MrShorty

As a musician, I am familiar with all of those. Now Thank We All, Our God is probably less well known because it is often associated with Thanksgiving, and, since we only sing 2 or 3 of our 5 or so Thanksgiving hymns on one (maybe two) Sunday during the year, it is easy for one to "fall through the cracks". For the Strength of the Hills is one of those pioneer/Utah-centric hymns that will probably only be sung around the 24th of July or other occasional sacrament meeting where the local leader decide to commemorate the westward trek and establishment of Deseret in the western US. The others are sacrament hymns and will be chosen based on the whims of whoever chooses sacrament music. If they are already less well known, those in charge will tend to choose better known hymns.

I think this is something I see frequently in science reporting/journalism. "Breakthrough" makes a much better headline and a more compelling article, but it seems that a lot of what is labeled a breakthrough is really an incremental improvement. But no one -- especially lay people -- wants to read about a bunch of incremental improvements. We want to read about breakthroughs. It sometimes seems like journalism in general (not just in reporting on science and technology) is becoming more about sensational headlines and such than "just the facts" kind of reporting. What to do about it? I don't know. (Other than get on various internet discussion sites and groups and complain about the decline in journalism -- that's kind of fun).

As for old technology, the amateur astronomer in me says that we've been building reflector telescopes and accidentally pointing them at the sun to burn skin and eyes and eyepieces and such since Isaac Newton. My impression from CNN's article was that the use of artificial intelligence was the new aspect they were exploring. It would probably take someone like @Traveler (who seems to know something about AI) to really say if this is novel.

Could it be happening? Yes, I'm fairly confident that the probability of such a thing is much greater than 0. How common I don't know, nor do I have any good ideas for actually measuring how common it is. In short, I believe it happens. I believe it has happened to me. I'm not sure what to really do about if, if anything should be done about it at all. Overly compelled? I think there is some peer pressure (or similar) say that we know the Church is true, but I'm not sure how "overly" compelling that pressure is. Speaking only for myself, I have said that I know something is true when my confidence in that thing was really not strong enough to warrant the I know part of the statement. Some of that could have been the heat of the moment (sometimes emotions are running high during the testimony meeting). Some of it could be immaturity. Peer pressure like that was much stronger when I was younger, but now I don't feel the same need to live up to expectations. If my confidence is only I believe or I hope, then that's how I express my testimony, I feel less compelled to overstate my testimony than when I was younger. To @Just_A_Guy's point, this is certainly something I would only judge for myself -- whether I am overstating my testimony due to peer pressure. I don't want to set myself up as any kind of judge over whether someone else is overstating their testimony.

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Milk" -- My grandfather was a dairy farmer, though not Italian. Close enough?

I've tried to listen to some of it, and it has been as cringeworthy as I expected. They have adopted a standard debate format. Jeremy clearly has the advantage of 2000 years of rigorous Christian theology behind him and Kweku is disadvantaged by a theology that has much less time and a certain disdain for rigorous philosophy/theology. Jeremy, as a good "sola scriptura" Christian leans heavily on Biblical authority (or, at least, his mainstream interpretation of the Bible). I think I've had as much as I can take. I may pick it back up if they leave the recording up, but I don't know. I still wish we had a better model for dialoguing about our differences that was less adversarial.

If Jana Riess and Ben Knowles data is right, there is a segment of the younger generations that would be perfectly happy in that particular offshoot Church. By the by -- don't I recall @prisonchaplain once saying something about coffee being something he couldn't give up -- being from the Seattle area and all? Perhaps he would be interested in this offshoot?

Amen. The notion, to me, minimizes the quest for truth into a "winner/loser" scenario where the winner is decided by who has the best talking points, can think on his/her feet the fastest, whose [human] logic is deemed best, etc. Couple that with the topic "Who is God", which is a topic that I think most of us will agree is difficult at best to really understand with our mortal understanding let alone the ability to express it in a logically coherent manner (or maybe it is just me that has trouble), and a standard debate just does not feel like the right format for discussing and discovering God. Part of me would like to hope that it can become something more like a discussion/discovery of similarities and differences (like Robinson and Blomberg's book How Wide the Divide) rather than a need to press for a winner/loser debate. I guess I am not optimistic that it becomes that.

