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  1. "Sometimes we may feel that we are being generous in giving them much without their giving any service in return, that maybe we are generous and that we are kind; but we are really unkind. It works the other way. We are unkind if we teach people to take without giving, without doing what they can do within reason" (Spencer W. Kimball) "It is a law of heaven, and one we haven’t learned fully here on earth, that you cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they can do, and should do, for themselves." (Ezra Taft Benson)
    2 points
  2. I think the person who calls, if they are asking for help for something they could do themselves, may indeed be doing themselves some harm. I also think that the person who answers the call, if they do so with a cheerful and willing heart - because God loves a cheerful giver - will be blessed for what they do, regardless of the needs or motivations of the caller. 6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: (New Testament | 2 Corinthians 9:6 - 😎 I think it would make for a fascinating study to try to guesstimate the primary considerations that God takes into account when trying to decide how to respond to a plea for help. Sometimes He parts the sea, sometimes He makes the waters stand up in a heap, sometimes the rivers of water are turned out of their course, and sometimes He just tells you where to find ore to make tools to build a ship. I think there are probably reasons for the different responses to what is essentially the same problem of how to get across a body of water. I think that God is well able to make such judgements as to what is needed and how best to respond to a request for help, but my judgement skills are not as good as His. As to the idea of whether helping such a person is the best use of our time and energy, I haven't yet reached the point in life where all of my decisions and actions are determined by what I think is the best way to use my time although I acknowledge that that is a worthy goal to aim for. Too often my actions and decisions are based on what I want rather than what I think is best.
    2 points
  3. I work out of the Welcker substation. Deputy Michael S. Welcker Died on February 24, 1994 Age 38 Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office Homicide: Handgun Deputy Welcker was killed by a prison parolee wanted for questioning in an assault. Officers went to a Taylorsville apartment where they believed the man was hiding. As they attempted to pick the lock, the man fired through the door with a 9mm pistol. Deputy Welcker, 40, was struck outside the panel of his body armor and died a few minutes later. Sgt. Larry Marx was wounded but recovered. As officers returned fire, the suspect retreated to the rear of the apartment and committed suicide. Deputy Welcker was single and had been a police officer for five years. He is buried in Valley View Memorial Park, Salt Lake County. His bronze memorial plaque is sponsored by the citizens of Salt Lake County.
    2 points
  4. I'm in the same boat. My only issue is I won't continue to do service if they have already 'burned' that service bridge. I find myself willing to help those who need service or help in an unusual situation/circumstance: death in the family, recently laid off, surgery, covid dinners, elderly, disabled. I find myself unwilling to help those who continually need service or help but are simply too lazy or cheap to help themselves. <---- these make me sour inside as well. So in an effort to not sour all service, I avoid the latter.
    2 points
  5. I fall back to my old rule: “does me being here cleaning your house (or whatever) actually helping for you in the long term? “
    2 points
  6. scottyg

