MarginOfError

Honestly, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that this could cause anxiety for someone.

Who is my Satan? <----------------------------- This guy.

This is immaterial to the situation at hand. To borrow a Utah colloquialism, What the Frick! Sorry, there are exactly two people that carry responsibility for this pregnancy. You never, ever, ever get to shift that blame to the other person unless you were raped or manipulated into having sex. By your own admissions, you were the one who used her for pleasure, knowing that you didn't share the same commitment to her that she did to you. You're stuck with the lion share of the blame on this one. This was not even six months ago. I hate to break it to you, but people don't change that quickly. "Oh poor me. A girl who had stronger feelings for me than I did for her agreed to sleep with me because she wanted to give me what I wanted." She has not wrecked your life. You've done that all by yourself. Um, yes, you really are young. Worse, you're immature. I say this with a straight face knowing that I'm probably going to get in trouble for it. But it honestly needs to be said. Do this poor girl and the child a favor. Walk away. Pay the child support and never see either of them ever again. They don't need an immature jerk hanging around. They're better off without you.

It's a semantic argument (and perhaps a petty one), but I've always considered it as the difference between power and authority. Sure, when I received the Melchizedek Priesthood, I was given priesthood power, but my ordination to the office of Elder sets limits on my ability to use that power (authority). It seems that the Line of Authority is aptly named in this way of looking at it, as it tracks that the limits of our authority are properly bestowed. It isn't a perfect perspective, but it's the best I've got.

As it turns out, I'm a pretty wise guy

I'm not disbelieving the things that John wrote. But we can't guarantee that John wrote everything we think he did. All I'm saying is there are other plausible interpretations and explanations. And that we can learn valuable lessons from all of them.

...according to whoever last wrote the transcript that would become the Gospel of John.

Yes, I did. And Vort is right, they don't elaborate on his motivations. There isn't any dispute over what he did. Only over why he did it. You also say "He knew who Christ was, what his mission was," but that isn't at all clear, as even the rest of the disciples were questioning how the crucifixion and disappearance of the body could be. The disciples don't seem to have fully grasped the nature of Christ's work until after the Resurrection and closer to the Ascension. Why would we think Judas was any more intuitive about it?

It seems you missed the point.

Or is it that when people are not educated, they feel a need to over simplify things? (As long as we are painting in broad strokes)

My best piece of advice is to expand your idea of a fundraiser. Read Handbook 2 13.6.8, and take notice of the following phrase: "Stakes and wards that sponsor fund-raising activities should not advertise or solicit beyond their boundaries. Nor should they sell products or services door to door." My guess is that if you only have 50 members attending sacrament meeting, you have a fairly large geographical boundary. See if you can come up with a fundraiser that isn't dependent on just the ward membership. If you pursue such a fundraiser, invest in some matching t-shirts for your group, and teach them to identify themselves to customers and explain the purpose of the fundraiser. "Fundraiser for church" is not going to gain as much positive support as "fundraiser to help our youth group pay for supplies for a week long summer camp" will get a pretty good reception.

I've neither seen nor heard direction from Church leaders that this is the case. While there's plenty of direction that tithing is "‘one-tenth of all their interest annually,’ which is understood to mean income" and not to dictate to members what constitutes income, that's all I've heard in the past decade. I do know of a couple of families that have been told by priesthood leaders not to worry about paying a full tithe as their finances are such that paying a full tithe would cause them to default on debts. The consequence of that would be fees, and a never ending spiral of not getting out of debt. And so they've been told not to feel bad about not paying a full tithe while they get their debts taken care of. But they also aren't given temple recommends.

This is an area where I need to do better. The primary source of my failures (or so I claim) is that I will eat a small breakfast on Saturday, before starting my weekend activities, whatever they may be. I then often neglect to eat again until the evening. At the point, after a day of hard labor, I'm already weary and deteriorated, but still don't enjoy eating much in one setting, and so I don't eat enough to fully replenish. If I then try to fast, I quickly become irritable and snippy at church, which doesn't really help anyone. Those aren't good reasons not to fast. Just the pattern I have noticed. A couple of years ago for Lent, I committed myself to carefully plan my days around fasting so that I would be adequately nourished when I started. I recall my fasting experience being much improved, but haven't maintained the habit. I don't see myself completing a long fast anytime soon. I have a history of getting weak after about 22 hours. I recall once as a missionary being pressured and guilted into a full 24 hour fast, as I normally broke it after about 16 hours. He apologized to me when I nearly fainted after 20 hours. But I admire the self control to accomplish such a feat.

