but for now they (or some variation or evolution thereof) seem to help. Hypothetically, of course. Again, I have no idea whether any of this might be of any use in the context of this thread; posting just in case it might. @BlueDreams and @MustardSeed, I welcome any correction either of you might offer.

@Ether93, you're not the first person to make a mistake that has unforseen and far-reaching consequences. The question is, how do you move forward from where you are now? Changing people's minds is probably not a realistic option. They are seeing through their lens and it is different from your lens. For instance, they may feel obligated to protect the Church from something they perceive as misuse of financial authority, and they may be taking an uncompassionate stance in hopes of preventing it from happening again. [Edit: I see now that @The Nehor has posted with knowledge of what official Church policy is.] Maybe you can appreciate that they have not chosen to involve the police, and that they are giving you time to pay the money back. Can you make small payments? That might shift the situation from you being at odds with the Church leaders, to you working with the Church leaders towards a common goal. A little bit of progress is quite a bit different from zero progress because it's a change of trajectory. God is far more forgiving than men are, in my opinion. I suggest you not allow your peace to be dependent on outcomes even as you navigate this situation in the best way you can. Let your peace come from having a real and present relationship with, and connection with, God.

YES! This is BRILLIANT! Its brilliance has to do with giving the ear/brain system the best possible chance to pay attention and understand clearly. Pardon me for getting a bit nerdy here, but some simple acoustics comes into play: The sound you hear in a room includes both direct sound (sound which travels directly from the source to your ears) and reflected sound (sound which bounces off of something before reaching your ears). As we move farther away from the source, the sound reaching our ears includes proportionally less direct sound and proportionally more reflected sound, which is the opposite of what we want for good intelligibility and (most important) good recall. When we are fairly far back in a large and somewhat reflective room, the direct sound is often so weak relative to the reflections that not only do we have a harder time understanding the words themselves, we also have a terrible time recalling them, and that is the problem. Let me explain the part about recall: We can usually still figure out what the individual words are even if the reflections are dominant, but we have to focus our attention on the words themselves in order to do so. So figuring out the actual words takes up time and attention we cannot spare! By the time we've figured out the word that was just spoken, the next word has already arrived, so the brain is always in catch-up mode. And our brain only has a limited amount of attention capacity that can be simultaneously devoted to different tasks. So if too much of that limited attention capacity is taken up simply trying to understand the words, there is not enough remaining for us to remember and recall them. So it can become quite difficult to recall the individual words for long enough to string them together into complex ideas, and then to put these complex ideas into long-term memory. The net result is the fairly rapid onset of fatigue, and maybe even a head-ache, along with boredom, instead of comprehension and retention of the ideas being presented. Public address loudspeaker systems make the sound louder for listeners further away from the front, but they can sometimes make things worse! Usually there are some loudspeakers positioned partway back on the side walls and/or ceiling, and the sound coming from those loudspeakers is delayed a little bit to compensate for the amount of time it takes for the sound to travel from the pulpit to that far back in the audience. Unfortunately this sort of system cannot provide optimum delays throughout the audience area, so there will be locations in the audience where the intelligibility is pretty good, and other locations where it is pretty bad. A really good solution is what @Stargazer suggested: Sit up front where the direct sound from the person at the pulpit is relatively loud compared to the reflections, and where we don't have to rely on the PA system in order for the sound to be loud enough. This way we don't reach burn-out in the first ten or fifteen minutes. Of course it's not possible for everyone to sit in the front, but if there are some open seats up there anyway, don't let them go to waste. This principle applies to classrooms as well, so tell your (grand)kids that there are valid acoustic reasons to sit in the front which will make a difference in their comprehension and therefore in their grades. For anyone wanting to take a bit deeper dive, here are the slides from a power point presentation by one of the leading researchers in this field (imo the most relevant slides are 2, 4, 5, 6, 30, and 36; slide 6 mentions a study wherein the students in the front half of the classroom did better than those in the back half of the classroom by an average of one letter grade): The-importance-of-attention-localization-and-source-separation-to-speech-cognition-and-recall.pptx (live.com)

Tank yah mi bredda! (An tank yuh too Google Translate).

