Vort

I don't know if your relationship will survive this. But to have any hope at all, you must come clean immediately. The longer your deception goes on, the worse it will be for you and your relationship.

Wrong question. The answer is obvious: Yes. A better question would be, "Should Latter-day Saints use birth control?" Of course, the ensuing argument would require a dozen or a score more qualifiers, and few if any would be listening with spiritual ears. So it would still be a waste of time.

If Elizabeth Smart went through nine months of sheer hell, I think Ed Smart suffered through a different kind of hell during that period, perhaps one even more bitter than his daughter's. He was the one who hired his daughter's kidnapper and rapist and allowed him into his house, all in an apparent effort to be Christlike. How could Ed Smart not have blamed himself? What sort of twisting effect would such an experience have on his (or anyone else's) mind? I have great sympathy for Ed Smart. I do not condone his actions in any possible way; I think it's shameful that a man older than me would up and leave his wife in order to follow his gonadal urges. I suspect that his actions, if not quickly repented of, will have a deeper, longer-lasting negative effect on his family even than his daughter's horrific experience, both now and in succeeding generations. But I'll withhold personal condemnation. I wouldn't trade places with the guy for all the gold in Fort Knox.

Ironically, "moving away" means almost nothing for an internet-based discussion group. Big upheaval for @pam, but unless she's planning not to manage the TH forums any more, pretty much transparent for most of the rest of us. Except, of course, she won't come see me any more when I go to Utah. Guess I'll have to make some Texas visits.

I'd love to come. Unfortunately, I won't be in Provo until at least the 28th, and probably not until November.

Lesson learned, apparently.

There are quite a few people on this forum that I would like to meet in person, and estradling is in the top tier of that list.

It's comprehensible because the church was small, but when you re present in hundreds of nations, its not pretty good to let all those people be represented by persons from only one nation. You have it backward. The apostles do not represent the peoples of the earth to God, the First Presidency, or the Quorum of Twelve. The apostles represent God to the peoples of the earth.

They watch General Conference in the DC temple? With red carpeting?

Dude. The Word of Wisdom is totally a CLASSIC! Not even Herod's server could make Daniel and Nephi smoke the peace pipe!

As a teenager, I complained to my mother about an older sibling's very obvious pretense of being all mature and grown-up. Mom told me something very wise that has stuck with me through my life: "Sometimes people need to fake being some way until they grow into it." Everyone understands and approves of the idea of genuineness. But a patient man is often an impatient man who holds his tongue. A loving man is often an angry, uncharitable man who holds his temper. This is how we begin to act like Christ. I do not consider such sincere efforts to be hypocrisy; quite the opposite. And I do not believe that there is any virtue in being a jerk in person as well as online instead of only online. In my experience, personal and otherwise, people who try to be kind in person eventually learn to try to extend that to their online persona. It's a facile and ultimately false argument to maintain that those who are less kind online than in person are hypocrites.

I often feel the same way.

I am constantly amazed that members of my former and present wards seem genuinely to like me. Helps me feel like I might actually one day be a denizen of Zion.

My son told me some very interesting stuff last week. He recently got his degree in something called bioinformatics, which is the intersection of biology and computer science. At BYU, bioinformatics is actually a College of Life Sciences degree, not a part of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (which houses the Department of Computer Science). So my son took quite a few biology classes, and he loved them, especially the genetics classes. We've had many hours of conversation about the stuff he learned, about histones and such. All very fascinating. The field has certainly moved along in the last 30 years since I was actively studying it. Anyway, we got to talking about taxonomy, which is how organisms are classified. For example, dogs are a type of wolf, so dogs and wolves are closely related. Dogs and coyotes are more distantly related, dogs and foxes more distantly still. Dogs and cats are related, but there's a long, long distance between them*. *So the taxonomy goes something like this: Among hunting mammals with claws and teeth for killing and eating other animals (Carnivora), there are two general types, cat-like (Feliformia) and dog-like (Caniformia). Dogs and cats split at this point. In the dog-like part, which includes wolves, bears, skunks, raccoons, walruses, and seals, among many others, there is a classification specifically for animals that are, let's say, very dog-like (Canidae). Two of the most common types of these animals include the fox-like (Vulpes) and the wolf-like or very very dog-like (Canis). This is where dogs and foxes split. Among the wolf-like, all the members there can interbreed to some extent, so they're all closely related. Coyotes are more distantly related to dogs than are wolves; in fact, dogs are today considered a type of wolf. When I was a boy, I learned that dogs were of the species Canis familiaris, which means "familiar dog", while wolves were of the species Canis lupus, or "wolf dog". These days, domestic dogs are classified as Canis lupus familiaris, which I suppose means "familiar wolf dog". The point is that the scientific community has recognized that there is no good point in dividing wolves and dogs, at least as far as genetic diversification goes. Dogs are truly just a subtype of wolves, a subtype that is much friendlier and more tractable and trainable. The asterisked comment above describes a taxonomy that was originally based on, basically, what animals looked like. These days, we're actually much more concerned with an animal's genetic ancestry than with the shape of its claws. This has resulted in many changes to the so-called evolutionary tree, some subtle, some earth-shaking. (By the way, counterintuitive and even ironic though it may seem, BYU has a very strong and respected evoutionary genetics program. You will find Saints of many stripes among the faculty of the Life Sciences college, including some of the most Christ-like individuals and Church leaders you are likely to find anywhere. But you won't find any evolution deniers.) So anyway, my son was telling me about recent (to me) changes in taxonomy among reptiles. Turns out that it was recognized many years ago that birds should be classified as a type of reptile, and that in fact (for instance) crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards or snakes. (So take that, @MormonGator!) Fascinating reading on e.g. Wikipedia, if you're interested in this type of thing. Crocodilians and birds are the modern descendants of the prehistoric, meat-eating, terrifying dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex. Absolutely amazing to think about, but actually quite believable when you look at a chicken's foot and realize that it's a one-twentieth scale model of the gigantic, terrifying feet you see in the dinosaur bones at the Museum of Natural History. Every Thanksgiving, I am wont to laugh maniacally at the cooked turkey on the table and say something like, "You ruled the world while we cowered underground! What do you have to say NOW? Oh, how the tables have turned!" But there is a deeper underlying point here. Taxonomy was originally developed just to try to sort out animals into different types that were somehow functionally "related" to each other. But we've known for a long time that different types of animals really are related to each other, literally. So taxonomy has naturally segued into not merely a differential description of what animals look and act like, but a family tree describing the ancestral relationship of animals to each other. If I were of a mind to do so, I could dwell on ideas of how taxonomic reclassifications are an example of the spirit of Elijah. Anyway, I find it fascinating. As a child, I learned of I guess it was six types of backboned animals: Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, and cartilaginous fish. Turns out that's not really a very good description of things. I look forward to see what tomorrow will bring in such areas of study.

I like to believe I would do the same, but I know myself well enough to wonder how true this would be for me. A month, sure. A year, maybe. But I fear that at some point my native immaturity and resentfulness might catch up with me.