PrinceofLight2000

I'm pretty sure you were already cynical, buddy.

*scratches head*

I agree. I clarified later. Sometimes I mix up tenses without thinking about it; while it started in the past and was its most severe in the past it's still an ongoing issue.

I would take the loan so he can get a better job sooner, but it depends on some things. You can always pay extra on the loan later, and also during his time at school to reduce interest. You should calculate how much it will cost to get the master's degree and then use that to determine how long it would take for him to save enough money to do it at his current position. If it takes more than 3 years I'd say it isn't worth saving.

do it do it do it

I think it can, but it doesn't do so by its own merit. Either way they'll still have to be rehabilitated, behind bars or otherwise. Putting someone behind bars is only really appropriate if they're a threat to the safety of others or their property, anyway, in which case they would need to be tangibly confined away from others. With that contrast then perhaps I am in a faction that is neither here nor there, since I have my own motivations that apparently go by separate reasoning.Food for thought: If I'm getting a ride in a wagon free of charge and not pushing it, what support am I giving to the driver? Mooching is GREAT!

Does the definition of marriage actually change just because the government says so? Well, if this isn't incredibly offensive then I don't know what is. The idea that making a sin criminally punishable will somehow make others understand the spiritual significance of the sin is a joke. If that actually happened, prisons everywhere would be cranking out fresh converts, but instead we have to teach the truth to them just as much. Your ideas, while well intended, are completely misdirected and futile. I place my trust in the prophets, but not in your methods. And we can agree to disagree on that note.

If they do, I'll move there!

You missed my edit.

You just blatantly ignored pretty much everything I've said so far. Laws that protect us from each other ought to be enforced by the government. All other spiritual laws ought to be enforced by God.

This situation would fall under the protecting us from each other category because the child is a third party without any capability of making their own decision. Same reasoning for abortion being illegal. I made my argument against the last part of your post earlier.

Then nothing more can be done, whether the former is included or not. This is how agency works.

The point there was to illustrate the abject lack of necessity of the former when the latter can be accomplished whether the former takes place or not, not to declare the two mutually exclusive. Although I still maintain that it generally skews the focus away from the spiritual aspects, at least insofar that prisons aren't penitentiaries, something that in all likelihood will remain true for a very long time.

I thought I made enough of a differentiation in my previous posts to allow for just an ounce of ambiguity, but apparently not. I didn't mean that I couldn't care less about ALL laws, only ones that assert that the government should protect us from ourselves.

And I think that trying to enforce laws of this nature is using that commitment in all the wrong ways. Is it better to fine someone or put them in jail, or to actually teach them why what they're doing is spiritually destructive?

Do we not believe that if we as individuals live righteously that we'll be blessed and spared? I couldn't care less what laws the government decides to pass when I know I'm in the right place committed to doing the right thing with others who are also doing so.

No. True discrimination would fall under the protecting us from each other category.I'm saying that because we have agency, any legal penalties that protect us from ourselves are ultimately futile because they don't address the spiritual root of the problem at all. They are counterproductive because they conflate true righteousness with merely following social expectations, which undermines everything the Gospel tries to accomplish. Can you think of any time in the scriptures that God took away agency and forced people to live righteously? And don't confuse it with presenting the consequences. There will always be spiritual consequences whether there are legal consequences or not, and ultimately anything God does in the scriptures is a spiritual consequence. See Vort quote for better wording. I'm not responsible for other people's motivations.

Yes, but I know now isn't the right time. If something changes later, then so be it.

Amen. Although sometimes the right time doesn't happen until even later in life, as seems to be the case with me. While my life has gotten a lot better than it was, I still don't feel ready yet. I'm not sure I'm picking up what you're putting down here. However, as a psych major, I totally agree that groupthink is terrible. Haha. I don't think the problem is entirely about taking the Priesthood duty to missionary service seriously. I think it has more to do with the stereotypes that have been created within the church that surround it, and those who believe or even teach those stereotypes need a new perspective. Again, I think it's just a matter of perspective and improperly equated concepts. Would it be more important that your daughter's future husband was of great spiritual character or that he served a full-time mission? Obviously (I hope), you'd prioritize the former. A lot of people think they're identical by necessity. Amen indeed.

I stand with you on abortion in this position, but not gay marriage. I believe the government is only obligated to protect us from each other, effectively ruling out rape, murder (including abortion), drunk driving, and embezzlement, not to protect us from ourselves. Assuming we're of sound mental capacity, anyway.

As far as I can tell, you're making the same point I am, either that or you're missing the intended message of my previous post. I have no doubt that this position is held by a lot of crazies on the left, but it's certainly not my position and it's definitely not the only way to approach the issue. I hate and always will hate judicial activism. My comment was more about the spiritual futility of the restriction, not the apparent legal implications of allowing it.

And as for tonight, pray.

Why would such a moral precedent need to be enforced by the iron fist of government as opposed to the conscience? What good comes from forcing someone to make a righteous decision when they don't actually understand the significance of it? There have been arguments from both sides of any ideological conflict throughout the ages that just because something is legal doesn't mean it's moral, and I believe that commonly used line of reasoning stems from the fact that righteousness isn't taught by legislation, only social expectations are, and inevitably when government is used to attempt to accomplish that end is also when righteousness begins to be confused as being simply a social expectation. We see it today. The phenomenon has been around for at least 60+ years at this point, if not longer.

