Missionary work and Gays

[Exiled]

46 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I suggest you look up the definition of "like"

Of course it is clear anyway that you do not understand metaphor, Mr. Literal.

When one reads Shakespeare when he says "Juliett is the sun" he is not saying she is a hot ball of gas. Shocking, I know. 

I think marginal gains understands the metaphor and was just shocked to hear someone on this site openly say it.  It does seem spot on though.  The church's stance is pretty clear to LGTB: the church's way or the highway.  LGTB understand this and I wouldn't expect much of a chance at conversion either.

[Gray]

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

No. Commonly Islamic republics have laws or policies against proselytising Muslims, and the Church seeks to obey those restrictions, but otherwise our missionaries just teach anyone. For example, we now have two stakes in Indonesia (about 85% Muslim). Unless things have changed greatly since I was last there, most Indonesian Latter-day Saints will have been Muslims previously.

We have a member in our ward who was baptised in Islamabad, Pakistan (about 95% Muslim). Although our branches there do not show up in online applications, I think he said there are about seven of them.* Having no personal experience, I can't say how many Muslims convert there, but the Church does send missionaries.

 

Thanks for clearing that up!

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, Exiled said:

I think marginal gains understands the metaphor and was just shocked to hear someone on this site openly say it.  It does seem spot on though.  The church's stance is pretty clear to LGTB: the church's way or the highway.  LGTB understand this and I wouldn't expect much of a chance at conversion either.

We openly proclaim homosexuality to be sinful.

Why would anybody openly homosexual want to join while maintaining that lifestyle?

People with same-sex attraction on the other hand would be a different story.

To me a person attracted to the same sex is not a "homosexual "unless they are practicing the lifestyle.

We all deal with temptations, same-sex attraction is another case entirely compared to acting on the attraction.

Edited May 29, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Guest]

On May 27, 2018 at 4:23 PM, aussieguy55 said:

Years ago I was having a conversation with a guy who had served a mission in New York. This was before 1978  change in the priesthood issue. He told me that when they door knocked homes and came across an African American family they would if invited give them the first lesson. The family would have to ask the missionaries to come back again and again. They were treated differently to white families in being persistent in giving the discussions. Now that gay marriage is gradually becoming legal in many countries what will the missionaries do when they door knock a gay couple? Will they present the discussions and persist. Would there be a demand for a change in their relationship if they were to be baptized?

A couple of things...

First of all Black persons everywhere and African American people have always been allowed to become members. To be baptized for the remission of sins, and that one day, be it in mortality or in the eternities enjoy all of the blessings of the Gospel. The Priesthood ban, has always had a puzzling past. The Prophet Joseph Smith called and ordained some Black men to the Priesthood, one (or maybe two) served missions, and one served as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy for the remainder of his life. It is true that some leaders have on the local or regional level told missionaries not to pursue or teach Black members. Even years after the ban was lifted, I was stationed at Fort Bennington, GA (Columbus, Georgia) and two missionaries were have dinner at our home. During the meal one of the missionaries said in an area down near Savannah, the Bishop had to them "not to teach any ...'s". It was in 1983, and I told the missionaries to leave for even repeating the term that Bishop used. The missionary apologized, so I told him that they could stay if they gave me the Bishop's name, and what Ward. He did not tell me, he did not want to get the Bishop in trouble. I still told our Stake President what I had heard, I was a Stake Clerk at the time so I did not need an appointment. The Church has in recent years noted different reasons for the ban, citing both social and cultural. The problem with it being "social and cultural", is that it can, to a large degree become "institutionalized". Institutional changes take a very long time to finally go away, sometimes decades and generations, be it Religious or Social norms, well former norms.     

Issues regarding teaching those who are Gay are not the same, because on issues of male-female relationships and marriage there is no ambiguity of any kind in scripture, in "any" scripture. I am not pointing this out because of my feelings on the issue, nor any others who have strong feelings on the issue. Persons who are Gay have choices, as there are Gay members in the Church who have chosen to live the commandments taught within the Church and scripture. There are those in every Faith who choose to live the commandments as they are taught or understand. Unlike the Priesthood Ban, those who were banned from holding the Priesthood, or even Black women from going to the Temple, they had no other course. They could not change their lifestyle and choosing to obey any commandment to overcome the limitations placed upon them, because they could not change their race. However, for the missionaries who find themselves teaching someone who is Gay, or a Gay couple, there is no reason to stop. The circumstances of that person(s) can change, if that person(s) is willing. Also, I am not suggesting that anyone can choose to stop being Gay, so there is no need to think that I am making such a claim. What I am doing is simply explaining the difference between the Priesthood Ban, and Gay Marriage, and such matters within Church Doctrine. 

