Just_A_Guy

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  1. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from Vort in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    I generally agree, but will point out in partial response that the enemies of the Church are *already* emboldened by the mere appointment of a man whom they see as one of their own.  In their paradigm, all they need to do is usurp a few high-profile positions, and then the Church membership like sheep will quietly do the bidding of the libertines.
    I don’t want to unduly embarrass the Q15, but part of me also wonders if maybe it isn’t a bad thing for the libertines to know that they’ll never be able to wholly do our thinking for us no matter what positions—or even quorums—some of their allies manage to infiltrate.  
  2. Sad
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from mikbone in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    Didn’t it turn out that 4 or 5 of those guys did indeed have convictions for doing bad things to kids?
  3. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to zil2 in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    We do what we can righteously do, and then we stand still and see the salvation of God as he fights our battles, shows to all that he is God, provides means for our continued action, comforts us, and reveals his arm.  God is able to do his own work.
  4. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to laronius in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    This is a worthwhile question.
    My response would be take up personal concerns with leadership but do so in private. Publicly questioning Church policy only causes doubt in those who faith is weak and emboldens the enemies of the Church.
  5. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to Vort in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    In which case, God was tacitly supporting the so-called Priesthood ban by not revoking it, for whatever reasons he had. Thus it was divinely supported, whatever the circumstances of its original implementation.
    I know you don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I find the reasoning you described above completely unconvincing. We belong to a Church that we claim is the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. We claim that God the Father himself and the risen Jesus Christ physically stood before the founding prophet when he was but 14 years old. We claim that Joseph was given square plates made out of gold (!!) along with seemingly magical stones that allowed him to translate or somehow render the otherwise undecipherable characters engraven on these gold plates into English. We claim that each of us may receive revelation to the degree we prepare ourselves. We claim not only that we do ordinances through the very power of Jesus Christ, but that we can do them by proxy in behalf of dead people, and that such ordinances are acceptable to God and will be honored if the person being proxied receives the ordinances.
    But we are to understand that the same all-knowing, all-powerful God responsible for such marvelous, miraculous institutions was too afraid to let black people hold his Priesthood until the late 20th century?
    Nonsense. Remember, Joseph Smith ordained at least two black men of African ancestry to the Priesthood, one of whom stayed faithful throughout his life and reared a faithful posterity, and was apparently honored by those Saints who knew him. (At least, I've never read evil words about Elijah Abel*.) The very idea that God would cause all these miracles upon the earth and among his people, restoring his gospel and his very Priesthood, but then would chicken out from one particular instance of these radical changes because too many of the white members just weren't ready to accept black folks into fellowship, rings completely hollow. Remember, these are the same people who were willing to practice plural marriage, a far more reviled idea than that black people could be in fellowship with white people and others. It is my opinion that the only people such an explanation would possibly appeal to are those who have already decided that the Priesthood ban was wrong and evil, and thus are thrashing about, searching desperately for any explanation that might fill the obvious logical hole without abandoning LDS beliefs altogether.
    *By the way, and apropos of nothing in particular: Given the old traditional explanation of African blacks being denied the Priesthood because they inherited through their ancestry the curse of Cain, I've always found it entertaining that the most famous example of a black man holding the Priesthood early in the restoration was a man named Abel.
  6. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to Vort in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    To clarify (and my apologies if this goes further down the rabbit hole, but the response of my inner twelve-year-old would be "You Started It!"):
    What I said (or was attempting to say) is that, accoring to Greg Prince*, President McKay wanted to change the Church's policy with respect to who can receive the Priesthood. But in sincerely and repeatedly asking of God, he reported something like "the heavens were a brass ceiling over my head". While I realize that nothing a prophet says makes a particle of difference to non-Latter-day Saints, I would think that any faithful and believing Saint would interpret an utter lack of divine response to a Church President's direct, sincere, and repeated petition as just that: Silence from God. The man was literally asking God, "Can I ordain black men to the Priesthood", and God wasn't answering. If the policy of the Church was to avoid ordaining men of sub-Saharan African descent, how else could such silence from heaven be interpreted other than a negative?
    *Not that I find Greg Prince to be a particularly credible source, but I see no reason to disbelieve this.