    Isaiah 5:20

    https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/hasbro-rebranding-mr-potato-head-gender-neutral Another article from nbc states that the toy will also be sold in a family pack with accessories for two sets of "same gender" parents for the baby potato. Our children need to be taught how to feel the Holy Ghost and discover truth for themselves, because the world is ready to sweep them up in sin.
    1 point
  7. Sad events all around. I did take some... 'minor' comfort... in reading he was single.
    1 point
  8. As mentioned earlier in this thread, God is a tremendous enabler. Instead of striking idiots with blight He causes His rain to fall on both the just and the unjust. One of the themes that comes out in the apocryphal accounts of the Flood (and even in our own book of Moses) is that God's generosity to the wicked is an absolute mystery. Enoch, the angels, and later Zenos' gardener all wonder why God puts up with this garbage as long as He does! I sometimes wonder if this is the wisdom of coming to a telestial creation. The Spirit knows all things, but godliness - perhaps even charity - requires that we learn through our own experience how to love those who don't deserve it. That said, I also acknowledge that Jesus did not move away the stone of Lazarus' tomb, and had to be talked down from destroying the Israelites and creating a new nation from Moses' descendants. There's a balance here, and I'm not sure that I know where to draw the line between allowing enabling versus allowing divine discontent. President Oaks has drawn attention to these two forms of divine love and says there's a need for both. But as a general authority he leaves it at general principles and leaves to us to work out what requests we file in each group. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2009/10/love-and-law?lang=eng
    1 point
  9. Nothing more than word games. In this context, saying that the earth and mankind are "nothing special" is a shorthand way of saying that the same physical laws that affect everything else affect them, and in the same way. It is a foundational assumption based on observation, not a judgment of worth. Yeah, that's just nonsense. As you say, Foucault's pendulum and the Coriolis effect. I, too, have never heard of this and know nothing about it. But it just means that the normal to the Earth's ecliptic is close to parallel with the Axis he mentions. A remarkable coincidence, to be sure, but hardly one-in-a-million. IMO, he would do much better talking about the astounding coincidence that the moon subtends exactly the same angle from the Earth's surface as does the sun, allowing solar eclipses to happen. Now THAT'S remarkable. I remember reading Douglas Hofstadter's masterwork Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid 20 or 25 years ago, and noticing how the final chapter(s) in the book were weirdly out of place, almost vacuous, filled with rambling thoughts and not at all as tight and utterly brilliant as the rest of the book. It took me years until I could look back and realize that, toward the end of the book, Hofstadter had lamented about how you can always tell when a book is going to end and all the plot points get wrapped up, because the physicality of the book means you know how many pages are left. He suggested that one way to avoid this was to pack the end of the book with random nonsense so that you could never be really sure where things were going to end. Years after reading the book, I realized that's what he was doing. Hey, maybe something similar is going on here. Interestingly, the two are not mutually exclusive. When I was finishing up my undergrad physics degree at BYU, I met and briefly spoke with a faculty member named Steven Jones. Electrochemists (Pons and Fleischmann—as you probably know, Fleischmann was from the University of Southampton) at the University of Utah had just announced "tabletop cold fusion", and Jones was preparing to publish his own (unrelated, except in subject matter) vulcanology study that hinted at unknown subterranean "cold" fusion processes that produced 3He instead of normal 4He. Jones was involved in the tabletop cold fusion debunking effort. A bit more than a decade later, this same brilliant physicist lent his voice to the World Trade Center conspiracy exposition effort, claiming that it was impossible that the towers could be brought down merely by jetliners hitting them.
    1 point
  10. It seems to me that what you are feeling is more manly rather than Godly. Such feelings are both natural, and necessary to change. I think that the best way to change your feelings from natural to Godly is by having an increased love for those you serve. If you cannot feel an increased love for these people then you can start one step further back and pray for a desire to love those you serve. As you pray with sincerity, humility, faith and real desire, God is likely to grant you the righteous desires of your heart and you will begin to feel a desire to love these people. As you consistently and gratefully act on that desire, you will come to love them and your sour feelings will be transformed. It all starts with you having the faith and the desire and humbly taking the problem to the Lord in prayer.
    1 point
  11. Just_A_Guy

    Views on Stimulus

    You probably know this, but one of the traps in evaluating any government expenditure is that we can clearly see the “good” that is done by money government spends. It’s a lot harder to see and quantify the “good” that those same dollars would have done in the hands of their original owners, the taxpayers. No one counts the investments that aren’t made, the new businesses that don’t open, the meals and hotel rooms and travel tickets that aren’t purchased, the gifts that aren’t given, the home renovations that aren’t undertaken, and so on. And what’s even more sinister is that these opportunity costs are, to a very great degree, being borne by a generation that is still children. Millennials are fond of pointing out how the Boomers screwed then over economically—but they’re turning around and demanding we do the same thing to the next generation so that they, the millennials, can get theirs. Take a look at the second link I put in my previous post, and bear in mind that the link is nine years old and the national (“household”) debt has doubled since then.
    1 point
  12. mordorbund

    Views on Stimulus

    @Fether Here's the short version of Milton Friedman explaining the effects of inflation. (full video here).
    1 point
  13. Just_A_Guy

