Just_A_Guy

https://askgramps.org/how-can-i-reconcile-the-message-of-gods-perfect-love-with-accounts-of-wrath-and-brutality/

The movie by the same name is well worth watching.

I’m not sure I follow you here. You’re saying that Christ can, while physically present, show someone a vision or “scene” of the future; except that He can’t show a particular scene from the future if Christ Himself is in that scene? (IE, to use a crass example: Dumbledore can show Harry scenes in penseive, except that the process doesn’t work if Dumbledore himself was in the scene that he wants to show Harry?) I’m not sure the scriptures rule that out. (I suppose I can’t think of a precedent for it happening, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s impossible). I’ve been watching, over the past week or so, a debate play out amongst LDS members about whether God exists “outside of time”. I do agree that God experiences time (He has, from His own perspective, a past and present and future). But I suspect that He experiences it in a vastly different way than we do—on a different “linear plane”, if you will, where many of the conundrums and paradoxes about time travel that we humans conjure up don’t apply as we think they might. Phrases like “one eternal round”, “one eternal now”, and the Lord’s manifestation and words to the Brother of Jared may be Christ attempting to “dumb down” those principles to something approaching what our puny minds can begin to comprehend; and the scenario @laronius posits of BoJ interacting with [from his own perspective] “future Christ”, intrigues me.

Erm . . . I’m white, and I trace my Israelitish ancestry through Ephraim, and I’ve *never* demanded the Lord apologize for His earlier policy of giving the priesthood to Levites and withholding it from my people. I’ve never expected Orthodox Jews to apologize for it, either.

How does this play into my earlier post about President McKay, who *wanted* to end the ban, being expressly denied permission to do so? Interestingly, in that same talk McConkie continues to embrace the ban itself as having been part of the Lord’s plan that the Gospel goes forth to different people at different times.

Some of them very much do; as evidenced by the perennial demands that the Church apologize for the policy and suggestions that its more recent statements (including the Gospel Topics essay) “don’t go far enough”.

We don’t know that. Many assume that, because they just can’t fathom the idea of God acting in a way that they’ve been culturally groomed to believe is universally unjustifiable. David O. McKay was ready, willing, and able to remove the ban in the 1950s. He prayed about it requesting permission multiple times, and was repeatedly told “no”; there are multiple accounts of people who heard him tell about this. Once we admit that the continuation of the ban past 1951 was at God’s instruction, it becomes awfully difficult to argue that the implementation of the ban could not have been at His instruction. Especially when there is both past and modern precedent for lineage/ethnic/“race”-based bans on priesthood ordination and/or temple blessings. (Even today, the Church won’t do proxy temple work for Jews in the spirit world except under very rare circumstances. Is that an error, or a temporary concession that God allowed His servants to make so that other facets of His work could go forward? We don’t like to think about the work of salvation or the Church’s mission including any kind of cold calculus that advances the work of salvation in one field at the expense of delaying the salvation of other individuals—especially when those individuals are statistical minorities or perceived “outsiders” or victims oof historical oppression—but it absolutely does.) When modern Church leadership says “we don’t know the ‘why’, and it’s best not to speculate”, they don’t mean “LDS progressives get to make all kinds of inferences and accusations and extrapolate links to modern-day issues, and LDS conservatives are bound not to offer any pushback”. They mean “we don’t know the ‘why’, and it’s best not to speculate”.

We don’t know the biological/mechanical reason. All we know is what Lehi said (2 Ne 2:23) and what Eve herself said (Moses 5:11) —that if they had stayed in the garden and had not eaten the fruit, they never would have had seed.

Yup. The issue comes when the NIV suggests certain constructions are in the Bible, that aren’t actually in the source manuscripts—when it presumes to offer clarity where the original is, in fact, ambiguous; leading Christians to a false impression as to what “The Bible” actually says (or, doesn’t say). As much as I hate to link to BCC, here’s a post by Kevin Barney from 2008 (back in the good old days when they were merely progmo, not full-blown anti) that gives some examples of how the NIV translators’ theological commitments subtly shaped the English text that they produced.