    In contrast, when President Kimball asked that very same question of the Lord a decade or so later, he eventually received a clear spiritual response. When he presented the revelation to the Brethren, all testified that they received the same spiritual response. As a believing Latter-day Saint, I see no other reasonable interpretation except that God did not want LDS Church policy changed in the 1950s or 1960s or early 1970s when his prophet asked back then, but he did want it to change in the late 1970s when his prophet asked at that time. And if God specifically did not want a policy to change, then that is at the very least a tacit endorsement of said policy. Thus, at least to that degree, we can be completely sure the continuation of that policy was of God, regardless of how, why, or by whom it was instituted.
  7. Thanks
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from Anddenex in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    Time will tell.  My misgivings are that his expressions go beyond standard disagreement; it’s a fundamental loyalty issue.  Plus, it’s frankly a little galling—at the behest of Elder Holland and others, many of us spent a lot of time and effort defending the Church and its teachings from the criticisms of people like Sherinian. Many of those who did so under their own name continue to face stigma, discrimination, and career stagnation; while the buffoons they were defending the Church from wind up getting Church money, Church public recognition, and Church confidence.  It kind of makes some of us apologists wonder what the #%$@! we’ve even been doing this for over the last couple of decades; and feeds into a sneaking suspicion that the Church leadership doesn’t have our backs the way we’ve tried to have their backs.  I hope and trust that I’m wrong, but it’s hard to make those niggling doubts completely go away. 
    One of my comforts (other than knowing that the Lord is in charge, yada, yada, yada); is that for professional reasons I’m fairly confident that some things are going to come out in the next 2-3 months that will cause the Church’s PR guys quite a few headaches.  The full facts, if known, would tend to exonerate the Church—but few will be willing or legally able to provide any public statement that might independently collaborate the Church’s response.  (Incidentally:  buckle up, folks.  Take your vitamins, eat your Wheaties, say your prayers and read your scriptures and do all those things the prophet has been telling us to do.  I may well be wrong, but think it’s going to be an interesting year.)  If Sherinian is the snake in the grass that I rather suspect he is, he just won’t hold his job for very long under those circumstances.  He’ll either say something so stupid or off-base that the Q15 will have no choice but to distance itself from him—or the professional need to back the brethren when every fiber of his being revolts against it, will just plain make his head explode.
    And a potential silver lining here is that if he is indeed good, he’s probably very good.  I believe his wife Emily was the originator of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign from 10-15 years back, which I thought was extremely well done.  
  8. Haha
  9. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to laronius in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    A thought I had while reading your post is how, from the beginning, the Lord has involved in His kingdom those who would ultimately fall away if not completely turn against His Church. Whether it's Lucifer, Judas or many of the early brethren who disaffected the Lord does not seem to fear disloyalty. And I think this aspect of building the kingdom is only going to get magnified with time. He will strengthen and use their talents until they decide on whose side they are really on. And I think we may be surprised by which side some choose both bad and good. But what we do know is that all things will be made to work to accomplish the Lord's purposes. That may make it a bit uncomfortable for us but there is purpose to that too.
  10. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from MrShorty in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    Time will tell.  My misgivings are that his expressions go beyond standard disagreement; it’s a fundamental loyalty issue.  Plus, it’s frankly a little galling—at the behest of Elder Holland and others, many of us spent a lot of time and effort defending the Church and its teachings from the criticisms of people like Sherinian. Many of those who did so under their own name continue to face stigma, discrimination, and career stagnation; while the buffoons they were defending the Church from wind up getting Church money, Church public recognition, and Church confidence.  It kind of makes some of us apologists wonder what the #%$@! we’ve even been doing this for over the last couple of decades; and feeds into a sneaking suspicion that the Church leadership doesn’t have our backs the way we’ve tried to have their backs.  I hope and trust that I’m wrong, but it’s hard to make those niggling doubts completely go away. 
    One of my comforts (other than knowing that the Lord is in charge, yada, yada, yada); is that for professional reasons I’m fairly confident that some things are going to come out in the next 2-3 months that will cause the Church’s PR guys quite a few headaches.  The full facts, if known, would tend to exonerate the Church—but few will be willing or legally able to provide any public statement that might independently collaborate the Church’s response.  (Incidentally:  buckle up, folks.  Take your vitamins, eat your Wheaties, say your prayers and read your scriptures and do all those things the prophet has been telling us to do.  I may well be wrong, but think it’s going to be an interesting year.)  If Sherinian is the snake in the grass that I rather suspect he is, he just won’t hold his job for very long under those circumstances.  He’ll either say something so stupid or off-base that the Q15 will have no choice but to distance itself from him—or the professional need to back the brethren when every fiber of his being revolts against it, will just plain make his head explode.
