Vort

No, I don't think a total lack of sex qualifies as "something [the man] is just going to have to deal with." On the contrary, it's a deal-breaker. Spoken like someone who never was or will be a husband. Whether or not you "abhor" it isn't relevant. No, there are far bigger lies. And if you think sex isn't vitally important in a marriage relationship, you do not know what you're talking about. "Good sexologist" is an oxymoron. Please. If he lived without her for the first 25 years of his life, he could live without her for the next 25 years. Marriage is a partnership. The "for better or for worse" part normally said at sectarian weddings may be true, but it is also true that marriage is a partnership built on trust and truthfulness. If a woman is one of those who "just aren't extremely physically attracted to men", she should have told her husband that little fact long before the engagement took place. Isn't that part and parcel of the marriage package? Doesn't he have the right to assume such an integral part of marriage will be included in the deal? If it's a big deal in their marriage, then evidently her little brother is not asexual or unbothered by living in such a hellish situation.

I have no good idea. Disagree. Making a choice is not competing in any meaningful sense, certainly not in any sense I'm talking about. Not that I can think of. I believe competition is anticelestial by its very nature.

I disagree with the prevailing interpretation that differentiates between "salvation" and "exaltation". I admit that such a distinction may often be appropriate, but I do not believe that applies here.Paul and Silas were describing the first step needed. Belief is indeed the first part. And what is involved in believing? More than simply a passive intellectual acceptance of the doctrines proposed. Believing means that you put your heart into an idea, that you allow it to permeate you and change you. "I believe, Lord; help thou mine unbelief!" That's no passive intellectual exercise.

If your brother is bothered by it, he should not pursue the relationship. If he is deeply bothered by anything about her, however trivial or profound, he should not pursue the relationship.It's easy to get judgmental and condemnatory toward someone who doesn't want to marry a specific person because of that person's sexual past or accent or skin color or halitosis or weight or bad grammar or annoying facial tic or donkey-like laugh or love of stinky cheese or whatever else. Doesn't matter if you think it's a stupid reason. Doesn't even matter if you're right. A person gets to choose his or her mate for whatever reasons s/he finds sufficient. As long as that mate agrees, that's how it goes. People have chosen to marry or forgo marriage to a person for much stupider reasons than that s/he didn't like his/her friend's sexual past. If it's a deal-breaker for your brother, that's his business and his right to make that determination.

How awful. I hope a silver lining becomes visible in this cloud. My thoughts are with you.

We're lucky the universe itself didn't implode at the paradox you created. After a few million years of having our flesh burnt off, we might not think it so lucky, though.

She was probably just upset because she's always the last to know anything. I know how she feels."What do you MEAN the world is ending today?! No one ever told ME! How come I'm always the last to know?!"

You win. Congrats.

They're very funny and sophisticated. Go watch them.

Yes, I do. Please go watch them, and then tell me what you think.

This is tiresome (and from you, one of my favorite LDS-Net participants, that is most unexpected). You wrote: This is to me, by definition, stupid. One does not have a hemlock-eating contest. That is simply absurd, and is an intentional dodge of my point. It appears you are trying to "win" this discussion in "proving me wrong" by bringing up absurd, ridiculous examples. As I pointed out, this ironically illustrates my point.A hemlock-eating contest? Seriously? You are ignoring that the essence of competition is striving with another for the desire of mastery. If you don't desire the outcome, then you're not competing.When I play Chutes & Ladders with my four-year-old, it is not a competition. I have no desire to win the game. My only desire is to have fun with my child. When I play Stratego with my son, we are in competition, each trying to defeat the other. Hopefully, our competitiveness is subsumed in our enjoyment of mutual play; but I guarantee that if one or the other of us always won, the game would cease to be interesting or enjoyable. It is the competition we are enjoying, the idea of winning mastery over your son (or father). Is this Godly? Is this celestial? Then it's not a competition, is it? Unless the pageant "contestants" actually want to marry you.Seriously, Dravin, what is your point? In the years I've participated here, I have always appreciated your posts, and usually agreed with you. But this time I honestly cannot make out what you are aiming for. I welcome intelligent discussion and even disagreement with my thesis, but your points are not well-taken and not even germane to what I asked about. They're just sort of bizarre and irrelevant. It is as if I asked about "loving my wife" and you started making examples of how some people love bleu cheese or entomology, and how love can include things like slavery and cannibalism. You must know perfectly well that I am wondering about the very idea of competition. Bringing up outlandish or even stupid examples of "competition" where the prize is death or disfigurement or something equally awful doesn't address the point of my question at all. I can only assume it's an attempt to "win" the "argument" by proving me "wrong" with a bunch of ridiculous examples, like a "hemlock-eating contest" or a "beauty contest enforced by a dictator to pick his bride". On the chance that you somehow have completely missed what I was asking and your comments thus far are an honest attempt to deal with the question, let me ask something more specific: Can you give me an example of divine competition between celestial beings? Within Church leadership? Between Saints striving with all their hearts to build each other up? Do you think it's appropriate to have an elders quorum home teaching "competition" where the winning district goes out for pizza on the losers' dime? If we are adrift at sea, dying of thirst, with only one bottle of water left, ought we to have a competition to see who will drink it? Wrong. If you're competing, then you want the offered prize. Otherwise you are not competing. In what way do you see this being at all germane to my original point? Then you can quickly and easily give me an example of celestial beings competing with each other. Curious what you see yourself as doing in this discussion. It's not the way I used the word. Many discussions by their very nature are semantic, including most philosophical discussions. That is true in the present case only if you can't figure out what I mean by "competition", and that I don't mean something like "a hemlock-eating competition".

