Should anyone care about historical hate speech by senior Church leadership?

[Grug the Neanderthal]

14 minutes ago, pogi said:

God's view is not our view.  It is relative.  God's truth is absolute because of his holistic perspective.  Our truth is not. 

God's truth is relative to God's absolute position.  Our truth is relative to our restricted and limited position.  

The scriptures are an imperfect picture, they are an approximation.  They do not absolutely correspond with absolute truth of God.  There is no perfect correspondence in mortality.  Such an endeavor is futile.  God's ways are not our ways.  His thoughts are not our thoughts.  His truth therefore, is not our truth.  What we have been provided is a way to eventually and ultimately remove all limiting filters and expand our perspective until it ultimately aligns in oneness with God's truth, as we become God.  

Think of God's absolute truth like an incomprehensibly large picture on a screen with almost infinite number of pixels.   Each pixel cannot be understood and perceived as it is intended in isolation from the other pixels.  A few yellow pixel independent from the intermingled blue pixels will not be interpreted as intended to be perceived as green, for example.  The whole is greater then the sum of its parts.  Absolute truth cannot be understood proper without perceiving of that wholeness.  The pixels that have been revealed to us are extremely limited.  The give us enough to provide a path of enlarging our perspective and improving our interpretation over time, a process that will continue on for millennia before exaltation and wholeness/oneness of perspective of the absolute is achieved.  Our perspective and interpretation of the few pixels we have now can is in no be considered absolute in isolation from what we do not have.  What we have is relative.  It places us on a path of progression of understanding.

This is what I believe:

 

 

 

What you are describing sounds an awful lot like this to me:

16 They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.

While the scriptures don’t tell us everything about God and his will, they do tell us an awful lot, and most of what the scriptures tell us about God, his nature, and what he expects of us is pretty clear. In fact much of it so clear that a primary child can understand it.

I consider the scriptures to be the word of God, even the iron rod, that we are to hold fast to as we work our way through the mists of darkness. Letting go of the iron rod in favor of our own ideas is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. If we toss out what is plainly taught in the scriptures in favor of our own ideas, then we literally having nothing to determine truth and right from wrong besides what society tells us and whatever we decide for ourselves. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

30 minutes ago, california boy said:

I am asking you to provide just 10 things in the scriptures directly related to the issue of past and present teachings and policies regarding race and other social issues that everyone can agree with found in the scriptures.  

Can you give 10 teachings or principles from the scriptures that everyone can agree on as you have claimed????  If you want to include the two you mentioned, I would be glad to comment on those as part of your list.  

I never said that everyone would agree with the concrete things contained in the scriptures. Many people reject or twist whatever the need to in order to justify whatever it is that they want to believe.

But there are nevertheless very plain and concrete things taught in the scriptures that pretty much everyone can understand the meaning of if they are being honest with themselves. 

I can provide many things relating to the church's past and present teachings on race and other social issues that are plain and concrete. 

Here's one example. The scriptures plainly show that in times past God commanded his people not to intermarry with people from a particular lineage and took measures to keep his people from intermarrying with people from a certain lineage. People can claim that the men who wrote this down were wrong and writing their own prejudiced ideas and attributing them to God, but the fact that the scriptures say that God did this is really beyond dispute. 

Another one is that Paul taught that the husband is to be the head of the wife, in a similar manner that Christ is the head of the church. People may disagree about whether or not Paul was speaking for all time, just his time period, or even right. But what is beyond dispute is that the Bible says that the husband is to be the head of the wife in similar manner that Christ is the head of the church. 

And one more. The Bible says that God considers homosexual sexual acts to be abominable before him. Now again, people are free to believe that this is wrong and not actually the word and will of God, or outdated, but the fact that the Bible says that God considers homosexual sexual acts to abominable is really beyond dispute. 