    And a potential silver lining here is that if he is indeed good, he’s probably very good.  I believe his wife Emily was the originator of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign from 10-15 years back, which I thought was extremely well done.  
  11. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from zil2 in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    Time will tell.  My misgivings are that his expressions go beyond standard disagreement; it’s a fundamental loyalty issue.  Plus, it’s frankly a little galling—at the behest of Elder Holland and others, many of us spent a lot of time and effort defending the Church and its teachings from the criticisms of people like Sherinian. Many of those who did so under their own name continue to face stigma, discrimination, and career stagnation; while the buffoons they were defending the Church from wind up getting Church money, Church public recognition, and Church confidence.  It kind of makes some of us apologists wonder what the #%$@! we’ve even been doing this for over the last couple of decades; and feeds into a sneaking suspicion that the Church leadership doesn’t have our backs the way we’ve tried to have their backs.  I hope and trust that I’m wrong, but it’s hard to make those niggling doubts completely go away. 
    One of my comforts (other than knowing that the Lord is in charge, yada, yada, yada); is that for professional reasons I’m fairly confident that some things are going to come out in the next 2-3 months that will cause the Church’s PR guys quite a few headaches.  The full facts, if known, would tend to exonerate the Church—but few will be willing or legally able to provide any public statement that might independently collaborate the Church’s response.  (Incidentally:  buckle up, folks.  Take your vitamins, eat your Wheaties, say your prayers and read your scriptures and do all those things the prophet has been telling us to do.  I may well be wrong, but think it’s going to be an interesting year.)  If Sherinian is the snake in the grass that I rather suspect he is, he just won’t hold his job for very long under those circumstances.  He’ll either say something so stupid or off-base that the Q15 will have no choice but to distance itself from him—or the professional need to back the brethren when every fiber of his being revolts against it, will just plain make his head explode.
    And a potential silver lining here is that if he is indeed good, he’s probably very good.  I believe his wife Emily was the originator of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign from 10-15 years back, which I thought was extremely well done.  
  12. Surprised
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from mikbone in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    Time will tell.  My misgivings are that his expressions go beyond standard disagreement; it’s a fundamental loyalty issue.  Plus, it’s frankly a little galling—at the behest of Elder Holland and others, many of us spent a lot of time and effort defending the Church and its teachings from the criticisms of people like Sherinian. Many of those who did so under their own name continue to face stigma, discrimination, and career stagnation; while the buffoons they were defending the Church from wind up getting Church money, Church public recognition, and Church confidence.  It kind of makes some of us apologists wonder what the #%$@! we’ve even been doing this for over the last couple of decades; and feeds into a sneaking suspicion that the Church leadership doesn’t have our backs the way we’ve tried to have their backs.  I hope and trust that I’m wrong, but it’s hard to make those niggling doubts completely go away. 
    One of my comforts (other than knowing that the Lord is in charge, yada, yada, yada); is that for professional reasons I’m fairly confident that some things are going to come out in the next 2-3 months that will cause the Church’s PR guys quite a few headaches.  The full facts, if known, would tend to exonerate the Church—but few will be willing or legally able to provide any public statement that might independently collaborate the Church’s response.  (Incidentally:  buckle up, folks.  Take your vitamins, eat your Wheaties, say your prayers and read your scriptures and do all those things the prophet has been telling us to do.  I may well be wrong, but think it’s going to be an interesting year.)  If Sherinian is the snake in the grass that I rather suspect he is, he just won’t hold his job for very long under those circumstances.  He’ll either say something so stupid or off-base that the Q15 will have no choice but to distance itself from him—or the professional need to back the brethren when every fiber of his being revolts against it, will just plain make his head explode.
    And a potential silver lining here is that if he is indeed good, he’s probably very good.  I believe his wife Emily was the originator of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign from 10-15 years back, which I thought was extremely well done.  
