unixknight

My D&D group has always been made up of a variety of different people with different beliefs. We've had Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents. We've had Protestants, Catholics, Atheists, Mormons, Quakers. We've had gay, straight, bi. We've had Caucasian, latino, black. You name the demographic and chances are we've had someone play in our group at some point that represents it. This group has run almost continuously since 2000. That's right, nearly 20 years. I've DMmed for longer than that, but this club, this campaign world, has endured for that long. If my D&D campaign club was a living person, they'd be old enough to vote. In all that time, those differences between people has never once caused any significant drama. And in August of 2018, That changed. It began as a normal D&D game. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was that a new player (but very old friend) was joining us. We will call him Tony. Well, we were in the pre-game social phase, when the frozen pizzas are in the oven and people who haven't seen each other in a while have a chance to socialize a bit, catch up, etc. before the actual game session begins. At one point, a more or less tense exchange got going, from our more leftist members on how Christians are so very privileged in this country. This came from a friend we'll call Penny. When I asked her for an example of this supposed Christian privilege, the best example she could come up with was that Christians get 2 holidays per year where they get the day off. Yeah, that was really her argument. Apparently Easter and Christmas are proof positive that Christians are the privileged class. Well I don't know about you, but I've never gotten a day off for Easter since it falls on a Sunday anyway (I understand some people do, but that's not a very powerful argument.) And Christmas is as much a secular holiday as any other, oh and many pagan systems celebrate it too as Yule. So I made this point to Penny, who started becoming agitated. She'd already snapped at my son for having the nerve to say "punching up" isn't justified. ("Punching up" is the idea that a less socially advantaged group is free to be critical or mocking toward a more socially advanced group and that's fair game, but "punching down" is bad. This is a philosophy most often used by leftists to get away with their own version of discrimination and bigotry.) At about this time I left the room to go get the pizzas out of the oven, and took my son with me to help. While we were gone, something happened. When we came back with the pizzas, Tony and Penny were involved in a very heated exchange over the current social problems in Europe arising from the sudden influx of Syrian refugees. In a nutshell, Tony was talking about how these social problems needed to be addressed and remedied, and Penny was calling him a racist for saying these social problems were a result of these refugees. Now, I want to point out here two things. One, Tony is no racist. I've known the man for 30 years now and I can tell you with full honesty and confidence that there's no racism in him. Two, Tony is very direct in his way of speaking. He isn't rude or undiplomatic, he just doesn't sugar coat things. Penny, by contrast, lives in the leftist, SJW bubble that just doesn't get any other point of view. Her kneejerk reaction to Tony's comments was to immediately go to the racist card. Things were getting very heated, very fast, and before I could referee them back to their corners, Penny decided she would no longer sit and listen to Tony's "racism" and packed her stuff to leave. Tony, who is also quite a reasonable fellow, started trying to calm her down. He was apologetic (not that he owed her an apology, in my opinion), gentle, and managed to get her to stop at the door. The bickering continued at that point, with Tony sitting at the table and Penny by the door. It was like watching that video of Jordan Peterson debating Cathy Newman... where Peterson would make a point, then Newman would respond with "So you're saying that..." and then proceed to utterly misrepresent and twist the argument. This was just like that. After a minute of this, Steve got involved, telling his wife to either go or stay, but that her behavior was embarrassing him in front of his friends. Shortly after this, she calmed enough to rejoin us at the table, and was perfectly pleasant for the rest of the session. (Don't let that fool you. She was putting on an act. As far as she's concerned, Tony is a vicious racist, period, an will not hear any defense of him. I tried.) Now, after that session, I realized I had a very serious problem. Penny can be a very nice person, but her contempt for Christianity and conservatism in general has always been hidden, but she'd occasionally let it peek out. The Christians and conservatives in our group are well aware of this, but we've always just let it slide to avoid exactly the sort of meltdown that happened on this fateful evening. The problem is that Penny isn't the only one in our group who thinks that way, and those who see things from her point of view are a tight knit group of friends who also hang out when not in my D&D campaign. That meant this fire was gonna spread. At the time, I was running two concurrent D&D groups, each of which was about half and half between left and right wing thinkers. My fear was that this incident was going to spill over into the other group. This was going to come up again for sure, especially because I really enjoyed having Tony in my group. He and I hadn't played D&D in many years. Funny thing is, he isn't even a conservative. He's very centrist. So I followed up with an E-mail conversation with Penny. I was hoping she'd at least acknowledge that she'd gone too far. Nope. She sees herself as the victim. She doesn't want me to try and defend my friend, she doesn't want to discuss anything in detail, and she doesn't want to come to D&D games anymore if it means she has to triple check her words before speaking. (Which I can't believe she said unironically. This whole mess happened because someone else didn't triple check is words in front of HER.) That E-mail chain ended amicably between her and me, but I don't feel much better. So I scrambled the reactor, as it were, to avoid a meltdown. I discontinued both of my D&D games until I could come up with a way to deal with all of this. Ultimately, I resumed D&D in the beginning of January and invited only those who could play nice with each other in the sandbox. You see, the story I just told isn't the only example of friction between the two sides. It was just the straw that finally broke the proverbial camel's back. I *HATE* the idea that politics has infected my gaming club like this. I always felt that even though we may disagree on things, we all saw each other as people who all wanted the best for everyone in our country, just didn't see eye to eye on how to achieve it. What I've learned is that is NOT how some folks in the group think. At best, people like Penny see us as deluded people who do evil in the name of our God and need to be defeated. Well, I guess I should be grateful that she doesn't think we're evil. Or maybe I just don't care anymore. Has it really come to this? So Penny and her husband, another friend of mine, did come over and hang out with my wife and me one time since then, but I haven't heard from them since. Another VERY left wing friend who was in the group and I chat every single day through Skype, but our conversations never stray into anything deep or interesting anymore. I occasionally put out a feeler and he doesn't respond until the subject can change to gaming, or TV shows or something else like that. A good Star Wars discussion always brings him out, but with the latest Star Wars films becoming politicized, my list of topics I can discuss with him is shrinking. Is it time to start trimming branches away? Is it time to let it go? I never wanted to lose friends over politics, but the open contempt that my religion and my beliefs are shown by people who claim friendship has made it impossible to think about them without that accompanying resentment. Christians are evil. Conservatives are Nazis, but do not *dare* question them on anything they believe. I loved the idea of having friends with very, very different views... but in the current climate, is that even possible anymore?