I just felt like my story in this department needs to be shared. Don't worry, it won't be a thousand-page novel. As some of you may remember, I and my family have had various financial and medical struggles for many years now. I lost a good 3 years of my life via indecisiveness which originally started with post-high school laziness and gradually morphed into a period of anxiety and depression that I couldn't find a way out of. I didn't need any medication, I just needed to get my life stable again. I chose to not go on a mission. I did this despite direct and specific personal revelation that I will be going on a mission at some point in my life, which, at this point will probably be taking place once I'm married and retired. I received apparently contradictory personal revelation that I needed to stay home and get my life in order. During the time in which I was expected to go on a mission (after I had turned 19), it simply didn't feel like the right thing to do even though I hadn't seriously prayed about it at the time. I underwent mountains of pressure from family, ward members, friends, and my girlfriend at the time to "just go" and "let everything take care of itself". I didn't feel ready, and the cognitive dissonance that was taking place in my mind made me confused, and when I get confused, I become indecisive and idle. Naturally, the idleness made the anxiety problem worse. It got to the point where (and here's the bigger reason why) I finally realized that I wasn't actually emotionally healthy or mature enough to go on a mission. Because of what I was told by members around me, since I was in adolescence, I had always assumed that a mission is what brings your true, righteous character and self-reliant maturity out. I was wrong, and so were they. In reality, that character needs to be present before you go on a mission, otherwise you will never be an effective missionary. I came to this epiphany in the midst of my greatest trial, the chronic pain I have to deal with every single day. It gave me a lot of time to sit and really think about my choices and where they had led me, which resulted in prayer, which fed the decision I made not to go. At the same time, I believe bad things that are allowed to happen to one person can cause good things to happen to another. Had I left on my mission when most of us in the church expected young men to go, at 19, several things would likely either not have changed in my life, or the change would have been delayed so much as to cause additional damage, which I now know for a fact wouldn't have been good for me or for other parties involved. I would probably still be with my ex, who I knew deep down wasn't right for me but I wouldn't admit it because I, in my state of denial, bought into the lie that seems to permeate LDS culture (I see it a lot here at BYUI, actually) that you can marry anyone you want, even the first person you see, and if you work hard enough despite obvious signs of incompatibility then undoubtedly you'll be satisfied, nevermind personality or other relatively static factors that may affect your communication and relationship overall. But this isn't the most compelling aspect of this reason. Had I gone when I was "supposed" to, I would never have met my current girlfriend who is now converted and will be attending BYUI in just a week, she would have never been introduced to the gospel at a crucial point in time, and more than likely she would have committed suicide as a result of the psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents. The moral of my story is this: You have to be prepared for your mission before you go, and only after you've received revelation that it's where you need to be at that point in time. I had an LDS friend who told me that he left his mission because he felt that he wasn't prepared, and he taught me a valuable lesson. A missionary needs to be physically, spiritually, and emotionally prepared. I learned that I wasn't even close to being emotionally prepared for a mission, or for autonomous life. Now that I'm done sharing, I'd like to add a little commentary about missionary work in general. I dislike the way Mormon culture (NOT prophets or general authorities), at least as I've experienced it, treats going on a mission. I think it emphasizes missions in a way that can be incredibly spiritually dangerous and misleading. From what I have observed, going on a mission is more of a social expectation than a spiritual act. It's assumed that all young men will go, and that nothing will get in their way, and that as long as they are taught correct principles that nothing can get in their way. Missions seem to be treated as a duty to the church (I observed this amongst my young men's instructors) more than as a willful act of service and a virtue. Secondly, not going on a mission is a social stigma of the highest order in LDS culture, something I find incredibly offensive. Everywhere I go, I see young women refusing to date young men not because of their spiritual character, but because they didn't go on a mission, and worse yet I've seen the claim made here numerous times at BYU-I that missionaries are automatically more spiritually aware. At the same time, unconscious positive stereotypes exist about anyone who has served on a mission, spiritual character aside. I've heard many, many stories about missionaries sent home for doing abominable things and return missionaries who should have been sent home but weren't, and despite all of this being revealed there's still this cognitive dissonance in our culture that compels people to think that mission = saint. Even as I type this post, I worry, though perhaps unnecessarily, that I'm being judged for my decision. Lastly, I'd like to touch on the importance of member missionary work. Believe it or not, I think it's OUR job to be doing most of the missionary work, and that the true reason why we have full-time missionaries is to give investigators whom WE as members already made interested a deeper level of spiritual example and better, more precise instruction. The thing that we have that full-time missionaries lack is the ability to create more long-term, intimate relationships based on not just the gospel, but other aspects of life, which I believe can help break the ice and more easily open the door to mutual understanding. We, the members, need to be just as spiritually powerful as the missionaries so that we can find those in our lives who need and are receptive to the gospel because we're around non-members just as often! I feel like there are a lot of people in the church who get so wrapped up in their daily lives that they forget this obligation and justify their laziness by deferring to the full-time missionaries on grounds of unpreparedness, and the pressures and burdens of full-time missionaries are increased because of it. But we must be prepared. I wonder what it would be like if every single member did everything they could feasibly do to use their relationships to teach the gospel. I'm inclined to think that we wouldn't need full-time missionaries the same way we do now.