  13. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to LDSGator in LDS Church's New Managing Director for Church Communication   
    This guy worked for Phillip Morris? A company you can say, without hyperbole, is accountable for millions of deaths. We all need to feed our families and they can say whatever they want now about anti smoking, but that’s repulsive. 
  14. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from Carborendum in I'm NOT Raising a Red Flag... But I Am.   
    In the abstract, I have no problem with states determining that certain candidates are ineligible to run.  I think it strengthens the role of states in the electoral system.  But of course, any regimen that tends to exclude a particular candidate would still have to pass muster under a due process analysis; and I have no idea whether the states in question have afforded due process to Trump (and whether the underlying statutory regimens are truly tenable) or not.
    I rather wonder, though, whether Kamala Harris couldn’t be excluded from office under those same statutes; since I believe her campaign was involved in raising bail funds for BLM rioters (including resistors of arrest and, possibly, courthouse/state capitol occupiers).
  15. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to Carborendum in We Finally Understand the Link between Honesty and Chastity.    
    I’ve made statements to the effect that truth and chastity are inseparably connected.  This was based on the metaphoric “Armor of God.”  The Girdle of Truth is often associated with chastity (protects the privates).
    I had pointed to Hamlet asking if Ophelia was honest.  This was a double meaning.  He was first asking if she was being serious about giving his keepsakes back to him.  But he realized something was up, and that they were probably being spied upon.  So, he took it a different way.  He turned it into a question about her chastity.
    A man who got a woman pregnant needed to marry her which would “make an honest man out of him." 
    Pres Kimball wrote of the relationship between honesty and chastity very briefly in The Miracle of Forgiveness.
    Even with all that, I recognized that in our generation, we don’t quite seem to understand what honesty & chastity have to do with one another.  Part of that is modern religion.  Part of that is modern culture.
    Jordan Peterson said,”Sex has never been free.  There were always consequences.  Casual sex is a myth.  There is always some sort of emotional exchange and bond formed.”
    He brought up the idea that children are always a possible consequence of casual sex.  With today’s wide and affordable access to contraceptives, there does appear to be a crack in the wall.  But because we’ve only had both cheap contraceptives and widespread casual sex in the culture for maybe one generation, we don’t have enough data to determine if that really changes anything.  So, it is too early to tell if this technology changes thousands of years of history and evolution or not.
    Recently, I’ve done a lot of learning about male-female relationships in today’s society.  One thing that had me worried was why my children and all my nieces and nephews were having such difficulty finding an eternal companion.  I count 14 young adults of marriageable age. Only three are married. One solidly moving toward engagement.  One more has a prospect, but the more I observe that one, the more misgivings that relationship is generating.  We’ll see.
    Many of these young adults are finding it difficult to find someone who is even interested in getting married.  One of them has no interest in finding a girl because of the maneaters out there.  He doesn’t know if he can find a girl that won’t just destroy him like two of his uncles have experienced.  He is a textbook hermit. 
    He works from home with a fine paying job.  And he’s looking to double his income by taking a few more classes.  He’s making a lot of money, has few expenses.  And he is a savvy investor.  He’ll probably be a millionaire by 30.  But what woman out there is going to be his proper match and value an eternal marriage?
    We see declarations of such “strong-independent-modern-women” (SIMW) who don’t need a man, but still expect her man to make more than she does to prove he’s worthy of her.  Really?  What logic generates that?
    These SIMW only look for rich SIMPs.  But if a man is really all-that then why would he want a woman who will walk all over him?  SIMW want to lead except for the times that she is tired of leading.  Then she expects the SIMP to immediately take the reins and know exactly what to do and make all the right decisions that she must eventually approve of.  Are they being honest with themselves?
    SIMW goes to gyms with barely anything on and sets up her exercise station directly in front of a man who has been working out for the last 10 minutes.  Then she raises a stink about how he’s checking her out.  Is this honest behavior?
    SIMW decides that she no longer needs a man and divorces him because she wants to lead her “authentic life” for real fulfillment.  And BTW, she wants joint custody with 100% child support and a ton of alimony.  Is she for real?
    SIMW refuses to get married until she can find a man with $300k income, over 6ft tall, and is a 10.  She believes this is possible because that is what social media says she can do.  Nevermind that she has never gone to the gym, herself, and she has a seriously high body-count, and she doesn’t even make $30k/yr.  Is her head screwed on straight?  She wouldn’t know truth if it hit her in the face.  No, social media says she's a 10 and can bag any man.  No problem.