I'd give my left arm to have been able to see that.

I think there's a flip side to the coin presented in the OP. While it's true that there's a problem when cultural influences start eroding the high, strict standards by which we live, there's also a problem, I feel, when people give themselves standards that aren't even doctrinal or are greater than what is set forth - and then view themselves as more righteous for living by them.

So the title of "protestant" is more important than the substance of a church. Interesting. It seems to me that if you attended church there, and it wasn't obvious to you that it wasn't protestant, then maybe that label is less important than you might have supposed.

I think it has a lot to do with wanting the world to see us as unusual, perhaps, but not incompatible with it. What I mean by that is (and I used to be guilty of this myself) it's sometimes hard, when telling someone about our faith, to resist the urge to present it as being easy to relate to. Sure, we can't have coffee and tea but some types of tea are okay and boy, do I sure miss coffee. I totally get where you're coming from! But it's not so bad because when I want caffeine I can just have a Pepsi so... see? We're cool! And yeah... I know sometimes members of the Church can come across as being kinda snooty but don't worry we aren't all like them... (However 'them' is defined... remember, we're cool!) Oh, and don't worry about those old things like polygamy or black people and the Priesthood... that's all in the past! We're COOL now! Oh, you heard that this or that is a doctrine that's really weird? Yeah, haha I agree it's weird but it isn't really emphasized/talked about/a big deal do it's okay you can ignore it when forming your opinion of our Church! I like to think I wasn't quite this bad, but you get what I mean. And if you do this, ask yourself whether it's really just that you feel embarrassed by some of this stuff. I don't particularly care if my non-member peers think the Church is cool. Not anymore. The world we live in had made it abundantly clear that its values are not our values... so why, exactly, am I supposed to concern myself with what people think? If someone is open to the Holy Ghost, then they'll understand the truth of it whether it's fashionable or not. It's not up to me to sell it with a hip, contemporary veneer to make it look more approachable.