[CA Steve]

On 1/27/2023 at 9:21 AM, The Great Pretender said:

Good question. Because I don't make a habit of hanging around social media platforms in general. I guess if I were to conclude that the Church is untrue or I no longer wanted to live by its precepts, I'd close that chapter of my life and find new interests. I certainly wouldn't hang around arguing with members to justify my position. That, to me, seems like miserable ground to occupy.

Do you believe that everyone here is either a fully believing member or has concluded that the church is untrue?

[Meadowchik]

On 1/23/2023 at 3:41 PM, MrShorty said:

IMO, this is one of the really difficult issues.

On one hand, I think we need to extend grace towards historical figures because they often reflect the common attitudes and beliefs of their time and culture. As I think Patrick Mason has said, history is a foreign country, and we need to recognize that we are only visitors. While visiting, we may find that many of the beliefs and practices seem abhorrent to our own cultural sensibilities, but we need to be able to set our own sensibilities aside as a visitor to this foreign world.

On the other hand, I also think we need to be able to call out falsehoods and errors where we see them. We're a church that often makes a big deal out of eternal truth and absolute morality. I think we need to be able to state our disagreements with past prophets and apostles.

To me, where this gets really tricky is what does it mean for our "model" of prophets and revelation. why would God allow past prophets and apostles to teach and believe things that seem to us seem so morally black and white?

It's a double bind.

Being taught the completeness and utmost importance of scripture and applying it to ourselves while simultaneously being compelled to consider it non-present and so otherworldly that we're incapable of judging it.

I feel like the closest the church got to untangling this double bind was with the concept of renewal, continual revelation, and truth coming from any source. But, imo, unfortunately Joseph Smith quickly diverged with polygamy and dug a deep ideological bind that the church has been stuck in since.

[Grug the Neanderthal]

2 hours ago, pogi said:

Human consensus is never going to align with God's view in any absolute sense.  

On this point I completely agree.

And I get that people will always have differences of opinion, even if they are all striving to use the scriptures as their guide and measuring stick for truth. But ultimately there is truth and there is error. People with vastly different and contradictory views cannot all be right. People’s perception of truth, morality, or reality doesn’t actually determine any of these things. Definitely not in God’s eyes. 

For example, if one person believes that 9/11 was a strictly an inside job orchestrated by the US government and another believes that it was strictly an external terrorist attack, they can’t both be right. Both perspectives can’t be true. 

In the same way those who believe that the priesthood ban was legitimately from God and those who believe that the whole thing was a mistake that did not originate with God can’t both be right. 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Grug the Neanderthal

[Rain]

1 hour ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

I never said that everyone would agree with the concrete things contained in the scriptures. Many people reject or twist whatever the need to in order to justify whatever it is that they want to believe.

But there are nevertheless very plain and concrete things taught in the scriptures that pretty much everyone can understand the meaning of if they are being honest with themselves. 

I can provide many things relating to the church's past and present teachings on race and other social issues that are plain and concrete. 

Here's one example. The scriptures plainly show that in times past God commanded his people not to intermarry with people from a particular lineage and took measures to keep his people from intermarrying with people from a certain lineage. People can claim that the men who wrote this down were wrong and writing their own prejudiced ideas and attributing them to God, but the fact that the scriptures say that God did this is really beyond dispute. 

Out of curiosity, do you believe the bible is always correct?

1 hour ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

Another one is that Paul taught that the husband is to be the head of the wife, in a similar manner that Christ is the head of the church. People may disagree about whether or not Paul was speaking for all time, just his time period, or even right. But what is beyond dispute is that the Bible says that the husband is to be the head of the wife in similar manner that Christ is the head of the church. 

And one more. The Bible says that God considers homosexual sexual acts to be abominable before him. Now again, people are free to believe that this is wrong and not actually the word and will of God, or outdated, but the fact that the Bible says that God considers homosexual sexual acts to abominable is really beyond dispute. 

 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

6 minutes ago, Rain said:

Out of curiosity, do you believe the bible is always correct?

No, not always. There are translation errors in the Bible and plain and precious truths were removed. But I generally consider it to be reliable.