As I understand it, the NIV translators weren’t above “cheating” a little to buttress their own (Protestant) theology. I typically go to the Net Bible, or the NRSV. But yes, comparing differences between different versions can quickly become a fascinating pursuit.

I explain that by the sad-but-true fact that most Americans, sex comes before either politics or religion. One hopes, of course, that things will be different amongst one’s own co-religionists. 🙂

As a wise man said— “We’ll see”. As I understand it, it’s pretty openly known that he was going to sex parties and doing a lot of Epstein-type stuff, whether or not the women involved were actually minors. Mitt Romney has his faults, but he does show that it’s possible for a politico to live his life in such a way that if accusations like this cropped up—no one of any consequence would believe them. And sadly, a common denominator between many of Trump’s nominees (Musk, Kennedy, Gaetz, Hegseth) is that, like Trump himself, they just can’t seem to keep their pants on. That does tend to—uh—expose them to things like this. I suppose I’m rambling a bit. Obviously, being a sexual profligate (or a degenerate, even) doesn’t always make one a trafficker or a rapist. But I don’t see how Latter-day Saint conservatives/centrists can see all of this and not wonder whether the strength of the Lord is truly with us at this point when we embrace and defend and celebrate such morally bankrupt leadership (cf Mormon 2:26). I firmly believe that whatever we get out of this administration will be a mere fraction of what we could have had.

The DOJ hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory lately. But the Right under Trump needs to reconcile itself to the notion that at least sometimes, the reason a person gets investigated/prosecuted is because the authorities have a good-faith, evidentiarily-supportable belief that the person had in fact done something illegal. I had some hope that Trump would be more effective this time around because he would have no illusions about what is and isn’t attainable without Congressional support. It seems that either I was mistaken, or the Gaetz nomination is intended as a distraction/sacrificial lamb that will make it easier to get the other nominees confirmed. (Then again, maybe Trump really can keep Collins and Murkowski and Tillis and Curtis in line and get Gaetz through the Senate. I’m not holding my breath for that, though.)

In fairness—inability to give an articulate, concise answer in a debate-type venue may make one a poor politician; but not necessarily a poor president or legislator. If you’re a careful thinker and are given a question about policy—immediately seeing multiple sides of the issue (and quickly deriving from all of that, which is the superior side) is one skill set; but quickly distilling all of that down into a thoughtful, memorable, and easily-quotable sound byte that reasonably-accurately reflects your entire thought process, is quite another. Kamala’s supporters made that point; and while I don’t think it applies to her specifically—it is, as a general matter, often true. I am increasingly persuaded that the traditional style of one-on-one oral political debates in this country needs to die; to be replaced by unedited long-form podcast interviews with individual candidates and/or written debates done via dueling forum/blog post or news articles produced over a period of days or weeks.

I had only heard in general terms that Welby had resigned over the church’s handling of some sort of sex abuse issue. The treatment I saw was sympathetic and suggested that Welby’s resignation was an acknowledgement that since something happened on his watch, he wasn’t the guy to fix it; and that his willingness to admit to a new leadership was needed is an example for other Christian sects. But . . . if this was something he knew about for years and he accepted his last position knowing the situation, but still didn’t remedy until the public found out he had known about it . . . Yeesh.

Imma gonna say it: The “reason” isn’t that there’s a danger to the public. The “reason” is that someone in the Costco/Kirkland corporate hierarchy made the wrong political enemy.

I for one think it would be a repeat of 2018: he’d lose at convention, petition in and force a primary (which he’d win), and then win in the general.

BYU profs posting leftist screeds on their door (which precipitated this) has been a thing at least since I was there in 1999-2003. Stupid, but not disqualifying. As for what ensured afterwards: I’m hearing rumors that the professor in question is mentally ill. So . . . I feel bad for him. But not bad enough to keep him on the Church’s payroll in a position of authority over people who take the Gospel more seriously than he does.