    Now, what about men?  When women behave like this, it is all too easy for men to forsake marriage.  Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?
    Where is commitment?  What is commitment?  Men just take what they can get whenever they can.  But now we see a lot of men leaving the dating/marriage market entirely because they know that they always get the shaft.  From me too fraud to divorce always favoring the woman (especially no-fault divorce) men know what a high risk merely dating can be, let alone marriage.  Why?  Because there is no trust.  No one is honest anymore.
    Honesty is always linked to chastity.  If your chosen partner has a high body count, then how can you trust them?  They never made a commitment about the most intimate decision of their lives.  They chose intimacy and made it like playing a video game.  It’s just something you do when you have the time.  You can take it and leave it.
    If you’re flippant about committing to intimacy, then you’re flippant about committing to anything.
    BIOLOGY: Oxytocin has been called the “cuddling hormone.”  A great deal of it is released during intercourse.  It is not merely a sexual high.  It is an emotional bonding high.  It is also released when mothers nurse their babies, so it is not just a sexual thing.
    When we engage in intercourse so often without even really considering a relationship, our very biology is getting screwed up.  The oxytocin is trying to tell you that the person that you just shared this with needs to be with you.  You need to stay.  You need to commit to a relationship.  When we ignore and treat casually such biological signals, it messes with our entire psychology related to commitment and keeping promises.
    This is why Balaam was able to destroy the children of Israel by sending in the loose women to tempt the men away.  There is never any such thing as casual sex.  There is always a consequence.  And refusing to acknowledge that consequence/responsibility is dishonest.
    It doesn’t matter if we avoid tyrannical government.  Hollywood already introduced casual sex into this society when I was a kid.  Yes, there was always some of it in any society.  But "society" at least knew it was wrong.  It wasn’t until the 80s where it started being considered acceptable behavior.  And it was during the Friends era that it became expected.
    When society stopped being honest, we were all ready to listen to any politician tell us anything. And we'd believe it.  Not because we had confirmation by the Holy Ghost, but because it was pleasing to our ears.  And pleasure without responsibility is all we wanted.
  16. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to mikbone in Female angels?   
    Zechariah 5:9 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven.
    D&C 138:39 And our glorious Mother Eve, with many of her faithful daughters who had lived through the ages and worshiped the true and living God.
    https://bhroberts.org/records/jFuxrc-9SdpGb/zebedee_coltrin_recalls_an_account_of_joseph_smith_seeing_father_adam_and_mother_eve_in_a_vision
     
  17. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to Vort in Female angels?   
    By definition, angels are messengers from God. Angelic visitations recorded in scripture are almost always to prophets and devout believers (with Paul, Alma, and the sons of Mosiah standing out as stark exceptions). These visitations seem to me to have the quality of a Priesthood assignment, which might therefore be considered a Priesthood responsibility. This would explain why the angels we read of in these visitations are male.
  18. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to Carborendum in Newest Apostle   
    Interesting.  I had a 10th grade English teacher who had a list of 1600 words taken from the literary classics which we were to read throughout the year. 
    At the time, I thought they were big time words.  But over the years, I heard them all over the place.  Yet I'm surprised at how many people either don't know these words or use them incorrectly.
    "Hirsute" was brand new to me.
  19. Like
    Just_A_Guy reacted to NeuroTypical in LDS Opinion on Appropriate Missionary Behavior   
    Ok @old, I'm calling it.  We've let you have a good 6 pages of venting your issues about your ward and it's members, and your leadership.   I'll go ahead and close this thread now, I think everyone has had ample opportunity to weigh in, not only on the thread topic, but also your personal story.  Again, I'm not judging here, but I will take the opportunity to remind everyone of site rule #1, which everyone agreed to in order to post here:
     
    If you feel like you still need a platform from which to voice your grievances anonymously and publicly, I can forward you to mormondialogue.org, which has no such rule.  But consider yourself put on notice, we're done with the bishop and SP bashing, and the theology and doctrine 2nd guessing. 