Yesterday after Church, I had to go to a different ward building to meet up with the Stake Patriarch real quick. While I was waiting for him, my son (7) and I found a basketball in the multipurpose room We played around a little, shooting baskets and teaching him to dribble, and even though I got winded easily I still had fun... and that was key. I enjoyed it, in a way I don't normally enjoy physical activity anymore. I want that all back. Last night my wife and I had a serious heart to heart. We both want to lose weight and be healthier, but we've been taking all the wrong approaches. We've been undisciplined, we've been enabling each other, we've been trying to make changes "gradually" (which is another way of saying 'not at all') and while we've managed to avoid getting heavier, our progress has ground to a halt. So, we had a meeting. We made some decisions. We made some commitments. We are using the Real Appeal system to get coaching, track progress and learn. This is a system that's paid for by health insurance and includes lots of training videos, live coaching, a tracking dashboard, etc. We will train ourselves to regard a healthier menu as being "comfort food." Until now, "comfort food" has been defined as things like pizza, burritos, McDonald's, ice cream, chocolate, Pepsi, etc. We need a new definition for "comfort food" to be things that are, at worst, neutral. The problem is that healthy food takes more effort than junk. We committed to putting in the effort to keep and prepare snacks that make better health sense. We've decided to be more honest about what we like and don't like. If a particular food isn't to your liking, you will not be able to turn it into a pleasurable snack. So either train yourself to like it, or search for something else that will work. We will still have a cheat day. We will be treating junk food addiction in the exact same way as an addiction to cigarettes or alcohol or whatever. These things aren't easy to quit. If they were, nobody would ever die of liver disease, lung cancer or diabetes. We have to realistically approach as it is, and what it is, is HARD. Let's be honest. Trying to break an addiction by half measures and "I'll do it later" is like bringing a nerf bat to a gun battle. We will exercise and start doing Yoga together. The Real Appeal app has a lot of that but there's plenty more out there as well. I got myself a Yoga mat and she had one already. Yeah, it's a lot, and it's big, and we won't be perfect. But we have learned enough about ourselves that gradual weaning doesn't work with either of us. We do this cold turkey or we don't do it at all. That's just the reality. Today, I excavate my bike out of the shed BEFORE I start working on my sedentary hobbies. If the weather is nice when I get off work, I'll work on it outside. I have a handy, large shelf on the side of my shed I can use to work on it. Otherwise, I bring it down to my workshop in the basement. If that goes smoothly, I'll also get out the baby trailer and make sure that's ready to go too. ALSO if things really go swimmingly, I'll get my bike rack for cars and figure out the proper settings to attach it to my car. (The rack came out before my particular car model was a thing, so the instructions don't have the settings for it. If they don't have a website with updated settings, I can just figure it out.) I'm tired of being fat.

This is the element that I'm stuck on. It's very hard for me to picture a Bishop saying that it's "no longer a requirement." If that were so, it would be a HUGE change and would quickly become common knowledge.

It was a gradual process for me. I was raised Catholic, and was pretty comfortable with that for about the first 20 years of my life. Gradually, though, as I thought about things, I discovered that more and more I accepted what I had been told without really picking it apart to see if it made sense. I don't mean to disparage Catholicism when I say this, I just mean that there are certain things that felt like inconsistencies that I just couldn't reconcile in my mind. So, as a result, I started to explore other belief systems and other worldviews, even going so far as to spend time hanging out with the Wiccans at the university I was attending. Not that it made more sense to me than Catholicism did, but the more I learned about other systems the more I started finding little bits and pieces here and there that felt right and made sense. The problem was that I hadn't been able to find one single belief system that contained all of them at once... ..Until I started learning about this Church. I had been aware of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a long time, of course, but all I knew was that it was the denomination that had twice as much reading material and used to have multiple wives. I had no feelings toward the Church, either warm or hostile. It just was. One day though, I had a very deep discussion with a member who revealed to me a lot of things that make the Church not only unique, but these were things that fit the missing puzzle pieces of the picture I'd managed to cobble together in my spiritual wanderings. She offered to have a pair of missionaries come over to answer questions that she didn't have the knowledge to answer. I spoke to one set of missionaries at first, but they just didn't seem to know the answers to my questions, so we tried another set... and these were the ones who not only answered my questions, but told me things that made perfect sense, and cause my heart to leap. I was, at last, hearing the truth. The rest of my story rather strays from the point but suffice it to say that in time I was baptized and have been a member, happily, ever since. This was also gradual. I really believe that you can't be truly convinced of something until you've honestly and sincerely opened your mind to the possibility that it isn't true. So, over several years, I have pondered what the universe would be like in two scenarios: 1) There is a Divine Being who created us. 2) There is no Divine Being and we came from simple, random chance. Mind you, I spent years on this question, because I find the idea of self deception to be pointless and destructive. I'd rather be aware of an unpleasant truth so that I can deal with it than to splash about in the warm waters of a comfortable lie. To avoid a 100' wall of text, I'll just say here that in the end, I understood that the Universe and life as we know it cannot have come from random processes, and that a Universe without a Divine Being is not logically consistent with itself. To me, the phrase "God does not exist" is equally rational with the phrase "My rutabaga is faster than yours." It's a series of words that have no logical meaning in reality when formed in to a sentence.