Heard this announced on the radio, then saw the ad on Facebook, so I thought I would post it here -- just in case anyone is interested. It appears that Kwaku from the Saints Unscripted youtube show is going to Payson Bible Church to discuss/debate who is God Friday evening. They claim they will live stream it. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it -- not sure how any of you would feel about it, but however we feel about it doesn't matter. I couldn't find a better event announcement than the one on PBC's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1421362644679415/

When I was young (during MG's Satanic Panic), I picked up a copy of the game, then got rid of it because my friends and I who were getting started with me bought into the "devil worship" angle. Later, as I got older and less naive, I discovered that there is a contingent of Christianity that declares any fantasy franchise involving "magic" (including things like Harry Potter) as part of the occult. I now regret abandoning the game so readily, because it is fun. I don't see D&D as anything more than escapist fantasy -- no different from any other role playing game or video game or fantasy novels/movies or other fictional franchises.

I think laronius is on to something here. Yesterday, interestingly, Pastor Lutzer on the Q&A segment of his radio show tackled the question "can we separate salvation by faith from discipleship?" (https://www.moodymedia.org/ask-pastor-lutzer/archives/question-184/ ). Pastor Lutzer kind of hedged on the answer, but basically would not say that anything is required beyond that initial statement of faith. On another occasion, he responded to the question, "Is repentance required for salvation?" His response was to call that question "a hornet's nest" because there was a lot of debate in Christian circles. Again he kind of hedged that repentance should follow faith, but would not declare it necessary. It sometimes seems that some Protestants will take the "sola fide" part of their theology so seriously that they are very careful to never demand any action on our part to be saved. At this point, I don't think I would be seeking "answers" to his claim that baptism is not required. I might be seeking more to understand his position in more detail. As @Anddenex asked, does he pick and choose commandments to obey, or does he believe that obedience to any commandment is not required? At the end of the day, if your friend is Protestant and you are not, there may not be an "answer" other than, "My study of the scriptures leads me to believe that God expects us to strive to obey commandments." and agree to disagree from there.

I don't think we will owe the porn industry anything. The porn industry is not approaching this from a moral right/wrong perspective (if they even can approach anything from a moral right/wrong perspective), but from a simple practical or pragmatic perspective. I see this as similar to (though maybe starkly clearer than) the other practical issues that transgender people trigger. How do we handle trans women competing against cis women in athletic contests? How should a choir teacher/director deal with a trans-man who wants to sing in the bass section? In the changing landscape, our society is not fully settled on how to deal with transgender people in some of these special circumstances where the physical differences between biological males/females become important or even crucial (with porn, what the camera sees is crucial). The porn industry will be looking for a practical solution to the problem, not a moral solution.

Maybe it bucks the trend of the other responses, but I will offer this. Without knowing exactly how much alone time you really have or how much more "me" time you want, I would venture to say that dads (and moms, too) all deserve a reasonable amount of "me" time. What constitutes a reasonable amount depends on the person and the family, and I don't think we on this side of the internet have any way of knowing exactly what that looks like for you (that's probably where a neutral 3rd party counselor could really help). It seems clear to me from this thread that you need (or at least think you need) more "me" time than you are currently getting. One of the things I learned from Dr. Harley's His Needs Her Needs (mentioned earlier in the thread) is that if meeting your wife's needs causes you pain or causes you to sacrifice your important needs, you will eventually develop some kind of aversion or resentment towards meeting her needs. Do you like country music? Pull up "Too Cold at Home" by Mark Chestnut, and think about what it must be like to not want to go home. I expect it doesn't take a lot of searching to find men (and women) who will hang out at the bar, the golf course, take on extra work, etc. all so they can avoid going home. IMO, we don't want to become that guy who avoids going home because his wife won't let him have a little "me" time. We are only hearing your side of the story, and even then it is a very incomplete picture of what's going on. It sounds like you might as a family just be in a difficult time of life, where you have extra demands at work/school which limits the time you have for everything else and you need to balance that limited time/energy between yourself, your wife, and your family, and that gets to be difficult. I think a good marriage has to find a workable balance between Work's (both Dad's and Mom's) time, Dad's time, Mom's time, couple's time, and family time somewhere within the constraints of the limited time that we are given. It appears to me that you are in the midst of discovering just how hard that can be. I wish I had a concrete answer for you, but I don't. Maybe some intense and careful introspection -- how much of what types of personal time do you really need (and how much of what you want can you really do without)? Where are the work and other outside demands on your time coming from and can you change them (say no to a project at work or delegate more to coworkers)? Anything else that your introspection leads you to consider? Your wife probably needs a similar exercise. Then come together (I can still see value in having a neutral 3rd party present for some of these conversations) and figure out what you can do as a family to balance everyone's needs. I really wish I had more to offer.

