Great response. Honesty is the best policy.
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It always sickened me when I'd hear an RM talk about how all the poverty they saw in their mission helped them realize how grateful they are for everything the Lord has given them. This always just came off as so privileged and arrogant to me. I know I would hate it if I had someone visit my house and then afterward say how grateful the visit made them for everything they have back at home. Wh
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"Her 'mission' was to uncover all the important teachings from the General Authorities." That truly sounds like an impossible mission.
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They could have done double duty with that one. Get it? I digress? Seriously though, something like this, "My wife and I were visiting the primary near our Pleasant Grove home. The spirit that day was sweet and strong when I suddenly felt strong urges come upon me to use the restroom with every fiber of my being. As I opened the door to the bathroom stall, however, I was devastated to see
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Although I'll throw out there that when they finally let a woman speak, she seemed to address exactly what I was talking about (Joy D. Jones' "A Sin Resistant Generation).
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Is it just me, or have the talks at GC so far been really generic and forgettable? Maybe it's because I'm just reading the talk summaries on lds.org and not actually listening (which I can't bring myself to do), but it doesn't seem like there's any major policy change or any major shaming (like we could always count on Boyd K Packer to do). Other than that incredibly awkward misuse of a Star Wars
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"But I see a ton of harm done by Church members in how they judge and manipulate and shame people." And the thing is, I don't need the internet to see this.
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I'll echo that sentiment. In a lot of ways it was more difficult to believe, but you always started with the proposition that it is absolutely, unquestionably true. So when you got conflicting information about its veracity (DNA evidence, lack of archaeological evidence, parts of the narrative that just don't make a lot of sense), you'd have to try and resolve the discrepancy in your mind as best
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I remember some regional authority came to talk to us when I was on my mission. I don't remember much from his talk except something along the lines of "when you get home from your missions, if you meet a girl who you think it wonderful but isn't a member, tell her "chau."
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Even at my most TBM, I always saw our meetings and buildings as very dull. I'd visit a Catholic mass or a Hindu temple and marvel at the beauty, then come back to our dull buildings with the same paintings as all the other LDS buildings. I believed the church was true, but secretly wished that we were more expressive architecturally and in the content of our meetings.
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That's pretty standard if you go to most cemeteries in Utah. Picture of the temple, list of children's names.
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There's a great bit of dialogue between Ryan Gosling and a teenager in the film "The Nice Guys": Holland March: Jesus Christ! One at a time! Janet: You took the Lord's name in vain. Holland March: No I didn't, Janet. I found it very useful actually.
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It's called apatheism when you don't think it's relevant, which is everyone's word of the day now. Feel free to scream or drop green slime on anyone who uses it today. I feel that way about the Book of Mormon too, incidentally. Even if it's true, it doesn't really contain much that's useful or new. It's mostly just a collection of copied Bible verses and feel-good stories about God's love. Its
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Whether it's accurate or not, I always respected the story of the First Vision as presented in the old 1976 movie the church made because it focused so much on the sincere search for truth and the questions Joseph asked himself before heading to the Sacred Grove. It was really about the first two steps of the old Primary song: search and ponder. In general, most TBMs are horrible at these firs
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I'd like to try and steer this back toward recovery a bit, if I may. Poopstone, do you feel like your political views affected your views of the church, or were they completely unrelated?
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Even at my most TBM, I don't think it was something that I really believed in. I didn't live my life like the second coming was just around the corner.
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I think part of it stems from motivation. I know of several ex-mos who are seemingly befriended by a member of the church. But once the member realizes the ex-mo isn't coming back to church, they cut off the friendship.
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I do not miss this at all
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Is Journal of Discourses considered approved material? The whole thing is available off BYU's website. There's some pretty damning stuff in there about polygamy, blood atonement, etc. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/search/collection/JournalOfDiscourses3
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I want to see the same video for the Elders. I am sure it would go something like this: "Elders, when you're standing, stand however you feel like. They'll be paying too much attention to what you're saying to notice or care about your posture." "Elders, when going to sit in a chair, sit normally, and put no extra thought into it. You've been sitting in chairs since you were
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I was reading up on the Episcopalian church, which falls under liberal Christianity. They are fully accepting of gays, have ordained women, and have fought for civil rights. It made me want to find a nice graph that plots where all the different religions are on the political spectrum, so I googled it and found this, which is based on the Pew Religious Landscape Survey: http://religionnews.com
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And in this scenario, hangul was really another version of reformed Egyptian?
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I'm not sure how to tie it into Mormonism completely, but there was a study a few years ago that found that labeling a woman a "slut" had more to do with social class than with actual sexual activity. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/29/slut-shaming-study.html I think within Mormonism it is socially constructed in a similar way, where there's a focus on outward indica
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Gilgal Gardens, if you want to see Joseph Smith's head on a sphinx.
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I'm simply saying that the idea of reformed Egyptian actually exists, though no one actually calls it that. It is a real thing. The scribbles on the Anthon transcript don't match what reformed Egyptian would have been (likely Demotic), or anything coherent for that matter.
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It all depends on what "reformed Egyptian" actually means. We usually think of Egyptian as hieroglyphics, but they actually had several writing systems because hieroglyphics were really annoying to write. For example, the Rosetta Stone has classic Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Demotic Egyptian (which is a simplified script). Demotic came into being around 650 BCE, which would have
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From my 21st birthday to when I finally tried alcohol, I figure I did about 125 Lents' worth of not drinking. I'm counting that as good for the rest of my life.
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We're celebrating Mardi Gras (because we're fun), so to explain it to my 8-year old, I explained Easter and worked back with Lent. He said we needed to eat a lot tonight (I told him Catholics frequently give up meat for Lent). I told him that wouldn't be necessary since we wouldn't be celebrating Lent, but he insisted that he wanted to. So I asked him what he wanted to give up. "Fresh fru
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Excellent!
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Interesting how "being offended" didn't make the list at all.
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