So, please any who read this, I am addressing the issue factually, not emotionally. Keep in mind, this is more difficult for me that some, as I have a large emotional stake in this debate. So, there is no need for anger, as these comments are not my opinion. I was and am only answering the question(s) in the OP, not the comments and questions of others, as I have not read any responses yet. I usually try to do so, this way the answers or opinions of others does not inform my own. Now that I have done so, I will read other responses and if I feel impressed to do so, I will address that opinion or answer, provided I think I might be able to add something new.  

[Eek!]

12 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

On my mission in France I never knowlingly had the opportunity to teach a Muslim. 

We taught quite a few.  I don't recall being aware that conversion would put their lives at risk.

There was a young Muslim man who was baptized into a ward in Paris.  He was like the ward's favorite son, but after several months he re-discovered Islam, one might say, and one day in church he told everyone good-bye.  Four of us missionaries went to his apartment hoping to change his mind.  He was as considerate and amicable towards us as one could possibly have been under the circumstances.  He gave each of us as much time as we needed to say everything we wanted to say, giving us the final word and thanking us for our concern and saying his words of blessing to us. 

Of course at the time I thought he had "blown it" by leaving the LDS church, but no longer think so. That kid was full of light.  I have no doubt that he has been an instrument in God's hands, regardless of what name he calls Him by. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Eek!

[smac97]

20 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

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I wonder if the Church will take a stance somewhat similar to polygamist families.  As I understand it, polygamist families are not taught because joining the Church would require the dissolution/destruction of the family.  The Church removes or mitigates the difficulty of that situation by not having missionaries enter into it in the first place (by not teaching same-sex couples at all).

If a same-sex couple were to ask for lessons, I think the missionaries would need to be up-front about the barrier to baptism that exists in such relationships.

Thanks,

-Smac

WWJD?

 I think He would encourage His children to obey the law.  "But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matthew 19:20).

And to repent.  "Neither to I condemn thee.  Go, and sin no more" (John 8:11).

And He would have compassion and love for them.  "Then Jesus beholding him loved him" (Mark 10:21).

I think perhaps the Rich Young Ruler is the most analogous situation which the Savior addressed during His ministry.  The young man was genuinely good and decent in many ways in his life.  But the Lord nevertheless told him "One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me" (Marck 10:21).  The young man's wealth was an impediment to him.  Nevertheless, the Lord evetually expressed hope for him:

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And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!
And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?
And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.

(Mark 10:23-27)

"For with God all things are possible."

Obedience.  Repentance.  Love.  Compassion.  These are the things I think the Lord would show and encourage.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

We openly proclaim homosexuality to be sinful.

Not quite.  We proclaim homosexual conduct to be sinful.

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Why would anybody openly homosexual want to join while maintaining that lifestyle?

The "lifestyle" is incompatible with discipleship, that is true.

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

People with same-sex attraction on the other hand would be a different story.

To me a person attracted to the same sex is not a "homosexual "unless they are practicing the lifestyle.

Hmm.  "Homosexual" seems to cover both categories of persons.

Personally, I don't care for the term because it conflates the two (orientation/attraction and behavior).

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

21 hours ago, jpv said:

Quote

I wonder if the Church will take a stance somewhat similar to polygamist families.  As I understand it, polygamist families are not taught because joining the Church would require the dissolution/destruction of the family.  The Church removes or mitigates the difficulty of that situation by not having missionaries enter into it in the first place (by not teaching same-sex couples at all).

If a same-sex couple were to ask for lessons, I think the missionaries would need to be up-front about the barrier to baptism that exists in such relationships.

Thanks,

-Smac

Which is a real shame as those individuals are living and believing 99% of the Restored Gospel anyways.

And yet "one thing [they] lackest" (Mark 10:21).

The Law of Chastity is a fairly important tenet of our faith.  A person who, in essence, says "Yes, I want to join the Church, but I refuse to obey the Law of Chastity" is not ready for the covenants associated with baptism. 

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Count me as one against the polygamist children policy just as much, and even more so as the children of gays policy.  

I think the policy as to children from polygamist families makes a lot of sense.

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Assuming being against both is an unpopular opinion. Curious how many others feel this way.

We've talked quite a bit about both policies.  See, e.g., here.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited May 29, 2018 by smac97

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Not quite.  We proclaim homosexual conduct to be sinful.

The "lifestyle" is incompatible with discipleship, that is true.