+1, and I will add a couple of links to Hawaiian based resources: http://humanservices.hawaii.gov/ssd/domestic-violence-resources/ https://www.domesticshelters.org/help/hi From the second link, a little how to recognize abuse, if you want. https://www.domesticshelters.org/common-questions/am-i-experiencing-abuse#.Wd-mTtFrzD4 Please get some help from someone.

It is an interesting idea, and one that maybe needs its own thread to really explore rather than a threadjack. However, when has that stopped anyone from making a threadjack, right? I note the following from Handbook 2: For the ordinance of administering to the sick (section 20.6): " Only Melchizedek Priesthood holders may administer to the sick or afflicted. " For Father's blessings and blessings of comfort (section 20.8): "... one or more Melchizedek Priesthood holders place ..." In the one case, the word "Only" would seem to preclude women's participation in the ordinance. In the other case, the wording is less strict, but still makes no mention of women participating. I notice that your two statements are from the early and mid 20th century. From what I know of the history (without any expertise to verify the research presented to me), the trend was towards less women participating in ordinances like these throughout the 20th century. Like @clwnuke, I was under the impression that women could not participate at all in performing these ordinances. Not knowing the official answer to the question, I offer these thoughts. 1) Is it a case of "if it is not explicitly forbidden it is allowed" or "if it is not explicitly allowed it is forbidden"? 2) We often talk about not relying on "old" quotes from past Church leaders. Do we have anything newer than the '70s or '80s that would validate the older positions of Joseph, Joseph F, and Joseph Fielding Smith(s)? 3) In the spirit of "home centered -- church supported" does a wife/mother even need the Church's permission to participate with her husband in these ordinances? Like @clwnuke, I have always been under the impression that women should not participate in these ordinances, though I cannot find a specific prohibition against such. Part of me (the rebellious part, probably) would like to think that women can claim the right to participate whether the Church officially grants permission or not, but I am also mindful of AoF #5. I would feel a lot better about this practice if there was a newer affirmation that women could participate in these ordinances like you describe. With the steam that the feminist movement has (even among Church members), if we were at all comfortable with the older statements, I would think there would be more recent affirmations of the practice. In the absence of those affirmations, I am hesitant to accept the practice by virtue of the older statements alone.

If I understand the article, a temple recommend is required to witness baptisms for the dead in the temple (because being in the temple is necessary to witness those). However, any baptized member -- with or without a recommend -- may serve as a witness to baptism for the living outside of the temple. Again, assuming I am understanding the Des News reporting.