     
  20. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from Anddenex in Newest Apostle   
    You’re right about definitions varying.  Race, in Brazil, is tied just as much to economic status as to actual skin tone.  You can take two people of identical skin appearance, and based on dress and grooming and deportment and accent and other cues about wealth/stability, one will be dubbed “preto” (“dark”) and the other won’t. 
    That’s another reason this whole business of whining about the race of the various members of the Q12 is so silly—progressive members are, ironically, imposing an American notion of what globalism is supposed to look like.  
  21. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from Anddenex in Newest Apostle   
    1.  Erm . . . Uchtdorf’s family was refugees because their ethnicity in their particular area was on the losing side of World War II.  Gong’s dad, I understand, was a professor at San Jose State (a minor school . . my mom went there) —secure, but likely not particularly wealthy.  And Gong was working at the US embassy in Beijing when Tiananmen Square happened, so . . . there’s that . . .
    But perhaps the complaint about Gong’s “white upper middle class values” is the really revealing part here.  Maybe we don’t actually care what color the apostles’ skins are, or how poor they are/used to be, or even what country they’re from; but we care very much about their being hostile to the cultural mores to which we are hostile and to which we think any God worthy of our worship must be similarly hostile.  
    Is the problem really that apostles like Uchtdorf, Nelson, Oaks, and Soares were ostensibly born with some imagined degree of privilege?
    Or is it that their life stories hew uncomfortably close to a Horatio Alger novel; and we recoil at the notion of that being seen as a model for Saints in the third world, because we’ve committed ourselves to an economic/ political philosophy that denies such rags-to-riches stories based in WASP-y notions of hard work and education and creativity and self-sacrifice and family and faith and friendship and individual virtue are even possible?
    2.  This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but . . . BYU (and the other CES schools, and perhaps increasingly the PEF as well) are that leadership training program.  My first mission president was Carlos Godoy—grew up lower-middle class in southern Brazil, converted to the Church as a teenager, went to college, married young, Master’s degree at BYU, management track at a series of multinational corporations, hiatus as a mission president while still in his 30s, corporate consulting work, and then the Q70 and now the presidency of the 70.
    But with regard to Church leadership specifically:  I think one of the strengths of the Church is that theres no “leadership track” that individual members can pursue with the likely end of a role in the global church hierarchy.  Keeps the riffraff out.  I daresay that a number of secularist/ partisan think tanks have spent a lot of frustrating hours trying to figure out how they might infiltrate the LDS Q70/Q12 the way they’ve infiltrated the leadership of so many other modern institutions; to remarkably little avail.
  22. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from Anddenex in Newest Apostle   
    Lemme get this straight:
    —Two of the last three apostles are men of color; one of whom is in an interracial marriage (which I’ll bet has never created any difficulties for him) and the other of whom is from Latin America (but is still privileged because he chose to take a clerical job as a teenager and went on to get an accounting degree). 
    —But:  we’re concerned because the third apostle is
         —an Englishman
         —who was born on the Scottish border
         —and spent much of his youth in Saudi Arabia
         —(where his dad was apparently a weapons contractor),
         —and spent much of his Church ministry advocating for refugees—
    And thus, is ill-suited to properly comprehend the problems posed by ethnic tensions and/or poverty?
    And we’re also going to keep kvetching that the recently-called apostles are, on the whole, “too white”?
  23. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from zil2 in Newest Apostle   
    I was privileged (ulp!  There’s that word again) to have a 10th grade English teacher who insisted on giving us weekly vocabulary lists (and, thereafter, tests) of really obscure words.  That was one of them.  
  24. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from Carborendum in Newest Apostle   
    I was privileged (ulp!  There’s that word again) to have a 10th grade English teacher who insisted on giving us weekly vocabulary lists (and, thereafter, tests) of really obscure words.  That was one of them.  
  25. Like
    Just_A_Guy got a reaction from askandanswer in Another Utah influencer arrested, or, pride cycles   
    I get where you’re going here; and generally agree.  But I would note that I think it’s a rare Saint who vets potential counselors solely on their Church membership status or hires the first Mormon counselor they run across.
    I cannot speak as to the particular case under discussion in this thread.  But I stand by my general comments earlier in this thread and will propose that the problem with most of the nominally/formerly LDS families who wound up in the news over the past few years isn’t that they listened to their bishops too much; it’s that they didn’t listen to their bishops closely enough.