Hmm.  "Homosexual" seems to cover both categories of persons.

Personally, I don't care for the term because it conflates the two (orientation/attraction and behavior).

Thanks,

-Smac

Oh gosh, that is why I made the distinction. If a tree falls in the forest does it make a "sound"?

If someone never acts on ssa is he "homosexual" ?

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Oh gosh, that is why I made the distinction. If a tree falls in the forest does it make a "sound"?

If someone never acts on ssa is he "homosexual" ?

Internal behaviour is still behaviour.

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

Internal behaviour is still behaviour.

If so, then I am a murderer, a thief, a liar, a cheat, an adulterer, a fornicator, a gay man, a drunkard, a gossip, a glutton, a spendthrift and a streaker. Just to name a few. Oh, I'm also a superhero. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Hamba Tuhan

[strappinglad]

As a man thinketh in his heart , so is he. Careful Hamba. As I think Joseph once said, "you can't stop a bird from flying over your head, but you can keep it from building a nest in your hair " ...or something along those lines.

[Hamba Tuhan]

24 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

Careful Hamba.

I'm happy to be 'careful' if you'll kindly refrain from labelling or defining me based on the thoughts of my heart.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Hamba Tuhan

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

If so, then I am a murderer, a thief, a liar, a cheat, an adulterer, a fornicator, a gay man, a drunkard, a gossip, a glutton, a spendthrift and a streaker. Just to name a few. Oh, I'm also a superhero. 

Yeah, I don't see much reason to label myself by my internal or external behaviour save it saves time in communicating on occasion.  I am both an extreme introvert and extreme extrovert, for example, if I chose individual behaviours to define myself, but calling myself both is more confusing than helpful most of the time.  If, however, I am trying to communicate information about certain experiences and choices, one or other of the two labels might be useful.  I could say I hated high school because I was an introvert with terminal shyness.  I think enough understand those kinds of feelings that they can accurately picture what I am trying to convey with that label.

So I can also understand why many people feel comfortable using labels to convey some internal experiences.

[strappinglad]

48 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I'm happy to be 'careful' if you'll kindly refrain from labelling or defining me based on the thoughts of my heart.

Sorry, My tongue was firmly in my cheek at the time.

[Hamba Tuhan]

29 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

Sorry, My tongue was firmly in my cheek at the time.

Fair enough.

I'm a bit sensitive. I think one of the most insidious things we face in our increasingly mad world is the idea that people somehow lack agency. One of the things that our bishop and I tried really hard to teach our boys during my time as Young Men president was that they weren't their feelings or their thoughts.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Fair enough.

I'm a bit sensitive. I think one of the most insidious things we face in our increasingly mad world is the idea that people somehow lack agency. One of the things that our bishop and I tried really hard to teach our boys during my time as Young Men president was that they weren't their feelings or their thoughts.

I think it can be just as important to emphasize we also aren't our external behaviours.  When my daughter was diagnosed with diabetes, the therapist emphasized big time we should not start talking about her as a diabetic, but as someone experiencing diabetes.  She hadn't changed as an individual, but instead had some additional things she needed to pay attention to and deal with in her life.  The idea was to avoid her feeling as if she was trapped and out of control, that she had lost who she was and now all that mattered was DIABETES (intentionally in caps to imply screaming it, because honestly that is how we all felt about it for quite some time).

I think this should be applied to pretty much everything of what we experience (whether we view it as good or bad or a mixture as most things are) as we need to recognize we have a lot of power in and of ourselves even within extreme limitations (such as having to pay attention to blood sugars...or die).

Edited May 29, 2018 by Calm

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I think it can be just as important to emphasize we also aren't our external behaviours.

Yep, that too! There is something inherently evil in telling people that, because they have felt/thought/done something, that is now who they are, how they were born, how they are destined to live their lives (in both mortality and into eternity), etc. To deny agency is to simultaneously deny the Atonement. The message of the Saviour is an invitation to change, to rise above whatever it is we may have done or thought or desired and to become completely new in Christ Jesus.

I am inexpressibly grateful for the impact of this invitation in my own life, and I refuse to not share its majesty with others. How dare we sit in judgement and determine that someone else is past the redemptive power of the Lord?

And yet the madness where I live is so ascendant that we have an opposition MP who has recently gone on record that, in government, she would seek to make it unlawful for religious bodies to teach people that they can change. 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Hamba Tuhan

[Kenngo1969]

7 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

... And yet the madness where I live is so ascendant that we have an opposition MP who has recently gone on record that, in government, she would seek to make it unlawful for religious bodies to teach people that they can change. 