    Views on Stimulus

    Hmm. I wonder. I don’t hear the congresscritters (or their constituents) saying “it’s OK, by the time the debt comes due it won’t really be that much money”. And really, if they openly said that, no one would ever lend the government another cent. I don’t think we are really thinking of how to pay our debt back at all; we’re just thinking of what we want now and why we are entitled to have it. Even more problematic than the debt itself, I think, are the social and political mentalities and realities that allow it to continue to build. Since WW2 we’ve had a party that at least paid lip service to the idea of fiscal restraint; but I think the newly emergent populist wing of the GOP and their support for massive COVID relief packages—and the abject failure of classical conservatives to say “wait a minute, we’re freakin’ broke, how are we going to pay for this?”—is a potent indicator of just how entranced even the Republicans have become with the notion of voting themselves funds out of the public purse.
    1 point
  14. In additional these Stimulus packages have a lot more then just the checks to citizens... Its a majority of pork and special interest spending that got authorized in the name of "helping those who are hurting"
    1 point
  15. Issue 4: the federal government didn’t order the economy to shut down; (some of) the state governments did. Why should Utah, which has basically been open for business for the last year and whose economy is humming along, be subsidizing the coastal states’ draconian measures? If California or New Jersey feel their citizens deserve restitution, they are free to pass their own relief packages for their own residents.
    1 point
  16. The moral argument against federal stimulus is grounded in the realization of where stimulus money comes from: taxes. If only people who paid taxes were getting the stimulus then it would just be a tax break. Instead we have the federal government taking money from one group and giving to another. The analogy often used is imagine I found out that you're struggling financially so I reach in my pocket and give you $600. I tell Carb what's going on and he hands over $600 also. No one is objecting to this (until we find out you're the subject of the charity thread - but we can forego that discussion for now). Where it becomes morally wrong is when I go to Carb and tell him you're struggling financially, and he WILL give you $600 or I will forcibly take $600 from him to give you. The fact that it benefits you does not make it any less of a robbery. What suddenly makes it okay when I don't do it myself but instead vote for some faceless government to bully on my behalf? The logistical argument against federal stimulus is the variance in cost-of-living across the nation. $600 will go a lot farther in Provo, UT than it will in New York City. Rapid inflation (also known as a "soft default" for government loans) penalizes saving. Similarly, income tax penalizes high wages, sales tax penalizes high spending, and property taxes penalizes ownership. Yet despite these penalties we still see wages, spending, and ownership. So there's a tradeoff. In the case of inflation, the economy can handle some, but you don't want so much that it stifles lending (if I loan you $100K today, I want to know that the 200K I get back in 30 years is worth more than the $100K I'm giving you now). You've grouped UBI and stimulus together, but note that these are 2 different things. We used to have a few posters promoting universal basic income, but I haven't seen them for a while. Is UBI something you'd also like to discuss or do you want to keep this focused on stimulus?
    1 point
  17. I am not an economists. I do know how to do math and hold to the KISS concept of money - KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. The stupid term is not pointed at anyone but rather s rhetorical. I think of money as a means of exchange. The money itself is worthless but is given power by what backs up or support the money. Money itself is economy and therefore responds to supply and demand. Inflation is the result of money being available - there more money there is in circulation - the less it is worth. But this can all get rather tricky because as wealth increases the more money become valuable. So the simple answer, in my mind, is that when a government generates more money without increasing wealth - the less value that money can draw in exchanges. I have also learned a lesson about giving someone in need some money. I am convinced this will never solve any problem and in the long run will make those receiving the money dependent. If we want to help someone - we ought to be free with goods and services that are needed. First because money is not the same as goods and services and Second - Goods and services are will be seen as a sacrifice that ought to be appreciated - whereas money becomes an entitlement that is seldom appreciated. A good example of this is a kid in college. If they request help and instead of sending money offer goods and services - the kids seem to become much more invested in getting their own money. Whenever my kids have stated that they want a job that pays "good" money. I tend to sit down with them and explain that any money they make on their own is "good" money. Bad money is the money you obtain with nothing offered in return. Thus stimulus is "bad" money. The Traveler
    1 point
  18. I'd focus first on: "what is charity?" It is the pure love of Christ. It's not giving stuff away, it's not working for free, it's not feeding the hungry, it's not being part of a Facebook group, etc. (Though charity can indeed motivate each of those actions). It is first and foremost that feeling of God-like love. People and situations are diverse. Yes, there are times that giving of temporal goods in an act of love. And there's also times where it is NOT a loving act. Even God Himself can (and frequently does) answer prayers for temporal or other things with a "no". And as part of our learning discernment is learning to likewise say "no" when it's the right thing to do. And there are MANY times where "no" is the right answer and giving someone something they ask for is actually hurtful to them. MANY times.
    1 point
  19. Well, I passed the Technician’s exam yesterday. I ordered a Yaseu FT-60r along with a Diamond exchangeable antenna. I plan on getting an Icom for our base station, but I’m taking more time with that as I research what I need, and how I want to set it up.
    1 point
  20. Still_Small_Voice

    Isaiah 5:20

    Approximately one in six from America's youngest adult generation now identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, headlining a trend of increased LGBT identification in the country, according to a new Gallup survey. The survey, conducted throughout the last year, found that 16% of U.S. adults from Generation Z identify as something other than heterosexual. Those surveyed were born between 1997 and 2002. Generation Z is defined as those born between 1997 and 2012; the survey did not include those who have not reached age 18. Of those 18- to 23-year-olds who identify as LGBT, 72% of them classified themselves as bisexual. "Thus, 11.5% of all Gen Z adults in the U.S. say they are bisexual, with about 2% each identifying as gay, lesbian or transgender," Gallup stated. Additionally, the percentage is poised to grow, since many individuals from Generation Z have not yet reached adulthood and thus were not surveyed. https://www.theblaze.com/news/1-in-6-gen-z-lgbt
    0 points