And you're doing so in a most courteous and non-confrontational way! Thank you for pointing that out. And I acknowledge that animal sacrifice being absent from the oldest copy of Deuteronomy is not "proof" that it was a later invention of the priest class.

Agreed, those in a Telestial state cannot come where God and Christ dwell. <- I substituted the word "state" for "Kingdom", as I think it's more about who we have become. In other words, I think the state of the individual says which Kingdom they are a part of. And I think that once a person has progressed to a higher state than the Telestial, there are no barriers to them being in a higher kingdom than the Telestial. Of course I could be wrong. Again I could be wrong, but I think the controlling factor is the individual's state of progression. I don't think God is into holding grievances and turning away the repentant.

Thank you for replying and giving me a chance to explain. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that God will never give up on anyone; that Christ's work is not in vain; that every single person will eventually do what they need to do; and that God will not turn them away when that happens. Not sure this is a real category, but I'm what might be called a "long-path universalist". I think we really do have to become the same manner of men and women as Christ, no short-cuts, no honorary degrees. I think it is a very long path and that every one of us is somewhere on that path.

Could something that can be called "eternal" from one perspective be "non-permanent" from another? Sometimes the scriptures don't use words exactly the same way we would. For instance, Alma did not remain permanently in "eternal torment": "My soul was racked with eternal torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more." - Alma the Younger, in Mosiah 27:29 In any event making that judgment call is presumably above my pay grade. All I can say is that I do not believe it is my calling to withhold forgiveness from anyone for anything. D&C 64:10.

I think you are absolutely correct. I think the Old Testament is not very trustworthy. Let me elaborate: Animal sacrifice is something else that apparently did not come from God. In the late 1800's a scroll was found which was evidently the oldest known copy of Deuteronomy and animal sacrifice is among the things completely absent from it. Here is the interview where I first came across this information; the relevant part starts at 8:34 and goes for another 5 minutes or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyivXDVwJdc&t=514s For a deeper dive, look for interviews with Ross K. Nichols, who wrote a book on the subject entitled "The Moses Scroll". Imo this is actually far more earth-shaking than it may appear at first glance: If animal sacrifice was a self-serving invention of the priest class, then the teaching that Christ was the great and final blood sacrifice is called into question. Personally I have no problem with this, but Jesus being crucified as a blood sacrifice for sin is a core belief of many if not most Christian religions. Some road maps would have to be re-drawn; I think it would be for the better in the long run.

I was hoping @Stargazer would read and respond to my post asking whether Christ would succeed or fail. I still hope so. Imo @teddyaware's post is great, and must admit that I'm kinda thrilled he and I have common ground on this topic. Quoting from his post here: @bluebell, in response to your question I don't know either, but my understanding is that free will is always respected because the progress has to be real internal growth instead of an outward performance. I think the "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess" thing is a manifestation of free will rather than coercion. So if Christ is to succeed then I think it likely that "given enough time [and teaching and love and therapy and maybe even learning everything the hard way] everyone would eventually choose to follow Him." But I do not claim to know the mechanism(s) by which this will happen. Maybe the right words at the right time from the right person, even if that time does not come during mortality. The Good Shepherd may have more ways to reach lost sheep than we have imagined. There is a scripture which indicates, to me at least, that Christ will indeed succeed. D&C Section 3 verse 1: "The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught." And there is another scripture which indicates, to me at least, that we really are all in this together, far moreso that is outwardly apparent. From Section 128, verse 18: "For we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect." In the spirit of "in the mouth of two or more witnesses", one near-death experiencer described how much each person matters like this (I'm paraphrasing from memory): "It's as if we are each a grain of sand in a magnificent giant sandcastle, but if just one grain of sand isn't there, the whole thing crumbles."