Just saw this reported in the Deseret News. Apparently, Pres. Nelson announced to a leadership session that girls and women may now be witnesses for baptisms and sealings: https://www.deseret.com/2019/10/2/20894166/church-women-policy-witnesses-lds-mormon-conference?fbclid=IwAR2LtfL4QfTrRI89dQKgvRnE9bI3TwyZACki8FxbEQe-uIQAm065LXrfxD8

@Anddenex I too have been wondering about medallions/emblems/trinkets. As a cub scout leader, I find that some boys and parents are not too worried about the trinket. Others really look forward to receiving their trinket "award". I recall a mention of medallions on Sunday, but I seem to recall it was part of an If statement. If you as leaders or parents decide to include medallions (or other trinket) you may. It was unclear to me if those optional medallions would be officially part of the Church's program, or if each unit would decide what trinkets (if any) and would then source those trinkets from outside sources. I am expecting that this will be part of the "flexibility" of the program, where local units/parents/leaders will decide if the trinkets will help motivate their youth or not and choose how to include those trinkets when motivating their youth.

Perhaps in response to @Traveler's comment about making the comfortable uncomfortable, I have reflected and I think I understand part of why I did not fit well into other goal-oriented programs that were tried on me. I'm not sure how to explain, but maybe like this. I entered adulthood about the same time Covey published his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. So I remember sitting through many motivational firesides and talks and seminars about becoming an amazing person. Well, as I noted, I'm not exactly a strongly motivated or ambitious person, so I always felt like I fell way short of goal oriented programs aimed at becoming great. I was content to become competent, faithful, average. I did not feel a need to become "highly" effective. Effective would be good enough for me. As noted so much depends on implementation. I might have done better in goal oriented programs if there was more emphasis on my real goals rather than trying to motivate me to have goals well beyond what I was motivated to accomplish. Aiming high and falling short did not help me. Aiming low and succeeding was much more effective for me. If the new program can work with both approaches to goal setting, maybe I would fit into it. My past experience (a sample size of 1) suggests that goal-setting program tend to work better for those who are motivated to aim high.

I guess I have some repenting to do, because I am not particularly excited for the program as I understand it. I guess I have never been much of a self-starter or had much ambition, because I have never done well under these kinds of goal-setting programs. The program also feel like it will be very open ended without much direction (like Personal Progress was). I know it is presented as a feature not a bug, and I guess we will see how it plays out -- especially in November when details of the program will be given. I know that BSA is not the end all be all of youth programs, but there were a couple of things I liked about BSA's model. There was a wide array of interests (ie merit badges) one could explore. But, once you had chosen to explore one of those interests (geology, music, art, first aid, etc.), BSA told you what was expected of a scout who chose to explore that interest. A few of those topics (like first aid) were deemed important enough that all scouts were required to spend some time in those topics. I guess we will see what details come out in November. Until then, I find myself feeling like I would be a poor fit for the program as I understand it now.

In the Salvation chapter, Robinson specifically explains (in response to Blomberg's observation that the language used in the book seems very different from one of Robinson's Ensign articles where he gives a "bicycle" analogy) that, in this book, he is using language that Protestants will hopefully better understand. In his Ensign article, he was using language that LDS would understand without being concerned about whether Protestants would understand. This was one of those sections where, like @mordorbund suggests, I wonder if Robinson was employing a little "spin" to make our thinking a little more palatable to Protestants. I see many Protestants accepting and teaching some variation of "works as an outgrowth of faith/grace" that Robinson talks about. I even recall some statements from apostles like Elder Uchtdorf that fit into this. I wonder, if Blomberg had really pressed him to a yes/no "Do you believe in Sola Fide and/or Sola Gratia?" (I have noted many times that I like to think of those as separate), would Robinson answer "yes" or "no". I don't know how Robinson would answer. I have noted that I could answer yes to one and no to the other (I believe in salvation by grace alone, but believe that it takes more than faith alone to get there), but that's just me. In this part of the discussion, the thing Robinson did that really stood out to me was framing it as similar to the Arminianism vs. Calvinism debate. It's probably not perfect, but I can see how Robinson sees Mormonism (if you have a better "ism" for this word, I'm open to suggestions) as leaning more towards Arminianism and Evangelicalism (as Blomberg concedes) leans more towards Calvinism. This page (https://www.learnreligions.com/calvinism-vs-arminianism-700526 ) notes that the Arminianism vs. Calvinism debate is potentially one of the most divisive in Christian history, so it should be no surprise that there is a significant debate between us and Evangelicals over these points. But, again, would we as LDS really classify ourselves collectively and unreservedly as Arminians? Maybe not. But, putting the debate into those terms should help Evangelicals, who would likely be more familiar with Arminianism and the different points in that debate, understand it.