Am I the only one who's feeling uneasy about CNN's sudden interest in bringing attention to the Church? What will they do with that attention later, I wonder?

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I think you'll find this to be a touchy subject because we hear this kind of criticism from all fronts. We hear it from friends and family, we hear it form the media, we hear it even in entertainment. Yes, world. We get it. You think we're backward and bigoted and whatever. Am I the only one who's old enough to remember when Barack Obama ran on a traditional marriage platform his first time? Until like, 5 minutes ago historically speaking, the idea of same sex marriage was pretty far from being a foregone conclusion. Now anybody who hasn't fallen in line is bigoted and evil and yadda yadda yadda. Am I the only one who saw the angry mob gathering around the grounds of the Los Angeles Temple right after Prop 8 passed, shouting the vilest, most disgusting things at the people inside? Threats of violence so severe that the LAPD had to ask to move their vehicles into the gated Temple grounds to protect them from the mob? You know, the mob that claimed to be on the side of "love wins," "tolerance," and whatever? So @Madam_Mim, I realize you feel like @Vort's response was a bit overly blunt, but please understand that this subject is one that's well worn and exhausting for us, at this point. We're a little tired of being told how mean and nasty and rotten we are just because we refuse to follow popular culture and celebrate what other people do in their bedrooms.... Especially in a world where, in certain other countries, homosexuality will get you thrown bodily off a rooftop.

It's not clear to me how we are treating homosexuals poorly. We don't go around harassing them. We don't bully them. We don't shun them. What, exactly are we doing that is "treating them poorly?"

He's talking about me, of course 😎

Aaaand this is what I thought of...

That's ok. We've always been apart from the broader cultural tides. I think even back in the 1800s, members of the church were known to be a "peculiar people." I accept that gladly.

This had never occurred to me, and the concept hits like a thunderbolt. I had always felt it was selfish for same-sex couples to raise kids without understanding the psychological ramifications on those children from not being raised in a balance of a male and female parent, but this elevates that exponentially.

That's probably cultural and not religion per se, since it's not found in the Qu'ran. Just a guess though. But yeah this sort of thing isn't new. Hamas has been playing the sympathy card against Israel for decades. Even Saddam Hussein tried it. Indeed it is, but it's an effective tactic because nobody likes to be called a racist. Even when the accusation is nonsense, it still works because when someone's called a racist, their inclination is to immediately go into defensive mode to show they aren't, in fact, racist. At that point the argument is lost because they've lost all momentum and are now arguing a point that cannot be won, to an opponent who actually knows already but will interpret the defensiveness as guilt. That's true but it's easy to defer to someone when you feel like you could take that power back anytime you wanted it. Once they can't anymore, they'll squawk. I also don't really agree that women are in power. There's a lot of lip service paid, but right now Harris is the only semi-serious Democrat candidate for 2020. The others are Biden and O'Rourke... White men. In fact, even in 2016 the field of candidates before the Democrat primary was much less diverse than the Republican field. They make a big show about being for diversity, but it isn't reflected in the actual leadership.

I think it may be as simple as low hanging fruit. I have a leftist buddy who honestly believes that Christianity is a greater threat - and produces more terrorism. Why? Because even though Christianity is only a threat to him in a vague political sense (we tend to believe in, and vote for, things he doesn't agree with), there are Christians surrounding him whereas anything evil done in the name of Islam is far away in other lands, and can easily be written off as difference in culture, history, etc... anything but religion. And why are they so sensitive on behalf of Muslims? Because modern leftists are always looking for a victim class to defend, and in Western society they perceive Muslims as being a victim class. Muslims don't[ have enough political power in the west to bring about any real social changes (even though Muslims would vote alongside Christians in 99% of issues, if not even more conservatively) and so they aren't seen as a threat in that same way. Here's the key: In the mind of a leftist, there is no real distinction between a Muslim and a person with brown skin. That's why they called the restrictions on travel from certain Middle Eastern countries "racist." They perceived it as being a ban on Muslims and therefore, brown people. Should Muslims gain a significant amount of political power in the west, you'll see leftist support for them change right on a dime I guarantee it.