I have no idea who you are, but want to acknowledge and thank you for so consistently being a peacemaker. You were not at all defensive when I came in with a criticism from way out in left field, and imo that stands out in stark contrast with the way internet conversations usually go. Returning to the Joseph Fielding Smith Standard: Seems to me its validity largely hangs on canonical “thus saith the Lord” statements being what they purport to be. Is the correctness of such statements ever evaluated, and if so, how? Or, is the correctness of relevant canonical “thus saith the Lord” statements simply accepted as fact, the context for the Standard's application being LDS religious studies? I can see that being the case since everybody participating will have (theoretically) accepted the same canon. I might be coloring too far outside the lines here, but it does appear to me that the system is closed, at least to some extent. Let me give three examples: 1. Suppose one or more Samuel-the-Lamanite-type individuals show up from outside the Church heirarchy, having been inspired to deliver a corrective message for the Church. 2. Suppose thousands of people die, experience a portion of the afterlife, are resuscitated, and return having been instructed by beings on the other side to share what they experienced. 3. Suppose one or more individuals outside the Church heirarchy receive communication from the Divine intended to be shared with a wide audience. In each of these cases it seems to me that the system is effectively closed to their input ever meeting the criteria for being considered "authoritative". I'm grateful for you and for the manner in which you have engaged with me. You have my respect.

Yes, it's possible that I'm not thinking straight. What is Christ's mission? My understanding is that it is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." Do you think he will succeed or fail?

Okay, that makes sense. I can see the utility of having a tool such as the Joseph F. Smith Standard for sorting sources in a discussion about which teachings are or are not Church doctrine, with the in-context caveat that said Standard is only a Class 3 authority by its own standard. Imo the problem with making something like this Standard a yardstick for evaluating truth is that doing so can become formulaic instead of a spiritual quest. We can end up focusing on who said what when, where and how reliably is it recorded, what was their rank at the time, and if they are dead has someone of equal or higher rank said differently since then? And we can end up with a closed system wherein truth is only allowed entry via pre-approved channels, and can only rise to the level of authority permitted by the formula. If truth comes knocking by some other door, it may not even be noticed. Imo there's a good chance this is happening right now. I think the search for truth is supposed to be a spiritual quest moreso than a logical application of a flow chart. But I could be wrong! So in my opinion the Joseph F. Smith Standard can be useful in a discussion that presupposes its suitability for answering whatever the question at hand may be, such as whether a particular teaching is doctrinal, but I think it falls short in receptivity to truth-on-its-own-merits.

This is going to be somewhat tangential; apologies in advance. I read @quietcanon's first paper. Here is a copy-and-paste from Section 3 of that paper (pasted between the * * *'s below): * * * Authoritative Scripture Hierarchy (Joseph F. Smith Standard) Joseph F. Smith’s 1897 private refutation of Adam-God established the principle: revelation-based scripture, not prophetic commentary, is the Church’s standard. The Book of Mormon demands it: “Have they not read the scriptures?” (3 Nephi 27:4-5). Class 1 (supreme): God’s words verbatim—“saith the Lord.” Inviolable except by God (D&C 1:38; 3 Nephi 24:1). Class 2: Messenger’s own words recounting visions/revelations—authoritative yet subject to later clarification (3 Nephi 23:1). Class 3 (lowest): Commentary, policy, and leader teachings—most error-prone and revisable.[8] * * * Reading this hierarchy made me think about what my personal “hierarchy of sources” might be. While scripture enters into the picture, imo the fact that something has been canonized does not make it automatically authoritative. So consider the following to just be a snapshot of one random fringer's opinion taken at one point in time; I make no other claims: Class 1 (supreme): That which enlarges my soul, enlightens my understanding, and is delicious to me (Alma 32:28); and/or that which leads me to do good and love God and believe in Christ (Moroni 7:13-16); and/or that which fills me with the pure love of Christ (Moroni 7:46-48); and/or direct experience of the Divine (whether or not it can be put into words). Actually I think all of these things constitute "direct experience of the Divine." Classes 2 & 3: Everything else. To repeat, I am by no means recommending that you or anyone else even remotely consider adopting something akin to this heirarchy, but @quietcanon I would like to thank you for making me think about it enough to spell it out for myself.

I like the idea of using time that would otherwise be wasted on boredom for being aware of and present to/with/in the Divine. Unfortunately as Pyreaux said, and @Rain also noted, this isn't (to the best of my knowledge) something taught in the LDS Church. Back when I was active in the Church, any mention of "meditation" as a practice was viewed with a mixture of consternation and disapproval. Imo going deep into the feeling of gratitude (just the feeling itself; no thought-intensive "name them one-by-one" necessary unless it helps you get there) is relaxing and rejuvenating and maybe even gently transformational. You might put it in your bag of tricks. Just don't call it "meditation", at least not out loud, and you should be fine!