Thanks to the majority's magnanimous grant in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. _____ (2015) that the religiously devout may continue to "believe" and to "teach" as they wish with respect to homosexual behavior and gay marriage, as well as to a string of other poorly-reasoned U.S. Supreme Court decisions in matters of faith, it's only a matter of time before we reach that point here in the United States of America.

[smac97]

12 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Oh gosh, that is why I made the distinction. If a tree falls in the forest does it make a "sound"?

If someone never acts on ssa is he "homosexual" ?

In common usage, yes, he is.  "Homosexual" is ambiguous.

I appreciate that you draw a distinction between orientation/attraction and behavior.  So do I.  But many (most?) people don't, including when they use the word "homosexual."

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

On 5/27/2018 at 6:04 PM, Eek! said:

We taught an African family in France and the whole family was golden.  They were so excited to get baptized.  The father was a diplomat, but theirs was a poor country, so he did not have much money.  Their apartment had hardly any furniture - they had us sit in their two chairs when we taught them.  Anyway he somehow managed to buy airline tickets for his other children back in Africa to come to France and be baptized too... along with his other wife.  We found out about his other wife when we met her at their apartment not long before the baptism date.  We were instructed by the mission president to tell them no, that we could not go through with the baptisms. 

I don't know what the solution is, but that was awful for everyone involved.  Nearly forty years later it still feels like we betrayed him and his family. 

"We betrayed him?"  How so?

-Smac

[Eek!]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

"We betrayed him?"  How so?

-Smac

We gave him every reason to believe that we were offering him and his family baptism into the true church, and that later they would be able to go to the temple and be sealed together so they would be together forever, and who knows how much financial hardship it cost him to bring his other family members to France so they could be baptized too.   He trusted us completely, and then we rejected him because he loved and was married to two wonderful women, who loved him and each other.   Maybe you'd prefer a different word, but the word that fits for me is "betrayal".  

 

[smac97]

26 minutes ago, Eek! said:

We gave him every reason to believe that we were offering him and his family baptism into the true church,

But it was an honest mistake, correct?  It's not like there was malice involved.  You did not know, and he did not offer, that he was a polygamist.

Quote

and that later they would be able to go to the temple and be sealed together so they would be together forever,

That can still happen.  I think that's what the Millennium is for.  That is what the Atonement is for.  From D&C 137:

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7 Thus came the voice of the Lord unto me, saying: All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God;
...
9 For I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts.

I believe these sorts of situations will be sorted out.  

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and who knows how much financial hardship it cost him to bring his other family members to France so they could be baptized too. 

Unfortunate, but probably not catastrophic.

And again, there was no malice here by anyone.  Just an honest oversight.

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He trusted us completely, and then we rejected him

"We rejected him?"  Doesn't seem like it.

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because he loved and was married to two wonderful women, who loved him and each other.  

I get that.  But what is your concern here?  Polygamy, by divine mandate, is not presently allowed in the Restored Gospel.  Compliance with the Law of Chastity, including faithful monogamy or celibate singlehood, is a condition for baptism.  So is compliance with the Word of Wisdom.  And the Law of Tithing.  And Sabbath observance.  And belief in God and Jesus Christ and the Restoration.  An inability or unwillingness to adhere to these conditions is unfortunate, particularly when the individual really wants to get baptized.  But this seems to be the way things are supposed to be.  The Lord will sort things out in the end.

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Maybe you'd prefer a different word, but the word that fits for me is "betrayal".  

"Betrayal" seems like an awfully strong word for an innocent oversight, particularly since you are accusing others than yourself of this "betrayal" ("we rejected him...").

There are some people who are not eligible for baptism, including for reasons that can be difficult to address.  The man you describe engaged in conduct that is culturally acceptable to him, but is not doctrinally acceptable or compatible with membership in the Church.  That is unfortunate, but it happens.  The Lord will sort such things out.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited May 29, 2018 by smac97

[Eek!]

51 minutes ago, smac97 said:

The Lord will sort such things out.

On this point, you and I are in complete agreement. 

[smac97]

8 minutes ago, Eek! said:

Quote

The Lord will sort such things out.

On this point, you and I are in complete agreement. 

I am glad to hear it.  This is why I am fairly sanguine about situations where the leaders of the Church make a decision that A) is controversial, B) is a judgment call, C) is reasonable, and D) is within their exclusive stewardship.  If they make an incorrect decision, then that is between them and the Lord.  The Lord will sort such things out.

Thanks,

-Smac