If something looks fishy I compare it to the Joseph Smith Translation, Book of Mormon, D&C, Pearl of Great Price, teachings of Joseph Smith, and look at multiple translations and the meaning of words in the original language. 

[Tacenda]

2 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

On this point I completely agree.

And I get that people will always have differences of opinion, even if they are all striving to use the scriptures as their guide and measuring stick for truth. But ultimately there is truth and there is error. People with vastly different and contradictory views cannot all be right. People’s perception of truth, morality, or reality doesn’t actually determine any of these things. Definitely not in God’s eyes. 

For example, if one person believes that 9/11 was a strictly an inside job orchestrated by the US government and another believes that it was strictly an external terrorist attack, they can’t both be right. Both perspectives can’t be true. 

In the same way those who believe that the priesthood ban was legitimately from God and those who believe that the whole thing was a mistake that did not originate with God can’t both be right. 

So you think 9/11 could be an inside job? 

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Tacenda

[Bernard Gui]

8 hours ago, Teancum said:

Past leaders who got a lot wrong means current one's as well

What are you looking for?  I just look at what the past leaders say and see the poor track record they have had on getting some major thing correct.  If they got big things wrong so can the current ones.  Quite simple and not hard to grasp.

You compared current Church leaders with other kinds of leaders.
 

Quote

The leaders claim to be prophets, seer and revelators. Yet their track record is no better than any other human leaders. 

What are your metrics of comparison? Political, medical, religious, inspirational, economic, humanitarian, academic, personal behavior? How did you come to this conclusion?

[pogi]

5 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

What you are describing sounds an awful lot like this to me:

16 They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness,

What have I said that sounds like this?  I am pretty sure I have pretty clearly stated that we need to be seeking after the Lord via scriptures, prophets, reason, and personal revelation, and that our ultimate goal and aspiration should be to be one with him. 

5 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.

Again, not sure why you are accusing me of this.  Do you understand the context of this passage?  Clearly you and I believe in the same God.  I am also fairly certain we probably perceive Him differently.  I remember teaching the first discussion as a missionary back in the day.  We taught that we all believe in the same Supreme Being, even though we may call him by different names.  I taught this to Trinitarians.  We worship the same God even if we interpret and perceive Him differently.  You seem to disagree.  

Does it really "sound like" I worship pagan Gods of Babylon created in the likeness of the world? I am a fellow Saint.  Either you have a really messed up interpretation of that passage, or you have a really messed up perception of what I am saying.  Not sure which it is.  

5 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

While the scriptures don’t tell us everything about God and his will, they do tell us an awful lot, and most of what the scriptures tell us about God, his nature, and what he expects of us is pretty clear. In fact much of it so clear that a primary child can understand it.

Sigh

5 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

I consider the scriptures to be the word of God, even the iron rod, that we are to hold fast to as we work our way through the mists of darkness. Letting go of the iron rod in favor of our own ideas is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. 

Straw man.  Where have I encouraged anyone to let go of the scriptures?  I don't think you are being fair to what I am actually saying. 

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by pogi

[Bernard Gui]

8 hours ago, Teancum said:

I disagree.  And it is a rather specious observation on a discussion board in a topic about LDS leaders.  And on a board that invites critics and believer to participate. 

Yes. And back and forth critiques are to be expected. It is not specious to observe one’s oft repeated heartburns with LDS leaders and then conclude it appears to be an obsession. 

[Bernard Gui]

15 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

It's a double bind.

Being taught the completeness and utmost importance of scripture and applying it to ourselves while simultaneously being compelled to consider it non-present and so otherworldly that we're incapable of judging it.

I feel like the closest the church got to untangling this double bind was with the concept of renewal, continual revelation, and truth coming from any source. But, imo, unfortunately Joseph Smith quickly diverged with polygamy and dug a deep ideological bind that the church has been stuck in since.

That he claimed to have seen Deity and visited with angels has nothing to do with ideological binds past and present? If he had just ignored polygamy, everything else would have been forgiven.?