Interestingly, the Church seems to have formally distanced itself from any particular geography theory. https://www.lds.org/manual/gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-geography?lang=eng

I'm not even convinced that Judas is unsalvageable. The man was a zealot. He believed that Jesus was the Messiah, in the sense of rescuing the Jews from Roman rule. It's entirely plausible that he acted from a position of misguided faith and was convinced that turning Jesus over would spark the revolution. In other words, he was trying to help move things along without fully comprehending Christ's plan and purpose. If we are to believe the scriptures, he wasn't unique in that regard among the disciples. As for John's statement, the Gospel of John was written decades later by someone purporting to be the Apostle John, but the authorship isn't decisively affirmed. Furthermore, we never hear Judas's side of the story, and the statements against his spiritual welfare may originate in the bitterness the disciples felt toward Judas, not necessarily from the feelings of Christ. I'm not so strong in my opinions as to say Judas Iscariot is doomed or redeemable. I think we'd be wise to leave that to Christ and, instead, open our minds and hearts to the lessons we can learn from either interpretation.

Otherwise known as "discover a unicorn"

I was an active missionary when this changed, probably in 2001 or 2002. While visibility was a part of it, the visibility was described as a side benefit. The motivation for the policy, we were told, was to better conform to D&C 20:68. "The duty of the members after they are received by baptism--the elders or priests are to have sufficient time to expound all things concerning the church of Christ to their understanding, previous to their partaking of the sacrament and being confirmed" At the time, we were also told that there needed to be at least one week between the baptism and the confirmation. That policy has long since perished, and now we are content to call as few as 15 hours between a baptism at 6:15 PM and a confirmation at 9:15 AM to be sufficient time. So, we've clearly given up on that particular interpretation of the D&C. So if visibility is all that is left, in a pinch, recognizing the new member in sacrament meeting and asking them to stand and be seen is every bit as effective as bringing them to the front for the ordinance. (In reality, at least half of the congregation won't be paying attention either way) This may be location specific. I've never lived in an area where a baptism occurs in a building that isn't the ward's building. Being in the boonies means we get to have baptisms whenever we want. And this would certainly work for us. I'll also say that I would not attempt this for an adult convert. But for a nine years old, with apparently a fair support network, this kind of inflexibility is silly. And I didn't say he was dumb. Just unreasonable. If I were either the bishop or stake president, I've had said it to his face already (and have, in fact, said worse to my Bishop and stake president)

If the mission president can't be brought to see reason, then you may consider following the very letter of the law (or the church handbook of instructions) So your bishop may convene a sacrament meeting immediately following the baptism. A short sacrament meeting on such a special occasion sounds lovely

It's hard to know. I'm not claiming that everything in every vision is figurative. All I have to work with are the things they claim to have seen, their interpretation of what it means, and my own intellect and spiritual searching. Those all have to be processed into a body of What I Believe (TM). I won't claim those are internally consistent or even correct. Funnily enough, much of scripture is in the same condition.

I'll admit, I have a pretty complicated relationship with Moses. I think he existed, and I'm comfortable with the idea that he may be the originator of many of the ideas that turned into the Old Testament, but I don't really think much of what he taught or said survived to the compilation of what we consider the old Testament. More likely, the Old Testament represents a compilation of ideas that had multiple goals. Some were religious and some were sociopolitical. So it would probably be more accurate for me to say, "the Hebrews didn't consider Adam to be a single distinct individual " but, I'm lazy. Ultimately, I don't subscribe to biblical literalism, which many of the early revelations did. Joseph Smith, for example, was a firm believer that those with black skin were descendants of Ham, which has largely fallen out of favor. Early prophets were also convinced that the Lamanites were the principal ancestors of Native Americans. But now we claim they are only "among" the principal ancestors. It doesn't bother me that a prophet could see a vision of a figurative man and assume that he was literal, having adopted a literalist point of view.

Oh, the horror of trying to understand ancient documents in the context of which they were written!

The endowment ceremony is, at best, ambiguous on the point. Within the ceremony, Adam and Eve are portrayed as both distinct individuals alone on the earth, as well as a collective being assaulted by the teachings of men. Beyond that, there's a very plausible argument to be made that Moses himself didn't consider Adam to be a single individual, as the word Adam translates to the collective mankind. That there existed a man and a woman that had reached a phase of cognitive function that God was ready to assign them the task of first prophets/teachers/whatever is completely believable. That there existed a man and a woman that are genetic ancestors to every human being is less likely, but not completely out of the question (Heck, most human beings are genetic ancestors of Genghis Khan). That there existed a man and a woman that are genetic ancestors to every human being and had reached the phase of cognitive function that God was ready to assign them the task of first prophet/teacher/whatever strains credibility (at least for me). And that both of those conditions are met only 6,000 - 7,000 years ago strikes me as, well, NUH-UHHHHH. (I will concede that "fictional" characters is an overstatement, but will also note that that particular descriptor originated from Rob. I'm perfectly content to write that off as one of his strawmen)

You mean like the temple ceremony does?

Which confuses me. Everyone knows that the most surefire way to not get called as bishop is to actively campaign to be called as bishop. Still works for me!

Yes. Yes it is.