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

[Grug the Neanderthal]

On 1/27/2023 at 2:14 PM, smac97 said:

And yet we cannot formulate any hypothetical for comments from Pres. Nelson being "tossed under the bus" 50 years from now.

I can think of a few comments from President Nelson that could be “tossed under the bus” down the road.

A future church president could ease up on the ban of the word "Mormon" which would make Nelson's claim that using the word Mormon is a victory for Satan go by the wayside. 

If a future church president brings back 3 hour church, home teaching, and individual ward high priest groups, this would make Nelson’s claim that these have now been retired go by the wayside. And if a future church president said that these were being reinstated as a course correction, that would really make Nelson’s statements and actions look bad. 

If more information came to light and became publicly accepted that the Covid 19 vaccine really wasn’t all that effective and much more dangerous than the CDC claimed, Nelson's claim that it was a godsend, safe and effective, and the only way to defeat Covid 19 would go by the wayside. 

If polygamy were to be reinstated in the church in the future, even the very distant future, Nelson’s claim that we’re done with polygamy and it isn’t coming back (or something to that effect) would go by the wayside. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

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.

This is an interesting point about the correlation between women getting a college education and having a career outside the home and the divorce rate that has skyrocketed through the roof.

I don’t think that cost of broken marriages and families has been worth it for the sake of equality. As you pointed out, it didn’t have to be this way. Women can become educated and trained in a career and still choose to stay home to nurture the children and run the household, keeping the nuclear family together. And I would argue that women in western society have been able to get a college education and become trained in a career long before the divorce rate began spiraling out of control.

The issue I see is that so many women have chosen to leave the home and pursue a career, when the best thing would have been to stay in the home. They have chosen to sacrifice their marriage and nuclear family for their career.

In saying this, I am not claiming that women leaving the home is the only factor in the sky high divorce rate, there are definitely other factors, too. But I think that it’s clear that there is a definite correlation between women leaving the home and pursuing careers and the breakdown of the family. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t strong marriages and families where the wife decides to leave the home and pursue a career, but clearly many families fall apart because of this decision and other factors. I consider this to be a tragedy. 

[The Great Pretender]

14 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

I can think of a few comments from President Nelson that could be “tossed under the bus” down the road.

I have an example from a member of the First Presidency who wrote an article exactly 30 years ago to reinforce a principle we teach that is not doctrine but practice. A subsequent ldsliving.com article in 2016 insisted upon its continued relevance.

Personally, after almost 60 years of attending church, I am ready to toss the idea under the bus--except that I am so indoctrinated that the practice is automatic for me, and I know I would be judged harshly for abandoning it. It's akin to an Emperor's-new-clothes scenario in which we equate our level of spirituality with something utterly ridiculous.

I could post here, but it is unrelated to the main topic of this thread. I should probably begin a new thread and let the games begin.

[MustardSeed]

8 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

don’t think that cost of broken marriages and families has been worth it for the sake of equality.

Then why not prefer men stay home ? The divorce rate would drop significantly there too. The correlation is due to exposure to humans and subsequent affairs. (I believe.  No CFR) 

[Teancum]

15 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?

THe point is LDS leaders claim a special dispensation with God.  You know prophets, seers and revelators. But based on what they say, what the teach, what they predict, things they often get wrong, how they change based on social pressures though they are often way behind on this, etc. They seem to have no better insight on anything than other.  You can lump all the above in that if you wish.

[Teancum]

15 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

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. 

Yes it is specious. And you are incorrect.  Nice additional hyperbole though.

[Grug the Neanderthal]

27 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Then why not prefer men stay home ? The divorce rate would drop significantly there too. The correlation is due to exposure to humans and subsequent affairs. (I believe.  No CFR) 

Most husbands were already working out of the home before the divorce rate skyrocketed. So there’s clearly more going on here. 

It would also be interesting to see a study on the effects of the wife working and the husband staying home compared to the traditional husband working and wife staying home model. 

[Grug the Neanderthal]

41 minutes ago, The Great Pretender said:

I should probably begin a new thread and let the games begin.

Please do.

[MustardSeed]

6 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

 

6 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

 

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by MustardSeed

[MustardSeed]

—

Edited January 29, 2023 by MustardSeed

[The Great Pretender]

29 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

Please do.

Just did. 😉

[pogi]

16 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

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. 

It is a derogatory personal attack accusing him of a psychological disorder. I don’t see his involvement on these forums as any more of an “obsession” than yours.  He doesn’t seem to be much more active on these boards than you, he simply has a different perspective that you don’t like.   You wouldn’t accuse more active defenders on here of having an obsession, so your diagnosis seems more like a derogatory attack than an innocent observation (which you are not qualified to make).