Edited January 29, 2023 by Bernard Gui

[pogi]

2 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

On this point I completely agree.

No, I don't think you do agree based on what you are saying. 

We don't seem to be communicating.  This is as far as I care to go.  Take care.

 

 

[california boy]

2 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

I never said that everyone would agree with the concrete things contained in the scriptures. Many people reject or twist whatever the need to in order to justify whatever it is that they want to believe.

But there are nevertheless very plain and concrete things taught in the scriptures that pretty much everyone can understand the meaning of if they are being honest with themselves. 

I can provide many things relating to the church's past and present teachings on race and other social issues that are plain and concrete. 

Here's one example. The scriptures plainly show that in times past God commanded his people not to intermarry with people from a particular lineage and took measures to keep his people from intermarrying with people from a certain lineage. People can claim that the men who wrote this down were wrong and writing their own prejudiced ideas and attributing them to God, but the fact that the scriptures say that God did this is really beyond dispute. 

Another one is that Paul taught that the husband is to be the head of the wife, in a similar manner that Christ is the head of the church. People may disagree about whether or not Paul was speaking for all time, just his time period, or even right. But what is beyond dispute is that the Bible says that the husband is to be the head of the wife in similar manner that Christ is the head of the church. 

And one more. The Bible says that God considers homosexual sexual acts to be abominable before him. Now again, people are free to believe that this is wrong and not actually the word and will of God, or outdated, but the fact that the Bible says that God considers homosexual sexual acts to abominable is really beyond dispute. 

Your answer completely disproves that the scriptures can give anyone concrete answers as you were claiming.  One big flaw you point out is that no one really knows whether anyone was injecting their own ideas and had nothing to do with what God may want or not want.  The other problem you point out is that every scripture, even when you assume it came from God does not give concrete answers on what to do.  In your example of husbands is to be the head of the wife, in a similar manner that Christ is the head of the church.  What does it mean to be head of the house and exactly how does Christ govern His Church?  

Anyone looking for concrete answers are not going to find them in the scriptures.  They are also not going to find concrete answers from the big 15.  The last claimed revelation if it actually came from God was 50 years ago.  That would indicate that the husband is expected to only say something about his beliefs is maybe only going to occur every 50 years.  I know a lot of women who could get solidly behind this idea.  

Sound like concrete answers to you???

[Bernard Gui]

On 1/27/2023 at 7:04 PM, Grug the Neanderthal said:

Many examples can be provided in the scriptures and history of the outliers with unpopular views being right and the masses being wrong

And most of those outliers ended up getting the business end of the stick. Hugh Nibley called it “a prophet’s reward.” https://interpreterfoundation.org/nibley-lectures-time-vindicates-the-prophets-a-prophets-reward/

Edited January 29, 2023 by Bernard Gui

[Grug the Neanderthal]

4 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

And many of those outliers ended up getting the  business end of the stick.

Definitely. In fact that was a pretty common fate for them if they tried to help the masses see the error of their ways. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

7 minutes ago, california boy said:

Sound like concrete answers to you???

What I shared does sound like concrete answers to me, but your spin on them does not.

Basically your argument is not that the things I shared are hard to understand or not concrete, but rather that you question their divine origin. That’s an entirely separate issue. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

21 minutes ago, pogi said:

Again, not sure why you are accusing me of this.

I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m simply stating what your philosophy reminds me of. You are saying that people should all be pursuing God and his will in their on way, with everyone following their own “truth" and private interpretation of scripture. And that truth, morality, and the will of God are all relative to the perception of the individual.

I think that this approach leads to what that verse in section one is saying, where everyone is walking after the image of their own God, whose likeness is after the image of the world. I don’t think that this is what God wants. But I recognize and respect your right to disagree and pursue the course in life that you believe is right for you. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

So you think 9/11 could be an inside job? 

 

I think that there could have been insider involvement in 9/11 for a number of reasons, but I really don’t know.