I am problem one of the frightened spectators, because I think fear is a big problem for me in having these conversations. Too many examples (a couple of my own experiences) where it wasn't handled well, and I find myself preferring to completely avoid the conflict rather than figure out how to work through the conflict in a good way like these two did. Assuming that it will ever be my place to fully enter this dialog (outside of the anonymity of an internet forum like this), I will need to get over that fear before I can make a meaningful contribution.

I struggle enough with St. Paul's idea in 1 Cor. 7 that my sexual availability/unavailability might mean that I am at fault for my spouse's sin. I don't think that is right. I am even more uncomfortable with elevating that to the next level where my sexual availability/unavailability might be at fault for my fiancee's/spouse's very life. Any variation of "I will kill myself if you don't have sex with me" is all kinds of unhealthy and wrong -- even if I were to make concessions in the moral right/wrong department. I agree with NT, it is not fair to you to be yoked to someone whose very life depends on your sexual availability. If she is not currently in treatment for her suicidal ideation, then she needs to enter treatment. Get her emotional state back under control, then worry about how you are going to go forward -- including how you will deal with the moral right/wrong part of the question.

@prisonchaplain Now that you mention it, that is another big take away from the book. How to have a respectful conversation about these religious differences. I think that model can even go beyond LDS-Evangelical relations into other denominational relations (perhaps even the big Catholic-Protestant divide). Just modeling the ability to "disagree without being disagreeable" is a valuable skill -- especially with a topic that can be as charged as religion.

For some time now, @prisonchaplain has recommended Blomberg and Robinson's book. On one trip to the DI this summer, I came across a copy in good condition and decided I would pick it up and read it. Finished it this morning. A basic synopsis of the book: The book consists of 4 chapters (plus an introduction and a conclusion) that cover four topics: Scripture, God and Deification, Christ and the Trinity, and Salvation. Each chapter consists of a portion authored by Blomberg explaining the Evangelical beliefs on that topic and concerns with the LDS position, a portion authored by Robinson that explains the LDS beliefs on that topic and LDS concerns with the Evangelical positions. Each chapter includes a joint conclusion where they summarize the similarities and differences. We can talk about any of the chapters, if anyone wants to. A couple of overall impressions that stood out to me. I don't know if I was expecting some kind of ecumenical "bring us all together until we are singing Kum Ba Yah together by the end of the book", but my first impression was how neither author attempted to "gloss over" any of the main disagreements. Both authors, not in a mean spirited way, explained concerns and disagreements, while firmly explaining their convictions and their reasons for belief. For the most part, neither author made any concessions to the other in terms of belief, but neither did they attempt to misrepresent the others' arguments, either. I felt like each chapter provided a good opportunity for the reader to decide for him/herself just how different. The other impression that stood out to me was my reaction to some of Robinson's arguments. Maybe it is our inherent "mistrust" (or unwillingness to rely on or whatever this is called) of professional theologians/academicians, but I found myself occasionally wondering if the official Church leadership and publication people (correlation committees) would completely agree with what Robinson put into this book. Our Church is more "top down" authoritarian, and Robinson is not among those who are responsible for declaring and explaining doctrine in the LDS Church. He has been published in the Ensign and by Deseret Book, so he is certainly not a nobody in Church publication circles, but he kind of is a nobody. His opinion is just his opinion and carries no real weight. I doubt that anyone in the top councils of the Church would have serious misgivings over what he put in the book, though. When all was said and done, I thought he did a good job of summarizing LDS theology on those points as well as anyone else (especially considering that we don't really have a rigorous theology to refer to). Overall, I thought is was a good book. It does a good job, at summarizing each side of the chosen topics and how (most) Evangelical churches and the LDS Church can find agreement and disagreement.