We should welcome diversity on these boards.

Edited January 29, 2023 by pogi

[MrShorty]

On 1/27/2023 at 10:59 AM, smac97 said:

On 1/26/2023 at 10:01 PM, MrShorty said:

On other occasions, I think we mean that God in His infinite ability to perfectly blend justice, love, and mercy can forgive sins that were committed in ignorance or for other reasons that He judges sufficient to overlook our sin. But the sin is technically still a sin. IMO, this would be the kind of meaning for "context matters" that I would attribute to Elder Petersen and those before him.  God never once claimed that racism and bigotry were good and true and right.  For reasons that remain mysterious to me, though, He chose not (or maybe could not??) to grant revelation, but allowed these men to deceive themselves into believing that racism and bigotry were right and true and good.

I think this is getting closer to the mark.

As I've said elsewhere in this discussion, it often seems that these discussions go in one of two directions -- one of which is to focus on protecting the character of past prophets and apostles. This seems to me to be your emphasis. That is fine, I think this emphasis sometimes makes it difficult to talk about truth and right, because we end up tiptoeing so carefully around anything that might be remotely condemnatory towards past prophets and apostles.

On 1/27/2023 at 10:59 AM, smac97 said:

On 1/26/2023 at 10:01 PM, MrShorty said:

The second option leaves me wondering why God would tolerate such an egregious violation of eternal truth for so long among His people.

That's a fair question.  He let the Israelites in the Old World and the Nephites and Lamanites in the New descend into all sorts of wrongdoing.  He let devout Catholics kill devout Protestants, and vice versa.  He let the Saints in Cedar City commit an atrocity at Mountain Meadows.

I had never before made a connection between the problem of evil and the problem of prophetic fallibility/scriptural errancy. I've had to think and will probably be continuing to think carefully about the connection, but it is intriguing. Initially upon reading your comparison, I wanted to reject it as "apples to oranges." That the problem of evil and the problem of prophetic fallibility are two different problems. After thinking about it, I'm becoming convinced that they share more in common than my first impression allowed for. At this point, I will simply say that I frequently find that our "answers" to the problem of evil are less than satisfying, just like I find most of our answers to the problem of prophetic fallibility less than satisfying. Somehow, there is a problem in the interplay between God's omnipotence and omniscience, the presence of evil (including evils promoted by prophets and apostles) in a world that God created, and God's inability and/or unwillingness to prevent or correct such evils.

Unfortunately, I am a bit skeptical that I can hope to find The One True Answer to the problem of evil, considering that the best of Christian thinkers have been trying to resolve it for a couple thousand years.

[MrShorty]

@pogi To borrow (very liberally??) from St. Paul, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a relativist."

[Navidad]

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?

Hi - Can you please tell me in which writing did Patrick Mason say that? I would love to read the broader context. Thanks.

[Tacenda]

5 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

This is an interesting point about the correlation between women getting a college education and having a career outside the home and the divorce rate that has skyrocketed through the roof.

I don’t think that cost of broken marriages and families has been worth it for the sake of equality. As you pointed out, it didn’t have to be this way. Women can become educated and trained in a career and still choose to stay home to nurture the children and run the household, keeping the nuclear family together. And I would argue that women in western society have been able to get a college education and become trained in a career long before the divorce rate began spiraling out of control.

The issue I see is that so many women have chosen to leave the home and pursue a career, when the best thing would have been to stay in the home. They have chosen to sacrifice their marriage and nuclear family for their career.

In saying this, I am not claiming that women leaving the home is the only factor in the sky high divorce rate, there are definitely other factors, too. But I think that it’s clear that there is a definite correlation between women leaving the home and pursuing careers and the breakdown of the family. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t strong marriages and families where the wife decides to leave the home and pursue a career, but clearly many families fall apart because of this decision and other factors. I consider this to be a tragedy. 

I think women that are unhappy in an unhealthy marriage might divorce quicker if they make enough money or have good job aspects, than a woman who has stayed home with not enough education or experience, because the stay at home with an incomplete education etc,  will fear they wouldn't be able to take care of the children with a likely low income. 

https://www.mansurlaw.com/why-do-women-file-for-divorce-more-often-than-men/

Edited January 29, 2023 by Tacenda

[california boy]

19 hours ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

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. 

Not sure how you could have missed half of my post 

 

 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?  

[Grug the Neanderthal]

5 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

So perhaps when women began working they then had financial options to leave their cheating husbands & abusive situations.