It's an interesting question and there may very well be lots in there. For me personally, I don't think there's a connection, other than possibly around the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jewish people are all about wealth and controlling everything… I can see how that would run afoul of socialist thinking. Honestly, I think the current wave of anti-Semitism has more to do with the far left's* extreme sensitivity toward anything they even remotely perceive as hostility to Muslims, and the tension between Israel and its neighbors. *I want to specify "far left" because I do not want to cast too wide a net.

I believe it's because urban areas tend to be mostly Democrat, rural areas tend to be Republican. The nature of the Electoral College is such that it will always favor the rural areas, which is by design. As a result, only Republicans tend to benefit from it when it comes to the choice of President.

Not to nitpick, but this is an important distinction. It isn't the people, it's the sin that's the problem.

I don't struggle with it. God tells us plainly in Scripture what He thinks of it. Speaking purely from a standpoint of faith, that answer is enough. That said, of course we seek to understand what the reasons may be. God made us to be inquisitive so it's only natural to try and understand it. The only arguments that defend homosexual behavior are entirely emotion based, but emotion is not a particularly reliable way to understand the world or make decisions. Homosexual behavior is a far more complex issue than just a couple of consenting adults sleeping together. As a society, we already define certain such pairings that are either illegal, morally taboo, or both. As @Mores mentioned, and I also mentioned in the other thread, our culture looks dimly on consenting adults sleeping together who are within the same family unit, married to someone else, etc. The data tells a different story from the emotionalism. Studies show that problems in the gay community like depression, drug use, STDs, etc. are far higher than the average, but our culture makes it taboo to discuss that openly. That's a red flag right there. When it does get talked about, the blame is always laid at discrimination, but those numbers haven't gotten any better with modern culture shifting to be more accepting and encouraging of homosexuality. There are plenty of other arguments, but I don't want to derail the topic

The rules for interacting with the Darkweb are the same rules we tell kids: Don't open the door for strangers Don't take candy form strangers Don't talk to strangers And my personal paramount rule: When in doubt, EJECT. That said, it's actually harder than one might think to get into trouble on the Darkweb. All the nasty is out there, yes... but you have to be looking for it, and know how to look for it. Personally, I'm not knowledgeable about finding that sort of thing and my forays into the Darkweb have just been to look at a couple of index sites that have a handful of working links. Usually I would look for hacking tricks and such for my own personal edification, but that's about it. Like I said, I really don't have much use for it at this point. The first line of defense for Darkweb nastiness is its difficulty to find. Most things can only be found if you already know where they are.

What @Mores said. When we say "all are welcome" we mean it at face value.

You would still want to use a VPN, but tor does mask your origin sort of. The way it works is that it connects to the resource you want via a very in direct and meandering path, stopping at various points on the tor network in order to conceal where the original request came from. Combining that with a VPN would make you nigh untraceable.

You're right to be aware that the nature of the Darkweb enables a lot of shady goings on. That said, the Darkweb is infamous for that, but is far more, which can be very useful. For example, Wikileaks does a lot on the Darkweb, because it's extremely difficult to be tracked there, especially if you combine the use of a Tor browser with a VPN. Data and information that would be quickly censored or removed form the Clearnet can be found in the Darkweb. Being caught up as an innocent bystander in an online dragnet is nigh impossible. When governments go after shady actors on the Darkweb, they do it by tracking down the source servers that provide the content. That is incredibly difficult but not impossible... though they typically have to use other clues besides the data protocols and addresses. The Tor network is tailor made to prevent this. Innocents, and even the guilty who make use of these resources are pretty safe. As for viruses, well those are no different from the Clearnet. Stay away from nasty places and avoid doing nasty things, and you'll be fine. Search engines do exist on the Darkweb but, unsurprisingly, they only offer a very tiny sample of what's out there. For me personally, I've messed around with the Darkweb a little to become familiar with it and to understand how it works, but I have no use for it otherwise... at least for now. As censorship on the Clearnet tries to expand, the Darkweb may become our emergency escape hatch.