What did you think of the classic X-rated porn flicks Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas?

Can you name a competition where the point of the competition is to lose? (Bad jokes about weight and virginity aside.)Competition does not exist without a defined winner. If so, it's not a competition. This is partly by intent. I think the fundamental feeling of competition, of wanting to best someone else, is by its very nature prideful and thus wicked and unChristlike. I believe this is difficult for us to accept, or even to recognize, because our society is built on the idea of competition. Again, is there such a thing as a competition where the point is to lose? My point was that if people are ignoring or intentionally misunderstanding me and then using that as a semantic point to try to somehow "win" the discussion, it illustrates the non-celestial and ultimately self-defeating nature of competition.

I'm confused. Do people really, honestly not understand what I'm saying? Or has this become a contest of semantics? Because if so, that illustrates my point.

Early in this thread, selek brought up the unfair nature of the charges being directed at the Church leaders in this case. Several disagreed and mocked selek; few stood with him/her. Why is that? And when the irresponsible charges leveled or suggested against the leaders were shown to be unfounded, where were all the whisperers who had suggested such things? Did they come back and say, "Oops, look like my insinuations were wrong, guess I have learned a thing or two and will be more careful in the future before I shoot my mouth off"? Or did they simply stop posting, content in the knowledge that their names would not continue to be associated with the slander, even though the content and impression of the slander might live on -- both for those men individually and for the larger leadership, painted as they were with such a broad brush?

In terms of competition, those things are true by definition.

I remember Heaven's Gate. Weird and very sad, but not as awful as the Jim Jones-led Jonestown mass suicides. What some poor souls do in the name of true belief...

I disagree. Such things should be kept very strictly in secret and never see the light of day except to be expunged.Look at other no-longer-secret sex-related things and how normalized they've become. Even 30 years ago, a pregnant teenager and the guy who impregnated her were a shame to themselves and their families; today, it's business as usual. Fornication and promiscuity were things bantered about in locker rooms, not openly in mixed-sex gatherings. If such things must exist, I much prefer they exist in secret.

This is a timely reminder that those who live in glass houses ought not throw stones. Personally, I see nothing particularly strange about believing that God might appear to a teenage boy 200 years ago or an adult woman 2000 years ago or an old prophet today. But others might.My point was not to mock or even make fun (believe it or not). I was just wondering about the mindset of those involved. When they wake up, unRaptured, on Saturday morning, do they immediately accept that as prima facie evidence that the Rapture didn't happen? If so, they are either unaccountably confident of their own cleanliness before God or (more likely) their theology somehow "guarantees" them of a sure-Rapture-get-out-of-Hell-free card.

Every time I see this thread title, the words come unbidden to my mind, "Why? You need ten bucks?"

I'm pretty sure you have to give it to Vort.

If you are bigger, stronger, faster, and more skilled than I am, then I will never beat you unless I find a way to pull you down. That's competition.

Can you expand on this? How can I honestly seek to best you and come out on top while still honestly helping you to do the best you're capable of doing?

Are the Evangelicals who find themselves in bed tomorrow morning going to say, "Oh, I guess the Rapture didn't happen after all"? I mean, if they're not prideful, shouldn't they assume...something else?

My sixteen-year-old wanted to get his mother a T-shirt that read, "I like my men cold, dead, and sparkly."