This may very well be true for some situations, but I don’t believe this is the primary reason for why the divorce rate has skyrocketed the way that it has. There’s clearly more going on here, a lot more in my opinion. 

For years and years leaders of the church warned about the decay of the family that would happen if mothers left the home and went to work, when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. And from my observation, their words are proving to be quite prophetic. 

And of course mothers leaving the home to work unnecessarily is only part of what has caused this decay in the family and society. There are many other factors. A huge one is pornography consumption, which is generally a much bigger problem for men than women. Overall worldliness is another huge factor. 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Grug the Neanderthal

[MrShorty]

@Navidad I can't find a specific place where Mason wrote that. I thought it was in Planted, but cannot find a specific reference to Planted for it. A deeper search attributes the phrase to an L P Hartley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Go-Between ), but I'm certain that Mason (or some similar LDS author/speaker) has used the phrase when talking about studying LDS history.

[Grug the Neanderthal]

19 minutes ago, california boy said:

What does it mean to be head of the house and exactly how does Christ govern His Church?  

The scriptures give us a lot of insight to this. But it doesn’t sound like you really care what the scriptures have to say, since you question their authenticity. So I don’t feel inclined to invest the time breaking the scriptures down for you right now. 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Grug the Neanderthal

[Grug the Neanderthal]

51 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I think women that are unhappy in an unhealthy marriage might divorce quicker if they make enough money or have good job aspects, than a woman who has stayed home with not enough education or experience, because the stay at home with an incomplete education etc,  will fear they wouldn't be able to take care of the children with a likely low income. 

https://www.mansurlaw.com/why-do-women-file-for-divorce-more-often-than-men/

I’m sure this is true. But how many women are too quick to leave their husbands over issues that could be resolved, instead of working things out and saving their marriages, because divorce seems like such any easy fix now? 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Grug the Neanderthal

[MustardSeed]

56 minutes ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by MustardSeed

[Grug the Neanderthal]

6 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

What’s your beef with women?  Men and women both are stupid like this.  

I don’t have any beef with women. I was responding to a comment about women leaving unhappy relationships. 

Men bail on marriages too quickly, too. 

 

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Grug the Neanderthal said:

This may very well be true for some situations, but I don’t believe this is the primary reason for why the divorce rate has skyrocketed the way that it has. There’s clearly more going on here, a lot more in my opinion. 

For years and years leaders of the church warned about the decay of the family that would happen if mothers left the home and went to work, when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. And from my observation, their words are proving to be quite prophetic. 

And of course mothers leaving the home to work unnecessarily is only part of what has caused this decay in the family and society. There are many other factors. A huge one is pornography consumption, which is generally a much bigger problem for men than women. Overall worldliness is another huge factor. 

You’re missing the primary cause for two parents working in a household. It is much more difficult for families to economically survive on one paycheck. Some can barely survive on two paychecks.

[Tacenda]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

You’re missing the primary cause for two parents working in a household. It is much more difficult for families to economically survive on one paycheck. Some can barely survive on two paychecks.

Gone are the old days...

Also, now that the church doesn't put out talks about women staying at home to raise a family, I believe the men might rely heavily on their wives working. At least from what I've seen, they want their wives to pitch in and help. Or maybe bring some relief to them if they are under a lot of pressure to bring in enough for the family's needs. But sadly, some men want the woman to work so they can live a nice lifestyle and live it up in a way too. 

My dad held three jobs at one time to provide for his family of six children. But eventually had to quit due to extreme back pain from breaking his back at 17 years and having many surgeries. My mom went to work from then on. The doctor told my dad he couldn't keep doing what he's doing, my dad would come home drenched in sweat from the pain. 

But this was when his youngest was able to be cared for by siblings and then was in elementary school. 

My sister's husband wanted her to work and put the kids in daycare and they are stalwart members of the church, it made me mad of course back then. 

Recently I saw a national morning show where it had women choosing to stay home with their children, and making sure the men were fed a nice meal, and the house clean etc. It might be a swing back to the 50's style, who knows. 

I am sooo grateful I was able to stay home with my children. But it's not for every woman out there. And sometimes day care isn't so bad as long as they're well cared for. My granddaughter has been in day care since 3 months old and I share babysitting with her other grandma two days a week. She's really social and smart, so I'm thinking she is that way because of her experience with daycare. 

But if I'm being honest, I wish my daughter could stay home with her sometimes. And it might be why there are less and less children in families now. With the rat race and the worrying over cost to raise children, daycare costs, and how life is so busy for moms when they are holding the fort down if they don't get some help from the husband. Like many say....women can't have it all...career and children and not feel the brunt.