FWIW Romney is retiring from the Senate; his successor (John Curtis) was elected this week.

Agreed. Though, I would note that choosing their own king seems not to have been a prerogative granted to the Jaredites. Nor were they under a divine injunction to withhold their support from secular rulers who failed to meet a common denominator of honesty, wisdom, and goodness.

Just a note: The story about Trump raping Ivana broke in a book published in the early 1990s, and then was discussed in a Daily Beast article from 2016 (this one, now behind a paywall). It cited to a deposition Ivana gave during their divorce case; the New Yorker has a 2016 write up at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/24/documenting-trumps-abuse-of-women Trump’s response at the time was to dispatch Michael Cohen to (falsely) say that New York law had a marital rape exception, and threaten the reporting parties with lawsuits. I’m going off memory here, but IIRC Ivana publicly issued a statement (knowing full well that her ongoing alimony depended on it) wherein she said that the encounter discussed in her deposition was not typical of her loving relationship with her husband, but that in hindsight she wouldn’t use the R word. YMMV, but FWIW when I looked at the situation in detail back in 2016 I found her initial statements persuasive; and nothing that’s happened over the past 8 years has changed my mind.

At some point, it seems apropos to point out that the proprietors and most users of this forum (myself included) are Christians (a religion whose founder died a convict), and belong to a sect of Christianity whose restorer was in a fair way to become a convict when he was murdered. There are many, many reasons to be concerned about Trump and to find his character abhorrent and even disqualifying. (For newcomers who weren’t here when I slogged this out in 2016: I believe that among other things he’s a wife-rapist, a general predator, an inveterate liar, and overrated in his business acumen). But we, of all people, should be the nearly last to assume that “the fact he was convicted at all, automatically makes him a bad guy”.

As I understand it, the Chinese are heavily investing in researching the military implications of this sort of thing (together with genetic enhancements of soldiers). I suspect that eventually, as a matter of security/military expediency, we are going to have to accept the notion of chip implants/genetic modifications of soldiers; and once they revert to civilian life and begin out-performing non-veteran workers there will be demand to make those sorts of enhancements available to everyone.

Why am I suddenly thinking of Teletubbies?