But I don’t want to derail this thread. My point wasn’t about the truth of 9/11 itself one way or the other, but rather the fact that two different conflicting beliefs about the “truth" about 9/11 cannot both literally be true. And therefore truth is not actually relative, only the perception of truth is relative.

[Calm]

8 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Being taught the completeness and utmost importance of scripture and applying it to ourselves while simultaneously being compelled to consider it non-present and so otherworldly that we're incapable of judging it.

Interesting position.  It never occurred to me a fellow Saint could look at scripture this way (the God will yet reveal many things argues against completeness to me as well as the teachings of the importance of living prophets for the first and then there is God gives us truth at the level we can accept it, milk truth is still truth after all), but I can now see why you might if you see the implications of continuing revelation and line upon line differently, as the above rather than something g similar to mine.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Calm

[Calm]

5 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

You compared current Church leaders with other kinds of leaders.
 

What are your metrics of comparison? Political, medical, religious, inspirational, economic, humanitarian, academic, personal behavior? How did you come to this conclusion?

This is a good question.  One approach may get us further ahead in growth in many important ways, but may cause deterioration in others.  For example, education of women is a wonderful thing, but it has also had an effect on divorce rates (a cost that is worth it imo as the damage from keeping women from equality is more damaging to everyone’s soul than the cost of having fewer mothers fully in the home caring for children and if we get our act together we can have both fully educated and mothers able and willing to be in the home while needed where we can’t recover the cost of the damage that inequality cuts into people’s souls).  So the view of progress depends a great deal on what metrics are chosen.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Calm

[mfbukowski]

On 1/23/2023 at 7:41 AM, MrShorty said:

IMO, this is one of the really difficult issues.

On one hand, I think we need to extend grace towards historical figures because they often reflect the common attitudes and beliefs of their time and culture. As I think Patrick Mason has said, history is a foreign country, and we need to recognize that we are only visitors. While visiting, we may find that many of the beliefs and practices seem abhorrent to our own cultural sensibilities, but we need to be able to set our own sensibilities aside as a visitor to this foreign world.

On the other hand, I also think we need to be able to call out falsehoods and errors where we see them. We're a church that often makes a big deal out of eternal truth and absolute morality. I think we need to be able to state our disagreements with past prophets and apostles.

To me, where this gets really tricky is what does it mean for our "model" of prophets and revelation. why would God allow past prophets and apostles to teach and believe things that seem to us seem so morally black and white?

I think the point is that times DO change, and one ought to be able to respond to issues as they arise.  Some things never change BUT we must be able to respond when social currents change.

It's evolution ! Over time species change -- why?  In response to environmental change, whether physical or social.  We see how Christianity now sees not "Sodomites" to be burned at the stake, but other children of God to be loved and cared for.  The "prime directive" is to love each other as brothers and sisters, yet condemn certain behaviors and practices that are sinful.

Millions now practice abortion.  It is a new direction with which we disagree, but what are we to do to teach them how we see it. Do we alienate millions, or love them into seeing the savage inhumanity they are practicing?  What does God, who gave us agency for a reason, want us to do??

It's not that past prophets were wrong, it's that their tactics no longer work in today's church BECAUSE the environment is so different- while their response was correct for their trials and times, the same response doesn't work for today's  society.

We and they must remain flexible enough to use the right tools for the job to be done.  Auto mechanics used to have to know how to time a distributor, now they need to fix computerized fuel injection.  

It is simply not possible to correctly adjust fuel injectors..... the way they used to.

[Calm]

4 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It is simply not possible to correctly adjust fuel injectors..... the way they used to.

Agree with what you say while still believing prophets could get stuff wrong even for their time (Jonah got scolded by God for his prejudice).

But I think it would be very odd if instruction didn’t change over time, especially in how to apply doctrine.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Calm

[The Nehor]

9 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

For example, if one person believes that 9/11 was a strictly an inside job orchestrated by the US government and another believes that it was strictly an external terrorist attack, they can’t both be right. Both perspectives can’t be true. 

[MustardSeed]

Delete

Edited January 29, 2023 by MustardSeed