Greed is part of the issue; but I think the broader issue is "pride". Remember, in LDS doctrine a "Zion society" is the result of a rare alchemy of pervasive values/character traits goes far beyond mere economic communitarianism. It is characterized by communal worship, submission to a religious hierarchy, rigorous adherence to revealed scripture, rigid honesty, extraordinary subjugation of personal beliefs in favor of simply having peace (in both a temporal and spiritual sense), and sexual probity (see 4 Nephi 1). To the extent that scripture or history provide lessons, it seems that Zion societies tend to unravel when people a) don't trust the leadership and/or b) there is a pervasive feeling that a certain number within the community aren't even trying to do their fair share (and this feeling can be either among the "have-lots" looking downwards, or among the "have-lesses" looking upwards). If consecration in the Millennium functions as the United Order did--where private property and free enterprise do exist, and the consecration of excess income is voluntarily extracted through love rather than fear--then I think the old-fashioned capitalists (well, free marketeers, anyways) will do just fine there. (After all, it is the love of money, not money itself, that Paul describes as the root of all evil). The catch, though, is that the Millennium only happens after both the wealthy who are greedy and the poor who are shiftless, are . . . shall we say . . . "purged" from society; and indeed, from the earth itself. That's the problem with communitarianism . . . human nature being what it is, sooner or later you've got to start purging the deadweight. Who do we trust to implement the purges, and what happens to those who are purged? "It can't be worse than the status quo" often leads us into situations that are, indeed, far worse than the status quo ante. I have no problem with individual cities trying stuff like a community-owned grocery store to fill the gaps left by a food desert--it's not my tax dollars on the line. But I'm not optimistic it will work. I think the likely result is, it gets robbed with the same frequency as the private stores that previously existed and were run out of town by thieves. And then the mayor brings in the cops to protect this store, because it's government-owned--but then you think "gee, maybe if we'd just beefed up police protection in the first place, we wouldn't have had to go through all this rigmarole of setting up a state-owned store". (Plus, you get equal protection questions as to why this store, but not that store, gets government protection. It sounds awfully corrupt . . . ) I hear ya, and appreciate your perspective. I personally have a lot of skepticism about medical cannabis--I'd like to see scientific study of the substance legalized so that we can get some reliable data; but experientially it seems like for every four clients I see who have a medical marijuana card, two or three of them are pretty obviously using recreationally. I understand that clinical MDMA for processing trauma was looking pretty promising, and then it seems like the FDA randomly pulled approval--I haven't followed the issue closely, but it sounds like a shame. I tend to get pretty pedantic and sometimes prickly in the rough-and-tumble of debate, but please know that I'm glad you're still here. (By the way--we used to have a forum member who went by the moniker of "Godless" whose life story sounded a little like yours--former LDS, then agnostic/atheist; former military; socially progressive. Are you him, perchance? If so, welcome back.) We *should* bat an eye at the costs of incarceration, for sure. And to our credit, we conservatives been trying to limit them--by suggesting we not fund gender transition surgery for prisoners, for example. 😎 In all seriousness--this is a situation where we should probably be running the numbers and doing whatever's cheapest. But where people just point-blank refuse to go to treatment--incarceration is all we've got left. (And of course, lots of addicts commit other crimes that do merit incarceration, even if their addiction in and of itself shouldn't.) I guess my thought on that is: "Not my circus, not my monkeys." To my mind, the GOPers defecting to the Democratic Party are out of their ever-lovin' minds if they think they can nudge it back to the right. Systemically, the Democratic party is going to be a leftist organ. Since Jeffersonian days, they are the ones who have championed what Robert Bork called "radical [economic] egalitarianism" and "radical [moral] individualism". Iconoclasm, deconstructing and reconstructing society in pursuit of utopia, and giving short shrift to the experiential wisdom of the past, is practically baked into their DNA. It has been said that the "war on poverty", since 1964, has cost of $25 trillion. Assuming arguendo that it has indeed rescued 13 million people from poverty, then that's nearly $2 million per person. We could have given every one of those 13 million people an education at a private university for a cost of $50K per student per year, and had $22 trillion left over. This is insanity. Saying that PPACA "has its flaws", in light of the figures I've posted, seems like a study in understatement. And maybe there's a philosophical difference here. It seems to me that for progressives, doing something that inadvertently makes a situation worse is considered to still be better than doing nothing; whereas for conservatives, the reverse is generally true. What needs to happen, of course, is a free market. Use antitrust law to go after HMOs and health care providers that engage in anti-competitive behavior. Make them post prices. Let health care consumers shop for the best bargains. Prices began spiraling out of control when we decided we could improve health care by insulating both producers and consumers from the natural consequences of their own actions. I don't see how *any* of those could be helped by wage reform. The housing crisis is fundamentally a problem of supply and demand--too many people (and dollars) chasing too few dwellings. If you arbitrarily increase wages, then all you do is mean that there are even more dollars chasing the same finite number of dwellings; and prices go even higher. The only sustainable solution is to create more dwellings, and eliminate barriers to construction/development where we can responsibly do so. I dunno, brother. I think I just showed earlier in this post that, vis a vis the war on poverty--assuming it even worked, we spent $25 trillion ($83,000 per American alive today) to get a result that we could have gotten for under $3 trillion. The amount that Americans are willing to spend on people in crisis, is not the problem. The American welfare state, while well-intended, is quite simply a boondoggle on a level that seems unparalleled in modern history. And while we've had a number of budgetary brouhahas in which the GOP has thrown occasional tantrums over programs whose costs spin wildly out of control while yielding sub-par results--can we really point to large numbers of people who were turned down for federal programs like SNAP, or TANF, or WIC, or Medicaid, on the grounds that "you meet the criteria for eligibility, but we just don't have the money right now"? I don't believe so.